Note Back to Main Text — Chapter V
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The rapidity with which the contagion of convulsive prophesying spread was extraordinary. The adherents were all of the poorer classes, who read nothing but the Bible, and had it nearly by heart. It spread from Dauphiny to Viverais, and from thence into the Cevennes. "I have seen," said Marshal Villars, "things that I could never have believed if they had not passed under my own eyes—an entire city, in which all the women and girls, without exception, appeared possessed by the devil; they quaked and prophesied publicly in the streets."[35]