October 6, 2025 • 35 mins
In 17th century France a group of nuns described some unsettling visitations at their convent, which developed into a story of possession, political intrigue, and a moment in time that was rife with social tensions.
Research:
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Wars of Religion". Encyclopedia Britannica, 11 Mar. 2025, https://www.britannica.com/event/Wars-of-Religion
- “Hawthorn.” National Institute of Health. https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/hawthorn
- Cameron, Teagan. “A Diabolical Martyrdom: Urbain Grandier, the Transgressive Outsider, and the Surrogate Victim in The Possession at Loudun.” Constellations. Vol. 13, no. 2. Aug. 2022, doi:10.29173/cons29475
- deCerteau, Michel. “The Possession at Loudun.” University of Chicago Press. 2000.
- Dumas, Alexandre, Pere. “Urbain Grandier – 1634.” 1910. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2746/2746-h/2746-h.html
- Ferber, Sarah. “Demonic Possession and Exorcism in Early Modern France.” Routledge. 2013.
- Hunter, Mary Kate. “Loudun Possessions: Witchcraft Trials at The Jacob Burns Law Library.” Newsletter of the Legal History & Rare Books Special Interest Section of the American Association of Law Libraries. Volume 16 Number 3. Hallowe’en 2010. https://www.aallnet.org/lhrbsis/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/01/lhrb-16-3.pdf
- Huxley, Aldous. “The Devils of Loudun.” London. Chatto & Windus. 1952. Accessed online: https://ia601400.us.archive.org/3/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.469712/2015.469712.The-Devils_text.pdf
- Niau, Des and Edmund Goldsmith (tr.) “The history of the devils of Loudun; the alleged possession of the Ursuline nuns, and the trial and execution of Urbain Grandier, told by an eye-witness.” Edinburgh. Private Printing. 1887. Accessed online: https://archive.org/details/historyofdevilso00desn/page/n31/mode/2up
- Sluhovsky, Moshe. “The Devil in the Convent.” The American Historical Review , Vol. 107, No. 5 (December 2002), pp. 1379-1411. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical Association. https://.www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/532851
- Soth, Amelia. “A Mother Superior’s Demons.” JSTOR Daily. Oct. 31, 2024. https://daily.jstor.org/a-mother-superiors-demons/
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and today's show is
about a famous case of mass possession. The story of
(00:22):
the Loudain possessions in seventeenth century France has kept theologians,
psychology experts, historians and occultists frankly fascinated for four centuries.
And that's because it involves a group of nuns who
described some very unsettling visitations at their convent, and that
developed into a story of possession, political intrigue, and a
(00:44):
moment in time that was just rife with social tension.
So on September twenty second, sixteen thirty two, three nuns
at the Ursuline Convent in Loudon, France, were, according to reports,
visited in the night by what appeared to be a
spirit asking for help. The spirit appeared to each of
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them separately, but in each appearance it was a member
of the clergy. Those three nuns were Jean des Ange,
who was the mother superior, Sister de Colombier persistant, and
a junior member of the order called Sister Marte Sanmonique.
This was the beginning of the most famous possession and
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witchcraft case that France and really most of Europe had
ever experienced. According to the nuns accounts, there were many
other unusual happenings at the convent in the nights that followed.
First there were sounds, they heard voices, but then things escalated. Nuns,
these three and others began to report being hit by
(01:50):
unseen forces. Some of them were stricken with fits of
giggling for no reason. It was just this uncontrollable reaction.
And then they start seeing a skeleton walking through the
convent hallways. Then one night, the Mother Superior was handed
some hawthorns by what appeared to be a spirit hand.
(02:11):
Hawthorns are tart berries that come from a flowering shrub,
like a lot of other plants. This is related to
the rose. Hawthorns have historically been used to treat things
like indigestion, kidney disease, and skin condition, although there's no
solid proof that they help with any of that, and
some hawthorn preparations can be toxic. But for these nuns
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there was another effect, which was convulsions. The behavior of
the nuns also became irrational, and they started to see
a clear image of a particular person they all knew.
I will say for clarity, I never saw a definitive
explanation as to whether they consumed those hawthorns or if
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they sort of were spiritually exposed to hawthorn right. But
to talk about what happened next, we actually have to
put this unique moment in context and talk about some
of the key players in the story. So Luda which
was founded in the eleventh century by Benedictine monks since
about three hundred kilometers southwest of Paris, and in the
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early seventeenth century when this story takes place, it had
been through a lot. It had just been through a
terrifying plague in which three thousand of its residents had died.
There was no way to treat the plague, and many
of the doctors had left. Sometimes this is described as
the doctors abandoning Ludam but they realized they couldn't do anything,
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and they did not want to die and not be
able to help other people. And Huguenot Protestants and Catholics
had also been at odds in the region throughout the
sixteenth century, in what were known as the French Wars
of religion. The Edict of Nant had ended the fighting
in fifteen ninety eight, and it had established religious tall
on paper, but there was still friction and mistrust between
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those factions. In the more acute sense. Under King Louis
the Third, the French government wanted to tear down the
walls that surrounded the city of Loudon as a way
to make it less isolated and to bring it into
the greater fold of French centralized government. The Catholic population
of the town was all for this, but the Huguenot
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Protestants saw it as a way to ensure that Catholicism,
which was the national religion, dominated their day to day lives.
Next we introduce Urban Grandier. Grandio was born in Buier, France,
in fifteen ninety. According to a biography about him written
by Alexandre duma Perire, he was educated by his father,
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Pierre Grandier and his uncle Claude Grandier. Education was in
the sciences. At twelve he entered the Jesuit College at Bordeaux,
and he did really well in school. He was a
good speaker, he had natural charm, and his teachers really
loved him. It was also there that he became strongly
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encouraged to put his natural gifts to work with the church,
and he did so. In sixteen seventeen, Grandier was made
priest of the parish at Saint Pierre de Marchas e Laudon,
and also was appointed as a canon at the church
of Sainte Croix. That meant that he had a degree
of power within the ecclesiastical governance of the region. He would,
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with other canons, preside over ecclesiastical court proceedings. At the
age of twenty seven, he was considered young to have
such prominent positions, particularly in a place that was not
his hometown. Grandier was an outlier among his peers in
the Catholic Church. For one, he sided with the Protestant
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position that Loudan should keep its walls and have a
degree of independence from the French crown. He was pretty
generally anti royalist, and he was not a fan of
the powerful Cardinal Richelieu. He also wrote a treatise that
stated that he believed the rule of celibacy for religious
figures in the Catholic Church should be abolished, but he
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had enough friends and high places that for a while,
although his views were problematic, he maintained his position and power.
