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 eye-witness. Translated from the original French, and edited by Edmund Goldsmid.
- Des Niau.
- Date:
- 1887-88
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: 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 eye-witness. Translated from the original French, and edited by Edmund Goldsmid. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
16/148 page 12
![The Christian church, at the outset of its history, forbade the practice of pagan magic, but taught what may be described as a magic of its own. Both Origen and Tertullian held that mania and epilepsy were produced by the action of demons or evil spirits confined within the bodies of the sufferers, and that these were to be exorcised by certain forms of words. The church formally re- cognized the efficacy of exorcism in 367, when the Coujicil of Laodicea ordained that only those should practise it who were duly authorized by the bishops. Connected with magic and magical rites were the supposed curative properties of the relics of saints, and the divine origin popularly ascribed to visions and ecstatic trances. In the middle ages magic asserted its supremacy over the whole of Christian Europe ; but it had entirely lost the religious character communicated to it by the Chaldeans. It had degenerated into the black art. It dealt only with the night-side of nature, with the Evil One and his imps, with the loathsome practises of witchcraft and the enchant- ments of the necromancer. The scholar rose superior to this low kind of theurgy, but he, too, no longer sought communion with the heavenly powers ; he devoted all his energies to the discovery of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of eternal youth, to the sources of illimitable wealth and endlesss life. \_Encyc. Nat. ix. p. 52].](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21070325_0016.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
