The Atlantic Monthly, page 149 by Various Authors
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possible mark of authenticity; the originals being recorded and preserved in the public archives."[42]
Even in the very denunciations of opponents we find corroboratory evidence of the main facts in question. Witness the terms in which the Bishop of Bethléem declaims against the scenes of St. Médard:--"What! we find ecclesiastics, priests, in the midst of numerous assemblies composed of persons of every rank and of both sexes, doffing their cassocks, habiting themselves in shirt and trousers, the better to be able to act the part of executioners, casting on the ground young girls, dragging them face-downward along the earth, and then discharging on their bodies innumerable blows, till they themselves, the dealers of these blows, are reduced to such a state of exhaustion that they are obliged to have water poured on their heads! What! we find men pretending to sentiments of religion and humanity dealing, with the full swing of their arms, thirty or forty thousand blows with heavy clubs on the arms, on the legs, on the heads of young girls, and making other desperate efforts capable of crushing the skulls of the sufferers! What! we find cultivated ladies, pious and of high rank, doctors of law, civil and canonical, laymen of character, even curates, daily witnessing this spectacle of fanaticism and horror in silence, instead of opposing it with all their force; nay, they applaud it by their presence, even by their countenance and their conversation! Was ever, throughout all history, such another example of excesses thus scandalous, thus multiplied?"[43]
De Lan, another opponent, thus sketches the same scenes:--"Young girls, bareheaded, dashed their heads against a wall or against a marble slab; they caused their limbs to be drawn by strong men, even to the extent of dislocation;[44] they caused blows to be given them that would kill the most robust, and in such numbers that one is terrified. I know one person who counted four thousand at a single sitting; they were given sometimes w