ALAIN BOUREAU
The anxiety over Satan, which led, in a reciprocal relationship of cause and effect, to the relentless persecution of devil-worshippers and acolytes, took hold fully half-way through the Middle Ages. Christianity had always been conscious of the devil's presence; the earliest descriptions, found in both Genesis and the New Testament passage on Christ in the wilderness,815 portray him as seducer and tempter. The devil816 was the Enemy, the Foe, surrounded by demons, acolytes and other followers. The creation of the evil court, which stood in opposition to the celestial, was well known: a group of angels followed Satan in his fall and then continued to serve him. A basic dualism opposed the temptations of the flesh, ambition or despair (as with Job before his ultimate resistance) with the appeal for the love of God, compassion and hope. This dualism was dominated by the figure of Christ incarnate, unswerving and triumphant opponent of the devil and his eternal pursuance of evil works. From mid-way through the Middle Ages, devotions to Christ focused attention on the fight against demons; endeavours to imitate Jesus implied constant struggle, yet this was nothing compared with the difficulty and inequality of Christ's own battle. The extent of the evil to be confronted was such that it probably sparked the 'Cathar' heresies which appeared in the twelfth century - too easily viewed as simply one ancient and far-off error, imported and disseminated.
A number of different factors were responsible for modifying the simplicity of this dual opposition. Already, obscure forces of evil bearing no clear connection to Satan had appeared in the Old Testament, such as Asmodeus in Tobit, Lilith in Job and Isaiah, Azazel in Leviticus, and the satyrs in goat-form which occur in various books of the Bible. Christian history's centuries of
Spiritual guidance had created or confirmed the sense of a powerful, multiform demonical presence either inside or close to the world of men. Yet this took place without the population being aware of any precise or organised action by the devil, who indeed held little place in the thoughts of the general community.817 The anecdote told by Gregory the Great is well known:818 a nun had eaten a piece of lettuce without taking the precaution of making the sign of the cross above it, and was immediately possessed by the devil, hiding inside the leaf. This 'epidemiological' notion, seemingly 'homespun', was not completely without scriptural base: in the land of the Gadarenes, Christ concealed an evil spirit called 'Legion' in a herd of 2,000 swine, and 6,000 demons were hurled into the sea.819 Such perception of the proximity and concentration of demons, who dwelt in thick and obscure spheres of the atmosphere just above the clear earthly skies, was shared widely. Indeed, it was not incompatible with the story of the multitude of angels' fall, or, in its literal sense, with the traditional localisation of the fall, when the angels were thrown from the Empyrean - the last realm accessible to earthly creatures - all the way down to the lowest and darkest spheres surrounding the earth.
Thus the devil claims an ancient history in Christianity, but the creation of a science of the devil, a demonology, seems to be much more recent. Of course, St Paul had made the early distinction between spirits (evil opposed to good) one of the church's founding characteristics, which then led to the ecclesiastical office of exorcist, still in existence. Also, during Christianity's first centuries the possessed (known as energumens) could testify to the devil's plans and thus provide the church with useful knowledge. In addition, one can recreate a certain body of patristic and theological learning regarding the works of the devil and the bad angels. Yet nevertheless, one may only speak of a 'demonology' when an autonomous discipline concerns itself with not only the existence of demons and their actions, but above all, with the relationships devils forge with human beings, and with methods of detecting evil spirits allowing the distinction between possessed and inspired. The ancient 'gift' of recognising evil spirits came to be replaced or at least refined by more practical knowledge, an art based on a roughly defined doctrine. One of the tangible signs of the new discipline's emergence is seen in the specific treatises written to communicate knowledge and collective experience.
It is for these reasons that the birth of demonology has long been dated from the first known practical and theoretical treatise, The Witches’ Hammer, published in 1486 by the Dominican inquisitor Henry Institoris.820 Clearly, other handbooks for inquisitors had preceded, of which the most famous were those of Bernard Gui821 (around 1323) and Nicholas Eymerich (around 1376), but in these the pursuit of demons and their allies the sorcerers did not play such a central role, priority being given to the hunt for heretics proper and to technical questions of procedure. This timing carried the advantage of enabling the beginnings of demonology to coincide with those of the 'demonomania' seen with the great witch-hunts.
