World Famous Cults and Fanatics (2 page)

“Damn me”, said a doctor, “if the child is not
gone.”
These words filled the disciples with new hope.
Obviously, he meant that the child had been there, but had
now been transferred to heaven.
And even today, there are a small number of followers of Joanna Southcott – they call themselves the Panacea Society – who believe that when her
mysterious box is opened – a box supposed to contain her secret writings – all sin and wickedness in the world will suddenly disappear.

It is tempting to dismiss all these prophets and would-be saints as frauds or madmen.
But that would undoubtedly be a mistake.
Consider, for example, the strange case of Joseph of Copertino.

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The Flying Monk

Giuseppe Desa was born in Apulia, Italy, in 1603, a strange, sickly boy who became kriown as “Open Mouth” because his mouth usually hung open; one commentator
rermarks that “he was not far from what today we should call a state of feeblemindedness”; a bishop described him as
idiota
(although the word meant innocent rather than
idiotic).
He was subject to “ecstasies” and, even as a teenager, given to ascetic self-torments that undermined his health.
At the age of seventeen he was accepted into the Capuchin
order, but dismissed eight months later because of total inability to concentrate.
Not long after, the order of Conventuals near Copertino accepted him as a stable boy, and at twenty-two he became
a Franciscan priest.
He continued to starve and flagellate himself, acquiring a reputation for holiness.
Then one day, in the midst of his prayers after mass, he floated off the ground and landed
on the altar in a state of ecstasy.
He was unburned by candle flames, and flew back to his previous place.

Sent to see the Pope, he was again seized by such rapture that he rose in the air.
His flying fits seem to have been always associated with the state that the Hindus called
samadhi,
ecstasy.
His levitations ceased for two years when a hostile superior went out of his way to humiliate and persecute him; but after a holiday in Rome as the guest of the superior of the order, and
an enthusiastic reception by the people of Assisi, he regained his good spirits and sailed fifteen yards to embrace the image of the Virgin on the altar.

He seems to have been a curious but simple case; floating in the air when in a state of delight seems to have been his sole accomplishment.
The ecstasy did not have to be religious; on one
occasion, when shepherds were playing their pipes in church on Christmas Eve, he began to dance for sheer joy, then flew on to the high altar, without knocking over any of the burning candles.
Oddly enough, Saint Joseph could control his flights.
On one occasion, when he had flown past lamps and ornaments that blocked the way to the altar, his superior called him back, and he flew hack
to the place he had vacated.
When a fellow monk remarked on the beauty of the sky, he shrieked and flew to the top of a nearby tree.
He was also able to lift heavy weights; one story tells of how
he raised a wooden cross that ten workmen were strugghng to place in position, and flew with it to the hole that had been prepared for it.
He was also able to make others float; he cured a demented
nobleman by seizing his hair and flying into the air with him, remaining there a quarter of an hour, according to his biographer; on another occasion, he seized a local priest by the hand, and
after dancing around with him, they both flew, hand in hand.
When on his deathbed, at the age of sixty, the doctor in attendance observed, as he cauterized a septic leg, that Father Joseph was
floating in the air six inches above the chair.
He died saying that he could hear the sounds and smell the scents of paradise.

What are we to make of such phenomena?
It would be convenient if we could dismiss the whole thing as a pack of lies or as mass hysteria or hypnosis.
We can certainly dismiss ninety-five per cent
of the miracles attributed to the saints in this way without a twinge of conscience.
(A typical example: St Dunstan of Glastonbury is reported to have changed the position of the church by pushing
it.) But the evidence of Brother Desa’s power of flight cannot automatically be dismissed; it is overwhelming.
His feats were witnessed by kings, dukes and philosophers (or at least one
philosopher – Leibnitz).
When his canonization was suggested, the Church started an investigation into his flights, and hundreds of depositions were taken.
He became a saint a hundred and
four years after his death.

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The Miracles of Saint-Médard

The strange events that took place in the little Paris churchyard of Saint-Médard between 1727 and 1732 sound so incredible, so preposterous, that the modern reader is
tempted to dismiss them as pure invention.
This would be a mistake, for an impressive mass of documents, including accounts by doctors, magistrates and other respectable public figures, attests to
their genuineness.
The miracles undoubtedly took place.
But no doctor, philosopher or scientist has even begun to explain them.

