The Science of Demons: Early Modern Authors Facing Witchcraft and the Devil ed. by Jan Machielsen (review) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Rivista di Storia del Cristianesimo, 2021
Thomas Aquinas’ ideas have frequently been considered as one of the intellectual cornerstones of early modern European witch-hunts. His revolutionary approach to the study of angels created the conceptual basis that allowed theologians and other members of the cultural elite to explain the physical and visible manifestations of demons in the material world, especially their interactions with human beings. Nevertheless, the penetration of Aquinas’ notions among Protestant demonologists have sometimes been doubted or considered imperfect. English authors of witchcraft tracts, for example, have been pointed out as continuators of Augustine of Hippo’s gnoseological pessimism or John Calvin’s minimalist position on the matter. This article aims to demonstrate that despite being Calvinists, English demonologists adopted Thomistic ideas about the nature and features of demonic bodies, one of the essential problems of Christian demonological theory. The central hypothesis is that English authors resorted to demonological concepts developed by Aquinas in the thirteenth century and synthetized by late medieval and early modern European demonologists to rectify popular ideas about demons delineated in witchcraft pamphlets published during Elizabethan and early Stuart periods
An Unknown Demonologist at the University of Paris? : The Opus II.7–8 by Hugh of Saint-Cher
Philosophy. Journal of the Higher School of Economics, 2023
Though Daemonologia, like ontologia and anthropologia, is not genuinely medieval, but conceived in the Renaissance, it remains valid to apply such categories to the medieval intellectual culture. By doing so, we can restore the continuum of historical development. The present paper investigates the role of Hugh of Saint-Cher (ca. 1190-1263) within the domain of scholastic demonology. Specifically, it focuses on distinctions II.7-8 from Hugh's commentary on the Sentences (ca. 1231-1234) which has been transcribed, collated, and translated by me for the first time. I begin by examining Hugh's forerunners among scholastics in order to ultimately pick out Alexander of Hales. He was the sole precursor who invested in pushing demonology beyond conventional boundaries. Onwards, I demonstrate the diversity of thematic issues Hugh addresses. His text aims at accommodating a rational explanation and critique of the demonic procreation, healing, body assumption, locution, and wonders. Notably, Hugh's work demonstrates a relatively limited influence of Aristotle. The Dominican instead endows Lombard's text with illuminating stories about Balaam, Simon Magus, Apuleius, and Bartholomew. Hugh's ideas would go on to serve as the cornerstone for further elaboration of the demonology in the 1230s and 1240s. Subsequently, I offer an extensive overview of Hugh's impact on the handwritten tradition, clearly discernable through critical reception in Richard Fishacre, John de la Rochelle, and Eudes Rigaud's writings. What is more, I point out alternative ways to entail demonology by drawing upon evidence from Roland of Cremona and Alexander of Hales. After all, I consider Aristotle's impact on early scholastic demonology between 1225 and 1245.
The purpose of this paper is to present a clearer picture of Johann Weyer's conception of possession and exorcism by synthesizing various elements of his De Praestigiis Daemonum, and comparing these elements with Reginald Scot's The Discoverie of Witchcraft. Where appropriate, the two authors will also be compared with relevant contemporary Catholic authors, in order to better highlight the broader context in which they were writing. A particular emphasis is placed on what Weyer and Scot's views on possession and exorcism indicate about their broader religious and supernatural beliefs. To engage with these issues, the essay is broken into two parts. The first looks at how each author understood demons and the problem of demonic possession. The second examines how they engaged with exorcism as it was commonly practiced in the sixteenth century. The essay concludes by examining what the similarities between Johann Weyer and Reginald Scot mean for our understanding of the sixteenth century, and each author's broader ideas.
