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How and why did the Devil seem to present such a

threat to humanity in the Middle Ages?
In order to fully appreciate how and why the Devil posed such a threat to
humanity during the Middle Ages, this paper aims to delve specifically into
how certain groups within medieval society were particularly susceptible
to the seduction of Satan; whilst also attempting to establish that if not so
much a direct threat from the Devil himself in a literal sense, but as a
secondary threat imposed by the church which came to see certain
behaviours and superstitions as heretical, as being in-line with diabolical
activity and thus, ultimately punishable by death. This paper therefore
addresses ideas of control by Christian authority and feeds into the
argument that medieval conceptions of the Devil were so sinister and so
much more intensely feared than early Christian thought, as a response to
the churchs ability to invoke fear and guilt through art, clerical preaching
and other didactic methods. As a result, this enabled the church to rein in
the non-believers, solidify Christianity, maintain power and dispel the
world of evil.
Prior to medieval era, interpretations of the Devil marked a stark contrast
to what he later came to be understood as. The first Christian millennium
saw the Devil largely as an unobtrusive presence that was left to matters
of theological contemplation and interpretation by small select circles.1
Although an understanding of the Devil influenced by Genesis and
passages of the New Testament from the Bible existed, he remained
something more of an abstract character that at all times remained
subordinate to the power of God.2 Where the devil did filter through into
popular culture, he was held with little importance and often viewed as a
mere joker or tempter that could easily be overcome.3 As Norman Cohn
suggests; this was perhaps due to early Christian optimism that was still
widely dominant. Indeed, it was thought that faith in the God almighty
could and importantly, would, prevail over any trials and tribulations
devised by the Devil. Cohn draws on the work known as The Shepard of
1 Robert Muchembled, A History of the Devil from the Middle Ages to the
Present (Cambridge, 2003), p. 10.

2 Alain Boureau, Demons and the Christian community, in Miri Rubin and Walter
Simons (eds), The Cambridge History of Christianity 4 (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 42032, (p. 420).
3 Boureau, p. 420.

Hamas to elaborate. He notes that he who fears God cannot be effected

by the Devil; Satan himself takes flight when he comes up against strong
resistance, so only those without the Christian faith need fear him.4 In
addition to this, Jeffrey B. Russell has pointed out that a fragmented
Europe, far from fully Christianised, consisted of a variety of pagan
practices that influenced ideas on the devil; subsequently limiting any
clear concrete understanding of the sinister profile he would later obtain. 5
Although unformulated, some of these traits were thought to be
internalised by the church the Celtic God of fertility, Cernunnos, and the
Greco-Roman God Pan, are often suggested as origins for the devils goatlike, horned and hooved image.6 These depictions would go on to be later
assimilated and further accentuated into works of art seen in church
murals and the exempla collections used in sermons to illustrate a very
bold and frightening image of Satan as the Beast.
The bestial qualities that Lucifer had come to adopt had become a reason
for anxiety during the 12th century since distinctions between the animal
and human kingdom were being made; the Devil came to represent
everything that the human body ought not.7 What was most apparent,
was that this fear for those living in the Middle Ages, was very real and
manifested itself in accounts of demonic appearances that saw an
innumerable number of demons, hell bent on terrifying the medieval man
with intent to corrupt his soul.8 What is important here, is that contrary to
the former spiritual type demons, these were no longer incorporeal;
instead losing their ethereal bodies for an array of different forms ranging
from animals, humans and monstrous hybrids.9 Jeremy Harte reports that
this heightened fears for all those who encountered such demons because
unlike conventional demons, these newer demonic forms often did not
4 Norman Cohn, Europes Inner Demons: The Demonisation of Christians
in Medieval Christendom (London, 2005), (p. 23).

5 Jeffrey B. Russell, Lucifer: A History of the Devil in the Middle Ages

(Ithaca, 1984), (p. 62).

