Europe's inner demons

This story became widely known, also in Europe; but another, similar tale from Asia Minor had even greater resonance. It was first told by a patriarch of the Greek Church, Eutychius, who claimed to have been an eye-witness of these strange events. In the sixth century, in the reign of the Byzantine emperor Justinian the Great, there lived in Cilicia a man called Theophilus. He was the steward of the church of Ada, and was generally thought worthy of a bishopric; but thanks to slander put about by his enemies, he was dismissed from office. In despair he turned for help to a Jewish sorcerer, who arranged for him to meet the Devil in person. Theophilus signed a document renouncing Christ and the saints and pledging himself to the Devil, who thereupon secured his reappointment. But then came years of bitter remorse and harsh penance; until the Virgin was moved to intercede with God, and the dangerous document was miraculously wrested from the Devil.⁽¹⁰⁾ Translated out of Greek into Latin in the eighth century, rendered into Latin verse in the tenth century, the story of Theophilus provided the plot for many plays, in many languages, during the later Middle Ages. From the thirteenth century onwards it was one of the most familiar and best loved tales.

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There are other indications that in the later Middle Ages people became increasingly fascinated by such fantasies. Around 1180 the Englishman Walter Map tells how a certain Eudo was persuaded to accept the Devil as his master, in return for riches.⁽¹²⁾

And naturally Caesarius of Heisterbach, around 1220, is able to offer his novice an instructive case. He knows of two magicians who deceived the populace of Besançon with their miracles — until the day when a cleric conjured up the Devil and discovered the source of their power. They had signed a pact with the Devil, and each carried a copy under his armpit, beneath the skin. The bishop promptly had the precious documents cut out, after which the magicians could without difficulty be burned alive.⁽¹³⁾ These were mere fictions, but they were not necessarily regarded as such; and it is not surprising that when witch-hunting began in earnest, the notion of the diabolic pact should have found a practical application.

The notion that demons could mate with human beings was not new, either. Though the Bible supplied only one solitary example of such miscegenation, and that a dubious one,⁽¹⁴⁾ the literature and mythology of Rome seemed to supply plenty. Augustine regarded it as sheer impudence to deny that fauns have intercourse with women, considering the many testimonies to that effect.⁽¹⁵⁾

The implication was clear; for as the seventh-century encyclopaedist Isidore of Seville pointed out, the hairy creatures which pursued women, and which were known to the Romans as fauns and to the Gauls as Dusii, were really demons.⁽¹⁶⁾ But after all, many of the gods of Greece and Rome were notorious pursuers of women; and as we have seen, all Christian theologians, whether in the early or the medieval Church, were agreed that these gods were demons too.

Some medieval legends carry the idea much further, and tell how offspring could be born of the union of a demon with a woman. Ever since the first century Christians had been familiar with the idea that, in the days immediately preceding the Second Coming, a supernatural magician and monarch called Antichrist would rule the world from Jerusalem. In the tenth century a French monk, collating current notions about Antichrist, noted that his mother was expected to be a Jewish prostitute who, at the moment of conceiving, would receive Satan into her womb in the form of a spirit.⁽¹⁷⁾ Indeed, it was the miscarrying of a similar plan that resulted in the birth of Merlin, the Welsh enchanter in Arthurian romance. Exasperated by the Incarnation, Satan chose a special family, exterminated all its members save one daughter, and then sent a demon to beget Antichrist with her. Fortunately the woman’s confessor had the presence of mind to baptize the child at birth, with the result that he became not the malignant magician Antichrist but the benign magician Merlin. It was also commonly believed that certain whole peoples, such as the Huns, were born of demons mating with women.