The Scourge of Demons: Possession, Lust and Witchcraft in a Seventeenth-Century Italian Convent. By Jeffrey R. Watt. Changing Perspectives on Early Modern Europe 12. Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2009. xii+300 pp. $75.00 cloth.

摘要

Reviewing books of our colleagues with whom we toil in the field is a task wernshare and take on for the sake of collegiality. It can be onerous, rewarding,rnfrustrating, and downright boring. But when one reviews a book such asrnJeffrey Watt’s absorbing, illuminating, and scholarly examination ofpossession among the nuns of the convent of the Clarisse’s in seventeenthrncentury Carpi one feels rewarded. Watt’s book is enlightening, insightful,rnand compelling. This is a book by an accomplished scholar and storyteller.