"A Woman under the Influence": A Case of Alleged Possession in

Sixteenth-Century France
Anita M. Walker; Edmund H. Dickerman
Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 22, No. 3. (Autumn, 1991), pp. 534-554.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0361-0160%28199123%2922%3A3%3C534%3A%22WUTIA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-M
Sixteenth Century Journal is currently published by The Sixteenth Century Journal.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained
prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in
the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/journals/scj.html.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.

The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic
journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers,
and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take
advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

http://www.jstor.org
Tue Dec 4 09:51:51 2007

S i x t e e r ~ f i Cer1tur.y
i
Jo~rr.iini
X X I I , ,Yo. 3, I991

"A Woman under the Influence":

A Case of Alleged Possession
in Sixteenth-Century France
Anita M . Walker and Edmund H . Dickerman

The University 4 Connecticut

This article reexamines the case of the French demoniac Marthe Brossier, w h o in
1598 accused her neighbor Anne Chevreau of causing her demonic possession by
witchcraft. T h e testimony of Anne Chevreau provides an unusual perspective,
where the accused defends herself by accounting for the actions and motivations of
her accuser. She explains w h y Marthe became a demoniac and w h y she chose Anne
as the target of her accusation.
Anne's testimony and other sources allow us to reconstruct Marthe's extraordinary rise and fall and to demonstrate the existence in contemporary popular culture
of explanations of demonic possession at variance with those of theologians,
physicians, and magistrates. Under Anne's hand, a more sympathetic and plausible
picture of a sad and desperate person, w h o is used by others for their own ends,
emerges in this sixteenth-century depiction of one woman by another.

1598, WHEN THEY WERE I N CHURCH in Romorantin, a small

town in west central France, Marthe Brossier attacked Anne Chevreau,
screaming that Anne had bewitched her and caused her to be possessed by
the devil. As a result of these allegations, Anne was arrested on a charge of
witchcraft and imprisoned for more than a year, while Marthe embarked on
a career as an itinerant demoniac, going from exorcism to exorcism and
attracting large crowds. By March 1599, Marthe ended up in Paris, where
the threat of public disorder occasioned by her exorcisms led to intervention by the state.
This case received considerable contemporary attention from clerics,
magistrates, theologians, physicians, and ultimately the Parlement of Paris
and King Henry IV himself. Their concern was with the substantive issue
of whether Marthe was indeed possessed and Anne thus guilty of witchcraft. Modern historians have been interested in the larger context of the
case: Robert Mandrou with the clash between secular and ecclesiastical
authorities over the jurisdiction of cases of possession by ri~aleficiui~z,
and
between physicians and theologians over the criteria for possession;l Alfred Soman with the treatment by the Parlement of Paris of appeals in cases
of possession and witchcraft;2 Daniel F! Walker with the use of public
I N EARLY

'Robert Mandrou, Magistrats et sorciers en France au XVIIe sidcle, une anal!yse de psychologie
historique (Paris: Plon, 1968), 163-79.
2AlfredSoman, "The Parlement of Paris and the Great Witch Hunt (1565-1640):' Sixteenth
Century Journal 9, no. 2 (1978):3044. While Soman's article does not deal specifically with the
Marthe Brossier case, it must be read in conjunction with Mandrou's book for a better
understanding of the workings of the Parlement of Paris at this period.

534

The Sixteenth Century Journal XXIIl3 1991

The Witch

536

The Sixteenth Century Journal XXII/3 1991

exorcisms as religious propaganda.3 O u r study focuses on Marthe Brossier

herself We have reexamined an unpublished manuscript first used by
Mandrou. In addition to depositions by supporters ofMarthe, it consists of
two letters, one written to the Bishop of Paris by Anne Chevreau herself
from prison, the other by an anonymous supporter of Anne from information provided by her.4 Most of the surviving legal records of European
witchcraft prosecutions (except in Italy) give very little information about
either the accused or the accuser, making it difficult to reconstruct their
relative ages, marital and economic statuses, or the social context in which
the accusation took place. These two letters offer a highly unusual historical perspective, where the thoughts, feelings, and motives of one woman,
the accuser, are explained by the other, her victim. By analyzing these
letters, as well as using other contemporary information and modern
scholarly works, we will show why Marthe acted as a woman possessed,
why she accused Anne, and why Marthe, no less than Anne, should be
viewed as victim.
The socially accepted roles for adult women in early modern Europe
were very limited. The basic options were marriage or the religious life (as
bride of Christ). In either case, a woman passed from the social and legal
control of her father to that either of her husband or of an institution
ultimately responsible to male authority. All other roles were stigmatized.
Yet by 1598 Europe was undergoing a demographic transformation. Not
only had the age of women at first marriage risen to 23-27 (25-30 for men)
but large numbers of people never married at all.5 The proportion of single
women in European society rose from 5 percent to perhaps as high as 20
percent.6 Marthe Brossier's chances of a socially acceptable adulthood in
the late sixteenth century were thus only four in five from the start. In fact,
the odds against her were far greater. Additional obstacles stood in her
way-her father's financial circumstances and her two older sisters.
Marriages in the early modern period were economic contracts between families, negotiated primarily by the male heads of household. The
arrangements included payment of a dowry, as substantial as the bride's
father could afford and the groom's family would accept. There was also a
conventional order of marriage, older sisters generally marrying before
younger. In 1598Jacques Brossier, Marthe's father, was a ruined man; what
3D[aniel] I? Walker, Unclean Spirits (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1981), 33-42.
4BibliothPque Nationale, Paris (hereafter BNP): Fonds Fran~ais18453 fols. 1-100. Letter
of Anne Chevreau to the Bishop of Paris, 16 March 1599, fols. lr-19v; "Discourse against the
deceptions of Marthe Brossier, alleged demoniac," by an unnamed supporter of Anne
Chevreau, 1599, fols. 39r-61v.
5JohnHajnal, "European Marriage Patterns in Perspective," in Population in History, ed.
David V Glass and David E. C. Eversley (Chicago: Aldine, 1965), 101-43.
6H. C. Erik Midelfort, Witch Hulzting in Southzuestern Germany, 1562-1684 (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1972), 184.

