Judgments sweetened: Possession and exorcism in early modern Jewish culture

Journal of Early Modern History

Volumn 1, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 124-169

  Chajes, J H ^a  

^a YALE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 66149121504     PISSN: 13853783     EISSN: 15700658     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/157006597X00073     Document Type: Review

References (155)

1. Gershom Scholem, "Gilgul: The Transformation of Souls," in On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead, trans. J. Chipman (New York, 1991), 223ff
2. On the notion of 'ibbur in the Zohar (III 57b), Yehudah Liebes, Perakim be-milon ha-zohar [Chapters of a Zohar Dictionary] (Ph.D. Diss., The Hebrew University, 1977), 278
3. The distinction between gilgul and 'ibbur is made by Moshe Cordovero in his Shemu'ah be-'inyan ha-gilgul hakdamah 6: "For gilgul does not only refer to the [incarnation of the soul at the time of a⌋ person's birth, i.e., at the time of his formation, but also after his maturity, he may draw upon himself a gilgul. The sages refer to this as 'ibbur." Moses Cordovero, "Shemu'ah be-'inyan ha-gilgul," in Or yakar (Jerusalem, 1991), vol. 21, 79
4. This distinction is made in Vital's Sha'ar ha-gilgulim in nearly identical language. Hayyim Vital, Sha'ar ha-gilgulim, 15 vols., ed. Y. Z. Brandwein; vol. 10, Kitvei rabenu ha-ari zt"l. (Jerusalem, 1988), 14
5. On Shemu'ah be-'inyan ha-gilgul, Bracha Sack, "Some Remarks on Rabbi Moses Cordovero's Shemu'ah be-'inyan ha-gilgul," in the Altmann Memorial Volume (forthcoming). Sack regards an incident recorded by Cordovero in Sefer gerushin as a case of "a good 'ibbur." In this case, however, the term 'ibbur is not used by Cordovero. Cordovero, Sefer gerushin (Jerusalem, 1962), 11
6. Cf. Cordovero, Tefillah le-moshe, 11 vols. (Przemysl, 1892), vol. 1, 11a
7. Scholem, "'Golem' and 'Dibbuk' in the Hebrew Dictionary," (in Hebrew) Leshonunu 6 (1934): 40-41
8. and "Dibbuk" in Encyclopedia Judaica (Jerusalem, 1972)
9. Gedalyah Nigal, "The Dibbuk in Jewish Mysticism," (in Hebrew) Da'at 4 (1980): 75-100
10. and "Stories of Spirits in Italy in the Eighteenth Century," (in Hebrew) in Fields of Offerings: Studies in Honor of Raphael Patai, ed. V. D. Sanua (London and Toronto, 1983)
11. my review of the second edition (Jerusalem, 1994) in Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 1 (1996): 288-293
12. Yoram Bilu, "The Dibbuk in Judaism: Mental Disorder as Cultural Resource," (in Hebrew) Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 2/4 (1982): 529-563
13. Reprinted in Psychoanalytic Study of Society, vol. 11, ed. Boyer and Grolnick (English version). Cf. I. M. Lewis, Ecstatic Religions: An Anthropological Study of Spirit Possession and Shamanism (London, 1971), who advances similar arguments in his anthropologically-based study of possession
14. Sara Zfatman-Biller, "Exorcisms in Prague in the Seventeenth Century," (in Hebrew) Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore 3 (1982): 7-33
15. and "'Tale of an Exorcism in Koretz' - A New Stage in the Development of a Folk-Literary Genre," (in Hebrew) Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore 2 (1982): 17-65
16. The classic introduction to this field is Stith Thompson, The Folktale (Berkeley, 1977)
17. Cf. David Ruderman's call for a study of possession from a cross-cultural perspective in Kabbalah, Magic, and Science: The Cultural Universe of a Sixteenth-Century Jewish Physician (Cambridge, MA, 1988), 188, n. 46
18. Hugh Trevor-Roper, "The European Witch-craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries," in Religion, the Reformation and Social Change (London, 1984)
19. Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York, 1971)
20. H. C. Erik Midelfort, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 1562-1684: The Social and Intellectual Foundations (Stanford, 1972)
21. e siècle, principalement en Flandre et en Artois," Annales: ESC 28/1 (1973): 264-84
22. e siècle. Une analyse de psychologie historique (Paris, 1980)
23. Giovanni Romeo, Inquisitori, esorcisti, & streghe nell'Italia della contrariform (Florence, 1990)
24. Carlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi (Baltimore, 1983)
25. and Brian Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (London and New York, 1987)
26. A fine survey of the field as it stood at the time is E. William Monter's article "The Historiography of European Witchcraft: Progress and Prospects," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2 (1972): 434-51
27. Anita M. Walker and Edmund H. Dickerman, "'A Woman under the Influence': A Case of Alleged Possession in Sixteenth-Century France," Sixteenth Century Journal 22 (1991): 535-554
28. D. P. Walker, Unclean Spirits: Possession and Exorcism in France and England in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries (Philadelphia, 1981), 1, 8ff
29. and G. L'Estrange Ewen, Witchcraft and Demonianism (London, 1933), 169-73, 176-81). This assumption was not shared by Jews, for reasons to be made clear below
30. Midelfort, "The Devil and the German People: Reflections on the Popularity of Demon Possession in Sixteenth-Century Germany," Religion and Culture in the Renaissance and Reformation, Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies 11 (1989): 101, 107
31. Walker, Unclean Spirits, 3-5, 68
32. , e.g. Bamidbar Rabbah 19/Tanhcombining dot belowuma Hcombining dot belowukkat (§26 in Buber ed.). Cf. Josephus Ant. Jud. 8.42-49
33. also W. L. Knox, "Jewish Liturgical Exorcism," Harvard Theological Review 31/3 (1938): 191-203, for a discussion of a fourth-century Jewish exorcism manual
34. Cf. Bilu, "The Taming of the Deviants and Beyond: An Analysis of Dibbuk Possession and Exorcism in Judaism," in Psychoanalytic Study of Society, 20
35. Eliezer Ashkenazi, Ma'asei ha-shem [Acts of the Lord] (Venice, 1583), 5a
36. also Meir Benayahu, Toledot ha-ari (Jerusalem, 1967), 105, n. 3, on the circumstances surrounding Ashkenazi's receipt of the broadsheet
37. That such stories were published early as broadsheets was established by Benayahu. Benayahu, Toledot ha-ari, 47 and 104, n. 6
38. It is possible, though unlikely, that the printing could have been accomplished in Safed, as the earliest printing press in Safed - in the entire region - was founded in 1577. A. Yaari, Ha-defus ha-'ivri be-arzcombining dot belowot ha-mizrahcombining dot below [Hebrew Printing in the East], 2 vols. (Jerusalem, 1936), vol. 1, 10
39. On Hebrew printing in the period, Mordechai Glatzer, "Early Hebrew Printing," in A Sign and a Witness: 2000 Years of Hebrew Books and Illuminated Manuscripts, ed. Leonard Singer Gold (New York, 1988), 80-91
40. Moshe N. Rosenfeld, "The Development of Hebrew Printing in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries," in A Sign and a Witness, 92-100
41. Benayahu, "The Book 'Shushan Yesod Ha-'olam' by Rabbi Joseph Tirshom," [ms. Sassoon 290] (in Hebrew) in Temirin, ed. I. Weinstock (Jerusalem, 1972)
42. A recent article that makes use of ms. Sassoon 290 is Claudia Rohrbacher-Sticker, "From Sense to Nonsense, from Incantation Prayer to Magical Spell," Jewish Studies Quarterly 3/1 (1996): 24-46
43. The article by Byron L. Sherwin, "The Exorcist's Role in Jewish Tradition," Occult: New Dimensions of Life in the Field of Psychic Phenomena (1975), does not approach the subject comparatively, and suffers from serious mistranslations
44. Scholem, Kabbalah (New York, 1974), 424-25
45. On the history of the relationship between epilepsy and possession, Owsei Temkin, The Falling Sickness, 2nd ed. (Baltimore, 1971), 86ff., 138ff
46. and Walker, Unclean Spirits, 11
47. Vital, Sha'ar ruahcombining dot below ha-kodesh, 88
48. Vital, Sha'ar ha-gigulim [hakdamah], 22, 58
49. Saul Lieberman, Shkiin: A Few Words on Some Jewish Legends, Customs, and Literary Sources Found in Karaite and Christian Works (Jerusalem, 1939), 33-42
50. The third chapter of Seder 'olam, a talmudic era midrashic-chronological work, asserts that the worst sinners do not leave Gehennom after twelve months, but remain there forever. Chaim Minkowsky, "Gehenna and 'Sinners of Israel' in the Light of Seder Olam," (in Hebrew) Tarbiz 55/3 (1986): 311-44
51. Cf. D. Cohn-Sherbrook, "The Jewish Doctrine of Hell," Religion 8 (1978): 196-209
