SORCERY.
(Extraordinary Case of Urban Grandier.)

Urban Grandier, curate and canon of Loudun, burnt alive as a magician, was the son of a royal notary of Sable, and born at Bovère, near Sable. He was a good preacher; which made the monks of Loudun envy him at first, and at last hate him, when he pressed the obligation of confessing to the parish curate at Easter. He was a handsome man, agreeable in conversation, and neat in his clothes, which made him suspected of being beloved by the women, and of loving them. He was accused, in 1692, of having lain with women in his own church. The official of Poitiers condemned him to resign his benefices, and to live a penitent; but he appealed from that sentence, and by a decree of the parliament of Paris, was referred to the presidial of Poitiers, which declared him innocent.

Three years after, some Ursuline nuns of Loudun were thought by the common people to be possessed; Grandier’s enemies immediately spread the report that it was by his means, and accused him of magic, which seems very curious; for if they believed he could send the devil into people’s bodies, they should have been afraid of provoking him; they should have used him kindly, lest he should possess them with a legion of devils. Menage indeed says, that, “as to the learned, the greatest part of them maintained that those nuns were only distempered, not finding in them, whatever had been said to the contrary, any of the three symptoms that the Roman ritual requires, as a sign of being truly possessed by the devil; which are divination, the understanding of languages which the person has not learned, and a supernatural strength of body.” Dr Seguin, a physician of Tours, however says, “they answered in the Taupinaboux language,

in which M. de Launai Razilli spoke to them, whom I believe more than myself, and whom I allege to you, because you know him to be a credible man.” But since Menage, who was not ignorant of the contents of this letter, nor of the other stories published about the understanding of tongues attributed to these nuns, nevertheless affirms, “that they did not show thereby that it was a true possession,” it is plain that relations are not to be much depended on in such cases.

What Balzac says in his “Entretiens,” deserves a place here. “If,” says he, “for divination, he was accused of magic, the devils he corresponded with must needs have been mere blackguards in Lucifer’s troops. They must have been less learned than those of Loudun, who had not studied so far as the third class, as one of Cardinal Richelieu’s courtiers said. They must needs be of the order of those ignorant devils who, in Theodoret’s orations, commit faults in the number, and the language, and offend against the measures of verse, and the rules of syntax.” Here follow some proofs of the ignorance of the devils of Loudun. “Mass being ended, Barre came up to the mother superior, to give her the communion, and to exorcise her, and holding the sacrament in his hand, spoke to her in these words; ‘Adora Deum tuum, Creatorem tuum;—worship thy God, thy Creator;’ being pressed, she answered, ‘adoro te,—I worship thee.’ ‘Quern adoras,—whom dost thou worship?’ said the exorcist to her several times. ‘Jesus Christus,’ replied she, making motions as if she had suffered violence. Daniel Drouin, assessor in the provostship, could not forbear saying somewhat loud, ‘ here is a devil who does not understand concord.’ Barre, changing the phrase, asked her, ‘quis est iste quem adoras?—who is he whom thou worshippest?’ he hoped she would still say, ‘ Jesus Christus;’ but she answered, ‘ Jesu Christe;’ upon which many present cried out, ‘ this is bad Latin.’

Barre confidently maintained she had said, ‘Adoro te, Jesu Christe; I adore thee, O Jesus Christ.’”

Here is a very sharp raillery against the Capuchin director of Martha, who was said to be possessed, It was reported that she had two devils in her body, one called Belzebub, and the other Ashtaroth. The judges of Angers examined them, in Greek and Latin. Belzebub, in a passion answered, “that if he pleased, he could answer as well in Greek as in Latin.” The Capuchin, to afford him an excuse said, “Belzebub, my friend, there are some heretics here, and that is the reason why you will not speak. They spoke Latin to Ashtaroth, who excused himself upon his youth. Belzebub excused himself, saying that he was a poor devil. Hereupon there was a great dispute betwixt those on the bench, whether devils were bound to go to school. The civilians maintained, that it was the “proprium in quarto modo” of demoniacs to speak all languages, as he of Cartigni in Savoy, who was tried in sixteen languages, by the same token that the ministers of Geneva durst not exorcise him. Those of Angers were bolder. They began thus: “Commando tibi ut exeas Belzebut et Astorot, aut ego augmentabo vestras poenas, et vobis dabo acriores.” The second time he said; “jubeo exeatis super poenam excom municationis majoris et minoris.” And at last, being in a great passion, he added: “nisi vox exeatis, vos relego et confino in infernum centum annos magis quàm Deus ordinavit. Confession Catholique de Sancy, livre i, chap. vi. ¹⁰⁴

