Johann Joseph Gassner

Johann Joseph Gassner (August 22, 1727 Braz, near Bludenz, Vorarlberg - 1779 Pondorf, now part of Winklarn, Bavaria) was a noted exorcist.

While a Catholic priest at Klösterle he gained a wide celebrity by professing to "cast out devils" and to work cures on the sick by means simply of prayer; he was attacked as an impostor, but the bishop of Regensburg, who believed in his honesty, bestowed upon him the cure of Pondorf.

References

• Midelfort, H. C. Erik. Exorcism and Enlightenment: Johann Joseph Gassner and the demons of eighteenth-century Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005). ISBN 0300106696.
• Gassner at the Catholic Encyclopedia
• Gassner biography (German)

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1907 edition of The Nuttall Encyclopædia.