'Possession' in France in the Seventeenth Century--Urbain
Grandier and the Convent of Loudun--Exorcism at
Aix--Ecstatic Phenomena--Madeleine Bavent--Her cruel
Persecution--Catholic and Protestant Witchcraft in
Germany--Luther's Demonological Fears and
Experiences--Originated in his exceptional Position and in
the extraordinary Circumstances of his Life and
Times--Witch-burning at Bamburg and at Wuerzburg.
Demoniacal possession was a phase of witchcraft which obtained
extensively in France during the seventeenth century: the victims
of this hallucination were chiefly the female inmates of
religious houses, whose inflamed imaginations were prostituted by
their priestly advisers to the most atrocious purposes. Urbain
Grandier's fate was connected with that of an entire convent. The
facts of this celebrated sorcerer's history are instructive. He
was educated in a college of the Jesuits at Bordeaux, and
presented by the fathers, with whom his abilities and address had
gained much applause, to a benefice in Loudun. He provoked by his
haughtiness the jealousy of his brother clergy, who regarded him
as an intruder, and his pride and resentment increased in direct
proportion to the activity of his enemies, who had conspired to
effect his ruin. Mounier and Mignon, two priests whom he had
mortally offended, were most active. Urbain Grandier was rash
enough to oppose himself alone to the united counsels of
unscrupulous and determined foes. Defeated singly in previous
attempts to drive him from Loudun, the two priests combined with
the leading authorities of the place. Their haughty and careless
adversary had the advantage or disadvantage of a fine person and
handsome face, which, with his other recommendations, gained him
universal popularity with the women; and his success and
familiarities with the fair sex were not likely to escape the
vigilance of spies anxious to collect damaging proofs. What
inflamed to the utmost the animosities of the two parties was the
success of Canon Mignon in obtaining the coveted position of
confessor to the convent of Ursulines in Loudun, to the exclusion
of Grandier, himself an applicant. This convent was destined to
assume a prominent part in the fate of the cure of the town. The
younger nuns, it seems, to enliven the dull monotony of monastic
life, adopted a plan of amusing their leisure by frightening the
older ones in making the most of their knowledge of secret
passages in the building, playing off ghost-tricks, and raising
unearthly noises. When the newly appointed confessor was informed
of the state of matters he at once perceived the possibility,
and formed the design, of turning it to account. The offending
nuns were promised forgiveness if they would continue their
ghostly amusement, and also affect demoniacal possession; a fraud
in which they were more readily induced to participate by an
assurance that it might be the humble means of converting the
heretics--Protestants being unusually numerous in that part of
the country.
As soon as they were sufficiently prepared to assume their parts,
the magistrates were summoned to witness the phenomena of
possession and exorcism. On the first occasion the Superior of
the convent was the selected patient; and it was extracted from
the demon in possession that he had been sent by Urbain Grandier,
priest of the church of St. Peter. This was well so far; but the
civil authorities generally, as it appears, were not disposed to
accept even the irrefragable testimony of a demoniac; and the
ecclesiastics, with the leading inhabitants, were in conflict
with the civil power. Opportunely, however, for the plan of the
conspirators, who were almost in despair, an all-powerful ally
was enlisted on their side. A severe satire upon some acts of the
minister of France, Cardinal Richelieu, or of some of his
subordinates, had made its appearance. Urbain was suspected to be
the author; his enemies were careful to improve the occasion; and
the Cardinal-minister's cooperation was secured. A royal
commission was ordered to inquire into the now notorious
circumstances of the Loudun diabolism. Laubardemont, the head of
the commission, arrived in December 1633, and no time was lost in
bringing the matter to a crisis. The house of the suspected was
searched for books of magic; he himself being thrown into a
dungeon, where the surgeons examined him for the 'marks.' Five
insensible spots were found--a certain proof. Meanwhile the nuns
become more hysterical than ever; strong suspicion not being
wanting that the priestly confessors to the convent availed
themselves of their situation to abuse the bodies as well as the
minds of the reputed demoniacs. To such an extent went the
audacity of the exorcists, and the credulity of the people, that
the _enceinte_ condition of one of the sisters, which at the end
of five or six months disappeared, was explained by the malicious
slander of the devil, who had caused that scandalous illusion.
