1. On Loudun

Draw a line straight south-west from Tours and another north-north-west from Poitiers, and at the intersection you will find Loudun, in the Département de Vienne. The Loudun of today is a small city, numbering some six thousand inhabitants, but during the first decades of the seventeenth century it was much larger, with a population amounting to some fourteen thousand people. It was situated on a hill in a fertile countryside; in the middle of the town stood a donjon, dating from the fourteenth century. Loudun was not a centre of commerce and had no industry worth to speak of. Being far from the important means of traffic, the roads and the rivers, it led a rather isolated existence.
The Reformation had come early to Loudun; the Huguenot population group was fairly large. It was one of the places de sûreté, accorded to the Protestants in 1598 by the Edict of Nantes;[i] it had strong walls with seventeen towers and four gates.[ii] Until 1617 it had had a Huguenot governor. Protestant synods were held within its walls. The Protestants profited from their privileged position by, for instance, keeping their shops open on Catholic feastdays. After 1617 things began to change. The new governor was a Catholic; members of many religious Orders established themselves in the city. This was not suited to make life more peaceful within the walls.[iii] The Catholic revival brought with it that five convents were founded in Loudun; one of these was a house for the Ursulines, opened in 1626 in the Rue Pâquat. This convent was to play a main role in the strange story of the `devils of Loudun'.

2. Urbain Grandier

Another main actor in this lurid history was Urbain Grandier, born in 1590 in Bouère in Mayenne. He got his first intellectual training at the Jesuit college of Bordeaux; the fact that he was a Jesuit pupil made him all the more abhorrent to his enemies. After grammar school he continued his studies at a school for advanced studies, also run by Jesuits. He then did theology and was ordained in 1615; he did, however, not become a Jesuit, but a secular priest, being not one for rigid discipline. Yet it were the Jesuits who helped him to a good incumbence: in 1617 he became the parish priest of Saint-Pierre in Loudun, one of the city's three parish churches. Later he also became a canon of the church of Sainte-Croix.
The new parson was quite a man to see. He was tall, with large penetrating eyes, a high forehead, a long nose, and full lips; add to this a pointed beard, style-van Dyck, and a moustache with curled ends. He was indoubtedly vain, but not vulgar; he was quick-witted and intelligent and also widely read. Soon he made a name for himself as an eloquent preacher, with probably more sound and fury than spiritual content. The doors of the high society of Loudun stood wide open for this elegant priest. When the governor, Jean d'Armagnac, was absent, he entrusted the management of the city to Grandier.

3. Grandier's amorous quests

Another asset of the new pastor was that he could pay a handsome compliment to the ladies. As Aldous Huxley writes, "he took an interest in his female parishioners that was more than merely pastoral."[iv] His position in the town was not as secure as he may have thought himself. "From the first, the husbands and fathers of his female parishioners were deeply suspicious of this clever young dandy with his fine manners and his gift of the gab." Moreover, in those days France's regions were not yet really integrated with each other; someone coming from Bordeaux was practically a foreigner in Loudun. Why should a foreigner, who arrived with a whole family, a mother, three sisters and a brother, have this profitable post at St.Pierre?[v]
Soon stories about his moral - or rather immoral - behaviour began to circulate; part of these may have been slander, but not all of them. He seduced women, it was said, and slept with them. His own vicar, Gervais Méchin, even accused him of using his church for his amorous adventures. He closed the doors and then did with them what he would; others came to his room and stayed there until late in the night. Another testimony said that "he had kissed many beautiful girls in Loudun and even women in religion, who were possessed by Grandier rather than by the devil."[vi] It seems to me that abbé Grandier was a compulsive seducer, a man who should never have become a priest; a career at one of the profligate courts of the time, the Tudor one or that of the Valois, would have suited him better.

4. Grandier and sacerdotal celibacy

Who will be surprised that Grandier was not the staunchest defender of sacerdotal celibacy, not in practice, as we have seen, but neither in theory. In or about 1627 he wrote a short treatise on this subject. "A promise to perform the impossible is not binding," he argued. "For the young male continence is impossible. Therefore, no vow involving such continence is binding." Nobody accepts celibacy for its own sake. "The priest does not embrace celibacy for the love of celibacy, but solely that he may be admitted to holy orders." His conclusion is as may be expected. The vow of celibacy "does not proceed from his [the priest's] will, but is imposed on him by the Church, which compels him, willy-nilly, to accept this hard condition, without which he may not practice the sacerdotal profession."[vii]
Actually, this plaidoyer was not sheer theory, but, instead, special pleading. Grandier was a frequent guest at the table of Louis Trincant, the Public Prosecutor, a widower. He had two marriageable daughters, of whom Philippe, still young, was by far the prettiest. She was not "merely young and virginal, she was also of good family, piously brought up and highly accomplished ... [She] knew her cathechism, played the lute, but regularly went to church, had the manners of a fine lady, but liked reading and even knew some Latin."[viii]
This was more than enough to incite the seducer. Soon she fell in love with the well-mannered abbé, who profited from the fact that the father was absent for some time. The result was predictable: a baby was born, a boy. The child was immediately boarded out to a peasant woman. A friend of Philippe, a poor and dependent woman, proved ready to declare that she was the mother; Trincant made her sign an official statement to this effect. He had been Grandier's best friend, but was from now on his implacable enemy. The abbé turned his back on the young mother; it had never been the case of his loving the girl, and now he positively disliked her. She should have been more careful, the usual male excuse.[ix]
Grandier had already shifted his interest. He was acquainted with an elderly widow, Madame de Brou. Because she was slowly dying of cancer, Grandier, as a good pastor, regularly visited her. Perhaps he had also another reason for his solicitude: the De Brou family belonged to the nobility and was wealthy. Moreover, of the three daughters there was still one at home, the thirty-years-old unmarried Madeleine, who was caring for her dying mother.
On her deathbed the mother entrusted the care of her daughter to the abbé. Since she was an extremely pious young woman, she considered becoming a nun, but Grandier talked her out of this. He persuaded her that her place was in the world of Loudun, as a shining example to all the faithful, especially the female ones. Being alone now, she often came to visit the pastor's sister Françoise, who lived in his house, so that her brother had every opportunity to meet Madeleine. Then something quite unusual happened: Grandier fell in love with her.[x] He not only fell in love with her, he even wanted to marry her.
Naturally, he was desiring the impossible. He was a Roman Catholic priest, bound by a vow of celibacy, from which the Church would on no account release him. He could have himself defrocked and then act as he wanted, but defrocking would mean losing the status he had. Because Madeleine was also in love with him, he easily overcame her scruples. Her only condition was that their union would remain secret. And so they were married; actually, as the parish priest he conducted the ceremomy himself, in an empty church with no witnesses present.[xi] It was all as illegal and illicit as possible. And although what exactly the abbé had done remained a secret, the worthy citizens of Loudun had much to gossip about. The atmosphere in the small city became overheated; Grandier had to fight off attempts to have him out of the way.

