ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on four distinct phenomena that indicate how madness was intertwined with religion, power and cultural beliefs and customs in early modern Europe (ca. 1500-1700). These four rather extraordinary phenomena are dancing mania, demonic possessions and exorcisms, witchcraft, and folly. It was during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that the relatively stable world of the Middle Ages disintegrated and modern Europe went through painful birth pangs. The dancing mania refers to a phenomenon, in which groups of people; men, women and children, were overwhelmed by an urge to dance collectively in a state of disorientation and without any self-control. The art of exorcism was carried on by some Jesuits and profit-seeking 'popular exorcists', and to a small extent it has continued to the present day, not only in the Catholic Church but throughout the world. In several cases witchcraft and diabolic possession were connected; the main difference between them appeared to be in the form of demonic encounter.
