Demonic Possession and the Practice of Exorcism: An exploration of the Franciscan legacy

Early 2018, while trying to address one of the many deficiencies in the Franciscan Authors internet catalogue,² my attention was drawn towards a peculiar English study and source translation of the Flagellum daemonum, a treatise written by the sixteenth-century Observant Franciscan Girolamo Menghi.³ Almost immediately afterwards, I came across a German translation of and commentary on both the Flagellum daemonum and the Fustis daemonum by the same author.⁴ According to the makers of these modern translations, they aim to make the works of one of Europe's most famous sixteenth-century exorcists and possibly the most successful writer of exorcism manuals who ever existed, available for a wider scholarly audience.

Looking for corroboration of this verdict in a number of modern studies on demonic possession and exorcism, it quickly became apparent that Girolamo Menghi figures prominently in the present-day scholarly discourse on the development of exorcism and demonology during the late medieval, renaissance and early modern period.⁵ Moreover, alongside of Menghi, in this discourse figure several other Franciscan demonologists and exorcists active in different periods, who together produced a significant body of texts devoted to exorcisms and related issues.

Trying to put these matters into perspective, I came across a recent doctoral thesis, which was issued as a book early 2018, namely Jean-Baptiste Golfier's Tactiques du diable et délivrances. Dieu faitil concourir les demons au salut des hommes?.⁶ This book seems to make a modern theological case for the presence of the devil as an instigator of evil, and for the creation of a diagnostic theology of diabolical action. Yet it also contains a historical analysis of theological demonological thought, as well as an evaluation of existing spiritual and ecclesiastical remedies against diabolical activities, with recourse to the Catholic theological tradition. Both the historical analysis and the evaluation of existing spiritual and ecclesiastical remedies concentrate heavily, as is so often the case, on the writings of Thomas Aquinas, which Golfier presents as the pinnacle of mature scholastic theological reflection on this particular topic, and uses as the background to his own theological demonological reflections. However, Golfier's book at the same time contains specific statements with regard to the role of Franciscan theological thought in the development of Catholic demonology and therewith in the transformation of the art of exorcism, and of the persecution of witchcraft as a form of alliance with diabolic power in the late medieval and early modern period.

Following the lead of the French intellectual historian Alain Boureau,⁷ Golfier suggests that the 1277 condemnations of theological positions of Thomas Aquinas would in due course have meant a revival of Franciscan voluntarist theological thought, which curbed Aristotelian naturalism, and emphasized both God's freedom and the contingent status of creation. And in this process, the Thomist 'verrous spéculatifs' that would have bound demonic agency would have sprung, opening up pathways to a far more fear-ridden world view, in which the devil and his underlings were thought to have much more power to wreak havoc on mankind:

La paranoïa collective, que la chrétienté allait vivre peu après, n'aurait plus disposé du gardefou thomasien, équilibre manifestant la puissance du démon tout autant que sa place mineure et soumise dans le gouvernement divin.⁸

Hence, a less-reasonable and less-equilibrated scholastic demonology would have emerged as the long-term effect of Franciscan theological thought, connected with the opposition to Thomistic positions in the writings of Guillaume de la Mare, Pietro of Giovanni Olivi, Pierre d'Aureole, John Duns Scotus, Durand of Saint-Pourçain, William of Ockham and Enrico of Carretto (known for his advice to Pope John XXII with regard to inquisitorial jurisdiction in matters of sorcery). Over time, this would have bolstered the witch craze of the renaissance, the ubiquitous presence of the devil, demoniacs, and hence the concomitant need for exorcism, as well as an active persecution of witchcraft and sorcery. Both Golfier and Boureau, in particular, single out Olivi's nine questions on demons...