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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Alternative belief systems > Contemporary non-Christian & para-Christian cults & sects > Spiritualism
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Discerning Spirits - Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages (Hardcover, illustrated edition)
Loot Price: R1,898
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Discerning Spirits - Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages (Hardcover, illustrated edition)
Series: Conjunctions of Religion & Power in the Medieval Past S.
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
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Trance states, prophesying, convulsions, fasting and other physical
manifestations were often regarded as signs that a person was
seized by spirits. In a book that sets out the pre-history of the
early modern European witch craze, Nancy Caciola shows how medieval
people decided whom to venerate as a saint infused with the spirit
of God and whom to avoid as a demoniac possessed of an unclean
spirit. This process of discrimination, known as the discernment of
spirits, was central to the religious culture of Western Europe
between 1200 and 1500. indistinguishable, a highly ambiguous set of
bodily features and behaviours were carefully scrutinized by
observers. Attempts to make decisions about individuals who
exhibited supernatural powers were complicated by the fact that the
most intense exemplars of lay spirituality were women, and the
fragile sex was deemed especially vulnerable to the snares of the
devil. Assessments of women's spirit possessions often oscillated
between divine and demonic interpretations. Ultimately, although a
few late medieval women visionaries achieved the prestige of
canonization, many more were accused of possession by demons.
Caciola analyzes a broad array of sources from saints' lives to
medical treatises, exorcists' manuals to miracle accounts, to find
that observers came to rely on the discernment of bodies rather
than seeking to distinguish between divine and demonic possession
in purely spiritual terms.
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