52. For Jewish appropriation of the term "purgatory" to describe the nature of transmigration into animal bodies, Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic, and Science, 135-37
53. Ashkenazai, Ma'asei ha-shem, 5b
54. There are, however, sources that view the state of possession as a further aspect of the disembodied soul's punishment, understanding it as a particularly awful variety of imprisonment. , for example, Ibn Yahia, Shalshelet ha-kabbalah, 86b
55. Cf. Zohar I, 14b. This idea is also expressed in the Sefer hacombining dot belowsidim (Book of the Pious), §1170 (Margoliot edition)
56. Melila Hellner, "Transmigration of Souls in the Kabbalistic Writings of R. David ibn Zimra," (in Hebrew) Pe'amim 43 (1990): 16-50
57. and Scholem, "Regarding the Knowledge of the Kabbalah in Spain on the Eve of the Expulsion," (in Hebrew) Tarbiz 24 (1955): 167-206
58. Girolamo Menghi, Flagellum Daemonum (Bologna, 1586), 406-8
59. Souls of the dead did, however, wander the earth. Many claimed to them, and in a number of cases these souls were believed to be possessing agents until Church authorities stepped in to suppress this heretical identification. , for example, William A. Christian, Jr., Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain (Princeton, NJ, 1981), 6-7
60. Midelfort, "The Devil and the German People," 112
61. Cf. Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition, 58-59
62. Ben Israel, Nishmat hcombining dot belowayyim, 110a
63. Translation R.J. Zwi Werblowsky, Joseph Karo: Lawyer and Mystic, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, 1977), 81
64. Cf. Scholem "The Maggid of R. Yosef Taitazak [Taytaczack] and the Revelations Attributed to Him," (in Hebrew) in Sefunoth, ed. M. Benayahu (Jerusalem, 1971-78), 71-72
65. For the story as preserved in Vital's autograph, which differs in details from the version cited here, Vital, Sefer ha-hcombining dot belowezyonot (Book of Visions), ed. A. Z. Aescoly (Jerusalem, 1954), 19-36
66. also Michal Oron, "Dream, Vision and Reality in the Book of Visions by Hayyim Vital," (in Hebrew) Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 10 (1992): 307-08
67. Ta'alumot hcombining dot belowokhmah, 50a
68. Cited by Lea, Materials, 1062
69. T. Schrire, Hebrew Amulets: Their Decipherment and Interpretation (London, 1966), 97-98
70. L. H. Schiffman, "A Forty-two Letter Divine Name in the Aramaic Magic Bowls," Bulletin of the Institute for Jewish Studies 1 (1973): 97-102
71. Yakov Urbach, "On the Matter of the 42-letter Name," (in Hebrew) Mahcombining dot belowanayim 6 (1993): 238-40
72. On KR'A STN, Zohar II, 160a
73. Cordovero, Pardes Rimonim [Orchard of Pomegranites] (Munkacz, 1906, rpr. Jerusalem, 1962), 102c-103b
74. Elliot R. Wolfson, "Erasing the Erasure/Gender and the Writing of God's Body in Kabbalistic Symbolism," in Circle in the Square: Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolism (Albany, NY, 1995), 49-78, esp. 61
75. Idel, "Abulafia's Theory of Language," in Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics in Abraham Abulafia (Albany, NY, 1989), 1-28, esp. 7-8
76. especially Vital, Sha'ar ha-gilgulim
77. Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science VI (New York, 1923-58), 533
78. Nancy Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago, 1981)
79. James Bono, "Medical Spirits and the Medieval Language of Life," Traditio 40 (1984): 91-130, esp. 114 and 124
80. Marie-Christine Pouchelle, The Body and Surgery in the Middle Ages; trans. R. Morris (New Brunswick, NY, 1990), 119-120
81. Good possession was rejected by Christian theorists, who preferred to view such cases as deceptions - the devil disguised as an angel of light. Individuals who believed themselves to be possessed by a divine, holy spirit, were subjected to lengthy interrogations designed invariably to promote an "admission" that in fact, a devil and not an angel was at work. Walker, Unclean Spirits, 22, 55-56
82. During the Interregnum in England, good possession became viable and popular. Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down (London, 1972), 223-30
83. Lea, Materials, 1051
84. Lieberman, Texts and Studies, 24
85. E.g., Ibn Yahia's usage,. Ibn Yahia, Shalshelet ha-kabbalah, 86b
86. Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 61a
