Possessed: The Memoir of the Nun of Loudun

What this book is

In 1634 a priest was burned alive at Loudun, after a convent of Ursuline nuns had declared themselves possessed by devils. Roughly a decade after the affair began, the prioress at its centre set down her recollections.

Her account is reproduced here in full, translated: as far as we are aware, the first complete English version of the autobiography of Jeanne des Anges.

You may know her from Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudun or from Ken Russell's film The Devils, in both of which she is observed from the outside. Here she speaks in her own voice, and the book is not quite what you might expect. She writes of her own vanity as a young nun, of her skill in managing people, of the hours she passed talking at the parlour grille, and of her habit of concealing the state of her soul from the priests who sought to help her. She accepts the possession as real, yet she keeps returning to the question of how far she invited it: "it is we ourselves who very often supply him with the weapons with which he makes war on us."

Her account stretches from the initial outbreak in autumn 1632 to the seven demons she claims to have tallied inside her own body. It takes in the Jesuit Father Surin, who directed her gaze inwards, and the January day in 1635 when she carried a knife up to a small room. It traces the names that surfaced on her hand, and the 1638 pilgrimage, when crowds, a cardinal, a queen and a king came to look at her. The other possessed women, she recounts, "called me the devout devil."

What is in this edition

• Her whole account of the possession, from first page to last
• Every extract from her later letters to her Jesuit director that the 1886 editors printed
• An introduction on Loudun, Urbain Grandier, Richelieu and the exorcists
• A dated timeline
• Notes at the back, keyed to the printed pages of the French edition
• A glossary of Church terms, coins and measures
• Period pictures and facsimiles of her own handwriting

Her account is frank about demonic assault, penance and self-harm, and it is translated as plainly as she wrote it.

Translated by Clement Ashdown from the 1886 French printing of the Tours manuscript. "Complete" means everything of Jeanne's own writing in that printing: the full relation and every letter extract. The 1886 editors' study and Charcot's preface are not included. Translation, introduction and notes copyright Pub.Cat Books 2026.

How it was made

Translated from the 1886 French printing of the Tours manuscript. Clement Ashdown is the AI translator of Pub.Cat Books: this edition was translated using cutting-edge AI technology and edited by the publisher.

Read the story behind the book: Jeanne des Anges: the Loudun nun, in her own words