The Propaganda of Demonic Possession:

Religious and Gendered Politics in France, 1500-1700

Maclen Johnson

Phi Alpha Theta National Conference

Modern Europe

January 2020
 1

On February 8, 1566, after two months of ritual and effort, the adolescent Nicole Obry

was exorcised for the final time in the French territory of Picardy.1 Claiming that the spirit of her

deceased grandfather was inhabiting her body, Obry declared that she would not be freed until

her family completed the final rites he had mandated before his untimely passing.2 When the

local priest examined her, he determined that it was not her grandfather; instead, Obry was

possessed by the demon Beelzebub. Although the majority of possession cases fell on women,

their condition offered them a new avenue of communication and power. This paper will analyze

the cases of Obry and the nuns of Loudun as they worked within the confines of religion to

devise their own destinies. In the midst of unrelenting tension between Catholics and Huguenots,

possessed women crafted their own agenda rather than falling victim, breaking from social

norms to express their anxieties about religion, politics, and assumed gender roles.

Although it is easy to dismiss claims of possession as undiagnosed mental illness or other

ailments that were not understood, examining the phenomenon with respect to its cultural period

reveals the social and religious factors that influenced the afflicted. Possession demonstrated the

religious “script” of a geographical region, determining how the Devil was portrayed and the

beliefs that made a performance credible.3 Brian Levack points out the parallels of possession

and stage productions, comparing the exorcist to a director in front of the audience of the

cathedral.4 A total of 150,000 people are reported to have witnessed a case of possession by the

end of the seventeenth century in France.5 It was a theatrical experience, requiring all witnesses

and participants to play a role in the spectacle.

1
Daniel P. Walker, Unclean Spirits: Possession and Exorcism in France and England in the Late Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981), 21.
2
Walker, Unclean Spirits, 22.
3
Brian P. Levack, The Devil Within: Possession and Exorcism in the Christian West (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2013), 140.
4
Levack, Possession, 142.
5
Walker, Unclean Spirits, 22.
 2

Symptoms of possession were dramatic and went beyond typical human physical and

mental limits. Possession was difficult to fake because of the required knowledge of previously

unknown languages and apparent superhuman abilities. Speaking in tongues, a change in the

sound of the voice, and clairvoyance were often traced to possession along with physical

afflictions like extreme flexibility, levitation, and convulsions. Hysteria and melancholy, two

diseases commonly ascribed to women of the period, were also associated with the condition.6

Failure to adhere tightly to the list of requirements laid out by the Church’s definition of

possession meant the woman would be written off as mad or could be labelled a witch instead.7

While women were frequently persecuted as witches, possession was seen as something outside

of their control. A demon entering one’s body was different than willingly doing the Devil’s

bidding. The Malleus Maleficarum, published in 1487, was one of the major publications on

defining and persecuting witchcraft and is attributed to German author Heinrich Kramer. The

handbook introduces negative views of women, legislative procedure, and the growing concerns

about the role of the Devil in the sixteenth century. The document states that women were

“feebler in both mind and body” and more open to temptation.8 Because of their impressionable

nature, women are “more ready to receive the influence of a disembodied spirit.”9 Because of the

perceived weak wills of women, they were susceptible to possession as they did not have the

spiritual wherewithal to resist.

In France, the Reformation led the Catholic population to prove its sovereignty against

the Protestant Huguenots. Possession occurred predominately in Catholic lands, with Calvinist

6
Walker, Unclean Spirits, 13.
7
Moshe Sluhovsky, “A Divine Apparition or Demonic Possession? Female Agency and Church Authority in
Demonic Possession in Sixteenth-Century France.” The Sixteenth Century Journal 27, no. 4 (1996): 1045.
8
Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, “Malleus Maleficarum,” Witchcraft in Europe: 400-1700, ed. Alan Charles
Kors and Edward Peters (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 184.
9
Kramer and Sprenger, “Malleus Maleficarum,” 183.
 3

communities holding the fewest number of cases across Europe.10 Johnathan Pearl notes how

Catholics conflated Protestants with heretics, seeing it as their mission to rid France of the

Huguenots to “assuage the anger of God and save the world.”11 Prompted by the Wars of

Religion and the case of Nicole Obry, French demonological texts did not proliferate until the

1560s. The handbooks of demonology were largely German, but French writing referred to

individual experiences of possession and demonic influence.12 French demonological texts did

not focus directly on the rise of diabolism in the world. Instead, the religious environment of the

era directed anxieties about the Devil onto Huguenots.