Woman Under the Influence

537

is more, a ruined man with four daughters, all unmarried. O f these,

Marthe was the third. By 1598 Marthe herself was already twenty-five.'
Her oldest sister Silvine was around forty. The age of the second daughter is
not known, but since the youngest was twenty an estimate of thirty to
thirty-five for the second sibling is probably close. Marthe's expectations
of marriage were thus very low. Her father's financial position would not
have permitted her much of a dowry, and two sisters stood in line ahead of
her. Marthe found herself, as the period of her own eligibility was passing
rapidly away, shut out from the "normal" role of adult women.
Marthe had not grown up with these bleak expectations. Once P&re
Brossier had been "quite well o f f ' and had "honest means, " 8 so well off in
fact that he had begun negotiations for the marriage of his eldest daughter
Silvine to the nephew of a fellow townsman, the Sire Robert H ~ p p e a u . ~
Since the title "Sire" connotes a substantial landowner, and marriages were
usually between families not widely disparate in social and economic
status, P?re Brossier must originally have been a man of some wealth and
standing. If he planned to marry his eldest daughter at twenty-five (the
middle of the nuptial age range), and she was around forty in 1598, then he
was still a reasonably well-off man fifteen years before, or when Marthe
was ten. Marthe received some education as a child-she was literate
enough to read for herself the life of the demoniac Nicole D'Obry. Silvine's
expected marriage, however, which would have cleared the way for the
younger sisters, did not take place. Negotiations were broken off, by P?re
Brossier, according to Anne ("he didn't want to hear about it when he had
the means").lO Sometime during the next fifteen years he gradually lost his
money, "through wars, court decisions and other misfortunes" until by
1598 "he does not have the means of addressing the question [of marrying
off his daughters] in keeping with his social position."ll Because of this
Marthe had become "very agitated" and for some length of time before
1598 "very sad and withdrawn. "12 She apparently considered becoming a
nun and had talked to her father about it. H e spoke to the Abbess of
Religious at Glatigny, but they could not "come to an agreement. "I3 Since
entering a nunnery also involved a dowry, negotiations may have broken
down over money. After this second gate was shut to her, Anne says Marthe
became "more depressed than ever. "I4
0ther French fathers, however, lost their fortunes in the economically
unstable decades of the late sixteenth century and their unmarried daugh7BNP E E 18453, fol. 4r.

EIbid., fol. 3r.

gIbid., fol. 43r.

'OIbid., fol. 3v.

"Ibid., fol. 3r.

121bid.,fol. 4v.

13Ibid., fol. 41v.

14Ibid.

538

The Sixteenth Century Journal XXIIl3 1991

ters did not become demoniacs. The precipitating factor in Marthe

Brossier's case seems to have been an incident which took place not long
before her attack on Anne, probably in late 1597. According to Anne and
her supporter, both of whom describe the incident in almost identical
terms, one day Marthe disguised herself in men's clothes, cut off her hair,
and ran away from home. She fled first to a church in Romorantin "where
she was not known"l5 and hid out there, then left Romorantin altogether.
Why did Marthe run away? What did she hope to achieve by it? And why
did she disguise herself as a man? Anne very definitely sees this attempt to
run away as Marthe's response to her unmarried status. "From despair of
getting married, being but the third daughter . . . , she became very upset
. . . one day . . . she left her father's house."l6 Neither Anne nor her
supporter offers any explanation of Marthe's objective in fleeing "for what
purpose no-one knows."17 She may have disguised herself as a man for
practical reasons-from fear of rape (a realistic apprehension for a young
woman traveling alone), or because it would be easier to escape detection
and forced return. But Anne gives a different kind of explanation. By
cutting off her hair and dressing as a man, Anne says "this girl . . . denied
her sex," although Anne does not know why Marthe did so.18 By disguising herself as a man and running away, Marthe was not only rejecting her
identification as a woman, but perhaps also attempting to change sex by
presenting the appearance of a male and thus assuming control over her
own life.
In any event, this desperate and highly unusual act ended in failure.
After she had been gone from home for several days, she was finally
recognized in a town about twelve miles away and brought back to her
father's house.19 The incident, however, was not ended by Marthe's return
home. She found herself "blamed by all her friends and reproached by her
father" and she herself felt "such shame and remorse as you can imagine. "20
By her actions Marthe had dishonored and perhaps endangered both herself
and her family.
Both Anne and her supporter claim that Marthe began to behave as a
demoniac as a strategy to recover the honor she and her family had forfeited
by her actions, "[she began] to play the demoniac . . . to recover her
honor," and "[the Brossiers] wanted to . . . recover her honor.
Even
before Marthe ran away from home, the honor of the Brossiers can be seen
as at risk, since, through Jacques Brossier's financial misfortunes, the
family was already economically, and thus socially, dCclassC.22 Marthe's
ISIbid., fol. 4r.
16Ibid.
17Ibid., fol. 41v.
'EIbid., fol. 13v.
IgIbid., fols. 4r and 41 v
ZOIbid., fol. 13v
ZlIbid., fols. 15v and 43v.
22Forcontemporary notions of honor, see Guido Ruggiero, "More Dear to Me than Life
Itself: Marriage, Honor and a Woman's Reputation in the Renaissance," Quaderni Storici n.s. 66
(1987):753-75; Arlette Jouanna, "Recherches sur la notion d'honneur au XVIe siPcle," Revue
d'histoire moderne et contemporaine 15 (0ct.-Dec. 1968): 597-623.

Woman Under the Influence

539

flight and its attendant circumstances, however, plunged the family into
social crisis. The issues were cross-dressing and disorderly conduct.
Attitudes towards cross-dressing in late sixteenth century Europe
were ambivalent.23 Cross-dressing was a violation of an explicit tabu in the
Judeo-Christian tradition (Deut. 22:5). Likewise, longer hair in Christian
tradition was associated with proper female identity and shorter with male
(1 Cor. 11:14-15). Cross-dressing particularly from female to male, was
associated from time to time with witchcraft, and was one of the major
charges in the accusation of witchcraft against Joan of Arc in 1431. Yet it
was not illegal, and there was even within medieval hagiography a tradition
of transvestite female saints like St. H i l d e g ~ n d . ~ ~
In Marthe's case, cross-dressing also involved cutting off her hair.25
While we cannot know what the act of cutting off her hair meant to Marthe,
Anne interprets it as part of "denying her sex." Anne is surely reflecting
prevailing mores in contemporary Romorantin when she comments negatively on Marthe's cross-dressing: "This girl . . . committed the abovementioned fault of disguising herself and denying her sex. "26
By cutting off her hair, by wearing men's clothes, by running away
from home, Marthe had rejected the socially prescribed role of a person of
her sex, age, marital status, and social position. She failed to "comport
herself in a Christian fashion. "27 One should not forget that Anne's letter is
addressed to the Bishop of Paris. The very fact of a young unmarried
woman having been alone in a strange town for several days would be
enough to compromise her sexual reputation.28 Marthe thus failed signally
to display Marguerite de Navarre's essentials of female honor -gentleness,
patience, and above all, c h a ~ t i t y . ~ 9
Anne is explicit about the negative response to Marthe's actions even
by those presumably favorably disposed towards her such as family and
friends. But she also attributes to Marthe certain internal responses to her
23Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1977), 124-51; Winfried Schleiner, "Male Cross-Dressing and Transvestism in
Renaissance Romances," Sixteenth Century Journal 19, no. 4 (1988): 605-19.
24VernL. Bullough, Sexual Variance in Society and History (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1976; Phoenix Edition, 1980), 393, 395.
25Treatment of head hair has long been recognized as socially and psychologically
significant. E. R. Leach, "Magical Hair:' Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 88 (1958):
147-64.
26BNPE E 18453, fol. 13v.
27"Honor, for each 'estate: consists first of all in comporting oneself in a Christian
fashion, that is to say, by practising virtue according to the concrete conditions imposed by the
life one leads . . . furthermore, it consists of playing correctly the social roles which correspond to different 'estates.'" Jouanna, "La notion d'honneur:' 601.
28Women in the sixteenth century were considered to be "uncontrollably libidinous."
Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), 82,
note.
29Marguerite de Navarre, L'Heptamt!ron, ed. M. Fran~ois(Paris, 1960), 221, 301. Cited In
Jouanna, "La notion d'honneur:' 600 n.2. Jouanna says that in the sixteenth century chastity
was often considered the essential of female honor. Jouanna, ibid., 600.

