CONVULSIONARIES OF SAINT MÉDARD. - A complex of paranormal events that occurred during the 18th century in Paris, in the small cemetery adjoining the church of Saint-Médard, at the tomb of the deacon Pâris, or with his relics or with the earth of his grave.
The deacon François Pâris, an ardent Jansenist, who died at only 37 years of age, leaving behind a reputation for austere piety toward himself but understanding and merciful toward others, had been buried there in the early days of May 1727, and immediately, on the very day of the funeral, a stupendous healing was said to have occurred at his tomb, followed by several others, according to L.-B. Carré de Montgeron (La vérité des miracles, opérés par l'intercession de M. de Pâris, démontrée contre l'archévêque de Sens [Utrecht 1737]), who from dissolute and unbelieving had been converted to a new life at the deacon's tomb and became the most ardent defender of the alleged "miracles." Several of the healings had been accompanied by convulsions; indeed this aspect soon became predominant, thus opening the second period known as that of the convulsionaries. And convulsionaries were not only the sick but also the pilgrims; and no longer only at the tomb, but also in private houses. For the relief of the poor patients a whole series of secours or "means of alleviation" was invented, which were divided into two classes: small (blows with the fist, trampling, stretching with stout bandages, as if it were a thorn, of the limbs and the body) and great (violent blows with a club, a mallet, a hammer on the chest, the belly, the stomach of the victim, the torture of the wheel, crucifixions, swords pointlessly aimed and pressed against the body) inflicted until the patient said he felt relieved. Others, instead, uttered screams, writhed, leapt, gnashed their teeth with their eyes starting from their sockets, or walked on the brage (incombustibility) or remained suspended in the air (levitation); still others uttered prophecies or claimed, though laymen and women, to exercise priestly functions. The majority of the convulsionaries were women.
A proclamation of King Louis XV, of January 1732, had the gates of the cemetery barred; another of 17 February 1733 forbade the convulsionaries to make a spectacle of themselves in public and in private houses; notwithstanding this the phenomenon lasted almost until the French Revolution.
While the enemies of the Church made use of those events to cast ridicule and mockery upon the genuine miracles of Christianity, the fervent Jansenists put them forward as so many true prodigies, wrought by God to demonstrate the holiness of his servant Pâris and the truth of his doctrine. Thus from Paris the phenomenon spread to various places and gave rise to various sects (vaillantistes, augustinistes, farinistes).
Whoever wishes to form a fair judgment about this complex of events must follow the norms of sound criticism, equally far from the two extremes: to deny everything or to accept everything. Now: 1) several of these events are due to tricks and fabrications, as those who had lent themselves to the game themselves confessed; 2) others abound in evident and gross exaggerations due to the fanaticism of Jansenist adherents: it is therefore necessary to sift them carefully in all their circumstances; 3) still others are due to suggestion or to a contagious fascination that spreads easily among the masses (obvious examples: the dancing mania of St. Vitus, the dancing dervishes) or are naturally explained by hysterical or epileptoid crises, with the phenomena of paralysis and anesthesia that accompany them; 4) finally there remain other groups of events, which seem to escape any natural explanation. However, given all that they contain of the extravagant, the grotesque, the indecent, that smacks of the filthy or of true and proper immorality, it is not possible to attribute them in any way to the intervention of God, because they clash with his attributes and with everything that is known of his manner of acting and conducting himself. They agree instead with what history relates of diabolical powers (Simon Magus, sorcerers, etc.).
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