87. Vital, Sha'ar ha-gilgulim (1875), 89
88. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 190-91
89. Cf. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York, 1970)
90. On soul families and the notion that only "related" souls can assist one another in their spiritual development, Scholem, "Gilgul: The Transformation of Souls," 234
91. Sha'ar ha-gilgulim (1875), part II, 29b
92. Cf. Ben Israel, Nishmat hcombining dot belowayyim, 109a
93. Benayahu Toledot ha-ari, 296, n. 1
94. Valerio Polidoro, "Practica exorcistarum ad daemones et maleficia de Christi fidelibus pellendom" (Padua, 1582), ch. 10, fol. 9, in Thesaurus Exorcismorum (Cologne, 1626), 11-12
95. Rituale Romanum, Pauli V Pontificis Maximi Jussu Editum (Rome, 1665), 411-12
96. Moshe Zacuto, Iggerot ha-remez (Livorno, 1780), 2a-b
97. e siècle: Une analyse de psychologie historique (Paris, 1968)
98. also Giovanna Romeo, Inquisitori, esorcisti e streghe nell'Italia della controriforma (Florence, 1990)
99. and Temken, The Falling Sickness. Sources from Sophocles, Philostratus, the New Testament, and the Greek Magical Papyri routinely conflate natural illnesses, such as fevers, with demonic possession
100. Sophocles, Philoctetes, 758ff
101. also the discussion in Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician (New York, 1978), 106-107; 195-96. Of course, in addition to the possibility that a mingly possessed person was naturally ill, there was always the possibility of fraud. Much of the interrogation we find in possession stories ms designed to uncover fraud, however haplessly from our vantage point
102. and Clarke Garrett, "Women and Witches: Patterns of Analysis," in Witchcraft, Women and Society, ed. B. P. Levack (New York and London, 1992)
103. On the authority of demonologists in this period, Anglo, "Evident Authority and Authoritative Evidence: The Malleus Maleficarum," in The Damned Art: Essays in the Literature of Witchcraft (London, 1977)
104. and Clark, "The Scientific Status of Demonology."
105. Lewis, Ecstatic Religions
106. the many references to incense in Idel, "Investigations in the Methodology of the Author of 'Sefer ha-meshiv'," (in Hebrew) Sefunot 2/27 (1983): 185-266
107. Bos, "Hcombining dot belowayyim Vital's 'Practical Kabbalah and Alchemy'."
108. Scholem, "'Havdalah d'r. akivah' - Source for the Jewish Magical Tradition in the Geonic Period," (in Hebrew) Tarbiz 50 (1980-81): 243
109. Anti-demonic use of the psalm is also found in Qumran literature. Bilha Nitzan, "Hymns from Qumran 'to Frighten and to Terrify' Evil Ghosts [510 4Q,-511 4Q]," (in Hebrew) Tarbriz 54/1 (1985): 19-46
110. and Israel Ta-Shma, "Notes to Hymns from Qumran," (in Hebrew) Tarbriz 54/3 (1986): 440-442
111. Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 67b
112. E.g., Jewish exorcisms employing the Shofar (ram's horn), Catholic exorcisms the sacraments. note 137 below
113. Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, vol. 8, 557. Cf. Jesus's demand that a possessing demon reveal his name in Mark 5, 9
114. For the prescription of suffumigations in exorcism manuals, Thesaurus Exorcismorum, 417
115. Lea, Materials, 1054, 1061
116. Lea, Materials, 1059-60, 1065
117. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 281
118. Cf. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, 46
119. Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic, and Science, 129. Ruderman accepts Scholem's characterization of the non-Jewish social and cultural environment as not accepting the doctrine of transmigration (128), yet his discussion ms to suggest that the non-Jewish figures whom he studied specifically rejected transmigration into animal bodies
120. Walker, Unclean Spirits, 24, 76-77
121. , e.g., Ben Israel, Nishat hcombining dot belowayyim, 111b
122. Midelfort, "The Devil and the German People," 113
123. Cf. Lewis, "Spirit Possession and Deprivation Cults," Man 1 (1966): 307-329
124. and C. Harris, "Possession Hysteria in a Kenyan Tribe," American Anthropologist 59/6 (1957): 1046-1066
