In Hecker’s Epidemics of the Middle Ages is given a full account of the “Convulsionnaires of St. Médard,” so-called from the cemetery of St. Médard in Paris, where a noted Jansenist deacon was buried in 1727. The fanatical excitement of his followers first showed itself in pilgrimages and reported miraculous cures at his grave, to which they gradually flocked in great numbers, many becoming convulsed with terrible contortions, jumping, shouting, rolling on the ground, spinning around with incredible velocity, running their heads against walls, while others preached fanatical harangues or pretended to be gifted with clairvoyance. For more than fifty years these scandalous exhibitions continued, Convulsionism growing into a distinct sect in spite of the efforts of the government to suppress it, until swept out of existence by the greater excitement of the French Revolution.
In many of these cases, the supposition of intentional fraud was doubtless well founded; in others, the ecstatics were themselves the unconscious dupes of their own fanaticism. To appreciate the cautious scrutiny with which the church, however, sifts pretensions of this nature in any of her children, the reader
need only consult the lives of such saints as have been thus favored.[48]
The psychological condition or state which is somewhat vaguely termed ecstasy has always possessed peculiar interest both for the theologian and the physician; and, although numerous definitions of it have been attempted, it is extremely difficult to convey to the general reader a clear idea of its distinctive nature. The word itself usually signifies a condition in which the mind and soul is transferred, or placed out of its usual state.
St. Augustine called it “a transport, by which the soul is separated and, as it were, removed to a distance from the bodily senses,” and, following this definition, Ambrose Paré, the father of French surgery, terms it “a reverie with rapture of the mind, as if the soul were parted from the body.” St. Bonaventure, the contemporary and biographer of St. Francis of Assisium, says that ecstasy “is an elevation of the soul to that source of divine love which surpasses human understanding, an elevation by which it is separated from the exterior man.” St. Thomas Aquinas, Cardinal Bona, and other theological writers give similar definitions; while among medical authorities, Briquet, J. Franck, Bérard, Thomas King Chambers, Guislain of Brussels, Clymer, Gratiolet, and many others describe its symptoms and discuss its pathological relations.
Well-marked ecstasy and the stigmata have but seldom been united in the same individual, and still more rarely have these extraordinary manifestations been subjected to the searching tests of science.
It will not, then, be amiss to present
the readers of this magazine with a brief description of the most notable illustration in recent times of these marvellous phenomena, as the case has acquired a European celebrity, attracting the scrutiny of many savants, and forming the subject of an interesting memoir[49] by a professor in the Belgian University of Louvain. From his description of the facts, which he was officially appointed to investigate in their scientific bearings, we shall condense the following account.
In the rich and industrial province of Hainault, in Belgium, is situated the village of Bois d’Haine, about midway between the towns of Charleroi and Mons. It is mainly composed of cottages occupied by workmen in the neighboring manufactories; and in one of the poorest of these Louise Lateau, the subject of this notice, was born January 30, 1850.
She is the youngest of three children, all daughters; and their parents were poor working people, strong and ordinarily healthy, and never subject to any nervous hæmorrhagic disease. The mother is still living and in good health; the father died during an epidemic of small-pox at the age of twenty-eight. Louise, then two and a half months old, contracted this disease from her father, but made a rapid recovery. The family continued to struggle on in poverty, the children’s food being poor and scant—“plusque frugal,” says Dr. Lefebvre—but they nevertheless grew up robust and healthy. When only eight, Louise was placed in the temporary care of a poor old woman in the neighborhood, while the latter’s son was engaged in outdoor work. A little later she was