The History of the Devils of Loudun, Volumes I-III: The Alleged Possession of the Ursuline Nuns, and the Trial and Execution of Urbain Grandier, Told by an Eye-witnessDes Niau
History
The History of the Devils of Loudun, Volumes I-III: The Alleged Possession of the Ursuline Nuns, and the Trial and Execution of Urbain Grandier, Told by an Eye-witness
Des Niau
Couvent des Ursulines (Loudun, France); Demoniac possession; Grandier, Urbain, 1590-1634
The demons used to threaten him out of the mouth of the Mother
Superior, who was under his care. Once, in the presence of the Bishop
of Nimes, the demon took up his position on the face of the nun;
suddenly he disappeared and attacked the father, made him grow pale,
sat on his chest, and stopped his voice; but soon, obeying the order
of another exorcist, he returned to the nun, spoke through her mouth,
and showed himself extremely hideous and horrible on her face; and the
father, returning to the fight, continued his duties as if he had never
been attacked. In one afternoon he was thus attacked and released seven
or eight times; but these assaults were followed by others still more
violent, so that in his exorcisms he seemed to be struck with violent
interior blows, borne to earth, and violently shaken by his adversary;
he remained in this state sometimes half an hour, sometimes an hour.
The other exorcists applied the Holy Sacrament to the places where he
felt the demons, sometimes to his chest, sometimes to his head. When
the devil left him he reappeared on the face of the mother, where the
monk, with holy vengeance, pursued him, and constrained him to adore
the Holy Sacrament. Once the devil threw him out of a window on to the
rock where stands the convent of the Jesuits, and broke one of his
thighs. After having sustained during many years with perfect patience
and resignation these terrible trials, he was freed from them, and at
length died in the odour of sanctity.
As to the Mother Superior, towards the end of the year 1635, something
happened to her of a most extraordinary nature. Lord Montague came
to Loudun, accompanied by two other English noblemen. He brought the
exorcists a letter from the Archbishop of Tours, ordering them to edify
his Lordship as much as possible. The Superior, in the midst of a
convulsion, stretched out her left arm, and the name of Joseph appeared
on it written in capital letters. The report of this event was signed
by the English noblemen. Lord Montague hastened to Rome, abjured his
heresy, embraced the ecclesiastical career, and, under another name,
settled in France, where he lived many years. He is mentioned in the
memoirs of Madame de Motteville.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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