Sébastien Michaëlis

Sébastien Michaëlis was a French inquisitor and prior of the Dominican order who lived during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. His Histoire admirable de la possession et conversion d'une penitente (1612), includes a classification of demons which has passed into general use in esoteric literature.

Michaelis was vice-inquisitor in Avignon during the 1580s and was involved in a number of witch trials: a series of cases in 1581 and 1582 led to at least fourteen women being convicted and burnt. In 1587 he published a tract on demons called Pneumologie: Discours des esprits. By 1610 he was prior of the Dominican community at Saint-Maxim near Aix-en-Provence.

See also Aix-en-Provence possessions

In 1610 Michaelis became involved in a case of demonic possession at the Ursuline convent at Aix-en-Provence. This began when Jean-Baptiste Romillon diagnosed one of the nuns, a young girl of noble birth from Marseilles named Madeleine Demandols de la Palud, as possessed. Madeleine made accusations against her confessor, Father Louis Gaufridy, who was priest of the parish of the Acoules in Marseilles. She claimed that Gaufridy had sexually enchanted her (the devil having made his breath aphrodisiac) and inducted her into witchcraft, causing her body to be invaded by demons which would leave only when the priest was converted, dead, or punished. She claimed her principal demonic occupant to be Beelzebub. Unable to exorcise her, Romillon referred the case to the papal territory of Avignon and the jurisdiction of Michaelis. Another Dominican, Francois Doncieux (also known by the Latinised name Domptius), served as fellow chief investigator alongside Michaelis.

Other nuns soon confessed to similar possessions, the demons in many cases prompting them to sermonize at length. One nun, Louise Capeau, claimed to speak with the voice of a demon named Verin (or Verrine) and on 27 December 1610 announced the coming of the Apocalypse. Beelzebub, speaking through Madeleine Demandols, maintained there to be a total of 6,660 devils involved in the possession.

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