To add to his list of problematic attributes, he could
also be kind of a jerk. He was very smart
and more educated than most of the people in Ludam
And it seems like while he was apparently very lovely
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to people he considered friends or who he admired, he
was really condescending to everybody else. Yeah, there's nobody that's
like what he was so kind. They're like, oh, yeah,
he could one hundred percent be a jerk. He also
had a little problem when it came to women. He
was very handsome, and he was known to use his
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charms to gain the favor of women. In short, he
was known to engage in a lot of second relationships
with the women of lu Dant, and this became a
legal issue that was actually a precursor to the possession case. First,
a young woman named Philippe, whose father Luis t Manquin
was the king's prosecutor in Luda, became pregnant and word
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quickly spread that Grandier was the father. Then, in sixteen
twenty nine, a man named Jacques de Tibeau started telling
anybody and everybody that Grandier was lecherous, and that he
could not be trusted. Grandier and Tibau got into a
physical altercation outside the church after Grandier told Tibau that
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he had to stop telling everybody he was a bad man.
In response to that, Tobou beat the priest with a cane.
Grandier pressed charges, and the two men were soon before
the Parliament of Paris. Grandier clearly believed he was going
to win his case. This was not his first time
in court, because he was generally pretty quick to escalate
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conflicts into legal matters, and he generally won his cases
in part because he was so well spoken and so
good at making those cases, but he also made a
lot of enemies in the process. In this instance, though
Tibau showed up with receipts. There are some versions of
this story that actually include the idea that this entire
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situation had been something of a setup, that Tibau had
actually wanted Grandier to engage with him so that they
would end up in court, because many of the men
of Loudon were tired of Grandier's hold on the women
of the community and they had resolved to get him
out of their town. So when they got to court,
Tibau presented a long list of incidents in which Grandier
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was believed to have acted indecently with women of the town.
But more than that, Tibau revealed that well respected men
of Loudon had already discussed this entire matter with the
bishop that Grandier reported to, and that bishop had issued
an arrest order for the priest on charges that he
corrupted women and girls, engaged in profanity and blasphemy, and
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turned the church into a brothel. So at that point
the case in civil court against Tibau was dismissed and
things shifted over to ecclesiastical court, where Grandier was the
defendant and not the plaintiff. Things did not go well
for Grandier in his ecclesiastical case. After his civil case
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was dismissed, he made his way back to Loudon to
prepare a defense and was immediately imprisoned for two months.
When the trial took place, there was no evidence. None
of the women of Loudon came forward to say that
he had done any of the things that the men
of the town had accused him of, but he was
still found guilty of indecency. His punishment was that he
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had to fast on bread and water every Friday for
three months, and he was barred from performing the functions
of a priest in the diocese of Poitier for five years,
and that was where he served as canon at the
Church of Saint Croix. But he was barred from performing
public functions of a priest in luda permanently. Grandier did
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not accept this ruling and he fought it. He appealed
in both the ecclesiastical court and the Parliament of Paris,
and this was a very different state of affairs. As
a new investigation was opened, it became apparent that some
of the men who had made statements in the earlier
case were inconsistent in their stories when they were questioned again.
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Others flat out confessed that they had been bribed for
their earlier testimony. Some men, when shown their depositions from
the earlier proceeding, said that their statements had actually been
altered from what they actually said. Because of all of this,
Grandier was acquitted and returned to his duties as priest,
but there was still a lot of tension regarding him
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in lou Daume. He had actually been offered the chance
to transfer to another diocese, but he turned it down.
Coming up we will talk about Jean Desnge, the mother
superior at Loudon's ursuline convents, but first we will pause
for a sponsor break. Mother Superior, Jean Desnge was like Grandier,
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given a lot of responsibility at a young age. She
was born in sixteen oh five as jean de Belsier.
Her father was Louis de Belsier, who was a baron,
and her mother was Charlotte de Goumain. When she was sixteen,
Jeanne became an ursuline nun in Poitier, but in sixteen
twenty seven she transferred to Loudon to join the newly
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established convent. There. She was only twenty two, but she
was made mother superior of this new group. Once the
issues with John and her sisters at the convent escalated
to the point where it seemed like a demonic possession
was happening, the local clergy came to the conclusion that
they had to consider exorcism. There was a list of
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criteria used to determine if someone was possessed. If the
subject was speaking in foreign languages, exhibited clairvoyance, displayed an
unnatural degree of physical strength, and performed levitation. Then to
the clergy. It was just an open and shutcase. I
read one interesting paper about this case that mentioned that,
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of course, those are also the same list of qualifiers
to determine if you had some sort of divine interaction,
and it was really a matter of interpretation as to
whether it was a good one or a bad one.
The first attempt at an exorcism at Loudon was on
October fifth, so it was just two weeks after the
strange events began. But there were many exorcisms performed in
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the following months, and they shifted from private situations that
were carried out in the convent to public theatrical events.
They were sometimes staged in chapels and even in people's homes,
and at other times the nuns were brought onto a
scaffold in the town square that had chairs arranged on it.
The nuns were tied to the chairs so the assembled
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spectators could watch as the priests yelled their various prayers
and incantations, and the nuns writhed and occasionally exclaimed. Sometimes
they spoke in some sort of demon tongue. Canon Jean
Mignon and Father Pierre Bards carried out the earliest exorcisms,
but There were soon something of a rotating cast of
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priests and other church officials who participated in all of this.
It's been described in ways that make it sound almost
like an ecclesiastical tourist destination, but it also became an
actual tourist attraction. As words spread throughout Europe about what
was going on, people traveled from around France and even
from other countries to witness these public exorcism rights. It
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was determined that Jee had seven different demons inhabiting her body.
Diagrams were created showing where each of them was most
tightly lodged, and Jean became the star of the show.
She was exercised repeatedly. She and a lot of the
other nuns said very plainly that the cause of their
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possession was Raban Grandier. During one event, Jean Dezean clearly
stated that Grandier had used witchcraft to lead the sisters
of the order into debaucherous behavior. She and the other
nuns even produced a copy of a contract that he
was said to have signed in his own blood in
a deal with the devil. The original document, of course,
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was filed in Hell. Good to know Satan has a
well organized bureaucracy the nuns claimed that this contract was
what had started their possession. Things in Laudon became more
tense almost instantly, as people debated the veracity of these
possession claims and whether or not the legal actions against
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Grandier were valid. But that discussion was very quickly shut down.
The church was able to get a court order that
stated that anyone publicly criticizing the nuns claims or the
way the Church was handling the sorcery investigation could be
put to death. This was exhibited in the case of
a man named Mark Duncan, a Calvinist doctor and mathematician
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from Scotland who lived in Samour, about thirty kilometers away
from Ludump. Duncan believed that the explanation for the possessions
described by the nuns was way more mundane than supernatural.
