Convulsions of St. Medard.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 135, 2 January 1886, Page 5

Convulsions of St. Medard.

In 1727 there died in Paris a celebrated clergyman who had attained considerable fame by opposing certain new dogmas in his church. Four years later the rumour spread that miracles had taken place at hia tomb in the Cemetery of St. Medard. Certain of the visitors to the cemetery were seized with spasms and violent convulsions ; they rolled upon the ground, and their limbs were thrown into the strangest contortions ; they suffered from oppression of breathing, and the pulsa was quick and irregular. Some of them produced the phenomena of clairvoyance. One woman in particular, while blindfold, read every writing presented to her, and distinguished the characters of unknown persons. Some of the convulsionisb3 bounded from the ground like a fish out of water; others spun round and round on their feet with marvellous rapidity, like the whirling dervishes of the Orient ; others ran their heads against walls. Many suffered .terrible pains in the region of the stomach, like the St. John dancers of the fourteenth century. To relieve this a long board was sometimes placed across the body, upon which a whole row of men would stand. Some of them were beaten with stones, hammers, or clubs to relieve them of their sufferings. The clubs were used in the same manner that paviora use their mallets, and it is stated that some of them had daily as many as 6,000 or 8,000 blows thus inflicted. The original excitement soon abated, for the King ordered the cemetery closed, but a set of fanatics arose which continued the j same performances until 1790, when the ex- ! citement of the Revolution quelled it to a great extent. As late as 1828 there were some of the sect still in existence, and an attentive reader of the literature of modern spiritualism will often see references to the "Convulsionnaires of St. Medard." — "St. Louis Globe-Democrat."