5. The Ursuline convent

Let us now shift our attention to a location that I mentioned already, the convent of the Ursulines. Founded in 1626, it was situated in the Rue Pâquat in a large and uncomfortable house. It had to be large, because, in order to survive, the eighteen nuns had to take in girls as boarders. Almost all the nuns were of noble birth. Most probably they had not entered religion because of a vocation. Convents of those days were often asylums for young women whose families could not dispose of them in any other way, for instance, because the parents could not afford to provide them with a dowry. This also signified that they entered the convent without a dowry. All the same, the nuns dutifully followed the rules of monastic life; they did not become holy, but neither were they depraved. Yet it would be good to keep in mind what a certain Father de La Colombière wrote, not about Ursulines, but about Visitandines: "Communities which ought to be furnaces which are forever on fire with the love of God remain instead in a condition of frightful mediocrity, and God grant that things may not go from bad to worse."[xii]
The Ursulines of the Rue Pâquat did not lead a comfortable life. When they moved into the house that was to serve as their convent, it was totally bare of furniture; there were not even beds. The Catholics helped them out with some furniture, with linen and with some provisions. Conditions became better, when wealthy families sent their daughters to the convent school.

6. Mère Jeanne des Anges

The capable nun who had founded the house, got an assignment elsewhere already in 1627. Her successor, sent by the mother house in Poitiers, was soeur Jeanne des Anges. She was born on February 2, 1602, in the family castle of the barons of Cozes, in Saintonge, as the daughter of baron Louis de Belciel and Charlotte Goumart d'Eschiltair, also a noblewoman. Already as a very young girl Jeanne was difficult to handle. Perhaps this was due to her being deformed, maybe as the result of an illness or of a fall. Her stature was very small, almost dwarfish. She was intelligent, but she used her brains mainly to be a perfect nuisance to her surroundings. As Huxley expresses it, "the consciousness of being misshapen, the painful knowledge that she was an object either of repugnance or of pity, aroused in her a chronic resentment, which made it impossible for her either to feel affection or permit herself to be loved."[xiii]
Being at a loss what to do with her, her parents lodged her in a convent where an aunt was prioress. After a few years she was sent home as being intractable. Having spent some years at home, she suddenly announced that she had a vocation. Only too glad to be rid of her, her parents allowed her to take the veil in the Ursuline convent at Poitiers. She was fifteen then. On September 8, 1623, then being twenty-one years old, she took the perpetual vows, although she was far from being a perfect nun. She admits as much in her autobiography. "I applied myself to reading all kinds of books, but not from a desire for spiritual advancement, but only because I wanted to pass for a girl of spirit and of good conversation and in order to be able to surpass the others in whichever company."[xiv] It cannot have been a pleasure for the other nuns to consort with her, because her tone was often sarcastic and humiliating. Was she a pathological case? In any case she was very unstable. She had what is called a cyclothymic nature, which means that her mood rapidly changed from one extreme to another; she was alternately laughing and crying.
She herself asked to be moved to Loudun; she was twenty-five, when a year later, in 1628, she became mother superior of the convent. All the nuns, with only one exception, belonged to noble families. One was a relative of the all-powerful cardinal de Richelieu, another of his closest collaborator; others were daughters of barons and marqueses.[xv]

7. Mère Jeanne as prioress

As soon as she had arrived in the convent, her behaviour changed completely. "I took good care to make myself indispensable for those in authoritity, and since there were but few nuns, the superior was obliged to assign me to all the offices of the community. It was not that she could not do without me, for she had other nuns, more capable and better than I; it was merely that I imposed myself upon her by a thousand little compliances and so made myself necessary to her. I knew so well to adapt myself to her humor, that at last she found nothing well done except what was done by me; she even believed that I was good and virtuous."[xvi]
One of the tasks assigned to her was to converse with the learned monks who occasionally visited the convent. They often left books behind, treatises on spiritual life and mystical works; among these were classics like St.Augustine's `Confessions' and Teresa of Avila's autobiography. She read them avidly, but not, as she admitted herself, "for the sake of advancement in spiritual life, but only in order to seem clever and to outshine the other nuns in every kind of company." And, as Huxley remarks, "exalted by her new-found knowledge, she could look down on her sisters with an altogether delightful mingling of contempt and pity."[xvii]

8. Mère Jeanne and abbé Grandier

In spite of her trying to pass for a mystic, she frequently gave way to one of her great passions: sitting in the parlor and babling with the visitors, mostly female citizens of Loudun. One of their favourite subjects of conversation was abbé Grandier. The visiting ladies rapturously told Mère Jeanne what a fascinating man he was. "The mother prioress was so much troubled by this that she talked only of Grandier of whom she said that he was the object of her affections."[xviii] Her unfilled desires made her feel sick.
Then an unexpected chance to meet him presented itself. The spiritual director of the convent, canon Moussaut, died in 1631. Mère Jeanne lost no time to invite Grandier to become the canon's successor. But he politely refused, excusing himself with his busy life as a parish priest; it is also possible that Madeleine would not have him near these young nuns;[xix] the prioress was quite sure that Madeleine was behind the abbé's refusal. It happened that she came to the convent to visit a niece who was a boarder there. In the parlor she saw Mère Jeanne behind the grille, who immediately began screaming at her; she obviously knew about Madeleine's intimate relationship with the priest. "Whore, strumpet, debaucher of priests, committer of the ultimate sacrilege", she yelled. When the nun spat at her, the woman took to her heels.[xx]
Mère Jeanne's revenge was as refined as it was villainous. As Moussaut's successor she invited canon Jehan Mignon, who accepted the post. Mignon was the exact counterpart of Grandier: he was lame, he had no good looks, he did not possess rhetorical talents. What recommended him to the prioress was that he hated Grandier. He was alo a relation of the Trincant family, whose daughter Philippe the abbé had seduced. A deformed prioress and a lame confessor, it was a worthy couple, united in their desire to destroy Grandier.

9. The plague

Then, in May 1632, the plague broke out, raging until September. The death toll was horrifying: no less than four thousand people died, on a population of fourteen thousand. On the spire of Saint-Pierre stood a black flag, warning off travellers to Loudun.[xxi] There was a nervous looking for causes and remedies. Could it be that witchcraft was playing its part? Could it be that one citizen or other was in the service of the devil? It was supposed that stooges of Satan - les sectateurs du démon - were going about, purposedly spreading the pestiferous poison. The suspicions of some people - of not so few, in fact - went in the direction of abbé Grandier; it would be a good thing, if he was sent to the pyre, as the most appropriate scapegoat.[xxii]

10. The obsession begins

It goes without saying that this horrifying experience struck terror in the citizens of Loudun; the atmosphere became somewhat hysterical. Mère Jeanne made a clever use of it. May we believe her - but we rather had not - she had an apparition in the night of 21 to 22 September. "When she rested in her small but very chaste bed, mother prioress perceived a phantom encircled by a reddish light, clear enough to make her recognize the one who presented himself to her eyes, but sufficiently obscure to make her afraid. This spectre approached her; she immediately recognized the shadow of her deceased confessor, who said to her: `My daughter, do not have fear, I am your deceased father who comes to visit you ... I come here to console you and to teach you many things which I did not have the opportunity to teach you during my stay in this world. I have secrets to declare to you which can serve to direct your actions.'".
The next night the phantom reappeared, but now it was no longer canon Moussaut, but abbé Grandier, who "spoke to her of `amourettes' and solicited her with caresses that were as insolent as impudent ... She defends herself, nobody comes to help her, she is confused, nothing consoles her, she calls, no one answers, she cries, nobody comes, she trembles, she sweats, she invokes the holy name of Jesus."[xxiii] A psychiatrist would have no problem with this.

