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The Devil Within: Possession & Exorcism in the Christian West
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
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
359 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 22, 2013
22 people are currently reading
280 people want to read
About the author
Brian P. Levack
84 books30 followersBrian Levack is John E. Green Regents Professor in History and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. The winner of several teaching awards, Levack offers a wide variety of courses on early modern British and European history, legal history, and the history of witchcraft. For eight years he served as the chair of his department. His books include The Civil Lawyers in England, 1603-1641: A Political Study(1973), The Formation of the British State: England, Scotland and the Union, 1603-1707(1987); The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (3rd edition, 2006), which has been translated into eight languages; and Witch-Hunting in Scotland: Law, Politics, and Religion(2008). His newest book is The Devil Within: Possessions and Exorcism in the Christian West.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 17, 2018
If you're noticing a dark theme in my reading, it's because I'm researching a book. Levack's The Devil Within is quite well done. A study of, as the subtitle states, possession and exorcism, it is a valuable resource on the topic, especially for the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period. Historically Levack goes back as far as the Bible, and his information on the New Testament ideas of possession are quite good. He manages to deal with Late Antiquity and the Medieval Period without delving into boring theological discussions. And his book has a thesis.
As I discuss on my blog (Sects and Violence in the Ancient World, the thesis of exorcism being a form of theater is somewhat novel, but apt. During the Middle Ages, and especially around the time of the Reformation, the Catholic Church used exorcism as a demonstration of its power over the feared demons. I also found it quite interesting how Levack noted the changing symptoms of possession. Those that we recognize today are very similar to those of the Middle Ages. The Medieval symptoms, however, are quite different from those of Antiquity. The response, however, is always somewhat theatrical.
In a good corrective to the sometimes overstated influence of The Exorcist, Levack notes that exorcisms didn't entirely go away with modernity. Noting the close connections with witches and witch hunts, he points out that both phenomena grew in influence after the Enlightenment began, peaking in the 18th century. Witch hunting died out, but demonic possession continued. The Exorcist doubtlessly did influence public opinion about the reality of demons, but as this informative book shows, there's a lot more going on backstage than might meet the eye.
As I discuss on my blog (Sects and Violence in the Ancient World, the thesis of exorcism being a form of theater is somewhat novel, but apt. During the Middle Ages, and especially around the time of the Reformation, the Catholic Church used exorcism as a demonstration of its power over the feared demons. I also found it quite interesting how Levack noted the changing symptoms of possession. Those that we recognize today are very similar to those of the Middle Ages. The Medieval symptoms, however, are quite different from those of Antiquity. The response, however, is always somewhat theatrical.
In a good corrective to the sometimes overstated influence of The Exorcist, Levack notes that exorcisms didn't entirely go away with modernity. Noting the close connections with witches and witch hunts, he points out that both phenomena grew in influence after the Enlightenment began, peaking in the 18th century. Witch hunting died out, but demonic possession continued. The Exorcist doubtlessly did influence public opinion about the reality of demons, but as this informative book shows, there's a lot more going on backstage than might meet the eye.
October 16, 2021
Book: The Devil Within: Possession and Exorcism in the Christian West
Author: Brian P. Levack
Publisher: Yale University Press; Illustrated edition (5 March 2013)
Language: English
Hardcover: 352 pages
Item Weight: 760 g
Dimensions: 24.23 x 16.28 x 3.51 cm
Price: 277/-
The account of European witchcraft and magic continues to mesmerize and confront students and scholars. There is without doubt, no dearth of books on the subject. More than a few wide-ranging surveys of the witch trials and plentiful regional and micro studies have been published for an English-speaking readership.
While the eminence of publications on witchcraft has been high, some regions and topics have received less attention over the years.
The aim of this book, written by Brian P. Levack, the ‘John E. Green Regents Professor’ in History, of the University of Texas at Austin, and author of the best-selling book ‘The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe’, is to help enlighten these lesser known or little studied aspects of the history of witchcraft and magic. It also persuades the growth of a broader corpus of work in other related areas of magic and the supernatural: such as angels, devils, spirits, ghosts, folk healing and divination.
To facilitate further our perception and interest in this wider history of beliefs and practices, this book includes research that looks beyond the usual focus on Western Europe and that also investigates their significance and authority from the medieval to the modern period.
