The Devils of Loudun

by Aldous Huxley

As the Church in early 17th-century France faced a loss of power and the great Protestant threat, clergymen were as disreputable a bunch as you could find--desperate to restore controls and not above manipulating events for their own self-interest. In this book, the author examines one of the most intriguing and controversial events of the day: the alleged possession by devils of the nuns at Loudun's Ursuline convent, and the trial of the man deemed responsible--the magnetic, Jesuit-schooled parson, Urbain Grandier. Huxley delves into the psychological overtones of this incident, explaining how the clergy, motivated by pettiness and revenge, used a group of hysterical women for their own ends, destroying in the process a man whose charm & charisma they envied. Exploring such areas as medieval law, theology, and the occult, the book asks: Who were the real devils of Loudun--the spirits said to possess the nuns, or the exorcists bent on Grandier's destruction?

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Religion, Classics, Psychology, Horror, Philosophy

376 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1952

About the author

Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and philosopher. His bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives, and poems.
Born into the prominent Huxley family, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with a degree in English literature. Early in his career, he published short stories and poetry and edited the literary magazine Oxford Poetry, before going on to publish travel writing, satire, and screenplays. He spent the latter part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death. By the end of his life, Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the foremost intellectuals of his time. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times, and was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962.
Huxley was a pacifist. He grew interested in philosophical mysticism, as well as universalism, addressing these subjects in his works such as The Perennial Philosophy (1945), which illustrates commonalities between Western and Eastern mysticism, and The Doors of Perception (1954), which interprets his own psychedelic experience with mescaline. In his most famous novel Brave New World (1932) and his final novel Island (1962), he presented his visions of dystopia and utopia, respectively.

Reviews

[Sam Ruddick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is probably one of the most interesting and important books I've ever read.

Let me say first that (in spite of the tag-line) it actually has almost nothing to do with devils, or "demon possession" as such. I suspect it was billed as "A True Story of Demon Possession" in order to boost sales. It's lamentable for several reasons. One is simply that it misrepresents the book. I mean, if you're looking for something that deals with actual demon possession, or a piece of lurid fiction dealing with similar subject matter, this book probably isn't what you're looking for. And, if you're NOT interested in demon possession, the tag-line will keep you from reading the book. But I think the worst thing about it is that sales need to be boosted to begin with. This is a book that should be read. I mean, it's too bad more people haven't read or even heard of it.

It deals with actual events, that's true. It also deals with an alleged case of demon possession: that is also true. But it's not what it sounds like. A certain corrupt priest (Urbain Grandier) offended some people in high places, and ultimately he was accused of witchcraft and blamed for the "possession" of a convent full of Ursuline nuns. The possession was more likely hysteria. The sorcery charge was bunk, and most of the people involved understood this to be the case. So, on the face of it, the book is about the disastrous mix of Church and State in early 17th Century France. But that's not really what it's about, either. I mean, to bill it as a history book or a book about politics would be equally misguided.

Huxley uses this particular episode from history as an entry into a larger discussion about spiritual life. What is spirituality? What motivates it? He calls it self-transendence, and offers an in-depth discussion of some of the principles that are common to most religions. Not the simple stuff: I mean, it's not like he's just saying "most religions say that murder is wrong." He's talking about the need for an awareness of God, for the "Divine Ground" that unites everything, and the way that faith and works play into our attempts to connect to that awareness.

He discounts nothing. It's interesting, because at times he makes ironic or even sarcastic comments, and that's normally the refuge of a weaker writer, a writer who sneers at the world, dismisses the very idea of demon possession (or even plain old spirituality) as quaint fantasy. Huxley isn't dismissive. He cites well documented psychic phenomena (ESP, for example) as evidence of a world beyond the strictly physical world as we understand it. If it's possible that the human mind can tap into another mind, then those minds must share something on some non-physical level. One can not, therefore, rule out the possibility that a will (or an intellect) can exist on a non-physical level. There is no reason to believe that all such wills (that all "entities" existing outside the physical world as we know it) are well meaning and nice. Whether or not they're "demons" proper is sort of beside the point.

In case you're thinking this is all sort of dark, I should mention that he spends a lot of time emphasizing the positive (what he calls Original Virtue, rather than Original Sin). Original Sin he defines in terms of the human capacity for evil, Original Virtue, our capacity for good.

In case you're thinking this is all sort of flaky, I should mention that he also devotes considerable attention to psychology and psychiatry, as well. It's not as though he buys the idea of a spritual world without first exploring the possibility that some spiritual experiences are actually manifestations of mental disorders.

He also devotes considerable attention to matters of law, doctrine, et cetera.

At any rate, I'm not doing the book justice. There was no point at which I felt as though I was in the midst of a load of spooky b.s. It's never less than well researched and well reasoned. And it's sort of about everything. Politics, religion, spirituality, psychology, philosophy, history, society, art, justice, responsibility, sexuality, nature: everything. And it's all framed by this fascinating story about this priest and this convent and the political and personal intrigues that came together surrounding them.