6 Muchembled, pp. 15-16.

7 Muchembled, p. 29.
8 Cohn, p. 29
9 Cohn, p. 24, Muchembled, p. 31.

respond to the sign of the cross or invoking the name of the Blessed
Virgin. Instead, such spirits were capable of transformation at will.10 Not
only were such demons seemingly unresponsive to divine power, but they
also could inflict physical harms. Harte regales an account of a tailor from
Ampleforth, Yorkshire, who on his ride home from Paris is attacked by a
raven that shot sparks of fire from its sides. It then proceeds to transform
into a dog with a chain around its neck. What is to be interpreted from this
is that as it is demon with no apparent motive other than to inflict harm
and to morph itself at will, it meant that that medieval people in so many
of cases, were faced with demonic occurrences that they neither
understood or otherwise appeared powerless to do anything about.
However, they were resolute on the fact that such transformations
indicated signs of Hell, where the devils themselves are made out of a
hotchpotch of horns and beaks and faces put together.11
In his book, Dialogus Miraculorum, the German monk Caesarius of
Histerbach, who began life in the monastery in year 1200, demonstrates
further accounts of the violent and very physical nature that could be
endured by demons. One such example illustrates the account of Arnold,
of Bonn. Arnold was a priest that was thought to have had a very beautiful
daughter. By Caesaerius account, the daughter was seduced by a devil in
the form of a man, whereby they made love often. Eventually the
daughter confessed her sins and was sent away by her father. In anger,
the Devil then spoke, you wretched priest, why have you taken my wife
from me? You have done it to your hurt. The demon then hit the man
with such force that the priest vomited blood and within three days was
dead.12 Similarly, in another account, Caesarius recounts a story told to
him by a fellow monk, Gotteschalk, of Volmarstein, who spoke of a
necromancer named Philip. He warned three men not to exit the safety of
the circle drawn up on the floor, for no protection would be granted and
the demons could take you. One of the men, seduced by a demon in the
form of a beautiful woman, steps out of the circle and carries the man to
hell. 13 Again, what these tales demonstrate is that far from the the
portrayals of the devil deceived during the early Middle Ages, this Devil
10 Jeremy Harte, Hell on earth: encountering devils in the medieval
landscape, in B. Bildhauer and R. Mills (eds), The Monstrous Middle Ages
(Cardiff, 2003), pp. 177-95, (p. 179).

11 Harte, p. 180.
12 Cohn, p. 32-33.

and those devils that do his bidding beneath him are far more subversive,
physically present and ultimately, a threat to humanity.
While these demonic attacks no doubt must have created anxieties in
men belonging to all groups across medieval society from laity to clerics,
bourgeoisie and such some scholars have placed greater emphasis on
those groups who may have appeared to suffer more or at least, were
more vulnerable. Around the year 1270, Richalmus, Abbot of Schnthal,
focused his attention to demons intent on sabotaging monastic life. It is
the opinion of Richalmus that those who sought to more intently live a life
of sanctity would face the most brutal opposition from the Devil.14 He
argued that, the more Christian charity there is in a man, the more
violently they attack him If he is less chartable, they pause and cease
from tormenting.15 Whats more, was the pessimistic outlook that he
appeared to have in combat against demonic intervention. He questions
the relative power of angels to overcome demons, using an analogy of
water that surrounds a man swimming to the constant surrounding of
demons.16 His lack of faith alarmingly reiterates the sheer threat Satan
must have inflicted, for if even god-faring men were shaken to their core
what hope did the the average layman have? In a similar vein, Moshe
Sluhovsky draws on the mass possession of nuns found in convents
around Europe toward the end of the medieval era as a signal of diabolic
activity.17 He refers to the Dominican Joannes Nider, who was confident
that demons preferred to target the Mendicant orders more than other
humans, seen characterised by the demon Verrine, who possessed the
sisters at Aix in 1611.18 The demon admitted that female activism was
more than devils could take.19 Sluhovsky however is more critical,
arguing that what may have started out as interpretation of the divine by
13 Caesarius of Heisterbach, The Dialogue on Miracles, trans. H. Scott and
C. C. Bland, 2 vols (London, 1929), 1: 313-90, (p. 318-320).

14 Cohn, p. 27.
15 Cohn, p. 27-28.
16 Cohn, p. 27.
17 Moshe Sluhovsky, The devil in the convent, American Historical
Review 107 (2002), 1378-1411, (p. 1378).

