In any case, these accounts of a particular Luciferan doctrine are simply very belated additions to the traditional tales about a Devil-worshipping sect, which can be traced back some four centuries earlier; and it is the tales themselves that present the problem. Is it possible that a Devil-worshipping sect really did develop out of the Dualist religion?
One has only to examine the stories one by one to see how groundless this supposition is. Until recently it was thought that the Paulicians of Armenia, whom John of Ojun accused of Devil-worship in the eighth century, were Dualists; but the latest research has shown that at that date they were nothing of the kind.(61) The Bogomiles accused in the eleventh century were indeed Dualists — but not a word, in the couple of paragraphs allocated to them, suggests that Psellos was aware of the fact. Psellos was in Constantinople, the Bogomiles were in Thrace, and he knew so little about them that he even got their name wrong.(62) And in the West too accusations of Devil-worship were hurled at sects which knew nothing of Dualism. Already the heretical group discovered at Orléans in 1022 was so accused; and the stereotype of the Devil-worshipping sect was fully developed, in every detail, by 1100. But historians are generally agreed that the Dualist religion was unknown in the West before 1140 at the earliest.(63)
Between the middle of the twelfth and the middle of the thirteenth century that form of the Dualist religion known as Catharism did flourish in the West, and it was widely interpreted as a cult of Satan— witness the preposterous etymology which derived the very name “Cathar” from the worship of the demonic cat.(64) Is it possible that Catharism, at least, sometimes involved Devil-worship?
Towards the close of the twelfth century a French monk called Rudolf Ardent summarized the belief of the Cathars. According to him, they held that, whereas God created all invisible things, the Devil created all visible ones; so they worshipped the Devil as the creator of their bodies.(65) About the same time a French chronicler recorded the confession which two Catharist leaders were supposed to have made after spending some months as captives of the papal legate: “they said that Satan and Lucifer is the creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible…”.(66) No doubt it was such reports as these that gave rise to the notion of a Luciferan doctrine. They must also have lent fresh credibility to the age-old tales of a Devil-worshipping sect. But as evidence for the existence of a Luciferan doctrine or a Devil-worshipping sect they are valueless, for they grossly distort what Cathars really believed.
We have reliable information concerning the real beliefs of the Cathars — including some Catharist writings.(67) Like other Dualists, they were convinced that the material universe was created by an evil spirit — in effect, the Devil — who still dominated it. But so far from worshipping the Devil they were passionately concerned to escape from his clutches. That aspiration was the very heart of their religion. For souls were not created by the Devil but by God. Indeed, in the Catharist view souls are the angels who fell from heaven; they have been imprisoned in one body after another, and they yearn to escape from the material world and re-enter the heaven of pure spirituality. The morality of the Catharist perfecti — their condemnation of marriage, their horror of procreation, their vegetarianism and fasting — reflects their total rejection of the material world, imagined as a demonic creation. To come to terms with the flesh, to accept the world of matter — that is to reveal oneself as a servant of the Devil; and to be a servant of the Devil is to be incapable of salvation.
There is, then, no reason to think that, even in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, tales of a Devil-worshipping sect reflected something that really existed amongst the Cathars. Moreover in the fifteenth century, long after the Cathars had been exterminated those Bible-studying Christians the Waldensians were still being persecuted as “Luciferans”.
Finally, we must ask ourselves whether intelligent, educated and devout men could have accepted that a cult of Satan existed, if they had not had good grounds for thinking so. Several modern historians have argued, and have convinced many readers, that such a thing is inconceivable. But they are in error. The same people who accepted that a cult of Satan existed, also accepted that Satan miraculously materialized at the celebration of his cult, usually in the form of a gigantic animal. The two beliefs were practically inseparable; and if the one seems to lack evidential value, so should the other.
There is in fact no serious evidence for the existence of such a sect of Devil-worshippers anywhere in medieval Europe. One can go further: there is serious evidence to the contrary. Very few inquisitors claimed to have come across these Devil-worshippers, and most of those few are known to have been fanatical amateurs, of the stamp of Conrad of Marburg. We may be sure that if any sect really had held such beliefs, it would have figured in one or other of the two standard manuals for inquisitors: that by Bernard Gui or that by Nicolas Eymeric, both dating from the fourteenth century, when the Luciferans are supposed to have been at the height of their influence. But it does not. As we shall see in a later chapter, the only kind of “demonolatry” known to Eymeric lay in the efforts of individual practitioners of ritual or ceremonial magic to induce demons to do their will — which is a different matter altogether.(68) Gui’s comments have even less bearing on the matter. In fact, neither Eymeric nor Gui even hint at the existence of a sect of Devil-worshippers; and that should settle the question.
To understand why the stereotype of a Devil-worshipping sect emerged at all, why it exercised such fascination and why it survived so long, one must look not at the belief or behaviour of heretics, Dualist or other, but into the minds of the orthodox themselves. Many people, and particularly many priests and monks, were becoming more and more obsessed by the overwhelming power of the Devil and his demons. That is why their idea of the absolutely evil and anti-human came to include Devil-worship, alongside incest, infanticide and cannibalism.
But how did this preoccupation with the Devil ever start? How did it turn into such a terrifying obsession? How, above all, could it be believed that Christendom was threatened by a conspiracy of human beings under the Devil’s direct command? This chapter in the history of the European psyche deserves more than a passing glance.
4. CHANGING VIEWS OF THE DEVIL AND HIS POWER
The Old Testament has little to say about the Devil and does not even hint at a conspiracy of human beings under the Devil’s command.
For the early Hebrews Yahweh was a tribal god, they thought of the gods of the neighbouring peoples as antagonistic to them and to Yahweh, and they felt no need for any more grandiose embodiment of evil. Later, of course, the tribal religion developed into a monotheism; but then the monotheism is so absolute, the omnipotence and omnipresence of God are so constantly affirmed, that the powers of evil seem insignificant by comparison. The desert demon Azazel in Leviticus, the night demon Lilith and the goat demons in Isaiah — these are all residues of pre-Yahwistic religion and they remain outside the bounds of the religion of Yahweh; they are hardly brought into relation with God at all and they are certainly not powers standing in opposition to him. As for the dragon which appears in the Old Testament under the names of Rahab, Leviathan and Tehom Rabbah — that is taken over from the Babylonian creation myth, and symbolizes primeval chaos rather than evil at work in the created world. Nor does the Old Testament know anything of Satan as the great opponent of God and the supreme embodiment of evil. We are accustomed to regard the serpent, which deceived Eve in the Garden of Eden, as being Satan at war with God; but there is no warrant for this in the text. On the contrary, on the few occasions when Satan appears in the Old Testament, he figures less as the antagonist of Yahweh than as his accomplice.