Europe's inner demons

Demons are filled with such hostility towards mankind that it is a miracle that any human being survives; in fact, but for the protection afforded by God’s grace, nobody would. Not for a moment do demons cease from their plaguing and tempting of mortals, and particularly of the pious. “Just as one watches the hand on a pair of scales, to see whether it rises or falls, so do demons ceaselessly observe a man. And the more Christian charity there is in a man, the more violently they attack him… If he is less charitable, they pause and cease from tormenting.”⁽⁶⁸⁾ From this it follows that they concentrate particularly on priests and monks. Richalmus is well equipped to describe the demonic persecutions which he and his brethren have to endure, for he can hear demons talking together. The song of birds, the coughing of human beings, indeed every sound that breaks the silence of meditation — all is demons’ talk; and Richalmus has the gift of understanding it.⁽⁶⁹⁾

Demons specialize in sending afflictions that lead monks into indecorous or irreverent behaviour. Often at holy communion Richalmus has had to rush from the church and vomit up the host he has just received.⁽⁷⁰⁾ Fortunately he has found a partial remedy in the sign of the cross; but even this is of limited use against the infinite resourcefulness of demons. One day demons provoked an attack of giddiness to prevent the abbot from celebrating mass; and the following night he overheard two demons plotting together: “One demon ashed another to make me hoarse. The latter replied that he lacked the opportunity for that, but could arrange for flatulence.”⁽⁷¹⁾ This is a special skill of theirs: “Often they make my belly swell so much that, contrary to custom, I have to loosen my belt. Later when they stop — perhaps from forgetfulness — I tighten the belt again in the usual manner. But if they return and find it like that, they torment and harass me so that I really suffer.”⁽⁷²⁾ They also tempt him to sleep at unsuitable times. As he sits over holy books he begins to doze; if, to wake himself up, he takes his hands from under his habit and holds them out to the cold air, the demons promptly send a flea into his habit, so that he has to put his hands in again.⁽⁷³⁾ When he sits in the choir, demons tempt him to sleep — although, as he hastens to assure the novice, they fail in this, and the snores that come from him are really the work of the demons themselves.⁽⁷⁴⁾ Demons will also make a monk sing feebly, or even out of tune, during the service.⁽⁷⁵⁾

In every way demons strive to prevent the proper discharge of religious duties. When a priest is preparing to celebrate mass, they will send unsuitable thoughts to confuse and irritate him.⁽⁷⁶⁾ They will put a plaster on the ears of a lay brother just when he should be having the rule of the order explained to him.⁽⁷⁷⁾ The abbot would like to keep his head covered by his cowl, for the outer light extinguishes the inner light; but demons make his head itch, so that he has to uncover it to scratch.⁽⁷⁸⁾ When there is heavy work to be done, such as building a wall, demons make the monks unwilling to do it. They will pretend to sympathize: “You poor people! You have to work like slaves! What unbearable work! Isn’t it a shame to have to work so hard!”⁽⁷⁹⁾—with the result that the monks start complaining. It can even happen that demons will lead a monk out of the monastery and into the nearest town, where they will saddle a horse and send him riding off.⁽⁸⁰⁾ Brooding on all these demonic strategems, Richalmus has little help or hope to offer. He knows, of course, that good spirits surround us as well as evil ones, and that each of us has, in addition, a special guardian angel; but he has little confidence in their powers, and insists that when good spirits help or warn us, the evil ones promptly redouble their efforts.⁽⁸¹⁾ As for self-help, the only counter-measure that he recommends is the sign of the cross. When a monk lost his voice while singing the response, the abbot made the sign of the cross — and watched how the demons scuttled off, in great indignation, as the singer regained his voice.⁽⁸²⁾ The fleas and lice that torment a man are really demons; and the abbot, on the strength of his own experience, advises the novice to use the sign of the cross against them too.⁽⁸³⁾ The sign of the cross is indeed powerful, particularly if it is made properly and not scamped; yet there are strict limits to what even this remedy can achieve. It has little or no effect when many demons are acting in concert.⁽⁸⁴⁾ And in any case its power is short-lived — the demons soon return to the struggle “like a brave warrior, who has to be wounded and pierced through, before he will give way”.⁽⁸⁵⁾

It is a far cry from the self-confidence of the early Christians. Now demons are no mere external enemies, doomed to be defeated again and again, and finally cast down for ever, by the bearers of a militant faith. They have penetrated into every corner of life, above all they have penetrated into the souls of individual Christians. No longer imagined as causing drought or bad harvests or epidemics, demons have come to represent desires which individual Christians have, but which they dare not acknowledge as belonging to themselves. People feel themselves victims of forces which they are quite unable to master — and the more concerned with religion they are, the more grievous their afflictions: monks and nuns suffer most of all. These menacing forces are, above all, temptations to irreverence and sacrilege, indiscipline and rebellion. Often the psychic tensions and conflicts which they generate express themselves in such physical symptoms as giddiness and indigestion. But at the same time these forces take on the appearance of external beings, demons endowed with what look like bodies, animal or human. Ritualistic gestures seem the only means of resisting them — the inner resources of faith are not available, or not in sufficient abundance.

It is not surprising that in such an atmosphere people should have elaborated the fantasy of a secret society of Devil-worshippers. The source of the fantasy lay less in the existence of the Dualist religion than in the anxieties that haunted the minds of Christians themselves. It was because Christians, and particularly monks, were so obsessed by the power of Satan and his demons that they were so ready to see Devil-worship in the most unlikely quarters.

We have seen how, in the 1230s, Conrad of Marburg was moved by these fantasies to torture and kill not only heretics but also a number of perfectly orthodox Catholics; and how the pope himself was influenced into supporting this killing. At the beginning of the fourteenth century very similar fantasies were to be used to legitimate a far larger and more celebrated judicial killing, this time in France. The episode has entered history as “the affair of the Templars”.