When Boucha, the intendant of the district, heard of the performances of Isabella Vincent, he had her brought before him. She replied to his interrogatories, that people had often told her that she preached in her sleep, but that she did not herself believe a word of it. As the slightness of her person made her appear younger than she really was, the intendant merely sent her to an hospital at Grenoble, where, notwithstanding that she was visited by persons of the Reformed persuasion, there was an end of her preaching,—she became a Catholic!
Gabriel Astier, who had been a young labourer, likewise from Dauphiné, went in the capacity of a preacher and prophet into the valley of Bressac, in the Vivarais. He had infected his family: his father, mother, elder brother, and sweetheart, followed his example, and took to prophesying. Gabriel, before he preached, used to fall into a kind of stupor in which he lay rigid. After delivering his sermon, he would dismiss his auditors with a kiss, and the words: "My brother, or my sister, I impart to you the Holy Ghost." Many believed that they had thus received the Holy Ghost from Astier, being taken with the same seizure. During the period of the discourse, first one, then another, would fall down; some described themselves afterwards as having felt first a weakness and trembling through the whole frame, and an impulse to yawn and stretch their arms, then they fell convulsed and foaming at the mouth. Others carried the contagion home with them, and first experienced its effects, days, weeks, months afterwards. They believed—nor is it wonderful they did so—that they had received the Holy Ghost.
Not less curious were the seizures of the Convulsionnaires at the grave of the Abbé Paris, in the year 1727. These Jansenist visionaries used to collect in the church-yard of St Médard, round the grave of the deposed and deceased Deacon, and before long the reputation of the place for working miracles getting about, they fell in troops into convulsions.
Their state had more analogy to that of the Jerkers already described. But it was different. They required, to gratify an internal impulse or feeling, that the most violent blows should be inflicted upon them at the pit of the stomach. Carré de Montgeron mentions, that being himself an enthusiast in the matter, he had inflicted the blows required with an iron instrument, weighing from twenty to thirty pounds, with a round head. And as a convulsionary lady complained that he struck too lightly to relieve the feeling of depression at her stomach, he gave her sixty blows with all his force. It would not do, and she begged to have the instrument used by a tall, strong man, who stood by in the crowd. The spasmodic tension of her muscles must have been enormous; for she received one hundred blows, delivered with such force that the wall shook behind her. She thanked the man for his benevolent aid, and contemptuously censured De Montgeron for his weakness, or want of faith and timidity. It was, indeed, time for issuing the mandate, which, as wit read it, ran:
"De par le roi—Defense à Dieu,
De faire miracle en ce lieu."
Turn we now to another subject:—the possessed in the middle ages,—What was their physiological condition? What was really meant then by being possessed? I mean, what were the symptoms of the affection, and how are they properly to be explained? The inquiry will throw further light upon the true relations of other phenomena we have already looked at.
We have seen that Schwedenborg thought that he was in constant communication with the spiritual world; but felt convinced, and avowed, that though he saw his visitants without and around him, they reached him first inwardly, and communicated with his understanding; and thence consciously, and outwardly, with his senses. But it would be a misapplication of the term to say that he was possessed by these spirits.
We remember that Socrates had his demon; and it should be mentioned as a prominent feature in visions generally, that their subject soon identifies one particular imaginary being as his guide and informant, to whom he applies for what knowledge he wishes. In the most exalted states of trance-waking, the guide or demon is continually referred to with profound respect by the entranced person. Now, was Socrates, and are patients of the class I have alluded to, possessed? No! the meaning of the term is evidently not yet hit.
Then there are persons who permanently fancy themselves other beings than they are, and act as such.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there prevailed in parts of Europe a seizure, which was called the wolf-sickness. Those affected with it held themselves to be wild beasts, and betook themselves to the forests. One of these, who was brought before De Lancre, at Bordeaux, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, was a young man of Besançon. He avowed himself to be huntsman of the forest lord, his invisible master. He believed, that through the power of his master, he had been transformed into a wolf; that he hunted in the forest as such, and that he was often accompanied by a bigger wolf, whom he suspected to be the master he served—with more details of the same kind. The persons thus affected were called Wehrwolves. They enjoyed in those days the alternative of being exorcised or executed.
Arnold relates in his history of church and of heresy, how there was a young man in Königsberg, well educated, the natural son of a priest, who had the impression, that he was met near a crucifix in the wayside by seven angels, who revealed to him that he was to represent God the Father on earth, to drive all evil out of the world, &c. The poor fellow, after pondering upon this impression a long time, issued a circular commencing thus,—
"We, John Albrecht, Adelgreif, Syrdos, Amata, Kanemata, Kilkis, Mataldis, Schmalkilimundis, Sabrundis, Elioris, Overarch High-priest, and Emperor, Prince of Peace of the whole world, Overarch King of the Holy Kingdom of Heaven, Judge of the living and of the dead, God and Father, in whose divinity Christ will come on the last day to judge the world, Lord of all Lords, King of all Kings," &c.
He was thereupon thrown into prison at Königsberg, regarded as a most frightful heretic, and every means were used by the clergy to reclaim him. To all their entreaties, however, he listened only with a smile of pity, "that they should think of reclaiming God the Father." He was then put to the torture; and as what he endured made no alteration in his convictions, he was condemned to have his tongue torn out with red-hot tongs, to be cut in four quarters, and then burned under the gallows. He wept bitterly, not at his own fate, but that they should pronounce such a sentence on the Deity. The executioner was touched with pity, and entreated him to make a final recantation. But he persisted that he was God the Father, whether they pulled his tongue out by the roots or not; and so he was executed!
The Wehrwolves, and this poor creature, in what state were they? they were merely insane. Then we must look further.
Gmelin, in the first volume of his Contributions to Anthropology, narrates, that in the year 1789, a German lady, under his observation, had daily paroxysms, in which she believed herself to be, and acted the part of a French emigrant. She had been in distress of mind through the absence of a person she was attached to, and he was somehow implicated in the scenes of the French revolution. After an attack of fever and delirium, the complaint regulated itself, and took the form of a daily fit of trance-waking. When the time for the fit approached, she stopped in her conversation, and ceased to answer when spoken to; she then remained a few minutes sitting perfectly still, her eyes fixed on the carpet before her. Then, in evident uneasiness, she began to move her head backwards and forwards, to sigh, and to pass her fingers across her eye-brows. This lasted a minute, then she raised her eyes, looked once or twice around with timidity and embarrassment, then began to talk in French; when she would describe all the particulars of her escape from France, and, assuming the manner of a French woman, talk purer and better accented French than she had been known to be capable of talking before, correct her friends when they spoke incorrectly, but delicately and with a comment on the German rudeness of laughing at the bad pronunciation of strangers; and if led herself to speak or read German, she used a French accent, and spoke it ill; and the like.
Now, suppose this lady, instead of thus acting, when