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Where the Spirits Dwell: Possession, Christianization, and Saints' Shrines in Late Antiquity*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2010

David Frankfurter
David Frankfurter*
Affiliation:
University of New Hampshire
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Extract

With its clear-glass, brightly-lit, whitewashed interior, Harvard Divinity School's Andover Chapel reflects all the values of elite Protestant culture in New England history: quiet prayer, thoughtful sermons, an approach to God through the heart rather than the senses, and a minimum of iconic reminders that the space is Christian. And it was here, in April 2007, that this author beheld the Voudoun spirits Danbala and Ogoun arrive through several experienced mediums. The ceremony had not really been intended to call down the spirits, only to praise them in a kind of broad sampling of Haitian Voudoun songs.1 But the altar was full of their treats, the room was full, the drummers were good, the singing was loud, and the mediums were expert. So the spirits arrived: various Danbalas slithering across the floor and a very martial Ogoun huffing and puffing around the altar to get his rum. And they were greeted, with awed interest by the Harvard students, familiarity by the Haitians, and annoyed tolerance by one Adventist woman.

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ARTICLES
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Harvard Theological Review , Volume 103 , Issue 1 , January 2010 , pp. 27 - 46
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Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 2010

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References

1 Announced on posters as “Action de Grace: A Vodou Service at Harvard Divinity School, with Manbo Marie Claude Evans of Jacmel, Haiti and Mattapan, MA, Friday, April 13, 2007, 7pm–9pm, Andover Chapel, Andover Hall.”

2 On the diversification, localization, and performative variations of loas in Haitian Voudoun, see Harold Courlander, The Drum and the Hoe: Life and Lore of the Haitian People (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1960), and Karen McCarthy Brown, Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1991).

3 On the structually dramatic function of demons, especially in early Christianity, see Peter Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975) 18–23; Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire, A.D. 100–400 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1984) 21–29; and in ritual context David Frankfurter, Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Satanic Abuse in History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006) 13–72.

4 Regarding gods speaking as oracles, see: Aude Busine, Paroles d'Apollon. Pratiques et traditions oraculaires dans l'Antiquité tardive (IIe–VIe siècles) (RGRW 156; Leiden: Brill, 2005). On the complexity of spirits and gods in the landscape see William Brashear, “Exkurs. Übergänge, Grenzen, Niemandsland,” Archiv für Papyrusforschung 36 (1990) 61–74; and more generally, Charles Stewart, Demons and the Devil: Moral Imagination in Modern Greek Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991).

5 Nancy Caciola, Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003) xli. See also Jonathan Z. Smith, “Towards Interpreting Demonic Powers in Hellenistic and Roman Antiquity,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 2.16.1 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1978) 425–39. I will thus use “spirit” as the main second-order category and “demon” as an historically contingent classification for a peripheral and generally hostile spirit.

6 See useful perspectives on this reorganization of pantheons and cosmos in Robert Marcus, The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), and Valerie Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991) 87–199.

7 The variable function and representation of “demonic” possession in late antiquity has been insightfully sketched by both Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981) 106–27, and Peregrine Horden, “Responses to Possession and Insanity in the Earlier Byzantine World,” Social History of Medicine 6 (1993) 177–94. This paper is indebted to their approaches.

8 Cyprian, Ep. 75.10.2–5 in Saint Cyprien: Correspondance (ed. Louis Bayard; 2 vols.; Paris: “Les Belles Lettres,” 1961) 2:296–98.

9 In his description of her performance Firmilian implies that the sacraments were done correctly, not deviantly. The affront lay in their performance by a demon-possessed woman. See G. W. Clarke, The Letters of St. Cyprian of Carthage (4 vols.; Ancient Christian Writers 47; New York: Newman, 1989) 4:267–68 nn. 56–58.

10 Cf. Tertullian, An. 9.4 (early third century c.e.). On apocalyptic predilections for prophetic performance in second- and third-century c.e. Asia Minor see David Frankfurter, “Early Christian Apocalypticism: Literature and Social World,” in Jewish and Christian Origins of Apocalypticism (ed. John J. Collins; vol. 1 of Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism; 3 vols.; New York: Continuum, 1998) 415–53, esp. 426–30; and in general, Stephen Mitchell, The Rise of the Church (vol. 2 of Anatolia: Land, Men, and Gods in Asia Minor; 2 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1993) 37–51.