540

The Sixteenth Century Journal XXIIl3 1991

own actions-shame and remorse.30 Marthe must deal both with others'
perception of her as discredited and her own perception that she has done
something discreditable. Her initial response is, literally, a cover-up.
Having denied her female identity by assuming men's clothes and cutting
her hair, Marthe symbolically reaffirmed it after her return home by never
appearing before others with her head uncovered but always "heavily
veiled."31 While covering her head served the pragmatic end of hiding
Marthe's shorn hair, a reminder to others of her desperate act, both Anne
and her supporter interpret it as a sign of shame and regret for such a
"serious error. "32 By covering her head at all times Marthe reasserted not
only her femininity but also her modesty and, by implication, her sexual
purity.
The second issue involved the loss of parental (and specifically paternal) control implied by Marthe's running away. Women who escaped from
the patriarchal nuclear family, particularly as widows and spinsters, and
were thus unattached and uncontrolled, were regarded as dangerous, as a
"seditious element" within s0ciety.~3Marthe's flight was a public act,
which must have involved more than her father to locate her and bring her
back. It is thus not only she who has been shamed and dishonored but her
whole family and especially her father. Marthe's flight demonstrated in a
highly visible way Jacques Brossier's failure of masculine and parental
authority, his inability to control his womenfolk. Anne recognizes that the
incident involved more than Marthe when she mentions "the remorse
which not only she but also her velatives must have felt. "34
There was more at stake for Marthe and her family than social
embarrassment. In addition to her "natural shame," Marthe was affected
by her fear that "they would speak badly of her. " 3 5 At best, this was fear of
gossip, that highly effective regulator of female behavior. At worst it was
fear of something more malignant- witchcraft accusation.
The second half of the sixteenth century saw a gradual intensification
of witch-hunts and prosecutions all over Europe, a general phenomenon
which analysts have attributed to a variety of causes, including religious
conflict, the passage of new legislation concerning witches, economic and
political instability, and epidemic disease.36 The 1580s and 1590s were
The
especially bad for witch accusations in F r a n ~ e . ~
' people most likely to
30Thestigmatized person holds the same beliefs about identity as the rest of his society
Erving Goffman, Stigma (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963; Pelican Books Reprint,
1974), 17-18.
31BNP E E 18453, fol. 4r.
321bid., fols. 4r and 42r.
33Midelfort, Witch Hunting, 185-86.
34BNPE E 18453, fol. 13v Italics ours.
35Ibid., fol. 4r.
36Brian I? Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (London: Longman, 1987),174.
3qbid., 174 and 180-81; Mandrou, Magistrats, 133.

Woman Under the Influence

541

be the target of such accusations were women who exhibited "inappropriate female behavior," those who failed to protect their reputations, who
were "notorious,"38 and those who were perceived as sad, depressed, or
dejected.39 Statistically they were likely also to be unmarried (spinsters or
widows), poor, and over fifty.40 Marthe fitted all but the last two categories. Small wonder that after her return she was "tormented by anxieties
and troubled by fantasies and impressions which she dared not reveal."41
She may have been afraid that beyond loss of honor her desperate act would
make her vulnerable to an accusation of witchcraft. The atmosphere in
Romorantin in the 1590s was conducive to accusations of witchcraft, and to
accusations of a special kind, that is, of demonic possession caused by
witchcraft. In 1595 or 1596 three women of the town had been accused of
being witches, who by having practiced malefiicium had caused three other
women to be possessed. The accused Romorantin witches were convicted
by the local court of justice and executed.42 Their execution set off a
veritable wave of "copy-cat" possessions in the town. Anne's supporter
comments that "all who were sick began to think they were poisoned and
possessed, "43 and Anne says that "[it] gave the opportunity, as ordinarily
happens, for several others to claim they were bewitched, among them ten
or twelve women who were weak-minded, as is our sex. "4411 is not clear
whether these claims of demonic possession were followed by accusations
and prosecutions for witchcraft, but in 1597 "rumors of witches were still
fresh. "4 Since possessed persons in France at this period were rarely seen as
witches themselves,46 by becoming a victim of sorcery Marthe may have
been warding off the possibility of herself being accused of witchcraft.
Anne's supporter believes Marthe began to act like a demoniac as a
result of conscious and deliberate decision, which he sees as an attempt at
social survival on the part of the entire Brossier family, who "wanted to
cover up the fault with some pretext and recover her honor. Knowing no
other way, she decided to say she was a demoniac. . . . By this means her
fault could be explained away as the instigation of an evil spirit. Then she
would be pitied, and onlookers would excuse rather than condemn her for
her faults. This was the intention, the plan and the goal at which they aimed
by all sorts of trickery and ruses."47
38Clarke Garrett, "Women and Witches; Patterns of Analysis:' Signs 3 (1977): 466.

39Midelfort, Witch Hunting, 185.

40Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 12342.

41BNP E E 18453, fol. 4v.

42Ibid., fols. 5r and 52v.

43Ibid., fol. 53r.

@Ibid., fol. 5r.

451bid., fol. 1 3 ~ .

46Walker, Unclean Spirits, 10, mentions only three French cases between 1584 and 1611.

47BNPF. E 18453. fol. 43v.

