Some of these alleged cures, but more especially some of these so-called succors, were of a nature so far passing belief, that one would be tempted to cast them aside as sheer impostures, were not the main facts vouched for by evidence, not from the Jansenists alone, but from their bitterest opponents, so direct, so overwhelmingly multiplied, so minutely circumstantial, that to reject it would amount to a virtual declaration, that, in proof of the extraordinary and the improbable, we will accept no testimony whatever, let its weight or character be what it may.  Accordingly, we find dispassionate modern writers, medical and others, while reminding us, as well they may, that enlightened observers of these strange phenomena were lacking,[3] and while properly suggesting that we ought to make allowance for exaggeration in some of the details, yet admitting as incontestable realities the substantial facts related by the historians of St. Medard.

Among these historians the chief is Carre de Montgeron, a magistrate of rank and high character, Counsellor of the Parliament of Paris.  An enthusiast, and a weak logician, as hot enthusiasts generally are, Montgeron’s honesty is admitted to be beyond question.  Converted to Jansenism on the seventh of September, 1731, in the church-yard of St. Medard, by the strange scenes there passing, he expended his fortune, sacrificed his liberty, and devoted years of his life, in the preparation and publication of one of the most extraordinary works that ever issued from the press.[4] It consists of three quarto volumes, of some nine hundred closely printed pages each.  Crowded with repetitions, and teeming with false reasoning, these volumes nevertheless contain, backed by certificates without number, such an elaborate aggregation of concurrent testimony as I think human industry never before brought together to prove any contested class of phenomena.

Not less zealous, if less voluminous, were the writers opposed to what was called “the work of the convulsions.”  Of these one of the chief was Dom La Taste, Bishop of Bethleem, author of the “Lettres Theologiques,” and of the “Memoire Theologique,” in both of which the extravagances of the Convulsionists are severely handled; a second was the Abbe d’Asfeld, who, in 1738, published his “Vains Efforts des Discernans,” in the same strain; and another, M. Poncet, who put forth an elaborate reply to the Succorists, entitled “Reponse des Anti-Secouristes a la Reclamation.”

The convulsions, commencing in the year 1731, almost immediately assumed an epidemical character, spreading so rapidly that in a few months the affected reached the number of eight hundred.  These were to be found not only on the tomb and in the cemetery itself, but in the streets, lanes, and houses adjoining.  Many, after returning from the exciting scenes of St. Medard, were seized with convulsions in their own dwellings.

The numbers and the excitement went on increasing, and conversions to Jansenism were counted by thousands; the scenes became daily more extravagant, and the phenomena more extraordinary, until the King, moved either by the representations of physicians or by the remonstrances of Jesuit theologians, caused the cemetery to be closed on the twenty-ninth of January, 1732.[5]