Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: September 11, 2025
They stopped for some time in the outer hall, and before they entered the basilica twenty Christian priests came in with strange gestures and a still stranger chant; these were exorcists, come to bann the evil spirits and daemons that must surely haunt this high place of idolatry and abominations.
They wondered, and not without reason it must be confessed, what had induced the devils to go out of the nuns' bodies for two days only, and then come back and resume possession, to the confusion of the exorcists; further, they wanted to know why the mother superior's devil spoke Latin, while the lay sister's was ignorant of that tongue; for a mere difference of rank in the hierarchy of hell did not seem a sufficient explanation of such a difference in education; Mignon's refusal to go on with his interrogations as to the cause of the enmity made them, they said, suspect that, knowing he had reached the end of Ashtaroth's classical knowledge, he felt it useless to try to continue the dialogue in the Ciceronian idiom.
Be that as it may, the court of high commission got hold of evidence enough to justify the privy council in authorizing a full publication of the testimony. Harsnett was deputed to write the account of the Catholic exorcists which was brought out in 1603 under the title of A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures.
On this point all exorcists and writers on Demonology are agreed; and it is almost invariably recorded that after an apparition of the devil a foul odour of sulphur was left in the cells, even when the Saints had succeeded in dislodging him. "But the essential odour of the devil is amply recorded in the life of Christina of Stumbela.
In times of epidemic the specialists of Wu-ism, who act as seers, soothsayers and exorcists, engage in processions, stripped to the waist, dancing in a frantic, delirious state, covering themselves with blood by means of prick-balls, or with needles thrust through their tongues, or sitting or stretching themselves on nail points or rows of sword edges.
"Secundo: it is forbidden to say, publicly or in private, that the said nuns are not possessed by the Evil Spirit, or to doubt of the power of the exorcists, under pain of a fine of twenty thousand livres, and corporal punishment. "Let the bailiffs and sheriffs obey this. Given the eighteenth of June, in the year of grace 1639."
The young Superior, who was then upon her bed, turned toward the wall to weep, and said in an undertone to Father Barre, 'I can not go on with this, father. I repeated her words aloud, and infuriated all the exorcists; they cried out that I ought to know that there are demons more ignorant than peasants, and said that as to their power and physical strength, it could not be doubted, since the spirits named Gresil des Trones, Aman des Puissance, and Asmodeus, had promised to carry off the calotte of Monsieur de Laubardemont.
"I have heard an English maxim," wrote Colonel De Grapion to his kinsman, "which I would recommend you to put into practice 'Fight the devil with fire." No, he would not recognize devils as belligerents. But if Rome commissioned exorcists, could not he employ one? No, he would not! If his hounds could not catch Bras-Coupé, why, let him go.
You well know that the crown princes are generally the antipodes of those ascendant to the throne. If the ruler has only an enlightened mind, and is free from prejudices, so " "Is his crown prince an obscurer," added quickly the king, "having the more prejudices, and is capable of being ruled by mystics and exorcists. Is not that your meaning?" Count Herzberg nodded.
He recommended, as a remedy for the evil, that all these exorcists, whether lay or clerical, should be sent to the galleys, and that the number of witches would then very sensibly diminish. Many other instances of this lingering belief might be cited both in France and Great Britain, and indeed in every other country in Europe. So deeply rooted are some errors that ages cannot remove them.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking