The Catholic Salem: How the Devil Destroyed a Saint’s Parish (Mattaincourt, 1627–31)

Abstract

A virulent witch panic driven by many diabolically possessed parishioners of Mattaincourt in Lorraine caused about fifty deaths for witchcraft between 1627 and 1631. Sixty years before Salem, this episode constitutes the largest such tragedy yet found in Catholic Europe, where episodes of collective demonic possession were usually confined within female convents. Mattaincourt’s parish curé, St. Pierre Fourier, was then supervising the approval for two reformed religious orders at Rome and was unable to control events in Mattaincourt; a wealthy benefactor was among those burned. Fourier resigned his benefice when the outbreak subsided. This episode was apparently unknown to Catholic authorities during the modern procedures for Fourier’s beatification and canonization.

Religious and Counseling Discourses in Clinical Practice

“…The discourses which emerged in the interviews of all the participants in this study (the value and beauty of Catholic Christian faith for life and for counseling; autonomy and obedience; healing, renewal, and the call to serve) appear to be extensively represented in the literature of counseling, religion, and both. For example, discourses from faith healing and exorcism, as well as psychotherapy and addiction recovery are amply represented and discussed in the literatures of faith and counseling, in some cases in centuries-old materials (Barry and Connolly, 2009;Belmontes, 2018;Christopherson, 1994;Harrow, 2005;Monter, 2012;Rusu, 2016;Smith, 2005;Stuckenbruck, 2013). Materials relating to the themes of autonomy and obedience and the value of faith for counseling practice and for living showed the same pattern.…”

“…Discourse analysis is devoted to the multidisciplinary and multimethodological study of communicative texts produced in social contexts as a means of explaining certain social phenomena (Wodak & Meyer, 2016). The approach has often been applied to political discourse, such as that in public and legislative speeches, editorials, and books (Fairclough, 2013; Hoare & Smith, 2018; van Dijk, 1998), but it has also been used to study the content of religious documents (Kim, 2016), medical records (Joergensen & Praestegaard, 2018), historical legal archives (Monter, 2012), and advertising materials (Machin & Mayr, 2012). It has roots in poststructuralist philosophy and linguistics (Wodok & Meyer, 2016).…”