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“De par le Roi, defense à Dieu

De faire miracle en ce lieu.”

But though the votaries were expelled from the churchyard, they did not discontinue their practices. The scene of action was only removed to private houses. Miracles, too, were still worked by means of earth from the churchyard, and water from the well which had supplied the deacon’s beverage. Pushing their frenzy to extremity, the convulsionaries, as they were called, invented a system of self-torture, not exceeded by that of the Hindoos. Their purpose was to obtain the miraculous aid of the beatified deacon. To be beaten with sticks, to bend the body into a semicircle, and suffer a stone of fifty pounds’ weight to be dropped from the ceiling down on the abdomen, and to lie with a plank on the same part, while several men stood upon it, were among the trials to which even women submitted, apparently with delight. In some instances their insanity prompted them to still more horrible displays; some being tied on spits and exposed to the flames, and others nailed to a cross by the hands and feet.