Life
Grandier served as priest in the church of Sainte Croix in Loudun, in the Diocese of Poitiers. Ignoring his vow of celibacy, he is known to have had sexual relationships with a number of women and to have acquired a reputation as a philanderer. He also wrote a book attacking the doctrine of clerical celibacy. In 1632, a group of nuns from the local Ursuline convent accused him of having bewitched them, sending the demon Asmodai, among others, to commit evil and impudent acts with them. Modern commentators on the case, such as the author Aldous Huxley, have argued that the accusations began after Grandier refused to become the spiritual director of the convent, unaware that the Mother Superior, Sister Jeanne of the Angels, had become obsessed with him, having seen him from afar and heard of his sexual exploits. According to Huxley, Sister Jeanne, enraged by his rejection, instead invited Canon Mignon, an enemy of Grandier, to become the director. Jeanne then accused Grandier of using black magic to seduce her. The other nuns gradually began to make similar accusations. Grandier was arrested, interrogated and tried by an ecclesiastical tribunal, which acquitted him.
Grandier, however, had gained the enmity of the powerful Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister of France, after a public verbal attack against him. Grandier had also written and published scathing criticisms of Richelieu. Richelieu ordered a new trial, conducted by his special envoy Jean de Laubardemont, a relative of the Mother Superior of the convent of Loudun. Grandier was rearrested at Angers and the possibility of appealing to the Parlement of Paris was denied to him. Interrogated for a second time, the nuns (including the Mother Superior) did not renew their accusations, but this did not affect the predetermined outcome of the trial. After torturing Father Grandier, the judges (clerics Lactance, Laubardemont, Surin and Tranquille) introduced documents purportedly signed by Grandier and several demons as evidence that he had made a diabolical pact. It is unknown if Grandier wrote or signed the pacts under duress, or if they were entirely forged.
Grandier was found guilty and sentenced to death. The judges who condemned Grandier ordered that he be put to the "extraordinary question", a form of torture which was usually, but not immediately, fatal, and was therefore only administered to victims who were to be executed immediately afterwards. Despite torture, Grandier never confessed to witchcraft. He was burned alive at the stake.
Many theories exist as to the cause of the Loudun "possessions". One of the most likely explanations is that the whole affair was a hoax orchestrated by Richelieu. Huxley in his book The Devils of Loudun (1952) and in the Ken Russell film version of the Huxley book (1971) alleged that the initial accusations against Grandier by the nuns of the convent of Loudun were part of a case of collective hysteria.
Read more about this topic: Urbain Grandier
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“I am heartily tired of this life of bondage, responsibility, and toil. I wish it was at an end.... We are both physically very healthy.... Our tempers are cheerful. We are social and popular. But it is one of our greatest comforts that the pledge not to take a second term relieves us from considering it. That was a lucky thing. It is a reform—or rather a precedent for a reform, which will be valuable.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive. But strong natures, backwoodsmen, New Hampshire giants, Napoleons, Burkes, Broughams, Websters, Kossuths, are inevitable patriots, until their life ebbs, and their defects and gout, palsy and money, warp them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We shall make mistakes, but they must never be mistakes which result from faintness of heart or abandonment of moral principles. I remember that my old school master Dr. Peabody said in days that seemed to us then to be secure and untroubled, he said things in life will not always run smoothly, sometimes we will be rising toward the heights and all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The great thing to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is forever upward.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)