11. The contagion spreads

The prioress did not hesitate to relate all this to her nuns. Need one be a psychologist to predict that she soon would have a following? On the 1st of October 1632, "towards ten hours in the evening, the prioress was in bed, with a lighted candlestick, and with seven or eight of her sisters around her, to assist her ... She felt, without seeing anything, a hand which, closing her hand, left three thorns of a hawthorn in it ... Two days later it was found good that the prioress would burn them herself, which she did ... But it happened that the prioress and other religious after the reception of these thorns experienced strange changes in body and mind, so that they lost all judgment and were agitated by strong convulsions which seemed to proceed from extraordinary causes. It was thought that the thorns were something maleficent to make them possessed."
On the third of the month "these strange vexations and agitations were observed at the bodies of the prioress, soeur Louise de Jésus and soeur Claire de St.Jean [soeur Claire was Claire de Sazilly, a relation of Richelieu]. We found this a true case possession, and that it would be expedient to submit them to the exorcisms of the Holy Church."[xxiv] The situation was becoming decidedly pathological.

12. About exorcisms

Since the Roman Catholic Church believes in the existence of devils, and also believes that individuals may get totally in their power, so that they are entirely at their beck and call, that is, that they are `possessed', it has a procedure, called 'exorcism', for driving out the devil(s). This procedure is subjected to very strict rules. According to a Vatican ruling of 1999, exorcizing should only then be applied, if all other means, medical, psychological, and psychiatric, have failed. By no means every priest may exorcize. An exorcism may only be conducted with the authorization of the bishop, by an especially appointed and experienced priest, who must follow a prescribed ritual from which he may not deviate.
It will be evident from the scenes to be described that almost all these, then not yet codified, rules were transgressed. I ask myself whether Barré, the first exorcist, really had an authorization for this specific case. For several of the other exorcists this was almost certainly not the case. The exorcists all followed rules of their own making, in fact acting as amateurs.

13. The beginning of the exorcisms

Naturally, canon Mignon, the spiritual director of the convent, was informed of all this. He did not doubt for a moment that what was said to have happened was real; what was more, he told the nuns that the ghosts they had seen might be devils. He assured the terrified women that the manifestations were of Satanic origin. Mignon brought the affair beyond the convent walls by assembling four or five people in the country house of Trincant. He related to them what had happened at the convent, adding that it might be used to harm Grandier. The first thing to be done was to appeal to experienced exorcists.[xxv] It was high time, for, with the exception of two or three of them, all the nuns had nocturnal visits of Grandier's spectre. Grandier, however, had never visited the convent and did not know the prioress or any other nun. According to the abbé, it was a case of furor uterinus, of repressed sexuality, in which he was probably not far wrong.
Two exorcists were engaged. The first was Pierre Rangier, the parish priest of Veniers, a man of good standing with the bishop, so that no episcopal interference was to be feared. The second was the most formidable one, Pierre Barré, the parish priest of St.Jacques at Chinon; he had a degree in theology. He literally saw devils everywhere; the affair in Loudun was gefundenes Fressen for him.
We possess a compte rendu of the happenings in the convent, dated October 7 and signed by Barré and two other priests. Soeur Marthe de Sainte-Monique testified that a spectre had appeared to her in the night, in the shape of a cleric, clad in a cassock and an ample mantle; he held a book bound in white parchment in his hand. He wept and asked her to pray for him, because he could not do so himself. Later the same spectre appeared to the prioress. On the 24th of September a spectre in the form of a black globe had appeared in the refectory; it had thrown soeur Marthe on the floor and the prioress on a seat, violently hitting two other nuns. Not a night had passed without nuns being molested by spectres.[xxvi]

14. Barré in action

Accompanied by a large group of his parishioners, Barré marched into Loudun on one of the first days of October. It did not please him that the exorcisms were already begun, and behind closed doors at that. The devil must suffer a resounding defeat, at the hands of abbé Barré. The whole group poured into the convent chapel in order to witness Satan's defeat. They got what they wanted. Mère Jeanne became convulsive; she "rolled on the floor. The spectators were delighted, especially when she showed her legs," is Huxley's sardonic comment.[xxvii] She screamed, howled, and ground her teeth, two of which were broken. The devil only left her, when Barré commanded him to depart. The whole town was now involved in the affair. Imagine what an unexpected bounty this was in a time without tv, radio, and illustrated weeklies!
During the exorcisms Barré attempted to make the devils give their names, without much success. At the first session the only answer was `enemies of God'; at the second this was repeated several times. When a devil was asked how he had been introduced into the convent, he said `pact'. A pact with whom? `Priest' (in Latin). Which priest? `Petrus'. Function? `Curé'.[xxviii] This made it intriguing. There obviously was a priest behind it all. Could it be Grandier? But his Christian name was not Petrus. When Soeur Claire was being exorcized, she also mentioned a name: Zabulon, which did not make sense to whomsoever.

15. A device of Barré's own making

On October 8 Barré decided to attack the seven devils who inhabited Mère Jeanne's body; their chief was called `Asmodeus'. The following scene makes us ask who was more alienated: the prioress or Barré. Severely questioned Asmodeus said that he was lodged in the nun's lower belly. More than once Barré repeated the exorcizing formula over her. "I exorcize you, most unclean spirit, every onslaught of the adversary, every spectre, every legion, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, be thou uprooted and put to flight from this creature of God." He sprinkled her with holy water, laid his hands on her and covered her with relics. However, Amadeus made laughing sounds and stayed where he was.
Then the local apothecary, Monsieur Adam, was sent for; he arrived armed with a large syringe. Mère Jeanne was bound face down to her bed, on which she was held down. Then Adam administered an enema to her; a liter of holy water [sic] flowed into her. When it streamed out again, Asmodeus came out with it and fled.[xxix] What happened was a great shame. Barré, comments Huxley, "had treated her to an experience that was the equivalent, more or less, of a rape in a public lavatory."[xxx] Barré himself considered it as a significant victory.

16. The public authorities involved

While the exorcisms continued, mainly conducted by Mignon, Barré judged that the time had come to inform, and to involve, the public authorities. On October 11 he dispatched Rangier to the townhall, where he found the bailiff, Guillaume de Cerisay de la Guérinière, and his lieutenant Louis Chauvet. These two men accompanied him to the convent; they were introduced into a room where Mère Prieure and another nun were lying on beds. There were more people in this room, nuns, several Carmelite friars, two other priests, and a surgeon. We read in the protocol what happened.
Mère Jeanne "began to make very violent movements, with certain noises like the grunts of a small pig, then buried herself under the bedclothes, ground her teeth, and made various other contortions, such as might be made by a person out of her wits. At her right was a Carmelite and on her left hand the said Mignon, who stuck two fingers, namely the thumb and the forefinger, in the said Mother Superior's mouth and performed exorcisms and conjurations in our presence."[xxxi]
Things now began to take a nasty turn. "When one was at the exorcism that commands the devil to mention his name, he was pressed and again pressed with great fury to do this; he repeated three times that his name was Astaroth. Commanded to tell, `How did you come into this house?', [questions and answers in Latin], he said, by means of a pact with the pastor of St.Peter's. When we continued our prayers, the devil gave a horrifying cry and said twice in French, O méchant prêtre! When asked, which priest, he said twice Urbanista. When ordered to say and distinctly which priest, he answered, screaming a long time in a high-pitched voice and as if hissing, Urbanus. Pressed to say who was this `Urbanus', he said curatus S.Petri. Of which S.Petri? He said twice Du Marché. Pressed and pressed again by which new pact he was remitted, he said `flowers'. Which flowers? `Roses'".[xxxii]
With regard to that bunch of roses, it had been found on the staircase of the dormitory by soeur Agnès, a novice. Mère Prieure had stuck these musked roses in her belt, "whereupon she had been attacked by a great trembling of her right arm and was seized by love for Grandier all the time of her orisons, being unable to keep her mind on anything except the presentation of Grandier's person which had been inwardly impressed on her."[xxxiii] She added a curious detail: she said that the bunch had been brought by Jean Privart, a man who was then no longer in the land of the living.[xxxiv]

