Overview

The French mystic Jean-Joseph Surin (1600-65) was the chief exorcist during the infamous demonic possession in Loudun in 1634-37. During the exorcism, a demon entered Surin's own soul, and the exorcist became demoniac. He spent the following eighteen years of his life mute and paralyzed. All the while his troubled mind conversed with God, and he composed hymns and poems that tried to comprehend his agony. Surin left detailed descriptions of the dramatic events that shaped his life and fascinated his fellow Jesuits. But Surin was also an author of spiritual texts, a spiritual director of souls, a poet, and a prolific correspondent. This volume is the first to offer English readers a comprehensive selection of Surin's mystical writings.

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9789004387645

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a remarkable achievement which deserves a place on many graduate and even undergraduate reading lists. Jan Machielsen, Cardiff University. In: H-France Review, Vol. 19 (August 2019), No. 155.

Author Information

Moshe Sluhovsky is the Paulette and Claude Kelman Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His books include Believe not Every Spirit : Demonic Possession, Mysticism, and Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism and Becoming a New Self: Practices of Belief in Early Modern Catholicism. Known internationally for her translations of Fernand Braudel and Philippe Aries, Patricia M. Ranum subsequently translated, edited and presented several seventeenth-century sources, among them the travel account of a Jansenist priest called Charles Le Maistre; the Spiritual Doctrine of Louis Lallemant, a Jesuit; and the memoirs of Jean Le Boindre, a judge in the Paris parlement.

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