The Devils of Loudun was first published in 1952, I think, and when I finished reading it, I thought about all the stuff I read in school, the critical theory that's come out of the academic community and the religious and political discourse that's come out since 1952, and I just felt like something had gone terribly wrong. That all that discourse is so pinheaded and narrow-minded. That there was this flash of intelligent thinking about the world in this book, and that somehow it's been neglected, that the conversation went in some other direction, and we've been in darkness ever since.

Maybe I just haven't read enough.

Probably I haven't read enough. But I've read a lot, and I've never run into anything quite like this before. It's brilliant. I cannot recommend it more highly.

[Maziyar Yf · Rating 2 out of 5]

شیاطین شهر لودون نوشته آلدوس هاکسلی را به سختی می توان یک رمان دانست ، بیشتر مانند مقاله ای طولانی ، خشک و خسته کننده ای ایست که برای پژوهشگران قرون وسطی نوشته شده و چندان مناسب مخاطب عام نیست . آنچه در قسمت مقاله کتاب می خوانیم تاریخ سخت خوانی از زندگی در فرانسه در قرن هفده بوده که جامعه به شدت تحت کنترل و تسلط کلیسا را نشان داده و دستگاه تفتیش عقاید است که قدرت را به معنای واقعی در اختیار دارد ، هاکسلی با استفاده مکرر از اشعار فرانسوی و لاتین و شرح تحلیل هایی از افراد مختلف که اکثریت آنان برای خواننده ناشناخته هستند افزون بر آنکه مطالعه کتاب سخت خوان خود را سخت تر کرده ، درک مفهوم کتاب را هم برای خواننده نگون بخت بسیار دشوار و شاید هم محال کرده است .

داستان کتاب هم در مورد کشیشی به نام گراندیه است که به جهت اغفال دختر یکی از دوستان خود و داشتن رابطه نامشروع با او ، به جادوگری و هم پیمانی با شیطان متهم می شود ، اتهامی که پذیرفتن آن بسیار آسان و عقوبت آن بسیار سنگین است . احتمالا هدف نویسنده از داستان کشیش گراندیه ، نشان دادن اندیشه های مذهبی و شاید هم سیاسی اروپا و رواج اندیشه های خرافی و اشتیاق توده های مردم به خشونت ، تماشای اعدام و شکنجه بوده . هاکسلی داستان یا مقاله خود یا ترکیب هر دو را به آهستگی و کندی و شرح انبوه جزئیات پیش برده ، جزئیاتی که اگر چه برای خواننده خسته کننده است اما شاید خواندن آنها برای یک محقق و یا پژوهشگر تاریخ اروپا بسیار جذاب و آموزنده باشد .
شیاطین شهر لودون کتابی ایست بسیار سخت خوان ، بدون کشش که احتمالا برای مخاطب عام نوشته نشده است ، اما شاید علاقه مندان تاریخ مذهب در اروپا و قرون وسطی مطالعه آن را جذاب و خوشایند بدانند .

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1976 my bro David RAVED about this book. I wondered why, but couldn't - so go figger. HE was right on the money with his five stars.

So I've done my reading. And I give it the same.

You see, back then - as now - I was neuroleptically literal. Now, with advanced meds, I also see through chlorpromazine's vapid head games. Huxley ROCKS.

WHY?

Cuz the devil never sleeps.

He is inside us. The innocent avoid his tricks. The experienced among us can’t!

No. We see him. And most are consistently fooled.

Don't believe it?

This month we all saw ethical principles taking a back seat to common sense.

Nuff said?

Then I rest my case, your honour.

In pinko Canada, Cradle of Misinformation, we know better than to be politically correct…

Or sensible!

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was so well known in its day that it was adapted into both a play and a film, though I hadn’t previously heard of the events described. It’s one of those books that falls on the boundary of fiction and non-fiction. It relates actual events, but also contains a great deal of speculation, particularly around motive. I found it very uneven. Some parts were very good, other parts were awful.

The book examines the psychology behind a six-year period of supposed demonic possession that affected a group of 17 French nuns in the years 1632-38. The nuns put the blame for summoning the demons on a local priest, Urbain Grandier, a dandy and a ladies’ man, and by all accounts an insufferably arrogant individual. He had made an enemy of the all-powerful Cardinal Richelieu. Huxley notes that there many witch trials in France at the time, but this was the only one in which Richelieu was known to have taken a personal interest. Grandier was horrifically tortured before being burnt alive. Whatever his personal faults, he showed remarkable courage and dignity during his last days.

Huxley suggests that the behaviour of the nuns arose from a mix of erotic fantasy and mass hysteria, with Grandier as the subject for the fantasy. It may have started like that, but I think Richelieu took advantage of the situation to get rid of the annoying priest, and probably arranged for them to identify Grandier as the person calling forth the devils. Huxley himself acknowledges there is plenty of evidence to suggest the nuns could turn the possession act on and off whenever they wanted.