17. The sceptical bailiff

After the exorcism Mignon had a private conversation with the bailiff, telling him that this case had a strong resemblance with that of Louis Gaufridy. This man had been the parish priest of Les Accoules in or about 1612. He was a sorcerer who used nuts, not roses, to bewitch women and girls in order to get them in his bed. Among his victims were Ursulines of the convent in Marseille. Gaufridy had been condemned and burned.
However, not everybody was taken in. The bailiff was sceptical; he had the impression that Mère Jeanne was exhibiting. He was struck by the fact that she so emphatically mentioned the Christian name of Grandier and his function. Could it be that the monks who surrounded her had given her intoxicating potions in order to make her tell what they wanted her to tell? Could it be that the whole performance was a plot to bring Grandier down?[xxxv] In any case he warned the abbé that he was at risk; he also scolded Mignon in no uncertain terms that he was an infamous hypocrite. Grandier reacted the same day with a request in which he made very sensible propositions. He asked that the nuns be sequestered and isolated from one another, and then interrogated and examined. In case there was real possession, ecclesiastics of good standing should be invited to perform the exorcisms, instead of Mignon and those around him, who were prejudiced against him, Grandier.[xxxvi]
The bailiff peremptorily ordered Barré and Mignon to stop the exorcisms, but they produced an order signed by the bishop of Poitiers, La Rocheposay, telling them to continue their work. The bailiff had no choice but to allow them to go on with the exorcisms, but he insisted on being present. During one of these occasions the exorcists cut their fingers. Suddenly there was a loud noise in the chimney, and a cat fell onto the fireplace. The bare devil! The cat was caught, aspersed with holy water, and adjured in Latin. Then it appeared that it was the convent's cat, called Tom, who use to take a walk on the roof and then descend through the chimney. The sceptics of Loudun had a good laugh.[xxxvii]

18. The bailiff excluded

To rid themselves of the importune presence of the bailiff, Barré and Mignon shut the door of the convent in his face, letting him and his assistants stand outside in the autumn wind. The indignant magistrate stated that he had `a vehement suspicion of trickery and suggestion'; he required that there should be no secret sessions; everything should be done in his presence. The exorcists then promised to hold no more sessions. Mignon brutally addressed the bailiff in these words. "I am only responsible to the bishop ... I do not know you and I shall continue to pay visits to the Ursulines in spite of your impertinent injunctions."[xxxviii] Grandier himself took the road to Poitiers to see the bishop, but he was not received. Yet the bailiff came to his aid by issuing a decree forbidding "all people of whichever rank or quality to harm or vilify the person of Grandier."[xxxix]

19. Eccentric behaviour of the nuns

Mignon did not have a good influence on the nuns. Their behaviour became so eccentric that the parents of the girls who were boarders of the convent became alarmed and began to withdraw their daughters from the school. The situation became still worse, when Barré, after spending some time in his parish at Chinon, returned to Loudun on November 20. Mannoury, the surgeon, and Adam, the apothecary, were seized with fright, because of the nuns' `uterine fury'; they were probably not entirely innocent of what was happening, for, if the nuns were under the influence of drugs, who else would have furnished these? They invoked the assistance of all the physicians of the city, who examined the nuns. They reported to the bailiff: "The nuns are certainly deranged, but we do not consider that this has happened through the workings of demons and spirits ... Their alleged possession seems to be more illusory than real."[xl] They added that Barré and Mignon had refused to sign the report.[xli]

20. The bailiff intervenes with the ecclesiastics

The bailiff intervened with the bishop on Grandier's behalf, calling the affair `the sorriest piece of knavery for many ages past'. He assured the bishop that the abbé had never had any intercourse with the nuns and that they did not know him. The bishop did not reply. A second, more detailed letter remained also unanswered.[xlii]
The bailiff now wrote officially to the archbishop of Bordeaux, Henri de Sourdis, while Grandier did the same unofficially. The metropolitan did not believe in witchcraft; the doctor he dispatched to examine the affair, did so still less. Immediately all the nuns became quiet. Towards the end of December the archbishop forbade Mignon to exorcize; Barré was allowed to continue, but only when assisted by two exorcists appointed by him. He also wrote to the bailiff that, if there would be a new case of alleged possession, the nun in question should be separated from the community, examined by two or three doctors of a good reputation, and exorcized only then, when all other means to cure her had been exhausted.[xliii] For two whole months all remained quiet; there were no new incidents.

21. The court intervenes

Meanwhile, the Loudun affair was acquiring national proportions; the court heard of it and desired to be informed. In the autumn of 1633 Jean de Martin, baron de Laubardemont, a royal councillor, arrived in Loudun on a fact-finding mission; he had been there twice before, in 1630 and 1631 on official missions. Already the next day he visited the convent, where he listened to Mignon, Mère Jeanne, soeur Claire, kinswoman of the cardinal, and to two nuns who were his own sisters-in-law. They all told him that the possessions were real and authentic, and that the devils were at Grandier's beck and call. They complained that the archbishop would not believe this. They asked Laubardemont to intervene on their behalf, but he did not commit himself, not wanting to burn his fingers, because he did not know whether the cardinal too would believe this.[xliv] Although King Louis XIII and the queen believed in witchcraft, almost all the members of the court were profoundly sceptical.[xlv]
A few days later a high-placed visitor arrived, Henri II de Bourbon, Prince of Condé. Apart from being a bootlicker of Richelieu, he was a notorious profligate, a crook and a paederast. He came for the spectacle and he got it. He visited the convent in Laubardemont's company. He witnessed Mère Jeanne and two other nuns convulsively rolling over the floor, belching out obscenities and blasphemies. Soon all the nuns followed suit. "For an hour or two the church looked like a mixture between a beargarden and a brothel."[xlvi]
Condé was convinced that Grandier was the instigator of all this; he was told that the nuns were clamouring for him in the most impossible places, for instance, in a shed in the garden.[xlvii] He wanted Laubardemont to report this to Richelieu, but he refused. He even invited Grandier and his friends to have dinner with him. How sincere his hospitality was remains to be seen.[xlviii]

22. The anti-Grandier cabal

The anti-Grandier cabal in Loudun had not yet given up all hopes to get at their enemy. In 1627 a venomous pamphlet, directed against Richelieu, entitled Lettre de la Cordonnière de la Reine Mère à Monsieur de Barradas. It is certain that Grandier was not the author, but he was denounced as such. When Queen Maria de Medici visited Loudun in 1616, she had a young wench in her service; this bright young thing was called Cathérine d'Amour, later married to a certain Hammon. She became the queen's shoemaker, and what is more, also her confidante. What she heard and saw at the court, she passed on to Grandier, whose lover she had probably been. The abbé did not not keep these savoury bits of news to himself, but read Cathérine's letters to his friends. One of these was Trincant, who became an implacable enemy after the rape of his daughter.
Trincant was at the centre of the anti-Grandier party; it consisted of revengeful fathers of daughters, of cuckolded husbands, and of the majority of the regular clergy of Loudun, an obscurantist lot according to Grandier. The Capuchins were the best placed to harm the abbé, because a co-frater of theirs, Père Joseph, was very close to Richelieu. It was Trincant who suggested that Grandier was the author of the libel; he knew very well that the cardinal was not interested in witchcraft, but would never stand attacks on his person. The Capuchins drafted a letter to their man at the court; armed with this, Laubardemont, who was perfectly acquainted with Richelieu's sensitivity with regard to his person, left Loudun towards the end of October. In order to camouflage his treacherous intentions he once again treated Grandier and his friends to a dinner.