An exorcist speaks with the clout of God to cast out demons. Whether or not this imperceptible drama in actuality takes place behind the external words and actions of exorcist and demoniac, the Catholic exorcist’s affectations to authority are grounded not in personal self-assurance but in legal fact.
In modern-day Catholicism, exorcists claim to confront the devil not only with the authority of God, but also with that of the church, which they themselves have received by an explicit licence from a diocesan bishop within the strictures of Canon Law. Catholic theology presents exorcism as a political act in the invisible polity, in which the kingdom of Jesus Christ confronts and overthrows the devil’s kingdom of darkness.
However, exorcism is also a political act on the human level of church history. The entire canonical process of exorcism, beginning with the approval of the exorcist and ending in the spoken rite, radically brings into focus questions of authority and legitimacy, to a greater extent than any other rite of the church.
For most people in early modern Europe, demonic possession made flawlessly good sense. For them the afflictions suffered by demoniacs—the seizures, scowls, muscular stringency, distension, vomiting of alien substances, disdain for sacred objects, and speaking in languages formerly unknown to them — were the result of the Devil's entrance into the inner caverns of their bodies and the control he in so doing acquired over their physical movements and mental operations.
This belief that the Devil was accountable for the symptoms of possession was consonant with the dominant tradition in early modern Catholic and Protestant theology, which assigned him considerable power in the natural world. Demonic accountability for possessions also made sense to the uneducated, who acquired at least a elementary knowledge of the demonic world from the clergy who preached and ministered to them.
The book under review is one of the most all-inclusive modern works on Exorcism that one could ever read. The author has divided his work into ten chapters:
1) Making Sense of Demonic Possession
2) Possession and Exorcism in Christian Antiquity
3) Possession in Christian Demonology
4) Expelling the Demon
5) Demonic Possession and Illness
6) The Performance of the Possessed
7) The Demoniac in Society
8) The Demoniac and the Witch
9) Possession in the Age of Reason
10) Possession: Past and Present
What is the general outlook of this book? Well, it is as follows:
1) This book is concerned principally with the early modern period of European history, which is generally defined as the years between 1450 and 1800, but it also deals with earlier and later periods.
2) The author’s debates on possession and exorcism in the time of biblical antiquity investigates the diverse ways that Christians in the early modern period interpreted the accounts of Christ's exorcisms in the New Testament, while references to possessions and exorcisms in the Middle Ages and the works of medieval scholastic theologians provide a context for understanding the early modern phenomenon.
3) In the later chapters the book talks about possessions in the 19th and 20th centuries.
4) The miscellaneous cases of possession recorded in this book not only bear witness to the perseverance of religious conviction and adherence in a ‘secular’ world but permit for comparisons between modern possessions and those that took place centuries earlier.
One would do well to remember that the surge in the number of possessions in early modern Europe had its origins in movements for religious reform that arose in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. The most noteworthy of these movements were the Protestant Reformation, which began in the early 16th century, and the Catholic Reformation, which had begun earlier but gathered new strength in response to the Protestant challenge.
Both reformations urged the cultivation of personal piety, and the efforts by both Catholics and Protestants to achieve inviolability contributed to the late 16th century augment in the number of possessions. The different ways in which Catholic and Protestant demoniacs acted and spoke when possessed and the different strategies that priests and ministers employed to dispossess them were deeply rooted in the religious cultures of their day.
Studying demonic possession in this period offers us an opportunity to appreciate the variety of religious beliefs and experiences in the age of the Reformation and to compare those beliefs and experiences with those of both believers and sceptics in the modern world.
Exorcism is extensively and liberally discussed by 21st century Catholics, and the secular media’s craving for exorcists and stories of exorcism is apparently voracious. If the 16th and 17th centuries were ‘the golden age of the demoniac’, the 21st century is a second golden age of the exorcist. After three centuries of continual inquiry and misgiving from within and without the church, exorcism has proved to be a dark yet enduring feature of Catholic culture.
Exorcism is in demand as never before, from Catholics and non-Catholics alike, and thanks to the global impact of cinema, the figure of the priest-exorcist has come to be recognized throughout the world. The contemporary popularity of exorcism raises a historical question.
