Demonic Possession

[Ready for Fall 2026]

Modified: 2026-08-04 9:47 AM CDST

• In the late Middle Ages, a Christian form of demonic possession theory took hold.
  • The devil was assumed to possess individuals, either with or without the victim's consent.
    • Eventually, the Catholic Church established a system, called the Inquisition, that tried, convicted, and executed the possessed.
• Possession could be implicit or involuntary, and in such cases God was punishing people for their sins.
• Possession could also be explicit or voluntary.
  • Here people entered into pacts with the devil, usually trading earthly gains for the price of their souls.
• The theme of such possession has a long literary history, from Faust on.
  • Modern literature and even popular music still echo that theme as in the Charlie Daniels hit, "The devil went down to Georgia (looking for a soul to steal ....)."
  • In that song, the country-boy fiddler outwits the devil, but in the Middle Ages the inquisitor usually won.
• Goldiamond (personal communication) stated that as many as a million or more may have been executed by inquisitors over a period of many years.
  • However, other estimates are much lower.
  • He further argued that the Inquisition yielded the Church much property and goods from the estates of the victims, especially in continental Europe.
  • In the British Isles, many fewer were tried as witches.
  • Goldiamond attributed the difference to the English system of law, where defendants were innocent until proven guilty (as in the system in the USA).
  • However, most continental countries had legal systems where defendants had to prove their innocence.

• Malleus Malificarum, or Hammer for Witches, was the first "handbook" of clinical psychology, in a perverse way.
  • It was written by two Austrian monks, and it specified how to identify and deal with the possessed.
    • Some of its "treatments" included burning at the stake and dismemberment (being pulled apart by having horses attached to each limb, for instance).
    • Even colonial America was not immune.
    • The famous Salem witch trials were an example of a similar way of dealing with abnormal behavior.
• Abnormal behavior shows historically based symptoms.
  • For example, in the Middle Ages, whole villages would be affected by mass hysteria in the form of dancing sickness.
  • The villagers would dance themselves into exhaustion over a period of several days.
  • The Italian song, "La tarantella," is an example of the music that inspired such behavior.
• Before you think that such episodes are past us, they are not.
  • You may read about or see on the TV news stories about all of the workers in an entire building falling sick at the same time.
  • Very often, no physical cause for the illness can be ascertained.
  • Those instances may be examples of modern mass hysteria.

• Malleus Malificarum-
  • Contains substantial portion in English translation of the book of the same title used to identify and condemn witches (the insane) during the Middle Ages and beyond.

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