23. Council of war at the court

Having arrived at Rueil, where the court resided, he had a conversation with Père Joseph and later with this Capuchin and Richelieu together. He gave them a report on the exorcisms and handed the letter to them that accused Grandier of being the author of the libel. The cardinal was only too glad to discover at last who was its anonymous author. A council of war was held on November 30, with King Louis XIII, Richelieu, Père Joseph, Laubardemont, and some others present. It was resolved to send Laubardemont back to Loudun, where he must take information on Grandier and keep the court informed about the progress of the exorcisms at which he had to be present. To this a lettre patente was added, authorizing Laubardemont to arrest Grandier.[xlix]

24. Grandier arrested

Having returned to Loudun on December 6, Laubardemont immediately ordered the police chief, Guillaume Aubin, to arrest Grandier. Aubin, who had no axe to grind with the abbé, tipped him that he must flee. Grandier flouted this advice and was arrested the next day in front of his church. Aubin confiscated all the abbé's books and papers and put seals on his rooms.[l] The abbé himself was imprisoned in the severely guarded castle of Angers. A list was framed of the texts found in his study. There was no work on magic among them. There was an anonymous copy of the Lettre de la Cordonnière, but not a manuscript. And there was also the manuscript of the Treatise on Sacerdotal Celibacy, in which Grandier had argued the priests might marry. Since this was heresy, it was dangerous. No proofs or indications were found that he had been involved in the events in the convent.
The bishop of Poitiers admonished the faithful that they should inform against Grandier. This they did: Laubardemont received a torrent of malicious letters. Witnesses were heard; most of what they related on oath was sheer gossip and hearsay. The most damaging testimony came from seventeen Ursulines. In an official statement they declared that "Grandier had introduced himself into their house at all hours of the day and the night during four months, without their being able to explain how he had managed to enter; that he had presented himself to them, whilst they were awake and praying; that he had sollicited them to evil; that they had been hit by something which they did not see; and that all these incidents had begun with the arrival of prior Moussaut and finally that of Grandier."[li]
The only one who was not heard was Grandier himself; he did not even have a counsel for the defense. Yet he had his defenders, his brother René, for instance, and his mother Jeanne Estiève, who sent her son warm clothes to keep him warm in his cold cell, and also money.[lii] She also courageously attacked Laubardemont for listening to false witnesses and to deranged nuns. She accused him of being prejudiced and told him that he was not an impartial judge, because two of the nuns were members of his family, whereas his wife was related to the bishop.[liii] During January 1634 she approached many authorities, one of these being the bishop. She also announced that she would appeal to the hightest possible judicial authority, the Parliament of Paris - a prospect that did not please Laubardemont at all.

25. Grandier's fate sealed

Lauberdemont interrogated Grandier in his cell from 4 to 11 February 1634. Or rather, he attempted to do so, for the abbé simply refused to answer any of his questions; he hoped and expected that the Parliament of Paris would be prepared to occupy itself with his affair. He knew that its basic attitude was to stick to the rules of law. The exasperated Laubardemont travelled to Paris, where he found Richelieu, who preferred to keep the Parliament out of the affair, on his side. When the Council of State discussed it, with the king present, the cardinal said that the demoniacal powers must be checked. This was dishonest of him, for it may be asked whether he really believed in devilry and witchcraft. In any case he needed this in order to convince the king, which was easily done.
It was then officially laid down that Laubardemont was allowed to continue his work, "to which the king renews his commission for as long as may be necessary, debars the Parliament of Paris and all other judges from taking cognizance of the case, and forbidding the parties from suing each other before them, under penalty of a fine of five hundred livres."[liv] This sealed Grandier's fate.

26. A godsend for the city

Heaving a sigh of relief, Laubardemont returned to Loudun, where he arrived on April 9 or 10. The first thing he did was to have Grandier transferred from the castle of Angers to Loudun. There he was lodged in the back room of a house belonging to Mignon. It could not have been more uncomfortable. It was dark, because the windows had been bricked up; there was no fire, for the chimney was closed with a grating (or else the devil might come in through it). His bed was a heap of straw. He was guarded by a sergeant called Bontempts (nomen est omen) and his megaera of a wife.[lv] Moreover, he had the probably unwelcome company of two Capuchin friars who, at the bishop's orders, stayed day and night with him, continuously praying for his conversion.[lvi]
The affair was becoming a godsend for the city, for the innkeepers and the shopkeepers. From all over France sensation seeking tourists flocked in. To satisfy their curiosity the nuns were brought to the churches of the city in small groups; while they were hearing Mass, they became convulsive, screaming and contorting themselves.[lvii] There were even public performances, not by the nuns, but by laypeople, for the contagion had spread. Scaffolds were erected on which writhing women could be seen, to be duly exorcized by Carmelite friars. The tourists really got value for their money.

27. Attempts to prove that Grandier was in Satan's service

What Laubardemont needed was the irrefutable proof that Grandier was the magician who had bewitched the nuns; this must be confirmed by Satan himself. The problem was, as Huxley explains, that Satan is the Prince of Lies, never to be believed. His testimony would for this reason be worthless. The bishop tried to circumvent this problem by stating that a Catholic priest could force Satan to tell the truth. With this he was overstepping his mark, because it was accepted theological opinion that, even if the devil occasionally spoke the truth, he should not be listened to.[lviii]
It was more convenient for Laubardemont to stick to the bishop's opinion than to refer to the authority of St.Thomas. To him - but did he believe this himself? - Grandier was more than a magician; he was `a high priest of the Old Religion', that is, of Satanism. A young laywoman testified that she had had sexual intercourse with Grandier and that he had promised her to take her to a witches' Sabbath. It did not help the abbé that he declared never to have met this girl.[lix]
To Laubardemont this was excellent news: the abbé was in the service of the devil. In order to prove this, Grandier was subjected to a very humiliating experience. As Satan's servant he was supposed to have spots on his body where he would not feel pain, do what you would to them. On April 20 Mère Jeanne was kind enough to specify where these spots could be found: they were five in number, one on a shoulder, two on the buttocks near the perineum, and one on each testicle.[lx]
The next day a small crowd assembled in Grandier's room, consisting of Laubardemont, the surgeon Mannoury, several apothecaries (not all from Loudun), and the local physicians. Grandier was stripped bare; all his body hair was shaved off, and he was blindfolded. Then Mamnoury began to prick him with a long stiletto on the indicated spots, pushing it deeply in. The abbé screamed so loud that it could be heard outside. Yet two of the spots proved to be painless. However, one of the apothecaries, the one not from Loudun, saw that the surgeon was cheating: he pressed the blunt end of the instrument on the spots. The man protested loudly, but was ignored. It was as clear as daylight: the abbé was a servant of Satan. Yet, although Mère Jeanne had spoken of five insensible spots, Laubardemont had to be content with two.