They began with the burial of François de Pâris, the Deacon of Paris, in May 1727.
François was only thirty-seven years old, yet he was revered as a holy man, with powers of
healing.
He was a follower of Bishop Cornelius Jansen, who taught that men can be saved only by divine grace, not by their own efforts.
The Deacon had no doubt whatever that his own healing powers
came from God.

Great crowds followed his coffin, many weeping.
It was laid in a tomb behind the high altar of Saint-Médard.
Then the congregation filed past, laying their flowers on the corpse.
A father
supported his son, a cripple, as he leaned over the coffin.
Suddenly, the child went into convulsions; he seemed to be having a fit.
Several people helped to drag him, writhing, to a quiet corner
of the church.
Suddenly the convulsions stopped.
The boy opened his eyes, looking around in bewilderment, and then slowly stood up.
A look of incredulous joy crossed his face; then to the
astonishment of the spectators he began to dance up and down, singing and laughing.
His father found it impossible to believe, for the boy was using his withered right leg, which had virtually no
muscles.
Later it was claimed that the leg had become as strong and normal as the other.

The news spread.
Within hours cripples, lepers, hunchbacks and blind men were rushing to the church.
At first, few “respectable” people believed the stories of miraculous cures
– the majority of the Deacon’s followers were poor people.
The rich preferred to leave their spiritual affairs in the hands of the Jesuits, who were more cultivated and worldly.
But it
soon became clear that ignorance and credulity could not be used as a blanket explanation for all the stories of marvels.
Deformed limbs, it was said, were being straightened; hideous growths and
cancers were disappearing without trace; horrible sores and wounds were healing instantly.

The Jesuits declared that the miracles were either a fraud or the work of the Devil; the result was that most of the better-off people in Paris flatly refused to believe that anything unusual
was taking place in the churchyard of Saint-Médard.
But a few men of intellect were drawn by curiosity, and they invariably returned from the churchyard profoundly shaken.
Sometimes they
recorded their testimony in print: some, such as one Philippe Hecquet, attempted to explain the events by natural causes.
Others, such as the Benedictine Bernard Louis de la Taste, attacked the
people who performed the miracles on theological grounds, but were unable to expose any deception or error by them, or any error on the part of the witnesses.
The accumulation of written testimony
was such that David Hume, one of the greatest eighteenth century philosophers, wrote in
An enquiry concerning human understanding
(1758):

One of those who investigated happenings was a lawyer named Louis Adrien de Paige.
When he told his friend, the magistrate Louis-Basile Carré de Montgéron, what he
had seen, the magistrate assured him patronizingly that he had been taken in by conjuring tricks – the kind of “miracles” performed by tricksters at fairgrounds.
But he finally
agreed to go with Paige to the churchyard, if only for the pleasure of pointing out how the lawyer had been deceived.
They went there on the morning of 7 September 1731.
And de Montgéron
left the churchyard a changed man – he even endured prison rather than deny what he had seen that day.

The first thing the magistrate saw when he entered the churchyard was a number of women writhing on the ground, twisting themselves to the most startling shapes, sometimes bending backward until
the backs of their heads touched their heels.
These ladies were all wearing a long cloth undergarment that fastened around the ankles.
Paige explained that this was now obligatory for all women who
wished to avail themselves of the Deacon’s miraculous powers.
In the early days, when women had stood on their heads or bent their bodies convulsively, prurient young men had begun to
frequent the churchyard to view the spectacle.

However, there was no lack of male devotees of the deceased Abbé to assist in the activities of the churchyard.
Montgéron was shocked to see that some of the women and girls were
being sadistically beaten – at least, that is what at first appeared to be going on.
Men were striking them with heavy pieces of wood and iron.
Other women lay on the ground, apparently
crushed under immensely heavy weights.
One girl was naked to the waist: a man was gripping her nipples with a pair of iron tongs and twisting them violently.
Paige explained that none of these
women felt any pain; on the contrary, many begged for more blows.
And an incredible number of them were cured of deformities or diseases by this violent treatment.