Healing or hurting? The interpretation of the use of exorcism as a remedy in the second half of 19th century by contemporary media

Abstract

The second half of the 19th century also witnessed number of possession and exorcism cases. Some of these possessions were recognized by the church representatives who also conducted exorcism.

But also in this first group we can see the effort of newspapers to interpret such cases as the illness (both mental or physical disorder) and priests behavior as the superstitions. Some cases stayed at the level of local community or family.

In such cases a variety of popular and folk methods were used to "heal" the possessed person. The results of such folk exorcism were sometimes fatal.

We can never say how many possession cases occurred in the particular period of history because even archival materials probably do not cover all possession and exorcism cases. But by using contemporary newspapers as the main source we can investigate how such "healings" were perceived by the newspapers and presented to the public.

In my contribution I will focus mainly on the cases as Wemding (1891), Gis (1893), Montelepre (1893) and Pontea Ema (1893) well represented within contemporary press but I will mention also other case without so much information for deeper analysis. The cases represent both the ritual Christian exorcism and folk exorcism but are connected by the press interpretation of the possession state as the illness.