The devil : an historical, critical, and medical study

Part I

. The Devil and his Relation to the other Maleficent Divinities

. The Origins of the Christian Devil . The Formation of the Christian Devil . The Devil . The Covenant with Satan and the

Mark of the Devil

. The Manifestations of the Devil and the Power of the Sorcerers

Part II

. From Belief to Delusion . The Genesis of Modern Ideas about

Demoniacs

Fantasies

. Religious

Exorcism

. Demoniacs and Convuisionaries . Neuroses Characterised by Demonic and Lay Therapy:

Page

PART

Chapter I The Devil And His Relation To The Other Maleficent Divinities

Often, when the origin of the Christian Devil is sought, an attempt is made to relate him to ancient beliefs, anterior to the Christian religion. Because of certain resemblances, distant or close, confusion has sometimes arisen which has led to serious error, and it does not seem idle, at the beginning of a-critical study of the Demon as he is met with in the teachings of the Church for ten centuries past, first to establish clearly what his origins were, and to take special pains to separate his very specific personality from others, appearing to resemble him, which belong to earlier or contemporary or neighbouring religions.

The Christian Devil, if we consider him in the classic form which he assumed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, is, we shall see, an infinitely complex personage, of relatively recent formation. His form, his face, his appearance, his character, which were established precisely and studied meticulously by the theologians and physicians and jurists, are very definitely distinguishable from the infernal or maleficent divinities of the different mythologies which preceded him. What has made it possible for the confusion to arise, and for the diverse creations of different geniuses to be wrongly confounded, is that all beliefs seem to share certain fairly simple fundamental metaphysical ideas which are almost instinctive, and by whose aid, from the very dawn of humanity, certain problems of elementary morality have been dealt with in convenient fashion.

Mankind carries with it a tremendous inheritance of terror. Before being a religious animal, man was a fearful animal. For thousands of years, knowing nothing of the phenomena of nature, impotent to protect himself against storms and catastrophes of every kind, or even against the beasts, incapable of perceiving the reasons and the causes of those wondrous happenings which could not fail to sow terror, he was unable to discover whether or not the volitional element existed in external objects. Therefore, projecting outside himself wills which he believed were being exercised upon him, he peopled the world about him, in his first imaginative effort, with lives, opinions, and passions like his own.

Among the terrors inflicted upon man by his ignorance, the fear of death must be accounted as one of the strongest and deepest. Every undeveloped individual preserves within himself an instinctive egoism which makes him forget his final doom. This doom appears to him, indeed, against nature, if not impossible. Its coming terrifies him. The death of his neighbour recalls it to his mind ; he is frightened, and he perceives obscurely that the dead man still lives in the memory of the living, and is perpetuated in their thoughts. From that moment he comes forth from the void and takes up a new life, a purely spiritual one now, more or less completely free from terrestrial occupations according to the degree of imagination of him who creates it. Ancestors and friends stay in the memory, and, more or less disinterestedly, prowl about those who remain alive. Their disinterestedness, their interest, or their hostility, make them either protectors or enemies. Ancestor-worship appears, comforting the living, who from now on are assured that they will not disappear entirely. Death participates in the universal animism, and, because those things henceforth endowed with a spiritual life remain unchanged, and seem to partake of eternity, man himself rises to the height of the gods by accepting death as a passage from the material world to the world beyond. The unknown beings who have been diversely humanised are sometimes in agreement with one II another and sometimes in conflict. Above human quarrels and human interests there are played out, in a superior, invisible, and inaccessible domain, the quarrels of the spirits. Their appetites and interests are similar to those of men, but formidable and terrible in their terrestrial consequences.

His conviction that he had understood the world enslaved man yet more deeply. He no longer seeks to penetrate the mysteries which, in their essence superior and divine, must escape his understanding until the distant day when, freed from his first terrors, he shall with a mad hope seek by another way, by science, new disillusion.

Primitive man simplified the world by animating it, every terrifying thing thereby explaining itself, and unknown causes seeming to become clear. Surrounded by forces which had been, for the most part, anthropomorphised, the individual felt less isolated ; it remained to entreat, to pray, to gain the good graces of the strange powers whose often tangible manifestations filled him with reverent awe.

