Des Niau

“ The Bishop sharply reprimanded him, and as he had said that some of the possessed understood Latin, he was allowed to interrogate in Greek. At the same time, the demon cried out by the mouth of Sister Clara: "Eh! speak Greek, or any language you like; I will answer." At these words, he became confused, and could not say anything more.
To behave thus, or to acknowledge the truth of the accusation, is one and the same thing, but other circumstances strengthened this certainty.
Any man whose own writing testifies against him is lost. Now this is what Grandier experienced. ”

“ A word of love, of comfort, of promise, is able to strengthen the timid, the weak, or the physically ill; but words of hatred, censure, enmity, or menace, lower our confidence and self-reliance. How easily the worldling, who rejoices under good fortune, is cast down under adversity, and despair only enters where religion is not—where the mind has no inward and divine comforter. But there is, probably, no one who is proof against curse or blessing. [Ennemoser, Hist. of Magic, I., p. 120.] ”

“ The Sieur Mannouri, the Surgeon who had sounded the marks [13] which the devil had impressed on the magician priest, suffering from extraordinary troubles, was of course said by the 20friends of Grandier to be the victim of remorse. Here are the particulars of the death of this Surgeon—
One night as he was returning about ten o'clock from visiting a sick man, walking with a friend, and accompanied by a man carrying a lantern, he cried all of a sudden, like a man awaking from a dream, "Ah! there is Grandier! what do you want?" ”

“ In the midst of this mass of people, notwithstanding the noise of so many voices and the efforts of the archers who shook their halberts in the air to frighten them, a flight of pigeons flew round and round the stake. Grandier's partisans, impudent to the end, said that these innocent birds came, in default of men, as witnesses of his innocence; others thought very differently, and said that it was a troop of demons who came, as sometimes happens on the death of great magicians, to assist at that of Grandier, whose scandalous impenitence certainly deserved to be honoured in this manner. ”

“ For those to whom the universe is a piece of clockwork, or a perpetual motion, which continues moving for ever of its own accord—to whom the everlasting power and wisdom and love in eternity and nature is as nothing, prayer and supplication must seem objectless and insipid ”

“ Rome borrowed her magic, no less than her art and literature, from poetic Hellas. The occult science does not appear to have been known to the Romans until about 200 years before the Christian era. But they had previously cultivated a modification of the Etruscan sorcery, comprising the divination of the future, the worship of the dead, the evocation of their lemures or phantoms, and the mystic ceremonies of the Mana-Genita, a nocturnal goddess of awful character. Numa was the great teacher of the ancient Roman magic, which probably partook both of a religious and medical character. ”

“ To believe that Urbain Grandier was unjustly condemned and executed, we must blindly believe hundreds of things which revolt common sense. One of the Protestant writers, for example, after having said in a thousand different ways27 that the possession of the nuns of Loudun was a mere imposture and horrible farce, confesses that it is impossible to conceive human beings, and especially women, driving a priest to a horrible death by such a series of feigned possessions. ”

“ Not only did the early Christians heal by words, but the old magicians performed their wonders by magic formulas. "Many cures," says the Zendavesta, "are performed by herbs and trees, others by water, and again others by words: for it is by means of the divine word that the sick are the most surely healed." The Egyptians also believed in the magic power of words. Plotin cured Porphyrius, who lay dangerously ill in Sicily, by wonder-working words; and the latter healed the sick by words, and cast out the devil by exorcism. ”

“ The Devil sometimes made them fall suddenly asleep: they fell to the ground and became so heavy, that the strongest man had great trouble in even moving their heads. Françoise Filestreau having her mouth closed, one could hear within her body different voices speaking at the same time, quarrelling, and discussing who should make her speak.
Lastly, one often saw Elizabeth Blanchard, in her convulsions, with her feet in the air and her head on the ground, leaning against a chair or a window sill without other support. ”

“ He never cast his eyes on the image of Christ, nor on that of the Virgin, which were opposite to him, and they were offered to him in vain: whereupon the judges remonstrated with him. They were still more scandalised when they tried to make him say the prayer which every good Christian addresses to his guardian angel, especially in great extremities, and he said he did not know it. Such was his conduct under torture: in such a crisis every feeling of religion would be awakened in an ordinary man. ”

“ The box in which the priest sits in the church to hear the penitent is called a confessional. But the act of confession may be performed out of church, in private houses, or in any place, in short, of which the bishop approves, provided it be not within hearing of any person except the priest and the penitent. The Greek Church retains the practice of auricular confession, but differs from that of Rome in the form of the absolution. The reformed churches do not as a rule encourage the practice, and in Scotland it is not even recognized. ”

“ None of these three can be denied, but it is impertinent arguing to conclude, that because there have been cheats in the world, because there are some too credulous, and some have been put to death for witches, and were not, therefore all men are deceived. There is so much written, both at home and abroad, so convincingly, and by so unquestionable authors, that I have not the vanity to add any thing, especially to you; but because you have desired me to tell you the story of the nuns at Loudun, and some others, I shall first tell you of a real possession near the place I was born in ”

“ Five years later, died of the same disease Father Tranquille. He was a holy monk, a celebrated preacher, gifted with a judicious mind, great piety, and a profound humility. A laborious exorcist, much feared by the devils, he had preferred that painful duty, generally little sought for, to the fame of preaching, and had devoted himself to the service of the possessed of Loudun. The demons, irritated at his constancy, determined to possess his body. But God never allowed him to be entirely possessed. ”