28. Grandier's `pact with Satan'

As we know from the textbooks of demonology, or else we know it from Goethe's Faust, a servant of Satan must conclude a pact with him. Helpful as always, Mère Jeanne procured it. When being exorcized on April 27, the demon Asmodeus, obviously back home again, said that he would procure it the next day, which he duly did. This curious document, that is preserved in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, runs as follows.
"Monseigneur and master, I recognize you as my God and I promise to serve you as long as I shall live, and that from now on I renounce all others and Jesus Christ and Mary and all the saints of heaven and the Catholic, apostolic and Roman Church, and all the supplications and orisons that might be made for me; I promise to adore you and to do homage at least three times daily and to do as much evil as I can and to persuade as many people as will be possible to me to do evil, and wholeheartedly I renounce chrisma and baptism and all the merits of Jesus Christ, and in case I would convert, I give you my body, my soul and my life as holding them from you, having ceded them forever without wanting to repent. Thus signed Urbain Grandier with my blood."[lxi] It would have been easy to prove that this document was a hoax, but the attempt was not made.
On June 17, when possessed by another devil, Leviathan, Mère Jeanne vomited a pact, containing `a piece of the heart of a child, sacrificed in 1631 at a witches' Sabbath near Orléans, the ashes of a consecrated wafer, and some of Grandier's blood and semen'.[lxii] Huxley mentions something, first brought forward by Dr.Gabriel Legué in 1874, that should have made Laubardemont suspicious. The possessed nuns blasphemed all and everything, God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost, but never King Louis XIII and still less cardinal Richelieu. "The good sisters knew well enough that, against Heaven, they could let off steam with impunity. But if they were rude to the cardinal, ... [the dots are Huxley's]."[lxiii]

29. Laubardemont criticized

We should not think that Laubardemont had a walkover with his campaign against Grandier. There were many in Loudun who found that he was prejudiced and dishonest. It should not be lost from view that there was a considerable body of Protestants in the town; these Huguenots had their own thoughts about the affair. Mocking ditties were sung in the streets. Posters deriding the monks appeared on the church doors; sentries were posted before them, but then they appeared elsewhere. Some people were apprehended and set free again. On July 2 a decree was issued forbidding to do or say anything 'against the nuns or other persons of the said Loudun afflicted by evil spirits [i.e, to doubt that the possession was real], or against their exorcists, or against those who assist the exorcists [i.e. Laubardemont].' Transgression of these injunctions would be fined with the nice sum of ten thousand livres.[lxiv]

30. A counterblast

Soon after the first of August an anonymous treatise appeared, entitled Véritable Relation des justes procédures observées au fait de la possession des Ursulines de Loudun, a true relation of the correct procedures observed with regard to the possession of the Ursulines of Loudun; it was published at Poitiers and had the bishop's approbation. Its author was a Capuchin friar, Père Tranquille, one of the exorcists. Two things stand out in the title: the procedure was correct and the possession was a fact. The history of the possessed girls of Loudun, it said, is the most memorable and most famous of its kind having occurred in several centuries. Hell saw itself reduced to despair through the fall of heresy; not being able to prevent Catholic truth, it wanted to make magic creditable in order to vomit its rage against heaven and against innocents more freely.[lxv] Tranquille placed the events in the context of the struggle between the Huguenots and the Catholics in the city, in which the latter had triumphed.
The most damning sentence in this treatise was: "Duly restrained, the devil is bound to tell the truth". In other words, the accusations uttered by the possessed nuns against Grandier must be taken as being true. And it followed that everyone who doubted this was a servant of the devil. Sensing the danger, the pro-Grandier party decided to take action. On August 8, many people assembled in front of the townhall; a police officer and an attorney tried to disperse the crowd, but were booed away. The spokesmen of the assembly were Cerisay, the bailiff, and Louis Chauvet, his Lieutenant. They had composed two texts, which they read to the crowed, a Supplique au roi and a Censure of Tranquille's treatise. Both texts were voted by show of hands.
The Supplique ran as follows. "The officials and inhabitants of your city of Loudun see themselves at last obliged to resort to your majesty, very humbly remonstrating to him that, with the exorcisms performed in this city on the religious of St.Ursula and on some other girls, ... something is committed that is highly prejudicial to the public cause and to the tranquillity of your faithful subjects, because the exorcists, abusing their ministry and the authority of the Church, ask questions during their exorcisms tending to defame the best families of this city.
M. de Laubardemont, councillor, despatched by your majesty, had heretofore given in too much to the sayings and answers [of the possessed]. On the strength of a false indication made by them, he entered into the house of a young lady [Madeleine de Brou] with great noise and followed by a great many people in order to sequestrate non-existing books of magic ... Since then this evil had made so much progress that such consideration is made of the denouncements, testimonies and indications of the said demons, that a booklet has been printed of them [that of Tranquille] and spread through the city, the aim of which booklet is to establish creditibility in the mind of the judges [who were to judge Grandier], because truly exorcized demons tell the truth.
The suppliants therefore, moved by their own interest, namely, if one lends credit to these demons in their responses and articles, the better people and the most virtuous of the innocents, against whom in consequence, the said demons foster a more than mortal hatred, will remain a prey to their malice, request and supplicate your majesty most humbly to interpose his royal authority in order to stop these excesses and profanations of the exorcisms occurring daily at Loudun in the presence of the sacrament [i.e. in the churches]." They added that the position taken by the exorcists, namely, that an exorcized devil could tell the truth, was contrary to the doctrine of St.Thomas and the Fathers of the Church.[lxvi]
The next day Cerisay and Chauvet were on their way to Paris. Once there, an acquaintance they had at the court brought the petition to the king, but his answer was that he did not want to receive them. His majesty did not love to be told by his subjects what to do, however humbly they presented their wishes.[lxvii]

