ABSTRACT
The origin of witchcraft, a terrible malady which has led many more people to the bonfire and scaffold than all the wars during the last century taken together, can be explained in a similar way. Regnard proposes to the witch to make her rich and powerful; he shows her his cap full of money; but to be awarded all these goods she has to repudiate Holy Baptism and God, and devote her body and soul to Satan”. Another equally common belief, which received particular power owing to medieval religious mysticism, is so called devil-possession, possession of the human body by the devil. In monasteries, and mainly in women’s cloisters, religious ceremonies and constant concentration on the miraculous almost always involved various nervous disorders which all in all constituted what was called devil-possession. The devil-possession of the Benedictine women made much commotion, but its popularity is trifling compared to the devil-possession epidemic of the Ursuline women which burst out in 1610.
