Brian Levack - The Devil Within

Copyright 2013 Brian P. Levack

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Levack, Brian P.

The Devil within : possession and exorcism in the Christian West / Brian Levack.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-300-11472-0 (cl : alk. paper)

1. ExorcismEuropeHistory. 2. Demoniac possessionEuropeHistory. I. Title.

BV873.E8L48 2013

133.4'26094dc23

2012042933

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Illustrations

Gerard Hoet, Jesus Expels an Unclean Spirit, Dutch Bible of 1728.

Manuscript illustration in a book of Gospels by T'oros Roslin, 1262. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

Unknown artist, St Eligius performing an exorcism, in a fifteenth-century life of St Eligius. Museo Diocesano di Orte. Art Resource.

St Catherine of Siena exorcizing a demon from a possessed woman, French School, seventeenth century. Bibliothque nationale de France/The Bridgeman Art Library.

Panel of the Small Mariazell Miracle Altar, Danube School, 1512. Alte Galerie, Universalmuseum Joanneum, Graz, Austria.

Thomas Belot, engraving in Jean Boulaese, Le Thrsor et entire histoire Laon l'an 1566 (Paris, 1578).

Woodcut of the exorcism of Nicole Obry in Pierre Boaistuau, Histoires prodigieuses extraictes de plusieurs auteurs (Paris, 1575), 1566.

Urbain Grandier burned at the stake. Wood engraving, French School, seventeenth century. Bibliothque nationale de France, Archives Charmet/The Bridgeman Art Library.

Peter Raul Rubens, The Miracles of St Ignatius Loyola, c. 1619 Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

Unknown artist, The Exorcism of Madeleine Bavent by Mgr. de Pricard, Bishop of Evreux, seventeenth century. Mary Evans Picture Library.

Jacques Callot after Andrea Boscholi, The Possessed Woman, or Exorcism, 1630.

Johann Christoph Haizmann, two paintings of the Devil, 1677. sterreichisches Nationalbibliothek.

Jean-Franois Badoureau, drawing of an hysterical attack by Louise Lateau in D.-M. Bourneville, Science et miracle: Louise Lateau ou la stigmatise belge (Paris, 1878).

Illustration of hysterical contortion in Paul Richer, tudes cliniques sur la grande hystrie ou hystro-pilepsie (2nd edn, Paris, 1885). Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin.

Title page of A True and Fearefull Vexation of One Alexander Nyndge (London, 1615). The British Library Board.

William Hogarth, Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism: A Medley, in The Works of William Hogarth (London, 1837), 1762. Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin.

Christ expels an unclean spirit. The eighteenth-century Dutch artist Gerard Hoet depicts Christ healing the demoniac in the synagogue at Capernaum at the beginning of his public ministry. The engraving was included in a Dutch Bible to illustrate the exorcism text of Mark 1: 23.

Christ exorcising a demoniac. This thirteenth-century manuscript illustration depicts the demon as a man with wings who is addressing Christ. The image was intended to represent the exorcism at Capernaum, in which the demon asked Christ, What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?

St Eligius performing an exorcism. St Eligius (c. 590659) was the bishop of Noyon. Painted in the fifteenth century by an anonymous artist, Eligius is shown praying, while two men are restraining the demoniac. The departing demon, depicted here as exceptionally large, has horns and bat wings.

St Catherine of Siena exorcizes a possessed woman. This seventeenth-century French engraving depicts St Catherine of Siena (134780) performing an exorcism of a female demoniac. Most exorcisms were performed by men, but Catherine's holiness qualified her for this role.

Exorcism of a young German woman in the fourteenth century. A sixteenth-century panel painting of an exorcism that took place in 1370 at the shrine of the Virgin Mary at Zell in Styria shows the exorcist has wrapped his stole around the woman's neck. The demoniac had been so tortured by the demons that she had killed her parents and infant, shown on the floor to the left. The numerous exorcised demons are leaving through the window.

The exorcism of Nicole Obry at the Cathedral of Laon in 1566. In the foreground Obry is being carried in a procession to the cathedral, while in the centre a crowd gathers below an improvised stage to witness different scenes of the exorcism. Near the top the exorcized demons are departing.

Administration of the Blessed Sacrament to Nicole Obry in 1566. French exorcists used the Eucharist in exorcisms as part of a propaganda campaign against the Huguenots to prove that Christ was really present in the Eucharist and that the Catholic Church was the one true Church established by Christ. Catholics considered both the Eucharist and exorcism to be miracles.

Execution of Urbain Grandier at Loudun in 1634. Grandier was one of three French priests convicted of causing the possession of nuns by means of witchcraft in the first half of the seventeenth century. The exorcism of the nuns takes place in the background.

St Ignatius of Loyola healing the possessed. This large painting by Peter Paul Rubens, originally placed above the altar in the Jesuit church at Antwerp in 1618, depicts St Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuit order, with one hand on the altar and the other raised to God. The people below him include a male and a female demoniac in the midst of their convulsions.