Crowds of persons of all ranks flocked from Paris and from the
most distant parts to see and hear the wild ravings of these
hysterical or drugged women, whose excitement was such that they
spared not their own reputations; and some scandalous exposures
were submitted to the amusement or curiosity of the surrounding
spectators. Some few of them, aroused from the horrible delusion,
or ashamed of their complicity, admitted that all their previous
revelations were simple fiction. Means were found to effectually
silence such dangerous announcements. The accusers pressed on the
prosecution; the influence of his friends was overborne, and
Grandier was finally sentenced to the stake. Fearing the result
of a despair which might convincingly betray the facts of the
case to the assembled multitude, they seem to have prevailed upon
the condemned to keep silence up to the last moment, under
promise of an easier death. But already fastened to the stake, he
learned too late the treachery of his executioners; instead of
being first strangled, he was committed alive to the flames. Nor
were any 'last confessions' possible. The unfortunate victim of
the malice of exasperated rivals, and of the animosity of the
implacable Richelieu, has been variously represented.[123] It is
noticeable that the scene of this affair was in the heart of the
conquered Protestant region--Rochelle had fallen only six years
before the execution; and the heretics, although politically
subdued, were numerous and active. A fact which may account for
the seeming indifference and even the opposition of a large
number of the people in this case of diabolism which obtained
comparatively little credit. It had been urged to the nuns that
it would be for the good and glory of Catholicism that the
heretics should be confounded by a few astounding miracles.
Whether Grandier had any decided heretical inclinations is
doubtful; but he wrote against the celibacy of the priesthood,
and was suspected of liberal opinions in religion. A Capuchin
named Tranquille (a contemporary) has furnished the materials for
the 'History of the Devils of Loudun' by the Protestant Aubin,
1716.
[123] Michelet apparently accepts the charge of immorality;
according to which the cure took advantage of his popularity
among the ladies of Loudun, by his insinuating manners, to
seduce the wives and daughters of the citizens. By another
writer (Alexandre Dumas, _Celebrated Crimes_) he is supposed
to have been of a proud and vindictive disposition, but
innocent of the alleged irregularities.
Twenty-four years previously a still more scandalous affair--that
of Louis Gauffridi and the Convent of Aix, in which Gauffridi, who
had debauched several girls both in and out of the establishment,
was the principal actor--was transacted with similar circumstances.
Madeleine, one of the novices, soon after entering upon her
noviciate, was seized with the ecstatic trances, which were
speedily communicated to her companions.[124] These fits, in the
judgment of the priests, were nothing but the effect of witchcraft.
Exorcists elicited from the girls that Louis Gauffridi, a powerful
magician having authority over demons throughout Europe, had
bewitched them. The questions and answers were taken down, by
order of the judges, by reporters, who, while the priests were
exorcising, committed the results to writing, published afterwards
by one of them, Michaelis, in 1613. Among the interesting facts
acquired through these spirit-media, the inquisitors learned that
Antichrist was already come; that printing, and the invention of
it, were alike accursed, and similar information. Madeleine,
tortured and imprisoned in the most loathsome dungeon, was reduced
to such a condition of extreme horror and dread, that from this
time she was the mere instrument of her atrocious judges. Having
been intimate with the wizard, she could inform them of the
position of the 'secret marks' on his person: these were
ascertained in the usual way by pricking with needles. Gauffridi,
by various torture, was induced to make the required confession,
and was burned alive at Aix, April 30, 1611.
[124] M. Maury, in a philosophical and learned work (_La
Magie et l'Astrologie dans l'Antiquite et au Moyen Age_),
has scientifically explored and exposed the mysteries of
these and the like ecstatic phenomena, of such frequent
occurrence in Protestant as well as in Catholic countries;
in the orphan-houses of Amsterdam and Horn, as well as in
the convents of France and Italy in the 17th century. And
the Protestant revivalists of the present age have in great
measure reproduced these curious results of religious
excitement.