542

The Sixteenth Century Journal XXIIl3 1991

Anne attributes to Marthe a more complex motivation. Not only does

she depict her as a deeply troubled woman before, during, and after her
flight, Anne maintains that Marthe herself did not understand why she felt
and acted as she did, but was constrained to cover up her inner turmoil.
"Several people asked her what was the matter with her and she told them
she didn't know. "48 Anne even claims that the idea of demonic possession
did not originate with Marthe, but was suggested to her as a plausible
explanation by others. "Seeking only to cover up her fault and mindful of
the current rumors of witches, Marthe let herself be easily persuaded by
these others that her behavior and troubled mind were the result of being
poisoned and bewitched. "49 While Anne's supporter thinks Marthe's demonic possession began as an outright fraud planned by the whole Brossier
family, Anne more generously sees the Brossier parents as merely gullible,
"weak-minded" people, who felt "relieved" at this plausible explanation
and grasped at this straw when it was presented to them; "through her
grimaces and leaping about, they immediately came to believe that she was
possessed by an evil spirit. "50 Thus Marthe's identification as a demoniac
can be explained as serving several purposes. It would safeguard her from
being accused as a witch, despite her extremely vulnerable position in a
suspicious town. It would recoup the family honor by exonerating Jacques
Brossier from responsibility for his daughter's socially deviant action, and
most importantly, it would explain and justify Marthe Brossier's feelings
and actions to herself, in terms acceptable within the sixteenth-century
context. After acting "like a madwoman and maniac" in public several
times, Marthe saw Anne in church, threw herself upon her, and accused her
of witchcraft.51
That Marthe should displace responsibility for her unacceptable feelings and aberrant behavior onto some "other" is understandable, given the
prevailing climate of association between possession and witchcraft in
Romorantin. If Marthe were possessed, then chevchez la sovci2m, but why
pick on Anne Chevreau? Both Anne and her supporter explain Marthe's
choice of target in terms of interpersonal conflict.52 Marthe accused Anne
because of "a certain rancor which she bore towards one of m y sisters and
towards me for her own motives."53 Anne's supporter says Marthe felt
481bid., fol. 13v.
49Ibid.
SOIbid., fol. 6r.
SlIbid., fol. 44v.
52The notion of interpersonal conflict as a root cause of witchcraft accusation is widely
accepted in anthropological literature and confirmed in studies of the relationship between
accusers and accused in England and New England. See Alan Macfarlane, Witclzcraft in Tudor
and Stuart England (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970); Keith Thomas, Religion and the
Decline of Magic (New York: Scribner's, 1971); Stephen Boyer and Paul Nissenbaum, Salem
Possessed; The Social Origins of Witchcraft (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974);John I?
Demos, Entertaining Satan; Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1982).
53BNPE E 18453. fol. 14r.

Woman Under the Influence

543

"mortal hatred. "54 This bad feeling was shared by the whole Brossier
family, "the hate and rancor which her relatives feel towards me and one of
m y sisters."55 The source of this hatred lay in the history of the two
families. Anne's sister was the wife of Sire Robert Huppeau, that same Sire
Huppeau whose nephew Jacques Brossier had wished to marry to his eldest
daughter Silvine. Each side blamed the other for the breakdown of the
intended match. "Marthe and her relatives felt mortal hatred for . . . Anne
Chevreau and her sister, wife of Sire Huppeau, for having prevented the
marriage of their nephew to Marthe's eldest sister. " 5 6 Logically, one would
expect that Anne's sister or her husband would have been the one accused.57
Perhaps Sire Huppeau and his wife were seen as too powerful to attack.
Anne was more vulnerable. For one thing, she was, like Marthe and her
sisters, unmarried. Her supporter refers to her as afille,58 a term denoting
an unmarried woman, a virgin. She was younger than her sister, since her
sister was married and she was not, but if she had been old enough to take
part in and be blamed for the aborted marriage negotiations for Silvine
Brossier, Anne was presumably already an adult fifteen years before,
making her at least forty by 1598. She may have been even older. During her
career as demoniac, Marthe twice claimed she had been bewitched since she
was a child of two or three. At one exorcism she said that when she was two
years old Anne had given her a magic apple "made of sulphur and
smoke."59 O n another occasion she said the devil had been in her for
twenty-two years.60 One would infer that Anne was already a young
woman when Marthe was two or three, which would put her closer to fifty
by 1598. Anne thus falls into two of the most important categories of
vulnerability to witchcraft accusations - she is unmarried and she is middle-aged. It is also possible that in Anne Marthe is rejecting an unacceptable
image of herself twenty years down the line. There are additional plausible
reasons for the choice of Anne as target. Whether Anne is forty or fifty, she
is old enough to be identified more as a member of Marthe's parents'
generation than Marthe's own. Other researchers have noted the pattern of
an older female accused ofwitchcraft by a younger unmarried one,61which

541bid.,fol. 43r.
55Ibid., fol. 2r.
56Ibid., fol. 43r.
57Midelfort singles out "better known men and women" as the second group likely to
attract denunciation as witches. Midelfort, Witch Hunting, 187.
58BNPE E 18453, fol. 43r.
S9Ibid.,fol. 901.
60Ibid., fol. 46v.
61Monter cites the case of the last witch executed in Geneva as "an old widow accused by
a young unmarried girl" and calls this "a typical example of how demonic possession worked
in Jura trials." E. William Monter, Witchcraft in France and Szuitzerland (Ithaca and London:
Cornell University Press, 1976), 140.

544

The Sixteenth Century Journal XXIIl3 1991

is explained as intergenerational conflict based on resentment of the parental control to which unmarried girls were subject, particularly by their
mothers.62 The intergenerational conflict here may be paternal rather than
maternal. Marthe displays some degree of hostility towards her father. At
an exorcism at Saumur before a large audience, Marthe, as Beelzebub,
attributed her possession to the sin of her father in not going to Mass. Since
nonattendance at church was a factor often contributing to accusations of
witchcraft, this cannot be other than a baleful and deliberately negative
comment.63 Marthe clearly attaches great importance to the failure of the
marriage negotiations between the Chevreaux-Huppeaux and the
Brossiers. It may have represented a symbolic end to her expectations.
Anne blames Marthe's father for the breakdown. Perhaps she was partly
right. Marthe might then feel anger towards her father for blighting her
hopes but would have no legitimate means of expressing it. Instead she
would intensify her fury against the other side and thus Anne. There is
certainly no question in Anne's mind of the ultimate objective of Marthe's
accusation: "She wanted me dead. "64
Like her claim to be possessed, Marthe's accusation of Anne is overdetermined. By fastening on the most vulnerable member of the Chevreaux-Huppeaux clan, she is revenging herself and her family on their
family and on Anne personally for past wrongs. At the same time, she may
be displacing aggression against her parents, either severally or together,
for their part in the failed marriage negotiation, her continued dependency
on them, and their reproaches at her recent conduct.
The initial response to Marthe's attack on Anne in church was not
promising. Anne began, or threatened to begin, a civil suit for injury
against Jacques Brossier and his daughter.65 Brossier, "a man of unprepossessing appearance, but subtle and inventive, "66 fearing he would be
in trouble for this further action of his wayward daughter, pushed the
accusation of witchcraft, "thinking he could win easily. "67 The result was
immediately gratifying. Anne was arrested and clapped in jail.
After the transfer of jurisdiction over crimes of witchcraft from the
ecclesiastical to the secular courts in the late fifteenth century, the development of effective legal machinery, coupled with the use of torture in
witchcraft cases, resulted in not only a rapidjudicial process but an increase
62JohnI? Demos, "Underlying Themes in the Witchcraft of Seventeenth Century New
England:' American Historical Review 75 (1970):1325.
63BNPE E 18453, fol. 90r. See Levack, The Witch-Hunt 137.
64BNPF. E 18453, fol. 14r.
651bid., fol. 44v.
66Pierre-Victor Palma Cayet, Chronologie Septinaire. In Michaud and Poujoulat, eds.,
Mirnoires pour servir a l'histoire de France, Series 1, vol. 12, pt. 2 (Paris and Lyon: Guyot FrPres,
1850), 61.
67BNPE F. 18453, fol. 44v.