Martin Delrio: Demonology and Scholarship in the Counter-Reformation by Jan Machielsen (review)
2017
This is an outstanding and important book. Based on a PhD dissertation from the University of Oxford, this monograph explains the important position of demonology within the setting of late Renaissance Humanism, early Jesuit concerns, and the Counter Reformation. At the same time, it is part of a recent surge in intellectual biographies of demonologists. Following Stuart Clark's magisterial Thinking with Demons (1997) and other recent works, no one questions anymore the theological and philosophical importance of early modern demonology for the working through major contemporary concerns-not all of them directly related to witches or demons. But while much previous work has been organized thematically or topically, this book discusses the contexts of demonology by following the career of Martin Delrio (1551-1608). The Antwerp-born Spanish Jesuit taught in Salamanca, Douai, Liège, Graz, and, above all, Leuven, where he spent most of his career. Delrio is best known for his Disquisitionum magicarum libri sex [Six Books of Investigation into Magic, 1599-1600], a three-volume compilation of all things superstitious. The book was republished in numerous editions in early modern Europe, frequently quoted, and used as a core reference throughout the seventeenth century. While one of Machielsen's concerns is to make sense of the book's internal logic and its popularity, he also addresses its author's motivations and other intellectual interests, both theological and Humanistic. By the time Delrio started compiling his book, he was already a distinguished author and a friend of Justus Lipsius, and was soon to become a rival of Joseph Scaliger. Earlier in his career, as a rising Humanist, he published a three-volume commentary on Seneca's tragedies. A Christianized Seneca, as Machielsen reminds us, played a major role in early Jesuit culture, and Senecan tragedies were part of the Society's curricula and missionary activities. Using Humanistic philological methods, Delrio established Seneca's authorship of some of the tragedies and refuted his authorship of others. In this scholarly enterprise, Delrio managed to walk a fine line between trusting one's philological method and the vulgata lectio-respecting and preserving tradition-just as he manages to follow the Jesuit manner of merging eloquence and morality. Last but not least, publishing his huge Senecan commentary was a way for Delrio to fashion his own scholarly persona, a point crucial for understanding his turn to demonology. The study of witches, Machielsen convincingly argues, was good for making one's reputation. Unlike most other demonologists, Delrio never encountered a "real" witch and he was not an inquisitor. All his
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 2001
The triune creator. A historical and systematic study. By Colin E. Gunton. (Edinburgh Studies in Constructive Theology.) Pp. xj. Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, . £. (paper). This volume is one of a series that has produced some first-rate books. The present volume continues these extremely high standards and maintains the series' aim of avoiding preoccupation with method and ideological critiques. It draws from Christian history and tradition to engage with the modern world. Colin Gunton, Professor of Doctrine at King's College London, has achieved two important goals in this single volume. For rather too long there has been the need for a comprehensive history of the doctrine of creation within Christian history. Gunton presents that history with care and detail, from Greek philosophy and the biblical world to the contemporary writings of Karl Barth and Wolfhart Pannenberg, but primarily as a critical theologian. This means that the historical material is accompanied by analysis and Gunton advances an interesting and important argument. His second achievement is to develop the argument that a Trinitarian doctrine of creation allows for theology to engage with science in a properly robust manner, for it offers the presuppositions of intelligible and realist discourse regarding nature and ' history '. Gunton traces the loss of the doctrine of divine creation from Scotus to Kant and its disastrous implications for so many aspects of modern thought. Gunton then develops the implications of the doctrine of creation in relation to providence, ethics and eschatology. Gunton's important contribution to systematic theology in this book complements his earlier Christ and creation () and The one, the three and the many (). This is a book that historians and theologians will find deeply stimulating. U B G D'C Continuity and change in Christian worship. Papers read at the summer meeting and the winter meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society. Edited by R. N. Swanson. (Studies in Church History, .) Pp. xxivj incl. figs. Woodbridge : Boydell Press (for the Ecclesiastical History Society), . £. ; In these thirty-one papers we encounter the results of two recent meetings of the Ecclesiastical History Society. The theme on these occasions was liturgy. About two-thirds of the essays treat aspects of ecclesiastical practice in England, Scotland and Wales, whilst the remainder range over myriad places and themes, from Augsburg (Philip Broadhead) to East Africa (Emma L. Wild). The studies are placed in chronological order, beginning with Paul F. Bradshaw's consideration of the early Christian eucharistic meal and ending with Edward Yarnold's discussion of the restored catechumenate after the Second Vatican Council. While most contributors show a strong interest in the textual evidence, several authors also reflect methodological and theoretical shifts in our own time. Bradshaw insists that liturgical manuscripts are ' living literature ' : they circulate within a community, forming part of its heritage and tradition, but modify continually ' to reflect changing historical and cultural circumstances ' (p. ). He thereby rightly dismisses the premise of Gregory Dix and others that there was not only a unified archetype for the eucharist but in some measure a common Christian adherence to it. Donald Bullough argues for dynamism and variety in Carolingian liturgical experience, criticising ' an excessive credence in the '' unifying '' effect of early Carolingian liturgical reform ' (p. ). He urges moderation in looking to anthropology and ' the new criticism ' (p. ) although raising related questions about the effects of ritual Latinity upon the laity. Brenda Bolton looks as far afield as sixteenth-century Mexico in finding parallels to the use of liturgical drama for essentially missionary purposes (p. ). Bruce Gordon finds some non-Zwinglian sources for liturgical formulation in Zurich, including medieval precedent and the ideas of Leo Jud. Simon Ditchfield disputes the uniformity of ritual after the Council of Trent, allegedly the result of a ' centralising papal monarchy '. He argues persuasively for a ' kinetic, interactive mode of breviary reading ' (p. ). Thus, he insists that Tridentine worship was not static but does have a detailed, including a local, history. Judith Champ provides a fascinating window onto the nineteenth-century Romantic movement in England and its effects upon the liturgy. The reintroduction of Catholic episcopal hierarchy drew upon the wide appeal of the Middle Ages to educated classes. Champ briefly traces and reinterprets the roles of men like Daniel Rock and Augustus Welby Pugin. Although Romanism gained the ascendancy over Gallicanism, ' the divisions between '' old-English '' and '' Roman '' cannot be as sharply drawn as has been traditionally believed ' (p. ). R. W. Ambler firmly sets liturgical innovation within the context of social and economic change in nineteenth-century Lincolnshire. Frances Knight, too, places Welsh choir participation in a setting that includes traditional harvest festivals and English-medium as opposed to Welsh-medium worship. Reviewing anthologies is always frustrating, for much of great worth can only be hinted at or not mentioned at all. Taken as a group, these essays are based in deep research. At the same time, they reveal a pattern within liturgical history of relating ritual to the society and the occasions it both serves and mirrors.
