‘They threw themselves back till their heads touched their feet, and walked in this position with wonderful rapidity, and for a long time. They uttered: cries so horrible and so loud that nothing like it was ever heard before; they made use of expressions so indecent as to shame the most debauched of men, while their acts, both in exposing themselves and inviting lewd behaviour from those present, would have astonished the inmates of the lowest brothel in the country.’
With The History of the Devils of Loudun, VAMzzz Publishing presents a revised edition of the – three volumes in one – original account of this historic case of mass possession. Seventeen Ursuline Nuns were taken over by demons and went into a sexual and blasphemous state of hysteria for years. The work also describes the trial of a womanizing local priest named Father Urbain Grandier, who was accused of summoning these demons by ‘throwing a bunch of roses over the convent wall’. Amidst a web of jealousy and political intrigues, he was eventually convicted of crimes of witchcraft, and burned at the stake on August 18, 1634. Ironically, after this work was first published in France in 1634, and Grandier had died, the possessions of the nuns continued for another three more years…