From this Bull, accepted in France after long opposition, the Jansenist party appealed to a future Papal Council, thence deriving their name of Appellants.  Among these, one of the most noted and zealous was the Diacre Paris, who refused a curacy, to avoid signing his adhesion to what he regarded as heresy, consumed his fortune in works of charity, and his health in austerities of a character so excessive that they abridged his life.  Dying, as his partisans have it, in the odor of sanctity, and protesting with his last breath against the doctrines of the obnoxious Bull, his remains were deposited, on the second of May, 1727, in the small church-yard of St. Medard, situated in the twelfth arrondissement of Paris, on the Rue Mouffetard, not far from the Jardin des Plantes.

To the tomb of one whom they regarded as a martyr to their cause the Jansenist Appellants habitually resorted, in all the fervor of religious zeal, heated to enthusiasm by the persecution of the dominant party.  And there, after a time, phenomena presented themselves, which caused for years, throughout the French capital and among the theologians of that age, a fever of excitement; and which, though they have been noticed by medical and other writers of our own century, have not yet, in my judgment, attracted, either from the medical profession or from the pneumatological inquirer, the attention they deserve.

Of these phenomena a portion were physical, and a portion were mental or psychological.  The former, first appearing in the early part of the year 1731, consisted (as alleged) partly of extraordinary cures, the apparent result of violent convulsive movements which overtook the patients soon after their bodies touched the marble of the tomb, sometimes even without approaching it, by swallowing, in wine or water, a small portion of the earth gathered from around it, the effect being heightened by strict fasting and prayer,—­partly of what were called the “Grands Secours,” literally “Great Succors,” consisting of the most desperate, one might say murderous, remedies, applied, at their urgent request, to relieve the sufferings of the Convulsionists.  These measures, called of relief, and carried to an incredible excess, were of such a character, that, during any normal state of the human system, they would have destroyed, not one, but a hundred lives, if the patient, or victim, had been endowed with so many.  Those who regarded this marvellous immunity from what seemed certain immolation as a miraculous interposition of God were called Succorists; their opponents, ascribing such effects to the interference of the Devil in protection of his own, or (a somewhat rare opinion in those days) to natural agency, went by the name of Anti-Succorists. (Secouristes and Anti-Secouristes.)