Overview

"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."

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9780226762821

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A new and fruitful approach to the problem of spirit possession in early modern Europe. While a number of historians have written about the dramatic cases of demonic possession that troubled European convents, none has addressed why, between the fifteenth and eightteenth centuries, the diagnosis of demonic possession was attached with increasing frequency to spiritually minded women. This is the problem that Moshe Sluhovsky takes up, and he does so with great success. - Barbara Diefendorf, Boston University

Author Information

Moshe Sluhovsky is professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and visiting associate professor of history at Brown University.

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