By acting on the will of God and defying the Devil in his name, exorcists worked against

the apocalyptic setting of the sixteenth century and the Huguenots who perpetuated the demonic

influx. The profession of exorcist was not originally a title of pride. The humanist movement of

the Renaissance prompted a “new paganism” that led to the condemnation of exorcisms, as it

was believed those who took on the task were making a pact with the Devil in a manner similar

to witchcraft.13 Calling upon demons to reveal their intentions was considered blasphemous and a

violation of serving God.14 During the 1500s, the Catholic Church embraced the practice again to

bolster their perceived strength in combatting demons. Sarah Ferber details the transformation of

putting the Devil on the side of the heretical Protestants, and how exorcists drew verbal

admission from the demons of the power of the ritual.15 Although Protestant exorcists existed,

the unique confessions produced by the Catholic practitioners demonstrated the unique goal of

discrediting religious dissenters.

10
Levack, Possession, 69-70.
11
Johnathan T. Pearl, The Crime of Crimes: Demonology and Politics in France, 1560-1620 (Waterloo: Wilfrid
Laurier University Press, 2006), 78.
12
Pearl, The Crime of Crimes, 25.
13
Sarah Ferber, “Demonic Possession, Exorcism, and Witchcraft” in The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early
Modern Europe and Colonial America, ed. Brian P. Levack (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 578.
14
Ferber, “Demonic Possession,” 580.
15
Ferber, “Demonic Possession,” 582.
 4

Priests and exorcists employed the eucharist to prove the supremacy of their methods

against the Huguenots. It was the most powerful tool in an exorcist’s arsenal, to be used only if

holy water, saint’s relics, and the cross were not enough. The eucharist was used to bring the

possessed out of their stupor and, in the case of Obry, to rid the body of the demon. Although a

Huguenot proposed giving Obry an unconsecrated wafer to verify her condition, it was never

carried out because the man did not want to be “polluted” by interacting with the Catholic

sacrament.16 The demon within Obry revealed itself to be Beelzebub after being threatened with

the eucharist and stated that it feared the sacrament because “it was the real presence of God”

rather than a symbolic measure.17 The nuns of the Loudun convent possession showed “a great

repugnance” to the eucharist, their devils forcing the women to vomit rather than partake in the

communion.18 It was a direct example of the righteousness of the Church and justification of

transubstantiation, a belief opposed by Protestants.19 Catholic theology dictates that the eucharist

is a literal manifestation of the body and blood of Christ. By ingesting it, the demon within the

possessed person’s body would have no choice but to exit. Since the eucharist was the last resort,

it cemented that Huguenots did not have the power to rid the body of spirits and therefore did not

have the full blessing of God.

Familial actions that contradicted Catholic doctrine cropped up in cases of possession as

the root cause and first symptom. It was a common belief that demoniacs were punished for their

own sins or the sins of their family.20 In his analysis of the Obry case, Moshe Sluhovsky argues

that the “possessed woman becomes the agent rather than the prey of her possession,” taking her

circumstances and applying them to her own agenda rather than be used solely for Catholic
16
Walker, Unclean Spirits, 24.
17
Sluhovsky, “Divine Apparition,” 1041.
18
Michel de Certau, The Possession at Loudun, trans. Michael B. Smith (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2000), 18.
19
Sluhovsky, “Divine Apparition,” 1041.
20
Levack, Possession, 199.
 5

propaganda.21 Throughout multiple exorcisms, she revealed the transgressions of herself and her

family beyond their failure to complete the last rites for her grandfather. Her mother cursed her

after Obry lost her sister’s rosary beads, and Obry herself admitted to stealing money from her

grandfather and mother.22 Cases in Soissons in 1582 mirrored Obry’s experience as well. Laurent

Boissonnet and Marguerite Obry claimed to be possessed by the same devil that resided within

Nicole, and voiced issues of theft and dishonesty in their families that influenced their

condition.23 In the childhood of Jeanne des Anges, a physical deformity left her shunned by her

mother and spurred her to join the Loudun convent.24 These verified possessions shed light on

the religious and familial guilt the women experienced.

