Marie Dessens was just 17 when she appeared, at the beginning of 1867, before the correctional bench of the court of Montpellier. Justice accuses this young woman, who lives in the Catalan mountains, on the border of Spain, of having defrauded many locals, convinced that she had supernatural power.
The daily press of the time detailed the miracles that this “young witch”, as she was called Le Figaro, has accomplished. Marie Dessens has the gift of healing. At least, that’s what she says. “People came from very far to consult her, the house was always full of pilgrims who were leaving [de chez elle] by throwing their crutches in the air”, relates the daily, in its edition of January 21, 1867. A woman whose child was dying, a sailor, an artillery officer, and even a man of justice had appealed, they say, at his service. The newspaper The sunthe same day, even said that “the sick arrived at her house every day in such large numbers that her house often could not contain them”.
A donation received “following a mysterious apparition”
This success, which resonated beyond the department, had aroused the suspicions of justice. Does Marie Dessens have a supernatural gift? The magistrate officiating at his trial, at the beginning of the year 1867, did not believe it for a second. He puts the popularity of the teenager on the back of “the ignorance and the blind stupidity of the inhabitants of the countryside”, we read, in the columns of the Figaro. But Marie Dessens, she maintains hard as iron, before the court of Montpellier, that she does indeed have power. She even explains that it was given to her “following a mysterious apparition” in her remote countryside.
That day, she had just sold the oil she was making. A bearded man, who suddenly appeared to her, assured her that if she gave up a “small part of the product” of her oil, she would immediately receive the gift of healing the sick. She did. When asked for help, The sun relates that the young woman went to the attic to seek advice from this bearded man whom she had met one day on the way to her house. Was it God, or the devil, wonders the daily? “After which she confined herself, sometimes to gazing fixedly at the patient, sometimes to simply passing her hand over the parts of the body of this person where the disease was found”, we read, in the newspaper.
She didn’t get money, but her mother did
To make matters worse in her case, in front of an ultra-skeptical justice, the young woman had also explained that she had seen the Virgin appear to her, and that she had even spoken to her in Catalan, the language of her country. But Marie Dessens tried in vain to convince the court of her good faith, it was not enough. The “young witch” fell for fraud.
At first instance, however, she was acquitted. Because justice noticed that if the young lady did not receive money from the patients who appealed to her gifts as a healer, her mother, yes. Marie Dessens was thus sentenced to fifteen days in prison, and her mother, two months. We do not know if this condemnation kept the sick away from her home, or even what became of this teenager, who had dared to defy justice.