Tongues and Other Miraculous Gifts in the Second Through Nineteenth Centuries, Part 4: From the 13th to the 18th Centuries

 

The Jansenists

Another eighteenth-century group in France, the Jansenists, were Catholics who were persecuted because of their leanings toward Protestantism. In 1731, miracles were said to have been performed at the tomb of the archdeacon of Paris, who had defended the doctrines of Jansenius. Cutten wrote of them as follows:

Some people while visiting that tomb experienced ecstasy and convulsive movements that became contagious, and many who were thus seized prophesied and uttered unintelligible expressions in an unconscious state. They often used absolutely senseless combinations of sounds, which passed for words from foreign languages. They believed, as do the Camisards, that their organs of speech were controlled by a superior power.¹¹⁰

The miracles among the Jansenists had actually begun many years previous to this time, the first being the well-attested healing on March 24, 1656, of Marguerite Perrier, the young niece of Blaise Pascal (A.D. 1623-1662), the famous French mathematician and apologist. She had suffered for a long time from a serious ulcer of the tear duct of one of her eyes. A historian of Jansenism, B. Robert Kreiser, wrote of the healing as follows:

Mile. Perrier had been suffering for a long time from a serious and disfiguring lachrymal fistula in the corner of one eye. She was suddenly healed when a Holy Thorn recently presented to the sisters of Port-Royal-des-champs, where she was a pensionary, was simply touched to her ulcerous sore. Despite vehement Jesuit denunciations and attempts to explain it away, the miracle, supported by substantial medical evidence and duly authenticated a short time later by the diocesan authorities, made a profound impression on the public. So great was the impact of this extraordinary event that the queen mother herself accepted the cure as miraculous and allegedly induced Mazarin to hold off the persecution of the Jansenists for another five years because of it.^­111

As a result of these events Blaise Pascal began a long and fruitful series of reflections on the miracles recorded in the Bible and the relationship between miracles and religious truth.¹¹²

 

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Next Issue:

Part 5 (Fall 1999): The 18th and 19th Centuries
Part 5 of Tongues and Other Miraculous Gifts

 

Notes

⁷⁴ Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints, August 17, in Herbert Thurston and Donald Attwater, eds., Butler’s Lives of the Saints (New York: P. J. Kennedy & Sons, 1956), vol. 3, p. 341.

⁷⁵ Stanley M. Burgess, “Medieval Examples of Charismatic Piety in the Roman Catholic Church,” in Russell P. Spittler, Perspectives on the New Pentecostalism (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1976), pp. 21-22, citing Acta Sanctorum, Sugust 11, 687.

 

Tags: 13th, 18th, centuries, gifts, miraculous, nineteenth, part, tongues

Category: Church History, Summer 1999