Europe's inner demons

As spiritual beings who were yet capable of appearing physically on earth, and as enemies of Christ who operated through the moral weakness of Christians, the demons of medieval Europe were powerful indeed. In the tenth century Ratherius, bishop of Verona, felt it necessary to point out that Satan and his hosts were still subject to an omnipotent God. This should have been clear to the clergy at least; yet it was the clergy who constantly stressed Satan’s near-omnipotence. To appreciate just how obsessive their preoccupation had become by the thirteenth century one has only to consider some of the anecdotes told by two German monks, Caesarius, of the monastery of Heisterbach in the Rhineland, and Richalmus, abbot of the monastery of Schönthal in Württemberg.

Caesarius, who entered his monastery towards the year 1200 and died between 1240 and 1250, has sometimes been regarded as a mere joker, a connoisseur of tall stories; but he was nothing of the kind. The very form of his best-known book, the Dialogus Miraculorum, shows how serious his intention was; for it consists of a series of dialogues in which Caesarius, as an experienced man, instructs a novice of his monastery. It was a monastery noted for its strict discipline; and the monks who were Caesarius’s colleagues, and who no doubt read and criticized his writings, would never have tolerated a frivolous treatment of matters touching so nearly on the salvation and damnation of souls. Caesarius’s tales are in fact exempla, cautionary tales designed to be used in sermons; and many of them are to be found in other well-known collections of exempla from the same period.

In Caesarius’s book Satan and the lesser demons appear as obstinate rebels against God. We hear how once a demon went to confession. Appalled by the number of his sins, the father confessor remarks that they must have taken more than a thousand years to perform; to which the demon replies that he is older than that, for he is one of the angels who fell with Satan. Yet, having seen how penitents are granted absolution even for grievous sins, he hopes for the same relief. So the priest prescribes a penance: “Go and throw yourself down three times a day, saying: ‘Lord God, my Creator, I have sinned against you, forgive me.’ And that shall be your whole penance.” But the demon finds this too hard, for he cannot humble himself before God; and so he is sent packing.⁽⁴⁵⁾

This particular demon appears in human form, and that is not uncommon. Other talcs of Caesarius show a demon in the guise of a big, ugly man dressed in black -⁽⁴⁶⁾ or, when he is set on seducing a woman, as a fine, smartly dressed fellow or a handsome soldier.⁽⁴⁷⁾ It is not uncommon for a demon to appear as a Moor.⁽⁴⁸⁾ And the demons who sit on the stately train of an ostentatious lady are like tiny, black Moors, who giggle, clap their hands and jump about like fish in a net.⁽⁴⁹⁾ But demons can also manifest themselves as oxen, horses, dogs, cats, bears, apes, toads, ravens, lambs.

Both Caesarius and the novice know that demons are exceedingly numerous — it seems that no less than a tenth of all the hosts of heaven fell with Satan. Because of this, one human being can be tormented by the attentions of more than one demon. Caesarius proves this by the story of a French nun whom a demon tormented grievously with the temptation of lust. She prayed ardently to be relieved of this temptation; whereupon her good angel appeared and recommended a verse from a psalm as a certain cure. But as soon as the nun escaped from the temptation of lust, another demon afflicted her with an irresistible urge to blaspheme. Again the angel suggested a helpful verse — but added that, once cured of blasphemy, she would be tortured again by lust. The nun chose lust, for it is better that one’s flesh should suffer than that one’s soul should be damned.⁽⁵⁰⁾

Caesarius recognizes that God imposes certain limits to the powers of demons: nobody can be forced to sin, and holy men are capable of resisting any temptation. And nevertheless the accent has shifted, unmistakably, since the days of the early Church. Now the stress is all on die ubiquity and resourcefulness of the demons, the relative helplessness of human beings. Demons are always around us and in our midst, and their cunning is infinite;⁽⁵¹⁾ they lead people astray by false promises or even by false miracles,⁽⁵²⁾ they undermine their faith.⁽⁵³⁾ No trouble is too great if they can damn a soul; a demon has been heard to say that he would rather accompany a soul to hell than go alone to heaven.⁽⁵⁴⁾ Indeed, a demon is such a dangerous being that only an exceptionally virtuous person can see or touch one without suffering serious harm.⁽⁵⁵⁾ Caesarius tells of an abbot and a monk who nearly died after seeing a demon, and of two youths who fell sick after seeing a demon in the form of a woman.⁽⁵⁶⁾ A woman pressed the hand of a man-servant whom she thought she knew; it proved a bad mistake, for the servant was really a demon, and within a few days the woman was dead.⁽⁵⁷⁾ A soldier who played cards with a demon at night had his entrails torn out.⁽⁵⁸⁾

Most disturbing of all, a demon can enter a person’s body and take up residence in its bowels and hollow places, where the excrement is. Caesarius illustrates the point with a story of a five-year-old boy who swallowed a demon while drinking milk; it continued to torment him until he was a grown man, when the apostles Peter and Paul were moved by his piety to expel it.⁽⁵⁹⁾ But sometimes what appears as possession is really a still more sinister phenomenon. There was once a priest whose singing was a joy to all — until one day another priest heard it, and realized that such perfection must come not from a human being but from a demon. So he exorcized the demon, which promptly departed— whereupon the singer’s body fell lifeless to the ground, showing that for some time it had been animated by the demon alone.⁽⁶⁰⁾

Around 1270 a whole book was composed from the discourses of Richalmus, abbot of Schönthal, concerning the plots and wiles which demons use to ensnare human beings.⁽⁶¹⁾ He too addresses his hints to a novice in the monastery, and unlike Caesarius he takes his material chiefly from the monastic life; his special concern is with the temptations and obstacles with which demons try to divert monks from their quest for sanctity. Within these limits he presents much the same picture as the Rhenish monk.

It was always understood that angels are organized hierarchically, and according to Richalmus the same applies to demons. The finest and most cunning demons dwell permanently in the air just above the earth, and it is they who issue instructions to demons of the cruder sort, who patrol the earth itself;⁽⁶²⁾ there is in fact a constant mutual incitement to evil-doing, with the superior demons setting the pace.⁽⁶³⁾ But hierarchy obtains even amongst demons occupied with a particular job on earth; for instance, in each monastery a staff of demons is employed, and those operating at the top level are themselves known as “the abbot” or "the prior”.⁽⁶⁴⁾ But from the point of their human victims it is the sheer numbers that impress: “It is untrue what some people say, that each human being is pursued by only one demon, for several demons pursue each human being. Just as a man who plunges into the sea is wholly surrounded by water, above and below, so demons too flow around a man from all sides.”⁽⁶⁵⁾ Indeed there are times when demons “surround a man like a thick vault, so that there is no air-hole between them”.⁽⁶⁶⁾ When Richalmus shuts his eyes he often sees the tiny bodies of the demons surrounding him and every human being, thick as specks of dust in the sunlight.⁽⁶⁷⁾