Woman Under the Influence

545

in convictions by the late sixteenth century.68 According to Anne and her

supporter, Marthe and her father fully expected that Anne's conviction and
execution would follow as swiftly and as smoothly as they had in the earlier
possession and witchcraft cases in 1595196. "She thought that as soon as she
had made two or three of her leaps and grimaces they would believe her
possessed and without further enquiry I would straightaway be burned, as
actually happened to three others, who were convicted by the diligence of
the judges of this town of the crime of being witches. "69 As soon as these
earlier witches were dead, "the possessed women found themselves cured
of their devils. "70 Anne's supporter comments that "since the victims of the
executed witches had been freed of their spell, Marthe planned to claim to
be liberated from her spell when Anne was executed. By this means her
fault could be explained away as the instigation of an evil spirit. Thus she
would be pitied and onlookers would excuse rather than condemn her for
her faults. "71 Honor retrieved, vengeance achieved, symptoms relieved,
case closed.
In Anne's case, however, "the means the judges used were such that
from the beginning it took a year or more. " 7 2 Since Anne writes in March
1599 that her accusers are trying to get her convicted,73 it is clear she had not
yet come to trial at the time of writing. The fact that she was capable of
writing this long, coherent and rational letter after more than a year in
prison and that she was still vehemently maintaining her innocence argues
that she had not been subjected to the tortures usually applied to produce
confessions from accused witches.74 Her family, unable to prevent her
arrest, may nevertheless have been influential enough to convince the
judges to proceed with "prudence and discretion," although Anne's supporter attributes their caution to the benign intervention of God.75
In the absence of a confession, the case against Anne rested on the
genuineness ofMarthe's possession. To be possessed was not a crime. Cases
68Estimates of how many accused witches escaped execution vary Mandrou cites one in
ten in Lorraine, one in twenty in Labourd. Mandrou, Magistrnts, 111. Romorantin, however,
may have had a much higher rate, since, although witchcraft cases were tried in the local court,
the town came under the appellate jurisdiction of the Parlement of Paris, which Soman's
studies have shown commuted almost two death sentences in three. Soman, "The Parlement
of Paris," 34. See also his earlier study, "Les ProcPs de sorcellerie au Parlement de Paris (15651640)," Annnles E.S.C. 32 (1977):790-814.
69BNPE E 18453, fol. 15v
70Ibid., fol. 5r.
711bid., fol. 43v.
721bid., fol. 44r.
73Ibid., fol. 19r.
74Another Soman article on the treatment of those accused of witchcraft in the
jurisdiction of the Parlement of Paris suggests that far fewer of those indicted on such charges
were "put to the question" than has been previously thought. Alfred Soman, "La
Decriminalisation de la sorcellerie en France," Histoire, Econoinie et Societi, 4, no. 2 (1985):
179-203.
75BNPE E 18453, fol. 44r.

546

The Sixteenth Century Journal XXIIl3 1991

of possession had traditionally been addressed by ecclesiastical, not secular,

authorities, and dealt with by the ritual of exorcism. In order to strengthen
their claim of possession (and thus the charge of maleficium), the Brossiers
brought in a family friend, the cure'of Romorantin. This cure', whom Anne's
supporter dismisses as "very ignorant, "76 had some experience with devils.
He had exorcised one of the "copy-cat" cases.77 H e apparently also had an
axe to grind with the Chevreaux-Huppeaux. "He joined in enthusiastically
on account of the hatred he bore Robert Huppeau. "78 The cur4 was assisted
by an episcopal canon (who Anne's supporter claims could not read),
another who like the cure'"ate ordinarily at Brossier's table. "79 The two of
them exorcised Marthe at home and in the parish church. Although Anne's
supporter remarks scornfully that these rituals were conducted "without
either authority or knowing how to put the question," and seemed "more
like a farce than an exorcism,"80 many people, both ecclesiastical and lay,
were convinced of the authenticity of Marthe's possession. Others were
not. What began as an accusation against Anne became a test of Marthe, as
she was required to demonstrate her possession over and over again. Thus
began her strange career as an itinerant demoniac who, accompanied by her
father and sister Silvine, for more than a year went from one ecclesiastical
authority to another within the region, from OrlCans to ClCry, to Romorantin, to Angers, to Saumur, being exorcised repeatedly in public
before large audiences (three thousand in the church of St. Pierre at
Saumur) and examined in private by clerics, doctors, and legal officials.
From the theological authorities at OrlCans the Brossiers even acquired a
certificate of authentication.81 At one examination conducted by the
Chatelain of Romorantin and the Procurateur du Roy as well as the cure' of
Romorantin, Anne herself was forced to be present,82 presumably to test
her guilt, since part of the common beliefwas that demonic convulsions and
the like were brought on by the presence of the witch responsible. Opinion
among both ecclesiastical and lay authorities about the authenticity of
Marthe's possession remained divided.
In order to persuade by her performance, Marthe's behavior as a
demoniac had to conform to certain contemporary theological expectations. The criteria of possession comprised (1) the ability to speak and
understand languages unknown to the person possessed (generally Greek,
Latin, or Hebrew), (2) clairvoyance, (3) unnatural body strength, and (4)
761bid.,fol.44v.

77Ibid., fol. 15v

78Ibid., fol.45r.

79Ibid.

soIbid.

BlIbid., fols. 63r-64v.

s21bid., fols. 17v-19r.