125. The early modern French historian Moshe Sluhovsky has recently suggested that "social deprivation" is inadequate to account for the predominance of women among the possessed. Instead, he argues that greater attention ought to be paid to "personal psychopathological dynamics," which underlie an "outburst of this unique behavior." Sluhovsky isolates "the possessed women's sexual anxieties" as the most significant element at work. The unpublished paper of Moshe Sluhovsky has now appeared as M. Sluhovsky, "A Divine Apparition or Demonic Possession? Female Agency and Church Authority in Demonic Possession in Sixteenth Century France," in: Sixteenth Century Journal 27.4 (1995): 1036-1052. My thanks to Prof. Sluhovsky for sharing his article with me before its publication
126. "Exorcism of the possessed should always be in a church or other sacred edifice, and never in a private house unless absolutely necessary." Lea, Materials, 1064
127. also the discussion and bibliography in Stephen Greenblatt, "Shakespeare and the Exorcists," in Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (Oxford, 1988), 9; 185, n. 6
128. Midelfort, "The Devil and the German People," 118
129. Scholem, Sabbatai sevi, 19
130. Ze'ev Gries, Conduct Literature (Regimen Vitae): Its History and Place in the Lives of Beshtian Hasidim (in Hebrew); (Jerusalem, 1989)
131. Idel, "One in a Town and Two in a Family: A New Look at the Problem of the Diffusion of Lurianic Kabbalah" (in Hebrew) Peamim 44 (1990): 5-30
132. Gregory Hanlon and Geoffrey Snow, "Exorcisms et cosmologie tridentine: trois cas agenais en 1619," Revue de la Bibliothèque Nationale 28 (1988): 12-27
133. Ottavia Niccoli, "Awaiting a new Octavian," in Prophecy and People in Renaissance Italy (Princeton, 1990)
134. Jonathan L. Pearl, "Demons and Politics in France, 1560-1630," Historical Reflections 12/2 (1985): 241-251
135. and "'A School for Rebel Soul': Politics and Demonic Possession in France," Historical Reflections 16/2-3 (1989): 286-306
136. Phillip M. Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints: Counter-Reformation Propaganda in Bavaria (Berkeley and London, 1993), 99-158
137. e siècles)
138. Actes du les Colloque Jean Boisset (Montpellier, 1980), 45-60
139. and "Demonic Possession Used as Propaganda," 237-248
140. and Henri Weber, "L'Exorcisme à la fin du, instrument de la Contre Réforme et spectacle baroque," Nouvelle Revue du seizième siècle 1 (1983): 79-101
141. Stuart Clark, "The Scientific Status of Demonology," in Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance (Cambridge, 1984), 351-374
142. Midelfort, "The Devil and the German People," 111
143. John Darrel, ed. The Traill of Maist. Dorrell, or A Collection of Defences against Allegations not yet suffered to receive convenient answers (1659), 8
144. and Greenblatt, "Shakespeare and the Exorcists," 104
145. Benayahu Toledot ha-ari, 195-196
146. Joseph Jozpeh, Yosef omezcombining dot below (Frankfurt am Main, 1723), 173-174. Jospeh learned this story from a letter he received from Shlumil Prosnitz
147. E. Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy: Rabbi Moses Hagiz and the Sabbatian Controversies (New York, 1990), 257
148. Idel, "Investigations in the Methodology of the Author of 'Sefer ha-meshiv'"
149. Ronit Meroz, "From the Compilation of Ephraim Penzieri: The Ari's Homily in Jerusalem and the Intentions for Eating," (in Hebrew) in Mehkerei Yerushalayim be-Mahshevet Yisrael, ed. R. Elior and Y. Liebes (Jerusalem, 1992): 211-257
150. S. Pines, "Le Sefer Ha-Tamar et les Maggidim des Kabbalistes," in Hommage à Georges Vajda - Études d'histoire et de pensée juives, ed. G. Nahon and C. Touati (Louvain, 1980)
151. Scholem, "The Maggid of R. Joseph Taitazak and the Revelations Attributed to Him," (in Hebrew) in Sefunot 11 (1971-78): 69-112
152. and Isaiah Tishby, "The First Sabbatian 'Maggid' in the Study House of R. Avraham Revigo," (in Hebrew) in Netivei emunah u-minut [Pathways in Faith and Heresy] (Ramat Gan, 1964)
153. Idel, "Investigations in the Methodology of the Author of 'Sefer ha-meshiv'" 224
154. Idel, "R. Yehudeah Hcombining dot belowallewa and his 'Zcombining dot belowfenat pa'aneah'," (in Hebrew) in Shalem: Studies in the History of the Jews in Eretz-Israel, ed. J. Hacker (Jerusalem, 1984), 122-124
155. and Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy, 195-255