11 Athanasius, Festal Letter 42, fr. 15 in L.-Th. Lefort, S. Athanase. Lettres festales et pastorales en copte (CSCO 150, Scriptores Coptici 19; Louvain: Peeters, 1955) 65; translation from David Brakke, “ ‘Outside the Places, Within the Truth’: Athanasius of Alexandria and the Localization of the Holy,” Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt (ed. David Frankfurter; RGRW 134; Leiden: Brill, 1998) 479–80.

12 It may be to this situation that Athanasius refers in Vit. Ant. 23.5, where the hermit Antony warns against demons’ pretenses “to prophesy and foretell what is going to happen [μαντεύεσθαι καὶ πρоλέγειν τὰ μεθ’ ἡμέρας ἐρχόμενα]” (ed. G. J. M. Bartelink; SC 400; Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2004) 200.

13 does not necessarily mean that such acts take place in the church itself.

14 Shenoute of Atripe, Those Who Work Evil in Œ uvres I (ed. Émile Amélineau; Paris: Leroux, 1907) 220. See L.-Th. Lefort, “La chasse aux reliques des martyrs en Égypte au IVe siècle,” La nouvelle Clio 6 (1954) 225–30; and on the shortly post-431 c.e. date, Stephen Emmel, Shenute's Literary Corpus (Louvain: Peeters, 2004) 649–50, 669–70 (§13.630). is employed in Lev 19:31 and 1 Sam 28:8 (lxx) for ecstatic mediumship and was a topic of considerable discussion in early Christian exegesis regarding the location of souls and the nature of demonic deception: see K. A. D. Smelik, “The Witch of Endor: 1 Samuel 28 in Rabbinic and Christian Exegesis till 800 A.D.,” VC 33 (1979) 160–79, and Rowan A. Greer and Margaret M. Mitchell, The “Belly-Myther” of Endor: Interpretations of 1 Kingdoms 28 in the Early Church (SBL Writings from the Greco-Roman World 16; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 2007). On incubation practices in early Egyptian Christianity see Leslie S. B. MacCoull, “Duke University Ms. C25: Dreams, Visions, and Incubation in Coptic Egypt,” OLP 22 (1991) 123–32; and David Frankfurter, “Voices, Books, and Dreams: The Diversification of Divination Media in Late Antique Egypt,” in Mantikē: Studies in Ancient Divination (ed. Sarah Iles Johnston and Peter Struck; RGRW 155; Leiden: Brill, 2005) 233–54.

15 Macarius, Hist. Laus. [copt.] in M. Chaîne, “La double recension de l'Histoire Lausiaque dans la version copte,” Revue de l'Orient chrétien 25 (1925/26) 245–48; trans. Tim Vivian, “Coptic Palladiana III: The Life of Macarius of Egypt,” Coptic Church Review 21 (2000) 96–97. Versions of this story are discussed in James E. Goehring, Ascetics, Society, and the Desert: Studies in Early Egyptian Monasticism (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1999) 128–30.

16 Sulpicius Severus, v. Mart. 18.1–2, in Early Christian Lives (trans. Carolinne White; London: Penguin, 1998) 150–51. See Jacques Fontaine, Vie de Saint Martin 1 (SC 133; Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2004) 290–93.

17 Gregory of Tours, De virt. Mart. 1.2 in Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum (ed. Krusch; Hanover: Hahn, 1969 (1885) 136–37), trans. Raymond Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993) 202. Cf. Sulpicius Severus, V. Martini 17; Gallus 6 (ed. and trans. Jacques Fontaine, SC 510 [Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2006] 311–13).

18 Sozomen, Hist. eccl. 7.24.8–9 (ed. Bidez and Hansen; Berlin, 1960) 338. On the Hebdomos see ibid. 7.21.

19 Miracles of St. Artemios 18 (ed. and trans. Virgil S. Crisafulli and John W. Nesbitt; The Medieval Mediterranean 13; Leiden: Brill, 1997) 114–15.

20 See Jacques Fontaine, Sulpice Sévère. Vie de saint Martin 2 (SC 134; Paris 1968) 853–62.

21 See Raymond Van Dam, Leadership and Community in Late Antique Gaul (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1985) 266–68, on the abilities of possessed folk to respond to current socio-political situations; and, more generally, John Eade and Michael J. Sallnow, introduction to Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage (London: Routledge, 1991) 7.

