“Moshe Sluhovsky’s fascinating study links spirit possession, exorcism, and mystical practice in early modern Europe. Women and men, healers and priestly exorcisers are caught up in a new quest for truth and introspection as they try to figure out whether these dramas of body and soul come from the devil or God. A stunning feat of scholarship and interpretation.”—Natalie Zemon Davis, University of Toronto
(Natalie Zemon Davis 20060926)
“Believe Not Every Spirit achieves something very rare—it gives entirely new shape to a vast historical subject. Encompassing the spiritual and physical dimensions of Catholic religiosity and the divine and diabolic causalities at work in both, it reinterprets the myriad experiences and beliefs of visionaries, mystics, demoniacs, exorcists, and inquisitors over three centuries. The key to Moshe Sluhovsky’s ambitious and compelling argument is the concept of the discernment of spirits, in his hands both a sophisticated hermeneutics for the reading of religious texts and arguments and a key to understanding the lives of individual men and women in states of possession. This is a sensitive, compassionate, and profoundly original book.”—Stuart Clark, University of Wales, Swansea
(Stuart Clark )
“Believe Not Every Spirit offers a new and fruitful approach to the problem of spirit possession in early modern Europe. While a number of historians have written about the dramatic cases of demonic possession that troubled European convents, none has addressed why, between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, the diagnosis of demonic possession was attached with increasing frequency to spiritually minded women. This is the problem that Moshe Sluhovsky takes up, and he does so with great success.”—Barbara Diefendorf, Boston University
(Barbara Diefendorf )
"This is a very scholarly book. It is a model of how an important element of a religious tradition needs to be examined. It is highly recommended not only for its content but also for its method."—Lucien J. Richard, Catholic Library World
(Lucien J. Richard
Catholic Library World )
"This study of mysticism and possession in early modern Europe is a model of scrupulous scholarship, not only on account of its detailed scrutiny of a very complex historical literature in half a dozen languages, but on account of its refusal to apply reductive frameworks at the expense of the integrity of the data."—David Martin, Books and Culture
(Daid Martin
Books and Culture )
"Sluhovsky has written an excellent study of possession and mysticism in early modern European Catholicism. His elegantly written and clearly argued book . . . points scholars in some new directions in understanding the meaning of demonic possession."—Marc R. Foster, H-Net
(Marc R. Forster
H-Net )
"A sprawling, energetic, deeply researched book, one that glides happily to and fro among salacious tidbits and big historiographical assertions. . . . One of the book''s major objectives, thoroughly achieved, is to persuade us that early modern people widely if not uniformly accepted spirits, good and evil, as routine participants in their daily lives. . . . The entire book merits close reading by a wide audience interested in the history of Western Christianity."—American Academy of Religion Book Reviews
(Rudolph M. Bell
AAR Book Reviews )
"An exceptional piece of historical scholarship and highly recommended for historians of early modern Catholicism."
(Robert Fastiggi
The Historian )
"Highly recommended for researchers of French and Roman early modern Catholic demonology."
(Gordon James Klingenschmitt
Religious Studies Review )
"Any short summary can give only a limited account of the argument presented in this well-documented, rigorously historicized, ambitious, and thought-provoking contribution to the cultural history of antinomian spirituality."
(Susan Rosa
Journal of Modern History )
"A highly stimulating and enjoyable read. Extensively researched, clearly written, and carefully argued, Believe Not Every Spirit is the definitive study of early modern possession and discernment."—Nancy Caciola, Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft
(Nancy Caciola
Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft )
