I recently watched Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971) in a theater, in its new 4K restoration. I saw it on October 20, the day before the feast of Saint Ursula and her Companions, and am publishing this reflection on her feast day, October 21. The coincidence is worth mentioning because the nuns at the center of the film belong to the Ursuline order, named after Saint Ursula. What stayed with me after the screening, however, was not simply the film’s notorious imagery, but the historical tragedy behind it and the questions it raises about religious authority, human weakness, and the terrible consequences of mistaking institutional interests for the interests of God.
More than half a century after its release, The Devils remains a disturbing film. Russell portrays a world in which political ambition, sexual scandal, religious fanaticism, and personal vengeance become entangled until the language of faith itself is turned against the people it should serve. His indictment of religious hypocrisy has considerable force, but his treatment of sacred imagery raises questions of its own. An Orthodox Christian can recognize the injustice at the heart of the story without necessarily accepting every artistic choice Russell makes.
Russell’s film is not a straightforward reconstruction of these events. Drawing on Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudun and John Whiting’s stage play, he shaped the historical material into a dramatic confrontation between a defiant priest and an alliance of religious and political power. The result is a film that demands to be considered both as a work of cinema and as an interpretation of a real historical injustice.
The new 4K restoration is significant because audiences can now encounter the film in a form much closer to the one Russell intended. The original release in 1971 was subjected to extensive censorship in Britain and the United States. Among the most notorious omissions was the sequence commonly known as the “Rape of Christ,” in which nuns sexually desecrate a large crucifix. Other material was cut or shortened because of its sexual content, nudity, and violence.
Russell believed that the alterations damaged the film and weakened its argument. The restoration draws on the original camera negative and the reconstruction of his intended edit, developed in 2004 under his supervision with editor Michael Bradsell and in collaboration with film historians Mark Kermode and Paul Joyce. Its theatrical release finally gives audiences access to the version Russell had sought to present.
The controversy began with the film’s original release. Following its presentation at the Venice Film Festival in 1971, L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, condemned the film and called for the resignation of the festival’s director. The reaction reflected the offense caused by Russell’s treatment of Catholic religious life and, particularly, his use of sexualized sacred imagery.
The film’s history of censorship is inseparable from its meaning. For some viewers, its shocking imagery is integral to an uncompromising exposure of the corruption that can flourish within religious institutions. For others, the imagery crosses a line that the film’s political argument cannot justify.
Seeing the restored version makes this disagreement harder to avoid. Restoring a film allows us to encounter the work more fully, but it does not oblige us to approve of everything it contains. The question is whether Russell’s intended version succeeds on its own terms, and whether its most provocative scenes illuminate the injustice it depicts or become a spectacle in their own right.
The Loudun affair unfolded in seventeenth-century France, when religious authority and royal power were closely intertwined. The country was still dealing with the consequences of the wars of religion, and the monarchy was determined to strengthen its control over local communities.
Loudun had a history of religious tension and a measure of political independence. Cardinal Richelieu, chief minister to Louis XIII, sought to consolidate royal authority, and the dismantling of Loudun’s fortifications formed part of this wider policy. Grandier’s opposition to the destruction of the town’s defenses brought him into conflict with powerful interests. Russell turns this conflict into a personal struggle between Grandier and Richelieu, although the historical relationship was more complicated than the film suggests.
Grandier was himself a controversial figure. Born around 1590, he was known as an eloquent and learned priest, but also for his sexual relationships and disputes with other clergy and local officials. His relationships with women, including Philippe Trincant, the daughter of a royal prosecutor, contributed to the hostility surrounding him. One of his contentions against the Catholic Church which he served was the issue of clerical celibacy, and this would later be brought up in his trial. He had made enemies well before the accusations of witchcraft emerged.
This background matters. Grandier need not be presented as a morally flawless man for the injustice committed against him to be recognized. His failings were real, but they did not establish that he had practiced witchcraft or caused the alleged possessions. Nor did they justify torture or a trial conducted under circumstances in which powerful interests were working against him.