22 Daimōn loses its originally neutral associations in Christian literature of late antiquity: Lampe, Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961) s.v.

23 Gregory Nazianzus, Or. 4 contra Julianum 69 (PG 35:589).

24 Vita Maximi/Domitii in Histoire des monastères de la Basse-Égypte (ed. Émile Amélineau; Paris: Leroux, 1894) 273; see translation in Tim Vivian, “The Boharic Life of Maximus and Domitius,” Coptic Church Review 26 (2005) 44.

25 Historial monachorum in Aegypto 1.11 in Lives of the Desert Fathers (trans. Norman Russell; London: Mowbray, 1980) 53. See also Augustine, Civ. 5.26, on John's mantic abilities. Compare the man from Ascalon who had “a spirit of divination [],” which is later exorcised as an “unclean spirit.” Vita Maximi/Domitii in Monastères de la Basse-Égypte, 270. On the relationship of desert monks’ clairvoyant powers (and spirits) to oracles see David Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998) 184–93.

26 See Laura Nasrallah, An Ecstasy of Folly: Prophecy and Authority in Early Christianity (HTS 52; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Divinity School, 2003), on discourses of evaluating ecstasy in the early Roman period vis-à-vis madness and rationality rather than type of spirit. In placing Pythian oracular possession in theological and natural context Plutarch (Def. orac.) uses both daimōn and pneuma to classify the possessing spirit, but he does not represent local discourse on spirits.

27 See esp. I. M. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession (2d ed.; London: Routledge, 1989); Pamela Constantinides, “ ‘Ill at Ease and Sick at Heart’: Symbolic Behaviour in a Sudanese Healing Cult,” in Symbols and Sentiments: Cross-Cultural Studies in Symbolism (ed. Ioan Lewis; London: Academic Press, 1977) 61–84; Women's Medicine: The Zar-Bori Cult in Africa and Beyond (ed. I. M. Lewis, Ahmed Al-Safi, and Sayyid Hurreiz; Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991); Gerda Sengers, Women and Demons: Cult Healing in Islamic Egypt (Leiden: Brill, 2003); Celia Rothenberg, Spirits of Palestine: Gender, Society, and Stories of the Jinn (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2004); and Mohammed Maarouf, Jinn Eviction as a Discourse of Power: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Moroccan Magical Beliefs and Practices (Leiden: Brill, 2007).

28 Although I know of no late antique sources that capture this latter transformation (i.e., the ecclesiastical domestication of a traditional oracular spirit), there is sufficient evidence of ambiguous local spirits that maintain credibility in local Christian culture and of Christian seers (like John of Lycopolis) whose mantic services replicate those of traditional spirits to posit the likelihood of such cases. Of course, madness itself may serve as an evaluation of spirit possession at any stage, denying any spiritual possession: see Horden, “Responses to Possession,” and Nasrallah, Ecstasy of Folly.

29 Compare Plutarch, Def. orac. 433C.

30 See Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt, 97–144, and Ton Derks, Gods, Temples and Religious Practices: The Transformation of Religious Ideas and Values in Roman Gaul (Amsterdam Archaeological Studies 2; Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1998). On the geography of the demonic see also Stewart, Demons and the Devil; Anna Plotnikova, “Balkan Demons Protecting Places,” in Christian Demonology and Popular Mythology (ed. Gábor Klaniczay and Éva Pócs; Budapest: Central European University Press, 2005) 213–20; and on antiquity, Horden, “Responses to Possession,” 182–84; and Frankfurter, Evil Incarnate, 13–19.

31 See in general Marcus, The End of Ancient Christianity, 139–55, and Brakke, “ ‘Outside the Places’ ”

32 These martyria were based in tombs, as André Grabar argued in Martyrium. Recherches sur le culte des reliques et l'art chrétien antique (2 vols; Paris: Collège de France, 1946) 1:47–75, 82–84. See Ahmed Fakhry, The Necropolis of El-Bagawat in Kharga Oasis (Cairo: Government Press, 1951); and now, Peter Grossmann, Magdy Saad Salib, and Mohammed Salem Al-Hangury, “Survey of an Early Christian Burial Chapel at Tall Al-Yuhudiyya-Suez,” BSAC 44 (2005) 45–53.

