United States or Cyprus ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Pere Lactance died in the most terrible agony on September 18th, 1634, exactly a month from the date of Grandier's death. His brother-monks considered that this was due to the vengeance of Satan; but others were not wanting who said, remembering the summons uttered by Grandier, that it was rather due to the justice of God. Several attendant circumstances seemed to favour the latter opinion.
Furthermore, the exorcists announced that six of the strongest men in the town would try to prevent the contortions of the weakest of the convulsed nuns, and would fail. It need hardly be said that the prospect of such an entertainment filled the church on the appointed day to overflowing. Pere Lactance began by calling on Asmodeus to fulfil his promise of raising the superior from the ground.
"Si ton gentil esprit prend bien cette science, Tu mettras en repos ta bonne conscience." Upon this, M. de Laubardemont demanded the girl's name; but Grandier assured him it should never pass his lips, none knowing it but himself and God. Thereupon M. de Laubardemont ordered Pere Lactance to insert the third wedge.
At the seventh wedge Grandier's legs burst open, and the blood spurted into Pere Lactance's face; but he wiped it away with the sleeve of his gown. "O Lord my God, have mercy on me! I die!" cried Grandier, and fainted for the fourth time. Pere Lactance seized the opportunity to take a short rest, and sat down.
While it was being driven in by the monk's lusty arm, each blow being accompanied by the word "'Dicas'!" Grandier exclaimed "My God! they are killing me, and yet I am neither a sorcerer nor sacrilegious!" At the fourth wedge Grandier fainted, muttering "Oh, Pere Lactance, is this charity?"
The holder being frightened, dropped the line and fled, and although M. de Laubardemont, the exorcists, and the spectators waited, expecting every moment that the cap would rise into the air, it remained quite firm on the owner's head, to the no small confusion of Pere Lactance, who, all unwitting of the fiasco, continued to adjure Beherit to keep his word of course without the least effect.
"It's not my fault," answered the executioner; "the monks have knotted the cord, so that the noose cannot slip." "Oh, Father Lactance! Father Lactance! have you no charity?" cried Grandier. The executioner by this time was forced by the increasing heat to jump down from the pile, being indeed almost overcome; and seeing this, Grandier stretched forth a hand into the flames, and said
The first time the superior opened her lips to reply, Pere Lactance perceived that she knew almost no Latin, and consequently would not shine during the exorcism, so he ordered her to answer in French, although he still continued to exorcise her in Latin; and when someone was bold enough to object, saying that the devil, according to the ritual, knew all languages living and dead, and ought to reply in the same language in which he was addressed, the father declared that the incongruity was caused by the pact, and that moreover some devils were more ignorant than peasants.
Thereupon she confessed that all that she had said during the last fortnight against Grandier was calumnious and false, and that all her actions had been done at the instigation of the Franciscan Pere Lactance, the director, Mignon, and the Carmelite brothers. Pere Lactance, not in the least taken aback, declared that her confession was a fresh wile of the devil to save her master Grandier.
Wherever she looked, the candors of her girlhood were violated. The phallus then was omnipresent. Iamblicus, not the novelist, but the philosopher, has much to say on the subject; as has Arnobius in the Adversus gentes, and Lactance in the De falsa religione. If Juvenal, Martial, Petronius, are more reticent, it is because they were not Fathers of the Church, nor yet antiquarians.
Word Of The Day