The crisis at the Ursuline convent developed in the early 1630s. Jeanne des Anges, the prioress, became the central figure in the reported possessions. The nuns claimed to experience demonic manifestations, and Grandier was eventually accused of having caused their condition through witchcraft by appearing in dreams. Public exorcisms attracted crowds, transforming what had begun within a convent into a spectacle watched and interpreted by religious officials, political authorities, and curious spectators.
The proceedings against Grandier were deeply compromised. Jean Martin de Laubardemont, an official associated with Richelieu, became a central figure in the prosecution. Grandier was arrested, interrogated, tortured, and condemned. On August 18, 1634, he was burned at the stake.
The existence of a formal trial and an official sentence does not establish the truth of the accusations. Contemporary accounts are valuable evidence for what people believed and what authorities did, but they must be read with an awareness of their authors’ loyalties and assumptions. The surviving record establishes Grandier’s conviction and execution; it does not independently establish that he caused the nuns’ alleged possessions.
Nor did his death bring the affair to an end. The reported possessions continued, complicating the claim that Grandier’s execution had resolved the crisis. The events at Loudun were not simply a story of a priest accused, tried, and punished. They became a prolonged episode in which religious belief, personal hostility, political ambition, and public fascination fed into one another.
Russell shapes this history to make his indictment of power unmistakable. His Grandier is presented as a victim of political and ecclesiastical persecution, and several scenes are constructed for dramatic effect rather than historical accuracy. The film should not be treated as a documentary. But neither should its artistic liberties distract us from the historical injustice that forms the basis of the story.
One of the most compelling parts of the film is Grandier’s interrogation. When pressed to confess, he acknowledges his moral failings rather than pretending to be innocent of every sin. He does not present himself as a saint, nor does he deny that his conduct has given others grounds to criticize him.
Yet he refuses to confess to witchcraft.
This distinction gives the scene its force. Grandier is willing to acknowledge what he has actually done, but he will not affirm what he denies having done merely to satisfy his persecutors. His admission of personal weakness is not enough for them. They want him to validate their accusations, to admit to a pact with the Devil, and to provide a confession that will make the proceedings appear justified.
The authorities are not seeking an honest acknowledgment of sin. They are seeking the words necessary to confirm a conclusion they have already reached.
The scene is especially troubling because torture is presented as an instrument of spiritual correction. Grandier’s tormentors claim to be concerned with his soul, yet they subject him to cruelty in order to make him say what they want to hear. The language of religion becomes a means of coercion, and the demand for confession is separated from the truth that confession is supposed to serve.
Christian repentance requires honesty. A person must acknowledge his actual sins, not invent crimes to satisfy someone else. A confession extracted through torture cannot be trusted simply because it has been spoken, especially when the accused is being forced to affirm something he continues to deny.
Grandier’s refusal does not make him a model of Christian virtue in every respect. His earlier conduct remains part of the story. But he can be guilty of moral failings and still be innocent of the particular crime for which he is condemned. We do not need to idealize a victim to recognize that he has been wronged.
His persecutors demand that he surrender not only his life, but also the truth about himself. His refusal to do so becomes an act of resistance against a system that has confused the appearance of religious justice with justice itself.
Another memorable exchange occurs when Laubardemont asks Grandier whether he loves the Church. Grandier replies, “Not today.”
The answer is brief, but it captures much of the film’s moral conflict. Grandier is not simply declaring himself opposed to Christianity. He is responding to the treatment he is receiving from men who claim to represent the Church and who are demanding that he confess to something he denies.
Laubardemont urges him to make a public confession so that the crowd will see him return to the Church’s arms. He argues that Grandier’s refusal will damage the Church and encourage its enemies. In this reasoning, the institution’s reputation becomes more important than the truth of the accusation.
Grandier’s response exposes the contradiction. What kind of love for the Church is being demanded of him if he must affirm a lie to protect its public standing? What does it mean to defend the Church when its representatives are prepared to sacrifice a man rather than acknowledge the possibility of their own injustice?