Nevertheless, recent works, notably those by Agostino Paravicini Bagliani's group, also those by Pierrette Paravy822 and Martine Ostorero, have shown that a fundamental moment in the formation of an earlier practical and theoretical demonology must have occurred towards the end of the 1430s. Then the first meticulous witch trials in the Valais took place and works appear on procedural doctrine, such as the report by Chancellor Johann Frund on the Valais witches, the Formicarius of Dominican John Nider, the anonymous text entitled Errores gazariorum, and also the treatise by a judge from the Dauphine, Claude Tholosan. The Council of Basel (1431-37) would have played a vital role in the conflict between experience and doctrine.823 In fact, only at this time does the systematic linking of the Witches' Sabbath and prosecution of devil-worshippers emerge. The doctrine was new: in its official and pastoral work the medieval church had always condemned or rejected the practice of magic, but viewed it with disdain and as no more than hollow superstition. Through trickery, the devil fooled the weak-willed into believing in his power; in reality his strength remained limited and natural ('natural' in the scholastic sense, nature encompassing all things created by God).
At this point, therefore, we must admit that the massive persecutions of devil-worshippers indeed did begin during the medieval period. The early stages were in part original in that 'sorcerers' were largely men; in the Renaissance period, women were the prime victims. Yet the beginnings of anxiety over the devil did not arise solely out of the popularisation of the
Sabbath (for both persecuted and persecutors), even if it did add to the mania by suggesting the possibility of the cult's expansion. The idea of a 'devil's synagogue' took root: a counter-church with all its ramifications and own form of 'spiritual guidance'. It is of note in passing that a picture of this disturbing assembly appears shortly after the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), among others, had regulated church observance more strictly.
Anxieties over the devil seem to have emerged prior to the discovery of these elements. The level of concern is shown in the number of trials at the beginning of the fourteenth century which were organised by the papacy and Europe's great monarchies and which involved a link with the devil. It should be noted that the new nature of the charges emanated from the very establishments which enabled the link. Indeed, it was usual to denounce an accused by likening him or her verbally to the devil, but not to particular acts - impossible without such collusion. Moreover, an important sign, not disassociated from the recent obsession, comes with John XXII's request in the autumn of 1320, asking ten theologians and canon law specialists for expertise on whether the practices of magic and invocation of the devil should qualify as heresy. It seems likely that this indicated the pope's wish to pave the way for new legislation - and the doctrinal leap for which he was preparing necessitated very serious doctrinal work.
The text of the pope's questions, with ten responses, has been conserved in the Borghese manuscript no. 428 in the Vatican Library, traced by Anneliese Maier824 and published in its entirety by the present author.825 Clearly, the three first questions, to which we will return, refer to various types of sorcery not explicitly linked to demonology, but the fourth question is direct: 'Should either those who make sacrifices to demons with the intention of persuading them to force someone to do what they wish, or those who invoke demons, be considered as heretics or simply practitioners of magic?' The consultation, despite the reticence of the majority of theologians asked, produced remarkable results, in that it approved the new concept of a 'heretical fact'. One of the experts, Enrico del Carretto, even sketched the outline of an effective satanic sacrament - a description derived from the contractual theory of sacraments produced in the second half of the thirteenth century.
Such concerns with the devil's activities have solicited various explanations. R. I. Moore has stressed the repression hypothesis. Carlo Ginzburg sees the concern as stemming from the interaction between two cultures: the clerical and the popular. I propose that the process emerged out of the conjunction, revival and interaction of two ancient ideas: the pact with the devil and devil-possession. The satanic pact, an ancient notion found early in Theophilus' famous legend, took on a fresh and frightening topicality during the thirteenth century for reasons both political and theological. Following the vast movement of demographic growth and population density which marked the beginning of the first millennium, ways of organising community life had multiplied and overlapped (rural and urban communities, parishes, seigniories, principalities, kingdoms, etc.). The complex and multi-layered status of property ownership, at the heart of the feudal system, increased incidences of multi-ownership. After a period of extreme competition (which triggered a gradual reduction in fallow land and development possibilities), the thirteenth century saw a period of conflict and tension between the different types of systems. Sovereignties attempted to assert themselves with neither the institutional nor ideological means of doing so, and from the end of the century onwards the twin worlds of society and scholastic knowledge became entrenched in intense political debate - accentuated by the arrival of Aristotle's Politics. Secular and religious rulers alike were gripped by a fear of plots and conspiracies, demonstrated, for example, by the famous Templar persecutions at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Within theology, the gradual development of a theory of sacramental causality from the 1230s onwards focussed attention on the idea of a pact between God and humankind. Naturally enough, the ecclesiastical and ministerial theory of sacramental grace grew weaker as a consequence of this doctrine.
