DIAGNOSING THE DEVIL

On 20 January 1573, at seven o'clock in the evening, the torments of Alexander Nyndge began. His chest and body began to swell and his eyes to stare. He beat his head against the ground. He was often seen, we are informed, to have a lump running up and down his body between the flesh and the skin. He gnashed his teeth and foamed at the mouth. He shrieked with pain, and wept and laughed. He had the strength of four or five men, and his features were horribly disfigured. ‘The body of the said Alexander’, his brother Edward informs us, ‘being as wondrously transformed as it was before, much like the picture of the Devil in a play, with a horrible voice, sounding Hell-hound, was most horribly tormented.’

His brother had made an instant diagnosis of the cause of Alexander's behaviour, that he was being molested by an evil spirit. It was a diagnosis made in the presence of Alexander. And it was one which Alexander repeatedly confirmed for Edward and his family by his subsequent speech and actions. Edward's quick diagnosis may have been intended to highlight his own perspicacity. But it does suggest that the symptoms of possession by evil spirits were sufficiently common to make the diagnosis possible.

It is impossible to make an accurate estimate of demoniacal behaviour in the early modern period. The exorcist John Darrell reported in 1599 that he had seen ten demoniacs and had heard of six more.