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This is just a name!

Agnes was twenty-six years old when the village first began to whisper.

She had always been quiet — but this was different. She stopped attending Sunday Mass. She was found sitting at the edge of the well past midnight, muttering in fragments no one could understand. She told her husband, Thomas, that there was a voice — a clear, commanding voice — telling her she had been chosen. Chosen for what, she could not say.

Some days she did not sleep at all, moving through the house with strange energy, rearranging objects, pacing, eyes bright and faraway. Other days she could not rise from the bed. She refused food. She wept for no reason she could name.

Her neighbor, Marta, reported that Agnes had told her: "I see them at the crossroads — three figures, hooded, watching me. They want something from me."

Thomas brought Agnes to Father Edmund at the parish church. Father Edmund listened carefully. He asked her: "Do you renounce the Devil?" Agnes said: "What Devil? I hear God."

Father Edmund wrote to the monastery. The prior arrived within the week.

The Prior's Assessment

| Observation                | Interpretation (1347)                     |

| -------------------------- | ----------------------------------------- |

| Hears a commanding voice   | Divine communication OR demonic influence |

| Sees figures others cannot | Spiritual sight OR bewitchment            |

| Refused sacraments         | Deeply suspicious — sign of evil          |

| Woman of no rank or piety  | Not in her favor                          |

Conclusion: Agnes is afflicted by the Devil — possibly through a pact, possibly the evil eye.

Treatment Prescribed

  1. Three days fasting and prayer inside the church

  2. Exorcism: Latin prayers, laying on of hands, burning of sulfur

  3. Isolation from family — to prevent "spiritual contagion"

  4. If no improvement — referral to the ecclesiastical court

Agnes did not improve. She grew more agitated in isolation.

She was brought before the court and declared "afflicted by forces beyond natural cause."

She was sent to a house of Benedictine nuns, where she remained — isolated, praying, working — for the rest of her life.

Modern Interpretation

Her symptoms — auditory hallucinations, visual hallucinations, disrupted sleep, social withdrawal, disorganized behavior, grandiosity — overlap significantly with early-onset schizophrenia.

But in 1347, there was no such word. There was no such concept. As Carson et al. (2000) document, the dominant explanatory framework of the medieval period was demonology — the belief that abnormal behavior arose from demonic possession or divine punishment, not from any condition within the person's mind or body (Chapter 2).

There was only: holy, or damned.

Foucault (1961/1988) argues that this exclusion was not incidental — the removal and containment of the mad served the purpose of defining the boundaries of sanity itself (Preface).

Questions to Think About
  1. Was Agnes treated — or was she managed?
  1. What did Agnes need that no one around her could provide?
  1. How did her gender and social status shape her outcome?
  1. If Agnes lived today, how might her story be different — or the same?

References

Carson, R. C., Butcher, J. N., & Mineka, S. (2000). Abnormal psychology and modern life (11th ed.). Allyn & Bacon.

Foucault, M. (1988). Madness and civilization: A history of insanity in the age of reason (R. Howard, Trans.). Vintage Books. (Original work published 1961)

Laing, R. D. (1965). The divided self: An existential study in sanity and madness. Penguin. (Original work published 1960)

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