Several years ago, in a brilliant contribution to the Collection Archives Series, Michel de Certeau wove together a large number of seventeenth-century documents pertaining to the famous episode of demonic possession among the Ursuline nuns of Loudun.1 One of the principal ways in which de Certeau organized his disparate complex materials into a compelling narrative was by viewing the extraordinary events as a kind of theater. There are good grounds for doing so. After all, as clerical authorities came to (...) acknowledge the incidents of possession and treat them accordingly, they ceased to be isolated, private events occurring inside the convent walls and were transformed instead into public spectacles performed for a populace deeply divided between Catholics and Huguenots. Once or twice a day the nuns were taken from their needlework or tranquil meditations and led in small groups through the streets of the town to a church or chapel, where spectators had already gathered. At first these spectators were local townspeople, many of whom must have been acquainted with or even related to the nuns, but, as word of the possession spread, crowds of the curious arrived not only from the region but from all over France and from as far away as England and Scotland. The inns of the town were filled with these visitors who traveled to Loudun expecting to witness events there that were at once beyond nature and yet performed on schedule: repeatable, predictable, and—in their bizarre way—decorous.At the appointed times, beneath the expectant gaze of the crowd, the possessed women would ascend a scaffold, be loosely tied to low chairs, and begin to manifest their symptoms. From within each of the tormented bodies, a particular devil would arise and be constrained by the exorcist to identify himself. If a nun were possessed by more than one demon, the exorcist could dismiss one supernatural voice and demand that another come forth and occupy the tongue of the writhing woman. If the demon refused to cooperate in the interrogation, the presiding priest would solemnly remove the Holy Sacrament from the pyx and hold it up to the mouth of the possessed while the priests and spectators would assist by chanting the Salve Regina. This would provoke screams and violent contortions. Submitting to irresistible spiritual pressure, the devil would then be compelled to speak, confirming the Christian mysteries and the power of the Catholic church. “On stage,” writes de Certeau, “there are no longer human beings; in this sense, there is no longer anyone—only roles” . And these “roles” in turn are revealed to be the hidden truths that underlie the masks of ordinary life; more accurately, the ceremony has the power to convert ordinary life into mere masks, precisely so that these masks may be stripped away to reveal the inward drama of spiritual warfare. The demons appear at first to dominate that drama, forcing their wretched and unwilling hosts to manifest the power of darkness, but a spectacular ecclesiastical counterforce transforms the tragedy into a comedy in which the devil confesses that he has been vanquished by Jesus Christ. 1. See Michel de Certeau, La Possession de Loudun, Collection Archives Series, no. 37 ; all further references to this work, abbreviated PL, will be included in the text . On the relationship between exorcism and theater in this period, see also Henri Weber, “L’Exorcisme à la fin du seizième siècle, instrument de la Contre Réforme et spectacle baroque, » Nouvelle revue du seizième siècle 1 : 79-101. Stephen Greenblatt, the Class of 1932 Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, is a founder and editor of Representations. His most recent book, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare, received the British Council Prize in the Humanities. He is presently completing a study of Shakespeare and the poetics of culture. “Marlow, Marx, and Anti-Semitism,” his previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, appeared in the Winter 1978 issue. (shrink)

The phenomenon of belief in demonic possessions always appears in times of crisis. The intention of this communication is to report the vision of Michel de Certeau, among others, on a fact of possession that occurred in Loudun and shows that religious motives, for some time in history, have been and are still being used for political manipulation. With great documentary and literary analysis, allied to intense research on the city's folklore and imagery, Certeau shows a perspective on the (...) history of religions in the least different. In the construction of his reasoning and his research, contradictory histories emerge, each at different times and places and each one connected in political and epistemological transformations, of Certeau not only maintains an unconventional authorial posture, but more importantly: it shows the reader That which is lost, missing and fragmented in the process of writing official history. (shrink)

Throughout the 1630s, the town of Loudun, France, is gripped with an ongoing crisis of demonic possession that involves every member of the community. As historian Michel de Certeau demonstrates in his book The Possession at Loudun, the townsfolk express and attempt to expel their anxieties through a surrogate victim: Urbain Grandier, the priest of Saint-Pierre-du-Marché, is judged and executed as a sorcerer. In doing so, the Loudunais seem to closely follow the framework constructed by René Girard in (...) his book The Violence and the Sacred for understanding the surrogate victim and their role in ritual sacrifice. A transgressive stranger to the community, here Grandier, is symbolically purged, and with him all their sins, fears, and worries. Grandier’s death, however, does not end the violence. This paper will bring the works of de Certeau and Girard into dialogue in order to better understand the position of both Urbain Grandier and the exorcist Father Surin in the demonic possession at Loudun. Although Grandier seems to be a perfect Girardian transgressive outsider and sacrifice, his death does not restore balance to the community; instead, the enigmatic Father Surin must also take on many characteristics of the surrogate victim in order to end the troubling events. (shrink)

