Discerning spirits: Sanctity and possession in the later Middle Ages. (Volumes I and II).

Abstract

Discerning Spirits: Sanctity and Possession in the Later Middle Ages examines the responses of different cultural strata to spirit possession from the mid-twelfth through the fifteenth century in Western Europe. I argue that in Medieval Europe spirit possession was ambiguous: malignly, it was expressed as diabolic possession, while benignly it appeared as unitive mysticism. While only the former was described as spirit possession within medieval culture, unitive mystics, with their stress on the indwelling quality of their experience of God, may also be considered possessed--by the Holy Spirit. Indeed, so closely parallel were mystics and demoniacs considered to be, contemporaries had difficulty discerning one from the other. As a result, a great deal of suspicion and anxiety surrounded the vocations of unitive mystics, who often were accused of being demonically inspired. Adding to this perplexity were general ideas about body and spirit that pervaded medieval culture. Although the civilization of the Middle Ages is often thought of as dualistic in its conceptions of body and spirit, my work shows that the boundaries between the two actually were quite fluid. Spirits were conceived as having a material basis, and conversely the body, in certain areas, was thought to have a basic spiritual vitality. Tales of corpses coming back to life, and folkloric ideas about shamanistic spirit journeys, reveal a broad cultural preoccupation both with the ways in which bodies and spirits acted independently, and with the ways they interacted. By the fifteenth century, the juxtaposition between the divinely and the demonically possessed had begun to elicit responses: new demonological treatises, manuals of exorcism, and a textual tradition devoted to the discernment of spirits. Yet, the attempt to discern spirits on a purely abstract plane was doomed to failure: ultimately, one could only evaluate exterior signs of comportment, since visions and revelations were private and hence unverifiable. Thus the discernment of spirits eventually was worked out as a discernment of the body: judging the comportment and physical control of the individual became paramount. Sanctity was increasingly associated with incorporeality, while possession became defined by a connection with fallen physicality.