1727-1735

Medical testimony, in Paris and provinces, about legitimacy of Convulsionaries’ miracle cures: Following the death of Jansenist deacon Francois de Paris in 1727, the cemetery of his burial, St. Médard, became a theater to which Paris’s parish members, and then a segment of the larger Jansenist community, came to pray at his grave. There they underwent “frenzied convulsions and the enunciation – with tears, screams, and groans – of apocalyptic visions” accompanied by severe beatings that left them “curiously unharmed and in some cases deeply relieved or even ecstatic” (L. Wilson, loc 161). Medical testimony thereupon became “a crucial factor in conditioning public understanding of the Convulsionaries and their miraculous cures.” Representatives of church and state hoped that summoned physicians would validate the efforts of both to suppress the movement (loc 219). Consulting physicians, though initially divided on the medico-religious legitimacy of the convulsions and healings, typically fulfilled this role: Physiological abnormalities, hysteria, vapors, suspension of menstruation, and other sexually based disorders were among the reasons they provided to undermine the validity of Convulsionaries miraculous healings (loc 199ff.). While a few of the Convulsionaries – predominantly single young Parisian women – established new social identities through the authority conveyed by their convulsions, the majority suffered from the image of women propounded by their critics. Among the philosophes, Diderot was repeatedly drawn to the Convulsionaries, who, he believed, epitomized the link between women’s nervous disorders and religious fanaticism (loc 275-277).