“The nuns were far gone in hysteria, but never so far gone as to forget which side their bread was buttered. Throughout the possession, as Dr. Legué has pointed out, God, Christ and the Virgin were constantly blasphemed, but never Louis XIII and never, above all, His Eminence. The good sisters knew well enough that, against Heaven, they could let off steam with impunity. But if they were rude to the Cardinal . . . Well, see what was happening to M. Grandier.”

There’s a lot of good stuff in the book about belief in sorcery, the behaviour of mobs, and the dangers of idealism. Writing in 1952, Huxley was well aware of the parallels between the hatreds of the 17th century and his own time.

“Today it is everywhere self-evident that we are on the side of Light, they on the side of Darkness. And being on the side of Darkness, they deserve to be punished and must be liquidated ...”

Unfortunately, other parts of the book were much less impressive. Huxley wanders off on long and rambling discourses regarding his interest in mysticism, clairvoyance, and general spirituality. We end up with paragraphs like the one below:

“In doctrine, the extravagances of Jansenist Augustinianism were tempered by a dose of semi-Pelagian common sense. (At other periods the extravagances of Pelagianism—those of Helvétius, for example, those of J. B. Watson and Lysenko in our own day—have had to be tempered by appropriate doses of semi-Augustinian common sense.)”

I appreciate that others will have more an interest in these themes than I do, but I found these chapters both unconvincing and boring.

To end on a positive note, I was impressed by one of Huxley’s arguments, that it is dangerous to be motivated more by being against something, than to be for something. As he puts it, “Every crusader is apt to go mad. He is haunted by the wickedness which he attributes to his enemies; it becomes in some sort a part of him.”

I think’s that’s a message that I will bear in mind.

[William2]

Oliver Sacks mentions this work in his book Hallucinations for its depiction of groups experiencing mass delusions. I do not know if Arthur Miller read this when working on his play The Crucible, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

[Nandakishore Mridula · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not about devils, really, but about mass hysteria and the psychological roots of religious ecstasy, mania, and spirituality itself. This is the story of the philandering priest Urbane Grandier of Loudun, in 17th Century France, who was burnt at the stake for causing the demonic possession of a whole nunnery. The problem was, even his death did not send the devils away.

If you read this as horror aficionado looking for devils (like I did in my early twenties), you are going to be disappointed. (No devils were harmed in the making of this book.) Stirring stuff, otherwise.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Those who crusade not for God in themselves but against the devil in others, never succeed in leaving the world better, but leave it as it was or sometimes even perceptibly worse than it was before the crusade began.”
This is a semi-factual account of a small slice of the witch craze that swept Europe in the Renaissance era. It concerns events in the town of Loudun where in 1634 a parish priest Urban Grandier was tortured, put on trial and burnt for sorcery/witchcraft; allegedly a whole convent of nuns were possessed by devils because of him. There were numerous exorcisms, some of them public and Huxley went through a good deal of the contemporary accounts, reports and diaries from the time. Huxley also draws on modern psychology (Freud et al) and on his own experiences with mysticism and Eastern religion to explain what happens. He also uses a number of mental health tropes. This was written in the early 1950s so the spectre of the horrors of the Second World War is in the background.
Huxley also looks at some of the political comings and goings in the background. Grandier always denied the charges, but what he had done was top alienate a number of local dignitaries by his rather amorous behaviour and numerous seductions. There is a wider background and some of the impetus also came from Richelieu. As one reviewer has perceptively subtitled it:
“Politically motivated witch-hunts and how to avoid them”
The narrative is secondary to Huxley’s analysis and there is a good deal of analysis and speculation. Speculation around motive is always tricky at such a distance.
It is a fascinating account but there are a couple of issues. It is difficult to provide a good analysis without a much broader look at society and the historical setting. There is also the question about how the speculations concerning mental health and “mass hysteria” are handled. Inevitably they are handled within the limitations of the time.
“The untutored egotist merely wants what he wants. Give him a religious education, and it becomes obvious to him, it becomes axiomatic, that what he wants is what God wants, that his cause is the cause of whatever he may happen to regard as the True Church and that any compromise is a metaphysical Munich, an appeasement of Radical Evil.”

