The Convulsionnaires of Saint-Médard

François de Pâris died on 1 May 1727, aged 36 or 37. He was a deacon who judged himself unworthy of the priesthood. He lived in extreme poverty in the Faubourg Saint-Marceau, ate one meal a day and knitted stockings for the poor. He was also an appellant, an opponent of the papal bull Unigenitus.

The next day he was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Médard, under a black marble slab on four stone blocks. Mourners carried off hair, nail parings, wood splinters and soil. That same day, Madeleine Beigny said her paralysed left arm was healed by rubbing it with the coffin wood.

About a dozen cures were claimed over the next three years. Then came 1731. Over 70 cures were announced that year alone. Pilgrims lay on the slab or took earth from the grave, rubbing it on the body or drinking it in wine. On 13 June 1731 Marie-Anne Couronneau, a servant who walked on two crutches, declared herself cured.

That summer, the bodies began to move. After touching the tomb, people reported violent convulsive movements. Witnesses described cries, moans and fainting, bones cracking, muscles stiffening and eyes rolling back. Some miaowed or barked. Helpers pulled on the clenched limbs, and the convulsionnaire did not appear to suffer.

Abbé Bescherand came from Montpellier with an atrophied left leg and visited twice a day. Police reports compared his leaps to those of a carp. His valet measured the leg, counted the convulsions and announced the results to the crowd. Chairs were rented to watch.

Not everyone came to pray. In August 1731 Gabrielle Gautier, a soldier's widow, came to the tomb intending to fake an illness and then a cure. She lay on the slab and was paralysed. A 1732 pamphlet collected by her confessor, Chaulin, dates it to 4 August. An engraving of the scene carries a verse: the healthy unbeliever came back feeble and crippled.

Archbishop Vintimille banned devotion at the tomb on 15 July 1731, but the crowds kept coming. A royal ordinance closed the cemetery on 27 January 1732, and two days later hundreds of soldiers sealed the gates. Someone wrote at the gate: "De par le Roi, défense à Dieu / De faire miracle en ce lieu." By order of the King, God is forbidden to perform miracles in this place. The movement moved into private houses, where followers practised the secours, from blows with logs to crucifixion.

Lieutenant of police René Hérault had 24 doctors and surgeons examine seven convulsionnaire prisoners in the Bastille. They judged the convulsions voluntary, though their methods were widely criticised. Philippe Hecquet blamed roguery, a depraved imagination or a hidden illness. The Jesuits saw the Devil. Believers saw a divine sign for the persecuted appellants.

Louis-Basile Carré de Montgeron, a counsellor in the Parlement who converted after a miracle at the tomb on 7 September 1731, answered with La Vérité des miracles. Its first edition reportedly sold out in 15 days.

David Hume weighed the cures in "Of Miracles". Diderot, who lived on rue Mouffetard, asked of a crippled child, "So where is your miracle?" Later, Charcot read the convulsions as hysteria, yet of the reported sword wounds that did not bleed, he wrote: "La réalité du fait ne peut être repoussée sans examen." The cemetery was cleared in 1875, and today it is the square Saint-Médard.