How exorcism, marginalized for so long, managed a rebirth at the end of the twentieth century, one might ask. Media events of the last forty years, such as William Friedkin’s 1973 fi lm The Exorcist and the Satanic abuse panic of the 1980s, do not adequately explain the thorough resurgence of an ancient and controversial practice.
The historical roots of exorcism are as profound as those of any Christian rite, yet the renewal of interest in exorcism does not so much represent the antiquarian resurrection of a long-dead custom as the re-emergence of an organic, adaptive tradition. The origins of contemporary exorcism lie as much in the apocalyptic spirituality of Pope Leo XIII (1878–1903) and the charismatic exorcisms of Johann Joseph Gassner in 18th century Germany, as they do in the 20th and 21st century events.
To answer methodically the question of why exorcism has made a triumphant come-back, the entire history of exorcism within Catholic
Christianity needs to be examined.
This is precisely what the book under review does.
A tad elongated, but extremely enlightening! Grab a copy if you choose.
Author: Brian P. Levack
Publisher: Yale University Press; Illustrated edition (5 March 2013)
Language: English
Hardcover: 352 pages
Item Weight: 760 g
Dimensions: 24.23 x 16.28 x 3.51 cm
Price: 277/-
The account of European witchcraft and magic continues to mesmerize and confront students and scholars. There is without doubt, no dearth of books on the subject. More than a few wide-ranging surveys of the witch trials and plentiful regional and micro studies have been published for an English-speaking readership.
While the eminence of publications on witchcraft has been high, some regions and topics have received less attention over the years.
The aim of this book, written by Brian P. Levack, the ‘John E. Green Regents Professor’ in History, of the University of Texas at Austin, and author of the best-selling book ‘The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe’, is to help enlighten these lesser known or little studied aspects of the history of witchcraft and magic. It also persuades the growth of a broader corpus of work in other related areas of magic and the supernatural: such as angels, devils, spirits, ghosts, folk healing and divination.
To facilitate further our perception and interest in this wider history of beliefs and practices, this book includes research that looks beyond the usual focus on Western Europe and that also investigates their significance and authority from the medieval to the modern period.
An exorcist speaks with the clout of God to cast out demons. Whether or not this imperceptible drama in actuality takes place behind the external words and actions of exorcist and demoniac, the Catholic exorcist’s affectations to authority are grounded not in personal self-assurance but in legal fact.
In modern-day Catholicism, exorcists claim to confront the devil not only with the authority of God, but also with that of the church, which they themselves have received by an explicit licence from a diocesan bishop within the strictures of Canon Law. Catholic theology presents exorcism as a political act in the invisible polity, in which the kingdom of Jesus Christ confronts and overthrows the devil’s kingdom of darkness.
However, exorcism is also a political act on the human level of church history. The entire canonical process of exorcism, beginning with the approval of the exorcist and ending in the spoken rite, radically brings into focus questions of authority and legitimacy, to a greater extent than any other rite of the church.
For most people in early modern Europe, demonic possession made flawlessly good sense. For them the afflictions suffered by demoniacs—the seizures, scowls, muscular stringency, distension, vomiting of alien substances, disdain for sacred objects, and speaking in languages formerly unknown to them — were the result of the Devil's entrance into the inner caverns of their bodies and the control he in so doing acquired over their physical movements and mental operations.
This belief that the Devil was accountable for the symptoms of possession was consonant with the dominant tradition in early modern Catholic and Protestant theology, which assigned him considerable power in the natural world. Demonic accountability for possessions also made sense to the uneducated, who acquired at least a elementary knowledge of the demonic world from the clergy who preached and ministered to them.
The book under review is one of the most all-inclusive modern works on Exorcism that one could ever read. The author has divided his work into ten chapters:
1) Making Sense of Demonic Possession
2) Possession and Exorcism in Christian Antiquity
3) Possession in Christian Demonology
4) Expelling the Demon
5) Demonic Possession and Illness
6) The Performance of the Possessed
7) The Demoniac in Society
8) The Demoniac and the Witch
9) Possession in the Age of Reason
10) Possession: Past and Present
What is the general outlook of this book? Well, it is as follows:
1) This book is concerned principally with the early modern period of European history, which is generally defined as the years between 1450 and 1800, but it also deals with earlier and later periods.