Thus, as M. Salomon Reinach has pointed out, the word “ religion ” implies, without any material constraint, a limitation of the individual will, or, rather, of human activity in so far as it depends upon the will.

Little by little there grows up the notion of things which are permitted and of things which are forbidden—sometimes for utilitarian reasons, sometimes without apparent reason—and then we get taboos. The soul of things, the spiritual life of objects, the spirit of the dead, the spirit of spirits which is God, the sole or multiple creator— all these produce a continual variety of effects, among which men sometimes perceive, or think they perceive, certain vague relationships. ‘hey divine favourable and unfavourable deities. The notion of good and evil, the elementary principle in social relations, is extended into the domain of the gods. Some are beneficent, others maleficent. To the former are given prayer and supplication, and alliance is made with them to secure protection against the latter.

Empirical observations lead to the belief that certain signs, certain words, have power to appease some and to excite others. Certain plants and perfumes seem to enjoy a particular virtue. The discovery of certain sympathies, certain experimental motions, and a systematisation of them, seem to produce desirable effects. Religion takes on form ; a ritual is established ; confidence is born.

But man accepts with an ill grace a passive and impotent réle. Very soon he desires to escape from a slavery which weighs upon him. Wearied with obedience, he seeks to command. He seeks out the weakness by which he may seize hold upon divinity and subject it to himself. Prayer becomes command ; magic appears.

Voltaire has said of magic that it is the secret of doing what nature cannot do. This definition is arguable. Primitive man cannot conceive what is or is not possible to nature. We must rather suppose that magic has no other design than to constrain nature to do at a particular moment what it is supposed it could do freely, but would not necessarily.

Thus magic in its origin is not separated from religion : it is one of the forms of the rite, and can be either imperative or suppliant : it is by these qualities of necessity and force that we can recognise it. Religion, moreover, never completely separates itself from it. In his relations with the divinity the religious man always practises a certain amount of magic, in the degree in which a certain act or a certain ritual word constitutes an understanding with the superior force, to obtain from it, and with its agreement, a certain definite effect.

However, it is natural that while a simple invocation or prayer is generally respectful, and often timid, the more audacious magic command, whereby a man gives his orders to God, should be less embarrassed by scruples. Humanity has raised itself so high that it believes it has power to dominate, at its own whim and at its own time, He or Those Whom, until then, it had only entreated. Man, who has become the master, gives his instincts free rein ; usually he solicits the help of the superior force, which can no longer resist him, for material and utilitarian ends, without concerning himself about moral values. He seeks the satisfaction of his passions.

By this process, magic, which at first was a simple manifestation of a permitted faith, becomes synonymous with a dangerous and reprobate science. Little by little the use of the magic power tended more and more frequently to the illicit and the forbidden, in the sense that it sought only to satisfy material desires and needs of every kind, from concupiscence to vengeance and crime.

Thus, while there had been established the great dualism of good and evil of which men were the witnesses and the playthings, pure religion separated itself little by little, as far as appearances went, from magic, because of the opposite aims of those who practised the latter. Doubtless, as we have said, religion preserves a magic part, but, in the evolution of common speech, magic and evil ended by becoming confounded. Whether we take the combat between Indra, the god of the sky, and Vrita, the demon of the night, which forms the constant theme of the hymns of the

Rig-Veda, or the battles of Ormuz and Ahriman, the principle of light and the principle of darkness, or the opposition in Egyptian mythology of Ra and Set, or the rivalry of Jehovah and the Demon in the Old Testament—nearly always magic is found more particularly on the maleficent side, and Deuteronomy pronounces exemplary penalties against magicians.

For magic is often confounded, in more evolved religions, with a whole series of sciences which procure, to those who practise them, supernatural power : medicine, astrology, enchantment.

The magician has passed insensibly from good to evil under the pressure of his desire to obtain what he wishes. Now master in his turn, he ceases to address the beneficent deity, but only appeals to the evil force which is subjected to his evil instincts. Under a veil of dissimulation he transmits recipes full of danger; hidden, he participates in the most terrible mysteries. He is feared. The pious keep away from him ; the evil have recourse to him.

