In 1611 we have a typical case at Aix.

An epidemic of possession having occurred there, Gauffridi, a man of note, was burned at the stake as the cause of the trouble.
Michaelis, one of the priestly exorcists, declared that he had driven out sixty-five hundred devils from one of the possessed.

Similar epidemics occurred in various parts of the world.( 392) (392) See Dagron, chap.

ii.
Twenty years later a far more striking case occurred at Loudun, in western France, where a convent of Ursuline nuns was "afflicted by demons." The convent was filled mainly with ladies of noble birth, who, not having sufficient dower to secure husbands, had, according to the common method of the time, been made nuns.
It is not difficult to understand that such an imprisonment of a multitude of women of different ages would produce some woeful effects.
Any reader of Manzoni's Promessi Sposi, with its wonderful portrayal of the feelings and doings of a noble lady kept in a convent against her will, may have some idea of the rage and despair which must have inspired such assemblages in which pride, pauperism, and the attempted suppression of the instincts of humanity wrought a fearful work.
What this work was may be seen throughout the Middle Ages; but it is especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that we find it frequently taking shape in outbursts of diabolic possession.( 393) (393) On monasteries as centres of "possession" and hysterical epidemics, see Figuier, Le Merveilleux, p.

40 and following; also Calmeil, Langin, Kirchhoff, Maudsley, and others.