Author: Philip C. Almond
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 113945160X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 417
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Book Description
This book is exclusively devoted to demonic possession and exorcism in early modern England. It offers modernized versions of the most significant early modern texts on nine cases of demonic possession from the period 1570 to 1650, the key period in English history for demonic possession. The nine stories were all written by eyewitnesses or were derived from eyewitness reports. They involve matters of life and death, sin and sanctity, guilt and innocence, of crimes which could not be committed and punishments which could not be deserved. The nine critical introductions which accompany the stories address the different strategic intentions of those who wrote them. The modernized texts and critical introductions are placed within the context of a wide-ranging general Introduction to demonic possession in England across the period 1550 to 1700.
Author: Hilaire Kallendorf
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487586779
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 366
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Book Description
Exorcism and demonic possession appear as recurrent motifs in early modern Spanish and English literatures. In Exorcism and Its Texts, Hilaire Kallendorf demonstrates how this 'infection' was represented in some thirty works of literature by fifteen different authors, ranging from canonical classics like Shakespeare, Cervantes, Ben Jonson, and Lope de Vega, to obscure works by anonymous writers. From comic and tragic drama to picaresque narrative and eight other genres, possession worked as a paradigm through which authors could convey extraordinary experience, including not only demonic possession but also madness or even murder. The devil was thought to be able to enter the bodily organs and infect memory, imagination, and reason. Some came to believe that possession was tied to enthusiasm, poetic frenzy, prophecy, and genius. Authors often drew upon sensational details of actual exorcisms. In some cases, such as in Shakespeare, curing the body (and the body politic) meant affirming cultural authority; in others, as with Zamora, it clearly meant subverting it. Drawing on the disciplines of literary theory and history, Exorcism and its Texts is the first comprehensive study of this compelling topic.
Author: Sarah Ferber
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134615205
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
In this highly original study of possession by demons and their exorcism, Sarah Ferber offers a challenging study of one of the most intriguing phenomenon of early modern Europe. Looking also at the present day, she argues that early modern.
Author: David L Bradnick
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004350616
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 337
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Book Description
In Evil, Spirits, and Possession: An Emergentist Theology of the Demonic David Bradnick develops a multidisciplinary view of the demonic, using biblical-theological, social-scientific, and philosophical-scientific perspectives. Building upon the work of Pentecostal theologian Amos Yong, this book argues for a theology informed by emergence theory, whereby the demonic arises from evolutionary processes and exerts downward causal influence upon its constituent substrates. Consequently, evil does not result from conscious diabolic beings; rather it manifests as non-personal emergent forces that influence humans to initiate and execute nefarious activities. Emergentism provides an alternative to contemporary views, which tend to minimize or reject the reality of the demonic, and it retains the demonic as a viable theological category in the twenty-first century.
Author: Kathleen R. Sands
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 031305777X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236
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Book Description
In October of 1563, 18-year old Anne Mylner was herding cows near her home when she was suddenly enveloped by a white cloud that precipitated a months-long illness characterized by sleeplessness, loss of appetite, convulsions, and bodily swelling. Mylner's was the first of several cases during the reign of Elizabeth I of England that were interpreted as demon possession, a highly emotional experience in which an afflicted person displays behavior indicating a state of religious distress. To most Elizabethans, belief in Satan was as natural as belief in God, and Satan's affliction of mankind was clearly demonstrated in the physical and spiritual distress displayed by virtually every person at some point in his or her life. This book recounts 11 cases of Elizabethan demon possession, documenting the details of each case and providing the cultural context to explain why the diagnosis made sense at the time. Victims included children and adults, servants and masters, Catholics and Protestants, frauds and the genuinely ill. Edmund Kingesfielde's wife, possessed by a demon who caused her to hate her children and to contemplate suicide, was cured when her husband changed his irreverent tavern sign (depicting a devil) for a more seemly design. Alexander Nyndge, possessed by a Catholic demon that spoke with an Irish accent, was cured by his own brother through physical bondage and violence. Agnes Brigges and Rachel Pindar, whose afflictions included vomiting pins, feathers, and other trash, were revealed as frauds and forced to confess publicly, their parents being imprisoned for complicity in the fraud. All these cases attest to a powerful need to ascribe some moral significance to human suffering. Allowing the sufferer to externalize and ultimately evict the demon as the cause of his or her affliction bestowed some measure of hope—no mean feat in a world with such widespread human distress.
