THE DEMONIACS OF LOUVIERS--MADELINE BAVENT: 1633-1647.
Had Richelieu allowed the inquiry demanded by Father Joseph into the
doings of the Illuminate Confessors, some strange light would have
been thrown into the depth of the cloisters, on the daily life of the
nuns. Failing that, we may still learn from the Louviers story, which
is far more instructive than those of Aix and Loudun, that,
notwithstanding the new means of corruption furnished by Illuminism,
the director still resorted to the old trickeries of witchcraft, of
apparitions, heavenly or infernal, and so forth.[103]
[103] It was very easy to cheat those who wished to be
cheated. By this time celibacy was harder to practise than in
the Middle Ages, the number of fasts and bloodlettings being
greatly reduced. Many died from the nervous plethora of a
life so cruelly sluggish. They made no secret of their
torments, owning them to their sisters, to their confessor,
to the Virgin herself. A pitiful thing, a thing to sorrow
for, not to ridicule. In Italy, a nun besought the Virgin for
pity's sake to grant her a lover.
Of the three directors successively appointed to the Convent of
Louviers in the space of thirty years, David, the first, was an
Illuminate, who forestalled Molinos; the second, Picart, was a wizard
dealing with the Devil; and Boullé, the third, was a wizard working
in the guise of an angel.
There is an excellent book about this business; it is called _The
History of Magdalen Bavent_, a nun of Louviers; with her Examination,
&c., 1652: Rouen.[104] The date of this book accounts for the thorough
freedom with which it was written. During the wars of the Fronde, a
bold Oratorian priest, who discovered the nun in one of the Rouen
prisons, took courage from her dictation to write down the story of
her life.
[104] I know of no book more important, more dreadful, or
worthier of being reprinted. It is the most powerful
narrative of its class. _Piety Afflicted_, by the Capuchin
Esprit de Bosroger, is a work immortal in the annals of
tomfoolery. The two excellent pamphlets by the doughty
surgeon, Yvelin, the _Inquiry_ and the _Apology_, are in the
Library of Ste. Genevieve.
Born at Rouen in 1607, Madeline was left an orphan at nine years old.
At twelve she was apprenticed to a milliner. The confessor, a
Franciscan, held absolute sway in the house of this milliner, who as
maker of clothes for the nuns, was dependent on the Church. The monk
caused the apprentices, whom he doubtless made drunk with belladonna
and other magical drinks, to believe that they had been taken to the
Sabbath and there married to the devil Dagon. Three were already
possessed by him, and Madeline at fourteen became the fourth.
She was a devout worshipper, especially of St. Francis. A Franciscan
monastery had just been founded at Louviers, by a lady of Rouen, widow
of lawyer Hennequin, who was hanged for cheating. She hoped by this
good deed of hers to help in saving her husband's soul. To that end
she sought counsel of a holy man, the old priest David, who became
director to the new foundation. Standing at the entrance of the town,
with a wood surrounding it, this convent, born of so tragical a
source, seemed quite gloomy and poor enough for a place of stern
devotion. David was known as author of a _Scourge for Rakes_, an odd
and violent book against the abuses that defiled the Cloister.[105]
All of a sudden this austere person took up some very strange ideas
concerning purity. He became an Adamite, preached up the nakedness of
Adam in his days of innocence. The docile nuns of Louviers sought to
subdue and abase the novices, to break them into obedience, by
insisting--of course in summer-time--that these young Eves should
return to the plight of their common mother. In this state they were
sent out for exercise in some secluded gardens, and were taken into
the chapel itself. Madeline, who at sixteen had come to be received as
a novice, was too proud, perhaps in those days too pure also, to
submit to so strange a way of life. She got an angry scolding for
having tried at communion to hide her bosom with the altar-cloth.
[105] See Floquet; _Parliament of Normandy_, vol. v. p. 636.
