SIMON MORIN. 
359 
however, did not subside until the Neapolitans were entirely freed 
from the reigning dynasty. 
Simon Morin. . 
This person was a celebrated French fanatic, who excited much 
attention at Paris in the seventeenth century : he was born about the 
year 1623, at Richmont, near Aumale in Normandy, of obscure pa- 
rents, who found means to procure him instruction in reading and 
writing, but they were not able to obtain a situation for him, in which 
he might earn his maintenance. He therefore w'ent to try his fortune 
at Paris, where his good penmanship recommended him to the place 
of clerk in tlie otiice of M. Charron, extraordinary treasurer at war. 
Here he soon betrayed symptoms of a deranged imagination, and 
indulged so much in his visionary contemplations, that his business 
was neglected, and he was dismissed from his employment. He had 
now nothing to depend upon but his skill as a copyist, and having 
much leisure time, he spent it in a manner that increased the disorder, 
of his mind, by listening to the reveries of the IllumintSy who were 
then numerous in Paris. In company with persons of this description, 
he was one day arrested, and committed to the prison belonging to 
the bishop’s court ; where his behaviour was in general so decent and 
inoffensive, that he was soon liberated. Having taken an apartment 
at the bouse of a woman who sold fruit and other refreshments to the 
frequenters of an adjoining tennis-court, he seduced the daughter of 
his hostess, whom he was obliged to marry. This adventure, how- 
ever, did not produce any diminution of his religious enthusiasm, and 
he formed an acquaintance with several of the fives-players, who were 
weak enough to attend to his rambling harangues, and to be persuaded 
that he saw visions, and had supernatural divine communications. His 
apartment was soon found to be too small for the numbers who came 
to hear him, upon which he hired a much larger room in a neighbour- 
ing house. The police, however, being informed of those meetings, 
thought proper to arrest him a second time in 1664, and to immure 
him within the walls of the Bastille, where he was confined twenty-one 
months. At the expiration of that time he was again set at liberty, 
when his fanaticism appeared to have acquired fresh vigour during his 
hours of solitude, and he immediately set about composing his book 
of Thoughts, designed to explain and to propagate more wddely his 
opinions. Manuscript copies of this piece were received with eager- 
ness by his deluded followers ; but the dem.and for it became so 
great, that in 1647 he caused it to be privately printed, with this title, 
“ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit : 
The Thoughts of Morin, dedicated to the King,” &c. octavo. Thia 
work is a tissue of arrogance, wild fanaticism, and ignorance, and 
maintains some of the notions afterwards condemned in the Quietists, 
only that Morin carried them to a greater length of absurdity, mixed 
with mad presumption : for he affirms, that there would quickly be 
a reformation in the church, and that all nations should be converted 
to the true faith. He pretends that this renovation was to be accom- 
plished by the second coming of Jesus Christ, in his state of glory. 