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this book in high school and it made a great impression on me. Huxley’s account of the Church’s investigation into demonic possession in a seventeenth century French town is a disturbing example of institutional abuse, sexual repression, and political ambition. I’ve never found such a riveting account surrounding the torture and execution of the priest Urbain Grandier. (Admittedly, I haven’t looked very hard.) At the time I first read this work I was also researching a paper on church doctrine, and had just read an English translation of the Malleus Maleficarum. That school term was a bit depressing, what with all the reminders of how incredibly shitty people can be in the interest of doing the right and proper thing. I recently came across the Devils of Loudun again and decided to reread it. This was a good move. Huxley is adept in describing the complex web of events that led up to Grandier’s arrest and trial, and his detailed description of the poor man’s execution would make anyone beg off extra crispy fried anything for a few months. As one would expect from a talent as chubby as Huxley’s, the author resists applying modern sensibilities to historical characters. He carefully, almost relentlessly exposes the self-serving motives of the people involved without resorting to the complacency of hindsight. Although not a work of fiction, his narrative style helps the reader feel that they are witnessing the events and, my god this is not a happy experience. As a mature reader I more fully appreciate the behavior of the Ursuline nuns who Grandier was supposed to have corrupted. The damaging and hysterical testimony of the Mother Superior in particular, was born of the severe sexual, political, and societal constraints placed on women at the time. Grandier, an arrogant bon vivant, was at most guilty of being incredibly foolish by alienating the great and powerful Richelieu. Laubardemont, who was of the same family as the Mother Superior, abdicated personal responsibility in the course of his actions with the same ruthless efficiency as a Nazi prison guard. The community in which the trail and execution took place provides an example of group think and mass hysteria, reminding me how little we have changed in the last three hundred years. It would be a mistake to consider this story as only an example of popery at its worst, because then you’d miss the larger message. It’s about us, and how we fool ourselves into thinking that an atrocity is okay as long as we have a bright and shiny scaffold of excuses to justify our behavior. Yet rereading the text somehow did not depress me this time. Perhaps my coping mechanisms have matured along with the rest of me, or it could be that I knew what to expect. This story was made into a Ken Russell film in the seventies called, The Devils. I find the film kinda meh, except for the intelligent performance of Vanessa Redgrave as the Mother Superior. I have mentioned the Devils of Loudun throughout the years and find that most people know nothing of it. For the life of me I cannot fathom why more people have not read this book. It is one of Huxley’s finest.

[Jeffrey Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book requires much of the reader and makes no concession to popularity. It speaks to a reader devoted to truth and careful analysis who holds the author and the reader to superlative standards. I can't begin to claim to fully measure up to that standard but the reader for whom this book was written would scoff a criticism of the language or presentation as too demanding. The abundance of data, however obscure, would be expected not criticised.

Huxley made a deep survey into the theology of the day of the trial. He defined what that theology understood as the nature of soul. He examines the evidence offered in the trial in light of that standard. It is a very focused study. Huxley avoided the historicist fallacy of criticizing the condemnation of Grandier based upon the values and knowledge of his day. He could have drawn generalized conclusions but, instead, he takes the more specific approach of condemning only the finding of this trial. Huxley does make references to his ideas and values but they are not essential to his conclusion.

It's difficult to show sympathy for Grandier when he seduced and abandoned Philippe after getting her pregnant. Its difficult to excuse Grandier's dereliction of trust after his friend Louis Trincant had placed his daugher under Grandier's care. However, Aldous examines the case for which Grandier was tried, not his general character. It's a master work of self control and restraint.

The Devils of Loudun is still an important book for out time. The crushing of Grandier's legs and his burning alive show the unforgiving malevolence of which fundamentalists are capable when placed in power and have the freedom to use that power, not for the public good but for their own personal privilege.
> >

[Mark Joyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

A challenging read, not least because it deals with some of the worst of human behaviour in a way that is depressingly recognisable. It's challenging too in the sense of straddling multiple genres, which can be a great thing in literature but is problematic when it comes to history.

Huxley takes, to put it mildly, quite a few liberties with the source material. His skill as a writer compounds the difficulty of knowing when one is reading genuine source-based historical narrative versus literary embellishment, philosophising and pure fiction. This is disorientating, occasionally irritating and also intellectually problematic given that one of the purposes of the book seems to be as a sort of manifesto for Huxley’s views about perception and mysticism.

All of that said, this is a fascinating and thought-provoking book if read with one’s critical faculties fully switched on. I wouldn’t call it history - “based on true events” would probably be nearer the mark - but would have absolutely no idea where else to shelve it in a book shop or library.

[paper0r0ss0 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un saggio romanzato o un romanzo saggistico. Sta di fatto che l'incedere lento e pastoso di questo scritto mette spesso a dura prova la pazienza del lettore. Sicuramente molto erudito, sicuramente molto ducumentato, sicuramente molto ben scritto altrettanto sicuramente senza anima. Non comunica nulla. Non ha ne' l'afflato del romanzo ne' il passo del saggio. Seppur percorso da una tenue e ingenua vena di humor (troppo British), questo libro non riesce mai a coinvolgere veramente e a convogliare una vera passione. I personaggi rimangono cosi' descritti semplicemente sulla carta, non comunicano nulla di piu' di cio' che compiono, quasi fossimo alle prese con la lettura di un'antologia di storia per le scuole. Una delusione, per quello che viene definito il capolavoro del pur grande Huxley.