Not less unwilling was she to uncover her soul, to confess to the Lady
Superior, after the usual monastic custom of which the abbesses were
particularly fond. She would rather trust herself with old David, who
kept her apart from the rest. He himself confided his own ailments
into her ear. Nor did he hide from her his inner teaching, the
Illuminism, which governed the convent: "You must kill sin by being
made humble and lost to all sense of pride through sin." Madeline was
frightened at the depths of depravity reached by the nuns, who quietly
carried out the teaching with which they had been imbued. She avoided
their company, kept to herself, and succeeded in getting made one of
the doorkeepers.
* * * * *
David died when she was eighteen. Old age prevented his going far with
the girl. But the vicar Picart, who succeeded him, was furious in his
pursuit of her; at the confessional spoke to her only of his love. He
made her his sextoness, that he might meet her alone in chapel. She
liked him not; but the nuns forbade her to have another confessor,
lest she might divulge their little secrets. And thus she was given
over to Picart. He beset her when she was sick almost to death;
seeking to frighten her by insisting that from David he had received
some infernal prescriptions. He sought to win her compassion by
feigning illness and begging her to come and see him. Thenceforth he
became her master, upset her mind with magic potions, and worked her
into believing that she had gone with him to the Sabbath, there to
officiate as altar and victim. At length, exceeding even the Sabbath
usages and daring the scandal that would follow, he made her to be
with child.
The nuns were afraid of one who knew the state of their morals; and
their interest also bound them to him. The convent was enriched by his
energy, his good repute, the alms and gifts he attracted towards it
from every quarter. He was building them a large church. We saw in the
Loudun business by what rivalries and ambitions these houses were led
away, how jealously they strove each to outdo the others. Through the
trust reposed in him by the wealthy, Picart saw himself raised into
the lofty part of benefactor and second founder of the convent.
"Sweetheart," he said to Madeline, "that noble church is all my
building! After my death you will see wonders wrought there. Do you
not agree to that?"
This fine gentleman did not put himself out at all regarding Madeline.
He paid a dowry for her, and made a nun of her who was already a
lay-sister. Thus, being no longer a doorkeeper, she could live in one
of the inner rooms, and there be brought to bed at her convenience. By
means of certain drugs, and practices of their own, the convents could
do without the help of doctors. Madeline said that she was delivered
several times. She never said what became of the newly-born.
Picart being now an old man, feared lest Madeline might in her
fickleness fly off some day, and utter words of remorse to another
confessor. So he took a detestable way of binding her to himself
beyond recall, by forcing her to make a will in which she promised "to
die when he died, and to be wherever he was." This was a dreadful
thought for the poor soul. Must she be drawn along with him into the
bottomless pit? Must she go down with him, even into hell? She deemed
herself for ever lost. Become his property, his mere tool, she was
used and misused by him for all kinds of purposes. He made her do the
most shameful things. He employed her as a magical charm to gain over
the rest of the nuns. A holy wafer steeped in Madeline's blood, and
buried in the garden, would be sure to disturb their senses and their
minds.
This was the very year in which Urban Grandier was burnt. Throughout
France, men spoke of nothing but the devils of Loudun. The
Penitentiary of Evreux, who had been one of the actors on that stage,
carried the dreadful tale back with him to Normandy. Madeline fancied
herself bewitched and knocked about by devils; followed about by a
lewd cat with eyes of fire. By degrees, other nuns caught the
disorder, which showed itself in odd supernatural jerks and writhings.
Madeline had besought aid of a Capuchin, afterwards of the Bishop of
Evreux. The prioress was not sorry for a step of which she must have
been aware, for she saw what wealth and fame a like business had
brought to the Convent of Loudun. But for six years the bishop turned
a deaf ear to the prayer, doubtless through fear of Richelieu, who was
then at work on a reform of the cloisters.
Richelieu wanted to bring these scandals to an end. It was not till
his own death, and that of Louis XIII., during the break-up which
followed on the rule of the Queen and Mazarin, that the priests again
betook themselves to working wonders, and waging war with the Devil.
Picart being dead, they were less shy of a matter in which so
dangerous a man might have accused others in his turn. They met the
visions of Madeline, by looking out a visionary for themselves. They
got admission into the convent for a certain Sister Anne of the
Nativity, a girl of sanguine, hysteric temperament, frantic at need
and half-mad, so far at least as to believe in her own lies. A kind of
dogfight was got up between the two. They besmeared each other with
false charges. Anne saw the Devil quite naked, by Madeline's side.
