A Case of Witchcraft: The Trial of Urbain Grandier by Robert Rapley (review)

370 letters in canada 1999 to the congregation, is given special treatment as a subsection under baptism. It shares with baptism the function of `postnatal cleansing,' though in churching it is not the child but the mother who is purified. Hodgson cites the relevant Old Testament decree (Leviticus 12:2B7), and notices how it is echoed in Roman Catholic liturgies, such as the Sarum missal. In the Catholic ritual, the mother would return to the priest thèchrism' (also `chrisom' and `chrisom-cloth'), the white robe in which her child was baptised, and which would have been its shroud had the infant died in its first month. The ceremony is reinflected by the Book of Common Prayer as an offering of thanksgiving to God for delivering the mother from the perils of pregnancy and childbirth; in Ecclesiastical Polity Hooker explicitly denies that churching has anything to do with the (false) belief that a woman is `unholie' during her confinement. Within this cultural context Hodgson reads the rhetoric of several sermons, such as that`Preached at Essex house, at the Churching of the Lady Doncaster.' The conclusion she reaches is both predictable and, in my view, unearned by anything Donne has said: `In this sermon, then, Donne creates the strongest case for his own authority when he considers the pervasive presence of sinful female fleshliness.' Here Hodgson comes perilously close to implying that, in his sermons, Donne could have said anything he liked, thus liberating himself with spectacular ease both from his own priestly vocation and from sixteen hundred years of Christian tradition. The careful scholarship by means of which Hodgson herself has traced the history of churching would of course suggest the contrary. There is a great deal to admire here, both in the scholarly contexture of the project and in specific critical readings: the interpretations of the Somerset epithalamium, of `Show Me Dear Christ,' and of `Death Be Not Proud' are especially persuasive. The writing is always lucid and intelligent . But there seem to me three discursive registers in this book: that of cultural history (as in the discussion of churching), that of critical explication (of particular poems and prose texts by Donne), and that of feminist critique (in the manner of Jean E. Howard, Katherine Eisaman Maus, Mary Nyquist, and Valerie Traub, for example, all of whom are cited with approval). These registers interanimate one another, sometimes in highly pleasing ways; but if the author's project had been fully realized, they wouldn't have struck me as separable at all. (RONALD HUEBERT) Robert Rapley. A Case of Witchcraft: The Trial of Urbain Grandier McGill-Queen's University Press 1998. x, 278. $29.95 A Case of Witchcraft tells the extraordinary story of the career of Urbain Grandier, executed for witchcraft in Loudun, a small city in central France, in 1634. Grandier, priest at Loudun's biggest church, spent several years before his death embroiled in bitter struggles with a faction of the local humanities 371 elite. This was probably the result of his having impregnated the daughter of a well-connected dignitary who had been his good friend. When, in September of 1632, several nuns at the Ursuline convent in Loudun suffered hallucinations which came to be interpreted as demonic possession, Grandier was accused of being the witch who caused the possession. His enemies formed a tight cabal against him, and with the backing of Cardinal Richelieu, who had his own grievances against him, a special commissioner was appointed to conduct an investigation and trial that would guarantee Grandier's death. Robert Rapley tells this complex tale very well. He keeps the details of the case and the many individuals who participated in it clearly defined. This is a complicated story, involving many political, religious, and legal issues and many people, and Rapley does an excellent job of telling it. Even though, from the first page, we know what the outcome is to be, the story is moving and full of suspense. Grandier was a deeply flawed person, who does not really function as a hero or martyr. But there is little doubt that he was railroaded to a penalty far in excess of what he may...