“ But why should I wonder, if those who believe not Moses and the prophets, will not believe though one should rise from the dead? One great cause of the hardening of these infidels is, the frequent impostures which the Romanists obtrude on the world 30in their exorcisms and pretended miracles. Another is the too great credulity of some who make everything witchcraft which they do not understand; and a third may be the ignorance of some judges and juries, who condemn silly melancholy people upon their own confession, and perhaps slender proofs. ”

“ The rumbling was extraordinary; the good old man commonly called his family to prayer when it was most troublesome, and immediately it was converted into gentle knocking, like the modest knock of a finger; but as soon as prayer was done, they should hear excessive knocking, as if a beam had been heaved by strength of many men against the floor. ”

“ Every honest man takes a pride in the blamelessness of his profession, and cannot look favourably on a colleague who dishonours it, nor speak favourably of him. The curate, then, had nothing to expect from the Canon, who was very intimate with the Bishop, [4] and he had already been made aware of the opinions Mignon had expressed at the time of the first trial. These circumstances were not likely to induce Grandier to look with a kindly eye on his successful competitor, and he consequently determined to give plenty of work to the confessor and to his penitents. ”

“ When and under what circumstances confession, either public or private, was first deemed absolutely necessary for the remission of sins is a subject of controversy. Innocent III., in the fourth Lateran Council, A.D. 1215 (Canon 21) , made confession (meaning auricular or private) obligatory upon every adult person once a year; and that continues to be one of the rules of the Roman Catholic church to the present day. The Council of Trent, in its Catechism, defines it to be "a declaration by the penitent of his sins made to a priest in order to receive the penance and absolution." ”

“ Such is the true story of the possession of the nuns of Loudun and of the condemnation of Urbain Grandier, so different from the false accounts hitherto published. Even those who do not blush to deny the truth of infernal possessions need only notice that the human race has always believed, and still believes, that there are intelligent creatures in existence other than man, and almost similar to those whom the Pagans have always represented as Gods of Evil, or subterranean genii, like the demons believed in by Christians ”

“ If, as calumny asserts, the only thing sought was the death of Grandier, here were sufficient proofs to burn him, if only for abusing the privileges of his ministry and of his Church, or for the sacrileges he had committed therein. But justice is not satisfied with punishing one kind of crime, when she finds traces of another still more serious. It was moreover a Christian duty to assist the views of God, who permitted so strange an event, to confound the calumnies of the protestants, and26 to prove the demonstration the "possession" of the nuns, and the magic exercised by the accused. ”

“ Father Vignier, Superior of the Oratory at La Rochelle, bears witness in his Latin Narrative, that, having questioned Sister Elizabeth a whole afternoon in Greek, she always replied correctly and obeyed him in every particular.
The Bishop of Nimes commanded Sister Clara in Greek to raise veil and to kiss the railings at a certain spot; she obeyed, and did many other things he ordered, which caused the prelate to exclaim that one must be an Atheist or lunatic not to believe in "possession." ”

“ All Protestant worship was forbidden under penalty of arrest and confiscation of property. Ministers were to leave the kingdom within fourteen days unless they became converted. All Protestant schools were closed, and all children born after the passing of the law were to be baptized and brought up as Roman Catholics; all marriages, unless celebrated by the Roman Catholic clergy, were declared null, and the Protestant laity were strictly prohibited from leaving the kingdom.
The provisions of the edict were carried out with relentless rigour, 30 and a desperate flight of the Huguenots ensued. ”

“ I told him, "That was not the question, nor could all the devils in hell pervert me; but the question was, if that was a real possession, and if any could understand me, I shall confess it under my hand." His answer was, "These devils have not travelled;" and this I replied to with a loud laughter, nor could I get any more satisfaction; only in the town I heard enough that it was a cheat invented to burn a curate, (his name, as I take it, was Cupiff,) and the man had been really burned to ashes as a witch, but the people said it was for his conversion from them. ”

“ For instance, if a man was charged with stealing a pair of old shoes, value threepence, and with being "habit and repute" a thief, if the jury found such indictment proved, or such prisoner guilty, the Court would by law be bound to sentence the prisoner to be hanged; if my temerity may be pardoned, for supposing that any such thing exists as a precise established rule of criminal law in Scotland. ”

“ It is not easy to estimate the number of the Huguenots at this period, but according to Beza they were not less than 400,000, and the party included about one-third of the nobility of France. The persecutions of the Roman Catholic party, however, had become more fierce and intolerable as the number of the Protestants increased, and at last, driven to desperation, the Huguenots took up arms in their own defence and sought to change the government in order that they might gain liberty of worship. ”

“ The other exorcists applied the Holy Sacrament to the places where he felt the demons, sometimes to his chest, sometimes to his head. When the devil left him he reappeared on the face of the mother, where the monk, with holy vengeance, pursued him, and constrained him to adore the Holy Sacrament. Once the devil threw him out of a window on to the rock where stands the convent of the Jesuits, and broke one of his thighs. ”

“ The corporal effect of possession is a proof which strikes the coarsest minds. It has this other advantage, that an example convinces a whole assembly. [11]
35 Now the nuns of Loudun gave these proofs daily. When the Exorcist gave some order to the Devil, the nuns suddenly passed from a state of quiet into the most terrible convulsions, and without the slightest increase of pulsation. ”

“ This word alone is for some people a subject of ridicule, as if it had been clearly proved that religion is mere folly and the faith of the church a fable. True Christians must despise these grinning impostors. Exorcisms, then, were employed. The demon, forced to manifest him43self, yielded his name. He began by giving these girls the most horrible convulsions; he went so far as to raise from the earth the body of the Superior who was being exorcised, and to reply to secret thoughts, which were manifested neither in words nor by any exterior signs. ”