Madeline swore to seeing Anne at the Sabbath, along with the Lady
Superior, the Mother-Assistant, and the Mother of the Novices. Besides
this, there was nothing new; merely a hashing up of the two great
trials at Aix and Loudun. They read and followed the printed
narratives only. No wit, no invention, was shown by either.
Anne, the accuser, and her devil Leviathan, were backed by the
Penitentiary of Evreux, one of the chief actors in the Loudun affair.
By his advice, the Bishop of Evreux gave orders to disinter the body
of Picart, so that the devils might leave the convent when Picart
himself was taken away from the neighbourhood. Madeline was condemned,
without a hearing, to be disgraced, to have her body examined for the
marks of the Devil. They tore off her veil and gown, and made her the
wretched sport of a vile curiosity, that would have pierced her till
she bled again, in order to win the right of sending her to the stake.
Leaving to no one else the care of a scrutiny which was in itself a
torture, these virgins acting as matrons, ascertained if she was with
child or no, shaved all her body, and dug their needles into her
quivering flesh, to find out the insensible spots that betrayed the
mark of the Devil. At every dig they discovered signs of pain: if they
had not the luck to prove her a Witch, at any rate, they could revel
in her tears and cries.
* * * * *
But Sister Anne was not satisfied, until, on the mere word of her own
devil, Madeline, though acquitted by the results of this examination,
was condemned for the rest of her life to an _In pace_. It was said
that the convent would be quieted by her departure; but such was not
the case. The Devil was more violent than ever; some twenty nuns began
to cry out, to prophesy, to beat themselves.
Such a sight drew thither a curious crowd from Rouen, and even from
Paris. Yvelin, a young Parisian surgeon, who had already seen the
farce at Loudun, came to see that of Louviers. He brought with him a
very clear-headed magistrate, the Commissioner of Taxes at Rouen. They
devoted unwearying attention to the matter, settled themselves at
Louviers, and carried on their researches for seventeen days.
From the first day they saw into the plot. A conversation they had had
with the Penitentiary of Evreux on their entrance into the town, was
repeated back to them by Sister Anne's demon, as if it had been a
revelation. The scenic arrangements were very bewitching. The shades
of night, the torches, the flickering and smoking lights, produced
effects which had not been seen at Loudun. The rest of the process was
simple enough. One of the bewitched said that in a certain part of the
garden they would find a charm. They dug for it, and it was found.
Unluckily, Yvelin's friend, the sceptical magistrate, never budged
from the side of the leading actress, Sister Anne. At the very edge of
a hole they had just opened he grasped her hand, and on opening it,
found the charm, a bit of black thread, which she was about to throw
into the ground.
The exorcisers, the penitentiary, priests, and Capuchins, about the
spot, were overwhelmed with confusion. The dauntless Yvelin, on his
own authority, began a scrutiny, and saw to the uttermost depth of the
affair.
Among the fifty-two nuns, said he, there were six _possessed_, but
deserving of chastisement. Seventeen more were victims under a spell,
a pack of girls upset by the disease of the cloisters. He describes
it with great precision: the girls are regular but hysterical, blown
out with certain inward storms, lunatics mainly, and disordered in
mind. A nervous contagion has ruined them; and the first thing to do
is to keep them apart.
He then, with the liveliness of Voltaire, examines the tokens by which
the priests were wont to recognize the supernatural character of the
bewitched. They foretel, he allows, but only what never happens. They
translate, indeed, but without understanding; as when, for instance,
they render "_ex parte virginis_," by "the departure of the Virgin."
They know Greek before the people of Louviers, but cannot speak it
before the doctors of Paris. They cut capers, take leaps of the
easiest kind, climb up the trunk of a tree which a child three years
old might climb. In short, the only thing they do that is really
dreadful and unnatural, is to use dirtier language than men would ever
do.
