Demon Possession in Elizabethan England
Publisher: Praeger Publishers
Published: October 30, 2004
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 240
ISBN-13: 9780275981693
Subjects: British & Irish history: c 1500 to c 1700; European history: c 1500 to c 1750; Satanism & demonology; c 1500 to c 1600; History - General History; History: World; England; Europe; Cults; Europe - General; History / Europe / General; 16th century; Case studies; Demoniac possession; Demonomania; History
First sentence: The young man falls to the ground and lies motionless.
Description: "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."--BOOK JACKET.