Possession of supernatural powers also gained new substance in the thirteenth century. Together, Cistercian concepts of the human person and Aristotelian philosophy led to an anthropological interest in the strengths and weaknesses of man's individual unity, a concept by then essential to sacramental doctrine. Those who were alienated, inspired, mad, somnambulist or euphoric acquired a particular relief,826 like so many concave or convex mirrors of the human condition. An individual's soul and body were considered to be more direct receptacles for supernatural influence. The individual strength of the human gave him resistance against his fragility, yet his autonomy placed him in danger of satanic subjection.
Up to the very end of the thirteenth century, theology took little interest in demons, which presented no particular speculative problem, whereas the question of Satan and his fall provoked reflection linked to evil, predestination and divine providence. One of the more celebrated examples of this reflection was St Anselm's treatise The Fall of the Devil (De casu diaboli), composed at the end of the eleventh century. But nonetheless, it was the divine plan and its consequences for humanity which excited more interest than the devil's position. Peter Lombard's Sentences, written around 1140 (and providing a framework for university study) spoke only briefly of demons. Discussion was limited to the fate of demons in hell in Book IV; only one isolated comment in Book II received attention.
The situation appears to have changed quite suddenly after the 1270s. The first great work of scholastic demonology is probably the lengthy discussion of devils in Thomas Aquinas' treatise On Evil (De malo),13 most likely published in 1272,14 towards the end of his life. The question's twelve articles considerably updated his scattered notes in the Summa theologiae and the Scriptum super sententiis and formed a full and original body of doctrine of which historians have largely underestimated the significance.15 The twelve articles correspond to twelve questions, which may be grouped under four headings. Firstly, a question on the nature of demons (Article 1: 'Do Demons Have Bodies Joined to them by Nature?'). Secondly, three articles discuss the circumstances of the devil's fall and that of the bad angels (Article 2: 'Are Demons Evil by their Nature or their Will?'; Article 3: 'Did the Devil in Sinning Desire Equality with God?'; Article 4: 'Did the Devil Sin, or Could he Have Sinned, at the First Moment ofhis Creation?'). Third, six articles follow
2003); also that of Dyan Elliott (Proving Woman: Female Spirituality and Inquisitorial Culture in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). The authors study the feminine, non-institutional aspects of visionaries and mystics.
13 Thomas Aquinas, De malo, ed. Leonine Commission, Opera omnia, vol. 23 (Rome: Ex Typographia Polyglotta S. C. de Propaganda Fide et al., 1982), 279-334.
14 For all matters of dating in Thomas Aquinas' work, and for an overview of his doctrine, I refer to the invaluable publication by J. P. Torrell, Initiation a saint Thomas d’Aquin: Sa personne et son oeuvre (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires; Paris: Le Cerf, 1993; rev. and expanded 2002).
15 We must note the dearth of contemporary bibliography on scholastic demonology. While almost all the subjects and ideas treated by Aquinas have been the object of continued research, the only work on demons of which I am aware is a 1940 monograph, aimed at clearing Aquinas of any responsibility in the witch-hunts at the end of the Middle Ages (Charles Edward Hopkin, The Share of Thomas Aquinas in the Growth of Witchcraft (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1940) (several editions).
