Not reviewed in this Journal at the time of its first appearance, Nancy Caciola's rich and intelligent enquiry into the nature of medieval ideas of exorcism and possession, now issued in a paperback edition, can at last be accorded the recognition that is its due. Bearing in mind that exorcism was amongst Christ's first miracles and that St John had advised his followers to ‘Test the spirits, to see whether they are of God’ (1 John iv.1), it is hardly surprising that a desire to establish whether possession was by good or evil spirits became a deeply embedded concern of the early Christians. Having lain dormant during the centuries of conversion, such concerns re-emerged from the twelfth century onwards, reappearing in western Europe at much the same time as accusations of heresy and focusing increasingly upon the mistrust of women's claims to prophetic or spiritual gifts. In justifying the reservation of canonisation enquiries to the papacy, Innocent iii had already referred to St John's injunction to test spirits for good or ill. Exorcism, which in the twelfth and thirteenth century was chiefly associated with visits to the shrines of the saints, itself became increasingly an occupation for living and controllable clergy rather than for dead and uncontrollable saints: a clerical ritual now governed by prayers whose wording, Caciola demonstrates, was itself frequently gendered so as to be targeted above all at possessed women. Women, whose bodies were believed to be more permeable and hence more open than those of men to demonic possession, were increasingly assumed to be possessed by evil rather than by good spirits, so much so that, save in exceptional circumstances, laywomen were hardly ever canonised in the two centuries after 1300. The exceptions – St Bridget of Sweden and St Catherine of Siena – had both prophesied the pope's return from Avignon to Rome, allowing their detractors amongst the Avignon party to dismiss them as demonically deluded; possessed by the ‘effeminate’ spirit of the age. As Jean Gerson's attacks upon St Bridget demonstrate, there was a widespread belief that prophecy, like all spiritual gifts, should pass through proper, masculine and hierarchical channels, far from the world of silly women. Gerson's attacks upon St Bridget circulated very widely and were known to the Council of Basle and hence to Johannes Nider, whose Formicarius was itself a crucial forerunner, in both its paranoia and its misogyny, to the Malleus maleficium. In this way, as Caciola reveals, the investigation of possession and the deliberate dismissal of female claims to sanctity based upon the spirit of prophecy links very neatly into the much broader question of the origins of the European witch craze and the persecution of those believed guilty of commerce with the devil. This is a very good book which pursues an overarching and original line of argument whilst illuminating numerous small details along the way. Amongst these details, Caciola contributes an edition and analysis of various prayers of exorcism, a splendid iconographic study of demons shown with female characteristics, not least in giving birth to sinners, and three detailed case studies of ‘rapt’ women, amongst which, for anyone not familiar with her story, the life of Sibylla of Marsal, from the 1240s, deserves to rank as one of the more remarkable instances of religious fraud recorded for the entire medieval period. No one with an interest in medieval religion should fail to read this book, and it can be very highly recommended to students, not least because, in an age of jargonised and gendered poppycock, it shows uncharacteristic respect for common sense. Caciola writes for a wide audience, not merely for the usual, small group of grammatically-challenged academic initiates. To this extent, her text deserves to rank alongside such classics as Norman Cohn's Europe's inner demons or Lester K. Little's Religious poverty as a staple of the undergraduate curriculum.