31. Grandier before his judges

All hopes for Grandier now being lost, Laubardemont began to assemble judges who would be ready to condemn him. it would be best, if they were citizens of Loudun, but the four magistrates he approached, Cerisay, Chauvet, and two others, all refused. He found more willing ones and also a public prosecutor in other cities, as far afield as Orléans and Beaufort. "The most complete arbitrariness prevails in the affair that is occupying us", writes Villeneuve.[lxviii] Laubardemont and the judges knew what the court expected of them and acted accordingly. The outcome of the process was a foregone conclusion. The only one who still believed that justice would be done was Grandier; convinced of his innocence he wrote to the king.
Laubardemont behaved most villainously. His prisoner remained housed in his stinking, airless hole, with a bundle of straw for bed. His mother was refused to see him, while an agent was sent to Madeleine de Brou, the abbé's paramour, to cajole her into confessing that she had been bewitched by Grandier, which she steadfastly refused to do.
On August 15 Grandier stood before his judges. He forcefully defended himself; he denied the charges and said that the procedure was illegal, that the exorcists had used fraudulous means, and that belief in witches was heresy. The judges showed no interest. They "sat there, shifting in their chairs with unconcealed impatience, whispering among themselves, laughing, picking their noses, doodling with squeaky quills on the papers before them."
Back in his cell, he lay on his bed and cried, knowing that there was no hope for him. At five o'clock in the afternoon of that day, a visitor came in, Father Ambrose, an Augustinian friar, who sincerely pitied the prisoner. Grandier made a complete confession to him, of all the sins of the flesh and of pride he had committed; he knew now that he had not been a good priest, and he deeply regretted this. He accepted his ordeal as a punishment for his sins. Father Ambrose gave him the absolution, prayed with him and gave the communion. Then the door opened; the jailer appeared and said that, at the orders of Laubardemont, the priest had to disappear immediately, never to return.[lxix]
In the evening of the 15th and on the 17th and 18th Grandier again confronted his judges, each time refusing to answer their questions. Later in the morning of August 18 Grandier was stripped bare and shaved all over; even his eyebrows went off. Laubardemont then ordered the surgeon to pull out his fingernails, but the man refused to do this. Next Grandier was clad in a long nightshirt, but his biretta placed on his head. Looking so strangely unlike himself, he was ushered into the courtroom, where the sentence was read to him. The tribunal unanimously condemned to death by burning. "In order to repair [his crimes] we have condemned him and condemn him to make amende honorable, bareheaded and in his shirt, with a rope around his neck, with a candle in his hand weighing two pounds, before the churches of Saint-Pierre au marché and Sainte-Croix of this city of Loudun, to ask there, on his knees, pardon of God, the king and justice. This done, he will be led onto the public square of Sainte-Croix to be bound to a pole on a pyre that to this effect will be erected on this square and be burned there live with the pacts and the magical signs ... together with the manuscripts of the book composed by him against celibacy, and the ashes to be thrown into the wind."[lxx]
Having heard this sentence, Grandier spoke for the first time. "My lords, I call God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost to witness, together with the Virgin, my sole advocate, that I have never been a sorcerer, have never committed sacrilege and have never known any other magic than that of Holy Scripture, the which I have always preached. I adore my Saviour and pray that I may partake in the merit of the blood of His Passion." In this vein he went on for some time. People could be heard sobbing; even some of the judges were moved.
Fearing that at this very last moment his prey might escape him, Laubardemont ordered to clear the courtroom; only the judges, the officials and Grandier remained behind. Because there were sceptics and because the public was obviously swayed by Grandier's words, he urgently needed a confession. A sheet of paper was laid before him and a pen was offered him. He had only to sign, but he refused. "I must beg your lords to excuse me." Laubardemont used every device to bring his victim to sign, even tears, but all to no avail.
He then gave orders that Grandier be led to the torture chamber, but even under torture he protested his innocence. Having suffered unbearable pain for three quarters of an hour, the prisoner was hoisted on a bench; a merciful captain of the guard gave him a glass of wine. Then Laubardemont spoke with him, or rather to him, for two hours, but did not get what he wanted so much. At last he gave op.

32. The execution

Grandier was carried down the staircase; his legs had been so badly mauled that he was unable to stand. A car stood waiting in which he was placed on a bench. In front of Saint-Pierre he was lowered down, but he could not kneel on his shattered knees. A Cordelier friar, called Grillau, approached, gave him a message of his mother, and embraced him. Both men wept. Since the crowd began to murmur, Laubardemont ordered the cortège to move on. At the door of the Ursuline convent he had to ask the forgiveness of the nuns, but he refused, saying that he had done them no harm.
The next stage was the square of Sainte-Croix. Six thousand people stood packed on it. Grandier was bound to the stake in the middle of the pyre, with his back to the church and his face towards the house of Louis Trincant, whose daughter he had seduced. Papa Trincant was enjoying his finest hour, sitting in his window; he held a glass of wine in his hand, raising it and signalling to Grandier with it.
For the last time great pressure was exerted on him to confess, and for the last time he refused. When a friar gave him the kiss of peace, a chorus was heard from the public: 'Judas, Judas!' Grandier had been promised that he would be strangled before the pyre was lighted, but the spiteful Capuchins threw a torch on it before this was done. The victim's last words were: "Deus meus, miserere mei, Deus", and then in French: "Pardonnez-moi, pardonnez mes enemies." Then it was all over.[lxxi]

33. The aftermath

The fact that Grandier, who was supposed to have instigated the possession of the nuns, was now out of the way did not stop the strange events. The sisters, especially Mère Jeanne, remained hysterical. One of the Capuchins, Father Lactance, died on September 18. Mannoury, the surgeon, when walking home on a dark evening, saw Grandier standing naked before him; he fainted and died a week later. The next to die was Louis Chanort; accused by the prioress of being a magician, he became melancholy and died in the beginning of 1635. Father Tranquille, one of the exorcists, succumbed on May 30, 1638; according to Huxley, this was due "to a too exclusive occupation with evil", for he himself began to behave as if obsessed.[lxxii]
Towards the end of the year 1634 Laubardemont invoked the help of the Jesuits, but most of them refused to have anything to do with the affair. Finally four of them were found ready to come and exorcize the nuns. On December 15 they arrived in Loudun, led by Father Jean-Joseph Surin. He was a sickly and neurotic man, suffering of depressions, in other words, not the one to occupy himself with this affair. Soon Surin began to work on Mère Jeanne, firmly convinced as he was that her obsession was genuine. Yet he too became a victim of his own art, for he began to believe that he was pryed upon by devils. However, the three Jesuits he had come with Surin to Loudun, remained sceptical; they believed that the prioress was exhibiting. In October 1636 Surin, who was at the end of his tether, was recalled to Bordeaux and replaced by a Father Ressès, who also believed in the possession and continued to exorcize Mère Jeanne and other nuns.
In June 1637 Behemoth, the devil who inhabited the body of the priores, told Ressès that he was ready to depart, if only the nun would make a pilgrimage to the tomb of St.François de Sales at Annecy, and this in Father Surin's company. Surin duly returned, but his provincial would not allow him to travel with a nun, so they went to Annecy along separate ways. Once there, Behemoth left Mère Jeanne. Immediately, the possession became a thing of the past. Yet her finest hour was still to come.

34. Mère Jeanne's triumphal tour

"From Loudun and in the company of a mystic, seven devils and sixteen hysterics, the Prioress now stepped out into the full glare of the seventeenth century, for she had become a celebrity." Invited by Richelieu to visit him, she travelled to Paris in May 1638. On her way to the capital she was everywhere greeted as if she had won a war; huge crowds brought her ovations. The cardinal was already nearing the end of his days, but lying in bed he had a conversation with her. His Eminence obviously had forgot that he once was very sceptical about witchcraft and devilry. But, as Huxley supposes, he was ill enough to believe in anything.
From Paris she went to Tours to be received by the archbishop, Bertrand de Chaux, an old fool of eighty, who had fallen in love with a lady of thirty. Thousands of people beleaguered the convent where she was lodged. At Tours she also met Gaston, Duke of Orléans, another fool, who had an affair with a sixteen-year-old girl; she lived at Tours, which is why he was there. He told her: "I came to Loudun [he was there indeed in May 1633); the devils who were in you gave me a great fright. They served to cure me of my habit of swearing, and there and then I resolved to be a better man than I had been until that time" - after which, writes Huxley, he hurried back to his girlfriend.
From Tours she went to Amboise and thence to Blois, where people were so enthusiastic that they broke open the doors of the room where she sat dining. At Orléans, where she was lodged in the Ursuline convent, the bishop came to visit her; people were allowed in to take a look at her. Once again she visited Paris, where she was lodged in Laubardemont's house; the archbishop came to see her. The house was constantly overcrowded with visitors from all ranks of society.
Laubardemont's coach brought her to St.Germain-en-Laye, where the court resided. Queen Anne spoke a long time with her; the king also came. Encounters with the archbishop of Sens and with the papal nuncio followed. On the long road to Lyons she was everywhere applauded by great crowds. Once in Lyons, she had an interview with the archbishop, and also with Father Surin, who had lost most of his wits. From Lyons she hurried back to St.Germain in order to be near the queen, whose labour pains had begun in the night of September 4, 1638; Mère Jeanne's chemise was spread over her. A boy was born, who was to be King Louis XIV.[lxxiii] The prioress then returned to Loudun, having been fêted and honoured as one who had triumphed over demons.
"The doors of the convent closed behind her forever," wrote Huxley. "Her crowded days of glorious life were over, but she could not immediately reconcile herself to the humdrum routine, which was henceforward to be her lot."[lxxiv] She lived this humdrum life for another twenty-seven years, until she died in January 1665. She was venerated as though she was a saint. Her head was severed from her body and placed in a box with crystal panes. The convent was suppressed in 1772; the box and the other relics have disappeared.