* * * * *
In tearing off the mask from these people, the surgeon rendered a
great service to humanity. For the matter was being pushed further;
other victims were about to be made. Besides the charms were found
some papers, ascribed to David or Picart, in which this and that
person were called witches, and marked out for death. Each one
shuddered lest his name should be found there. Little by little the
fear of the priesthood made its way among the people.
The rotten age of Mazarin, the first days of the weak Anne of Austria,
were already come. Order and government were no more. "But one phrase
was left in the language: _The Queen is so good._" Her goodness gave
the clergy a chance of getting the upper hand. The power of the laity
entombed with Richelieu, bishops, priests, and monks, were about to
reign. The bold impiety of the magistrate and his friend Yvelin
imperilled so sweet a hope. Groans and wailings went forth to the Good
Queen, not from the victims, but from the knaves thus caught in the
midst of their offences. Up to the Court they went, weeping for the
outrage to their religion.
Yvelin was not prepared for this stroke: he deemed himself firm at
Court, having for ten years borne the title of Surgeon to the Queen.
Before he returned from Louviers to Paris, the weakness of Anne of
Austria had been tempted into granting another commission named by his
opponents, consisting of an old fool in his dotage, one Diafoirus of
Rouen, and his nephew, both attached to the priesthood. These did not
fail to discover that the Louviers affair was supernatural,
transcending all art of man.
Any other than Yvelin would have been discouraged. The Rouen
physicians treated with utter scorn this surgeon, this barber fellow,
this mere sawbones. The Court gave him no encouragement. Still, he
held on his way in a treatise which will live yet. He accepts this
battle of science against priestcraft, declaring, as Wyer did in the
sixteenth century, that "in all such matters the right judge is not
the priest but the man of science." With great difficulty he found
some one bold enough to print, but no one willing to sell his little
work. So in broad daylight the heroic young man set about distributing
it with his own hands. Placing himself on the Pont Neuf, the most
frequented spot in Paris, at the foot of Henry the Fourth's statue, he
gave out copies of his memoir to the passers by. At the end of it they
found a formal statement of the shameful fraud, how in the hand of the
female demons the magistrate had caught the unanswerable evidence of
their dishonour.
* * * * *
Return we to the wretched Madeline. Her enemy, the Penitentiary of
Evreux, by whose influence she had been searched with needles, carried
her off as his prey to the heart of the episcopal dungeons in that
town. Below an underground passage dipped a cave, below the cave a
cell, where the poor human creature lay buried in damps and darkness.
Reckoning upon her speedy death, her dread companions had not even the
kindness to give her a piece of linen for the dressing of her ulcer.
There, as she lay in her own filth, she suffered alike from pain and
want of cleanliness. The whole night long she was disturbed by the
running to and fro of ravenous rats, those terrors of every prison,
who were wont to nibble men's ears and noses.
But all these horrors fell short of those which her tyrant, the
Penitentiary, dealt out to her himself. Day after day he would come
into the upper vault and speak to her through the mouth of her pit,
threatening her, commanding her, and making her, whether she would or
no, confess to this or that crime as having been wrought by others. At
length she ceased to eat. Fearing that she might die at once, he drew
her for a while out of her _In Pace_, and laid her in the upper vault.
Then, in his rage against Yvelin's memoir, he cast her back into her
sewer below.
That glimpse of light, that short renewal and sudden death of hope,
gave the crowning impulse to her despair. Her wound was closing, so
that her strength was greater. She was seized with a deep and violent
thirst for death. She swallowed spiders, but instead of dying, only
brought them up again. Pounded glass she swallowed, but in vain.
Finding an old bit of sharp iron, she tried to cut her throat, but
could not. Then, as an easier way, she dug the iron into her belly.
For four hours she worked and bled, but without success. Even this
wound shortly began to close. To crown all, the life she hated so
returned to her stronger than before. Her heart's death was of no
avail.
She became once more a woman; still, alas! an object of desire, of
temptation for her jailers, those brutish varlets of the bishopric,
who, notwithstanding the horror of the place, and the unhappy
creature's own sad and filthy plight, would come to make sport of
her, believing that they might do all their pleasure against a Witch.