33 On reconstructing sites of devotion to St. Martin of Tours see Van Dam, Leadership and Community, 230–54; May Viellard-Troiekouroff, Les monuments religieux de la Gaule d'après les œ uvres de Grégoire de Tours (Paris, 1976) 311–23; and Charles Lelong, Vie et culte de saint Martin. État des questions (Chambray-lès-Tours: Cahiers du Livre et Disque, 1990) 99–117.

34 On the ritual world of fourth- and fifth-century martyria in general see Brown, Cult of the Saints; Hippolyte Delehaye, Les origines du culte des martyrs (Brussells: Société des bollandistes, 1933) 115–31; and Richard M. Price, “The Holy Man and Christianization from the Apocryphal Apostles to St. Stephen of Perm,” The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Essays on the Contribution of Peter Brown (ed. James Howard-Johnston and Paul Antony Hayward; Oxford: Clarendon, 1999) 219–24. For Gallic saint-shrines see Van Dam, Leadership and Community, 230–49; and for Egyptian saint-shrines: Arietta Papaconstantinou, Le culte des saints en Égypte des Byzantins aux Abbassides. L'apport des sources papyrologiques et épigraphiques grecques et coptes (Paris: Centre nationale de la recherche scientifique [CNRS], 2001). On incense as indicating or cultivating the presence of the martyr-saint's spirit see Franz Cumont, “Cierges et lampes sur les tombeaux,” in Miscellanea Giovanni Mercati (Studi e testi 125; Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana 1946) 5:41–47; Béatrice Caseau, “Euōdia: The Use and Meaning of Fragrance in the Ancient World and Their Christianization (100–900 AD)” (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1994) ch. 5; and idem, “Incense and Fragrances: From House to Church,” in Material Culture and Well-Being in Byzantium (400–1453) (ed. M. Grünbart et al.; Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2007) 75–92, esp. 85–87; and Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2006) 75–90. Archaeological evidence for incense in tomb-shrines is discussed in Fakhry, Necropolis of El-Bagawat, 26–27. Cf. Plutarch, Def. orac. 437C, in which εὐωδία heralds the presence of the oracular spirit. Wall-paintings in tomb-martyria portrayed martyrs in what would have been understood as their “transfigured” bodies, much as Roman Egyptian funerary iconography included images of the deceased in his or her “transfiguration body”: see Christina Riggs, The Beautiful Burial in Roman Egypt: Art, Identity, and Funerary Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

35 Sulpicius Severus, Gallus 6.4.

36 On the St. Felix cult, see: Paulinus of Nola, Carmen 14.25–33 (The Poems of St. Paulinus of Nola [trans. P. G. Walsh; Ancient Christian Writers 40; New York: Newman Press, 1975] 78), with edition of Andrea Ruggiero, Paolino di Nola. I Carmi (2 vols.; Naples: LER, 1996) 1:222. On the St. Callixtus cult, see: Passio S. Callisti 3: “a temple virgin [or Bacchante apud Mombritius edition] named Juliana was seized by a demon and shouted out, ‘The God of Callixtus is himself the living and true God’ ” (ed. AASS, 440B–C). I am indebted to Kristina Sessa for this reference.

37 See, e.g., Tertullian, Spect. 26; Acta Andreae (Latin) 27. On demons of the landscape in general see Brashear, “Exkurs. Übergänge, Grenzen, Niemandsland.”

38 Plutarch, Def. orac. 438B.

39 Peregrine Horden notes that, in early Byzantine hagiographical materials, most supplicants to shrines or holy men seeking healing from demonic possession only manifest the demons when they get to the shrines or encounter the holy man (“Responses to Possession,” 178). Note that zar possession often (although not always) takes place at saint-shrines in modern Egypt: see Hani Fakhouri, “The Zar Cult in an Egyptian Village,” Anthropological Quarterly 41 (1968) 49–56; and Richard Natvig, “Some Notes on the History of the Zar Cult in Egypt,” in Women's Medicine, 183–84.

40 Jerome, Ep. 108.13 = PL 22:889, trans. Philip Schaff, NPNF 2d series, 6:201. See Brown, The Cult of the Saints, 106–12.