It remains crucial to recognize that these women did believe in their possession, and that

cases of fraud were acknowledged, tried, and discredited. In 1598, Marthe Brossier claimed to be

possessed after bewitchment at the hands of her neighbor, a story that paralleled successful

accusations of witchcraft at the time in France that may have prompted Brossier to “taking up the

career of demoniac.”25 Her family touted her throughout the country for fifteen months and had

her exorcised in front of crowds, but skepticism and disapproval colored her case. Brossier’s

failure to react to drinking holy water and convulsions onset by a reading of the Aeneid solidified

her status as a fraud in the eyes of many Catholics and Huguenots alike.26 She was imprisoned in

1599 and her copy of the Miracle of Laon, the recounting of the possession of Nicole Obry, was

taken away.27 Brossier had seen multiple examples of women changing the outcome of the

political and religious landscape and had been eager to make a similar mark, most likely at the
21
Sluhovsky, “Divine Apparition,” 1044.
22
Sluhovsky, “Divine Apparition,” 1048.
23
Sluhovsky, “Divine Apparition,” 1042. Despite the same last name, Marguerite and Nicole do not share a familial
relation.
24
Certau, Possession at Loudun, 222.
25
Walker, Unclean Spirits, 34.
26
Walker, Unclean Spirits, 34.
27
Walker, Unclean Spirits, 36.
 6

behest of her father. It is not coincidence that her condition manifested during the efforts of

Henri IV to issue the religious toleration declaration of the Edict of Fontainebleau.28 Although

she claimed her father did not attend mass to provide a reason as to why she became possessed,

Brossier clearly sought the grand stage for her condition.29 The violation of strict expectations of

possession defined by Catholics ensured Brossier could not become a legitimate symbol of the

religion in the same way as Obry. The presence of copycats, and the strict religious confines that

women like Obry had to work in, should not negate the personal messages they were conveying.

Mass possessions in convents provided the gendered space for demoniacs in the

seventeenth century. The relationship between witchcraft and possession is demonstrated in the

case of the Ursuline nuns of Loudun. In 1632, France suffered another plague cycle that

physicians fled rather than treating.30 Michel de Certau describes Loudun as a city “struck by a

theological evil” in the wake of the disease, using possession as justification for their plight and

separating it from human fault.31 Situated in a region divided heavily between Catholics and

Huguenots, the scholar Francis Young notes that clergy and citizens of Loudun saw the convent

possession as “punishment from God for the French monarchy’s toleration of Protestantism.”32

The possession of the Ursuline nuns reportedly began in September 1632, when three nuns saw a

phantom of their former confessor who had died weeks earlier. Reports of the convent “shaken

by the cries and writhing bodies” of the women inside rose in October.33 Urbain Grandier was a

parish priest in the town with strong support from its Huguenots. The Protestant backing gave

Grandier a sense of security and led him to “put no bounds to his audacity,” earning him a

28
Walker, Unclean Spirits, 35.
29
Sluhovsky, “Divine Apparition,” 1049.
30
Certau, Possession at Loudun, 11.
31
Michel de Certau, The Possession at Loudun, 12.
32
Francis Young, A History of Exorcism in Catholic Christianity (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 123.
33
Certau, Possession at Loudun, 14.
 7

reputation for his sharp tongue and overt pride.34 In 1630, he had gone on trial for allegations of

impiety and debauchery after sleeping with multiple women and girls within the walls of the

church, although he received an acquittal after priests withdrew their accusations.35 Nicolas

Aubin, an eyewitness to the later witchcraft trial of Grandier and publishing under the name “Des

Niau,” writes an account on how the man “returned to Loudun with a laurel branch in his hand”

to spite his opponents despite receiving a warning from the archbishop to leave.36 He vied for the

position of confessor and priest at the Ursuline convent but was harshly rejected in favor of the

priest and canon Jean Mignon. Shortly after this appointment, the reports of strange behavior

from the nuns arose.37 Seventeen women were “either fully possessed, or partially under the

influence of the Evil One” when examined by lay and clerical doctors.38

The nuns of the convent for St. Ursula were the children of nobility, with lineage tied to

Cardinal Richelieu and the house of Nogeret. Exorcism was the final attempt to relieve the

ailments of the nuns. When the demon possessing the women was questioned, Mignon and his

assistants were seized with “profound astonishment” when it claimed Grandier was the magician

who had instilled the evil spirit within the convent.39 Grandier was not popular, but none had

expected him to be “guilty of Magic,” a more heinous crime than his previous alleged scandals.40

Because there were no instances of maleficia, or harmful magic, legal pursuit was not taken

