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some, such as one Philippe Hecquet, attempted to explain the events by natural causes. Others, such as the Benedictine Bernard Louis de la Taste, attacked the
people who performed the miracles on theological grounds, but were unable to expose any deception or error by them, or any error on the part of the witnesses. The accumulation of written testimony
was such that David Hume, one of the greatest eighteenth century philosophers, wrote in An enquiry concerning human understanding (1758):
    There surely never was a greater number of miracles ascribed to one person . . . But what is more extraordinary; many of the miracles were immediately proved upon the
     spot, before judges of unquestioned integrity, attested by witnesses of credit and distinction, in a learned age . . . Where shall we find such a number of circumstances, agreeing to the
     corroboration of one fact?
    One of those who investigated happenings was a lawyer named Louis Adrien de Paige. When he told his friend, the magistrate Louis-Basile Carré de Montgéron, what he
had seen, the magistrate assured him patronizingly that he had been taken in by conjuring tricks – the kind of “miracles” performed by tricksters at fairgrounds. But he finally
agreed to go with Paige to the churchyard, if only for the pleasure of pointing out how the lawyer had been deceived. They went there on the morning of 7 September 1731. And de Montgéron
left the churchyard a changed man – he even endured prison rather than deny what he had seen that day.
    The first thing the magistrate saw when he entered the churchyard was a number of women writhing on the ground, twisting themselves to the most startling shapes, sometimes bending backward until
the backs of their heads touched their heels. These ladies were all wearing a long cloth undergarment that fastened around the ankles. Paige explained that this was now obligatory for all women who
wished to avail themselves of the Deacon’s miraculous powers. In the early days, when women had stood on their heads or bent their bodies convulsively, prurient young men had begun to
frequent the churchyard to view the spectacle.
    However, there was no lack of male devotees of the deceased Abbé to assist in the activities of the churchyard. Montgéron was shocked to see that some of the women and girls were
being sadistically beaten – at least, that is what at first appeared to be going on. Men were striking them with heavy pieces of wood and iron. Other women lay on the ground, apparently
crushed under immensely heavy weights. One girl was naked to the waist: a man was gripping her nipples with a pair of iron tongs and twisting them violently. Paige explained that none of these
women felt any pain; on the contrary, many begged for more blows. And an incredible number of them were cured of deformities or diseases by this violent treatment.
    In another part of the churchyard, they saw an attractive pink-cheeked girl of about nineteen, who was sitting at a trestle table and eating. That seemed normal enough until Montgéron
looked more closely at the food on the plate, and realized from its appearance as well as from the smell that reached him that it was human excrement. In between mouthfuls of this sickening fare
she drank a yellow liquid, which Paige explained was urine. The girl had come to the churchyard to be cured of what we would now call a neurosis: she had to wash her hands hundreds of times a day,
and was so fastidious about her food that she would taste nothing that had been touched by another human hand. The Deacon had indeed cured her. Within days she was eating excrement and drinking
urine, and did so with every sign of enjoyment. Such cases might not be remarkable in asylums; but what was more extraordinary – indeed, preposterous – was that after one of these meals
she opened her mouth as if to be sick and milk came pouring out. Monsieur Paige had collected a cupful; it was apparently perfectly ordinary