unsatisfied longings, suspicions, bickerings,
petty jealousies, envies, and hatreds, so inevitable in convent
life--mental disease was not unlikely to be developed at any moment.
Hysterical excitement in nunneries took shapes sometimes comical, but
more generally tragical. Noteworthy is it that the last places where
executions for witchcraft took place were mainly in the neighbourhood of
great nunneries; and the last famous victim, of the myriads executed
in Germany for this imaginary crime, was Sister Anna Renata Singer,
sub-prioress of a nunnery near Wurzburg.(372)

(372) Among the multitude of authorities on this point, see Kirchhoff,
as above, p. 337; and for a most striking picture of this dark side of
convent life, drawn, indeed, by a devoted Roman Catholic, see Manzoni's
Promessi Sposi. On Anna Renata there is a striking essay by the late
Johannes Scherr, in his Hammerschlage und Historien. On the general
subject of hysteria thus developed, see the writings of Carpenter and
Tuke; and as to its natural development in nunneries, see Maudsley,
Responsibility in Mental Disease, p. 9. Especial attention will be paid
to this in the chapter on Diabolism and Hysteria.

The same thing was seen among young women exposed to sundry fanatical
Protestant preachers. Insanity, both temporary and permanent, was thus
frequently developed among the Huguenots of France, and has been thus
produced in America, from the days of the Salem persecution down to the
"camp meetings" of the present time.(373)

(373) This branch of the subject will be discussed more at length in a
future chapter.

At various times, from the days of St. Agobard of Lyons in the ninth
century to Pomponatius in the sixteenth, protests or suggestions, more
or less timid, had been made by thoughtful men against this system.
Medicine had made some advance toward a better view, but the theological
torrent had generally overwhelmed all who supported a scientific
treatment. At last, toward the end of the sixteenth century, two men
made a beginning of a much more serious attack upon this venerable
superstition. The revival of learning, and the impulse to thought
on material matters given during the "age of discovery," undoubtedly
produced an atmosphere which made the work of these men possible. In the
year 1563, in the midst of demonstrations of demoniacal possession by
the most eminent theologians and judges, who sat in their robes and
looked wise,