41 Paulinus of Nola, Carmen 23.82–95, ed. Ruggiero, I carmi 2:98–100, tr. Walsh, Poems, 212.

42 Miracles of St. Artemios 6, ed./tr. Crisafulli/Nesbitt, Miracles of St. Artemios, 88–89.

43 Paulinus of Nola, Carmen 23.48–54, ed. Ruggiero, I carmi 2:96, tr. Walsh, Poems, 210–11.

44 See, e.g., Mark 1:23–28; 5:1–13; 9:17–29; Acts 19:13–17; Justin, 2 Apol. 6; Acts of Thomas 42–50, 62–81; Acta Andreae (Coptic) 10; (Latin) 5, 17, 27, with Jan N. Bremmer, “Man, Magic, and Martyrdom in the Acts of Andrew,” The Apocryphal Acts of Andrew (ed. Jan N. Bremmer; Leuven: Peeters, 2000) 24–32. See also Lucian, Philopseudes 16; Philostratus, v. Apollonii 3.38; 4.10. See in general Campbell Bonner, “The Technique of Exorcism,” HTR 36 (1943) 39–49.

45 For examples of Christian exorcistic spells see PGM 4.86–87, 1227–64, 2007–86; 36.275–88; 94.17; 114.1–14. Some form of the Testament of Solomon would also have circulated as a basis for exorcistic and apotropaic rituals by the fourth century: see Todd E. Klutz, Rewriting the Testament of Solomon: Tradition, Conflict, and Identity in a Late Antique Pseudepigraphon (Library of Second Temple Studies 53; London: T&T Clark, 2005), and the important new study of manuscript diversification, Sarah L. Schwarz, “Reconsidering the Testament of Solomon,” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 16 (2007) 203–37.

46 E.g., Vera-Elisabeth Hirschmann, Horrenda Secta. Untersuchungen zum frühchristlichen Montanismus und seinen Verbindungen zur paganen Religion Phrygiens (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2005).

47 E.g., Acts 16:16–18; Lucian, Alexander, 43–44; Origen, Cels. 7.9; Eusebius 5.16.7–9.

48 On evidence for traditions of spirit possession in Pharaonic Egypt see Yvan Koenig, Magie et magiciens dans l’Égypte ancienne (Paris: Pygmalion, 1994), 217–18; and Philippe Derchain, “Possession, transe et exorcisme: Les oubliés de l’Égyptologie,” Göttinger Miszellen 219 (2008) 9–18.

49 Roy Kotansky, Greek Magical Amulets (P.Col. 22; Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1994) #24 (second century c.e.), #33 (third/fourth century c.e.). Number twenty-four was found in a workshop (idem, 96) but was probably intended to be deposited where the demon was imminens rather than left under Julia's pillow (100).

50 Respectively, P.Oxy 6.935 (third century c.e.); P.Hermopolis 2 (fourth century c.e.).

51 See Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt, 111–31.

52 Helmut Satzinger, “The Old Coptic Schmidt Papyrus,” JARCE 12 (1975) 37–50, republished in Religions of Late Antiquity in Practice (ed. Richard Valantasis; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000) 230–31, reflecting a traditional Egyptian sense that ancestors mediate inevitably in domestic affairs.

53 The extent and diversity of spirits in the Egyptian Christian landscape alone is well-documented: see Sydney Aufrère, “L’Égypte traditionnelle, ses démons vus par les premiers chrétiens,” Études Coptes V (ed. Maggy Rassart-Debergh; Cahiers de la Bibliothèque copte 10; Paris: Peeters, 1998) 63–92; See also Frankfurter, “Syncretism and the Holy Man in Late Antique Egypt,” JECS 11, 3 (2003) 461–64. Beyond Egypt, see (e.g.) Lisa M. Bitel, Isle of the Saints: Monastic Settlement and Christian Community in Early Ireland (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990) 42–48, and Ken Dowden, European Paganism: The Realities of Cult from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (New York: Routledge, 2000) 25–148.

