Blast Of Silence

The Letters of Remission… for the period of the Hundred Years War, judicial documents of the duchy of Lorraine in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, and research into folklore in the Charente department reveal that a maleficent influence was sometimes attributed to the saints. They mention sick people ‘touched’ or ‘affected’ or ‘held and vexed’ by saints. An accused woman from Saint-Die deposed that when the ‘holy saints take a disliking to a person, they make him anguish, and if they do not hate him all that much they bring him a rapid death’. At Berry, people referred to saints as ‘jealous’. Hence in the witchcraft trials examined by E. Delcambre, a distinction is drawn between the ‘evil caused’ and the ‘saint’s evil’, the former being attributed to the devil and sorcerers’ spells, the latter to the activity of a saint who, although he could cure it if he wanted to, in fact sent it. Another even more aberrant fact in a supposedly Christian society was that our Lady herself was suspected of harming humans. An accused woman from Bazezney in Lorraine wanted to know which one it was, our Lady, our Lady of Sion, our Lady of Fricourt or our Lady of La Maix, who had brought evil on a woman, as if there were as many Virgins as sanctuaries in dedicated to her name. ”