Convulsionnaires

Convulsionnaires, a sect which sprang up among the Jansenists in France in 1730, and which centred itself around the memory of one Francis of Paris, at whose tomb miracles were alleged to take place. The sect was the victim of one of those apparently hysterical seizures which have inexplicably cropped up from time to time in Church history, whence their name. Voltaire said that the grave of Francis of Paris was also that of Jansenism.