He thought things like fasting and solitude had led the
nuns to a point where they could not discern the
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difference between their imaginations and reality. He had to go
into hiding to avoid arrest for his opinion. Yeah, this,
of course also becomes one of those things that is
tied very keenly to the ongoing tensions between Protestants and Catholics,
and it seemed like he was trash talking Catholics, at
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least according to the people who thought this court order
was worthwhile. Cardinal Richelieu sent a commission to examine the
evidence of the Loudan possessions and Grandier's part in them. Meanwhile,
Grandier's allies actually tried to intercede on his behalf, but
that court order, making it impossible to contradict the nuns
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of the church essentially amounted to a gag order, and
it left them unable to advocate with any real impact.
On August eighteenth, sixteen thirty four, Urban Grandier was found
guilty of sorcery. He was burned at the stake, but
this did not end things in Loudon. In some ways,
it seems that once the frenzy of the accusations and
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execution were all done, some of the clergy were left
trying to make sense of it all. Thirty four, one
of the priests who participated in the exorcisms, Father Tranquille,
wrote an account of the events that were taking place
at Loudam. In his version of events, he was careful
to explain the reasoning of the priests who were involved
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in the exorcism and to justify their actions. He also
chastised people who did not believe the nuns, and despite
Grandier no longer being able to bewitch her, Jeann Desange
continued to exhibit strange behavior. At one point she told
one of the town leaders, who had been instrumental in
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prosecuting Grandier, that she actually feared she had offended God
with her testimony. She also attempted suicide at least once,
and possibly twice. It's a little unclear, but she seemed
very much out of sorts mentally, and instead of anyone
being concerned that she needed some sort of help in
that regard, it was perceived as proof that she was
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still possessed. And then Father Jeane Joseph Currant arrived in Loudon.
Surant was considered something of a wunderkind in the Catholic
Church at the time. He was born in sixteen hundred
and at the age of eight is said to have
promised his life to the church and taken a vow
of celibacy. His entire life had been dedicated to his spirituality,
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and he was the man chosen to help Loudon finally
get rid of all the demons. Still wreaking havoc on
the convent. Soulan took an express interest in June's situation,
and he created a plan to get her spiritually healthy again.
This included things like prescribing specific prayers and schedules in
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which to say them, and urging her to ignore her
bodily desires. All of this was a very different approach
to the situation. These were not big public shows. They
were more intimate consultations. To be clear, there were still
exorcisms being performed. In fact, the exorcisms continued for another
three to four year years, but even Juhn later wrote
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that these were less violent and more quiet than the
exorcisms that had been part of the early Loudin events.
A lot of the interactions between June and Sorrent actually
sounds almost like modern talk therapy, with Jehne learning to
find her own strength, which in turn was said to
be weakening her demons. This was all very unconventional for
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the time, and it often put Surrent in the ill
favor of higher ups within the church. They just wanted
him to get rid of the demons in Ludin, do
it quick and be done with it eventually, and with
the Church, putting pressure on him for results. Saren was
apparently able to cast out Jean's demons one at a
time over the course of those several years that the
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exorcisms continued. The case made Jean Dezege famous when the
exorcisms pushed out her seven bad demons. According to her
later memoir, those spaces had filled with positive holy spirits.
She had also, as this transformation took place, had four
names emblazoned on her left arm, Jesus, Maria, Joseph, and
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Francis Dessaile. Francis Dessaule was an influential bishop who had
died in sixteen twenty two. John traveled all around France
showing people her scarred limb, and in sixteen forty four
Jean Desenge published her account of the possessions, and in
it she also describes her sexual desire for Urban Grandier,
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writing quote, when I did not see him, I burned
with love for him, and when he presented himself to me,
I lacked the faith to combat the impure thoughts and
movements that I felt. She blamed this on him bewitching her,
But there have been a lot of interpretations that Jeanne's
claims of possession may have been a way to actually
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punish Grandier for not reciprocating her interest. While as Jean
Dezenge remained Mother Superior at Moudon for the rest of
her life. As a result of her involvement in the
possession and exorcism, she was often met with skepticism. In
addition to her role at the convent, she came to
be seen as a local mystic. In the years following
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the witchcraft trial and the execution of Grandier, she claimed
she had direct interaction with a guardian angel who guided
her in spiritual matters. This sometimes caused her to run
into issues when her guardian angel gave her information that
was counter to church figures, but it also put her
in a position of power in these interactions, like how
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could her detractors, who claimed to be men of God
argue with an angel. Meanwhile, Father Surren's time after Jun's
demons were exercised was less positive. As he worked with
the Mother Superior. He had prayed for her demons to
leave her and inhabit him, and both she and he
believed that had happened. His health declined as these alleged
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spirits took hold of his body. He wrote about having
difficulty initially with things like headaches or just finding himself
unable to catch his breath. Then his physical problems progressed
to a point where he experienced uncontrollable trembling. He started
having hallucinations. He described having severe abdominal pain as a
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final manifestation of this prolonged possession. In a letter to
a friend, Suran stated plainly, quote, during my ministry, the
devil passed from the body of the possessed person and
entered into mine. Whether his illness had a rational medical
explanation or not, Father Soran believed that he carried a demon.
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His physical and psychological pain progressed to the point where
he attempted to die by suicide, Although that effort failed.
He is usually characterized as having gone insane in his
final years. Both Jean Desnge and Father Sorrant died in
sc exteen sixty five. Coming up, we'll talk about some
of the accounts that finally surfaced that ran counter to
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the one the church had put forth. But before we do,
we will hear from the sponsors that keep stuffy Miess
in history class going. It wasn't until sixteen ninety three
that the world got an account of the possessions that
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was counter to the Catholic narrative that was written by
Nicola Aubin, a Protestant pastor who lived in Loudon at
the time of the possession and trial, but who, like others,
was essentially gagged by the illegality of questioning the statements
and stance of the Catholic Church. In his account, written
sixty years after Alba had left Loudon, he states plainly
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that Urban Crandier was killed not for witchcraft, but as
part of a sinister political machination. Additionally indicated in his
account that the nuns had been coached to perform during
the exorcisms in ways that would incriminate Urban Grandier. Not
only did this entire theatricality get rid of a priest
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who was considered to be a problematic libertine according to Auban,
it also put the Catholic Church in a position where
it had publicly demonstrated its ability to conquer evil and
more specifically, demons and the devil through exorcisms. Similarly, an
account written by a Monsieur Danielle, which was translated into
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English as the History of the Devils of Ludain, the
alleged possession of the Ursuline Nuns, and the trial and
execution of Urban Clandier told by an eye witness. All
one title states that the sorcery accusations against Grandier were absurd,
and they were motivated by things that had nothing to
do with demonic possession. In this writing, Danielle traces the
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believed origins of magic, but it also notes the way
that the early Christian Church molded the concept to suit
its own needs. Quote the Christian Church at the outset
of its history forbade the practice of pagan magic, but
taught what may be described as magic of its own.
