Demonology
Taken
from The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology by
Rossell
Hope Robbins
Demonology, the “ology” or scientific study of demons is treated here as the complement of witchcraft, not as the antithesis of theology, the study of God. Theologians could assume some knowledge of the problem of good and evil in their learned readers, but the demonologists bowdlerised this most difficult theory into simple language for priests and magistrates on local levels. The trial of Joan of Arc was an international event, and her replies were examined not only by her judges, all scholars, but by the combined faculties of the Sorbonne. The subtleties of the questions – eg., did St. Michael seem warm to her – were weighed by Europe’s experts to determine her guilt. Similarly, the distinctions in addressing the Devil were clear to the scholastic mind: supplication was to admit his power and was therefore heretical; a command, knowing that God permitted Satan certain powers (eg., over weather), was not, at least in this count, heretical. Among others, the lawyer Paulus Grillandus (1525) probed the niceties of this dilemma of dualism.
In practice, the priests and judges who examined the witches were not highly educated – Carpzov complained that most judges in Saxony were boorish and semi-literate. The accused themselves, while they might have property and be literate, were generally ordinary town or country folk with little religious training beyond that acquired at the parish church. To judges and victims, the Devil was simply a superhuman figure, the apotheosis of evil, who acted like the ruthless brigand familiar enough in war years, especially in the early seventeenth century. The theologians might debate at length on how the devil could steal semen from a man and keep it warm long enough to impregnate a woman, but practicing judges found an enforced admission of copulation with the devil – icy cold though it was – sufficient for conviction. “The vulgar opinion,” Bishop Hutchinson summarised in 1718, and it was valid for earlier centuries, “is that the devil is something like a man, but with a tail, and claws, and horns, and a cloven foot.”
Thus such experts as Bodin, Del Rio, or Remy, although themselves highly learned and sophisticated, enlarged on the craft of witches (the pact and the sabbat) rather than the deviltry of demons. The premise of the Devil, but his agent appeared in court.
The Devil had power, even is its extent was debatable. Johan Weyer, the sceptical physician, wrote (1563):
Satan possesses great courage, incredible cunning, superhuman wisdom, the most acute penetration, consummate prudence, and incomparable skill in veiling the most pernicious artifices under a specious disguise, and a malicious and infinite hatred toward the human race, implacable and incurable.
Jean bodin, the French witch judge, was willing to extend Satan’s attributes to lesser devils (1580):
It is certain that the devils have a profound knowledge of all things. No theologian can interpret the Holy Scriptures better than they can; no lawyer has a more detailed knowledge of testaments, contracts and actions; no physician or philosopher can better understand the composition of the human body, and the virtues of the heavens, the stars, birds and fishes, trees and herbs, metals and stones.
About the time Bodin was writing, many little pamphlets appeared in France testifying to the strange prowess of the Devil. For example, one booklet, published in Paris in 1619, had for its title: Shocking but True History, Occurring in Soliers in Provence, about a man who had dedicated himself to the Church but having fulfilled his obligations, the devil cut off his privy parts.
Michaelis Psellus had classified devils by their habitat, but at least two of his species could have no communication with witches. Other demonologists tried to bring such groupings into line with demoniacal power. Alphonsus de Spina found ten varieties of devils:
1. Fates. Some say they have seen Fates, but if so they are not women but demons (and Augustine says the only fate is the will of God).
2. Poltergeists. Commonly called the duende de casa, who do little tricks at night, like breaking things, pulling off bedclothes, making footsteps overhead. They move things but do little damage. [Binsfield held that a poltergeist justified a tenant’s breaking his lease.]
3. Incubi and Succubi. Nuns are especially subject to these devils. When they awake in the morning, they “find themselves polluted as if they had slept with men.”
4. Marching hosts. Which appear like hordes of men making much tumult.
5. Familiar demons. Who eat and drink with men, in imitation of the abgel of Tobit.
6. Nightmare demons. Who terrify men in their dreams.
7. Demons formed from semen and its odor when men and women copulate. These demons also cause men to dream of women so the demons can “receive their emission and make therefrom a new spirit.” [Spina did not believe this]
8. Deceptive demons. Who sometimes appear as men and sometimes as women.
9. Clean demons (but really most foul) who assail only holy men.
10. Demons who deceive old women (called xorguinae or bruxae) into thinking they fly to sabbats.
Other demonologists drew up a hierarchy of devils and ascribed to them power to provoke people to commit the seven deadly sins. Binsfield (1589), for example, gave one such list:
Lucifer - Pride
Mammon - Avarice
Asmodeus - Lechery
Satan - Anger
Beelzebub - Gluttony
Leviathan - Envy
Belphegor - Sloth
In The Magus or Celestial Intelligencer, published in London, 1801, Francis Barrett, an occultist born two centuries too late, changed the roster of devils and attributed sins. Mammon became prince of tempters and ensnarers, Asmodeus of revengers of evil, Satan of deluders (serving conjurers and witches), and Beelzebub of false gods. In addition, Pytho was introduced as prince of the spirits of lies, Belial of vessels of iniquity (cards and dice), Merihim of spirits causing pestilence, Abaddan of evil war, and Astaroth as prince of accusers and inquisitors.
