Books: A Devil with the Women

THE DEVILS OF LOUDUN (340 pp.)—Aldous Huxley—Harper ($4).

In the course of the year 1631, in the little French town of Loudun, an entire convent of Ursuline nuns went insane, or rather, to use the analytical term of that day, they were possessed by devils. And since the chiefest of these was a demon of desire for the parish priest—a dashing esthete adored by the women of the town and detested by their husbands—it was indisputably evident to the man’s enemies that he was a wizard, and that something had to be done about him.

In The Devils of Loudun, Aldous Huxley with skill and scholarship resurrects one of the forgotten scandals of Christendom. The result is a brilliantly quarrelsome tract that is also one of the most fascinating historical narratives of the year.

Rash Priest. Father Urbain Grandier, the center of the disturbance, looked for all the world like “a fleshier, not unamiable and only slightly less intelligent Mephistopheles in clerical fancy dress.” Since his arrival at Loudun in 1617, he had fully exploited his devilish good looks. He not only made himself free with scullery trulls and upstairs maids; he also abused the confessional and other sacred precincts, it was said, with docile ladies of the parish. He had even taken a rich “wife,” though his enemies had difficulty in proving it, because Grandier himself had served as both priest and bridegroom.

Furthermore, the fellow had angered the local Carmelites by taking over from them the hearing of confession in the town, and the Capuchins by discrediting their cloister’s miracle-working image. There was, however, some consolation, for the priestly popinjay had made an enemy of Cardinal Richelieu by walking ahead of him during a religious procession. And just as rashly, he had a child by the daughter of his best friend, the public prosecutor of Loudun.

The Prioress’ Revenge. Yet it was Sister Jeanne, prioress of the Ursulines, who brought the long delusion of Grandier to an end. In Huxley’s interpretation, her native hysteria was aggravated by the abnegations of convent life; she began to have daydreams, and later night sweats, about the handsome priest. She offered him the post of director of her convent, and Grandier refused. Thereupon, as Huxley reads the evidence, Sister Jeanne’s fantasies turned into a mania for sadistic revenge.

Appointing a confessor who was a sworn enemy of Grandier, Sister Jeanne began to confide to him her symptoms of a demonic infestation that clearly indicated Grandier as the infester. Soon 16 other nuns, under the vivid suggestion of their prioress’ example, found themselves with demon: here Leviathan in the center of a forehead; there, Enemy of the Virgin in the neck; Asmodeus (in Hebraic lore, king of the demons) snuggled in a groin; Concupiscence at home in the left rib.

Clearly the demons had to be exorcised. Grandier’s enemies opened the exorcisms to the public, who were properly edified to watch the nuns scream, throw convulsions, expose their navels to the priests and to the crowd. At last, with the circus in full swing, word of it reached Richelieu. The order came quickly to arrest Grandier and try him for witchcraft.

The Aftermath. Grandier was seized, probed to the bone with a long needle for “devil’s pain-free spots,” put to the “question extraordinary” (a procedure in which the victim’s legs were systematically splintered), adjudged guilty and burned at the stake.

Amazingly, in his last ordeal, the smirking canonical rake became a man. He refused to make a false confession, found his own soul, and died with a dignity that put the fear of God (and the devils) in his judges.

For the devils, even after their supposed master was dead, went right on with their deviltry. The day after the execution, one of two friars who had helped torture Grandier came down sick, passed into convulsions and not long afterward died in despair, knocking the crucifix from his confessor’s hand. His colleague lasted a few years more, but soon went insane, and died so. Father Jean-Joseph Surin, the great Jesuit contemplative who finally cured Sister Jeanne, did so only at the cost of becoming himself possessed. Sister Jeanne, however, with her flair for the dramatic, became a celebrity, and toured France to show off some handwriting God had supposedly done on her body.

As to the devils, they at last went back where they came from, leaving behind a memory on the whole not too unpleasant in the vicinity: for some generations the people of Loudun did a jolly trade with tourists who came to visit the scene of the crime.