2011
At the request of the famed scientist Robert Boyle, the French divine, Pierre du Moulin, translated an account of a demon that had plagued a Huguenot family in Burgundy, France in 1612. Moulin’s 1658 translation of François Perreaud’s L’Antidemon de Mascon went through at least six editions (three French and three English) during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Years later, nineteenth-century enthusiasts popularized the story of the Devill of Mascon by reprinting it in their commentaries on early modern religion and witchcraft. This paper offers a fresh evaluation of the The Devill of Mascon by considering how French Protestant elites made sense of the supernatural during the Scientific Revolution. “The Devil Does His Mischief” additionally explores the relationship between popular belief and elite thought. Huguenot ministers and demonologists, like François Perreaud, who sought to understand how the supernatural and natural worlds were related, maintained meaningful conta...
Introduction to the Special Issue: Witchcraft, Demonology and Magic
Religions, 2020
Witchcraft and magic are topics of enduring interest for many reasons. Chief among these is their extraordinary interdisciplinarity: anthropologists, folklorists, historians, and more have contributed to build a body of work of extreme variety and consistence. Of course, this also means that the subjects themselves are not easy to assess. In a very general way, we can define witchcraft as a supernatural means to cause harm, death, or misfortune, while magic also belongs to the field of the supernatural, or at least esoteric knowledge, but can be used to less dangerous effects: such as for divination and astrology. In Western civilization, however, the witch hunt of Late Medieval-Early Modern times has set a very peculiar perspective in which diabolical witchcraft, the invention of the Sabbat and the persecution of many thousands of (mostly) female and (sometimes) male presumed witches, gave way to a phenomenon that is fundamentally different from traditional witchcraft, even if many case studies conducted in South America or Africa present similarities, especially in contemporary times (see Wachtel 1992; Geschiere 1997). Another peculiarity of magic and witchcraft in Western civilization is given by the number of writings that detailed their nature, techniques, and effects: these include technical treatises about how to perform magic, such as in the case of necromancy (see Kieckhefer 1998; Gal et al. 2017), or the many writings explaining the powers of witches from the point of view of judges and inquisitors. Today, scholars generally agree on the so-called "cumulative concept of Western witchcraft", meaning that, if there is one thing of which recent scholarship about witch hunting has assured us, it is that all mono-causality theories must be ruled out, as so many factors have been discovered and investigated: the change in climate, which occurred around the year 1600, and its socioeconomic fallout (Behringer 1997: Id., Behringer 2009); the scientific debate that framed many of the phenomena related to witchcraft (Clark 1997); the social conditions in village communities and how often bottom-up pressure gave way to trials against alleged witches (Briggs 2002); the reading of folk beliefs in light of heretical prosecutions and demonology (Kieckhefer 1976); the centrality of demonology (Ostorero 1995; Boureau 2004); and the role of humanistic culture in the developing of witch hunts (Montesano 2018). All of these, and many other approaches, have proven very useful for understanding witch hunts, but only as pieces of a puzzle. This Special Issue of Religions dedicated to witchcraft, demonology, and magic features nine articles that deal with four different regions of Europe (England, Germany, Hungary, and Italy) between Late Medieval and modern times in different contexts and social milieus. Far from pretending to offer a complete picture, they focus on some topics that are central to the research in those fields. The role of monks and priests in performing occult sciences and ritual magic is analyzed by Rita Voltmer (Debating the Devil's Clergy. Demonology and the Media in Dialogue with Trials. 14th to 17th Century) in a long and articulated essay that takes into account the polemics between Catholics and Protestants in Germany, while Francis Young (The Dissolution of the Monasteries and the Democratisation of Magic in Post-Reformation England) focuses on the role of friars and monks in England before and after the dissolution of monasteries (1536-1540), which of course provided a turning point in their role as