2) The author’s debates on possession and exorcism in the time of biblical antiquity investigates the diverse ways that Christians in the early modern period interpreted the accounts of Christ's exorcisms in the New Testament, while references to possessions and exorcisms in the Middle Ages and the works of medieval scholastic theologians provide a context for understanding the early modern phenomenon.
3) In the later chapters the book talks about possessions in the 19th and 20th centuries.
4) The miscellaneous cases of possession recorded in this book not only bear witness to the perseverance of religious conviction and adherence in a ‘secular’ world but permit for comparisons between modern possessions and those that took place centuries earlier.
One would do well to remember that the surge in the number of possessions in early modern Europe had its origins in movements for religious reform that arose in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. The most noteworthy of these movements were the Protestant Reformation, which began in the early 16th century, and the Catholic Reformation, which had begun earlier but gathered new strength in response to the Protestant challenge.
Both reformations urged the cultivation of personal piety, and the efforts by both Catholics and Protestants to achieve inviolability contributed to the late 16th century augment in the number of possessions. The different ways in which Catholic and Protestant demoniacs acted and spoke when possessed and the different strategies that priests and ministers employed to dispossess them were deeply rooted in the religious cultures of their day.
Studying demonic possession in this period offers us an opportunity to appreciate the variety of religious beliefs and experiences in the age of the Reformation and to compare those beliefs and experiences with those of both believers and sceptics in the modern world.
Exorcism is extensively and liberally discussed by 21st century Catholics, and the secular media’s craving for exorcists and stories of exorcism is apparently voracious. If the 16th and 17th centuries were ‘the golden age of the demoniac’, the 21st century is a second golden age of the exorcist. After three centuries of continual inquiry and misgiving from within and without the church, exorcism has proved to be a dark yet enduring feature of Catholic culture.
Exorcism is in demand as never before, from Catholics and non-Catholics alike, and thanks to the global impact of cinema, the figure of the priest-exorcist has come to be recognized throughout the world. The contemporary popularity of exorcism raises a historical question.
How exorcism, marginalized for so long, managed a rebirth at the end of the twentieth century, one might ask. Media events of the last forty years, such as William Friedkin’s 1973 fi lm The Exorcist and the Satanic abuse panic of the 1980s, do not adequately explain the thorough resurgence of an ancient and controversial practice.
The historical roots of exorcism are as profound as those of any Christian rite, yet the renewal of interest in exorcism does not so much represent the antiquarian resurrection of a long-dead custom as the re-emergence of an organic, adaptive tradition. The origins of contemporary exorcism lie as much in the apocalyptic spirituality of Pope Leo XIII (1878–1903) and the charismatic exorcisms of Johann Joseph Gassner in 18th century Germany, as they do in the 20th and 21st century events.
To answer methodically the question of why exorcism has made a triumphant come-back, the entire history of exorcism within Catholic
Christianity needs to be examined.
This is precisely what the book under review does.
A tad elongated, but extremely enlightening! Grab a copy if you choose.
May 7, 2015
This is a valuable guide to the concept of demonic possession in early modern European Christianity. It's a little dense and probably not the best starting point on the subject, but it's full of important information and astute observations.
In particular, Levack does an excellent job of contrasting the experience and social context of possession within Catholic communities as opposed to Protestant communities, highlighting how central the Reformation was to the early-modern surge in reported possessions.
The book also does a laudable service in keeping its focus on the religious aspects of possession and exorcism, which tend to be dismissed or ignored by modern writers. Levack convincingly demonstrates why the reductive explanations characteristic of contemporary authors (e.g. possessions were simply cases of "hysteria") are ultimately unsatisfactory in explaining the phenomenon, which, he argues, can't be understood without located them within specific religious contexts.
The book stumbles a little in its final chapter, in which Levack, a historian, tries to tie his insights into contemporary cases of demonic possession and exorcism. He makes a few wince-inducing errors (misreading survey data to suggest that 20 percent of Americans identify as atheists, when in fact the survey in question has 20 percent identifying as people with no religious identification, or "nones," while only about 3 percent identify as atheists) and some sweeping generalizations that aren't supported by the facts (the notion that belief in demonic possession is "on life support" will surely come as a surprise to Christians in Africa and Latin America, as well as to Pentecostal Christians in North America and Europe).
