This book is centered around the short-lived career of Johann Joseph Gassner as an exorcist. Gassner enjoyed brief fame and generated a massive polemical debate starting in 1774 because he “healed” thousands of people by casting out demons that caused “unnatural” ailments. Gassner was just as quickly, by early 1776, again relegated to obscurity after his exorcisms attracted negative attention from the highest levels. Midelfort's aim is not to chronicle the details of Gassner's brief notoriety as an exorcist, but rather to explore various aspects of late eighteenth-century German culture, society, and politics through Gassner's case. In five chapters Midelfort explains how the relatively obscure and heretofore virtually unknown case of Gassner tells us a great deal about eighteenth-century demonology, imperial politics, medicine, biblical studies, and the Enlightenment.

Midelfort's book provides a number of surprises. First, though witch trials had virtually ceased by the late eighteenth century, Midelfort aptly demonstrates that demonology was still alive and well. Furthermore, demons were at the center of an intellectual discourse in the late eighteenth century. Midelfort casts doubts on the conventional view of the Enlightenment as secular and secularizing. Scholars familiar with “the Enlightenment” will already be aware that “Enlightenment” is not synonymous with “secular,” and Midelfort makes the same point here. Predictably, Gassner's opponents used the tools of the Enlightenment—rational arguments in public arenas—to discredit him and his works. Surprisingly, Gassner's supporters used the same means to defend him and to “prove” the existence of demons. Furthermore, many “Enlightened” investigations of Gassner's exorcisms by university professors and doctors of medicine confirmed their efficacy and veracity (and ironically, some of the same “Enlightened” investigators condemned Franz Anton Mesmer's “scientific” theories of magnetism).

Next, Midelfort places Gassner's case in the context of the ecclesiastical territories in which he was active. He thereby points out that ecclesiastical principalities and the Holy Roman Empire not only still existed, but also still mattered in the late eighteenth century. Midelfort ably explains the confusing structure of the Empire and how it was that Gassner was able to elude those who would have more promptly squelched him. Secular authorities banned Gassner and his works early and often, but Gassner was able to move from one territory to another and finally found refuge in the territory of one of his supporters, the bishop of Regensburg. Ultimately, the condemnations of the emperor (Joseph II) and the Pope (Pius VI) overwhelmed Gassner's protector and effectively shut down Gassner's exorcisms.

Gassner was utterly convincing to many in his audiences, and Midelfort explores the “healing” that Gassner performed, consciously using the model of Marc Bloch's The Royal Touch. The thousands of “patients” who sought Gassner's help were not only from the backward and “superstitious” rural population, but also from the highest (and best educated) ranks of society. Gassner's efficacy seems to have declined as his exorcisms were exposed to more and more scrutiny, so that at the height of his fame, he dismissed without treating most of those who sought his help. Midelfort rejects any modern medical explanation (such as the placebo effect), and instead insists we should understand that Gassner's patients (and audiences) simply believed in the exorcisms.

Midelfort sets Gassner's case in particular and demonology in general in the context of ongoing late eighteenth-century debates about biblical exegesis. By the late eighteenth century theologians argued that the Bible was a product of man and that it therefore could not be interpreted literally. In the case of biblical demons, those arguing against the reality of demons in the late eighteenth century insisted that the “demons” in the Bible were the product of mistranslations or Jesus's accommodation of Jewish superstitions. Gassner's case brought forth a renewed debate on whether demons and witches were real. Unexpectedly, Midelfort can show that in the late eighteenth century, Protestants and Catholics seem to have reversed their positions regarding the reliability of the Bible: Protestant biblical scholars argued that the Bible could not be taken literally regarding demons, and Catholics were quick to use the Bible as evidence that demons were real.

Finally, Midelfort uses Gassner's case and demonology to rethink the supposedly transparent and civil nature of Enlightenment discourse. Midelfort points out that the typical rhetoric of pamphlets regarding Gassner (and of the Enlightenment in general) was not rational argument meant to convince one's audience, but rather “ridicule, satire, parody, and witty attack.” Rather than “civil discourse,” these (typically anonymously authored) attacks were meant to annhilate opposing arguments and humiliate opponents, or at least to rally one's own partisans. Hence, Midelfort argues that there was not one Haber-masian “public sphere” of “conversation, dialogue, and thoughtful dissent,” but many mutually exclusive public spheres of like-minded people, based on “scorn, sarcasm, personal vituperation, ridicule, and raillery.”

Given the limited ambitions (and length) of this book and the author's tentative tone, there is little to criticize. On the contrary, this is a delightful little book that should be of interest to anyone studying (or teaching) the eighteenth century. The 148 pages of text would be ideal as an assignment for undergraduate students—Midelfort's book might best be understood as an eighteenth-century analog to the brief, easily accessible, narrative-based, micro-analytical, and widely popular works on the sixteenth century (such as Carlo Ginzburg's The Cheese and the Worms or Natalie Zemon Davis's The Return of Martin Guerre). That Midelfort explicitly compares phenomena of the late eighteenth century to such present-day issues (such as placebo cures, popular religiosity, and political divisiveness) makes the book even more accessible to students.