Urbain Grandier, Priest Accused of Sorcery

Urbain Grandier, a French Catholic priest who was burned at the stake after being convicted of sorcery in the Loudun possessions. His story is known to the public mainly through the book of the Calvinist Saint-Aubin, titled *History of the Devils of Loudun* (Histoire des diables de Loudun), which aimed to distort the facts in the spirit of his sect. Today, it is recognized that his book is a deceitful and slanderous pamphlet. Grandier was unfortunately a priest more dissipated, as the accounts of the time say than his condition allowed. He thus had a title to the sympathies of the enemies of the Roman Church. There had been for seven years in Loudun a convent of Ursulines, which Grandier wanted to seduce. He bewitched the nuns, as they said then; today it would be said he magnetized them, by means of enchanted flowers that he sent them; and these holy girls became possessed and frenzied. The phenomena produced by magnetism before our eyes explain many facts that dissidents and philosophers have treated as absurd, and which can no longer be doubted. A procedure was initiated, followed with much order, slowness, and wisdom. Grandier, in prison, composed or hummed songs. He was sentenced to death. There have been outcries against this sentence, and people have bemoaned his execution. However, magnetism and turning tables have produced or will produce crimes, which will be, as well as those of Grandier, the responsibility of the provost courts or the assize courts.