On the abilities of demons after their faU (Article 5: 'Can Demons' Free Choice Return to Good after their Sin?'; Article 6: 'Is the Devil's Intellect so Darkened after Sin that it Can Err or Be Deceived?'; Article 7: 'Do Demons Know Future Things?'; Article 8: 'Do Demons Know our Interior Thoughts?'; Article 9: 'Can Demons Alter Material Substances by Changing the Substances' Forms?'; Article 10: 'Can Demons Cause the Locomotion of Material Substances?'. Finally, the two last questions focus on the powers that demons exercise over humans (Article 11: 'Can Demons Affect the Soul's Cognitive Powers Regarding the Internal or External Senses?'; Article 12: 'Can Demons Affect Human Beings' Intellect?').
We should note that this eloquent collection ofqueries does not represent a simple synthesis of theological opinion on demons, but a series of reasoned and also daring stances which were to be quickly attacked by several Franciscans, in particular William de la Mare, in 1277. Shortly afterwards, another theologian, Peter de Falco, Regent Master in Paris, devoted four very lengthy disputed questions827 to the bad angels, meticulously indicating the points where Aquinas had leant more towards the philosophers than the doctors of the church (particularly St Augustine). Finally, at the beginning of the 1280s, in the second book of his commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences, the Franciscan Peter John Olivi wrote seven extended questions on the angels' fall.828 It was the opposing views of Thomas Aquinas and Peter John Olivi which were to provide the basis of fresh thought with respect to demons. Yet it was not simply a question of the clash between two personalities; other theologians joined the exploration. At the beginning of the 1290s, the Dominican Master John of Paris (or Jean Quidort829), regarding the same passage as the Sentences, offered valuable additions to Thomas' doctrine. Taken together, these works which focussed on the period's main controversies constituted a rich and significant corpus and offered a solid foundation for further demonological study.830
The revival of scholastic interest in the devil and demons can be attributed to a number of causes. Firstly, it is possible that the continuing potency of
Cathar and other thirteenth-century dualist heresies may have driven the need for a doctrinal response to one of their basic assertions. They claimed that it was the evil demiurge, the devil, who governed the world by populating it with demons. Jacques Fournier, one of the ten experts consulted in 1320, had gained practical experience of the wide spread of dualism831 during his scrupulous inquisitorial enquiries in the Montaillou area. As early as 1241, the University of Paris had condemned a proposition asserting that 'an evil angel has been evil from its creation and has never been other than evil'.832 It is hard to know at whom this unattributed condemnation was aimed. Taking it literally, one might sense a heresy postulating an evil creation as opposed to divine. In his Sentences Peter Lombard had mentioned the opinion of some who 'say that angels had been created evil and straight away fallen. Some thought that those angels who fell had deviated towards evil not through their own free will but because God had made them evil'.833 Thomas Aquinas signalled the mistaken proposal of 1241 in De male, without seeing in it any allusion to an evil nature or creation. For Aquinas, the question turned on Satan's immediate use of free will which made him choose to sin.
Some modern thinkers have had the audacity to assert that the devil was evil
At the first moment of his creation, obviously not by nature, but by the action
Of free will which forced him to sin. But this position was condemned by all
Masters teaching in Paris at that time.834
Secondly, the discovery of early pagan knowledge together with the recent prestige of ancient and Arab-Neoplatonist thinking, which viewed the world in terms of a hierarchical population of intermediary beings, led to the assimilation of demons with ancient daimones. These had natural and superhuman powers, and were not connected to Satan. The question of 'separate substances' took on a different slant in cosmology at the close ofthe thirteenth century. Angels and the souls of the dead were placed under this heading, both stripped of their material body, and sharing their existence with heavenly bodies in supralunary space inside the first moving sphere. Notably, through the intermediary of the Book of Causes, Greek-Arab peripatetic cosmology embraced the notion of the Intelligences as distinct from matter and the agent Intellect. This turn presented a new challenge to Christian thought, but one can find traces of it as early as the twelfth century in the work of Bernard Silvestris, one of the few convinced Platonists in this 'renaissance' period - gives it little mention. In his treatise De mundi universitate,835 Silvestris distinguishes between good demons, which live above the moon, and bad - the so-called satellite demons - which incite evil and inhabit obscure regions of the atmosphere. Such confusion between angels and daimones was maintained by the desire to see angels as descended from their heavenly empyrean and now closely participating in the world of men. Thus in about 1240, the Dominican Guerric of Saint-Quentin stated that angels had two abodes, one in the empyrean heavens, according to their nature (ex natura), the other in obscure regions of the atmosphere, according to their function (ex officio). After the fall, demons kept only the place they occupied through their function.836
In addition, the thirteenth century saw thinking on demons revised to take account of their potential role in the great historical setting instituted by the eschatology of the Spiritual Franciscans and based on the prophecies of Joachim of Fiore. The time was approaching when the devil would generate a new aide, the Antichrist, supported by the restructured cohort of demons. (According to John in the Apocalypse,837 Christ delivered the group from imprisonment in the brief period preceding God's reign at the end of time.) Thus the demons were torn out of their dismal state of timelessness to become active participants in the story of salvation.