Woman Under the Influence

547

horror and revulsion at sacred things.83 The last two were usually demonstrated by bodily and facial contortions and acrobatics. Both ~ n n and
e her
supporter comment on Marthe's performance. It is interesting to note that
Anne does not deny the existence of witches or witchcraft, "such an
execrable and abominable crime, "84 nor does she deny the possibility of
possession. But Anne knows she herself is not a witch and that she has not
caused Marthe's possession. Nor does she claim that anyone else has
bewitched Marthe. She concludes, as has been shown above, that Marthe is
not possessed, but is acting as a possessed person for her own reasons. Her
supporter goes further and bluntly calls Marthe's performance fraudulent.
Both maintained, for different reasons, that Marthe started out as a very
naive demoniac, aware of only the most superficial aspects of possessed
behavior and only gradually learned what was expected of her. Encouragement, instruction, rehearsal, and practice, they claim, honed her performance and enabled her to produce the behavior that convinced her audiences. In this she was aided by the cur4 of Romorantin. He provided her
with the account of the highly successful possession of Nicole D'Obry of
Laon in 1566, from which Marthe learned the names of devils and to bark,
mew, croak, and play dead.85 In addition, he coached her in the answers
expected by investigating ecclesiastical and lay authorities.86
From the testimony of the letters and the depositions concerning the
genuineness of her possession, one can infer that, despite the continued
persistence of detractors, throughout 1598 and until March 1599 Marthe
derived considerable satisfaction at many levels from her career as a woman
possessed. From a position of shameful obscurity she was elevated to one of
public consequence. From being merely the misfit third Brossier daughter
she became the most important member of the family. If the physician
Marescot is correct in his assertion that the Brossiers received a considerable amount of money from supporters, she became also a major source of
family income.87 She became a focus of attention for men of note, not just
in Romorantin but throughout the region. Crowds flocked to her exorcisms and, in deference to her demoniacal powers of clairvoyance, treated
her like an oracle; "a great number of people go to her and ask if their
mothers or fathers are in Heaven or Purgatory, others if their husbands who
are away will return safe and sound, others if those with whom they had
quarrels or court cases would be damned after their deaths. "88 If Marthe
83Walker, Unclean Spirits, 12.
84BNPE E 18453, fols. l v and 44v.
85Ibid., fol. 141.
s61bid., fol. 12r.
87Michel Marescot, Discours vhitable sur lefaict de Marthe Brossier de Romorantin pritendue
dimoniaque (Paris, 1599), 3 8 4 0 . Cited in Walker, Unclean Spirits, 37.
88FX" E E 18453, fol. 8v.

548

The Sixteenth Century Journal XXIIl3 1991

were not a conscious fraud but half believed in her own performance, the
adulation of the crowd would have reinforced her conviction that she was
possessed of supernatural powers.
The exorcisms also served to present to others theatrically and publicly a reconstructed self-a "true" Marthe, as it were-and to demarcate
sharply this unblemished self from the "false," stigmatized Marthe whose
eccentric and bizarre actions were externally and demoniacally caused.
Such interpretation is borne out in the description by Hillaire Raveille,
Conseiller d u Roy, a supporter of Marthe, of an exorcism at the church of St.
Pierre at Saumur in November 1598. The scene for the liturgical drama of
exorcism was carefully set. "Vespers were sung, people were in their places,
Marthe was brought to the altar." The atmosphere was one of religious and
social propriety. Marthe herself was a model of Christian female decorum.
She was not agitated but displayed "a spirit at peace" and "an appearance of
maidenly modesty." She knelt at the altar, breviary in hand, and crossed
herself. But as soon as the Cure' Recteur of Saumur began the prayers
signalling the start of the exorcism, Marthe's appearance became very
disturbed, "her face turned black, her mouth gaped, her tongue protruded
the length of four or five fingers, and her eyeballs rolled back hideously."
Then as the Cure' R e c t e u ~held up the sacred host before her, "this girl arced
her body back and forth, her head near her breasts and leaped and twisted in
different directions. "89
As a demoniac, she was not only permitted, she was expected to act in
ways which represented a complete reversal of normative female behavior.
No need now to don men's clothes and run away. As a woman completely
taken over by a male demon (his identity at first varied, sometimes the
Devil himself, later consistently Beelzebub, but always male), Marthe
could act the man without fear of censure. She could-engage in public
argument with males as an equal, she could contradict, she could be
assertive and aggressive, she could reward with praise, she could threaten,
and she could display anger. Thus "Marthe's demon" "spewed forth an Iliad
of insults against those who denied her claim . . . but showed friendship
and courtesy to all who believed her."90 O f a religious who disputed her
claim, Anne reports that "Marthe's demon" "said he was excommunicated
and several times called him an apostate and one time said that he had lied
because he said she should be whipped for feigning madness. To show her
'civility' she said to him in front of the Procurateur du R o y and several other
notables, 'Go, go, you [the derogatory 'tu'] are an apostate and you have
lied about which Master you serve' . . . all this said with great anger."gl
s91bid., fols. 73r-74v

gOIbid., fol.6v.

911bid.,fol. 8r.

Woman Under the Influence

549

Since Anne was sitting in prison during this period, these remarks are
hearsay. Nevertheless Anne was eyewitness to another exaillination where
"Marthe's demon, " "who did not want to be contradicted, "'"esponded
to
lay skepticism at her inappropriate answers to questions in Latin and
Greek. First "Marthe's demon" said to the C h a t e l a i n , "Ha ha, believe what
you like, you have to believe the Church and do justice," then, when the
questioners countered that if Marthe were indeed possessed, her demon
should not worry whether one believed the Church, "Marthe's demon"
shouted, "completely transported by rage and clapping one hand against
the other, 'Par le mort diable, if you make fun of me I will say nothing- more
today."'93 In short, in the persona of Beelzebub, whether dealing with
officials or working the crowds as a clairvoyant, Marthe could exercise a
control over herself and others denied her until then. Conventional expectations of demonic behavior freed her from inhibition not just in her speech
but in her physical behavior in public. Her contortions, jumpings, twitchings, back bends, and somersaults made ofher perforce a sexual exhibitionist in an age when women of her station wore nothing beneath their gowns
but a short shift.94 Even as Marthe, in the intervals between possessions,
she could exercise control over certain of her supporters by playing on their
sympathies for her as victim. At the same time she could force a degree of
compliance with her sexual wishes. "Many times . . . she said, 'Kiss me,
canon,' and in fact forced him to kiss her and was not able to go to sleep
unless he laid his cheek against hers or held her in his arms."95
In the larger context, however, Marthe was not under her own control
but that of others. She may have been the income producer, but it was her
father who managed her, and the reality of the power relationship is cruelly
depicted by Marescot: "For fifteen months she was led around like a
monkey or a bear. "9Wnne also sees the cure' of Romorantin as exploiting
Marthe to enhance his own reputation.97 Each successive expulsion of the
demon was itself a symbolic act of submission, the triumphant exercise of
domination, not only of Good over Evil, of cleric over demon, but of male
over female, visually and publicly endlessly repeated.
The exorcisms of Marthe, moreover, served yet another purpose, as
Mandrou and Walker have shown: that of Catholic propaganda against the
Huguenots.98 The ritual of exorcism demonstrated the validity of Catholic
92Ibid., fol. 6r.
931bid., fols. 1%-19r.
9%lthough i n Catherine d e Medici's t i m e there was briefly a fashion at court for wearing
drawers, it is doubtful that this fad, regarded as rather risque e v e n for ladies o f t h e court,
would have percolated d o w n t o Romorantin. In anv case, t h e drawers had n o crotch. Cecil
l
1968), 82-87.
s a i n t - ~ a u r e L tH
, istory of Ladies' U~derwear( ~ o n d o n : - M i c h a eJoseph,
95BNP E E 18453, fol. 7r.
96Marescot, Discours vhitable, 28-29. Cited i n Walker, Uncleaiz Spirits 34
97BNP E F. 18453, fol. 17r.
98Mandrou, Magistrats, 166; Walker, Unclean Spirits, 34-37.