But an angel succoured her, so she said. From men and rats alike she
defended herself. But against herself, herself she could not protect.
Her prison corrupted her mind. She dreamed of the Devil, besought him
to come and see her, to restore to her the shameful pleasures in which
she had wallowed at Louviers. He never deigned to come back. Once more
amidst this corruption of her senses, she fell back on her old desire
for death. One of the jailers had given her a drug to kill the rats.
She was just going to swallow it herself, when an angel--an angel, was
it, or a devil?--stayed her hand, reserving her for other crimes.
Thenceforward--sunk into the lowest depths of vileness, become an
unspeakable cipher of cowardice and servility--she signed endless
lists of crimes which she had never committed. Was she worth the
trouble of burning? Many had given up that idea, but the ruthless
Penitentiary clung to it still. He offered money to a Wizard of
Evreux, then in prison, if he would bear such witness as might bring
about the death of Madeline.
For the future, however, they could use her for other purposes--to
bear false witness, to become a tool for any slander. Whenever they
sought the ruin of any man, they had only to drag down to Louviers or
to Evreux this accursed ghost of a dead woman, living only to make
others die. In this way she was brought out to kill with her words a
poor man named Duval. What the Penitentiary dictated to her, she
repeated readily: when he told her by what marks she should know
Duval, whom she had never seen, she pointed him out and said she had
seen him at the Sabbath. Through her it fell out that he was burnt!
She owned her dreadful crime, and shuddered to think what answer she
could make before God. She was fallen into such contempt that no one
now deigned to look after her. The doors stood wide open: sometimes
she had the keys herself. But where now should she go, object as she
was of so much dread? Thenceforth the world repelled her--cast her
out: the only world she had left was her dungeon.
During the anarchy of Mazarin and his Good Lady the chief authority
remained with the Parliaments. That of Rouen, hitherto the friendliest
to the clergy, grew wroth at last at their arrogant way of examining,
ordering, and burning people. A mere decree of the Bishop had caused
Picart's body to be disinterred and thrown into the common sewer. And
now they were passing on to the trial of Boullé, the curate, and
supposed abettor of Picart. Listening to the plaint of Picart's
family, the Parliament sentenced the Bishop of Evreux to replace him
at his own expense in his tomb at Louviers. They called up Boullé,
undertook his trial themselves, and at the same time sent for the
wretched Madeline from Evreux to Rouen.
People were afraid that Yvelin and the magistrate who had caught the
nuns in the very act of cheating, would be made to appear. Hieing away
to Paris, they found the knave Mazarin ready to protect their knavish
selves. The whole matter was appealed to the King's Council--an
indulgent court, without eyes or ears--whose care it was to bury, hush
up, bedarken everything connected with justice.
Meanwhile, some honey-tongued priests had comforted Madeline in her
Rouen dungeon; they heard her confessions, and enjoined her, by way of
penance, to ask forgiveness of her persecutors, the nuns of Louviers.
Thenceforth, happen what might, Madeline could never more be brought
in evidence against those who had thus bound her fast. It was a
triumph indeed for the clergy, and the victory was sung by a knave of
an exorciser, the Capuchin Esprit de Bosroger, in his _Piety
Afflicted_, a farcical monument of stupidity, in which he accuses,
unawares, the very people he fancies himself defending.
The Fronde, as I said before, was a revolution for honest ends. Fools
saw only its outer form--its laughable aspects; but at bottom it was a
serious business, a moral reaction. In August, 1647, with the first
breath of freedom, Parliament stepped forward and cut the knot. It
ordered, in the first place, the destruction of the Louviers Sodom;
the girls were to be dispersed and sent back to their kinsfolk. In the
next, it decreed that thenceforth the bishops of the province should,
four times a-year, send special confessors to the nunneries, to
ascertain that such foul abuses were not renewed.
One comfort, however, the clergy were to receive. They were allowed to
burn the bones of Picart and the living body of Boullé, who, after
making public confession in the cathedral, was drawn on a hurdle to
the Fish Market, and there, on the 21st August, 1647, devoured by the
flames. Madeline, or rather her corpse, remained in the prisons of
Rouen.