'The Devils of Loudun', by Aldous Huxley ‘The Devils of Loudun’ is a historical account of religious fanaticism and sexual hysteria in seventeenth century France, and an investigation into the circumstances that led to the torture and execution of a local parson who, during a farcical ecclesiastical trial, was accused of having ‘commerce with devils’, and of bewitching a whole convent of nuns. Huxley’s erudition was legendary (it was even said of him that he ‘knew everything’), and the range of his knowledge