The line belongs to Russell’s screenplay, not to a verified historical transcript of Grandier’s interrogation. It should be understood as the film’s dramatic expression of his predicament. Nevertheless, it is one of the most revealing moments in the story because it distinguishes the Church from those who exercise authority in its name.
Grandier’s conflict with Richelieu and the men associated with the prosecution is central to the film’s interpretation of the affair. Russell presents the priest as a man whose personal failings have made him vulnerable, but whose enemies exploit those failings to destroy him. The Church becomes entangled with political power, and the demand for loyalty becomes a demand for submission.
The distinction is important for an Orthodox Christian. The truth of the Church does not depend on the moral perfection of every cleric or official. But the sanctity of the Church cannot be used to shield its representatives from criticism when they act unjustly. The sins of those who abuse ecclesiastical authority should neither be confused with the faith itself nor excused because they are committed under its name.
“Not today” is not a theological declaration. It is the anguished response of a man who finds himself being condemned by the very institution he has served. Its power lies in the tension between faith and the failure of those who claim to defend it.
The film’s most notorious sequence is the sexual desecration of a crucifix by the nuns. It is also one of the scenes that most clearly separates Russell’s artistic interpretation from the historical record. There is no established historical evidence that an incident corresponding to this particular scene occurred at Loudun. It should not be presented as an event reconstructed from the contemporary accounts.
Its function is metaphorical. Russell uses the crucifix to make visible the contradiction at the heart of the world he depicts: people who claim to defend Christianity become participants in the degradation of what Christianity holds sacred. The scene is not simply an accusation against the nuns as individuals, but a visual expression of a religious institution that has become corrupted by the very forces it claims to oppose.
An Orthodox Christian may understand what Russell sought to communicate: a religious institution that has become corrupt can desecrate the very things it professes to honor. The crucifix becomes an image of the contradiction between outward religious identity and inward moral disorder. The film attempts to expose a world in which sacred objects are surrounded by people who have lost the moral and spiritual integrity that should accompany them.
That is a powerful idea, and it deserves to be considered separately from the scene’s deliberately offensive presentation. The film’s metaphor does not depend on the incident having happened historically. Indeed, treating it as a literal episode would obscure what Russell is doing with it artistically.
Nevertheless, the metaphor raises its own question. Does the film expose sacrilege, or does it turn sacrilege into a spectacle? In Orthodox Christianity, the Cross is not merely an emblem of institutional power. It is the sign of Christ’s Passion and victory over death. Sacred images are approached with reverence because of their relationship to the holy persons they represent. Their degradation is therefore not a neutral artistic device.
A filmmaker may depict sacrilege in order to condemn it, but the intention does not settle every question about the depiction. Russell’s scene may serve his indictment of hypocrisy, yet an Orthodox Christian can still find its method spiritually offensive. Recognizing the point he is trying to make does not require approving of every means he chooses to make it.
The scene is also connected to the film’s emphasis on sexuality. Russell portrays the convent as a place where repressed desire erupts in grotesque forms, making sexual obsession central to his interpretation of the affair. But this is the film’s interpretation, not an established explanation of the historical events. The surviving evidence does not justify reducing the nuns’ reported experiences primarily to sexual repression.
The contemporary accounts of Loudun do contain descriptions of sexualized accusations, obscene speech, bodily contortions, and behavior that observers considered indecent. Some reports describe the nuns exposing parts of their bodies or behaving in ways that scandalized those present. Such descriptions are relevant to understanding why the affair attracted so much attention, but they must be treated with caution.
These reports were produced in a highly charged environment, often by people who already believed the nuns were possessed and who interpreted their behavior through that assumption. Exorcisms were public performances, and the nuns’ conduct was recorded within a framework in which obscenity, blasphemy, and sexual temptation were understood as possible manifestations of demonic activity. The accounts therefore tell us not only what observers claimed to have witnessed, but also how they interpreted and presented what they witnessed.