The Capuchins of Loudun, the great enemies of Grandier, thought it expedient, in order to succeed in their accusation, to strengthen themselves with the powerful authority of cardinal Richelieu. To this purpose, they wrote to father Joseph, one of their fraternity, who had a great interest with his eminence, that Grandier was the author of a libel,

intitled, “La Cordonnière de Loudun (the shoe-maker’s wife of Loudun)” which was very injurious to the person and birth of cardinal Richelieu. This great minister, amongst many perfections, had the fault to prosecute with the utmost rigour, the authors of the libels printed against him: so that, suffering himself to be persuaded by father Joseph that Gran dier was the author of " La Cordonnière de Loudun,” he wrote immediately to M. de Laubardemont, counsellor of state, his creature, who was commissioned by the king to demolish the fortifications of Loudun, to inform himself carefully of the affair of the nuns, and gave him sufficient intimations that he wished the destruction of Grandier.

I have read, in the Sorberiana, that he promoted this farce in order to intimidate Louis XIII, and keep him more subservient to his designs, by these stories of sorcery, with which they stunned his ears. This is not probable, though it must be confessed that men of the sublimest genius are commonly such as least neglect the occasions that seem most ridiculous and absurd. I speak of those great men who govern a state. Their great penetration makes them discover secret springs where one would think there are none; because they know better than other men what use may be made of a trifle; because they are more acquainted with the weakness of mankind, and are well acquainted with what the ignorance and weakness of some, and the malice of others can produce. We must not therefore argue thus upon all occasions: such a thing is so absurd, so mean, so extravagant, that a man of sense and judgment would never mind it; and consequently it is false that such a minister of state made use of it, invented, or supported it. The author of the history of the edict of Nantes observes, “that many people looked upon the comedy that was played for many years by the Ursulines of

Loudun, to be an affair of religion.” I believe he means that those people fancied this farce was acted in order to undermine the edict of Nantes.

M. Laubardemont made Grandier a prisoner, in December, 1633, and having taken ample information of the matter, he went to concert the business with the cardinal. Letters patent were issued out the eighth of July 1634, to bring Grandier to his trial. These letters were directed to Laubardemont, and to twelve judges of the courts in the neighbourhood of Loudun, all indeed honest men, but all credulous persons, and for that reason chosen by Grandier’s enemies. The eighteenth of August 1634, upon the deposition of Ashtaroth, a devil of the order of the seraphim, and the chief of the possessing devils; and of Easus, Celsus, Acaos, Cedon, Asmodæus, of the order of the thrones; and of Alex, Zabulon, Nepthalim, Cham, Uriel, and Achas, of the order of the principalities; that is, upon the depositions of the nuns who pretended to be possessed with those devils; the commissioners gave judgment, by which Urban Grandier, priest, curate of the church of St Peter in Loudun, and canon of the church of the Holy Cross, was declared, “duly attainted and convicted of the crime of magic, sorcery, and possession, happening by his means in the persons of some of the Ursuline nuns of Loudun, and other secular women mentioned in the process.” This appears from the second verbal process of the exorcist. There were three possessions: during the first, the devils, except one, refused to tell their names; they only answered that they were enemies of God. During the second and third, they discovered their names and dignities, and accused Grandier by name. It is remarkable that they answered in French, though the exorcists spoke to them in Latin: but it is much more remarkable, that their testimony should have been admitted in a court of

justice, and made a proof in a trial wherein a man was condemned to be burnt alive. Were they ignorant of what our Saviour says of the devil? Seguin’s thoughts are very singular. “It seems,” says he, “that it is not so much the judgment of men as of God, who sent the devils from hell for the confusion of this wretch: for it is a wonderful thing how the devils rose up against him, and forced him to acknowledge that they were his accusers. I leave it to the Sorbonne to determine whether any exceptions should have been admitted against them speaking from God and giving evident proofs of the truth, which they were forced to utter.”