Part of the procedure in the service of exorcism, still included in the Rituale Romanun printed in 1947, was the interrogation of a possessing devil. The priest demanded his name and rank, and the devil, like a prisoner of war, was in honour bound to respond. In the celebrated exorcism in Auch (1618), the devil gave his name as “Mahonin, of the third hierarchy, and the second order of archangels, and that his living, before he entered the body of the possessed, was in the water.” Knowledge of a devil’s name was considered to give the exorcist, by a primitive animistic theory, control over him.
Under exorcism, people regularly gave the names of the devils possessing them. Being acquainted with the current nomenclature, either by reading or sermons, the energumens generally gave names familiar to the exorcists – if the devil was himself reluctant to reveal his identity. This, when the Louviers Nuns were bewitched, Sister Mary of the Holy Sacrament said she was possessed by Putifar, and Sister Mary of the Holy Ghost by Dagon, both devils sent by the witches, Father Picard and Sister Madeleine Bavent (Récit véritabl, 1643). Other nuns added to the roster:
Sister Anne of the Nativity by Leviathan
Sister Barbara of St. Michael by Ancitif
Sister Louise de Pinteville by Arfaxat
Sister Anne by Consague
Sister Marie Cheron by Grongade
Sister Mary of Jesus by Phaëton
Sister Elizabeth by Asmodeus
Sister Françoise by Calconix
One of the most complete lists of devils and their functions was reported by the celebrated exorcist Father Sebastien Michaëlis, in his Admirable History (1612). Balberith, a demon possessing Sister Madeleine, at Aix-en-Provence, obligingly told the priest not only the other devils possessing the nun, but added the special saints whose function was to oppose them. Since the devils were angels who had rebelled and fallen, they maintained their rank and ex-angels. The angelic court had been invented in the fourth century, out of the writings of Paul (Col. I. 16; Eph. I. 21), by the Pseudo-Dionysius, and consisted of nine orders of angels (three hierarchies each of three orders):
First Hierarchy: Seraphim
Cherubim
Thrones
Second Hierarchy: Dominions
Principalities
Powers
Third Hierarchy: Virtues
Archangels
Angels
Balberith gave many lesser devils occupying Sister Madeleine, but the most important listed by Michaëlis were as follows:
First Hierarchy
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Beelzebub was Prince of the Seraphim, and next unto Lucifer. For all the princes, that is to say all the chief of the nine choirs of angels, are fallen; and of the choir of Seraphim there fell the three first, to wit, Lucifer, Beelzebub, and Leviathan, who did all revolt. But the fourth, who was Michael, was the first that resisted Lucifer, and all the rest of those good angels followed him, so that now he is the chiefest amongst them all. Lucifer, when Christ descended into hell, was there chained up, where he commands all . . . Beelzebub tempts men with pride. And as John the Baptist holds Lucifer’s place in Paradise . . . by his singular humility, so Beelzebub has Francis for his adversary in heaven.
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Leviathan is the Prince of the same order, and is the ringleader of the heretics, tempting men with sins that are directly repugnant unto faith. [Adversary: Peter the Apostle]
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Asmodeus is of the same order, He continues a Seraphin to this day, that is, he burns with the desire to tempt men with his swine of luxuriousness, and is the prince of wantons. [Adversary: John the Baptist]
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Balberith is Prince of the Cherubim. He tempts men to commit homicides, and to be quarrelsome, contentious, and blasphemous. [Adversary: Barnabas]
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Astaroth, Prince of the Thrones, is always desirous to sit idle and be at ease. He tempts men with idleness and sloth. [Adversary: Bartholomew]
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Verrine is also one of the Thrones, and next in place unto Astaroth, and tempts men with impatience. [Adversary: Dominic]
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Gressil is the third in the order of Thrones, and tempts men with impurity and uncleanness. [Adversary: Bernard]
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Sonneillon is the fourth in the order of Thrones, and tempts men with hatred against their enemies. [Adversary: Stephen]
Second Hierarchy
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Carreau, Prince of Powers, tempts men with hardness of heart. [Adversaries: Vincent and Vincent Ferrer]
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Carnivean is also a Prince of Powers, and does tempt men to obscenity and shamelessness. [Adversary: John the Evangelist]
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Oeillet is a Prince of Dominions. He tempts men to break the vow of poverty. [Adversary: Martin]
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Rosier is the second in the order of Dominions, and by his sweet and sugared words, he tempts men to fall in love. His adversary in Heaven is Basil, who would nit listen to amorous and enchanting language.
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Verrier is Prince of Principalities, and tempts men against the vow of obedience, and makes the neck stiff and hard as iron, and incapable to stoop under the yoke of obedience. [Adversary: Bernard]
Third Hierarchy
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Belias, Prince of the order of Virtues, tempts men with arrogance. His adversary is Francis de Paul for his great and dove-like humility. He also tempts gentlewomen to prank up themselves with newfangled attires, to make wantons of their children, and to prattle unto them while mass is saying, and so to divert them from the service of God.
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Olivier, Prince of the Archangels, tempts men with cruelty and mercilessness toward the poor. [Adversary: Lawrence]
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Iuvart is Prince of Angels, but he is in another body [of another nun at Louviers] and hath not his abode here [in Sister Madeleine].
Such lists were common in the works of theologians and demonologists, and the celebrated Ambroise Paré, in the chapter on monsters in his Opera Omnia (1572), described devils in a similar fashion. Knowing the saint who opposed the devil had practical use, not only for prayers to help the exorcism, but in less reputable dealings with devils. Devils could be invoked with greater security if prayers were first made to their adversaries; many grimoires – do-it-yourself books on conjuration of spirits – include such charms.