And it looked as follows: fasting preceded the day of the dispossession, then the ministers took turns in saying prayers and sermons over the
demoniac, and the gathered audience supplemented these prayers with responses much alike a service or rite.
In "Reconciliation | Dispossession | Exorcism," she returns to her point in chapter 1 that dispossession could be extremely violent, to explore how dispossession taught
demoniacs to resume normative behaviors.
(130) This blind test had legal precedent, being used by Sir Matthew Hale during the infamous trial of Rose Cullender and Amy Duny at Norwich Assizes in March 1662 to allay fears that the fits and convulsions of the youthful
demoniac accusers were elaborate theatrics.
For example, "legion" in the story of the Gerasene
demoniac is a metaphorical term, meaning a large number; the "one" equaling the "many" can be explained by the fractals of chaos-complexity theory.
Hollenbach, "Jesus,
Demoniacs, and Public Authorities: A Socio-Historical Study," The Journal of the American Academy of Religion 49 (1981): 567-588; Deborah Amos, "The Littlest Victims," ABC News, April 13, 1999.
Lear voices the priests' sexual loathing of what lies beneath "the girdle," the accusations they make to justify their sexual violation of the female
demoniacs. (50) "There's hell, there's darkness, there is the sulphurous pit, / Burning, scalding, stench, consumption; fie, fie, fie!
There are long silences in this movie, and these are accentuated by occasional background noises, such as the neighing of a horse, the cries of
demoniacs, the screams of crucified men, or the laughter of children.
When Jesus came to the territory of the Gadarenes, two
demoniacs who were coming from the tombs met him.
The others were located in Sepphoris (Galilee), Jericho, Gadara (where the Gadarene
demoniacs of Matthew 8 lived), and Amathus on the island of Cyprus.
The possibility that physicians in individual cases of demonic possession were being influenced and manipulated by the families and communities of the
demoniacs has been given little consideration by historians.
They see the procedure not as a throwback to medieval times when
demoniacs were put to death, but as an advance.
While the continental undead are just as violent and dangerous, they do not need the devil to rise from the grave; rather, "they simply come back to life on their own and interact with the tangible world." (42) The unholy trinity of the devil, bodily possession, and earthly violence, abounding in English ghost stories and miracle stories of
demoniacs, was not a popular continental theme.