550

The Sixteenth Century Journal XXIIl3 1991

devotional practices, while claims by the demon that the Huguenots were
his adherents served to discredit the Huguenots and frighten stray sheep
back into the Catholic fold.99 Marthe was gradually sucked into this vortex
of anti-Huguenot propaganda; she became increasingly free with public
anti-Huguenot statements. This was a potentially volatile situation in an
area which had been wracked for the previous forty years by religious
controversy. By March 1599, "the disorder [was] so great, as it still is, that
everyone believed him [Marthe's demon] for an oracle, and no man,
however bold, dares say that Marthe is not possessed for fear she would say
he was a Huguenot. "100 To the excitation of religious antipathies was added
the threat of public disorder. "The common people flock there [to the
exorcisms] (abominable thing)."lOl Cooler heads among the clergy privately advised Jacques Brossier to take his daughter to Notre Dame des
Ardilliers for a retreat, whence she could return "healthy and holy"102 due,
people would say, "to the prayers and miracles of the Virgin Mary. "103 It
was a way out which would have defused the situation and saved face all
around. Anne thought that Marthe herself was becoming weary of her
demonic role. "Her evil spirit has already said many times that he was
bored in her body and wished to be out of it. The poor girl would never
have begun to play the demoniac if she thought it would go on so long. She
would have tried to find some other way to recover her honor, [but Marthe
was] afraid that her follies and malice would be found out."104 Jacques
Brossier was afraid that "in the end he would fall into the same pit which he
had dug for another,"l05 that is, he and Marthe would be accused of
witchcraft. They allowed the cuve' of Romorantin to dissuade them from
accepting the cure at Notre Dame des Ardilliers. Swept along by the antiHuguenot passion of extremist clerics, they went to Paris.
Marthe's experience in Paris in March 1599 was the climax ofher career
as a woman possessed. Under the aegis of the Capuchins of the Abbey of
Ste-Genevihe, Marthe, in front of huge audiences, underwent repeated
public exorcisms, which served as vehicles for rabid anti-Huguenot propaganda. "She made oracular pronouncements against the Huguenots, and
her devil went every day to find a new soul at La Rochelle and elsewhere to
put in his cauldron, saying that all Huguenots belonged to him. "106 By the
end of the month, Paris was in an uproar. O n March 30 the Bishop of Paris
99Walker, Unclean Spirits, 4-5.
loOBNPE E 18453, fol. 6v.
IOlIbid., fol. 8r.
102Ibid., fol. 17r.
lo31bid.,fol. 56r.
lO'jIbid., fol. 15v.
'OSIbid., fol. 49v.
lo6Pierre de l'Estoile, Journal de I'Estoile pour le rigne de Henri IV 1,1589-1600, ed. L.R.
Lefevre (Paris: Gallimard, 1948), 567, 30 March 1599.

Woman Under the Influence

551

intervened. Under his supervision teams of theologians and doctors examined Marthe. Theologians and physicians disagreed between themselves
and among themselves. A second examination took place on March 31. A
further examination on April 1 became a public and personal confrontation
between two champions: Father Seraphin, on behalf of the Capuchins who
supported the authenticity of Marthe's possession, and Marescot, on behalf
of the physicians who denied it.107 "In short, no one in Paris spoke of
anything else but Marthe's devil. "108 The threat of public disorder in the
capital could not be allowed to continue. Henry IV had issued the Edict of
Nantes, which guaranteed toleration for the Huguenots, a year before, but
it had not been enregistered by the Parlement of Paris until the king went
before it and publicly by moral suasion pressured it to enregister his edict
on February 25, 1599.109 Many Catholics refused to accept the legitimacy
of the edict and spoke against it. The arrival of the Brossiers in Paris at the
beginning ofMarch 1599 was not mere coincidence. Marthe's protection by
the Capuchins of Ste-Genevihe and their orchestration of her public
exorcisms argue undeniably that Marthe was being used as their mouthpiece for anti-Huguenot propaganda. Henry IV, fearing that "Marthe's
devil" would disturb the precarious equilibrium established by his edict,
gave orders for the state to act. O n April 2 "the court of Parlement, having
been alerted about it, ordered Sire Lugoly, lieutenant csiminel [an officer of
the court], to seize Marthe. "110 Her arrest on April 3 on a charge of fraud
provoked further public furor and contention, this time between Church
and State, as various clerics claimed that the state had no authority over the
purely spiritual matter of demonic possession.111 Marthe was imprisoned
in the Grand ChStelet and forced to undergo medical observation.
All these controversies, however, whether intellectual, personal, corporate, or institutional, were essentially struggles for dominance between
male protagonists. Scrutinized, prodded, and pricked, Marthe herself
became more and more depersonalized and objectified, even by her supporters.
O n May 24,1599, the Parlement of Paris accepted the laconic report of
the physicians that Marthe's possession derived from "nothing supernatural, a large element of fraud, a small element of disease. "112 "Marthe
17Mandrou, Magistrats 166. These intellectual and theological aspects o f the case have
been extensively analyzed i n both Mandrou and Walker, Unclean Spirits, and will not be
treated i n detail here.
108Palma Cayet, Chronologie, 62.
109Henri IV t o the Parlement o f Paris, 7 February 1599 i n Lettres missives de Henri IV 5, ed.
Berger de Xivery (Paris, 1843-76), 89-94.
"OPalma Cayet, Chronologie, 62.
lllArchives Nationales, Paris, U. 24, fol. lor and U. 329, cited i n Mandrou, Magistrats,
167.
112J. A, De Thou, Historiarum sui tempor~s,T.V. (Geneva, 1620), 869, cited i n Walker,
Unclean Spirits, 15.

