In this article, I will examine the Life of Josefa Maria da Trindade, a Benedictine nun whose biography was written by her confessor, spiritual director, and exorcist, the Discalced Carmelite Luís de Santa Teresa. It contains almost 300 occurrences of the word « devil » compared to only a few dozen in the other Lives from the same period. I will attempt to interpret the reasons for this massive presence. My hypothesis is that, in this Life, issues related to discretio spirituum are highly prevalent. Recent studies shed light on the relationship between diabolical possession and exorcism from a gender perspective. Female bodies, violently controlled from within by male demons, and from without by male exorcists, became the media through which exorcists affirmed the truth of their systems of knowledge and belief. Demonic phenomenology is a highly technical universe that requires clarification. Therefore, the role of authors of hagiographic works is to provide insights that are intended to reassure the public, hence the explanatory detail and the concern for nuance. The lexical field used to account for this is also highly technical and consists in a precise vocabulary to endorse the experience and attest to its authenticity.
The strong interest that the execution of Charles I elicited among the French public is evidenced in the numerous Mazarinades published in its wake, advancing a variety of political positions ranging from an exhortation to defend monarchism as the basis of political order, to raising the possibility of a similar revolt against the French regency, to advancing a newly pragmatic realism as a basis of international relations, and even to an attack on monarchism and an affirmation of republicanism. Henrietta Maria, as Charles’s widow and Louis XIII’s sister, and Anne of Austria, as mother regent for Louis XIV, played prominent roles in these Mazarinades, some published by female printers, thereby calling attention to women’s political agency in the Fronde. Many of these tracts lamented the regicide from a royalist perspective, based on an assumption of the legitimacy and sanctity of monarchical prerogative. However, some, written from the frondeur perspective, and featuring the ghost of Charles, compared the political situation in England and France to use Charles’s fate as a monitory example for Anne of Austria and Mazarin. A notable tract, which follows Henri de Rohan’s advancement of the primacy of interest, used the regicide to promote a pragmatic concept of shared national interest as the basis of international relations. Finally, a satire that places Charles in dialogue with Islamic despots, alongside a translation of a Declaration by the English Parliament, justifying the regicide and abolishing the monarchy, was followed by a tract calling for the English Parliament to exhort the Parlement of Paris to overthrow tyrannical oppression, de facto advocating the establishment of republicanism in France.
This article examines how Italian historians and thinkers interpreted the English Civil War and Cromwell’s Protectorate during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Drawing on historical writings from various Italian states – including the Venetian Republic, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Papal States, and Spanish Habsburg territories – the essay analyzes how Italian observers understood England’s revolutionary transformation. Italian historians produced remarkably detailed accounts of English events, relying on diplomatic correspondence, published documents, and eyewitness testimonies. However, they fundamentally misinterpreted the religious dimensions of the conflict, viewing Puritanism and Presbyterianism primarily as political rather than spiritual movements. Through a Machiavellian lens emphasizing conspiracy, self-interest, and power calculations, these authors portrayed the revolution as an anti-monarchical and anti-aristocratic struggle driven by popular agency. While initially critical of revolutionary chaos and regicide, Italian historians eventually adopted more favourable views of Cromwell’s regime, admiring its restoration of order and England’s emergence as an economic and commercial power. This shift reflects both the influence of Venetian republican traditions and Machiavellian political realism prevalent among Italian intellectual circles, particularly Venice’s Accademia degli Incogniti.
The chapter of the Blason des danses (1566) entitled “D’une danse épouventable” is in the tradition of the exemplum and foreshadows the prodigious tales, in an art of storytelling mastered by Paradin. The motifs relating to the devil and the dance serve a moralistic discourse designed to warn young girls. However, the staging of the dancing, bewitched female body echoes a text by Boaistuau and is part of a form of spectacularity that highlights the pleasure of the story.
The entries devoted to the Devil or the Diabolical in Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclopaedia are neither numerous nor easy to spot. Following this observation, it is necessary to look for the figure of the Devil under other names (synonyms, nicknames, euphemisms), to observe the minorising or devaluing treatment it then receives, in sometimes unexpected fields or categories of knowledge (Mythology, Astronomy, Medicine...). Our hypothesis is that the encyclopaedic strategy to destroy this concept consists in trivialising or secularising the devil rather than hiding or denigrating him.