34
Des Niau, The History of the Devils of Loudun: The Alleged Possession of the Ursuline Nuns, and the Trial and
Execution of Urbain Grandier, Told by an Eyewitness, trans. and ed. Edmund Goldschmid, 1887 (Reprinted
London: Forgotten Books, 2012), 25.
35
Niau, Devils of Loudun, 32-34. Grandier also wrote a treatise against clerical celibacy that circulated throughout
Loudun, which did not help his standing.
36
Niau, Devils of Loudun, 34 (part I). The account is attributed to “Des Niau,” possibly in reference to the trial
prosecutor Jacques de Nyau.
37
Niau, Devils of Loudun, 39 (part I).
38
Niau, Devils of Loudun, 40 (part I).
39
Niau, Devils of Loudun, 43 (part I).
40
Niau, Devils of Loudun, 43 (part I). Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIII did not support Grandier and his Huguenot
endorsements, either. His presence at a convent which housed a relative of the cardinal may have further aggravated
the situation.
 8

against the women as possession usually only damaged the person afflicted.41 However, his role

as a Protestant sympathizer and the alarming behavior of the nuns was enough to lead to his

execution. The public exorcisms of the nuns and the confessions forced out of the demons

condemned Grandier further as “all of France was watching the trial with eager eyes.”42 The

fourteen judges at the trial came to sentence Grandier to die with “a rope round his neck, holding

in his hand a burning torch… to ask pardon of God, the King, and Justice” before being burnt in

the city square.43 Other accusations against a diabolical priest bewitching nuns include Aix-en-

Provence and Louviers in the 1640s, both of which resulted in the execution of the accused.44

The possessions of nuns were particularly notable because they were figures so aligned with the

Catholic faith. Utilizing their demoniac status to target rivals and unpopular figures in the

community for witchcraft combined the phenomena within the scope of religious conflict and

gender.

Although the persecution of Grandier stood at the center, the Ursuline nuns displayed

awareness of and actively performed their prescribed role. The French scholar Michel de Certau

describes possession as having an “aspect of social security” in its performance.45 The nuns,

conscious of their condition, appealed to society as a way of “ridding themselves of an occult

deviancy” without having to take the fall for the blasphemous actions or sinful behavior they

exhibited.46 The women charged that Grandier had visited them in their dreams for four months

and “tempted them to indecent actions both by word and deed” for which they could find no

other explanation.47 Certau describes their actions as “the Amazons’ rebellion” because the

41
Levack, Possession, 202.
42
Niau, Devils of Loudun, 26 (part II).
43
Niau, Devils of Loudun, 10 (part III).
44
Ferber, “Demonic Possession,” 581.
45
Certau, Possession at Loudun, 100.
46
Certau, Possession at Loudun, 100.
47
Niau, Devils of Loudun, 11-12 (part II).
 9

women physically and verbally assaulted their interrogators in a manner unique to the case of

Loudun.48 This manifested in responses of the nuns to the commands they were issued to prove

their possession. Niau recounts that Sister Clara “exposing her person in the most indecent

manner” before her interrogators and demanding the Prior Chiron of Maillezais be her lover after

she had been told to obey his thoughts without being told what they were.49 It took an hour of

convulsions and outbursts before Clara followed his unspoken will of picking up a missal and

pointing to the mass recitation of the Holy Virgin.50 These actions, attributed to the demons,

permitted women bound by strict codes of morality and chastity to break from their constraints

without damaging their standing as they were not in control of their bodies.

Jeanne des Anges, the Mother Superior of the convent, recounted the events of her

possession in 1644, renouncing attempts to classify herself and the other nuns as accomplices of

their demons rather than victims. Des Anges never denies her possession, nor does another leader

and exorcist in the convent, Father Jean-Joseph Surin. The plight was real, but the ascription of

guilt wavered. She was adaptable and observant, embracing the chance to wear a mask that

permitted her to not “uncover the state of her conscious” and play a role.51 Certau describes des

Anges as a “beneficiary of the role suggested to her by the circumstances,” yet a woman who did

not bend to demands put forth by others.52 As quoted in Certau, Des Anges admits that the

demons “only acted according to the openings [she] gave them,” but they remained the ones with

the most power over her movement – her thoughts dictated their freedom.53 She recalls when she

“received the holy host and had half-moistened it, the devil threw it into the priest’s face” but

48
Certau, Possession at Loudun, 104.
49
Niau, Devils of Loudun, 31 (part II).
50
Niau, Devils of Loudun, 32 (part II).
51
Certau, Possession at Loudun, 225.
52
Certau, Possession at Loudun, 225.
53
Certau, Possession at Loudun, 30. The autobiography began as an account by Surin, who later granted control of
the writing to des Anges.
 10

acknowledges that she could not complete the action on her own volition.54 Her writing and

actions can be read as a woman struggling against occult forces, or as a person distrustful of

Grandier’s role in the convent and eager to see him gone. Des Anges conducted herself in a

manner that granted agency, despite any outside agenda.