552

The Sixteenth Century Journal XXII/3 1991

was brought to the Parlement, where she promised no one would ever hear
tell ofher again. The court showed mercy and enjoined Rapin, lieutenant de
robe courte [an officer of the court], to take Marthe, her father, and her sisters
back to Romorantin, without permission to leave on pain of punishment. "113 The judge of the town was required to report on her to Paris
every two weeks.
In this way Marthe returned to Romorantin, her humiliation complete. As for the fate of Anne, we have no direct knowledge. We do know,
however, that while in prison she had suffered the added indignity of being
accused of bewitching a fellow inmate. This woman, "a longtime prisoner
who was tired of being there, also pretended to be possessed and wanted to
mimic what she had seen and heard of the said Marthe, and she was so
wicked as to charge me with the same crime and to claim that I had
bewitched her. "114 The charge apparently sufficed to secure Anne's fellow
prisoner's release, since "she convinced several prelates that she was possessed," but "as soon as she was released, no more was heard of possession."ll5 Anne's comment on this, that "God, who is just, wanted to
uncover her malice and my innocence, "116 implies that this second charge
was promptly dropped or dismissed, which in turn supports the dismissal
of the Brossiers' case against Anne. It is surely safe to infer, therefore, that
with Marthe denounced as a fraud, the case against Anne collapsed and she
was released.
But life is very long: what does an ex-demoniac do? Marthe had been
pronounced an impostor by the highest court in the land. She had become
truly a stigmatized person, and one can imagine that the small town of
Romorantin did not let her forget it. Ifher position had been uncomfortable
in 1597, after May 1599 it was intolerable. For six months Marthe suffered
and was still. Then in December 1599 she returned to the role she knew
best. A staunch anti-Huguenot, Alexandre de la Rochefoucauld, prior of
St. Martin de Randan in Auvergne and brother of the bishop of Clermont,
"who had always believed strongly that she was possessed, "117 carried her
off in a coach and into hiding. The Parlement of Paris issued a warrant, but
Caumartin and Miron, the officials charged with her recovery, were unable
to get her back.118 Fearful of pursuit, the prior set off with his prot6gC to
Italy to reopen her case with the Pope. En route Marthe was exorcised a
number of times and spoke against the Huguenots. Once again the king

l13Palrna Cayet, Clzronologie, 62.

114BNP E E 18453, fol. 13v.

1151bid., fols. 53v-54r.

"6Ibid., fol. 14r.

ll7Palrna Cayet, Chronologie, 126.

n8Letter of Robert Miroll to Rosny, 24 January 1600. BNP E E 18453, fol. 100r.

Woman Under the Influence

553

intervened. He ordered the French Cardinal D'Ossat to persuade the prior

to abandon Marthe's cause and to convince the Pope of the wisdom of the
French state's action. By April 1600 Marthe was in Rome. But shorn of her
protector and blocked from audience with the Pope, she became merely one
of a crowd of "obsessed and possessed." What was a dangerous novelty in
Paris was a commonplace in Rome, where such persons "were delivered by
the Grace of God and the Ministry of Exorcists ordained for that task."
Anti-Huguenot threats meant nothing in Italy. As a fugitive from justice
Marthe could not return to France; so she remained in Italy, wedded to her
devil. She was last seen in Milan in 1604, still being exorcised, still "very
grievously tormented," her Evil Spirit protesting that "he would never
leave her until she returned to France. "119 As Cardinal D'Ossat assured
Henry IV, Marthe had become "an object of ridicule, to make even simple
and gullible folk laugh. "120
Mandrou sees the Marthe Brossier case as the forerunner to the series
of grand possession cases of the first half of the seventeenth century which
eventually resulted in a change in attitude (nzentalitk) towards witchcraft
accusations, reflected in concomitant legal and procedural changes.121 His
analysis shows that both Marthe's supporters and detractors evaluated her
possession within the same explanatory framework and using the same
criteria. The doctors' report accepted by the Parlement of Paris reflected
these three categories of explanation: (1) supernatural phenomena (possession), (2) fraud, and (3) disease. Within the category of disease they
considered only the possibility of epilepsy, hysteria, and melancholy, all of
which they viewed symptomatically. Since Marthe's symptoms did not fit
any of these diseases, and they had dismissed the first possibility, they
reached the o111y conclusion remaining: fraud. They were little interested in
why she became a false demoniac. Marescot thought she was somewhat
melancholic, but that her prime motivation was economic.
Anne's testimony, however, shows that at the level of popular culture
there was a shrewd perception of explanations which did not fit the
theological and medical categories of the time. Anne sees the "copy-cat"
possessions as false demoniacs-but not frauds. They are "weak-minded
women" who have "troubled brains and minds confused by a thousand
fantasies. "1" She gives an example of what happened to one of these false
demoniacs-"a woman and her granddaughter went to Bourges and the
Capuchins exorcised her on her request alone without having proof.
Il9Palma Cayet, Chroizologie, 126.
120Letter of Cardinal D'Ossat to Henri IV, 1600. Cited in Walker, Uncleniz Spirits, 37.
121Mandrou,Magistrats, 163-79. Soman, however, argues most persuasively that a trend
towards increased leniency in appeals of witchcraft collvictions, leading ultimately to the
decriminalization of sorcery, was already apparent as early as 1588, a result of "the difficulty of
rendering a legally correct verdict." Soman, "Parlement of Paris:' 37-9.
lZ2BNPE E 18453, fol. 5v.

554

The Sixteenth Century Journal XXIIl3 1993

Finally, some people of that city informed the Capuchins of her 'weakmindedness' and she was sent home. "123 From this example and her analysis
of Marthe we can infer several things: that the explanation of possession
(whether or not caused by witchcraft) was a plausible and available option
in Romorantin to account for odd behavior and feelings of confusion,
especially among women; that there was also a strong possibility that this
explanation would not be accepted by the rest of the population, who were
as likely to attribute "demonic possession" of females to the known
lightlweaklfeeble nature of women; and that clerics were influenced by
this sort of explanation by the laity.
While Anne obviously viewed Marthe as a false demoniac and devoted
a great deal of her letter to giving non-supernatural explanations of the
phenomena which Marthe produced during exorcisms, the crux of her
argument rests on her attempt to explain Marthe's possession not symptomatically but motivationally. Within the limitations of the language of
her time, Anne shows a sophisticated and intuitive understanding of the
genesis of neurosis, that gray area that lies between the twin poles of
madness and exogenous disease. In prison, in peril of her life, Anne can
even be generous. "I pity her; she is more tormented in her mind by her own
fault than I am by her calumnies. "124
From Anne Chevreau's letter and other sources, another picture of
Marthe Brossier emerges. Marthe is a victim, but not of sorcery. Her
possession derived from her response to a society which provided no
socially acceptable role for a woman of her age and circumstance, and one
whose officials failed to comprehend, and thus could not pity, her resulting
unhappiness. Unmarried and unmarriageable, exploited by her father and
the clerics even while dressed in a little brief authority, ultimately rejected
by church and state and reduced to a participant in a religious freak show,
Marthe was a woman more sinned against than sinning. In her whole
strange career she acted, in Anne's words, "from despair. "125

123Ibid.
124Ibid., fol. 15r.
1251bid.,fol. 4r.