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Did not the counsellor to the parliament, Montgeron, state, in three large quarto volumes, the names of a great multitude of individuals who protested on their honour as illuminati, that the tomb of the Deacon, Páris, had restored sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, strength to the paralytic; that in a twinkling it cured ailing people of gouty rheumatism, of dropsy, of epilepsy, of phthisis, of abscesses, of ulcers, &c.? Did these attestations, although many emanated from persons of distinction, from the Chevalier Folard, for example, prevent the convulsionists from becoming the laughingstock of Europe?
Look at the French Prophets, or Tremblers of the Cevennes, who had prophesyings and healings and discoverings of spirits and tongues and interpretations. Look at the ecstatic Jansenists, or Convulsionists of St. Médard, who were blessed with the same holy gifts.
The early Wesleyans had all the exaltation of the Quietists, and something of the lunatic fervour of the Convulsionists, who kicked and screamed themselves into epilepsy under the influence of the Unigenitus Bull. The pious Rebecca was no doubt an enthusiast. I found No. 7, Waterhouse-lane.
The cardinal had ordered the cemetery to be closed, in order to cut short the strange spectacles presented by the convulsionists; and, to break down the opposition of Parliament, the king had ordered, at a bed of justice, the registration of all the papal bulls succeeding the Unigenitus.
They have found in the possession-cases of the Ursulines of Loudun and the nuns of Poitiers, in the history, even, of the convulsionists of Saint Médard, the symptoms of major hysteria, the same contractions of the whole system, the same muscular dissolutions, the same lethargies, even, finally, the famous arc of the circle.
Compared with the "Bar at the Folies-Bergère," either the "Raft of the Medusa" or the "Convulsionists of Tangiers" is a classic production. And the difference is not at all due to the forty years' accretion of Protestantism which Manet represents as compared with the early romanticists. It is due to a complete difference in attitude. Géricault imbued himself with the inspiration of the Louvre.
The state of their conscience was that of the stigmatists, of the convulsionists, of the possessed ones in convents, drawn, by the influence of the world in which they live, and by their own belief, into feigned acts. As to Jesus, he was no more able than St. Bernard or St. Francis d'Assisi to moderate the avidity for the marvellous, displayed by the multitude, and even by his own disciples.
As a promising way of setting them right, half of the half-dozen had become members of a fantastic sect of Convulsionists, and were even then considering within themselves whether they should foam, rage, roar, and turn cataleptic on the spot thereby setting up a highly intelligible finger-post to the Future, for Monseigneur's guidance.
Swoons and strange convulsive agitations, however impressive and even awe-inspiring to an uninformed beholder, were undistinguishable from those, for example, which had given their name to English Quakers and French Convulsionists, which were to be read of in the Lives of Guyon and St. Theresa, and which were a matter of continual occurrence when Tauler preached in Germany.
Medard, in the Rue Mouffetard, offers nothing remarkable, but a mixture of different styles of architecture, according to the epochs at which it was repaired and embellished; in 1561 a tremendous attack was made upon it by the Calvinists, when several of the congregation were killed, and the Abbé Paris, having been buried in the cemetery attached in 1727, his tomb, it is pretended, had certain convulsions in 1730, and was the origin of the sect called convulsionists, and the scenes which occurred caused the cemetery to be closed in 1732.
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