The Scourge of Demons: Possession, Lust and Witchcraft in a Seventeenth-Century Italian Convent (review)

[Correction ]

With this solid monograph, the first English-language study of an outbreak of demonic possession in an early modern Italian convent, Watt joins a select group of early modern scholars who have moved south in mid-career from Protestant Switzerland into Catholic Mediterranean Europe (I know of none who has gone in the other direction). His work enriches current knowledge about episodes of demonic possession in seventeenth-century female convents and illustrates the a priori skepticism of the Roman Inquisition about charges of witchcraft stemming from exorcisms, but without significantly altering our general picture of either.

In brief, this is a tale of less-than-irresistible force—spectacular misbehavior by a dozen Franciscan nuns, fanned by a retired duke turned monk—eventually being stifled by an immovable object, the Roman Holy Office. The outbreak occurred at Carpi in the late 1630s at a large and prestigious Franciscan convent in the Duchy of Modena just after the widely reported possessions at the French Ursuline convent of Loudun had finally dwindled. Loudun was a tragedy; Italian-style possession came closer to farce. Instead of being judicially murdered, Carpi's principal suspect was never arrested. Loudun's possessed nuns produced spectacular obscenities; those at Carpi performed their acrobatics demurely. Loudun produced three written pacts with the Devil; Carpi, only a few rumors. The one major similarity was that both were finally ended by Jesuit troubleshooters, who gradually managed to quiet these scandalous disturbances after quarantining the most energetic demoniacs.

Watt follows the fashion of establishing agency among Carpi's possessed nuns, but he does not delve deeply into the most interesting problem emerging from his careful reconstruction—the collective (and largely successful) vigilante justice practiced by the principal "possessed" nuns against Dealta Martinelli, a nonconformist colleague whom they held responsible for their sufferings. There were actually two attacks on Martinelli—the first being at a major festival in April 1638, when between four and eight of them physically attacked her and no one came to her defense (61–63). Local authorities promptly isolated Sister Dealta from her community, but Rome prevented them from arresting her. From the viewpoint of the possessed, this at least partly successful action foreshadowed the most psychologically and culturally significant episode in Watt's story, which occurred only two days after Dealta's release in October 1638 (149–156).

Although male clergy watched constantly, and the remaining nuns made few efforts to intervene, five of the most determined demonically possessed nuns carried out a day-long kidnapping of sister Dealta. Eyewitnesses reported that all five went thirty-seven hours without eating or drinking and that four of them remained standing for twenty-three hours, while at one point their hostage ate two hard-boiled eggs. This extreme and relentless harassment ultimately overcame the resistance of a woman who had shown no sign of guilt during their previous attack; Deata finally made a public confession. Since the Roman Inquisition never contemplated charging her with witchcraft, it could ensure her physical safety only by transferring her to another convent in a different city.

Carpi experienced no aftershocks. Between 1649 and 1657, two of the five exorcists involved in this affair became confessors at Santa Chaira; between 1665 and 1681, four formerly "possessed" nuns became its abbesses (212, 213). Seven Clarisses still live there today.