Tremblers of the Cevennes

An Encyclopaedia of Occultism (1920)

A Protestant caste of convulsonaires, who during the sixteenth century spread themselves from their centre in the Cevennes over almost the whole of Germany . They possessed many points of resemblance with cases of possession (q.v.), and are said to have been insensible to thrusts and blows with pointed sticks and iron bars, as well as to the oppression of great weights. They had visions, communicated with good and evil spirits, and are said to have performed many miraculous cures similar to the apostolic miracles. They made use of very peculiar modes of treatment called grandes secours or secours meurtriers, which are authenticated by the reports of eye-witnesses and by judicial documents. Although they were belaboured by the strongest men with heavy pieces of wood and bars of iron weighing at least thirty pounds, they complained of no injury, but of experiencing a sensation of pleasure. They also were covered with boards, on which as many as twenty men stood without its being painful to them. They even bore as many as 100 blows with a twenty-pounds weight, alternately applied to the breast and the stomach with such force that the room trembled, and they begged that the blows might be laid on harder, as light ones only increased their sufferings. Indeed only those who laid on the heaviest and most strenuous blows were thanked by their sick. It seemed that it was only when the power of these blows had penetrated to the most vital parts that they experienced real relief. Ennemoser explains this insensibility to pain by stating that in his experience "spasmodic convulsions maintain themselves against outward attempts, and even the greatest violence, with almost superhuman strength, without injury to the patient, as has often been observed in young girls and women, where anyone might have almost been induced to believe in supernatural influence. The tension of the muscles increases in power with the insensibility of the power, so that no outward Trevisan, Bernard force is equal to it; and when it is attempted to check the paroxysm with force, it gains in intensity, and according to some observers not less psychical than physical.... I have observed the same manifestations in children, in Catholics, Protestants and Jews, without the least variation, on which account I consider it to be nothing more than an immense abnormal and inharmonic lusus naturæ."