VI.
Miraculous cures were counted by hundreds. It was impossible to verify them all. The episcopal commission submitted thirty of them to most rigorous scrutiny. The most severe strictness was shown in this examination, and nothing was admitted as supernatural, until it was absolutely impossible to call it anything else. All cures which had not been almost instantaneous, or which had been occupied by successive stages, all these were rejected; as also were all which had been obtained in conjunction with medical treatment, however unavailing the latter might have been. "Although the inefficacy of the remedies prescribed by science has been sufficiently demonstrated, we cannot in this case in an exclusive manner attribute the cure to a supernatural virtue in the water of the grotto which was used at the same time." So runs the report of the secretary of the commission.
Moreover, numerous spiritual favors, singular graces, unlooked-for conversions, had been reported to the commission. It is difficult to establish juridically events which have taken place in the closed recesses of the human soul and which escape the observation of all without. Although such facts, such changes, are often more wonderful than the restoration of a member or the healing of a physical disease, the commission judged rightly when it decided that it ought not to include them in the solemn and public inquiry with which it had been charged by the bishop.
In the report to his grace, the committee, by agreement with the physicians, divided the cures which had been examined into three categories, with all the carefully gathered details and procès-verbaux, signed by the persons cured and by numerous witnesses.
The first category included those cures which, despite their striking and astonishing appearance, were susceptible of a natural explanation. These were six in number; namely, those of Jeanne-Marie Arqué, the widow Crozat, Blaise Maumus, a child of the Lasbareilles of Gez, Jeanne Crassus, Arcizan-Avant, Jeanne Pomiès of Loubajac.
The second list comprised cures which the commission felt inclined to attribute a supernatural character. Of this number were Jean-Pierre Malou, Jeanne-Marie Dauber, wife of a certain Vendôme, Bernarde Soubies and Pauline Bordeaux of Lourdes, Jean-Marie Amaré of Beaucens, Marcelle Peyregue of Agos, Jeanne-Marie Massot Bordenave of Arras, Jeanne Gezma and Auguste Bordes of Pontacq. "The greater number of these facts," says the medical report, "possess all the conditions to cause them be admitted as supernatural. It will, perhaps, be found that in excluding them we have acted with too much reserve and scrupulousness.
"But far from complaining of this reproach, we shall congratulate ourselves upon it, since in these matters we are convinced that prudence demands severity."
Under such circumstances, a natural explanation, although in itself utterly improbable, seemed rigorously possible, and this was sufficient to prevent the examiners from declaring a miracle.
The third class contained cures which presented an undeniable and evident supernatural character, fifteen in number. Those of: Blaisette Soupenne, Benoite Cazeaux, Jeanne Grassus married to Crozat, Louis Bourriette, little Justin Bouhohorts, Fabian and Suzanne Baron of Lourdes, Madame Rizanand, Henry Busquet of Nay, Catherine Latapie of Loubajac, Madame Lanou of Bordères, Marianne Garrot and Denys Bouchet of Lamarque, Jean-Marie Tambourné of St. Justin, Mlle. Marie Moreau de Sazenay of Tartas, Paschaline Abbadie of Rabasteins, all these were incontestably miraculous.
"The maladies to which those favored by such sudden and startling cures were subject were of entirely different natures"—we quote from the report of the commission. "They possessed the greatest variety of character. Some were the subjects of external, others of internal pathology. Nevertheless, these various diseases were all cured by a single simple element, used either as a lotion or drink, or sometimes in both ways.