It would be a mistake to deny the presence of such material in the historical record or to treat it as proof that sexual repression explains the entire affair. The film makes sexuality a central interpretive key, but the historical events involved political conflict, personal animosity, religious beliefs about possession, public exorcisms, and a judicial process shaped by powerful interests. There is no firm basis for reducing the affair primarily to the sexual repression of the nuns.
The distinction matters. Russell’s nuns inhabit a world in which sexuality, religion, and power become grotesquely entangled. The historical evidence is more complicated and does not permit such a simple explanation.
One of the most extraordinary aspects of the historical affair concerns Jeanne des Anges herself. According to the accounts produced by the exorcists, the prioress was possessed by seven demons. Their names were recorded as Asmodeus, Amon, Gresil, Leviathan, Behemoth, Balam, and Isacaron, although spellings and forms of the names can vary across accounts.
How was it determined that she had seven demons? Not through an independent examination that could establish their existence, but through the exorcisms and the statements attributed to the supposed demons during those ceremonies. The exorcists questioned the nuns, recorded the answers they believed the demons had given, and interpreted the reported manifestations according to contemporary demonological beliefs. The number, names, and supposed characteristics of the demons belong to that historical record of claims; they are not independently verified facts about supernatural beings.
The exorcists also announced that three demons would leave Jeanne on May 20, 1634, and that their departure would be marked by physical signs. Such claims became public demonstrations of the supposed reality of the possession. The proceedings increasingly involved promises of signs, interpretations of bodily events, and the expectations of spectators.
The affair consequently became a contest over the credibility of the exorcists and the meaning of the nuns’ behavior. Some observers accepted the events as evidence of demonic activity; others questioned the explanations being offered. The historical question is not merely what the participants believed, but how those beliefs were formed, challenged, and used.
Jeanne’s own account of her experiences adds another layer. She interpreted her life through the language of possession, temptation, and spiritual struggle. Her autobiography, written years after the events, is valuable for understanding how she came to interpret herself, but it is not a neutral record of everything that happened at Loudun.
The surviving accounts are inseparable from the assumptions of the people who produced them. They show how the possession was understood by those involved; they do not settle the question of its cause.
The story of the Jesuit priest Jean-Joseph Surin adds another disturbing dimension to the affair. Surin arrived at Loudun after the public burning of Grandier in late 1634 to assist with the exorcisms, particularly those involving Jeanne des Anges. He became deeply involved in her spiritual direction and came to interpret his own subsequent suffering in relation to the possession.
Surin’s own letter of May 3, 1635, is particularly striking. Writing to a fellow Jesuit, he claimed that during his ministry the Devil passed from the body of a possessed person into his own, attacking and agitating him and, as he understood it, possessing him for hours. This is not merely a later story told about Surin; it reflects what he himself reported and believed was happening to him.
Surin’s suffering continued for years and severely impaired his ability to function. His writings describe intense spiritual and physical distress, periods of paralysis, difficulties with speech, and experiences that he interpreted as attacks by the Devil. It is sometimes said that he took Jeanne’s possession upon himself and that it drove him mad. That formulation captures the dramatic outline of the story, but it should not be treated as an established medical or supernatural explanation.
What can be said historically is that Surin believed his suffering was connected to his efforts to help Jeanne, and that he experienced a prolonged and debilitating crisis that he interpreted in spiritual terms. His account is evidence of his understanding of his experiences, not independent proof that a demon literally passed from one person to another.
His case complicates any simple picture of cynical manipulation. Political ambition and the exploitation of religious authority were important features of the affair, but not everyone involved can be reduced to a calculating fraud. Some participants appear to have believed sincerely in what they were witnessing. Sincerity, however, is not the same as accuracy. A person can be deeply convinced of a spiritual interpretation and still be mistaken about the nature or cause of an experience.
Surin’s story also shows how the affair could shape a person’s understanding of his own inner life. Once the events were interpreted as a struggle against demons, suffering itself could be understood as evidence of that struggle. This did not necessarily resolve the question of what was happening; it could make the original interpretation even harder to question.
