The Devil: Master of Witchcraft

      To medieval Christians, the devil was a real and active enemy, to whose powers and malevolence every mishap, whether full-blown disaster or minor inconvenience, might be traced. Floods were the work of water devils; one monk reported that devils made him itch, grow sleepy and feel ill when he had overeaten. Like the Gos he opposed, the devil was interested in all men, proud or humble, and like the gods of ancient myth, he or one of his legion was constantly interfering in human affairs.

      The vivid image Christians had of this ubiquitous meddler-the horned and hoofed ruler of the world was drawn in part from the Bible and Church teaching. Yet it also owed much to displaced pagan figures, such as the half-goat god Pan and Loki, the Teutonic god of fire and father of Hel, guardian of the underworld.

      Belief in a literal devil was not confined to the untutored; Saint Augustine said he had heard of a possible physical union between devils and humans. Martin Luther's writings are filled with tales of his painful battles with supernatural fiends who tried to distract him from his godly work. Yet for Luther and his contemporaries, living at the height of the witchcraft persecutions, the devil's greatest threat was his relentless determination to capture human souls.