[Julio Pino · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's a Brazilian saying that goes "de poeta e de louco todo mundo tem um pouco". (Everyone has a touch of the poet and madman inside". When I repeated this to a Brazilian girlfriend she told me I was only one---mad.) Huxley's THE DEVILS OF LOUDON is based on a true historical even in 1634 France, and if you want to read it at face value the novel treats mass hysteria, in this case a priest is accused, and needless to say executed, for inducing dozens of nuns at Loudon into sexual debaucharie with him and themselves. Yet anyone who has read Huxley knows this is just the tip of the iceberg. THE DEVILS can also be interpreted as a parable of fascism, much as Wilhelm Reich joined sexuality to totalitarian politics in THE MASS PSYCHOLOGY OF FASCISM. Or, we can examine two films inspired by the same spectacle. The 1960s Polish film ST. JOAN OF THE ANGELS treats this incident to indict the Catholic Church for its misogyny---one scene shows a group of priests waving their phallic crucifixes over supine nuns---while Ken Russell's THE DEVILS, from the 1970s, demonstrates how rebellion and hysteria can be useful to the state if channeled in the right direction---Richelieu exploits the outbreak of sexual freedom at Loudon by the nuns (read hippies) to build a more dictatorial regime around Louis XIII (read the state in the West). What hath Huxley wrought?

[Erik Graff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Huxley's, The Devils of Loudun, reading as easily as a well-written novel, purports to be the true story of a seventeenth century case of witchcraft in France. At one level it is the biography of Urbain Grandier, the Catholic priest so condemned. On another, it is an examination of mass psycho-sexual psychosis as represented in such cases--and of the religious bases for the underlying repression. On yet another, it is a mystery, exploring the possible motives of the main players in the drama in the context of the hegemonizing Catholic nation-state and its executive head at the time, Cardinal Richelieu. On all three levels it worked for me.

Ken Russell's film adaptation of the book, entitled The Devils (1971), also deserves note as a fine piece of work which manages to survey all three levels of the narrative outlined above. In my opinion, it is Russell's best film and one of Oliver Reed's best roles. See it.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible. And don't miss the Appendix, on man's urge to self-transcendence, crowd-delirium, and 'horizontal self-transcendence'.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

People want to burn books. People want to shoot other people. People want to beat you with their Bibles. It happened then and it's happening now. Happiness is a locked door, or as Cold Cave sang, "People Are Poison".

Aldous mentions a mental syndrome called Bovarism which references Gustave Flaubert's classic novel Madame Bovary, where someone is so self-delusional they imagine themselves to be the very opposite of what they really are, eg. a bloated numbskull who imagines himself to be a financial wizard and a great political leader. Anyone come to mind, folks? Everyone's hands are up in the air. Gee!

So now Aldous has labeled super-religious phonies conducting witch hunts that persecute innocent people as “Inarticulate Public Opinion”. So glad we don’t have that going on anymore.

Don't know if this counts as a spoiler, but when I reached the part about the Mother Superior receiving an enema as part of her exorcism and having it held in public view as a spectator event, well Aldous may have topped his LSD reporting in terms of literary outrage.

The Devils of Loudun ends with a striking Appendix that goes deep into the psychology of mob hysteria, points made to explain why witch hunting was such a widespread panic back in the day. ��No such scruples restrain the revolutionary leader, who hates the status quo and has only one wish – to create a chaos on which, when he comes to power, he may impose a new kind of order”.

[Juxian · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read the story of Loudun demonic possessions in so many renderings. It's just the kind of a story that shocks and fascinates with every its turn, that compresses so much of the darkness and nastiness a human is capable of. It's the case when a true story is more complex and amazing than any fiction can be.
I never thought one could tell this story in such a dry, dull, monotone way as Aldous Huxley did. I mean how - how can one suck all life out of a story that is overfilled with passions.
Okay, I certainly expected something different from this book. Had I wanted to read about Aldous Huxley and his endless musings, ideas and opinions on theology, spirituality, politics, etc. ... Sorry, but I didn't. And I didn't like this book at all.

[Orkun Yılmaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Açıkçası daha tarihi bir roman beklerken, roman yapısından uzak başarılı bir dönem/olay incelemesi ile karşılaşınca şaşırdım. Biraz anlatı dağınık da olsa, tüm olayı ve olayın kahramanlarını detaylı olarak aktarmayı başarmış. Kitap, Hristiyanlığın pek çok kolunu başarılı olarak açıklayabilmiş ve diğer dinlerle benzer ve farklılıklarına değinebilmiş. Ayrıca insanın her anlamda aşırılıklarının, kendisini ve toplumu nasıl etkilyebileceğini de net bir şekilde açıklamış.

[Athena · Rating 5 out of 5]

یکی از عالیترین کتابهایی که در زمینه ی قرون وسطا و تفتیش عقاید و جادوگری خوندم،اوربین گراندیه کشیشی دون ژوان که توسط راهبه های دیر لودون به جادوگری متهم میشه که درگیری هایی که مردم شهر و کاردینال ریشولو داشته هم بی تاثیر نیست.کتاب بدون غرض ورزی نوشته شده بعد شرایط حاضر در اجتماع رو توضیح میده بعد اتفاقی که افتاده.
https://taaghche.com/book/134462/%D8%...