Both Origan and Tretulia held that mania and epilepsy were
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produced by the action of demons or evil spirits confined
within the bodies of the sufferers, and that these were
to be exercised by certain forms of words. The Church
formally recognized the efficacy of exorcism in three sixty seven,
when the Council of Laudusia ordained that only those should
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practice it who were duly authorized by the bishops. Connected
with magic and magical rights were the supposed curative properties
of the relics of saints, and the divine origin popularly
ascribed to visions and ecstatic trances. It also notes that
the idea of magic is easy to assign to so
many normal, everyday things, even to words, noting quote in
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every word there is a magical influence, and that each
word is in itself the breath of the internal and
moving spirit. A word of love, of comfort, of promise
is able to strengthen the timid, the weak, or the
physically ill, but words of hatred, censure, and enmity or
menace lower our confidence and self reliance. In sociological readings
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of this entire situation, the outsider Grandier is in a
way a sacrifice on the part of the community. In
purging Ludain of Grandier, the frightened people of the town
were also able to cope with and set aside their
fears of demons, but also the fears that they had
been living with during that wave of the plague, and
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the anxiety that was tied to ongoing tensions between religious factions.
A number of papers have examined this as an example
of an often repeated cycle throughout history to restore order
to a community when it is on edge to the
people of Loudon in the sixteen thirties, he was a villain,
but when viewed through the modern sociological lens, Grandier was
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really the victim. In fifteen ninety two, Aldous Huxley wrote
a non fiction deep dive into the Loudon possessions titled
The Devils of Loudon. It has garnered critical acclaim and
is considered by many people to be one of his masterpieces.
In the modern era, many many psychological studies of the
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Loudon possessions have been written. One of the most famous
was written by French Jesuit priest and scholar Michelle Deserteaux
in nineteen seventy. His work points to mental disorders as
the catalyst for mass possessions, but that the context also
really mattered, because these events often happened as large social
and political events and transitions were taking place, particularly in
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instances where societies governed by theological entities were moving toward
a more political or rational governing ideology. Possession, according to Deserteaux,
enabled women who would generally not have a voice in
such times to verbalize through a possessing entity thoughts about
what was happening around them. Everyone from psychology students to
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well established psychiatrist has had an opinion about exactly what
happened at Loudon in the sixteen thirties. A lot of
these examinations of the facts as we know them land
at the idea that this was a case of mass hysteria.
Some analyzes come to the conclusion that in the cases
of Jean Desange and Father Surin, there may have been
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a personal hysteria or mental illness as well. But perhaps
the most interesting thing about the Loudon possession case is
that it is not unique at all. In a two
thousand and two paper published by the American Historical Review
titled The Devil in the Convent, historian Moshes Sluzovsky lays
out a compelling argument about the nature of such events,
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noting quote the mass possession in Loudame was only one
among numerous similar group possessions in religious female congregations, and
that most cases had nothing to do with witchcraft and
with witchcraft accusations. Slohovski states that out of more than
forty five such cases in Europe that have been documented,
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there were only five that catalyzed witchcraft accusations, and that
the lopsided coverage of these more sensational cases has actually
done a disservice to historical research. Slahovski traces the instances
in the historical record of mass possessions in convents, the
first of which appeared in the fourteenth century, and looks
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at their differences and their commonalities. All of the famous
cases are clustered together in the early seventeenth century. He
notes that feminist criticism has really changed the way these
events of been perceived, and that the gendered language of
hysteria has often been used to dismiss behaviors of women
that men have historically not really understood. He makes the
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case that these instances of mass possession are a form
of quote, female monastic spirituality. This is an expression of
spirituality that was acutely painful, but did not have anything
to do with demons. Slahovsky admits that there is an
inherent lack of information in this writing quote, it is
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impossible to generalize about the social profile of possessed nuns.
Our information is incomplete. He admits that any speculation or
assessment of this is tentative. His argument is that the
behaviors that a lot of historians and contemporaries to these
possessions have labeled as sexual or demonic, were actually way
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more complex expressions of the very many tensions at play
in fairly isolated communities. These were groups of women who
were grappling with their relationships with the outside world, their
efforts to fulfill their promises to live a life within
the order, a state of alertness to avoid temptations, concerns
(31:15):
about finances for themselves and their immediate community, and the
larger issues in conflicts that were facing the towns, villages,
countries and religious denominations that they were also a part of.
I really really like his look at the whole thing
because it does acknowledge one, obviously, how complicated it is,
(31:36):
but two that we don't We can all talk about
it as much as we want, but we will never
have all of the information because there was probably some
obfuscation of what really went on. So that is the
Ludon Possessions. It's been on my list for one hundred years.
I have a bit of listener mail about sleep Ugh.
(31:58):
This is written by our listener Kieren, who writes, Hello, ladies.
I just wanted to send a note because Holly's discussion
on a recent behind the scenes about her lifelong sleep
troubles made me feel so seen and also comforted. I've
likewise struggled with terrible insomnia for as long as I
can remember, as does the rest of my family, and
agree that while I try to practice quote good sleep hygiene,
(32:20):
it is far from solving the issue. Unlike Holly, though,
I get very cranky being so tired and restless during
the night, so I loved her being so chill about
it and approach I'm aspiring to. One thing that has
weirdly helped was reading Charles Dickens a Christmas carol and
it mentioning Scrooge getting up in the night, leading me
down a whole rabbit hole learning about the historical trend
(32:41):
of having first sleep and second sleep. According to some
sources in Eras, before artificial lighting was common, it was
a practice to sleep from about nine or ten to midnight,
and then get up and perhaps do some late reading, writing, prayer,
or even chores for an hour or two, then go
back to bed to sleep until dawn. I love this
being an accepted thing and is certainly preferable to frustratedly
(33:04):
tossing and turning all night. There are and have been
so many diverse human sleep patterns across cultures in time,
and like Holly described, it's important to acknowledge that everyone
has different rhythms. What works for one person may not
work for another. Here's to some nice midnight reading going
forward hopefully. As always, thank you so much both of
you for all you are and do you are light
(33:26):
in the dark and I always squeal and get so
excited when a new episode uploads. Also Holly, I too
was so excited about the sewing Patterns two parter. Thanks again, Kieran.
Apologies no pet tax is. I do not currently have
a fur baby, but I do have another scrap quilt
in the works. All the best. This scrap quilts looks
absolutely gorgeous. It is in shades of ivory and like
(33:49):
deep autumnal tones, and it's absolutely beautiful work. Amazing, amazing work.
