§ 188.11. About 100 clergy, twenty colour-bearers, 150 musicians, 10,000 leapers, 3,000 beggars, and 2,000 singers take part in the =Leaping Procession at Echternach= in Luxemburg, which is celebrated yearly on Whit-Tuesday. It was spoken of in the sixteenth century as an ancient custom. After an “exciting” sermon, the procession is formed in rows of from four to six persons bound together by pocket-handkerchiefs held in their hands; Wilibrord’s dance is played, and all jump in time to the music, five steps forward and two backward, or two backward and three forward, varied by three or four leaps to the right and then as many to the left. Thus continually leaping the procession goes through the streets of the city to the parish church, up the sixty-two steps of the church stair and along the church aisles to the tomb of Wilibrord (§ 78, 3). The dance is kept up incessantly for two hours. The performers do so generally because of a vow, or as penance for some fault, or to secure the saint’s intercession for the cure of epilepsy and convulsive fits, common in that region, mainly no doubt owing to such senseless proceedings. The origin of the custom is obscure. Tradition relates that soon after the death of Wilibrord a disease appeared among the cattle which jumped incessantly in the stalls, till the people went leaping in procession to Wilibrord’s tomb, and the plague was stayed! But the custom is probably a Christian adaptation of an old spring festival dance of pagan times (§ 75, 3; comp. 2 Sam. vi. 14).
§ 188.12. =The Devotion of the Sacred Heart.=--Even after the suppression of the Jesuit order the devotion of the Sacred Heart (§ 156, 6) was zealously practised by the ex-Jesuits and their friends. On the restoration of the order numerous brotherhoods and sisterhoods, especially in France, devoted themselves to this exercise, and the _revanche_ movement of A.D. 1870 used this as one of its most powerful instruments. Crowds of pilgrims flocked to Paray le Monial, and there, kneeling before the cradle of Bethlehem, they besought the sacred heart of Jesus to save France and Rome, and the refrain of all the pilgrim songs, “_Dieu, de la clemence ... sauvez Rome et la France au nom du sacré-cœur_,” became the spiritual Marseillaise of France returning to the Catholic fold. From the money collected over the whole land a beautiful church _du Sacré-Cœur_ has been erected on Montmartre in Paris. The gratifying news was then brought from Rome that the holy father had resolved on July 16th, 1875, the twenty-ninth anniversary of his ascending the papal throne and the two hundredth anniversary of the great occurrences at Paray le Monial, that the whole world should give adoration to the sacred heart. In France this day was fixed upon for the laying of the foundation stone of the church at Montmartre, and the Archbishop of Cologne, Paul Melchers, commanded Catholic Germany to show greater zeal in the adoration of the sacred heart, “ordained by divine revelation” two hundred years before.