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Brian P. Levack, Professor at the History Department of the University of Texas at Austin, is a specialist in early modern British and European history, legal history and the history of witchcraft, and is well known for his book The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (3rd edition, ), which has been translated into eight languages. The Devil Within is an exhaustive study of the related topic of possession and exorcism in Early Modern Europe.
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries thousands of Europeans were thought to be possessed by demons. These people, usually referred to as demoniacs, displayed a large variety of physiological, and verbal or behavioural symptoms. They reportedly experienced convulsions, their limbs stiffened, they demonstrated extraordinary physical strength, their faces became grossly distorted, their eyes bulged, their throats and stomachs swelled; they underwent temporary loss of hearing, sight and speech, vomited huge quantities of pins, nails and other materials, spoke in deep animal-sounding voices, suffered eating disorders and engaged in self-mutilation; they conversed in languages of which they had no previous knowledge, uttered blasphemies, violated moral standards, went into trances, foresaw the future, revealed secrets unknown to others and a few of them were even reported to have levitated. In view of the multiplicity of observable signs of possession, Levack's book deals only with those persons who were defined by their contemporaries as possessed and whose bodies were putatively invaded by demons.