Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 815.5

LOUIS BASILE CARRé DE MONTGERON La verité des miracles operés par l’intercession de M. de Paris : demontrée contre M. l’Archevêque de Sens. Chez les Libraires de la Compagnie 1737 782 p. in various pagings, [20] leaves of plates (some folded) : ill. 27 cm (4to)

One of the most remarkable displays of miraculous events ever recorded took place in Paris in the first half of the 18th century. The events centered around a puritanical sect of Dutch-influenced Catholics known as the Jansenists. Jansenist leaders seemed especially skilled at performing miraculous healings. The ailments thus cured included cancerous tumors, paralysis, deafness, arthritis, rheumatism, ulcerous sores, persistent fevers, prolonged haemorrhaging, and blindness. But this was not all. The mourners [for the departed saintly Abbe Francois de Paris] also started to experience strange involuntary spasms or convulsions and to undergo the most amazing contortions of their limbs. These seizures quickly proved contagious, spreading like brushfire until the streets were packed with men, women, and children, all twisting and writhing as if caught in a surreal enchantment. While they were in this fitful and trancelike state that the ‘convulsionaires’ displayed the most phenomenal of their talents: to endure without harm an almost unimaginable variety of physical tortures, including severe beatings, blows from both heavy and sharp objects, and strangulations. One investigator, a member of the Paris Parliament named Louis-Basile Carre de Montgeron, witnessed enough miracles to fill four thick volumes on the subject, which he published in 1737 under the title ‘La Verite des Miracles’. In the work, he provided numerous examples of the convulsionaires’ apparent invulnerability to torture. The convulsionaires themselves asked to be tortured because they said it relieved the excruciating pain of their convulsions.

Cited references: Waller 1783; Osler 3618; Wellcome II p.305

John Martin M.D. Endowment