Believe not every spirit possession, mysticism, & discernment in early modern Catholicism - Sluhovsky, Moshe (University of Chicago Press, 2007)
Includes bibliographical references (pages 269-359) and index
Possession and exorcism -- Mysticism -- Discernment -- Intersections
From 1400 through 1700, the number of reports of demonic possessions among European women was extraordinarily high. During the same period, a new type of mysticism?popular with women?emerged that greatly affected the risk of possession and, as a result, the practice of exorcism. Many feared that in moments of rapture, women, who had surrendered their souls to divine love, were not experiencing the work of angels, but rather the ravages of demons in disguise. So how then, asks Moshe Sluhovsky, were practitioners of exorcism to distinguish demonic from divine possessions? Drawing on unexplored a