It is to this extent only that the Christian Devil is related either to more ancient or to contemporaneous traditions. If we consider the Devil as the spirit of evil, the adversary of God, who is the spirit of good, it is incontestable that he belongs to a tradition as old as men themselves and their first beliefs. But each religion has differed profoundly, not only in the representation, but still more in the form of the manifestations which it has attributed to its deities. The power of each of them, his particular characteristics, his appearance, even the cult which is given to him, vary from one belief to another, according to the ethnological bias of his creators.

Doubtless a subtle mind can achieve a certain rapprochement, but its subtilty often seems overgreat and to be seeking out impossible correspondences between traditions which have no relation.

If we consider Christian demonolatry impartially, and without preconceived ideas, taking it as it is in the descriptions of the men of the Renaissance, we must admit that we cannot really relate it to anything identical elsewhere. We must certainly not exaggerate this assertion too categorically. It may not be impossible to find, here and there, certain trailing branches of vague pagan superstition, but what can be asserted is, that these are without any great importance.

The resemblances which have seemed the most precise require some illumination.

A very general observation is that we can scarcely imagine a belief without ritual ceremony, an exterior manifestation, by invocation, supplication, or command, to the obscure power. The

Bp 17 relation of man to his gods is very rarely to be reduced to simple contemplation or pure inner meditation. Generally, manifestations of faith translate themselves into loud words, gestures, and sometimes threats. But to try to find, between all these expressions of feeling, a single link, without any breach of continuity, seems, although the attempt has sometimes been made, an impossible endeavour. Although it is true that religions sometimes borrow from one another bits of legend, to assert identification would be unreasonable.

The apparent rapprochement which it seems possible to achieve is due to the fact that men have few means of externalising their feelings. There is, let it be repeated, scarcely any external manifestation of a cult without the celebration of a real or symbolic sacrifice, without the celebration of ceremonies, whether they be silent and contemplative or loud and frenzied. But just as dreams, which transform but do not create, are always the new perception of a lessened or augmented image, in the same way the order and quality of the external signs which are at man’s disposition for the expression of his feelings are limited to a small number of sensorial representations. |

It is thus, for example, that the classic Sabbath, the diabolic and orgiastic féte, will comprise

| 18 everything which it is customary to find in a féte—that is to say, a feast, music, dances, and lewdness.

Must we then relate to the demoniac Sabbath every féte in honour of a god wherein these characteristics are to be found? Are we to discover in the orgiastic fétes of pagan antiquity close ties with the sacrilegious ceremony celebrated in honour of the Devil? Ought we, because in the Dionysian ceremonies the celebrants became excited and drank and sang, to relate the exploits of the witches of the sixteenth century to their frenzies? It appears to us that this would be a grave error. Michelet expressed it clearly when he wrote: “‘ We must say of the Sabbaths : this word has designated very different things at different periods.”

Thus, if we take the Sabbath in the large sense of a ritual féte, pagan or demoniac, it becomes every ritual ceremony intended to celebrate the joy of living the life of the flesh ; but if, on the contrary, we give this word its true sense, as it has been transmitted to us by the Church, it means solely the diabolic and impious ceremony of Christian times, celebrated to render sacrilegious homage to the fallen angel, the symbol of evil and of perversity.

Thus the Christian Devil has a personality of his own, independent of those of the other more or less evil divinities which can be met with in neighbouring mythologies.

He only participates in his essence in a general idea which dominates nearly all religions. He is the representation of one of the elements in the contrast between good and evil; he fulfils for humanity a need of moral equilibrium. But he departs farther and farther from the other representations of the same mythical symbol, just as the religions, which nearly all started from animism, have followed different careers according to the characteristics or the race of the men who made them.

