Nicole Aubrey

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Nicole Aubrey or Obry (circa 1550 – fl. 1565) was a young married French woman, 15 or 16 years of age, who was publicly exorcised in 1566 in the French city of Laon. Occurring during the French Wars of Religion, the so-called Miracle of Laon was almost immediately seized upon for polemic by proponents of the Counter-Reformation, and it is from those polemics that the account survives.

Events leading up to the exorcism

In the aftermath of the

In November 1565, Nicole Obry, a resident of

On 4 January 1566 Bishop Jean de Bours arrived in Vervins but was unable to exorcise the demon. On 29 January the Bishop led a procession to the

Effect on the Wars of Religion

Within months of the event, multiple eyewitness accounts had been published and spread throughout Europe. For Catholics, the exorcism was a miracle and proof of the

Louis, believing that persecution of Protestants was imminent, attempted to overthrow Charles, and war broke out again.

Sources

• Backus, Irena Dorota, Guillaume Postel et Jean Boulaese: De Summopere (1566) et Le Miracle De Laon (1566) (Droz 1995).
• Kuntz, Marion, Guillaume Postel: Prophet of the Restitution of All Things, His Life and Thought (Martinus Nijhoff 1981).
• Pearl, Jonathan L., The Crime of Crimes. Demonology and politics in France 1560-1620 (Waterloo 1999) 43-45.