Testing the Spirit of the Prophets: Jean Chéron, Melancholy and the “Illusions” of Dévotes

This article contends that the vulnerability of mystics to accusations of “melancholy” was harnessed in late seventeenth-century France as part of an anti-mystical movement. Several historians have noted how the suspicion of mystics gained momentum in France during this period. Reports of anti-mystic scandals from elsewhere in Europe such as the Alumbrados in Seville (1623) were translated into French and widely publicized. There were also a number of domestic incidents including the persecution of the Illumines of Picardy in 1635, the possession at Loudun in 1635, and the infamous Quietist affair of the 1690s. This paper will present a case study from the middle decade of the century, focusing on the Carmelite Jean Cheron’s (1596-1673) critique of the “false spirituality” of female mystics. It will situate Cheron’s published treatise the Examen de la theologie mystique (1657) in the wider context of the anti-mystical spiritual currents of the century, as well as locating it within a longer tradition of using melancholy to discredit spiritual experiences. In the course of this discussion, this article argues that Cheron’s text can provide a window onto the anxieties about spiritual directors who were failing in their duties to subject mystical experiences to the criteria which “discernment” literature had set out for them. In doing so, it finds support for the recent approaches of historians who have sought to destabilize the notion that the anti-mystical movement of the seventeenth century constituted an attack on female spirituality.