54 On holy men as instruments of Christianization, see Peter Brown, “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity” Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (London: Faber & Faber, 1982) 103–52, and Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); as well as David Frankfurter, “Syncretism and the Holy Man,” 339–85. On Christianity's radical totalism see J. B. Rives, “Christian Expansion and Christian Ideology,” The Spread of Christianity in the First Four Centuries: Essays in Explanation (ed. William V. Harris; Leiden: Brill, 2005) 15–41. On the importance of exorcism see MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire, 21–29; and Eric Sorensen, Possession and Exorcism in the New Testament and Early Christianity (WUNT 157; Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck 2002). On the reorganization of pantheon and cosmology more generally see Robin Horton, “African Conversion,” Africa 41 (1971) 85–108; Birgit Meyer, “‘If You Are a Devil, You Are a Witch and, If You Are a Witch, You Are a Devil’: The Integration of ‘Pagan’ Ideas into the Conceptual Universe of Ewe Christians in Southeastern Ghana,” Journal of Religion in Africa 22 (1992) 98–132; Terence Ranger, “The Local and the Global in Southern African Religious History,” Conversion to Christianity: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives on a Great Transformation (ed. Robert W. Hefner; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) 65–98.

55 Cf. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion, 86–87, with J. Waardenburg, “Changes of Belief in Spiritual Beings, Prophethood, and the Rise of Islam,” Struggles of Gods: Papers of the Groningen Work Group for the Study of the History of Religions (ed. Hans G. Kippenberg; Religion and Reason 31; Berlin: Mouton, 1984) 260–90.

56 This process is particularly evident in Pentecostal churches' development in cultures with more complex cosmologies, often under Catholic aegis. See, e.g., John Burdick, Looking for God in Brazil: The Progressive Catholic Church in Urban Brazil's Religious Arena (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) 47–67; with Patricia Birman and Marcia Pereira Leite, “Whatever Happened to What Used to be the Largest Catholic Country in the World?” Daedalus 129 (2000) 273–74; Lionel Caplan, “The Popular Culture of Evil in Urban South India,” The Anthropology of Evil (ed. David Parkin; Cambridge: Blackwell, 1985) 110–27; and Birgit Meyer, “Beyond Syncretism: Translation and Diabolization in the Appropriation of Protestantism in Africa,” Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism: The Politics of Religious Synthesis (ed. Charles Stewart and Rosalind Shaw; New York: Routledge, 1994) 45–68, and Translating the Devil: Religion and Modernity among the Ewe in Ghana (Trenton: Africa World Press, 1999); with Dulue Mbachu, “Christianity vs. the Old Gods in Nigeria,” (Associated Press, 4 Sept. 2007). On the “domestication” or familiarization of demonic spirits in Pentecostal exorcism see Stephen Hunt, “Managing the Demonic: Some Aspects of the Neo-Pentecostal Deliverance Ministry,” Journal of Contemporary Religion 13 (1998) 215–30.

57 Ancient rules for the discernment of spirits: Deut 18; Did 11.

58 This point is illustrated in D. P. Walker, Unclean Spirits: Possession and Exorcism in France and England in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981), esp. 21–22, 31–32, 52–56; and Michel de Certeau, The Possession at Loudun (trans M. Smith; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), but its fullest theoretical statement appears in Caciola, Discerning Spirits, and Moshe Sluhovsky, Be lieve Not Every Spirit : Possession, Mysticism, and Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

59 Acts 16:16; Lucian, Alexander, 43–44; Origen, Cels. 7.9; Anonymous source on New Prophecy apud Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.16.7–9.

60 See R. L. Stirrat, Power and Religiosity in a Post-Colonial Setting: Sinhala Catholics in Contemporary Sri Lanka (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) 78–98. In general, see Lewis, Ecstatic Religion, 86–87, 92–96.

61 The point is made clearly for early modern Latin America by Fernando Cervantes, The Devil in the New World: The Impact of Diabolism in New Spain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), and for modern Christian Ghana by Meyer, Translating the Devil. In neither case was possession (evidently) involved in the demonization/preservation of local spirits; ideology, iconography, and (in Mexico) masquing were apparently enough.

62 On the utility of demonized spirits in post-conversion cultures see Waardenburg, “Changes of Belief in Spiritual Beings,” 282–86; Lewis, Ecstatic Religion, 116–19; Caciola, Discerning Spirits, 72–76; and Stewart, Demons and the Devil.

63 Respectively, P. London 5.1713; Ancient Christian Magic (ed. Marvin Meyer and Richard Smith; San Francisco: Harper, 1994), #20 (= PGM P10) and #24 (= PGM P15b), all ca. sixth century c.e.