Chapter II

The Old Testament begins, one might almost say, with an exploit of the Demon. The Serpent appears at the very beginning of Genesis. Because of this intervention, which dominates mankind, the whole biblical tradition is impregnated with his presence. However, it must be admitted that the spirit of evil is seldom directly named. i

Doubtless he prowls on every page, accompanying and protecting the race of Cain, compelling the Eternal—to such an extent does he corrupt mankind—to exterminate the human race by a universal deluge. Ham, the son of Noah, relapsed beneath the empire of the Demon, and the eternal struggle began anew.

It would be superfluous to seek out, throughout all the texts of Scripture, all the interventions of the spirit of evil, such as they have been discovered by the innumerable theologians who have given themselves to the problem. What is more important is, as we have indicated in the preceding

QI chapter, to find magic very early assimilated to maleficent manifestations.

When Moses and Aaron sought to persuade Pharaoh that he must let the people of Israel go, and when they showed him by miracles the will of God, the Demon, to prevent these things from happening, came to the rescue: “ Then Pharaoh also called for the wise men and the sorcerers: and they also, the magicians of Egypt, did in like manner with their enchantments.””?

Jehovah commands in his laws: “ Thou shalt not suffer a sorceress to live.’’* In Leviticus the condemnation of magic is repeated: “‘ Turn ye not unto them that have familiar spirits, nor unto the wizards ; seek not them out, to be defiled by them,”’* and : ‘‘ And the soul that turneth unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto the wizards, to go a whoring after them, I will even set My face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people.’’*

Deuteronomy contains almost a whole chapter against divination and magic’ and Saul chased ‘the magicians and diviners from his territories, * but in an erring moment he consulted the Witch of Endor.’

1 Exod. vil. 11. 2 Exod, xxii. 18. 3 Levi. xix. 31. * Fev.) xxi 0. 5 Deut., xviii. g to 22. *1 Sam. xxviii. 3. 7, Sam. xxviii. 7.

When an example is given of the wickedness of Manasseh, King of Jerusalem, it is written: **. . he practised augury, and used enchantments, and practised sorcery, and dealt with them that had familiar spirits, and with wizards: he wrought much evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger.’’: On the other hand, when Jeremiah counsels submission to the King of Babylon, he cries, fearing the intervention of evil spirits : “ But as for you, hearken ye not to your prophets, nor to your diviners, nor to your dreams, nor to your soothsayers, nor to your sorcerers . . . for they prophesy a lie unto you.’’*

Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, inspired by God, showed themselves before Nebuchadnezzar: “ He found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters that were in all his realm.’”’* Yet the king was surrounded with magicians, astrologers, and enchanters, who explained his dreams to him,‘ and all admitted themselves vanquished by the superior power of the true prophet in whom was the divine spirit.‘ And finally Malachi, the voice of the Lord, cried : ‘‘ And I will come near to you to judgment ; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers.’’*

12 Chron. xxxiii. 6. a Jer. xxvii. 9-10. 3 Dan. i. 20. *Dan.) ii. 2) 80, 17 3.iv..9 3 vi 7. 5 Dan. v. 11 and following. * Mal, iii. 5.

Hatred of sorcerers remained intense in the New ‘Testament. Simon the Magician is denounced in the Acts of the Apostles,: and the false prophet Bar-Jesus, stricken with blindness by a miracle, is a magician whom Paul called son of the Devil.’

If the Demon is seldom mentioned i in the Old Testament, and if his intervention by means of magic is spoken of only implicitly, he is, on the contrary, explicitly designated in the Gospels and the works whose totality comprises the New Testament. The Devil appears personally ; he is revealed in other fashion than by the wonders with which he favours his disciples ; it is he himself who tempts Jesus in the wilderness and carries Him to the pinnacle of the Temple.:

In order that our exposition shall be developed clearly, it is“desirable to point out those passages wherein the diabolic manifestations take a peculiarly characteristic form—passages which we shall examine later. The Synoptic Gospels give us, in fact, certain very precise descriptions, whose basis and explanation we shall seek in the second part of this work.