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent and, sadly, still quite relevant. RTC.

[Pam Baddeley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was described in another I read as being semi-fictional - having read it, I can see what they mean. In places, the author imagines how things must have been between people where no record exists of their interactions or in some cases their private thoughts and emotions.

The book starts off as being about the campaign against Urbain Grandier, a parish priest in the town of Loudun who was unpopular with many influential men due to his arrogance - he once insisted on precedence in a church parade over a visiting prelate who was technically his superior (something that cost him dearly years later when the man he snubbed had great power and a long memory for a grudge) - and his tendency to seduce female parishioners. The clergy had always had a poor reputation up until the middle ages, with many monks etc having common law wives, but by the 17th century, the Catholic church was trying to clean up its house as part of the Counter Reformation. Grandier's tendency to be his own worst enemy told against him when he made an implacable enemy out of a former friend due to this behaviour. He was also advised on a couple of occasions to obtain a posting elsewhere and leave town, but would not believe that his enemies could prevail against him. The author believes he loved disputation too much - he was embroiled in various court cases - but this can only be guesswork.

Originally thwarted in their attempts to ruin him, his enemies finally came up with the more drastic idea of staging a demonic possession of the local nuns who had become obsessed with his reputation although they had never actually seen him. The nuns blamed Grandier who became condemned as a sorceror, and the author spells out the involvement of various enemies of Grandier's and their cynicism in accusing him. His fate is truly horrific. The book then rather loses focus as it meanders on, describing the subsequent career of the various actors involved in the possessions, and includes a lot of material on a priest called Surin who was called in subsequently and had his own neuroses which became much worse due to his involvement. An appendix gives the author's ideas on the psychology of crowds and mass hysteria although rather belabouring the point I felt.

A weakness of the book is that there are no footnotes as would be usual in a historical account. There is only a bibliography of works consulted. So it isn't possible to tell exactly what certain assertions by the author are based upon. There is also quite a lot of untranslated French, references to very obscure people in history, and a lot of material at one point about spirituality but written in a style rather like Pseud's Corner from Private Eye. So although the material about Grandier is fascinating, the book balances out overall for me at a 3 star rating.

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Devils of Loudun. This book left me speechless; contemplating days after I had finished it. Huxley's insight into the theology of Christianity is whole in its entirety. There is no stone left unturned in this gruesome account of alleged demonic possession which led to numerous botched exorcisms. The incident Initially onset by townhood pranksters, turned into political ammunition for taking down a Catholic priest who once considered himself the hierarchy of Loudun. Through Urbain Grandier's lustful shortcomings he garners enemies for taking advantage not only the fine prioresses of the region; some of whom are daughters of important men in the clergy, but also manipulating those apart and following the church in a didactic fashion. Becoming a man of hypocrisy his enemies multiply until a cabal is formed in his honor; with the sole mission of destroying Urbain.

Through never-ending trials and appeals, enough 'subjective' evidence is garnered to sell the court on the 'fact' that Urbain is guilty of sorcery and was the reason why the Loudun nuns and the prioress were possessed. Once found guilty he was forced to admit his guilt within the final minutes of his life. He would not succumb to confess that he was a sorcerer yet he had confessed to his earlier crimes against the church. Through painstaking torture, Urbain continues to refuse to admit. With this Labramont gets frustrated and manipulates the confession by saying that one who is possessed can not tell the truth and continues with the execution. With Urbain burnt to a crisp on the stake, the cabal seems relatively happy. That is until a good majority involved became possessed themselves seemingly out the vengeful righteousness of god/the devil.

Throughout the book Huxley pivots from one person/topic to another depending on the point he is trying to bring to lite. What I enjoyed most about his way of writing is that he will explain both sides of every story and continue to be loyal to the objective view at the same time. Biases are heard throughout the book, but not without its adjoining counterpoint. I also enjoyed how in the end he was able to bring us back to the original thesis in regard to how our decisions play a larger role in our endless search for transcendence other than what we choose to project from our cherry picked beliefs.

I overall loved this book. If you like Huxley, 17th Century France, or interested in the history of Catholicism or Theology I would highly recommend this book.

[Side Real Press · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very readable account of this famous case of mass hysteria at times amusing and horrifying. Huxley uses original documents to create his narrative, which falls somewhere between fact and fiction.

He takes the three main characters, Souer Jeanne, Urbain Grandier and Jean-Joseph Surin and humanizes them, demonstrating the foibles in each (manipulation, arrogance and zeal respectively) that led to the appalling/ludicrous 'trial' and its aftermath. This could be incredibly dry stuff but there are some fascinating asides and little facts that keep the reader interested and the quotes from eyewitnesses to the events are wonderful. The whole book is very evocative of its period

In the appendix Huxley consolidates themes that he touches on the main body of the book, commenting on ecstasy, crowd control by regimes of all persuasions and the human need for some sort of transcendence, written just prior to his famous accounts of experiments with mescaline. His thoughts seem just as valid today, though what he says had been said by many prior to him.