It astonishes one to think that Christian judges should reject the exceptions made against such witnesses; for it is matter of faith that they are the fathers of lies. It were in vain to say that the force of exorcisms hindered them from lying; for the experience of the contrary had been lately seen. The second verbal process imports, “that so many exorcisms had been practised, and indefatigably continued, so many fasts, oraisons, and prayers had been made, that the master-devil and his associates having promised to strike the magician so violently, and in such a part of his body, that it would be as visible as painful; and moreover, having acknowledged that he yielded to the almighty power of God, and declared that he would retire from this monastery for ever; at last, on the thirteenth day of October, 1632, he departed from the body of the said mother superior, and notified his departure by seven phlegms which she spit a great way: likewise the devil of sister Clara departed from her body, and afterwards all the nuns remained undisturbed, every thing was quiet, and the whole nunnery enjoyed a holy peace;” but they kept not their promise; they imposed upon the exorcists; “from the twentieth of November of the same year,

1632, most of the nuns found themselves molested and disturbed by evil spirits.” Mercure Francois, St. John, page 761-762. ¹⁰⁵

For the reparation of these crimes, Grandier was condemned to an amende honorable, and to be burnt alive, with the magical pacts and characters being in the rolls, together with the manuscript book, which he was accused of having written against the celibacy of priests, and his ashes to be scattered in the air. Having heard this terrible sentence without any commotion, he desired to have the guardian of the Franciscans of Loudun for his confessor: he was doctor of divinity of the faculty of Paris. They refused him, and offered him a recollect, whom he would not make use of; saying, that he was his enemy, and one of those who had most contributed to his ruin. They persisted in their resolution to give him no other confessor than this recollect, and he persisted in his refusal; and so he made only a mental confession to God; after which, he went to the place of execution, and died very constantly and christianly. As he was upon the pile, a great fly (a kind of drone) happened to buz about his head. A monk, present at the execution, who had read in the council of Quieres, that the devils are always at hand, when men are dying, to tempt them, and who had heard say, that Belzebub signifies in Hebrew the god of dies, cried out immediately, that it was the devil Belzebub that dew about Grandier, to carry his soul to hell; upon which a very pleasant song was made.

The devil’s-craft of Loudun lasted a year after the death of Grandier. Theophrastus Renaudot, a famous physician, and inventor of the French gazette, made an encomium on Grandier, which was printed at Paris in loose sheets. This is taken from Menage, who vindicates him, and calls the possession of those nuns a chimera. He thinks it very probable that they were