Demoniacal possession was a mania in France in the seventeenth
century. The story of Madeleine Bavent, as reported, reveals the
utmost licentiousness and fiendish cruelty.[125] Gibbon justly
observes that ancient Rome supported with the greatest difficulty
the institution of _six_ vestals, notwithstanding the certain fate
of a living grave for those who could not preserve their
chastity; and Christian Rome was filled with many thousands of
both sexes bound by vows to perpetual virginity. Madeleine was
seduced by her Franciscan confessor when only fourteen; and she
entered a convent lately founded at Louviers. In this building,
surrounded by a wood, and situated in a suitable spot, some
strange practices were carried on. At the instigation of their
director, a priest called David, the nuns, it is reported, were
seized with an irresistible desire of imitating the primitive
Adamite simplicity: the novices were compelled to return to the
simple nudity of the days of innocence when taking exercise in
the conventual gardens, and even at their devotions in the
chapel. The novice Madeleine, on one occasion, was reprimanded
for concealing her bosom with the altar-cloth at communion. She
was originally of a pure and artless mind; and only gradually and
stealthily she was corrupted by the pious arguments of her
priest. This man, Picart by name--one of that extensive class the
'tristes obsc[oe]ni,' of whom the Angelos and Tartuffes[126] are
representatives--succeeded to the vacant office of directing
confessor to the nuns of Louviers; and at once embraced the
opportunities of the confessional. Without repeating all the
disgusting scenes that followed, as given by Michelet, it is only
necessary to add that the miserable nun became the mistress and
helpless creature of her seducer. 'He employed her as a magical
charm to gain over the rest of the nuns. A holy wafer steeped in
Madeleine'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 burned. Throughout France men spoke of
nothing but the devils of Loudun.... Madeleine 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.'
[125] It is but one instance of innumerable amours within
the secret penetralia of the privileged conventual
establishments. In the dark recesses of these vestal
institutions on a gigantic scale, where publicity, that sole
security, was never known, what vices or even crimes could
not be safely perpetrated? Luther, who proved in the most
practical way his contempt for the sanctity of monastic vows
by eloping with a nun, assures us, among other scandals
attaching to convent life, of the fact that when a fish-pond
adjoining one of these establishments in Rome was drained
off, six thousand infant skulls were exposed to view. A
story which may be fact or fiction. But while fully
admitting the probability of invention and exaggeration in
the relations of enemies, and the fact that undue prejudice
is likely to somewhat exaggerate the probable evils of the
mysterious and unknown, how could it be otherwise than that
during fourteen centuries many crimes should have been
committed in those silent and safe retreats? Nor, indeed, is
experience opposed to the possibility of the highest fervour
of an unnatural enthusiasm being compatible with more human
passions. The virgin who,
'Ut flos in septis secretus nascitur hortis
Ignotus pecori,'
as eulogised by the virgin-chorus in the beautiful
epithalamium of Catullus, might be recognised in the
youthful 'religieuse' if only human passion could be
excluded; but the story of Heloise and Abelard is not a
solitary proof of the superiority of human nature over an
impossible and artificial spirituality.
[126] As Tartuffe privately confesses,
'L'amour qui nous attache aux beautes eternelles
N'etouffe pas en nous l'amour des temporelles.
* * * * *
Pour etre devot, je n'en suis pas moins homme.'
The Superior was not averse to the publication of these events,
having the example and reputation of Loudun before her. Little is
new in the possession and exorcism: for the most part they are a
repetition of those of Aix and Loudun. During a brief interval
the devils were less outrageous: for the Cardinal-minister was
meditating a reform of the monastic establishments. Upon his
death they commenced again with equal violence. Picart was now
dead--but not so the persecution of his victim. The priests
recommenced miracle-working with renewed vigour.[127] Saved from
immediate death by a fortunate or, as it may be deemed,
unfortunate sensitiveness to bodily pain, she was condemned for
the rest of her life to solitary confinement in a fearful
dungeon, in the language of her judges to an _in pace_. There
lying tortured, powerless in a loathsome cell, their prisoner was
alternately coaxed and threatened into admitting all sorts of
crimes, and implicating whom they wished.[128] The further
cruelties to which the lust, and afterwards the malignancy, of
her gaolers submitted her were not brought to an end by the
interference of parliament in August 1647, when the destruction
of the Louviers establishment was decreed. The guilty escaped by
securing, by intimidation, the silence of their prisoner, who
remained a living corpse in the dungeons of the episcopal palace
of Rouen. The bones of Picart were exhumed, and publicly burned;
the cure Boulle, an accomplice, was dragged on a hurdle to the
fish-market, and there burned at the stake. So terminated this
last of the trilogical series. But the hysterical or demoniacal
disease was as furious as ever in Germany in the middle of the
eighteenth century; and was attended with as tremendous effects
at Wuerzburg as at Louviers.