My (original) edition has quite a lot of untranslated French in it- I believe later editions don't.

The reason it is not five stars is because some of the digressions are a little overlong and slow the book down a little. I think they would have been better integrated into the appendix, this is my minor quibble.

Highly recommended to anyone interested in crowd theory, or demonic possession.

[Ulysses · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tasty combination of history, theology, and psychology, rolled up in a greasy tortilla of religious hysteria and garnished with Huxley's twin trademarks of (1) haughty contempt for the stupidity and gullibility of the unwashed masses and (2) sexsexsex. Conceivably a reader could be pretty scandalized/mortified by the content of this book... but really, who these days thinks that people didn't treat each other like total shite in the 17th century, that organized religion hasn't historically been an astonishingly fertile source of depravity and woe, or that priests don't have sex?

Reading this produces the interesting sensation of having digested a number of closely related yet separate books, in the time it takes to read one book... it's like an entire intro-level college course on early modern European history, distilled down to one particular case study in one book. I'd say it verges on five-star territory, except that toward the end, Huxley drops the narrative more or less entirely, switches into full-strength Huxley Bloviation mode, and continues on with the bloviating for longer than necessary, which makes the book as a whole a little more exhausting to read than it needed to be.

[Mohammad Moradi · Rating 4 out of 5]

شیاطین شهر لودون یه کتاب تاریخی با نثر به نسبت سنگین که روایتگر زندگی تو عصر قدرت و جلال کلیساست. جایی که مردم اعتقاد دارن مسیح تو وجود تک تک کشیشا رخنه کرده و صد البته باید گوش به حرفشون بود. کتاب با کشیشی به اسم گراندیه شروع میشه، کسی که استاد سو استفاده از جایگاهش برای رسیدن به میل جنسی و خواسته های خودشه. چند فصل اول روایتگر اتفاقات عجیب و غریبی که نقش اول اونا کشیش جوون ما گراندیه‌ست. قضیه تا اونجایی بیخ پیدا میکنه که گراندیه بهترین دوستش رو میکنه بدترین دشمنش‌‌.

تو ادامه روایت تلخ و عجیبی از توطئه چینی، تهمت، دادگاه های مسخره و توهمی به اسم جادو و جادوگری میبینیم. قدرت عنصری به اسم توهم و خیال که سرتاسر ادامه کتاب رو تا اخر تحت شعاع خودش قرار میده. نثر نویسنده کتاب به شدت خشک و کسل کننده‌ست، گاهی جذاب و خوندنیم هست اما کلیت کتاب رو شامل نمیشه.

[Benjamin Stahl · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Devils of Loudun is a fascinating historical account, written like a fiction, detailing a scandalous affair in 1630s France. A priest is falsely accused of cursing a convent of nuns, causing them to be possessed by demons. Addressing the catastrophic dangers posed by religious hysteria, this book is by no means an attack on the Christian faith. Rather, it is an incredibly insightful meditation on the pious life, the ordeals of the devout, and the mysterious workings of God. Equally disturbing as it is moving, I found it rivetting. One of the best I have read this year.

[Fred Klein · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expected this book to more readable and more interesting, especially because of “Brave New World”. Here Huxley goes off on wild tangents and often quotes in French - assuming the reader understands it. Anyway I’m giving up. I will try Dumas’s book about Urbain Grandier and the Loudun “possessions”.

[The Professor · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The parson was a nuisance and must be taught a lesson.” One of those non-fiction texts you read with mounting excitement as it starts to explain to you in calm, fastidious detail exactly how the world has always worked. Aldous Huxley uses Cardinal Richelieu’s terrifying flexing of political and religious muscle to show us how little has changed since the 17th century and it is a blisteringly good read.

Fundamentally this is a corker of a story and Huxley is excellent company, leading us clearly through the maze of 17th century power players and showing how libidinous parson Urbane Grandier went from self-serving pamphleteer and hissable soap opera villain to falling afoul of the most powerful man in France to then, twist alert!, becoming a hero for the ages. That’s the basic meal before us but Huxley uses this shabby tale of proto-Beatlemania (“possession is more often secular than supernatural”) and judicial murder to unpack the whole demonic cack-pole and to emphasise the universality of the behaviour going on here (“humans beings are faced, at every time and place, with the same problems”), the mis-use of power and the limits of psychological thinking in a period of history which boxed all participants into binary positions vis a vis demons. The seriousness and tour d’horizon nature of this work put me very much in mind of later essayists such as Christopher Hitchens whose own “The Missionary Position” features the same level of insight and dry wit at a sentence level, albeit also demonstrating that writing such essays, while of great solace to those of us looking to history for explanations (Grandier ghosts Phillipe, trolls the wrong people, ends up on trial, gets cancelled while the mob cheer), rarely changes anything. “Loudun” is a masterpiece in the sense that there isn’t a sentence out of place and it is itself revelatory. There is something about this tale and Huxley’s telling of it that is darkly compelling and I can see myself returning to this text multiple times.

