Topic: Gothic V

She wasn’t like
Other girls
She was make-up

She didn’t embrace a
Natural look
She liked pale
Pale skin and eye shadow
After a fashion
That could be deemed
As way too much

Eye sockets should
Appear hollowed out
With irises cold steel blue
Lip stick black
Never done neat
Outfit blacker still

Now before you say
She was just another
Run of the mill gothic chick
I have to add that
She was also a nun
Aged over seventy six

(Madeleine de Demandolx was a nun in the early 1600s who was emotionally unstable and eventually thought to be possessed. Astoundingly, her testimony as a suspected possessed person was given weight in inquisition trials against a priest, Father Louis Gaufridi, whom she accused of having an inappropriate sexual relationship with her as a teenager, and whom she blamed for her possession. Even though evidence was never found of his abusing her, nor of his being a Satanist, witch, or any other sort of heretic—and even though he was a well-respected priest—he was tortured to obtain a confession and killed for the supposed crimes. Madeleine’s “possession” ended as soon as Gaufridi died. She was allowed to live, albeit under the watch of the inquisition and being further accused of witchcraft multiple times, until her natural death at the age of 77 in 1670. This is the first of many cases of possessed nuns in the first half of the Seventeenth Century in France. As scary as a “demon nun” may appear in a Hollywood thriller, these sorts of accusations and mass hysteria are a far more horrific monster in real life.)