Thank you so much for writing this listen. It always
helps to feel seen. As for the two sleep thing,
that's always fascinating to me as well. I'm pretty sure
I've talked about polyphasic sleeping on the show before, which
I would love to try, but doesn't seem to really
work in reality for anybody that has an inconsistent schedule.
(34:14):
But I'm glad when people figure out a thing that
works for them. I too, sometimes like to just get
up in the night. Usually I'm not that productive. I
just kind of goof around on my phone. If you
would like to write to us about your sleep troubles,
your demonic possessions, your concerns about sociologically analyzing historical events,
(34:34):
whatever you got going on, you can do that at
a history podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also
subscribe to the show if you haven't yet. You can
do that on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen
to your favorite shows. Stuff you Missed in History Class
is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
(34:57):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and today's show is
about a famous case of mass possession. The story of
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the Loudain possessions in seventeenth century France has kept theologians,
psychology experts, historians and occultists frankly fascinated for four centuries.
And that's because it involves a group of nuns who
described some very unsettling visitations at their convent, and that
developed into a story of possession, political intrigue, and a
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moment in time that was just rife with social tension.
So on September twenty second, sixteen thirty two, three nuns
at the Ursuline Convent in Loudon, France, were, according to reports,
visited in the night by what appeared to be a
spirit asking for help. The spirit appeared to each of
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them separately, but in each appearance it was a member
of the clergy. Those three nuns were Jean des Ange,
who was the mother superior, Sister de Colombier persistant, and
a junior member of the order called Sister Marte Sanmonique.
This was the beginning of the most famous possession and
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witchcraft case that France and really most of Europe had
ever experienced. According to the nuns accounts, there were many
other unusual happenings at the convent in the nights that followed.
First there were sounds, they heard voices, but then things escalated. Nuns,
these three and others began to report being hit by
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unseen forces. Some of them were stricken with fits of
giggling for no reason. It was just this uncontrollable reaction.
And then they start seeing a skeleton walking through the
convent hallways. Then one night, the Mother Superior was handed
some hawthorns by what appeared to be a spirit hand.
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Hawthorns are tart berries that come from a flowering shrub,
like a lot of other plants. This is related to
the rose. Hawthorns have historically been used to treat things
like indigestion, kidney disease, and skin condition, although there's no
solid proof that they help with any of that, and
some hawthorn preparations can be toxic. But for these nuns
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there was another effect, which was convulsions. The behavior of
the nuns also became irrational, and they started to see
a clear image of a particular person they all knew.
I will say for clarity, I never saw a definitive
explanation as to whether they consumed those hawthorns or if
(02:57):
they sort of were spiritually exposed to hawthorn right. But
to talk about what happened next, we actually have to
put this unique moment in context and talk about some
of the key players in the story. So Luda which
was founded in the eleventh century by Benedictine monks since
about three hundred kilometers southwest of Paris, and in the
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early seventeenth century when this story takes place, it had
been through a lot. It had just been through a
terrifying plague in which three thousand of its residents had died.
There was no way to treat the plague, and many
of the doctors had left. Sometimes this is described as
the doctors abandoning Ludam but they realized they couldn't do anything,
(03:41):
and they did not want to die and not be
able to help other people. And Huguenot Protestants and Catholics
had also been at odds in the region throughout the
sixteenth century, in what were known as the French Wars
of religion. The Edict of Nant had ended the fighting
in fifteen ninety eight, and it had established religious tall
on paper, but there was still friction and mistrust between
(04:04):
those factions. In the more acute sense. Under King Louis
the Third, the French government wanted to tear down the
walls that surrounded the city of Loudon as a way
to make it less isolated and to bring it into
the greater fold of French centralized government. The Catholic population
of the town was all for this, but the Huguenot
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Protestants saw it as a way to ensure that Catholicism,
which was the national religion, dominated their day to day lives.
Next we introduce Urban Grandier. Grandio was born in Buier, France,
in fifteen ninety. According to a biography about him written
by Alexandre duma Perire, he was educated by his father,
(04:47):
Pierre Grandier and his uncle Claude Grandier. Education was in
the sciences. At twelve he entered the Jesuit College at Bordeaux,
and he did really well in school. He was a
good speaker, he had natural charm, and his teachers really
loved him. It was also there that he became strongly
(05:08):
encouraged to put his natural gifts to work with the church,
and he did so. In sixteen seventeen, Grandier was made
priest of the parish at Saint Pierre de Marchas e Laudon,
and also was appointed as a canon at the church
of Sainte Croix. That meant that he had a degree
of power within the ecclesiastical governance of the region. He would,
(05:30):
with other canons, preside over ecclesiastical court proceedings. At the
age of twenty seven, he was considered young to have
such prominent positions, particularly in a place that was not
his hometown. Grandier was an outlier among his peers in
the Catholic Church. For one, he sided with the Protestant
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position that Loudan should keep its walls and have a
degree of independence from the French crown. He was pretty
generally anti royalist, and he was not a fan of
the powerful Cardinal Richelieu. He also wrote a treatise that
stated that he believed the rule of celibacy for religious
figures in the Catholic Church should be abolished, but he
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had enough friends and high places that for a while,
although his views were problematic, he maintained his position and power.
To add to his list of problematic attributes, he could
also be kind of a jerk. He was very smart
and more educated than most of the people in Ludam
And it seems like while he was apparently very lovely
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to people he considered friends or who he admired, he
was really condescending to everybody else. Yeah, there's nobody that's
like what he was so kind. They're like, oh, yeah,
he could one hundred percent be a jerk. He also
had a little problem when it came to women. He
was very handsome, and he was known to use his
(06:54):
charms to gain the favor of women. In short, he
was known to engage in a lot of second relationships
with the women of lu Dant, and this became a
legal issue that was actually a precursor to the possession case. First,
a young woman named Philippe, whose father Luis t Manquin
was the king's prosecutor in Luda, became pregnant and word
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quickly spread that Grandier was the father. Then, in sixteen
twenty nine, a man named Jacques de Tibeau started telling
anybody and everybody that Grandier was lecherous, and that he
could not be trusted. Grandier and Tibau got into a
physical altercation outside the church after Grandier told Tibau that
(07:37):
he had to stop telling everybody he was a bad man.
In response to that, Tobou beat the priest with a cane.