Finally, thirteenth-century scholasticism made the angels subject to significant investigation,838 placing them at the heart of the vast paradigm which grouped ordinary and favoured human beings (notably the Virgin Mary)
Together with Christ-man and the angels in order to investigate humankind's limits and potential. The new categorisation brought souls and angels closer together and accorded humans, as Tiziana Suarez-Nani puts it, a 'potential angelicity'; this then fostered the need for a science of angels. Yet any question of the will or reason of an angel necessarily had to be discussed in the context of the bad angels' fall. It was perhaps the debate over the primacy of will or reason - a key area of dispute between Dominican doctor Thomas and the Franciscans - which provoked the former's desire to treat methodically of the demons, despite the awkwardness involved. In all, no doubt the scholastic interest in demons was driven primarily by the borderline case they represented rather than a fascination with diabolical powers.
Confronted by the threat from demons, it was essential to take quick and efficient action - a contradictory aim, however, since efficiency assumes the slow and difficult establishment of truth. During this period the papacy held a wide range of judicial options at its disposal, which implied differences in procedure, jurisdictional competencies and forms of enquiry. The church favoured the development of inquisitorial procedure (through enquiry) over an accusatory form. This accorded with the movement initiated by Innocent III's decretals from 1198, the final form of which is found in canon 8 of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215). It is well known that the accusatory procedure, dominant until the twelfth century, and which continued its path in British and American Common Law, leaves indictment to the prosecutor of any particular case, who may also be liable to the consequences. The judge and jury merely arbitrate. The two-part action consists of the careful construction of the case, which must be rigorously defined (in Roman terms, the litis contest-atio) followed by deliberation. Inquisitorial procedure, on the other hand, favoured an accusation ex officio drawn up by a judge or prince; this followed the 'defamation' which originated in incriminating rumour. The process consisted of two successive enquiries: the first established the fama - an individual's reputation, good or bad, which resulted in indictment or release; the second pieced together the truth of the facts associated with the fama.
Various juridical bodies could deal with people who invoked demons: numerous episcopal law courts, the court of the Inquisition and ad hoc papal commissions. It is thought that the papacy created the Inquisition in about 1233 to combat heresy, and for a long time it retained that function, recruiting judges who were more theologians than jurists. Fierce controversy has tainted the image of the medieval Inquisition to the point where it is difficult to consider it rationally. Some medievalists, not without grounds, have endeavoured to refute its associations with the seemingly crazed persecutions; Edward Peters has shown how a dark myth has come to surround the Inquisition over time;839 an impressive article by Richard Kieckhefer questions its institutional reality.840 In fact, general opinion has often confused the implacable reality of the Roman Inquisition (established in 1542), and of, above all, the Castilian Inquisition (a state institution founded in 1481-2), with the limited and frequently confused endeavours of the medieval Inquisition. Yet it existed, and despite its weak foundations, represented a powerful institution. The Holy See appointed an inquisitor, yet the latter kept direct links with the religious order he came from (often the Dominican Order, but also the Franciscans and to a lesser extent the Carmelites). An inquisitor's daily duties placed him in direct contact with the secular authorities.
In such a context, stories of possession and invocation became more credible and more significant - and with this, we note a shift in thought on demons: belief in their limited abilities ends. The change is marked by three principal features. Firstly, demons were discovered to possess ways of behaving and relating to humans which gave them power; specifically, the pact and the satanic sacrament, where their natural powers drew together. The reassuring notion of diabolic illusion now disappeared. The demons' extended activity was confirmed by a second feature: the victims and accomplices of evil works were no longer seen as simply the vetule - credulous women - but, owing to their fragile constitution and susceptibility to the supernatural, as all humankind. Finally, the strong eschatological trends illustrated first signs of the demons' release into the world. Uncertainties of deciphering these were balanced by a process of enquiry and repression which the church would appear to have accepted.
