Download or read book Demonic Possession and Exorcism written by Sarah Ferber and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a highly original study of demon possession and the ritual of exorcism, both of which were rife in early modern times, and which reached epidemic proportions in France. Catholics at the time believed that the Devil was everywhere present, in the rise of the heretics, in the activities of witches, and even in the bodies of pious young women. The rite of exorcism was intended to heal the possessed and show the power of the Church - but it generated as many problems as it resolved. Possessed nuns endured frequently violent exorcisms, exorcists were suspected of conjuring devils, and possession itself came to be seen as a form of holiness, elevating several women to the status of living saints. Sarah Ferber offers a challenging study of one of the most intriguing phenomena of early modern Europe. Looking towards the present day, the book also argues that early modern conflicts over the Devil still carry an unexpected force and significance for Western Christianity.
Download or read book Demonic Possession and Exorcism in Early Modern England written by Philip C. Almond and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-07-01 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is exclusively devoted to demonic possession and exorcism in early modern England. It offers modernized versions of the most significant early modern texts on nine cases of demonic possession from the period 1570 to 1650, the key period in English history for demonic possession. The nine stories were all written by eyewitnesses or were derived from eyewitness reports. They involve matters of life and death, sin and sanctity, guilt and innocence, of crimes which could not be committed and punishments which could not be deserved. The nine critical introductions which accompany the stories address the different strategic intentions of those who wrote them. The modernized texts and critical introductions are placed within the context of a wide-ranging general Introduction to demonic possession in England across the period 1550 to 1700.
Download or read book Discerning Spirits written by Nancy Mandeville Caciola and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-25 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Trance states, prophesying, convulsions, fasting, and other physical manifestations were often regarded as signs that a person was seized by spirits. In a book that sets out the prehistory of the early modern European witch craze, Nancy Caciola shows how medieval people decided whom to venerate as a saint infused with the spirit of God and whom to avoid as a demoniac possessed of an unclean spirit. This process of discrimination, known as the discernment of spirits, was central to the religious culture of Western Europe between 1200 and 1500.Since the outward manifestations of benign and malign possession were indistinguishable, a highly ambiguous set of bodily features and behaviors were carefully scrutinized by observers. Attempts to make decisions about individuals who exhibited supernatural powers were complicated by the fact that the most intense exemplars of lay spirituality were women, and the "fragile sex" was deemed especially vulnerable to the snares of the devil. Assessments of women's spirit possessions often oscillated between divine and demonic interpretations. Ultimately, although a few late medieval women visionaries achieved the prestige of canonization, many more were accused of possession by demons.Caciola analyzes a broad array of sources from saints' lives to medical treatises, exorcists' manuals to miracle accounts, to find that observers came to rely on the discernment of bodies rather than seeking to distinguish between divine and demonic possession in purely spiritual terms.
Download or read book Believe Not Every Spirit written by Moshe Sluhovsky and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-11-15 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1400 through 1700, the number of reports of demonic possessions among European women was extraordinarily high. During the same period, a new type of mysticism—popular with women—emerged that greatly affected the risk of possession and, as a result, the practice of exorcism. Many feared that in moments of rapture, women, who had surrendered their souls to divine love, were not experiencing the work of angels, but rather the ravages of demons in disguise. So how then, asks Moshe Sluhovsky, were practitioners of exorcism to distinguish demonic from divine possessions? Drawing on unexplored accounts of mystical schools and spiritual techniques, testimonies of the possessed, and exorcism manuals, Believe Not Every Spirit examines how early modern Europeans dealt with this dilemma. The personal experiences of practitioners, Sluhovsky shows, trumped theological knowledge. Worried that this could lead to a rejection of Catholic rituals, the church reshaped the meaning and practices of exorcism, transforming this healing rite into a means of spiritual interrogation. In its efforts to distinguish between good and evil, the church developed important new explanatory frameworks for the relations between body and soul, interiority and exteriority, and the natural and supernatural.
Download or read book The Crime of Crimes written by Jonathan L. Pearl and published by Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most intriguing, and disturbing, aspects of history is that most people in early modern Europe believed in the reality and dangers of witchcraft. Most historians have described the witchcraft phenomenon as one of tremendous violence. In France, dozens of books, pamphets and tracts, depicting witchcraft as the most horrible of crimes, were published and widely distributed. Yet, in his new book, The Crime of Crimes: Demonology and Politics in France, 1560-1620, Jonathan Pearl shows that France carried out relatively few executions for witchcraft. Through careful research he shows that a zealous Catholic faction identified the Protestant rebels as traitors and heretics in league with the devil and clamoured for the political and legal establishment to exterminate these enemies of humanity. But the courts were dominated by moderate Catholics whose political views were in sharp contrast to those of the zealots and, as a result, the demonologists failed to ignite a major witch-craze in France. Very few studies have taken such a careful and penetrating look at demonology in France. The Crime of Crimes: Demonology and Politics in France, 1560-1620 sheds new light on an important period in the history of witchcraft and will be welcomed by scholars and laypersons alike.
