The Possession at Loudun

by Michel de Certeau, Michael B. Smith (Translator), Stephen Greenblatt (Introduction)

It is August 18, 1634. Father Urbain Grandier, convicted of sorcery that led to the demonic possession of the Ursuline nuns of provincial Loudun in France, confesses his sins on the porch of the church of Saint-Pierre, then perishes in flames lit by his own exorcists. A dramatic tale that has inspired many artistic retellings, including a novel by Aldous Huxley and an incendiary film by Ken Russell, the story of the possession at Loudun here receives a compelling analysis from the renowned Jesuit historian Michel de Certeau.

Interweaving substantial excerpts from primary historical documents with fascinating commentary, de Certeau shows how the plague of sorceries and possessions in France that climaxed in the events at Loudun both revealed the deepest fears of a society in traumatic flux and accelerated its transformation. In this tour de force of psychological history, de Certeau brings to vivid life a people torn between the decline of centralized religious authority and the rise of science and reason, wracked by violent anxiety over what or whom to believe.

At the time of his death in 1986, Michel de Certeau was a director of studies at the école des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris. He was author of eighteen books in French, three of which have appeared in English translation as The Practice of Everyday Life, The Writing of History, and The Mystic Fable, Volume 1, the last of which is published by The University of Chicago Press.

"Brilliant and innovative. . . . The Possession at Loudun is [de Certeau's] most accessible book and one of his most wonderful."—Stephen Greenblatt (from the Foreword)

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Religion, France, Sociology, Philosophy, Occult

266 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Michel de Certeau, historian, cultural theorist, psychoanalyst, and theologian was one of the most multifaceted French intellectuals and scholars of the late 20th century. His concept of everyday life practices was of signal importance for the development of cultural studies in the Anglo-Saxon world. His use of space as a key category in the history and analysis of cultural practices has also influenced the later “spatial turn” in history and art history. Finally, his works on early modern mysticism constitute ground-breaking research in religious studies and theology. Interestingly enough, these studies on mysticism were less influential in the Anglo-Saxon world than they were in France or Germany, whence the distinction between the “American” (of the cultural studies) and the “European” Certeau (the historian of mysticism). In spite of the diversity of his oeuvre, Certeau saw his scholarly work as one, integrated, intellectual enterprise. Asked about his scholarly profession, this French Jesuit used to answer that he understood himself in the first place as a historian of spirituality. Understanding the meaning of Christian mysticism in an era in which it started to lose its self-evidence required a broader focus, embracing the most divergent and complex cultural developments up to his own time. The gradual broadening of his interest field also required new methodological directions, which he found in Lacanian psychoanalysis and in semiotics, resulting in his own topographical way of thinking. He became a public intellectual in 1968, after the publication of his La prise de la parole, a book in which he applied his insights on the role of the mystics in the 16th and 17th centuries to the protesting students in the streets of Paris. From that moment onward he started to develop his theory of everyday life practices, resulting in a number of different books, of which L’invention du Quotidien 1980 was the most elaborate.

Reviews

[withdrawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cela vaut vraiment la lecture. Tout d'abord, il y a beaucoup d'informations et de documentation sur les possessions et le procès de sorcière de Loudun, France dans les années 1630. Deuxièment, l'analyse de l'information est fascinante. L'auteur, un prête jésuite par vocation qui a écrit de nombeux livresd'histoire, a été très bien un homme de son temps et de la nationalité française, un écrivain imbibé de lésprit de Freud et Deridaf. La lecture de cette histoire est plus que le récit des événments de Loudun. Il ságit dúne histoire intellectuelle des années 1970 en France. Cést merveilleux.

[Jack Markman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an obnoxious and exhausting read. Certainly de Certeau is brilliant, but for me brilliance is not enough.

Firstly, I must admit that this book is a far better translation of de Certeau than the last one I read. This prose goes down much better. Still, I would not argue that my first de Certeau is a bad translation, as it accurately captured the baroque opacity of de Certeau's writing. Sometimes you can follow, more often not.

That verbosity is expected for a Catholic, and I understand its value in this writing. These flourishes when transcribing history lend a fervor to the subject and resist the secular "objective historiography" impulse. They inject religiosity back into history, and I'm all for that. Sometimes de Certeau writes a banger phrase, but, on balance, I think the style eclipses substance. What de Certeau is trying to say is weighed down by his prose. The framing obscures as much as it elucidates. He's not adept at "getting to a point;" it's only edges on this sword.

And before the zealots repeat the mantra, "well, THAT'S the point," I remind you there is a way to make that point in clearer fashion: make it fiction. Thousands of artists and fiction authors have made creative analysis of history that can be understood on some level by more readers. But still the theorists lust for the pastoral fields of creative expression while hiding behind the elite ivory pillars of the academy. I'll repeat for them: a critical look at religious historiography need not be so rarefied.

Perhaps this is my propensity for Protestant severity (read: secularism) talking. I fully admit the baroque does not always speak to me, and that's my opinion. However, I do think this style has drawbacks that impact his analysis. Specifically, I think his prose robs one of his book's subjects of her agency.

The history of Western gendered conflict for supremacy is often a dialectic, though pitched to favor men. What the Possessions of Loudon demonstrated is that to break the dialectic and men's advantage, ally with a strong third party. So eager to defeat these new demons were the men, it freed these women from the dialectic and allowed them to express themselves unfettered and (at least directly) unopposed. But such a reading must lock the demons in battle with the men, and subordinate the devil's voice (though still present) for that of his host. de Certeau inverts this, elevating the voice of demon's over their host, making them men's allies even as they battle. I am not convinced the resacralizing of history required this ordering, and its side effect is to double subordinate those possessed. Even with a final chapter devoted to Agnes, you get the sense that these women have not a scrap of agency left when de Certeau is finished. Perhaps de Certeau had a different goal, but the pedantry and the opacity of prose makes it difficult for any voices or viewpoints to speak with power besides the male demonic. To reiterate a bit of my review of The Practice of Everyday Life: "coherence of revolutionary ideas is not always the purview of their prophet. Still, I'm left feeling that the difficulty of this book undermines its arguments." Ditto to that. How very Catholic to religiously subordinate again the sacred feminine. Once again women are possessed.