35. Assessment

The tale told here is a strange and repulsive concoction of superstition, credulity, deceit, exhibition, hysterics, political subservience, dishonesty, venom, hatred, and cruelty, with only a few sparks of common sense and Christian charity. We must not leave it at this, standing back in horror and wonder. As sensible people of the twenty-first century we must attempt to get to the bottom of this affair.
It all happened within the walls of the city of Loudun. In many respects its population did not differ from the rest of the French nation. Its inhabitants believed in the reality of witchcraft and in the existence of witches, were afraid of it, and believed that this evil had to be radically rotted out. This general fear made people credulous, which means that, when there was talk of devilry and witchcraft, they were quite ready to believe it as though it was Gospel truth.
On two accounts, however, Loudun was different. It was one of the places de sureté, which the French government had accorded to the Huguenots.[lxxv] The town had had a Protestant governor for a long time, but at the time of the events this was no longer so. It harboured a sizeable Huguenot population group; as may be expected in this time of hostility between the denominations, there was friction between the Huguenots and the Catholics. This was an element of unbalance. The plague that raged through the city in the summer of 1633 made this unbalance worse, causing feelings of fear and uncertainty.
The most important player in this drama was abbé Grandier, parish priest of St.Pierre. He was the only one fatal victim, hounded to death by a cabal of his enemies, laypeople and clerics, mainly regulars. He had to die because he was accused of having instigated the mass hysteria in the convent, and also because of being supposed to be author of a tract against Richelieu. On both accounts he was innocent. Nevertheless, it must be stated that, to a large extent, he brought down his fate on his own head himself. As an inveterate womanizer he made many deadly enemies in the city, the principal of whom was Louis Trincant, the public prosecutor, whose daughter he had seduced. He had also been deriding the monks and friars, especially the Carmelites and the Capuchins who, in order to revenge themselves on Grandier, forgot for a while the command of Christian love.
When the cabal managed to connect Grandier with the events in the convent, his fate was sealed. Did these men really believe that the abbé was an agent, or rather the agent, of the happenings in the convent? It is perfectly possible that those Carmelites and Capuchins, who were directly involved, for instance as exorcists, were convinced both of the genuiness of the possessions and of Grandier's guilt. I cannot believe the same of magistrates, like Trincant; they may have believed that there was really devilry at play, but not that Grandier was the instigator. To them it was the means to bring him down; in view of this it did not bother them whether it was true or not.
The convent of the Ursulines in the Rue Pâquat was a newcomer among the monasteries of the town. Seventeen nuns, with a prioress, lived there. They were young women, in the ages between seventeen and thirty-six years. Almost al of them were related to noble families. As I explained in previous pages, they had no true vocation, being dumped there as being `superfluous' by their families. They went routinely through their religious obligations and were easily bored. They would have been happy with diversion, but within the convent walls this was not to be had. And neither outside the walls, because they were cloistered.
The prioress, Mère Jeanne des Anges, was, with her thirty years, younger than the older nuns. She was a neurotic, a prey to hysterical fits; she was in fact the last person to give guidance to this impressionable group of young women. The great question is whether her bouts of possession were genuine or fake. In the previous pages I used the term `exhibiting'. I do, however, not believe that she was deliberately giving performances, although she surely made the most of her fits. In whatever way it may have begun - as the result of feelings of frustation, of emptiness, of dissatisfaction with herself and her way of life -, she must soon have believed that she was really possessed. It is also true that it gave her an ascendancy over the other nuns; she attracted the attentuion of outsiders and finally of all France. It gave her, as the Germans call it, a Sitz im Leben; once she had acquired this, it became impossible for her not to believe in herself.
Of the seventeen nuns only two showed no signs of being possessed. Fifteen followed suit, demonstrating what is called `copying behaviour'. They found their prioress an exceptional woman - to be visited by demons! And it offered them the diversion they lacked. To say nothing of the fact that it made them too an object of interest.
No good word can be said of either the exorcisms or of the exorcists. It is possible that Barré was an official authorized by the bishop of Poitiers. Father Surin, the Jesuit, was experienced, but had probably no authorization. The other priests who occupied themselves with the affair, the Capuchins and the Carmelites, were self-appointed. They all took it for granted that the nuns were possessed. The rituals they followed were their own invention; they make a highly amateurish impression. I only remind the reader of the undignified scene of Mère Jeanne being given an enema.
Let me venture a supposition. It is possible that the friars initially really believed that the nuns were really possessed, but they must soon have discovered that they were faking. This agreed very well with their wish to inculpate Grandier; they realized that they could make the nuns say what they wanted them to say. And say it they did: that Grandier was behind it all. Whether this accusation was suggested to them either by the friars or by the Trincant cabal or by Laubardemont we do not know. I guess that the latter one is the most obvious source. Deceit was not shunned: the letter from the demons Asmodeus and the Grandier's pact with the devil were fabrications.
The great agent of evil was the royal commissioner Laubardemont, an ambitious careerist, a bootlicker of Richelieu. At the cardinal's orders he had to get at Grandier, the alleged author of the libel directed against his master. A miserable role was played by the bishop of Poitiers, Mgr. de la Rocheposay, a man as vain as he was weak; he did nothing to stop the ridiculous proceedings or to help and save Grandier. He firmly believed that the possessions were genuine.
There were counterforces. The archbishop of Bordeaux did not believe in the happenings, but could do nothing. An archbishop has no authority to intervene in an other diocese. Doing what he could, the bailiff, De Cerisay, behaved honourably, but proved powerless against the royal commissioner and the court. The medical guild of Loudun was sceptical, but clearly did not want to burn its fingers.
Other people were less reticent, Father Ambroise took a personal risk by confessing Grandier, the captain of the guard who was indignant with the way Grandier was treated, and the Cordelier friar who publicly embraced him. The general public obviously pitied Grandier. Highly objectionable as his life had been, he made much good by his behaviour as a prisoner. Even under horrible torture he did not confess a guilt he did not have. The Grandier before the tribunal and at the pyre was a man very different from the unworthy parish priest he had been.

--------------


BIBLIOGRAPHY


CONTEMPORARY WORKS


MONOGRAPHS


CERTEAU, Michel de, La possession de Loudun, présentée par --. Collection Archives. Paris, 1970.

HUXLEY, Aldous, The Devils of Loudun. New York, 1952 (original edition Oxford, 1948).

VILLENEUVE, Roland, La mystérieuse affaire Grandier. Le diable à Loudun. Série: Bibliothèque historique. Paris, 1980.



NOTES