Abstract

[The melancholy of witches and possessed women. Aspects of the medical-demonological debate in France between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries]. The numerous trials for witchcraft and demonic possession that took place in France between 1550 and 1650 attracted the interest of doctors, demonologists, philosophers, and intellectuals.The thesis on the melancholic disease of witches and possessed women, supported by Jean Wier in De praestigiis daemonum, was strenuously fought by Jean Bodin in the appendix of Démonomanie des sorciers.The diagnosis of melancholy, as a disease that, better than others, reflected the condition of witches and possessed women, was echoed by other doctors, including André du Laurens and Jourdain Guibelet. Their works, together with those of other doctors who intervened directly in the trials for witchcraft and demonic possession, contributed to the process of naturalizing demonopathic phenomena in France. *** This article has been published Online First on 15.06.2018 and later included in the full 2018 journal issue ***