nuns of Xante, Spain, in 1560. Communities of nuns were overwhelmed by devils in Milan in 1590, in Aixen-Provence in 1611, in Lille in 1613, in Madrid in 1628, and, famously, in Loudun in 1634. Hundreds of accounts report the possession of individuals beyond these monastic communities as well.
The dramas of spirit possession episodes, macabre and in many cases sexually charged, have long been of interest to historians and lay readers. The fascination of the latter hardly requires explanation; by the sixteenth century, authors of the surviving accounts had realized that their tales would tantalize the reading public. Sharing this affection for colorful narratives, historians have made frequent use of possession accounts, recognizing the extent to which they communicate significant features of early modern culture. Exorcism rituals have also been subjected to a fascinating array of exegetical strategies and probed for their suggestive encryption of patterns of mentalité and theological suppositions. Whether used as indicators of shifts in the political and ecclesiastical realm or as signs of sexual and religious anxiety among the folk, materials related to the proliferation of spirit possession have been analyzed in various innovative ways by the conspicuously creative historians of early modern Europe.
Any attempt to treat spirit possession historically is challenged by the fact that it is a near-universal phenomenon of human culture.3 One need only take a cursory glance at the anthropological literature on the subject: a recent review article by Janice Boddy cites no less than 221 studies on spirit possession amid peoples on every continent.4 Yet this universalism must not obscure the distinctive place of spirit possession in different cultural settings. Its valence may vary diachronically, and at times it may occupy a more central or peripheral location in a given socioreligious group. A shift in the valuation or incidence of spirit possession may also be an indicator of broader cultural developments. And even when no such shift is evident, an analysis of the meaning and function of spirit possession may reveal deep structures of the religious culture under examination.
This study of spirit possession in early modern Jewish culture began with my realization that in the mid-sixteenth century, in the very period often referred to as “the golden age of the demoniac,”5 accounts of spirit possession among Jews suddenly begin to appear—this following a millennium during which no such sources were produced or from which none are extant. Although accounts of possession and exorcism are to be found in ancient rabbinic literature—and, of course, figure prominently in the Gospels—they are exceedingly rare in medieval Jewish literature.6 Might the apparent flourishing of this phenomenon be no more than the reflection of a new interest in the literary treatment of possession among Jews?7 This reasonable hypothesis can be tested, albeit impressionistically, by an inspection of the Jewish documentation for signs of shock at a sudden proliferation in spirit possession, as has been found among Christians in this period.8
Early Jewish possession accounts do, in fact, indicate in a variety of ways that a new phenomenon was confronting the rabbinic exorcists of the mid-sixteenth century. The deaths of the early victims, as well as the obvious confusion and lack of experience that Jewish exorcists showed in early accounts, is telling. So, too, is R. Gedalia ibn Yaḥia’s expression of wonder and bewilderment in his introduction to the 1575 Ferrara case—“The truth is, it [spirit possession by a disembodied soul] would seem to appear to be one of the wonders of our time and exceedingly strange.”9 Similar remarks were made by R. Eliezer Ashkenazi (1513–86) in his work of 1583, Ma‘asei ha-Shem (Deeds of the Lord).10 Ashkenazi wrote that he had heard “in this, our own time” of such cases of possession and that only “this year, in 5340 (1579–80)” had he become familiar with the phenomenon upon receiving a broadsheet from Safed, which may have reached him via Venice, describing such a case. Ashkenazi’s testimony seems to signal both the appearance of a new phenomenon in Jewish culture as well as an effort to publicize it. The significance of such a campaign emanating from Safed before 1579 cannot be underestimated, because the circulation of possession accounts may have been a significant factor in the diffusion of the phenomenon.11
Although no narrative reports of spirit possession among Jews have been discovered from before the 1540s,12 medieval manuscripts do preserve Jewish exorcism techniques from earlier centuries. This literary discrepancy is tantalizing and, although possibly deceptive, would seem to support the thesis that the sudden appearance of possession narratives in the sixteenth and, particularly, seventeenth centuries stemmed from a shift in literary conventions—for whatever reasons—rather than from the appearance of the phenomenon ex nihilo. We may imagine a situation in which exorcisms were carried out routinely for centuries, leaving traces only in the magical manuscripts that preserved and transmitted techniques over generations, the cases themselves left unrecorded. With a new interest in documenting cases of spirit possession emerging among sixteenth-century hagiographers, moralists, and other sundry rabbinic writers, the narrative possibilities of this genre are fully explored and exploited.
Such a scenario is not without medieval Christian parallels, though the order of literary progression is almost exactly the reverse. Although possession figured prominently in medieval saints’ vitae, by the fifteenth century demonologists had taken over the field. One looking exclusively at the vitae would thus wrongly assume that exorcism died out in the late Middle Ages.13 Although this imagined scenario has much to recommend it, we must also bear in mind that the presence of a magical technique in manuscript says little about contemporary practice. Magical manuscripts are notoriously conservative and preserve material that may long since have been out of use and even unintelligible to adepts. This in addition to the fact that as prescriptive rather than descriptive texts, they must not be assumed to reflect the historical realia of their period.
And something was new. The construction of spirit possession in Jewish culture had changed radically since antiquity. Gilgul, or reincarnation, had become a central concern of Jewish thinkers by the sixteenth century, and deeply penetrated the communal psyche. In keeping with this obsession with transmigration, Jews reconceptualized the phenomenon of spirit possession.14 The possessor was no longer a demon (which earlier techniques and ancient accounts suggest it had been for Jews and which it largely remained for Christians and Muslims), but a ghost, the soul of a deceased human being. Possession had become a subspecies of transmigration. The expressions of wonderment at the novelty of the noted phenomenon may well constitute responses to this etiologic development, for as we shall see, the ramifications of identifying the possessor as a disembodied soul were significant.
As an avid reader of the historiography of the early modern European witch-hunt, I could not help but wonder what all of this had to do with the golden age of the demoniac in Christian Europe. What sort of relationship could be reconstructed between Jewish and Christian cultures on this demonic ground? Did the cognate Jewish phenomena support or challenge the regnant interpretations of European historiography?15
European historians have long debated the reasons for the proliferation of witchcraft accusations and cases of spirit possession from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries.16 Although the two phenomena ought not to be conflated, they were not unrelated.17 Witch trials were typically initiated or exacerbated by accusations of the possessed, and demoniacs customarily ran the risk of being regarded as culpable witches. Indeed, major witch-hunts were triggered and perpetuated by demoniacs who blamed witches in their midst for their affliction.18 Jews entertained such a possibility, though the early modern accounts do not preserve a case in which such an accusation was actually leveled.19
Belief in witches and witchcraft was widespread, however, and Jews often shared the magical beliefs of their Gentile neighbors.20 German-Jewish pietists from the High Middle Ages had a pronounced fear of witches, at least some of whom were apparently Jewish.21 The most heinous accusation leveled against these women was that they ate children and, even in death, continued to devour the living.22 Pietistic sources relate that at the moment of their vigilante-style executions, such cannibalistic witches might be offered the opportunity for atonement in exchange for knowledge of techniques
