Satanism and Witchcraft by Jules Michelet

Author:Jules Michelet [Michelet, Jules]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Global Grey ebooks
Published: 2019-05-23T23:00:00+00:00

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19. The Nuns Of Loudun Urbain Grandier 1633, 1634

IN the Mémoires d’État composed by the renowned Father Joseph, known to us only in fragments, having doubtless been prudently suppressed as too instructive, the worthy Father explained how in the year 1633 he had had the good fortune to discover a heresy, an enormously widespread heresy, affecting a countless multitude of confessors and directors of consciences.

The Capuchins, an admirably organised legion of defenders of the Church, good watch-dogs of the holy flock, had scented out and unearthed, not in the deserts, but in mid-France, in the centre, at Chartres, in Picardy and everywhere, a formidable quarry, the alumbrados of Spain (illuminati or Quietists), who too fiercely persecuted in that country, had taken refuge in France, and who among women, and above all in the nunneries, were instilling the soft poison ticketed later on with the name of Molinos.

The wonder is the thing had not been discovered sooner. It could not very well be hidden, being so widely disseminated; the Capuchins swore that in Picardy alone (a land where the women are weak and the blood more fiery than in the South itself) this mania of mystic love had sixty thousand professors. Was the whole body of clergy involved then? all the confessors, all the directors? It must no doubt be understood that the official directors of consciences were supplemented by a great number of laymen burning with the same zeal for the salvation of female souls. One of this class, who was conspicuous at a later date no less for talent than for bold originality, was the author of the Délices Spirituelles (Spiritual Joys), Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin.

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