Author: Brendan C. Walsh
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100009684X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298
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Book Description
In 1598, the English clergyman John Darrell was brought before the High Commission at Lambeth Palace to face charges of fraud and counterfeiting. The ecclesiastical authorities alleged that he had "taught 4. to counterfeite" demonic possession over a ten-year period, fashioning himself into a miracle worker. Coming to the attention of the public through his dramatic and successful role as an exorcist in the late sixteenth century, Darrell became a symbol of Puritan spirituality and the subject of fierce ecclesiastical persecution. The High Commission of John Darrell became a flashpoint for theological and demonological debate, functioning as a catalyst for spiritual reform in the early seventeenth-century English Church. John Darrell has long been maligned by scholars; a historiographical perception that this book challenges. The English Exorcist is the first study to provide an in-depth scholarly treatment of Darrell’s exorcism ministry and his demonology. It shines new light on the corpus of theological treatises that emerged from the Darrell Controversy, thereby illustrating the profound impact of Darrell’s exorcism ministry on early modern Reformed English Protestant demonology. The book establishes an intellectual biography of this figure and sketches out the full compelling story of the Darrell Controversy.
Author: Darren Oldridge
Publisher: Sutton Publishing
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250
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Book Description
This book for the first time, traces religious, popular and political uses of Satan and witchcraft in early modern England.
Author: Francis Young
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319291122
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 283
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Book Description
This book traces the development of exorcism in Catholic Christianity from the fourth century to the present day, and seeks to explain why exorcism is still so much in demand. This is the first work in English to trace the development of the liturgy, practice and authorisation of exorcisms in Latin Christianity. The rite of exorcism, and the claim by Roman Catholic priests to be able to drive demons from the possessed, remains an enduring source of popular fascination, but the origins and history of this controversial rite have been little explored. Arguing that belief in the need for exorcism typically re-emerges at periods of crisis for the church, Francis Young explores the shifting boundaries between authorised exorcisms and unauthorised magic throughout Christian history, from Augustine of Hippo to Pope Francis. This book offers the historical background to – and suggests reasons for – the current resurgence of exorcism in the global Catholic Church.
Author: Brian Levack
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300195389
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 519
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Book Description
A fascinating, wide-ranging survey of the history of demon possession and exorcism through the ages. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the era of the Reformation, thousands of Europeans were thought to be possessed by demons. In response to their horrifying symptoms—violent convulsions, displays of preternatural strength, vomiting of foreign objects, displaying contempt for sacred objects, and others—exorcists were summoned to expel the evil spirits from victims’ bodies. This compelling book focuses on possession and exorcism in the Reformation period, but also reaches back to the fifteenth century and forward to our own times. Entire convents of nuns in French, Italian, and Spanish towns, thirty boys in an Amsterdam orphanage, a small group of young girls in Salem, Massachusetts—these are among the instances of demon possession in the United States and throughout Europe that Brian Levack closely examines, taking into account the diverse interpretations of generations of theologians, biblical scholars, pastors, physicians, anthropologists, psychiatrists, and historians. Challenging the commonly held belief that possession signals physical or mental illness, the author argues that demoniacs and exorcists—consciously or not—are following their various religious cultures, and their performances can only be understood in those contexts. “Riveting [and] readable . . . must-reading for students of history, psychology and religion.” —Publishers Weekly “Levak, a distinguished historian of early modern witchcraft, now sets exorcism in a long historical perspective, providing the most comprehensive and scholarly overview of the theme yet published.” —Peter Marshall, Times Literary Supplement
Author: J. A. Sharpe
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 0415926912
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
In 1604, 20-year-old Anne Gunter appeared to be bewitched: she suffered violent fits, fell into trances, and was said to be able to prophesy the future. The three women she accused as her tormentors were involved in a murderous feud with her father. This true tale of controlling fathers, wilful daughters, power relations between peasants and gentry, and village life in early-modern Europe opens a fascinating window into the past and reveals one young woman's experience with the phenomenon of witchcraft. Sharpe is professor of history at York University, UK. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