Holy women shaped the role that a victim of possession was meant to play, providing a

positive path that granted an image of strength in the face of adversity. Women like St. Catherine

of Siena and Teresa of Avila were regarded as “recipients of divine favor” who could

communicate the will of God.55 Ferber exemplifies that this gave possessed women an alternative

“career option.”56 A key difference between the holy women and demoniacs was that the latter

were not seeking religious authority, but a way to express their anxieties and be heard.57 A

scholar of Jewish possession, J.H. Chajes notes that spirituality was one of the few avenues that

women could create distinct and collective forms of expression in early modern Christianity.58

The “ecstatic, experiential nature of women’s spirituality” aligned in many ways with the

symptoms of possession, including clairvoyant abilities, trances, and knowledge beyond their

level of education.59 The possessed could speak their mind and what they witnessed within the

families and homes without breaking from the role of a female in the early modern era. This

state, typically associated with young women, is classified as an altered state of consciousness by

many societies and is generally accepted as legitimate behavior rather than an illness.60 Because

demonic possession was often revealed to be the root behind a display of perceived holiness, the

spiritual nature of the condition removed personal blame from the woman as something separate
54
Certau, Possession at Loudun, 31.
55
Ferber, “Demonic Possession,” 583.
56
Ferber, “Demonic Possession,” 582.
57
Sluhovsky, “Divine Apparition,” 1053.
58
J.H. Chajes, Between Worlds: Dybbuks, Exorcists, and Early Modern Judaism (Pennsylvania: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 97.
59
Chajes, Between Worlds, 98.
60
Sluhovsky, “Divine Apparition,” 1050.
 11

from a physical or mental illness – or even free will.61 The separation between holy and unholy

possession was hard to define, however. Early in Obry’s situation, her family and town of

Vervins celebrated her as a seer between her late grandfather and the living after his spirit

appealed to her in the church building. Weeks later, after Obry went through multiple seizures

and began comprehending languages like German and Latin, the Church confirmed that she had

instead been visited by a disguised demon that had now taken control of her body.62 The

possession began as a sign of hope and a method of expression, but was turned into a tool by

religious zealots once the requirements of a demoniac were met.

Possession offered an outlet and explanation for actions that opposed religious and social

restrictions placed on the sexuality of women. In the Malleus Maleficarum, Kramer states that “it

is common for them to practice carnal copulation with devils” in matters of witches sealing oaths

with demons.63 Sexuality was closely linked to supernatural matters because of its almost taboo

nature, especially when it concerned women. Obry’s mother reported that her symptoms of

possession developed a month after she began menstruating, and only a few months after she was

married. Nicole Le Roy, a woman involved in the 1582 Soissons cases, became possessed during

her first pregnancy.64 Menstruation and pregnancy “highlighted the Christian mistrust of the body

in general and of the female body in particular,” connecting to the diseases of melancholy and

hysteria that were frequently ascribed to possession.65 In the possession at Loudun, Niau recounts

how the nuns “made use of expressions so indecent as to shame the most debauched of men” and

that their lewd and explicit acts “would have astonished the inmates of the lowest brothel in the

country.”66 Demoniacs were freed from moral responsibility for their actions, leaving the women
61
Ferber, “Demonic Possession,” 584.
62
Sluhovsky, “Divine Apparition,” 1048.
63
Kramer and Sprenger, “Malleus Maleficarum,” 190.
64
Sluhovsky, “Divine Apparition,” 1051.
65
Sluhovsky, “Divine Apparition,” 1052.
66
Des Niau, The History of the Devils of Loudun, 44.
 12

free from having to confess their sins of the actions they performed while under the influence of

the Devil.67 The previous allegations against Grandier for his own sexual transgressions brought

additional evidence to their case that they had been bewitched and possessed at his hand. Nuns

adhered to even stricter regulation of their body as they could not marry or reproduce, making

such a display all the more shocking. The sexual anxieties of the young women became linked to

the demons that inhabited them.

Cases of possession operated as both public and intimately personal experiences. The

onset of possession was the result of the familial and internal concerns of the afflicted, but it

almost always concluded as a theatre for the Catholic Church to prove its sovereignty. By the

1700s, the witch-hunts and reports of possessions were in strong decline as political turmoil

between the Church and Protestants dwindled. Faith provided a grounding element for the young

women in an era that was wracked with religious conflict, instability, and severe limitations on

the freedoms afforded to them. These were private anxieties that, once publicized, were

appropriated for Catholic propaganda and overshadowed the women’s individual concerns and

tensions in a manner that left them free from permanent blights on their morality.

67
Levack, Possession, 202.
 13

Bibliography

Primary Sources

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Kramer, Heinrich and Jacob Sprenger. “The Malleus Maleficarum.” Witchcraft in Europe: 400-

1700. Edited by Alan Charles Kors and Edward Peters. Philadelphia: University of

Pennsylvania Press, 2001.

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 14

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