Urbain Grandier

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Urbain Grandier, woodcut from 1627

Urbain Grandier (* 1590 in Bouère ( Mayenne department ); † August 18, 1634 in Loudun ) was a French Catholic priest who was convicted of witchcraft and burned at the stake in the matter of the so-called Devils of Loudun .

Life

Grandier was a priest in the Sainte Croix church in Loudun in the Diocese of Poitiers . He appears to have had a number of sexual and romantic relationships with women and earned a reputation as a womanizer. In 1632 a group of nuns from the local convent of the Ursulines accused him of having bewitched them by sending them the demon Asmodaeus and others to commit wicked and shameless deeds with them. Modern commentators on the case argue that the lawsuits started after Grandier refused to become the spiritual director of the convent, not knowing that Mother Superior, Sister Jeanne des Anges, was obsessed with him after seeing him from afar and heard of his sexual acts. It is alleged that Jeanne, upset by the rejection, asked Canon Mignon, an opponent of Grandier, to take over the spiritual direction. Jeanne accused Grandier of seducing her using black magic ; other nuns gradually began to make similar charges. Modern scientists explain the process as a case of mass hysteria . Grandier was arrested, questioned by an ecclesiastical tribunal and examined, but was finally acquitted.

Pact in Latin, read backwards

However, through a public verbal attack, Grandier had also acquired the enmity of the powerful Cardinal Richelieu , who now ordered a new procedure to be led by a representative he had appointed: Jean de Laubardemont, a relative of Des Anges. Grandier was arrested again in Angers in 1633 ; he was denied the opportunity to appeal to the Parlement in Paris as a court of appeal . In the second questioning, the nuns and their superior did not renew the allegations, but this no longer affected the judgment that had already been made.

The judges (the clerics Laubardemont, Lactance, Surin and Tranquille) had Grandier tortured and introduced documents into the process that were supposedly signed by Grandier and various demons and were intended to prove the pact of the devil . One document was in Latin and appeared to have been signed by Grandier, another almost illegible, with lots of strange symbols and "signed" with their seals by several demons, including Satan himself (one signature clearly shows Satanas ). It is unknown whether Grandier wrote and signed the documents under duress or whether they were completely forged.

Grandier was found guilty and sentenced to death . The judges ordered that he be subjected to "extraordinary interrogation," a form of water torture that normally delayed death and that was only used on victims who were executed immediately afterwards . Even under this torture, Grandier did not confess. He was burned alive at the stake in 1634.

Urbain Grandier in Art (The Devils of Loudun)

Voltaire cites Grandier's execution as a sorcerer as evidence of the prevalence of superstition , which had a strong influence on French political affairs before the Enlightenment . Grandier's trial was the subject of two adaptations by Alexandre Dumas the Elder : one in volume 4 of his Crimes Célèbres (1840), and the other in the play Urbain Grandier (1850). In 1843 the novel Urban Grandier or the possessed of Loudun by Willibald Alexis was published . The same subject was dealt with a century later by Aldous Huxley in his extensive essay The Devils of Loudun (published 1952). Huxley's text was in 1969 as The Devils of Loudun of Krzysztof Penderecki processed in an opera, Ken Russell turned to the 1971 film The Devil (The Devils) . The novel, Dreams of Roses and Fire (published in 1949) by Swede Eyvind Johnson , also deals with Grandier's fate.

literature

  • Véritable relation des justes procédures observées au fait de la possession des Ursulines de Loudun, et au procès d'Urbain Grandier, avec les thèses générales, touchant les diables exorcisés ; by le père Tranquille, capucin. La Flèche 1634.
  • La Démonomanie de Loudun, qui montre la véritable possession des religieuses Ursulines et autres séculières, avec la liste des religieuses et séculières possédées, obsédées et maléficiées, le nom de leurs démons, le lieu de leur résidence et signe de leur sortie. La mort de Grandier, author of leur possession . La Flèche, 1634.
  • Récit Véritable de ce qui s'est passé à Loudun. Contre Maistre Urbain Grandier, Prestre Curé de l'Eglise de S. Pierre de Loudun, attaint & convaincu du crime de Magie, malefice & posseßion arrivée par son faict és personnes d'aucunes des Religieuses Urselines de la ville de Loudun. Imprimerie de Pierre Targa, Paris 1634.
  • La gloire de Saint-Joseph, Victorieux des principaux démons de la possessions des Ursulines de Loudun; où se voit particulièrement ce qui arriva le jour des Rois 1636, en la sortie d'Ysacazon du corps de la mère prieure ; par les RR. PP. exorcistes de Loudun, Le Mans 1636.
  • Nicolas Aubin : Histoire des Diables de Loudun, ou de la possession des Religieuses Ursulines, et de la condamnation & du suplice d'Urbain Grandier, Cure de la mème Ville. Cruels effets de la vengeance de Richelieu. 1693, Etienne Roger, Amsterdam 1716; aux dépens de la compagnie, Paris 1752.
  • Gabriel Legué : Urbain Grandier et les possédées de Loudun. Documents inédits de M. Charles Barbier. Librairie D'Art de Ludovic Baschet, Paris 1880 / Charpentier, Paris 1884.
  • Augustin Calmet: Scholarly negotiation of the matter of the apparitions of spirits, and of vampires in Hungary and Moravia. Edition Roter Drache, Rudolstadt 2006, ISBN 3-939459-03-8 (contains a detailed report on Grandier's trial in German).
  • Aldous Huxley : The devils of Loudun, 1952.
  • Michel de Certeau : La possession de Loudun, 1970. New edition in 2005 by Éditions Gallimard in the Folio Histoire collection.
  • Rosa Schudel-Benz: The possessed of Loudun. A trial from the time of Richelieu. Beck, Munich, 1927 (Stern und Unstern. A collection of strange fates and adventures, 9th book).
  • Nicolas Aubin : History of the devils of Loudun or the obsession of the Ursulines and of the damnation and punishment by Urbain Grandier, pastor of the same city (= materials on the phenomenon of "evil", volume 1). Birkenau / Scheden, Emig / Gauke, undated (Nicolas Aubin was a Protestant pastor and emigrated from Nantes to Holland after the Edict was revoked .)
  • Memoirs of Jeanne des Anges (Madame de Beclier):
    • Soeur Jeanne des Anges: Autobiography d'une Hystérique Possédée. Paris 1886.
    • Jeanne des Anges (= Madame de Beclier): Memoirs of a possessed (=  Rara: a library of the peculiar , vol. 2). Edited by Hanns Heinz Ewers . 2nd Edition. Lutz, Stuttgart 1911.
    • Jeanne (des Anges): Memoirs of a possessed woman. With an essay on 2 other cases of religious madness, [novel]. Soeur Jeanne. Edited by Michael Favin, Greno-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Nördlingen 1989, ISBN 3-89190-914-4 .

music

Opera

Other

Film and television film

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "On s'indigne que le ministre et les juges aient eu la faiblesse de croire aux diables de Loudun, ou la barbarie d'avoir fait un périr innocent dans les flammes" Voltaire: Le Siècle de Louis XIV. Édition établie et annotee by René Pomeau et revue by Nicholas Cronk. Édtion Gallimard, Paris 2015, p. 59.
personal data
SURNAME Grandier, Urbain
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Granderius, Urbanus (Latin)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French clergyman
DATE OF BIRTH 1590
PLACE OF BIRTH Bouère
DATE OF DEATH August 18, 1634
Place of death Loudun