Overall, though, this book is a welcome addition to any collection on the subject.
In particular, Levack does an excellent job of contrasting the experience and social context of possession within Catholic communities as opposed to Protestant communities, highlighting how central the Reformation was to the early-modern surge in reported possessions.
The book also does a laudable service in keeping its focus on the religious aspects of possession and exorcism, which tend to be dismissed or ignored by modern writers. Levack convincingly demonstrates why the reductive explanations characteristic of contemporary authors (e.g. possessions were simply cases of "hysteria") are ultimately unsatisfactory in explaining the phenomenon, which, he argues, can't be understood without located them within specific religious contexts.
The book stumbles a little in its final chapter, in which Levack, a historian, tries to tie his insights into contemporary cases of demonic possession and exorcism. He makes a few wince-inducing errors (misreading survey data to suggest that 20 percent of Americans identify as atheists, when in fact the survey in question has 20 percent identifying as people with no religious identification, or "nones," while only about 3 percent identify as atheists) and some sweeping generalizations that aren't supported by the facts (the notion that belief in demonic possession is "on life support" will surely come as a surprise to Christians in Africa and Latin America, as well as to Pentecostal Christians in North America and Europe).
Overall, though, this book is a welcome addition to any collection on the subject.
November 29, 2016
Very fascinating and informative if you're interested in the history of demonic possession in Christianity, but also very dense!
April 2, 2019
This book is a skeptical scholarly treatment of the phenomenon of demonic possession in the early modern era (16th and 17th centuries) in Western Europe. It does not accept possession as real, magic as real, so reader beware. If you are looking for a sympathetic history this is not it.
The author approaches the phenomenon of demonic possession not using the typical scholarly explanations: medical conditions, mental illness, faking. Instead he treats it as a social performance phenomenon. He traces the origins in the Gospels and early Christianity to the early modern era. What came before became the model or script for demonic possession in the early modern period. Basically he is applying the social performance anthropology of Victor Turner to the phenomenon.
His explanation for the prevalence in the early modern period was increased anxiety in European society as a consequence of the transition from the medieval to the modern and the reformation.
The reformation figures prominently for another reason. It was an effective marketing method for Catholicism against the upstart Protestant denominations. Protestantism rejected the efficacy of ritual exorcism, and focused on fasting and prayer. Catholic exorcism is a dramatic ritual and appears efficacious.
I am not totally sold on the anxiety theory. Other periods in European history were revolutionary without triggering epidemics of exorcisms. The causal path is not fully established to account for it under some conditions and not others.
The author approaches the phenomenon of demonic possession not using the typical scholarly explanations: medical conditions, mental illness, faking. Instead he treats it as a social performance phenomenon. He traces the origins in the Gospels and early Christianity to the early modern era. What came before became the model or script for demonic possession in the early modern period. Basically he is applying the social performance anthropology of Victor Turner to the phenomenon.
His explanation for the prevalence in the early modern period was increased anxiety in European society as a consequence of the transition from the medieval to the modern and the reformation.
The reformation figures prominently for another reason. It was an effective marketing method for Catholicism against the upstart Protestant denominations. Protestantism rejected the efficacy of ritual exorcism, and focused on fasting and prayer. Catholic exorcism is a dramatic ritual and appears efficacious.
I am not totally sold on the anxiety theory. Other periods in European history were revolutionary without triggering epidemics of exorcisms. The causal path is not fully established to account for it under some conditions and not others.
October 27, 2021
extremely well thought out arguments and well researched, great deep dive and great thesis. the idea of possession as unconscious performance is very believable
May 23, 2013
This was a really interesting look at the differing "scripts" which informed both possessions and exorcisms. Levack is not saying there were no psychological or physiological bases for individual possessions or arguing that they was all fraud--he is saying that whatever the causation, the actual events followed cultural scripts. He shows the differences between Protestant and Catholic scripts (and further breaks down the differences between Protestant sects) and discusses why they differed as they did. Among the other topics he covers are the symptoms of possession and the "diagnoses" of possession through the ages (melancholy, epilepsy, hysteria).
April 6, 2014
Interesting! (a tad heavy here and there, you need to focus and have little to no distraction to absorb this better)
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews