ABSTRACT
The Satan who had so long troubled individual men and women became extinct; henceforth his fossil remains only were preserved: they may still be found in the sculptures and storied windows of mediaeval churches, in sundry liturgies, and in popular forms of speech. But another Satan still lived—a Satan who wrought on a larger scale—who took possession of multitudes. Everything was made to contribute to the orthodox view of possession. On one occasion, when a cart conveying eight condemned persons to the place of execution stuck fast in the mire, some of the possessed declared that they saw the devil trying to prevent the punishment of his associates. About forty years after the New England epidemic of "possession " occurred another typical series of phenomena in France. In 1727 there died at the French capital a simple and kindly ecclesiastic, the Archdeacon Paris. At Tissot's visit in 1863 the possession had ceased, and the cases left were few and quiet.
