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Albert De Rochas D'Aiglun - Levitation of the human body

Here are some cases that have been described and legally affirmed.  The first one is at the National Library.

It is the " Report made, to deliver a girl possessed by the evil spirit to Louviers in 1591, by Louis Morel, squire, Sieur de La Tour, adviser to the king, provost general in the Maréchaussée de France and in the province of Normandy, assisted by Me Robert Behotte, law graduate, lawyer and lieutenant general of M. le vicomte de Rouen, at the residence of Louviers.»

The girl in question here was a poor servant, Françoise Fontaine, neither holy nor a witch, but afflicted by such extraordinary demonstrations that she had asked for all help, including religious help, to be delivered from them and that she had ended up being kept in Louviers prison to avoid accidents.

These demonstrations, which included hitting people against the walls, transporting movable objects and kidnapping their own bodies, so brutal that she and the attendants were often seriously injured, are described at length in the records with the witnesses' statements. I will limit myself here to reproducing the accounts of those that took place when the exorcism was used, using modern spelling and punctuation to make the rather confusing wording of the Provost of Normandy a little clearer.

"Following what we stopped yesterday with the said priest Pellet, we left our house and came to find the priest Pellet, viron over the six to seven hours of the morning, with whom we were transported to the prisons of the said city of Louviers, having brought with him a cleric who carried holy water, and we ordered the said Vymont, Dupuys, Hellot, Dubusc, Le Prévost and others, our archers, to accompany us; what they did. And went into this prison and found this Françoise who was in a small upper room, lying all dressed on a bunk with five or six prisoners guarding her, who had her face all bloody, like scratches, to whom we asked who had made this scratch.

" Through the said Françoise replied that it was the spirit that tormented her that had made the scratches to her, Saturday evening last night in our presence as we questioned her, having her said spirit when thrown to the ground because of what she had confessed to us, as we had seen.

"To which Françoise we have used several admonitions to reconcile her with the fear and love of God, showing her that by recognizing God, crying out to her, confessing her faults, asking her forgiveness and renouncing the devil, she could come out of the torments where the evil spirit had led her, by means of a general confession of her sins that she had to make to the priest Pellet, and put herself in good condition, to hear the Mass and receive the Holy Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ; what she promised to do.

"As a consequence, the aforementioned priest Pellet had yielded to her holy water, and she had a hearing of confession; after which we took Françoise, guided and led her with our two archers, being enclosed by her hands, to the Notre-Dame church in this city of Louviers, where said priest Pellet, who walked before her wearing her surplice and stole, had cast holy water into her; and we, after him, with our provost's staff in her hand, led her to the chapel of the Trinity where the altar had been made to be accommodated to say Mass, and before which altar we had benches placed, on one of which she leaned, knelt down and began to pray to God, being always near her said priest Pellet dressed in overhanging probit with his stole around his neck. And we are placed at the corner of the altar where we begin to utter the Mass, to see what capacity the said Françoise would hold without her noticing us.

"And at that moment, Me Jean Buisson, chaplain priest of that church, who was clothed in his priestly ornaments to say and celebrate the Mass, having had a great candle lit which he had placed on the edge of the altar, near us, and then began to celebrate a low Mass where more than 1,000 to 1,200 people, both Catholic and Huguenot of the Church, were present new so-called religion, soldiers and other quality people. And among other quality people, there were Abbot de Mortemer, Ratte, Abbot and councillor at the Toulouse Parliament, Rubempré, Baron de Neufbourg, Baron des Noyers, Séguier, Grand Maître des eaux et forêts de France, MeJacques Duval, doctor in Evreux, MeJonas Marie, receiver of the sizes in the election of Montivilliers, Me Nicolas Coquet, priest of the Louviers, Pierre Behotte, Jacques Surgis, Guillaume Juger the elder, Robert Langlois, bourgeois and merchants of the Louviers.

"Françoise had prayed and listened wisely to the Mass, except that when the said priest Buisson began to speak the Gospel, the said Françoise had begun to slumber, her head having fallen on the bench in front of which she was kneeling, as if she had been swooned down and passed out; of what we warned the said priest Pellet who looked at us and had his eye on us, as we had prayed to him, in order to warn him if we noticed that the said Françoise was doing something; the said priest Pellet had exorcised her and thrown blessed water at her, which had immediately returned, having risen and made the sign of the cross and heard the said Gospel carefully. After the Gospel said, she had been to the offering where she had been led by the said priest Pellet. When the Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ was lifted up, she had looked at it very carefully, always pretending to pray and adore it, without having been tormented in any way. After which elevation, the said priest had presented her with the peace she had kissed.

"And on what the said Buisson priest wanted to finish saying the Mass, the book and missal being moved from place to place and put back on the end of the altar where he had begun the said Mass, being at the thanksgiving of this Mass, the said priest Pellet had ordered the said Buisson priest not to finish his said Mass until he had administered the Blessed Sacrament and the Eucharist to the said Françoise; which Bush having stopped, here the priest Pellet, still clothed with his surplice and having the stole around his neck, having approached the lady Françoise, who he had heard the last confessional head, and having here exorcised, and having conjured up said evil spirit which said Françoise has publicly declared that she renounced, said priest Pellet took the Holy Eucharist to sign it and make her receive it.