During his journey in Galilee there were brought to Jesus those who were the victims of divers sicknesses and of tormenting pains, the

1 Acts viii. 9. * Acts xiii. 6 and following.

possessed and the demented, and He cured them.: His healings of the possessed were frequent. At Capernaum and in the places round about He also made the Demons come forth from the bodies of the demoniacs' ; in the country of the Gadarenes He forced the Devil to come out ef the bodies of men to pass into the bodies of swine. * And, again, through Jesus, the dumb man recovered his speech when Satan had vanished‘ : and Christ gave to His disciples the power necessary to cast out wicked spirits. *

‘The mere approach of the Saviour filled the Demons with terror ; they prostrated themselves before Him.* and, when the Scribes wished to discredit Him, they accused Him only of being the Prince of the Demons.’ The Demons themselves, through the mouths of the possessed, said that they were legion.» Mary Magdalene was possessed by seven of them.°

When Jesus wanted to give proof of His power to Herod, He said to His followers : ‘‘ Go and say to that fox, behold, I cast out devils.’’** Finally,

2 Mark i. 23-8 ; Luke iv. 31-7 ; Matt. viii. 16.

* Matt. ix. 32-4 ; Luke xi. 14 ; Mark ix. 17.

> Matt. x. 1 and 8 ; Mark iii. 15, vi. 7 ; Luke x. 17-21.

§ Mark iii. 11.

7 Mark iii. 22 ; Matt. xii. 22-50 ; Luke xi. 14~32.

® Mark v. 8, 9 ; Luke viii. 27.

® Mark xvi. g-10 ; Luke ix. 2. 10 Luke xiii. 32.

Judas Iscariot’s betrayal is explained, for Luke, by the fact that the Demon had entered into him.

The tradition preserved in the Fourth Gospel almost entirely neglects questions concerning Demons. While the Synoptic Gospels were eager to relate every miraculous healing, John has very little interest in them, and the relations of Jesus and the Demon are practically passed over in silence. The Johannine Christ does not cast out Lucifer.

The truth is that the Devil and his reign have, in this work, passed into a domain which is mainly of a moral order. It seems that the possessed are the unbelievers and the sinners. Speaking to the Jews, Christ said to them: “Ye are of your father the Devil, and the lusts of your father it is your will to do.’’* Satan appears as the symbol of living falsehood, as Christ is the living truth. The old duality has a positive character ; its influence, although it 1s less material and perhaps less gross, does not seem less continual. When the Jews say to Christ : “Thou hast a Devil,’ He answers: “I have not a Devil; but I honour My Father, and ye dishonour Me.” But when Jesus adds: “ If a man keep My word, he shall never see death,”’ the Jews answered : ‘‘ Now we know that Thou hast a Devil. Abraham is dead, and the prophets ;

? Luke xxii. 3. 4 John viii. 44. 26 and Thou sayest ... art Thou greater than our father Abraham, which is dead ?’”!

For St. John, to have a Demon within one is less to be materially possessed than, rather, to be inspired by the spirit of evil. The accusation is repeated several times. After hearing the Parable of the Good Shepherd, the Jews still say : “‘ He hath a Devil, and is mad.’’?

The Evangelist has eliminated the cases of possession, the Devil has become more spiritual, and it is into Judas’s heart that he enters to cause his treachery. *

The Acts of the Apostles are filled with more precise details of diabolic happenings, which recall those of Mark, Luke, and Matthew.

The towns near Jerusalem are full of the possessed,‘ and the Demons utter loud cries through their mouths.* A girl inspired by the spirit of divination predicts the future,‘ Paul exorcises the Demons, and certain Jews having sought to imitate him, the Devils make “ the man in whom the evil spirit was, leap on them.””'

It has seemed necessary to recall the principal passages of Scripture where Satan and magic are spoken of because we shall see that, truly, the whole demonological doctrine of the Church rests

1 John viii. 48. * John x. 20. ~ 8 John xiii. 27. * Acts v. 16. ® Acts viii. 7. * Acts xvi. 16-18, 7 Acts xix. 11-16.

on these texts. They are the:basis of all the works of all the authors upon this problem. Doubtless we shall find that reasoning, logical in form, led the theologians to create around these texts doctrines which were often complicated ; it is none the less true that it is these texts, and these only, upon which they based themselves, and it is to them that we must always return ; they are the foundation of dogma.

