My review of Brian Levack’s The Devil Within (2013) has just been published on the History of Women Religious in Britain and Ireland (HWRBI) website. Levack’s book is a history of demonic possession in Christianity (Catholic and Protestant) from the first century CE to the present day. I would recommend this book as an introductory text for anyone interested in the history of possession and exorcism, as it provides an excellent overview of the subject.
English Catholics and the Supernatural has been reviewed in the journal of the Historical Association, History, by Coral Stoakes of the University of Cambridge. I am very grateful to Coral for her thoughtful and generous review. She observes that the book ‘addresses a discernible absence of historical inquiry into the relationship between Catholicism and belief in witchcraft’, and comments that ‘One of the major strengths of this work is its use of previously neglected Latin sources’. She concludes that ‘Young presents a rich and balanced picture, thoroughly contextualizing ideas about the supernatural within the wider religious and political context and changing internal dynamics of the English Catholic community’.
The reference is History 97, pp. 301-302.