In Michel de Certeau’s Invention of the Everyday, improvisational community dance function as a catalyst for the subversive art of the oppressed, via its ancient Greek virtue/power of mētis, being “foxlike.” And in de Certeau’s The Possession of Loudun, this foxlike dance moves to the stage, as an improv chorus that disrupts the events at Loudon when reimagined as a tetralogy of plays at City Dionysia. More precisely, Loudun’s tetralogy could be interpreted as a series of three tragedies (...) and one comedy, the latter of which involves the chorine nuns’ channeling of anomie into a proto-feminist transfiguration. More precisely, the tactical prowess of the nuns’ chorus leader, namely the prioress Jeanne des Anges, elevates her to the status of an angelic prophet, which in de Certeau’s theatrical dancing critique makes her the Loudun tetralogy’s Dionysian, foxlike mage. In conclusion, this analysis suggests de Certeau’s relevance for revolutionary social justice today. (shrink)

This paper interacts specifically with two separate texts, that is Michel de Certeau’s The Possession at Loudun and Carlo Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller. Both of these texts present a narrative of religious turmoil, demonic possessions and a heretical Inquisition, respectively, and the events which surround a single religious dissenter. Examining the two heretical men presented within these texts in comparison allows for an understanding of Catholic Church dogma during the age (...) of the Counter Reformation, and how such an institution managed threats, both external and internal. Moreover, this paper also examines the methodologies behind the historical discourse, in order to understand the validity of the narratives presented, and the scope of historical depth sought. Addressing methodology is crucial when one narrows focus to two singular case studies by two separate historians. Thus, this paper intends to illustrate the threats to normative religious discourse which Urbain Grandier and Menocchio possessed in the face of the Catholic Church, while also demonstrating the methodologies by which the two men are presented within their respective histories. (shrink)

This article is concerned with three exceptional episodes in Descartes's life, each of which had a profound impact on the development of his thought; several arguments are advanced and new primary material uncovered to support our contentions. First, he did indeed visit Prague in November 1620 and his experiences there shaped his later views of mechanical automata, optical illusions, and the pseudosciences. Second, his encounter with the mysterious Sieur de Chandoux (identified here for the first time) in November 1628 shows (...) that Chandoux was not a reformer or a skeptic but a disguised cynic or erudite libertine. Third, he had close family connections with, and an informed report about, the demonic possessions of Loudun (near Poitiers) in 1634-36, and these shaped his version of the evil demon argument in the _Meditations. Through this argument and his 'new way of ideas' Descartes overthrew traditional notions about soul and mind, the status of the subject, and the evidence for truth. This permitted an understanding of the manner in which one can be an other for oneself and the manner in which certainty can be grounded with the 'objective' structures of consciousness. (shrink)

Michel de Certeau’s 1970 monograph The Possession at Loudun recounts a series of alleged demonic possessions at the Ursuline convent in Loudun, France, in the 1630s. These events led to the arrest of a local priest, Urbain Grandier, who was charged as a sorcerer and executed for his supposed crimes. Rather than seeking to verify the truth of the possessions, this paper analyses them through a feminist lens, suggesting that the state of ‘possession’ gave the afflicted nuns an (...) agency which was otherwise unavailable to them. Under the leadership of their clever prioress Jeanne des Anges, the possessed women used their new agency to target and eliminate Grandier, who can be seen as a representative or scapegoat for the patriarchy as whole. (shrink)

In Michel de Certeau’s Invention of the Everyday, improvisational community dance function as a catalyst for the subversive art of the oppressed, via its ancient Greek virtue/power of mētis, being “foxlike.” And in de Certeau’s The Possession of Loudun, this foxlike dance moves to the stage, as an improv chorus that disrupts the events at Loudon when reimagined as a tetralogy of plays at City Dionysia. More precisely, Loudun’s tetralogy could be interpreted as a series of three tragedies (...) and one comedy, the latter of which involves the chorine nuns’ channeling of anomie into a proto-feminist transfiguration. More precisely, the tactical prowess of the nuns’ chorus leader, namely the prioress Jeanne des Anges, elevates her to the status of an angelic prophet, which in de Certeau’s theatrical dancing critique makes her the Loudun tetralogy’s Dionysian, foxlike mage. In conclusion, this analysis suggests de Certeau’s relevance for revolutionary social justice today. (shrink)

The polymath Michel de Certeau is traditionally seen as one of a group of French poststructuralist thinkers who reject constructs in the social sciences in favor of the diversity of the everyday or the past. However, in this paper I will show that, as a historian, Certeau did not discard these constructs, but rather valued them as a means of doing justice to the “strangeness” of the past. The position that Certeau adopts can be seen most clearly from his theoretical (...) debate with Paul Veyne, which is the starting point of this article. I then show how Certeau’s first major historical work, The Possession at Loudun, exemplifies his theoretical position. An analysis of this work demonstrates how the historian’s active reconstruction of interactions between exorcists, medical doctors, state officers, and possessed nuns helps us to perceive the complexity of the past in a way that can be seen as a microhistory avant la lettre. I will suggest that during his writing of the history of Loudun, Certeau implicitly raises more theoretical and epistemological problems, and in so doing he “practices” a theory of history. The most elusive aspect of the story at Loudun turns out to be the drama around the priest Grandier. This article demonstrates how Certeau pays tribute to Grandier by using “scientific” methods, thus showing the “limits of representation” through disciplinary means. Finally, the article explores the implications of Certeau’s theory and practice of the writing of history for understanding historiography at large. The historian not only appears as a tramp who looks for remains that are forever lost to us, but is also a “scientist” who uses both models and concepts in order to put them to the test. (shrink)