“…the Loudun epidemic was an iatrogenic disease, produced and fostered by the very physicians who were supposed to be restoring the patients to health.”
I first became aware of the madness that descended on the small town of Loudun, located just south of the Loire Valley, and a bit north of Poitier, which today has a population of 7,500, when I watched the movie
The Devils
, starring Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave, in the 1970’s. I found the movie quite memorable (and disturbing!). And I recently read Arthur Miller’s play,
The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts
, concerning the same elements of a “witch hunt,” occurring in the same century as the events in Loudun, on the other side of the Atlantic, in Salem, Massachusetts. Aldous Huxley states that he first read of the events at Loudun in Michelet’s "La Sorcière". Huxley was struck by the inaccuracies and the “very slap-dash” quality of the work, written by an admittedly great historian. And he figured he could do better, capturing all levels, “from the most horrible to the most sublime,” as reflected in Grandier and Surin. Huxley also relates these distant events to similar phenomena today, much as Arthur Miller did.
Urbain Grandier was a real scumbag, in the plain-spoken vernacular. He was also a Jesuit priest, and shortly after his ordination, in 1615, he was assigned to Loudun, which had almost double the population of today. He conformed, and substantially exceeded the prevailing “community standards” of the time, which Huxley states as being “…from highest prelate to humblest friar, the majority of clergymen are thoroughly disreputable.” Certainly, they could not be encumbered by the vow of chastity, and the clergymen would normally have a few women in the congregation to whom they provided more than spiritual solace (no mention of young boys!). Grandier had many more than the proverbial “few,” including the daughter of his best friend, who he got pregnant, and then denied it all: she, of course, was the “sinner.” Her baby became another’s, “legal truth” as opposed to “truth,” as Huxley sarcastically notes. Thus, Grandier accumulated a few enemies in the town. He also ran afoul of the man who would become the most powerful in France: Cardinal Richelieu.
An Ursuline convent was established in Loudun. Jeanne des Anges, age 25, dwarfish, and deformed would become the head nun. She developed a sexual obsession for Grandier, handsome as he was. Almost certainly it was unrequited. She knew some of the village women who enjoyed “requited” status. As Huxley says: “envy modulated into hatred and contempt,” or, as more famously phrased: “hell hath no wrath like a woman scorned.” Hysteria followed, and “infected” the entire convent. The convenient explanation: the nuns were possessed of devils, and such were the times, the specific names of the devils, and their location in the body could be identified. Grandier’s enemies united, including Richelieu, who knew the charges were probably not true, but he sought the greater glory of France, and a consolidation of Royal power, and besides, “you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs” as Huxley says, and Grandier is a scumbag, so, he was charged with “sorcery.” Numerous individuals refused to participate in this charade, but enough did so that he would be condemned to death, tortured first, with his legs crushed upon the wheel, and burned at the stake. Huxley describes the details in “disturb-your-dreams” detail. I sensed a scrupulous attention to the facts, as detailed in court records and the many diaries of the time.
The aftermath was equally unpleasant. The three chief inquisitors met unpleasant ends, two within the year. Richelieu himself, who thought bringing back the Inquisition would be an excellent way to consolidate power and punish enemies would have a body that literally putrefied, causing a stink that others avoided and ridiculed. Jean-Joseph Surin, a coeval of Grandier, would be brought in to exorcise the demons from Jeanne des Anges. She would become famous, and the reason for “pilgrimages” to Loudun. Huxley describes her as: “she knew herself to be- half actress, half unrepentant sinner, wholly hysterical.” Her fate was also unpleasant, as would be Surin’s, who lived for a couple of decades with excruciating pains and bodily dysfunction (all psychosomatic?) and was eventually cured.
The madness of crowds. Huxley, who wrote this work in 1953, wove comparisons between Loudun and current events, particularly, but not limited to, totalitarian regimes. For example, he says: “…the Collective Will is merely the dictator’s will-to-power, sometimes mitigated, sometimes distorted to the verge of lunacy, by some pseudo-scientific theory of what, in the gorgeous future, will be good for an actuarial abstraction labeled ‘Humanity’.” Huxley concludes with a marvelous epilogue in which he discusses humanity’s urge to “self-transcendence,” via alcohol, drugs, sexuality and yes, “crowd-delirium,” “herd intoxification.” Oh, how true: “To men and women under the influence of herd-poison, ‘whatever I say three times is true’ – and whatever I say three hundred times is Revelation, is the directly inspired Word of God.”
I had to think of the substantial industry that is “airport security,” as well as those slew of “think tanks” when Huxley concluded: “If there had been no exorcists, it would never have begun.” Huxley is a thoughtful, incisive observer of the human condition. I’m glad I moved beyond
Brave New World
) to read at least one other of his works, which deserves 5-stars, plus.
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