Having approached her after having the said Françoise say all her Misereatur and confiteor highly, he appeared as a black shadow outside the church, which had broken a diamond in the windows of the said chapel and taken the candle that was on the altar, that he had turned off... and here Françoise, being on two knees, had been kidnapped very horribly, without having been able to receive the Blessed Sacrament, opening her mouth, with her eyes turned in her head, with such a terrible gesture, that it had been necessary, with the help of five to six people, to remove her by her clothes as she was being taken up in the air; where the said priest Pellet, who had immediately presented himself, who had exorcised and thrown holy water at her, even conjured up the said evil spirit, which had returned to itself, astonished and stupid. What the said priest saw, he had once again made the said Françoise recant the said evil spirit, and she made several admonitions for the salvation of her soul; to which the said Françoise had lent an ear.

"When this was done, the said priest had once again presented the Holy Host to the said Françoise, for whom receiving her on two knees, the said priest presenting her, the said Françoise was once again removed from the ground higher than the altar, as if it had been taken by her hair, in such a strange way that it greatly surprised the attendees who never believed they could see something so frightening; having all thrown themselves on their knees on the ground and begun to pray to God and beg for his grace for the deliverance of the said Françoise; having been of need to take her back, that several men had thrown themselves into her clothes and her face down, having thrown themselves on her to oppose the effect of the enemy who wanted to take her away, having the said Françoise's mouth chest and open, their eyes coming out of her head, arms and legs turned upside down.

"When he saw it, the said priest Pellet approached her, throwing holy water at her, exorcising her and conjured up the evil spirit. Having Françoise's face against it, and having remained in this state for some time, priest Pellet having lit another candle, Françoise had returned to herself and regained her senses. And after Françoise had once again shouted thank you to God and renounced the evil spirit, being on two knees approaching the said priest Pellet to her to present the Holy Eucharist to her in order to receive it, for the third time she had been prevented from doing so, having been removed for the third time over a large shape or bench that was in front of the altar where the mass was celebrated, and carried up to the side where the window had been broken, head down, feet up without its clothes being knocked over ([1]), through which, in front of it, with behind it, there was a large quantity of stinking smoke water; having been more tormented than before, in such a way and with such fury, that it was a horrible thing to see and incredible to those who had not seen it.

Which Françoise was for a time so transported in the air that she could not be retaken; but finally seven to eight men had thrown themselves at her, who had taken her back and put her against the ground, being tormented in such a way that it was a horrible and pitiful thing to see, so much so that those who were there in great numbers, both Catholics and of the new reformed religion, had pity, had knelt down and started to pray to God for the salvation of the soul of the said Françoise.

"During which prayers the said priest Pellet had approached the said Françoise where, once again, he had exorcised and conjured up the said evil spirit, and having thrown holy water at her, had returned and regained his spirits having declared all highly the said Françoise that she was renouncing the devil, shouting thank you to God and asking her forgiveness for her sins.

"Saying said Françoise of herself that the first time that said priest Pellet introduced her to the Holy Eucharist, she saw said evil spirit who had entered through a hole he had made in a window of said chapel, being on the right hand, which she showed us, and had extinguished the candle that was lit on the altar where the Mass and this Françoise was celebrated, taken by the hair to remove her and carry her away through the hole in the said window, lest she receive the Holy Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ."

The report adds that the priest Pellet remembered that whenever Françoise had been kidnapped, she had been taken by the hair, so he shaved it off her. As a result of this operation and the exorcism we just read, the poor girl was completely cured.

I quoted this long text in extenso so that the reader could get a good idea of the care with which the facts had been observed. There can be no doubt that Françoise was raised three times in the air during the Mass, in such a way that these levitations cannot be confused with contortions and jumps.

In the various circumstances described, the scientist can only remember a few particularities: such is the adherence to the body of the skirts that did not overturn when Françoise had her head down, which proves that the unknown force that removed her body against the laws of gravity also applied to her clothes, a phenomenon that has been observed at other times. This is also the fact that the removal of the hair has stopped, or rather contributed to stopping the manifestations, facts that can be compared to this observation that psychic force is often released by the hair, such as electricity. This is still Françoise's state of prostration after the levitations, circumstances that are always observed after the considerable expenditure of psychic force. I could also add the feeling of cold wind, which is not mentioned in the account reproduced above, but which is often indicated in the other parts of the records, at the time of the appearance of the phenomenon, as many experimenters have observed in similar manifestations ([2]).

[1] It often happens that the force that lifts the human being also applies to the objects around him. We have already seen examples of this with Saint Theresa and in the experiments of the Agnélas where the chair of Eusapia was raised with her. Here is another quoted by Goerres (Einleitung zu suzo's Leben), about Saint Suzo who once rose into the air, in the open, during a snowstorm; the snow gathered and remained suspended above his head forming a kind of roof.
[2] It would clearly be beyond the rights of positive science and even common sense to state that the facts, as described in the report, are sufficiently explained by the nervous disorders and hallucinations that have been studied in the hospitals. However, this is what a doctor did not hesitate to do recently in the long preface to the reproduction of Françoise Fontaine's story.....................

The casualness of these statements in the presence of the facts of which the reader has become aware above, would simply be comical if it did not denote a blind and harmful hostility against any person who leaves the official materialist education.