Structurally Huxley see-saws between the events in Loudun and delivering various mini-essays on the nature of spirituality, the medieval mind, even the dismay of a young woman who goes to bed with her charming word-smith parson and finds herself confronted, and abandoned, by a drooling monster. Huxley is helped by a smorgasbord of knock-out characters to keep our interest; there’s a stupendous portrait of Richelieu in his dying days and Oliver Reed is obviously exceptionally well cast as Grandier in the Ken Russell film. The most intriguing to me by far was Sister Jeanne des Anges, the Prioress and star of the demonic show ("half actress, half unrepentant sinner, wholly hysterical") whose love of the religious stage eventually led her on a Taylor Swift-sized tour of the regions and, of course, to an audience with the King. There is also the “holy fool” and “silly” Father Surin who swallows everything Sister Jeanne says to him and puts his own sanity on the line to rescue her. Father forgive me but here Huxley’s own generosity of spirit and interest in self-transcendence jarred a little with my own lapsed Catholicism and militant rationality. "Credulity is a grave intellectual sin, which only the most invincible ignorance can justify" says Huxley but despite framing Surin as naïve there is a sense that Surin’s religious journey, his brain-washed cleaving to his labyrinthine theology (while his fellow believers scorn and jeer at him), and above all, the gambling of his sanity in search of the sublime chimes rather hard with the author of “The Doors Of Perception”. When Huxley writes both that Surin was a fool but “the last barrier had now gone down and that, for one more soul, the Kingdom had come on earth” he allows himself to be both rational and spiritually inclined. If being an artist is being able to hold two contradictory positions at the same time Huxley wins hands down but this damned forever reader wanted to hear the words “undiagnosed schizophrenia” which just goes to prove Huxley’s point that we’re all at the mercy of the argot and consensus thinking of our age.

In the end Huxley points the finger at the real demons: the exorcists themselves, the social justice warriors of their day. The chess-playing spy-master Richelieu may well have spotted an opportunity to bring the walls of Loudun down and rid himself of the lèse-majesté parson but it is Baron Laubardemont who egged on the nuns, Fathers Lactance and Tranquille who tortured Grandier in fruitless pursuit of a confession and Louis Trincant who raised his glass at the sight of Grandier tied to the stake. How much comfort you derive by understanding that every age has its culture wars and demons is up to you but a great piece of work like this can be a friend to those in despair, a useful map of where we’ve been and, in all likelihood, a warning of things to come. “If there had been no exorcists, it would never have begun.”

[Gordon Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book - occasionally gets "into the weeds." A fascinating story. Don't skip the epilogue - it has some excellent insights on important issues.

Here is the best quote from the book.


"In the briefly liberal nineteenth century [learned men] found it difficult not merely to forgive, but even to understand the savagery with which sorcerers had once been treated. Too hard on the past, they were at the same time too complacent about their present and far too optimistic in regard to the future - to us! They were rationalists who fondly imagined that the decay of traditional religion would put an end to such deviltries as the persecution of heretics, the torture and burning of witches.

But looking back and up, from our vantage point on the descending road of modern history, we now see that all the evils of religion can flourish without any belief in the supernatural, that convinced materialists are ready to worship their own jerry-built creations as though they were the Absolute, and that self-styled humanists will persecute their adversaries with all the zeal of Inquisitors exterminating the devotees of a personal and transcendent Satan. Such behavior-patterns antedate and outlive the beliefs which, at any given moment, seem to motivate them. Few people now believe in the Devil; but very many enjoy behaving as their ancestors behaved when the Fiend was a reality as unquestionable as his Opposite Number. In order to justify their behavior, they turn their theories into dogmas, their bylaws into First Principles, their political bosses into Gods, and all those who disagree with them into incarnate devils. This idolatrous transformation of the relative into the Absolute and the all to human into the Divine, makes it possible for them to indulge their ugliest passions with a clear conscience and in the certainty that they are working for the Highest Good. And when the current beliefs come, in their turn, to look silly, a new set will be invented, so that the immemorial madness may continue to wear its customary mask of legality, idealism and true religion."

[Florencia ☕ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compré el libro sin saber de qué trataba. Creí que sería una novela de terror sobre un caso de exorcismo. No pude haber estado más equivocada y me llevé una de las mejores sorpresas de mi año.
Si bien el trata sobre los exorcismos que acontecieron durante el siglo XVII en la ciudad francesa de Loudun, donde varias monjas afirmaban estar poseídas por el demonio y señalaron como responsable al cura Urbain Grandier, Huxley hace hincapié en el impulso de la autotrascendencia y la naturaleza de la espiritualidad y la religión, así como también en la ambición y el abuso del poder.

[Toad Soup · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lol this was so whack, all because this one priest couldn’t keep it in his pants