[127] To the diabolic visions of the other they opposed
those of 'a certain Anne of the Nativity, a girl of sanguine
hysterical temperament, frantic at need, and half mad--so
far at least as to believe in her own lies. A kind of
dog-fight was got up between the two. They besmeared each
other with false charges. Anne saw the devil quite naked by
Madeleine's side. Madeleine swore to seeing Anne at the
Sabbath with the Lady Superior, the Mother Assistant, and
the Mother of the novices.... Madeleine 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 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 were with child or no; shaved all her body, and dug
their needles into her quivering flesh to find out the
insensible spots.'--_La Sorciere._
[128] The horrified reader may see the fuller details of this
case in Michelet's _La Sorciere_, who takes occasion to state
that, than 'The History of Madeleine Bavent, a nun of
Louviers, with her examination, &c., 1652, Rouen,' he knows
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 Bosrager,
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.'--_La Sorciere_, the Witch of the Middle Ages,
chap. viii. Whatever exaggeration there may possibly be in
any of the details of these and similar histories, there is
not any reasonable doubt of their general truth. It is much
to be wished, indeed, that writers should, in these cases,
always confine themselves to the simple facts, which need not
any imaginary or fictitious additions.
In Germany during the seventeenth century witches felt the fury
of both Catholic and Protestant zeal; but in the previous age
prosecutions are directed against Protestant witches. They
abounded in Upper Germany in the time of Innocent VIII., and
what numbers were executed has been already seen. When the
revolutionary party had acquired greater strength and its power
was established, they vied with the conservatives in their
vigorous attacks upon the empire of Satan.
Luther had been sensible to the contagious fear that the great
spiritual enemy was actually fighting in the ranks of his
enemies. He had personal experience of his hostility. Immured for
his safety in a voluntary but gloomy prison, occupied intensely
in the plan of a mighty revolution against the most powerful
hierarchy that has ever existed, engaged continuously in the
laborious task of translating the Sacred Scriptures, only
partially freed from the prejudices of education, it is little
surprising that the antagonist of the Church should have
experienced infernal hallucinations. This weakness of the
champion of Protestantism is at least more excusable than the
pedantic folly of the head of the English Church. When Luther,
however, could seriously affirm that witchcraft 'is the devil's
proper work wherewith, when God permits, he not only hurts people
but makes away with them; for in this world we are as guests and
strangers, body and soul, cast under the devil: that idiots, the
lame, the blind, the dumb are men in whom ignorant devils have
established themselves, and all the physicians who attempt to
heal these infirmities as though they proceeded from natural
causes, are ignorant blockheads who know nothing about the power
of the demon,' we cannot be indignant at the blind credulity of
the masses of the people. It appears inconsistent that Luther,
averse generally to supernaturalism, should yet find no
difficulty in entertaining these irrational diabolistic ideas.
The circumstances of his life and times sufficiently explain the
inconsistency.[129]
[129] The following sentence in his recorded conversation,
when the free thoughts of the Reformer were unrestrained in
the presence of his most intimate friends, is suggestive. 'I
know,' says he, 'the devil thoroughly well; he has over and
over pressed me so close that I scarcely knew whether I was
alive or dead. Sometimes he has thrown me into such despair
that I even knew not that there is a God, and had great
doubts about our dear Lord Christ. But the Word of God has
speedily restored me' (Luther's _Tischreden_ or _Table
Talk_, as cited in Howitt's _History of the Supernatural_).
The eloquent controversialist Bossuet and the Catholics have
been careful to avail themselves of the impetuosity and
incautiousness of the great German Reformer.
Of all the leaders of the religious revolution of the
sixteenth century, the Reformer of Zurich was probably the
most liberally inclined; and Zuinglius' unusual charity
towards those ancient sages and others who were ignorant of
Christianity, which induced him to place the names of
Aristides, Socrates, the Gracchi, &c., in the same list with
those of Moses, Isaiah, and St. Paul, who should meet in the
assembly of the virtuous and just in the future life, obliged
Luther openly to profess of his friend that 'he despaired of
his salvation,' and has provoked the indignation of the
bishop of Meaux.--_Variations des Eglises Protestantes_, ii.
19 and 20.