If you loved this book, I guess I can see why. Again, the man is brilliant, no doubt a pioneer for his time. He's not for me.

"I do not like this French, mon frère. I do not like it, bright Lumière."

[Fawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for a class last semester. it's utterly fascinating, if you enjoy witches, cardinal richelieu, the importance of smell in the middle ages/renaissance, etc.

[Jude Fokwang · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating but I find the prose too verbose!

[Bill Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Years ago, I read Aldous Huxley’s book about the demonic possessions at Loudon and I’ve seen Ken Russell’s movie THE DEVILS at least a dozen times, but there were plenty of things here that I didn’t know. Certeau’s approach to the case does a splendid job of putting the reader in the mindset of the participants, where every nuance, every demonic utterance was weighed against dogma. There are a couple of exceptional chapters at the end about the craziness that followed the burning of Father Grandier. I especially like the material about popular pamphlets and publications that were distributed after the execution. Then there’s the chapter on Father Surin, a pious priest brought into the convent to be Mother Jeanne’s attendant who himself becomes possessed. A version of that story is told in the 1961 Polish film “Mother Joan of the Angels,” but I couldn’t help wishing Ken Russell had made a sequel.

[Mary Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was easily my favorite book of my course on witchcraft this semester. I have been trying to convince my classmates all along that this is a linguistic problem rather than a narrative one, and de Certeau spoke my unformed thoughts. The book is heavily influenced by literary theory and it plays exceptionally well. Something literary is going on with these witch trials. I don't know what exactly, but the crossover is definite. Also, Stephen Greenblatt, who wrote an introduction for this book, has an article that complements it quite nicely about witchcraft in King Lear.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

¡Ay que meño! Michel de Certeau tiene el tino de contar una historia chingonsísima, de la manera más aburrida posible: desde la academia. Y aún así, la anécdota, que es buenísima, trasciende y te atrapa.

Y sí, al final, te das cuenta que la crónica demoniaca tiene la riqueza de ser el punto de encuentro entre muchas fuerzas sociales e históricas.

En general un buen libro pero quizás no el tipo de lectura para llevar a la playa o a una alberca.

Es más como para leerlo en la uni, de noche, viviendo solo, con un chingo de tarea, pero sin ganas de hacerla.

[Rachel · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is a historical recounting of a bunch of nuns being possessed by demons in early medieval France. It's hard to describe how bored and confused I was by this book. I wish I could get those hours back. The parts I was most interested in--the experiences of the nuns themselves of being possessed--seemed to take up the least amount of time in this book. There were SO many unfamiliar Catholic religious terms, I was constantly looking words up and for not much of a reward. Most of the book is concerned with the guy accused of sorcery and the ensuing legal proceedings.

[Mavibi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting ideas in there: the wizard as a scapegoat, the legal value of a demon's word as proof, etc... The most important one being that Loudun served as one of these places of epistemological transitions. Here can be witnessed the cannibalisation of the religious by the political, the sacred by the spectacular, the scent by the view but also the emergence of new medical practices as the word grows powerless.
Sadly one can not help but feel that development of these is lacking most of the time. Still a fun and worthwile read though.

[Madelyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The possession has no 'true' historical explanation, since it is never possible to know who is 'possessed' by whom"
"the historian himself would be fooling himself if he believed he was rid of that strangeness internal to history by placing it somewhere on the outside, far from us, in a past closed with the last 'aberrations' of yesteryear, as if 'possession' were over with the possession at Loudun"

[Not8rious]

In corso di lettura: molto interessante. Di cattiva qualità, per non dire irritante, la traduzione italiana.

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful book that fights back as you try to read it.

[w · Rating 5 out of 5]

insightful method work with the multiple archive, the uncertainty of history, the play of story

[Aeisele · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting book, although I didn't like the format. It was basically a social commentary on a number of primary documents concerning the possession of a number of Ursaline nuns at Loudon in the 17th century, and about the execution of Urbain Grandier, the "sorcerer" who "brought about" the possessions.
This is a very interesting commentary, because de Certeau isn't dismissive of what happened. His main metaphor is "theater": what happened at this town was a drama, that had been enacted often since the 14th century (i.e., possession and exorcism), and so the roles were well known. However, these roles were improvised in completely different ways, because of the climate of the period: rationalism and science were emerging (Descartes published his meditations during this period), the church was loosing its authority (the State actually tried and executed Grandier), and new "experts" started to emerge - the physicians. The re-alignment of truth and power - from power being the bearer of truth, to the "experts" and discourse being the bearer of truth, and power being the executer of "deeds" - is a major theme.
Really the main drawback to the book is some lack of clarity on the part of the author as to what his intentions are in each section. I liked it, but it was quite frustrating in its form.

[Lucie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book for my "history of religions" class.

Socially speaking, this book is really interesting and studied all the protagonists of the possession, not only the possessed. It focuses mainly on the sources so you can see how people perceived this possession. However, historically speaking, it wasn't enough. I don't feel like I've understood this event.

[Terry Earley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fascinating look at a well documented incident during the middle ages, and how things spin out of control for all concerned. Glad I read it.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

picked up from a shelf at CSAD, very good read, short but superbly researched.

[Sam Ruddick · Rating 4 out of 5]

essential reading for anyone who wants to understand these events.