In this work, Sari Katajala-Peltomaa undertakes to carve out a new space in studies on medieval demonic possession, positioning her work alongside, and in some contrast to, the influential studies of Nancy Caciola, Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages (Cornell University Press, 2003) and Brian P. Levack, The Devil Within: Possession & Exorcism in the Christian West (Yale University Presss, 2013). Where Caciola focuses on the role of the body and gender in reading possession, and Levack discusses possession as a culturally prescribed performance, Katajala-Peltomaa aims to interrogate her material through the concept of religion-as-lived, her long-term research specialty.

Katajala-Peltomaa makes an impassioned plea for religion-as-lived as a methodology in chapter 1 (“Introduction”) and chapter 8 (“Conclusions”). Chapter 2 recounts tales of demonic possession related to malediction, inappropriate behavior, and liminal spaces; chapter 3 deals with physiological stages of a woman's life from menarche through to pregnancy and their possible links with demonic possession; chapter 4 addresses the role of medieval understandings of physical and mental illness in accounts of demonic possession; chapter 5 rehearses rituals of exorcism and evidence of demonic emission and considers how these construct sanctity; chapter 6 provides an original reading of how local politics could influence proceedings related to demonic possession; and chapter 7 returns to the specifically female experience of demonic vexation.

Oddly, most of these chapters do not meet the methodological parameters that Katajala-Peltomaa sets for herself in her volume's title and introduction, which is to “concentrate on lay people's participation and experiences” (2), since she deals with lived religion only via layers of mediation in church documents. Throughout the text, Katajala-Peltomaa tells us that her chosen vehicle for uncovering lived religion—depositions to canonization inquiries—are artificial constructs that may bear little relation to the events they are relating, with information truncated, omitted, molded, and translated, witnesses cherry-picked or simply overlooked, and the finished text made to align with generic requirements and targeted towards specific outcomes (17–18). She notes often that the sufferers of demonic possession themselves did not make representation to the inquiry (“this case is not based on direct testimonies” [50]; “These women did not, however, testify” [64]), that a father was deputed to speak for a child (50), or even that some proceedings took no information from lay members of the community at all (58). She declares that “‘what really happened’ when someone was thought to be possessed by a demon, cannot be accessed” (18), and later that “Lay participation was shunned . . . the laity's devotional practices . . . were not emphasized” (149). It is unclear, then, how Katajala-Peltomaa can have confidence that these proceedings would offer any insight into the lived religion of a community and its individuals.

The line between demonic possession, which is Katajala-Peltomaa's stated focus, and the presence or action of demons is also blurred throughout the work, and many of the cases she adduces are not of demonic possession, as judged by the sufferers themselves, or the sufferer's community, or the adjudicating ecclesiastic body (“the case was not labelled as demonic possession in the records” [52]; “Demonic influence is not mentioned” [56]). This is particularly so in chapter 7, which deals with women as the sexual targets of demons, since demonic miscegenation (whether willing or unwilling) is distinct from possession, and Katajala-Peltomaa herself notes that the women involved were described at the time as being molested, harassed, tormented, or even tempted by demons, but not as possessed by them.

An unquestioned highlight of the monograph is chapter 6, “The Interwoven Fabric of the Sacred and the Political.” Here, Katajala-Peltomaa undertakes an original and fascinating analysis into the local political considerations that could impact how demonic possession and exorcism were read in communities. Although two other chapters of the book are devoted to the female experience of the demonic, this one offers perhaps the most nuanced and insightful description of how women could interact with the phenomenon of demonic possession to create community and construct local sanctity.

Limitations in Katajala-Peltomaa's scholarship are evident. The few translations she makes from Latin are incorrect, including the opening words of her monograph. Caesarius of Heisterbach does not claim “Demons exist” (1), which would make no sense for a thirteenth-century churchman to declare, since there was no question that they did. Rather, Caesarius's Monk is explaining to the Novice that he will speak “about what it is that demons are” (De eo quod demones sint).

Katajala-Peltomaa also appears unfamiliar with the long and complex scholastic discussion of the nature and powers of demons from the twelfth century through to the fourteenth. Her comment that “by the thirteenth century, demons were a well-established element in Church teaching” (7) suggests that she is unaware of the long prehistory of demonology prior to her period of research. Her few references to Thomas Aquinas are footnoted to secondary sources (74, 143, 160) and treat Thomas as though he were sui generis or the instigator of a conversation, rather than an intermediate (and not always unanimously approved) participant in an enduring scholastic disputation.

There is a great deal of close archival scholarship in this book which will bring to the reader new and interesting cases in the complex history of demonology, especially in relation to physical and mental illness, and social and political contingencies. Greater congruence between what the book does and what it wants to do would have allowed the text to speak more effectively on its own terms. At present, the material has been made to fit a framework both of demonic “possession” (rather than, perhaps, demonic “presence”) and of religion-as-lived, and it overflows these boundaries quite liberally. If readers come to this volume, however, with the expectation that they will learn about the role of demons in the construction of the sacred and the political in medieval Italy and Sweden through the prism of canonization proceedings, they will be rewarded for their time.