Europe's inner demons

Like Pope Alexander IV, whom he quotes, Eymeric recognizes that_ some forms of divination, however deplorable, are not heretical and so do not concern the Inquisition; such are divination by palmistry or by drawing lots. But heresy is present in any divination that involves the cult of demons — whether that cult take the form of latria, the worship due to God alone, or of dulia, the adoration paid to the saints. Eymeric knows of many ways in which latria

and dulia can be expressed. When a magician sacrifices birds or animals to a demon, or makes offerings of his own blood, or promises the demon obedience, or kneels to it, or sings songs in its praise, or observes chastity or mortifies the flesh out of reverence for it, or lights candles or burns incense in its honour, or begs something of it by means of signs and unknown names, or adjures it in the name of a superior demon — all this is latria. Dulia

includes less familiar practices, such as praying to God through the names and merits of demons, as though they were mediators like the saints. But Eymeric also knows of magical ceremonies by which a demon can be invoked without either latria or dulia; as when the magician makes a circle on the ground, places an assistant within it, and reads spells from a book.

Eymeric’s account is much fuller than anything offered by Aquinas or by John XXII. He had certain advantages: he mentions that he had seized and read many books of magic before burning them. His motives are also rather different from his predecessors’: as a leading inquisitor, he is concerned to show that practitioners of ritual magic come under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition. To prove his point he cites a large number of authorities, including Aquinas and the bull Super illius specula

— indeed, he gives the complete text of the bull, and that is the earliest copy of it we possess. His conclusion is that all ritual magic is heretical, even when neither latria nor dulia is involved; for the very act of invoking demons is heretical. Those who do these things are all heretics, and are liable to the same penalties as other heretics: if penitent, they are to be perpetually immured; if they are obdurate, or if after repenting they relapse, they are to be handed over to the secular arm for execution.

Such are the three authorities who, between them, are supposed to have created the stereotype of the witch. Obviously they did no such thing. Yet these are significant pronouncements, for they show quite clearly what, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Church thought of practitioners of ritual magic. Other sources add nothing substantial to what these three tell us. Confronted with the spread of ritual magic in western Europe, popes, scholastics and inquisitors alike decided that it was a form of heresy and apostasy.

The magicians themselves of course saw the matter in quite a different light. Fourteenth-century manuscripts of a magic book known as the Liber sacer, or alternatively as the Sworn Book of Honorius, carry a preface which must surely have been written in response to the papal condemnations of the 1320s.⁽²⁹⁾ The pope and the cardinals, we learn, have decreed the extirpation of the magic art and the physical extermination of all magicians. The grounds for the decree are that magicians are transgressing the ordinances of the Church, invoking demons and making sacrifices to them, and moreover deceiving ignorant people by their illusions and so driving them to damnation. But, say the magicians, none of this is true; the pope and the cardinals have themselves been deceived by the Devil. In the magic art spirits are compelled to act against their will — and this is something that only the pure of heart can achieve; the wicked are therefore unable to practise the art with any success. The Devil, so far from regarding the magicians as allies, sees in them a threat to his monopoly of working wonders — which is why he has inspired legislation against them.

On the evidence of the books of magic the protest seems justified. The magicians did not regard themselves as demon-worshippers, because they knew that when they invoked a demon, they did so in the name and by the power of God. The ecclesiastical authorities were presumably also aware of this fact, but in their eyes it made no difference. Whatever the procedure, ritual magic always involved asking from demons what ought to be asked from God alone; and that was utterly damnable.