only tormented with the suffocation of the matrix; and he says, that Grandier deserves to be added to Gabriel Naudés catalogue of great men unjustly accused of magic. However, he confesses that he heard the superior of the Ursulines of Loudun say: “that, when she was delivered from the devils that tormented her, an angel engraved upon her hand Jesus, Maria, Joseph, F. de Salles, and that she shewed him her hand, on which those words were really engraved, but lightly, and like those crosses we see on the arms of the pilgrims, who have been in the Holy Land. He heard her say farther, that the angel engraved first, on the upper part of her hand, the name of Francis de Salles; that this word removed lower to give the precedence to those of Joseph and Maria, and that all three removed lower still to make room for that of Jesus.” He has done well not to say in express words, that he took this for an imposture; the reader understands it well enough. But Monconis Voyages, part I, pag. 8 & 9. ¹⁰⁶ leaves no room to doubt of the cheat; for which reason it will not be amiss to relate here what he says of it. He went to visit this superior of the Ursulines, the eighth of May 1645, and because she made him wait to speak with her above half an hour, he' suspected some artifice. He desired her to shew him the characters, which the devil she was possessed with had imprinted upon her hand, when he was exorcised; According to Menage, it was an angel who imprinted those characters, when the possession was over. ¹⁰⁷ she did, and “he saw, in letters of a blood colour upon the back of her lefthand, beginning from the wrist to the little finger, the word Jesus; below, drawing towards the shoulder, Maria; lower, Joseph; and lower still in the fourth line, F. de Salles. She told him all the villanies of the priest Grandier, who had been burnt for sending the devils into the convent; and how a magistrate of the town, whose wife he had debauched, had complained of it to her, and that they agreed to impeach him, notwithstanding the strong inclinations this miscreant gave her by his conjurations, from which the mercy of God preserved her. At last M. de Monconis took leave of her, and desired to see her hand again; which she very civilly gave him through the grate: he observed to her, that the letters were not so red as when she came, and that those letters seemed to peel off, and all the skin of her hand to rise, as if it had been a thin skin of starch-water dried up: with the end of his nail, by a gentle touch, he took off part of a leg of the M; at which she was very much surprised, though the place remained as fair as the other parts of the hand.” He was satisfied with this. I do not in the least question it. The discovery of such a notable forgery, which had infatuated so many people, was an inestimable treasure to such a man as he. The new history of the devils of Loudun will inform you, “that, when the wrinkles of old age had made the hand dry and lean, the drugs, that were used to mark those names anew, being no longer able to imprint them, the good mother said then, that God had granted her prayers, and suffered those names to be effaced, which were the occasion of abundance of people coming to trouble and importune her, and withdraw her frequently from her acts of devotion.” Histoire des diables de Loudun, pag. 469. ¹⁰⁸ You will there find also, that Cerisantes had the art of marking a name upon his hand, and that the queen’s maids, in 1652, laughed at the engravings of the Ursulines.

It is probable that M. Menage designed to deny in general all that is said of magicians. In effect, he laughs at the first scene of this horrible tragedy, and draws from it some proofs for Grandier’s justification. That first scene consisted in this, that one of the nuns, being by night in her little, but most chaste, bed, perceived a spectre resembling their deceased confessor,

and which owned, that it was he himself, and that he was returned to impart very extraordinary things. The spectre said, it would appear to her the same hour the night following; it faded not to appear, and received the same answer as at first, that she could not treat with it without the privity of her superior. Hereupon this spectre took Grandier’s perfect shape. “He talked to this nun of love affairs, Solicited her with addresses equally insolent and lascivious—she struggles, no body assists her; she torments herself, no body comforts her; she calls, nobody answers; she cries out, no body comes;' she trembles, she perspires, she feints, she invokes the holy name of Jesus; and at last the spectre disappeared.”.

I own, with M. Menage, that this is proper enough to clear Urban Grandier as to magic; but not to justify him in other respects. Could not he, without being obliged to the devil Cedon for opening the door gain the door keeper, and get into this nun’s chamber, pretending to be a ghost, and disguising himself with a mask resembling their late ghostly father? M. Menage says, that no man of sense will believe, that Grandier had the power of disposing of devils at his pleasure, to send them to torment innocent virgins consecrated to God. In fine, he praises the prudence and justice of Lewis XIV, “who has stopped the course of the proceedings against those, who are accused of magic and witchcraft, having commuted the penalty of death into banishment, with respect to many persons condemned by a decree of the parliament of Rouen, to be burnt, as guilty of this crime; and having afterwards, by a decree of his council of state, the twenty-sixth of April, 1672, ordained, that, through all the province of Normandy, the prisons should be opened to all persons, that were detained for the same crimes; and that, for the future, such as should be accused of it should be judged according to the declaration, which his majesty promises, by this

decree, to send into all the jurisdictions of France, to regulate the proceedings that are to be observed by the judges in the trials of magic and witchcraft.”