18 Sluhovsky, p. 1393.

the nuns, was through continual denouncement by the catholic church,

theologians and the exorcists present, to be the force behind why such
events were labelled as satanic.20 Satanic or not, one can infer that the
power to decide did not rest with those experiencing the phenomena, but
through the eyes of the church; which as preceding historical narratives
suggest - toed the line of heresy.21 For Sluhovsky, such behaviour could be
explained in terms of increased tensions within the orders and used as an
outlet to express their opposition to reform and to the introduction of a
more rigorous regime.22
According to Richard Kieckhefer, the shift from accusatory procedures
which carried the heavy burden of facing the same charges if the
allegations failed to inquisitorial, made it increasingly easier to accuse
people of heretical behaviour. This, coupled with rising tensions that all
forms of magic previously regarded as merely natural or at least
unworthy of any real recognition, was in fact demonic.23 This therefore put
practitioners of necromancy (or those found accused) into the firing line of
the itinerant judges appointed under Pope Gregory XI in the thirteenth
century.24 What followed was a series of inquisitory trials that in many
cases looked to what Kieckhefer called, the clerical underworld for
seeking out those accused. These were men of varying educational
backgrounds that were thought to have strayed too far from the road of
pious observance into a moral wasteland.25 Naturally, if papal authority
feared Satan, then condemnation of practices that sought to invoke him
and his demons, was a logical step to take.26 Interestingly, something that
might be said on the fate of necromancers is that the threat they faced in
regard to the Devil was two-fold. On the outset, increasing persecutions
19 Sluhovsky, p. 1393
20 Sluhovsky, p. 1393, p. 1409.
21 Sluhovsky, p. 1380.
22 Sluvosky, p. 1393.
23 Richard Keickhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2000), 151201, (p. 193).

24 Kieckhefer, p. 190.

25 Kieckhefer, p. 151.

by religious authority meant that they were in constant peril of arrest and
execution - certainly following Pope John XXIIs request in the autumn of
1320.27 But we might also draw on the fact that these were men who
firmly believed in the magic they practiced and as Kieckhefer asserts, the
author of the Munich manual admits little possibility of failure.28 Yet
accounts have shown that whilst skilled in what they did and as successful
they may claimed have claimed in commanding demons to do their
bidding, they were not immune from the Devils evil and the after effects
that often followed. As evidenced by a recollection from John of Salisbury
in his work, Policraticus, recalls a tale of a priest who once taught him
Latin. The priest also happened to be learned in practices that John
regarded as invoking demons. He goes onto recount that of all the people
who knew who engaged in practices that involved the diabolic ended
badly; with people going blind or worse and even the priest in question did
not escape punishment for his offense.29 Clearly, punishment of practice
by the Devil or the church the necromancers were under threat in one
form or another.
Upon reflection of the argument presented in this paper, one can take
confidence in the thought that for all medieval citizens, the Devil
undeniably posed a very real and very insidious threat something far
removed from the Devil their ancestors no doubt envisioned. But perhaps
what is most important to take from this particular paper, was that
whether it was a fear of Satan as the Beast himself, the increasing
likelihood of diabolic possession or the risks associated with practicing
dark and dangerous sorcery - the truth was that church and all those who
exorcised religious authority ultimately played a pivotal role in the
dissemination and actualization of that threat; characterised by its power

26 Peter G. Maxwell-Stuart, The Occult in Mediaeval Europe (Basingstoke,

2005) (p. 148), contains an example decree written by Pope Alexander VI
(1501) to the inquisitor, Brother Angelo di Verona. In it, he condemns the
magicians in Lombardy for reasons to believe they were carrying out
diabolical acts of superstition: causing many dreadful crimes by their
poisonous magic. He then gives him authority to suppress crimes of this
sort.

27 Boureau, p. 423.
28 Kieckhefer, p. 164.
29 Kieckhefer, p. 151.

to persecute, to punish and to pave the way for new legislation that would
reform Christendom as they knew it.

Bibliography

Boureau, A. Demons and the Christian community, in Miri Rubin and

Walter Simons (eds), The Cambridge History of Christianity 4 (Cambridge,
2009), pp. 420-32

Caesarius of Heisterbach, The Dialogue on Miracles, trans. H. Scott and C.

C. Bland, 2 vols (London, 1929), 1: pp. 313-90.

Cohn, N. Europes Inner Demons: the Demonisation of Christians in

Medieval Christendom (London, 2005)

Harte, J. Hell on earth: encountering devils in the medieval landscape, in

B. Bildhauer and
R. Mills (eds), The Monstrous Middle Ages (Cardiff, 2003), pp. 177-95.

Kieckhefer, R. Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 151-201.

Maxwell-Stuart, P. G. The Occult in Mediaeval Europe (Basingstoke, 2005)

Muchembled, R. A History of the Devil from the Middle Ages to the Present
(Cambridge, 2003)

Russell, J. B. Lucifer: A History of the Devil in the Middle Ages (Ithaca,

1984), pp. 62-67.

Sluhovsky, M. The devil in the convent, American Historical Review 107

(2002), pp, 1378-1411.