The possessions at Loudun

摘要

The best-known case of possession in Western European history took place in the French town of Loudun, 20 kilometres west of Richelieu and 60 kilometres west of La Haye, the birthplace of Descartes. In 1631 Cardinal Richelieu received royal permission to construct the town that still bears his name as a monument to his own power. In 1633, in voluntary exile, Descartes suppressed publication of his treatise Le Monde after learning of the trial of Galileo. From 1632 to 1638, Loudun was the unlikely epicentre of a collective crisis; it became the stage for a case of demonic possession that drew crowds from all over Europe. These three events together defined a Zeitgeist and prefigured the direction in which the Western science of mind would be carried.