Grandier pressed charges, and the two men were soon before
the Parliament of Paris. Grandier clearly believed he was going
to win his case. This was not his first time
in court, because he was generally pretty quick to escalate
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conflicts into legal matters, and he generally won his cases
in part because he was so well spoken and so
good at making those cases, but he also made a
lot of enemies in the process. In this instance, though
Tibau showed up with receipts. There are some versions of
this story that actually include the idea that this entire
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situation had been something of a setup, that Tibau had
actually wanted Grandier to engage with him so that they
would end up in court, because many of the men
of Loudon were tired of Grandier's hold on the women
of the community and they had resolved to get him
out of their town. So when they got to court,
Tibau presented a long list of incidents in which Grandier
(08:43):
was believed to have acted indecently with women of the town.
But more than that, Tibau revealed that well respected men
of Loudon had already discussed this entire matter with the
bishop that Grandier reported to, and that bishop had issued
an arrest order for the priest on charges that he
corrupted women and girls, engaged in profanity and blasphemy, and
(09:06):
turned the church into a brothel. So at that point
the case in civil court against Tibau was dismissed and
things shifted over to ecclesiastical court, where Grandier was the
defendant and not the plaintiff. Things did not go well
for Grandier in his ecclesiastical case. After his civil case
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was dismissed, he made his way back to Loudon to
prepare a defense and was immediately imprisoned for two months.
When the trial took place, there was no evidence. None
of the women of Loudon came forward to say that
he had done any of the things that the men
of the town had accused him of, but he was
still found guilty of indecency. His punishment was that he
(09:49):
had to fast on bread and water every Friday for
three months, and he was barred from performing the functions
of a priest in the diocese of Poitier for five years,
and that was where he served as canon at the
Church of Saint Croix. But he was barred from performing
public functions of a priest in luda permanently. Grandier did
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not accept this ruling and he fought it. He appealed
in both the ecclesiastical court and the Parliament of Paris,
and this was a very different state of affairs. As
a new investigation was opened, it became apparent that some
of the men who had made statements in the earlier
case were inconsistent in their stories when they were questioned again.
(10:31):
Others flat out confessed that they had been bribed for
their earlier testimony. Some men, when shown their depositions from
the earlier proceeding, said that their statements had actually been
altered from what they actually said. Because of all of this,
Grandier was acquitted and returned to his duties as priest,
but there was still a lot of tension regarding him
(10:53):
in lou Daume. He had actually been offered the chance
to transfer to another diocese, but he turned it down.
Coming up we will talk about Jean Desnge, the mother
superior at Loudon's ursuline convents, but first we will pause
for a sponsor break. Mother Superior, Jean Desnge was like Grandier,
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given a lot of responsibility at a young age. She
was born in sixteen oh five as jean de Belsier.
Her father was Louis de Belsier, who was a baron,
and her mother was Charlotte de Goumain. When she was sixteen,
Jeanne became an ursuline nun in Poitier, but in sixteen
twenty seven she transferred to Loudon to join the newly
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established convent. There. She was only twenty two, but she
was made mother superior of this new group. Once the
issues with John and her sisters at the convent escalated
to the point where it seemed like a demonic possession
was happening, the local clergy came to the conclusion that
they had to consider exorcism. There was a list of
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criteria used to determine if someone was possessed. If the
subject was speaking in foreign languages, exhibited clairvoyance, displayed an
unnatural degree of physical strength, and performed levitation. Then to
the clergy. It was just an open and shutcase. I
read one interesting paper about this case that mentioned that,
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of course, those are also the same list of qualifiers
to determine if you had some sort of divine interaction,
and it was really a matter of interpretation as to
whether it was a good one or a bad one.
The first attempt at an exorcism at Loudon was on
October fifth, so it was just two weeks after the
strange events began. But there were many exorcisms performed in
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the following months, and they shifted from private situations that
were carried out in the convent to public theatrical events.
They were sometimes staged in chapels and even in people's homes,
and at other times the nuns were brought onto a
scaffold in the town square that had chairs arranged on it.
The nuns were tied to the chairs so the assembled
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spectators could watch as the priests yelled their various prayers
and incantations, and the nuns writhed and occasionally exclaimed. Sometimes
they spoke in some sort of demon tongue. Canon Jean
Mignon and Father Pierre Bards carried out the earliest exorcisms,
but There were soon something of a rotating cast of
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priests and other church officials who participated in all of this.
It's been described in ways that make it sound almost
like an ecclesiastical tourist destination, but it also became an
actual tourist attraction. As words spread throughout Europe about what
was going on, people traveled from around France and even
from other countries to witness these public exorcism rights. It
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was determined that Jee had seven different demons inhabiting her body.
Diagrams were created showing where each of them was most
tightly lodged, and Jean became the star of the show.
She was exercised repeatedly. She and a lot of the
other nuns said very plainly that the cause of their
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possession was Raban Grandier. During one event, Jean Dezean clearly
stated that Grandier had used witchcraft to lead the sisters
of the order into debaucherous behavior. She and the other
nuns even produced a copy of a contract that he
was said to have signed in his own blood in
a deal with the devil. The original document, of course,
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was filed in Hell. Good to know Satan has a
well organized bureaucracy the nuns claimed that this contract was
what had started their possession. Things in Laudon became more
tense almost instantly, as people debated the veracity of these
possession claims and whether or not the legal actions against
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Grandier were valid. But that discussion was very quickly shut down.
The church was able to get a court order that
stated that anyone publicly criticizing the nuns claims or the
way the Church was handling the sorcery investigation could be
put to death. This was exhibited in the case of
a man named Mark Duncan, a Calvinist doctor and mathematician
(15:29):
from Scotland who lived in Samour, about thirty kilometers away
from Ludump. Duncan believed that the explanation for the possessions
described by the nuns was way more mundane than supernatural.
He thought things like fasting and solitude had led the
nuns to a point where they could not discern the
(15:49):
difference between their imaginations and reality. He had to go
into hiding to avoid arrest for his opinion. Yeah, this,
of course also becomes one of those things that is
tied very keenly to the ongoing tensions between Protestants and Catholics,
and it seemed like he was trash talking Catholics, at
(16:11):
least according to the people who thought this court order
was worthwhile. Cardinal Richelieu sent a commission to examine the
evidence of the Loudan possessions and Grandier's part in them. Meanwhile,
Grandier's allies actually tried to intercede on his behalf, but
that court order, making it impossible to contradict the nuns
(16:31):
of the church essentially amounted to a gag order, and
it left them unable to advocate with any real impact.