For an Orthodox Christian, the story raises a serious question about spiritual discernment. Religious devotion does not make a person immune to error, and the willingness to suffer for another person does not, by itself, establish that the interpretation of that suffering is correct. We can take Surin’s distress seriously without accepting every supernatural explanation he gave for it.
Loudun belongs to a much larger history of witchcraft accusations, alleged possessions, and collective religious fear in early modern Europe. These episodes occurred in both Protestant and Roman Catholic settings. They differed in their circumstances and severity, but they reveal how accusations of supernatural evil could become entangled with local conflicts, political interests, religious assumptions, and legal procedures.
Witch hunts were not exclusive to one confession. Protestant communities participated in them, as did Catholic societies. The important question is how such events became possible in communities that understood themselves to be defending the Christian faith.
At Loudun, the nuns’ reported experiences were interpreted within a religious framework that expected demonic activity. Public exorcisms attracted crowds, and the events became increasingly theatrical. The accusations were no longer simply claims made within a convent; they became a public affair in which religious authorities, political officials, and spectators all had a part.
Once the accusations became bound up with political interests and the reputations of powerful men, the demand for a satisfactory explanation gave way to the need for a culprit. Grandier’s execution provided an apparent resolution, but the reported possessions continued. The result was a tragedy in which certainty about supernatural evil did not produce truth or justice.
We should be cautious about assigning a single explanation to all the people involved. The historical record does not allow us to diagnose every nun or determine with certainty whether particular actions were deliberate, involuntary, or the result of several interacting circumstances. What it does show is how the interpretation of extraordinary experiences can shape the course of events, particularly when public attention and institutional authority become involved.
For an Orthodox Christian, the broader issue is discernment. The Church does not need to deny the reality of spiritual evil in order to insist that claims about it be examined carefully. An unusual experience, a dramatic manifestation, or an accusation of demonic activity does not authenticate itself. Religious conviction cannot replace evidence, and no claim of spiritual authority can justify cruelty.
Nor should Orthodox Christians imagine that such dangers belong only to Western Christianity. The history of witch hunts and alleged possessions in the West should not become a means of scoring confessional points against Roman Catholics or Protestants. The more important question is whether religious communities can recognize the possibility of error within their own ranks and resist the temptation to treat their own certainty as proof.
Loudun deserves a broader historical examination, one that considers the social and political circumstances of witch hunts alongside the religious assumptions that made them plausible. Such an examination must take seriously how collective fear can acquire religious legitimacy, and how people can come to believe that they are fighting evil while participating in an injustice.
The danger is not simply that individuals may be mistaken about a supernatural experience. It is that an entire community may organize itself around that mistake, with institutions reinforcing it and innocent people paying the price.
Watching The Devils in its restored form brought the historical tragedy of Loudun into sharper focus. Russell’s film is deliberately excessive, and some of its imagery remains deeply objectionable from a Christian standpoint. Yet beneath the spectacle lies a serious indictment of what happens when religious authority becomes an instrument of political ambition and personal revenge.
These are questions Christians should be willing to confront honestly. To acknowledge the failures of religious authorities is not to reject the faith they profess. But neither is fidelity to the Church a reason to excuse wrongdoing committed in its name. The distinction between the Church and the sins of its representatives must be preserved precisely because the Church’s calling is greater than the interests of any individual or institution.
For an Orthodox Christian, the lesson of Loudun is not that every extraordinary religious experience is false, nor that the history of Western Christianity can be dismissed as a history of superstition. It is that spiritual claims require discernment, authority must remain accountable to truth, and no accusation becomes just merely because it is made in the name of God.
Russell’s film leaves us with an uncomfortable contradiction: a work that exposes the desecration of human dignity also employs the desecration of sacred imagery to make its point. We can recognize the force of its criticism without accepting all its methods. More importantly, we can look beyond the film to the historical tragedy it dramatizes and ask how such events were allowed to happen.
The ultimate warning of Loudun is that people can become most dangerous when they are convinced that their actions are righteous and that their opponents serve evil. When that conviction removes the need for evidence, silences criticism, and excuses cruelty, religion itself can be turned against the truth it exists to serve.
