Tremblers of the Cevennes

A Protestant caste of convulsionaries, who during the sixteenth century grew in numbers from their center in the Cevennes (south of Lyon, France), over almost the whole of Germany. They possessed many points of resemblance with cases of obsession and possession, and are said to have been insensible to thrusts and blows with pointed sticks and iron bars, as well as to the oppression of great weights. They had visions, communicated with good and evil spirits, and are said to have performed many miraculous cures similar to the apostolic miracles. They made use of modes of treatment called grandes secours or secours meurtriers, which were authenticated by the reports of eyewitnesses and by judicial documents.

Although they were belabored by the strongest men with heavy pieces of wood and bars of iron weighing at least thirty pounds, they complained of no injury, but experienced a sensation of pleasure. They also were covered with boards, on which as many as twenty men stood without its being painful to them. The Tremblers even bore as many as a hundred blows with a twenty pound weight, alternately applied to the breast and the stomach with such force that the room trembled; they begged the blows might be laid on harder, as light ones only increased their sufferings. It seemed only when the power of these blows had penetrated to the most vital parts that they experienced real relief.

Joseph Ennemoser explained this insensibility to pain by stating that in his experience:

"… spasmodic convulsions maintain themselves against outward attempts, and even the greatest violence, with almost superhuman strength, without injury to the patient, as has often been observed in young girls and women, where anyone might have almost been induced to believe in supernatural influence. The tension of the muscles increases in power with the insensibility of the power, so that no outward force is equal to it; and when it is attempted to check the paroxysm with force, it gains in intensity, and according to some observers not less psychical than physical…. I have observed the same manifestations in children, in Catholics, Protestants and Jews, without the least variation, on which account I consider it to be nothing more than an immense abnormal and inharmonic lusus naturoe. "

(See also Convulsionaries of St. Médard )

Sources:

Ennemoser, Joseph. The History of Magic. 2 vols., 1854. Reprint, New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1960.