As we see, the diabolic tradition was firmly established from the very beginning of Christianity. It never disappeared, but in the course of time it took on a varying importance.

The Demon, truly, always remained the symbol of the spirit which tempts mankind, and the Fathers of the Church gave much thought to him ; but they studied his character above all, if one may say so, from the point of view of moral problems. His actual presence on earth was very little manifested ; his powers were traced by means of ancient works. It is an observation of general application that a new religion never actually rejects the gods of the preceding religion, which it has supplanted and which it combats. It adopts them, but never fails to give them a maleficent rdle; the first centuries of Christianity, which confounded all the mythologies without absolutely denying the reality of any of them, accepted the gods of paganism but decreed that the inhabitants of Olympus were only Demons, and that the ancient idols were the divinities of hell. Actually the Devil tempted men very little. His direct interventions on earth were rare. The Church, occupied with its struggle against alien religions and against schisms and heresies, had not the leisure to consecrate itself to a search for a present Devil. The latter, being neglected, did not show himself; and if the established dogma taught his existence, one may nevertheless say that he did not seem to constitute a real or immediate danger.

When we come to study the pursuit and punishment of sorcerers and magicians we shall see the different texts of which use was made. Their severity was not great. |

It was forbidden to practise magic, but above all, it seems, in order, to defend the magicians against the danger which their souls might incur. The Devil was known, and his power was not exaggerated. The fear he inspired was not excessive. If the Church took care to put its faithful on guard, it was above all in order to warn them, so that they should not fall into superstitions that had incontestably issued from paganism and which might estrange them from the true Christian faith.

A particularly important document for this subject is the Canon Episcopt. The age of this text is uncertain. Del Rio: and Boguet* wrongly refer to the Council of Aquileia, Lancre,* to the Council of Ancyra. It is reproduced in part in the capitularies of Charles the Bald in 872, whence it is concluded that in the ninth century a large number of things, which later were declared to be certain, were still treated as purely fantastic. This Canon, which relates to sorcery and magic, recalls that certain wretched women, converted to Satan, and made subject by the illusions and phantasms of the Demon, believe and profess that during the hours of night they traverse, in nocturnal silence, vast spaces of the earth, accompanied by Diana, the pagan goddess, or Herodias, and an innumerable crowd of women riding upon certain beasts, obeying the orders of the Devil. The text observes that the great multitude who believe this are grossly deceived, for, believing it, they leave the true faith and fall into pagan error, for no divine power or will can exist outside that of God alone.

The Canon, cautiously, shows further that men are deceived in their dreams, and that one must be mad to believe that the body can undergo the effect of what takes place in the mind only. It

1 Tes controverses et recherches magiques (Paris, 1611), II. quest. 6. Cf. Bodin, De la demonomanie des Sorcters (Lyon, 1587), II. 4.

* Discours des Sorciers (Lyon, 1610), chap. xix.

* Tableau de I’inconstance des mauvais anges et démons (Paris, 1613), II. disc. 1.

is said, further, that he who believes these things belongs to God no longer, but to the Devil (infidelis est et Pagano deterior).

This document is of capital importance, for it gives us evidence that the Church at that time attached no importance to the Sabbath and the diabolic manifestations which were going to be © the grand preoccupations of the succeeding centuries.

In the same way, the reality of the effects of magic, which was first to become a dogma and then, later on, a matter whose practice was to become a heresy, was long denied by the theologians. The Council of Braza in 563 said: “If anyone alleges, with Priscillian, that the Devil has made certain wicked creations, and that by his own virtue he creates thunder and lightning, and tempests and droughts, let him be anathema : if anyone believes with the pagans and Priscillian that the soul and the body of man are fatally subjected to the course of the stars, let him be anathema.””?

The Council of Ancyra in 314 had punished the magicians lightly enough: ‘“‘ Those who follow the superstitions of the pagans and consult diviners, or bring these kinds of people into their houses for discovery, or to do malefices, shall undergo five years’ penance, that is to say, three years prostrate and two years without offering.”