ABSTRACT
The accounts that have come down to us of demonic possession in Europe in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries seem unbelievable, with their supposed victims of possession writhing, contorting, speaking in the voice of the devil or vomiting foreign objects. Belief in demonic possession, like belief in witchcraft, can all too easily be interpreted as one of those phenomena that separates early modern culture from that of the modern world. Readers now are at a loss, for example, when confronted with cases like that of the Viennese demoniac Anna Schlutterbäurin, who in 1584 was allegedly possessed by 12,652 devils.