On the eve of the prolonged and ferocious struggle on the
continent between Catholicism and Protestantism a wholesale
slaughter of witches and wizards was effected, a fitting prologue
to the religious barbarities of the Thirty Years' War. Fires were
kindled almost simultaneously in two different places, at Bamburg
and Wuerzburg; and seldom, even in the annals of witchcraft, have
they burned more tremendously. The prince-bishops of those
territories had long been anxious to extirpate Lutheranism from
their dioceses. Frederick Forner, Suffragan of Bamburg, a
vigorous supporter of the Jesuits, was the chief agent of John
George II. He waged war upon the heretical sorcerers in the
'whole armour of God,' _Panoplia armaturae Dei_. According to the
statements of credible historians, nine hundred trials took
place in the two courts of Bamburg and Zeil between 1625 and
1630. Six hundred were burned by Bishop George II. No one was
spared. The chancellor, his son, Dr. Horn, with his wife and
daughters, many of the lords and councillors of the bishop's
court, women and priests, suffered. After tortures of the most
extravagant kind it was extorted that some twelve hundred of them
were confederated to bewitch the entire land to the extent that
'there would have been neither wine nor corn in the country, and
that thereby man and beast would have perished with hunger, and
men would be driven to eat one another. There were even some
Catholic priests among them who had been led into practices too
dreadful to be described, and they confessed among other things
that they had baptized many children in the devil's name. It must
be stated that these confessions were made under tortures of the
most fearful kind, far more so than anything that was practised
in France or other countries.... The number brought to trial in
these terrible proceedings were so great, and they were treated
with so little consideration, that it was usual not even to take
the trouble of setting down their names; but they were cited as
the accused Nos. 1, 2, 3, &c. The Jesuits took their confessions
in private, and they made up the lists of those who were
understood to have been denounced by them.'
More destructive still were the burnings of Wuerzburg at the same
period under the superintendence of Philip Adolph, who ascended
the episcopal throne in 1623. In spite of the energy of his
predecessors, a grand confederacy of sorcerers had been
discovered, and were at once denounced.[130]
[130] 'A catalogue of nine and twenty _braende_ or burnings
during a very short period of time, previous to the February
of 1629, will give the best notion of the horrible character
of these proceedings; it is printed,' adds Mr. Wright, 'from
the original records in Hauber's _Bibliotheca Magica_.' E.g.
in the Fifth Braende are enumerated: (1) Latz, an eminent
shopkeeper. (2) Rutscher, a shopkeeper. (3) The housekeeper
of the Dean of the cathedral. (4) The old wife of the Court
ropemaker. (5) Jos. Sternbach's housekeeper. (6) The wife of
Baunach, a Senator. (7) A woman named Znickel Babel. (8) An
old woman. In the Sixteenth Burning: (1) A noble page of
Ratzenstein. (2) A boy of ten years of age. (3, 4, 5) The
two daughters of the Steward of the Senate and his maid. (6)
The fat ropemaker's wife. In the Twentieth Burning: (1)
Gobel's child, the most beautiful girl in Wuerzburg. (2) A
student on the fifth form, who knew many languages, and was
an excellent musician. (3, 4) Two boys from the New Minster,
each twelve years old. (5) Stepper's little daughter. (6)
The woman who kept the bridge gate. In the Twenty-sixth
Burning are specified: (1) David Hans, a Canon in the New
Minster. (2) Weydenbusch, a Senator. (3) The innkeeper's
wife of the Baumgarten. (4) An old woman. (5) The little
daughter of Valkenberger was privately executed and burned
on her bier. (6) The little son of the town council bailiff.
(7) Herr Wagner, vicar in the cathedral, was burned
alive.--_Narratives of Sorcery and Magic._ The facts are
taken from Dr. Soldan's _Geschichte der Hexenprocesse_,
whose materials are to be found in Horst's _Zauber
Bibliothek_ and Hauber's _Bibliotheca Magica_.
Nine appears to have been the greatest number, and sometimes only
two were sent to execution at once. Five are specially recorded
as having been burned alive. The victims are of all professions
and trades--vicars, canons, goldsmiths, butchers, &c. Besides the
twenty-nine conflagrations recorded, many others were lighted
about the same time: the names of whose prey are not written in
the Book of Death. Frederick Spee, a Jesuit, formerly a violent
enemy of the witches, but who had himself been incriminated by
their extorted confessions at these holocausts, was converted to
the opposite side, and wrote the 'Cautio Criminalis,' in which
the necessity of caution in receiving evidence is insisted
upon--a caution, without doubt, 'very necessary at that time for
the magistracy throughout Germany.' All over Germany executions,
if not everywhere so indiscriminately destructive as those in
Franconia and at Wuerzburg, were incessant: and it is hardly the
language of hyperbole to say that no province, no city, no
village was without its condemned.