It is certain, that the most incredulous and subtile philosophers must needs be puzzled with the phenomena relating to witchcraft; but, as to Grandier, I do not know but that we might apply to him what Olympias said upon the sight of a mistress of her husband, whom she found extremely handsome and witty: “let no body suspect her any longer of witchcraft, for all her enchantments are in her person.” The curate of Loudun was a handsome genteel man, and a fine speaker; and this probably was the magic, with which he tempted the superior of the Ursulines, and subjected the nuns to violent and lascivious ardours. The vow of continence and devotion not being sufficient to remove this disorder, it was believed to be supernatural. This imagination spared self-love the shame of cherishing so long a criminal passion. They therefore believed themselves bewitched; all the machine was out of order: and for the honor of that society, the first advances were not to be retracted. There is nothing more dangerous for people, that believe their good reputation to be necessary to the church, than to make a false step. This mother superior of the Ursulines might perhaps be sincere at first; but she was not so when she received Monconis’s visit; and yet she must carry on the farce to salve what was past. Those, who perfectly knew the little town of Loudun, where those devil-crafts first began, might have explained them better than can be done at present.

Since the composition of this article, the History of the Devils of Loudun has been printed in Holland; and it appears manifestly by that book, that the pretended possession of the Ursulines was a horrid contrivance against the life of Grandier. This relation is extremely curious, and attended with all the pieces

relating to that trial. I found one thing in it, at which I was a little surprized, with respect to the great outcries that were made against Father Coton. He set down upon a piece of paper several questions he meant to propose to a woman possessed with the devil. Amongst other questions this was one: “What is the most proper passage of Scripture to prove purgatory?” The Protestants joined with a great number of Catholics in crying out against this impious curiosity, and insulting both the father confessor of Henry IV, and the whole order of the Jesuits: yet it is certain that the confessor did but follow herein the practice of his church, excepting some questions he would have offered concerning political affairs. Did not the exorcist of Loudun ask the devil, “Which was the best means by which a creature departed from God might return to him?” Did he not ask him, “whether, since his fell, he had ever tasted the pleasures of divine love? And which is the strongest bond that fastens men to the creatures? Whether there was any body in hell who had had a great relish of the divine love upon earth?” The devil answered at large these questions, and he even discovered many secrets of his politics, and the means to overthrow them. These things have been not only practised at Loudun, but are the current style of the exorcists, as the Protestant divines object to the Roman Catholics. So that the particular hatred against the Jesuits was the reason of declaiming against the conduct of father Coton, which is not censured when others make use of it. A respect of persons will always prevail among men.

We find in the life of a Jesuit, who was one of the exorcists of the nuns of Loudun, several particulars upon this subject. I will mention two things out of it, one of which is very surprising: I know them only from Mr Cousin’s extracts. Here is what I have

read in his “Journal des Scavans,” in the place where he mentions the life of father Seurin. Journal des Scavans, pag. 311. ¹⁰⁹ " Upon occasion of this father’s conflict with the devils, the author of his life proves at large the truth of the nuns of Loudun being possessed by the devil, especially by the testimony or two of the greatest wits of this age. The one is cardinal Richelieu, who sent exorcists to Loudun, maintained at the king’s expense, and the other, lord Montague, who, having seen the devils go out of the body of the mother of the angels, was perfectly convinced of it, and discoursed of it with Urban VIII, when he abjured his heresy, and made profession of the Catholic faith before him.” What I am going to say is much more extraordinary. You will see there a man who redeemed Jesus Christ, that is, who, to rescue him from the hands of the devil, gave up himself to the devil» Read these words of the journalist. Journal des Scavans, ubi supra. ¹¹⁰ “When father Seurin exorcised the nuns of Loudun, the devils declared that ‘ two magicians had seized three hosts to profane them.’ Father Seurin fell to prayers to obtain the deliverance of his master’s body, and consented that his own body should be submitted to the power of the devils, in order to redeem it. , The offers were accepted, and the exchange performed. The devils took the three hosts out of the hands of their agents, and put them at the foot of the pix of the holy sacrament that was then exposed, and one of them entered into the body of the father, who remained possessed, or obsessed, the greatest part of his life!!!”—Art. Grandier. Such is the atrocious imposture, fraud, and cruelty which an ultramontane and fanatical portion of the priesthood would restore in France. M. Sismondi, by recently illustrating the lauded age of St Louis, has well exposed the rancorous folly and bigotry of this temporarily revived faction. Ed. ¹¹¹