On August eighteenth, sixteen thirty four, Urban Grandier was found
guilty of sorcery. He was burned at the stake, but
this did not end things in Loudon. In some ways,
it seems that once the frenzy of the accusations and
(16:54):
execution were all done, some of the clergy were left
trying to make sense of it all. Thirty four, one
of the priests who participated in the exorcisms, Father Tranquille,
wrote an account of the events that were taking place
at Loudam. In his version of events, he was careful
to explain the reasoning of the priests who were involved
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in the exorcism and to justify their actions. He also
chastised people who did not believe the nuns, and despite
Grandier no longer being able to bewitch her, Jeann Desange
continued to exhibit strange behavior. At one point she told
one of the town leaders, who had been instrumental in
(17:35):
prosecuting Grandier, that she actually feared she had offended God
with her testimony. She also attempted suicide at least once,
and possibly twice. It's a little unclear, but she seemed
very much out of sorts mentally, and instead of anyone
being concerned that she needed some sort of help in
that regard, it was perceived as proof that she was
(17:56):
still possessed. And then Father Jeane Joseph Currant arrived in Loudon.
Surant was considered something of a wunderkind in the Catholic
Church at the time. He was born in sixteen hundred
and at the age of eight is said to have
promised his life to the church and taken a vow
of celibacy. His entire life had been dedicated to his spirituality,
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and he was the man chosen to help Loudon finally
get rid of all the demons. Still wreaking havoc on
the convent. Soulan took an express interest in June's situation,
and he created a plan to get her spiritually healthy again.
This included things like prescribing specific prayers and schedules in
(18:39):
which to say them, and urging her to ignore her
bodily desires. All of this was a very different approach
to the situation. These were not big public shows. They
were more intimate consultations. To be clear, there were still
exorcisms being performed. In fact, the exorcisms continued for another
three to four year years, but even Juhn later wrote
(19:02):
that these were less violent and more quiet than the
exorcisms that had been part of the early Loudin events.
A lot of the interactions between June and Sorrent actually
sounds almost like modern talk therapy, with Jehne learning to
find her own strength, which in turn was said to
be weakening her demons. This was all very unconventional for
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the time, and it often put Surrent in the ill
favor of higher ups within the church. They just wanted
him to get rid of the demons in Ludin, do
it quick and be done with it eventually, and with
the Church, putting pressure on him for results. Saren was
apparently able to cast out Jean's demons one at a
time over the course of those several years that the
(19:47):
exorcisms continued. The case made Jean Dezege famous when the
exorcisms pushed out her seven bad demons. According to her
later memoir, those spaces had filled with positive holy spirits.
She had also, as this transformation took place, had four
names emblazoned on her left arm, Jesus, Maria, Joseph, and
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Francis Dessaile. Francis Dessaule was an influential bishop who had
died in sixteen twenty two. John traveled all around France
showing people her scarred limb, and in sixteen forty four
Jean Desenge published her account of the possessions, and in
it she also describes her sexual desire for Urban Grandier,
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writing quote, when I did not see him, I burned
with love for him, and when he presented himself to me,
I lacked the faith to combat the impure thoughts and
movements that I felt. She blamed this on him bewitching her,
But there have been a lot of interpretations that Jeanne's
claims of possession may have been a way to actually
(20:52):
punish Grandier for not reciprocating her interest. While as Jean
Dezenge remained Mother Superior at Moudon for the rest of
her life. As a result of her involvement in the
possession and exorcism, she was often met with skepticism. In
addition to her role at the convent, she came to
be seen as a local mystic. In the years following
(21:13):
the witchcraft trial and the execution of Grandier, she claimed
she had direct interaction with a guardian angel who guided
her in spiritual matters. This sometimes caused her to run
into issues when her guardian angel gave her information that
was counter to church figures, but it also put her
in a position of power in these interactions, like how
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could her detractors, who claimed to be men of God
argue with an angel. Meanwhile, Father Surren's time after Jun's
demons were exercised was less positive. As he worked with
the Mother Superior. He had prayed for her demons to
leave her and inhabit him, and both she and he
believed that had happened. His health declined as these alleged
(22:00):
spirits took hold of his body. He wrote about having
difficulty initially with things like headaches or just finding himself
unable to catch his breath. Then his physical problems progressed
to a point where he experienced uncontrollable trembling. He started
having hallucinations. He described having severe abdominal pain as a
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final manifestation of this prolonged possession. In a letter to
a friend, Suran stated plainly, quote, during my ministry, the
devil passed from the body of the possessed person and
entered into mine. Whether his illness had a rational medical
explanation or not, Father Soran believed that he carried a demon.
(22:44):
His physical and psychological pain progressed to the point where
he attempted to die by suicide, Although that effort failed.
He is usually characterized as having gone insane in his
final years. Both Jean Desnge and Father Sorrant died in
sc exteen sixty five. Coming up, we'll talk about some
of the accounts that finally surfaced that ran counter to
(23:06):
the one the church had put forth. But before we do,
we will hear from the sponsors that keep stuffy Miess
in history class going. It wasn't until sixteen ninety three
that the world got an account of the possessions that
(23:28):
was counter to the Catholic narrative that was written by
Nicola Aubin, a Protestant pastor who lived in Loudon at
the time of the possession and trial, but who, like others,
was essentially gagged by the illegality of questioning the statements
and stance of the Catholic Church. In his account, written
sixty years after Alba had left Loudon, he states plainly
(23:51):
that Urban Crandier was killed not for witchcraft, but as
part of a sinister political machination. Additionally indicated in his
account that the nuns had been coached to perform during
the exorcisms in ways that would incriminate Urban Grandier. Not
only did this entire theatricality get rid of a priest
(24:14):
who was considered to be a problematic libertine according to Auban,
it also put the Catholic Church in a position where
it had publicly demonstrated its ability to conquer evil and
more specifically, demons and the devil through exorcisms. Similarly, an
account written by a Monsieur Danielle, which was translated into
(24:34):
English as the History of the Devils of Ludain, the
alleged possession of the Ursuline Nuns, and the trial and
execution of Urban Clandier told by an eye witness. All
one title states that the sorcery accusations against Grandier were absurd,
and they were motivated by things that had nothing to
do with demonic possession. In this writing, Danielle traces the
(24:57):
believed origins of magic, but it also notes the way
that the early Christian Church molded the concept to suit
its own needs. Quote the Christian Church at the outset
of its history forbade the practice of pagan magic, but
taught what may be described as magic of its own.
Both Origan and Tretulia held that mania and epilepsy were
(25:20):
produced by the action of demons or evil spirits confined
within the bodies of the sufferers, and that these were
to be exercised by certain forms of words. The Church
formally recognized the efficacy of exorcism in three sixty seven,
when the Council of Laudusia ordained that only those should
(25:41):
practice it who were duly authorized by the bishops. Connected
with magic and magical rights were the supposed curative properties
of the relics of saints, and the divine origin popularly
ascribed to visions and ecstatic trances. It also notes that
the idea of magic is easy to assign to so
many normal, everyday things, even to words, noting quote in
(26:05):
every word there is a magical influence, and that each
word is in itself the breath of the internal and
moving spirit. A word of love, of comfort, of promise
is able to strengthen the timid, the weak, or the
physically ill, but words of hatred, censure, and enmity or
menace lower our confidence and self reliance. In sociological readings
(26:29):
of this entire situation, the outsider Grandier is in a
way a sacrifice on the part of the community. In
purging Ludain of Grandier, the frightened people of the town
were also able to cope with and set aside their
fears of demons, but also the fears that they had
been living with during that wave of the plague, and
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the anxiety that was tied to ongoing tensions between religious factions.
