Unclean Spirits: Possession and Exorcism in France and England in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries

by Daniel Pickering Walker

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

120 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1981

Reviews

[Octavia Cade · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short but interesting little book that take a close look at a small handful of exorcisms in 16th and 17th century France and England. The author makes no bones about his sceptical approach; he tends to categorise cases of possession as coming under mental illness, fraud, or the desire to exhibit a "good" (i.e. politically useful) demonstration of a particular faith. Not being religious myself, I've some sympathy with this approach! It was the use of exorcism as a political-religious tool that I found most interesting, though - it's not anything I'd come across before, but it made a very unsubtle sort of sense. ("Hey, Huguenots, watch this Catholic cure possession with a communion wafer and be converted!") Dunno how many fell for it, but points for trying.