Clearly, however, the witch-hunts did have a certain continuity with scholastic demonology. The follies described in The Witches’ Hammer are largely narrative, but the doctrinal parts of the handbook remain within the boundaries of scholastic demonology. We are thus perhaps able to reject two opposing historiographical viewpoints dominating the research field. Firstly, the attempt made by some to refute the whole idea of witch-hunts in the medieval world, and secondly, the opposite notion of others that witch-hunts were the direct manifestation of church and monarchical tendencies towards repression and oppression during the Middle Ages. Scholastic rationality represented neither the principle of resistance against the insanity, nor the cause of the error; at the most one may say that the consistency of enquiry, the ongoing desire to revise traditional categories, and a growing individualisation in the search for truth had opened up troubling areas of thought - and had awoken ancient demons. The creation of a science of man, scholasticism's true innovation, came at a price.
It remains, of course, to understand the gap of a century between the formation of a new demonology and procedure, on one hand, and the beginning of the systematic persecution of magicians and witches, on the other.841 How did the converging forces observed manifest themselves? We should note the reluctance of the civil and occasionally the ecclesiastic authorities to turn to the inquisitorial process. Anti-inquisitorial reaction is well attested, but it does not explain everything. The civil courts, so active in the sixteenth century, could have taken up the battle against demons themselves. My hypothesis is that the new demonology brought plausible arguments alone, and produced a complex and conditional concept which might be reproduced here as follows, and with which I draw together the new proposals already discussed: 'When dangerous times approach, demons are in possession of an immense potential, capable of destroying the Christian community using the individual's susceptibility to supernatural influences and peoples' readiness to form groups of heretics or sworn accomplices of Satan.' The hypothetical or temporal condition indicated by the conjunction 'when' was universally acknowledged and in keeping with common knowledge concerning the end of time. Those who believed in the proximity of the end represented a minority (the Spiritual Franciscans and beguines in particular). During the course of the fourteenth century, this state of mind might appear closer and closer to the truth; of course one must mention the Great Plague of 1348 and its various reoccurrences. Clearly it would be unwise to conclude of a single trauma following the Plague's carnage; one should think rather of a gradual accumulation of signs which rendered the proximity of the end more likely. Only present-day economists can measure the scale and duration of the upheavals in the 1310s which marked the beginning of the world's 'Little Ice Age', but these had already strewn the universe with bad signs. At the end of the century, the Great Schism in 1378 lent meaning to one of my statement's terms, with respect to the destruction of the Christian community. The West had experienced several papal divisions, but this one greatly affected an institution much more present in Christians' daily life than before. In addition, the support offered to one or other pope by the different national churches and monarchies gave the impression of a profound, perhaps irreparable, rupture. The hypothesis that the Councils of Constance and Basel842 (which put an end to the schism) played an important role in the spread of a new doctrine on witchcraft (this has been suggested by Agostino Paravicini-Bagliani's group) concurs with my interpretation.
The radical renewal of the concept of the demonic pact led to the idea that heretical groups of sworn enemies of Christian unity existed, within which the witch or demon-invoker were merely examples. The idea of a threatening hidden equivalency of heresies was strengthened during the fourteenth century by a growing certainty that conversion was impossible. The Waldenses, after more than two centuries of error, spread throughout Europe. Islam endured and expanded. The Jews held on; they also became the chief victims of the recent belief in conversion's failure: it is possible that the appalling laws on the Umpieza de sangre in fifteenth-century Spain corresponded to the conviction that the conversion of Jews was simply superficial and misleading.
Thus at the end of the Middle Ages the history of Christianity was marked deeply by the obsession with demons. The demonic invasion into scholasticism's triumph was without doubt one of the most important factors in its break-up and new collusion with the civil authorities - to which it brought too many opportunities and reasons for heavier controls. The freedom of Christian knowledge was paying dearly.
World History
