Abstract
In the late 1280s a boy suffering from demonic possession begged his family to make the journey from Borgo San Sepolcro to the neighboring city of Cortona. There was, he told them, a woman in that city whose “prayers and good works” would help loosen the devil’s hold on him. According to a contemporary account, as the boy and his family made their pilgrimage up the steep hill to Cortona, “the devil could not endure the wall thrown up by [her] prayers, and with great agitations, as if he were tearing the boy apart, released him.”¹
The fortification of prayer