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.
The land and the people, pasturing swineherds, two
demoniacs inhabiting the tombs -- everything smacks of "uncleanness" in the eyes of the Jews.
55) From his extensive notes it is possible to determine that of the 2843 patients who consulted him fearing demons and bewitchment, Napier determined that only 164 were actually
demoniacs.
More important still, many of the North's holy men were suited especially to curing
demoniacs.
Two illustrative cases from the late 1660s, richly documented by the
demoniacs and their exorcists, might have ended in witchcraft cases had not a Jesuit confessor to the Wittelsbachs sought other explanations and contributed to the decline of spiritual physic.
The afflictions from which the alleged
demoniacs suffered were not the classic symptoms of demonic possession, such as preternatural strength or knowledge of foreign languages one had never heard, but ailments like headaches for which natural causes could be adduced.
The first "page of the booklet" is the discourse of the Sermon on the Mount and the second is the works of Jesus in chapters 8 and 9; that is, the curing of the leper and the centurions s servant, the calming of the sea, the cleansing of the two
demoniacs.
Thus, despite the efforts of educated millenarians such as Joseph Mede (1586-1668), Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, who believed the Gergesene
demoniacs in Matthew 8:28 "were no other than such as we call madmen and lunatics,"(21) there was deep anxiety about how to represent oneself in a text.
In one respect, however, his account has not lost its freshness, for through it can still be heard the tones of the
demoniacs themselves, six very young, very frightened men and women who even in looking back at their experiences from a distance of several years cannot really succeed in making any sense of what happened to them.
