We will now take a case or two from the Roman Communion. Hysteria, as we might suppose, would be likely to manifest itself in the monastic orders. St. Joseph of Cupertino was one Christmas Eve in church, when the pifferari began to play their carols. Joseph, who was a Franciscan friar, carried away by religious emotion, began to dance in the midst of the choir, and then, with a howl, he took a flying leap and lighted on the high altar. He was then vested in a gorgeous cope, conducting the service. The carollers were amazed, no less than the friars; and their amazement was increased when they saw him jump from the altar on to the pulpit ledge, fifteen feet above the ground. One day he went into the convent choir of the Sisters of St. Clara, at Cupertino. When the nuns began to sing, Joseph, unable to restrain his emotion, ran across the chancel, caught the old confessor of the convent in his arms, and danced with him before the altar. Then he span himself about like a teetotum, with the confessor clinging to his hands, and his legs flying out horizontally. St. Christina, The Wonderful, a Belgian virgin, used to go into fits when her religious emotions were worked upon, put her head between her feet, bending her spine backwards, and roll round the room or church like a ball. St. Peter of Alcantara in his fervours used to strip himself naked. He would jump, curled up like a ball, high into the air, and in and out at the church door. “What was going on in his soul all this while,” says his biographer, “it is not given to mortals to declare.” The numerous cases of possession in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were nothing but hysterical disorders, the symptoms precisely those of Methodist revivals, Witches’ Sabbaths, Paulinian orgies, and Schamanism. It is worthy of note that the witches were always a prey to extreme exhaustion after they had attended their Sabbaths, a feature that is invariable after spiritual raptures. In Sweden a religious revival took place in 1842-3, which swept over the country, affecting great numbers of children. Boys and girls, only eight years of age, were inspired to preach the Gospel and go about in bands singing hymns. In the province of Skaraburg, where the epidemic was least extensive, it numbered, at least, 3000 victims. The patients had “quaking fits,” dropped down, became unconscious, had trances, saw visions, and preached when in an ecstatic state. Not two centuries before, a similar epidemic had passed over Sweden, affecting the children, but it then took a slightly different complexion: it was an epidemic of witchcraft. In 1669-70, the children declared that they were transported nightly to the Blockula, and their condition afterwards was one of complete prostration. A Commission was appointed to examine into the matter, public prayers and humiliations were ordered, and a great number of women and children were executed for their guilt in having attended these meetings on the Blockula.