Exorcism as Empowerment: A New Idiom

During the years 1610 and 1611, two Ursuline novices underwent an exorcism in southern France. In the spring of 1611, their confessor, Father Louis Gaufridy, was condemned of witchcraft and rape by Dominican inquisitors, and burned at the stake by state officials. The Dominican inquisitors found Father Gaufridy guilty of causing the Ursulines to be possessed by demons, and luring the young women to caves where they participated in illicit activities. Rather than accepting the role of victim, the Ursulines, working in collusion, accomplished the miraculous: public exoneration, and reintegration into their religious community accompanied not only by a reclaimed stature as women religious, but by an elevated stature. Through an intricate play of accusation and expiation, carefully worked through the demons that possessed them, the Ursuline novices reconstructed themselves as virtuous women religious.