Believe Not Every Spirit

Possession, Mysticism, and Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism

Bibliographic Data

ID23148019
AuthorsStephanie Thompson Lundeen (corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume8
Issue1
Pages153-156
Publication date2008-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal for Early Modern Cultural Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1531-0485 • E-ISSN: 1553-3786
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/jem.0.0008
OpenAlexW1493355465
LanguageEN
Citations received9

MOSHE SLUHOVSKY Believe Not Every Spirit: Possession, Mysticism, and Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. 384 pp. $45. Reviewed by Stephanie Thompson LundeenThe aim of Moshe Sluhovsky's Believe Not Every Spirit is ambitious: to reorient the study of demonic possession and exorcism away from its connection to witchcraft and toward certain forms of early modern Catholic spirituality. Sluhovsky argues that possession, mysticism, and the discernment of spirits were an interrelated triad of phenomena that gained particular prominence in Spain, Italy, and France between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. The turmoil these phenomena raised was only to be resolved by the adoption of a Roman rite for exorcism in 1614 and by a retreat from extreme practices of contemplative meditation among religious and lay practitioners. To make his case, Sluhovsky marshals an impressive cast, consisting of hundreds of theologians, mystics, cloistered and uncloistered religious, Inquisitors, charlatans, and common folk. The sheer breadth and scope of his work is its most impressive characteristic, though it is simultaneously its most problematic.According to Sluhovsky, demonic possession, previously considered a relatively minor problem, became a site for political and theological theater in the religious turmoil of early modern Europe. In 1526, for example, at the convent of Saint-Pierre in Lyon, France, the demon possessing Anthoinette de Grollee announced his allegiance to Calvinism and identified Geneva as his home. Possession also became a means for probing interiority and bringing women under tighter ecclesiastical control. The growing practice of contemplative mysticism among women, both lay and religious, peaked in sixteenth-century Spain and Italy and in the following century in France. This practice represented a serious challenge to clerical authority by promoting direct contact with the divine that could, and did, lead to the rejection of outward forms of piety, including even the sacraments. Eager to discount this strand of mysticism, theologians hastened to ascribe the ecstasies and prophecies of such women to the devil. Their cause was aided by some of the mystics themselves, who would admit to submitting to demonic possession as part of their progress toward contemplative union with God. A new theology of possession as occurring not only within the body but also, or even exclusively, within the soul promoted this potential conflation.The similarity between divine and demonic possession, Sluhovsky asserts, precipitated a theological crisis in discernment. Several prominent theologians of the period sought to establish a means to determine definitively the signs of the demonic, only to end, repeatedly, by admitting that there was no sure means. Experience and the recognition of discernment as a charismatic gift were, they concluded, the exorcist's best tools. Because of this admission, and of the failure of the learned establishment to set a definitive test, women enjoyed a de facto participation in the discernment of spirits.Sluhovsky's careful inclusion of such women-the late-medieval lay exorcists, the Mother Superiors whose letters offered advice on discernment, the mystics like Teresa of Avila who remained above reproach, the lay Italian mystics with their followers-balances his heavy reliance on clerical writings. These clerical texts, ranging from practical guides on exorcism to theological inquiries into discernment to Inquisitorial records, often display an authoritarian, even skeptical attitude toward mystical women. Indeed, several are forthrightly misogynistic, connecting demonic possession to female weakness, both physical and mental. As Sluhovsky notes, this literature would seem to preclude the reality of any degree of female empowerment, and so the inclusion of these active women serves to expose the limits of the clerical view. Even so, Sluhovsky sees the facts of early modern exorcism as instantiating the misogynistic rhetoric of possession. ...

Aesthetics · Art · Discernment · Literature · Mysticism · Possession (linguistics) · Theology · Early Modern Women Writers · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity · Religious studies

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