A number of papers have examined this as an example
of an often repeated cycle throughout history to restore order
to a community when it is on edge to the
people of Loudon in the sixteen thirties, he was a villain,
but when viewed through the modern sociological lens, Grandier was
(27:11):
really the victim. In fifteen ninety two, Aldous Huxley wrote
a non fiction deep dive into the Loudon possessions titled
The Devils of Loudon. It has garnered critical acclaim and
is considered by many people to be one of his masterpieces.
In the modern era, many many psychological studies of the
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Loudon possessions have been written. One of the most famous
was written by French Jesuit priest and scholar Michelle Deserteaux
in nineteen seventy. His work points to mental disorders as
the catalyst for mass possessions, but that the context also
really mattered, because these events often happened as large social
and political events and transitions were taking place, particularly in
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instances where societies governed by theological entities were moving toward
a more political or rational governing ideology. Possession, according to Deserteaux,
enabled women who would generally not have a voice in
such times to verbalize through a possessing entity thoughts about
what was happening around them. Everyone from psychology students to
(28:21):
well established psychiatrist has had an opinion about exactly what
happened at Loudon in the sixteen thirties. A lot of
these examinations of the facts as we know them land
at the idea that this was a case of mass hysteria.
Some analyzes come to the conclusion that in the cases
of Jean Desange and Father Surin, there may have been
(28:43):
a personal hysteria or mental illness as well. But perhaps
the most interesting thing about the Loudon possession case is
that it is not unique at all. In a two
thousand and two paper published by the American Historical Review
titled The Devil in the Convent, historian Moshes Sluzovsky lays
out a compelling argument about the nature of such events,
(29:05):
noting quote the mass possession in Loudame was only one
among numerous similar group possessions in religious female congregations, and
that most cases had nothing to do with witchcraft and
with witchcraft accusations. Slohovski states that out of more than
forty five such cases in Europe that have been documented,
(29:26):
there were only five that catalyzed witchcraft accusations, and that
the lopsided coverage of these more sensational cases has actually
done a disservice to historical research. Slahovski traces the instances
in the historical record of mass possessions in convents, the
first of which appeared in the fourteenth century, and looks
(29:47):
at their differences and their commonalities. All of the famous
cases are clustered together in the early seventeenth century. He
notes that feminist criticism has really changed the way these
events of been perceived, and that the gendered language of
hysteria has often been used to dismiss behaviors of women
that men have historically not really understood. He makes the
(30:12):
case that these instances of mass possession are a form
of quote, female monastic spirituality. This is an expression of
spirituality that was acutely painful, but did not have anything
to do with demons. Slahovsky admits that there is an
inherent lack of information in this writing quote, it is
(30:32):
impossible to generalize about the social profile of possessed nuns.
Our information is incomplete. He admits that any speculation or
assessment of this is tentative. His argument is that the
behaviors that a lot of historians and contemporaries to these
possessions have labeled as sexual or demonic, were actually way
(30:55):
more complex expressions of the very many tensions at play
in fairly isolated communities. These were groups of women who
were grappling with their relationships with the outside world, their
efforts to fulfill their promises to live a life within
the order, a state of alertness to avoid temptations, concerns
(31:15):
about finances for themselves and their immediate community, and the
larger issues in conflicts that were facing the towns, villages,
countries and religious denominations that they were also a part of.
I really really like his look at the whole thing
because it does acknowledge one, obviously, how complicated it is,
(31:36):
but two that we don't We can all talk about
it as much as we want, but we will never
have all of the information because there was probably some
obfuscation of what really went on. So that is the
Ludon Possessions. It's been on my list for one hundred years.
I have a bit of listener mail about sleep Ugh.
(31:58):
This is written by our listener Kieren, who writes, Hello, ladies.
I just wanted to send a note because Holly's discussion
on a recent behind the scenes about her lifelong sleep
troubles made me feel so seen and also comforted. I've
likewise struggled with terrible insomnia for as long as I
can remember, as does the rest of my family, and
agree that while I try to practice quote good sleep hygiene,
(32:20):
it is far from solving the issue. Unlike Holly, though,
I get very cranky being so tired and restless during
the night, so I loved her being so chill about
it and approach I'm aspiring to. One thing that has
weirdly helped was reading Charles Dickens a Christmas carol and
it mentioning Scrooge getting up in the night, leading me
down a whole rabbit hole learning about the historical trend
(32:41):
of having first sleep and second sleep. According to some
sources in Eras, before artificial lighting was common, it was
a practice to sleep from about nine or ten to midnight,
and then get up and perhaps do some late reading, writing, prayer,
or even chores for an hour or two, then go
back to bed to sleep until dawn. I love this
being an accepted thing and is certainly preferable to frustratedly
(33:04):
tossing and turning all night. There are and have been
so many diverse human sleep patterns across cultures in time,
and like Holly described, it's important to acknowledge that everyone
has different rhythms. What works for one person may not
work for another. Here's to some nice midnight reading going
forward hopefully. As always, thank you so much both of
you for all you are and do you are light
(33:26):
in the dark and I always squeal and get so
excited when a new episode uploads. Also Holly, I too
was so excited about the sewing Patterns two parter. Thanks again, Kieran.
Apologies no pet tax is. I do not currently have
a fur baby, but I do have another scrap quilt
in the works. All the best. This scrap quilts looks
absolutely gorgeous. It is in shades of ivory and like
(33:49):
deep autumnal tones, and it's absolutely beautiful work. Amazing, amazing work.
Thank you so much for writing this listen. It always
helps to feel seen. As for the two sleep thing,
that's always fascinating to me as well. I'm pretty sure
I've talked about polyphasic sleeping on the show before, which
I would love to try, but doesn't seem to really
work in reality for anybody that has an inconsistent schedule.
(34:14):
But I'm glad when people figure out a thing that
works for them. I too, sometimes like to just get
up in the night. Usually I'm not that productive. I
just kind of goof around on my phone. If you
would like to write to us about your sleep troubles,
your demonic possessions, your concerns about sociologically analyzing historical events,
(34:34):
whatever you got going on, you can do that at
a history podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also
subscribe to the show if you haven't yet. You can
do that on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen
to your favorite shows. Stuff you Missed in History Class
is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
(34:57):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
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Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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