Download or read book The Possession at Loudun written by Michel de Certeau and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2000-08 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is August 18, 1634. Father Urbain Grandier, convicted of sorcery that led to the demonic possession of the Ursuline nuns of provincial Loudun in France, confesses his sins on the porch of the church of Saint-Pierre, then perishes in flames lit by his own exorcists. A dramatic tale that has inspired many artistic retellings, including a novel by Aldous Huxley and an incendiary film by Ken Russell, the story of the possession at Loudun here receives a compelling analysis from the renowned Jesuit historian Michel de Certeau. Interweaving substantial excerpts from primary historical documents with fascinating commentary, de Certeau shows how the plague of sorceries and possessions in France that climaxed in the events at Loudun both revealed the deepest fears of a society in traumatic flux and accelerated its transformation. In this tour de force of psychological history, de Certeau brings to vivid life a people torn between the decline of centralized religious authority and the rise of science and reason, wracked by violent anxiety over what or whom to believe. At the time of his death in 1986, Michel de Certeau was a director of studies at the école des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris. He was author of eighteen books in French, three of which have appeared in English translation as The Practice of Everyday Life,The Writing of History, and The Mystic Fable, Volume 1, the last of which is published by The University of Chicago Press. "Brilliant and innovative. . . . The Possession at Loudun is [de Certeau's] most accessible book and one of his most wonderful."—Stephen Greenblatt (from the Foreword)
Download or read book The Devil Within written by Brian Levack and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-22 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating, wide-ranging survey of the history of demon possession and exorcism through the ages. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the era of the Reformation, thousands of Europeans were thought to be possessed by demons. In response to their horrifying symptoms—violent convulsions, displays of preternatural strength, vomiting of foreign objects, displaying contempt for sacred objects, and others—exorcists were summoned to expel the evil spirits from victims’ bodies. This compelling book focuses on possession and exorcism in the Reformation period, but also reaches back to the fifteenth century and forward to our own times. Entire convents of nuns in French, Italian, and Spanish towns, thirty boys in an Amsterdam orphanage, a small group of young girls in Salem, Massachusetts—these are among the instances of demon possession in the United States and throughout Europe that Brian Levack closely examines, taking into account the diverse interpretations of generations of theologians, biblical scholars, pastors, physicians, anthropologists, psychiatrists, and historians. Challenging the commonly held belief that possession signals physical or mental illness, the author argues that demoniacs and exorcists—consciously or not—are following their various religious cultures, and their performances can only be understood in those contexts. “Riveting [and] readable . . . must-reading for students of history, psychology and religion.” —Publishers Weekly “Levak, a distinguished historian of early modern witchcraft, now sets exorcism in a long historical perspective, providing the most comprehensive and scholarly overview of the theme yet published.” —Peter Marshall, Times Literary Supplement
Download or read book Exorcism and Enlightenment written by H. C. Erik Midelfort and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late eighteenth century, Catholic priest Johann Joseph Gassner (1727-1779) discovered that he had extraordinary powers of exorcism. Deciding that demons were responsible for most human ailments, he healed thousands, rich and poor, Protestant and Catholic. In this book H.C. Erik Midelfort delves deeply into records of the time to explore Gassner's remarkable exorcising campaign, chronicle the official efforts to curb him, and reconstruct the sufferings of the afflicted. Gassner's activities triggered a Catholic religious revival as well as a noisy skeptical reaction. In response to those who doubted that he was really casting out demons, Gassner marshaled hundreds of eyewitness reports that seemed to prove his exorcisms really worked. Midelfort describes the enormous public controversy that resulted, and he demonstrates that the Gassner episode yields important insights into the German Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment, the limitations of eighteenth-century debate, and the ongoing role of magic and belief in an age of scientific enlightenment.
Download or read book French Visual Culture and the Making of Medieval Theater written by Laura Weigert and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-12-30 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book revives the variety of performances that took place in the realms of the French kings and Burgundian dukes.
Download or read book Thinking with Demons written by Stuart Clark and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 850 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This major work offers a new interpretation of the witchcraft beliefs of European intellectuals between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, showing how these beliefs fitted rationally with other beliefs of the period and how far the nature of rationality is dependent on its historical context.
Download or read book Possession and Exorcism written by Brian P. Levack and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 1992 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book Demonic Possession and Exorcism written by Sarah Ferber and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this highly original study of possession by demons and their exorcism, Sarah Ferber offers a challenging study of one of the most intriguing phenomenon of early modern Europe. Looking also at the present day, she argues that early modern.
Download or read book Hostage to the Devil written by Malachi Martin and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Into the Dark Night and Back The Mystical Writings of Jean Joseph Surin written by Moshe Sluhovsky and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-12-24 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Into the Dark Night and Back is the first comprehensive English language selection of the mystical writings, poems, and letters of the French mystic and exorcist Jean-Joseph Surin, S.J. (1600–65).
Download or read book A History of Exorcism in Catholic Christianity written by Francis Young and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-27 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces the development of exorcism in Catholic Christianity from the fourth century to the present day, and seeks to explain why exorcism is still so much in demand. This is the first work in English to trace the development of the liturgy, practice and authorisation of exorcisms in Latin Christianity. The rite of exorcism, and the claim by Roman Catholic priests to be able to drive demons from the possessed, remains an enduring source of popular fascination, but the origins and history of this controversial rite have been little explored. Arguing that belief in the need for exorcism typically re-emerges at periods of crisis for the church, Francis Young explores the shifting boundaries between authorised exorcisms and unauthorised magic throughout Christian history, from Augustine of Hippo to Pope Francis. This book offers the historical background to – and suggests reasons for – the current resurgence of exorcism in the global Catholic Church.
Download or read book Demons on the Couch written by Michael J. Sersch and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2019-01-03 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Belief in possession, including from demonic forces, has ancient roots and continues into the modern world, especially among certain communities. This has been shown in books, movies, places of worship, and in the therapy office. This book traces the global history of possession and looks at ways contemporary mental health professionals can help a person who believes themselves to be possessed. Written especially for clinicians, but interesting to a wide variety of readers, this book uses a variety of disciplines, including cultural studies, psychology, and personal experiences, to try and understand the phenomenon from as wide a perspective as possible, including interviews with exorcists from various backgrounds. Both believers and sceptics will find this to be a fascinating study of a controversial topic.
Download or read book The Devil Within written by Brian Levack and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-22 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating, wide-ranging survey examines the history of possession and exorcism through the ages.
