Lucifer - the Devil in the Middle Ages

355 Pages·1986·15.234 MB·English

by  Jeffrey Burton Russell

Jeffrey Burton Russell
Lucifer
The Devil in the Middle Ages
Corned. University Press
Ithaca and London
Copyright © 1984 by Cornell University Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this
book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without
permission in writing from the publisher. For information,
address Cornell University Press, 124 Roberts Place, Ithaca, New
York 14850.
First published 1984 by Cornell University Press.
Second printing, 1988.
First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 1986.
Second printing, 1988.
International Standard Book Number 0-8014-1503-9 (cloth)
International Standard Book Number 0-8014-9429-x (paper)
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 84-45153
Printed in the United States of America
Librarians: Library of Congress cataloging information
appears on the last page of the book.
The paper in this book is acid-free and meets the guidelines for
permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for
Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
For the Caseholts, Kaufmans, Ratcliffs, and Traynors,
whose kindness and wisdom made my youth in Berkeley a
happy one.
LAETEEFCABANT IUVENTUTEM MEAM.
■)
Contents
List of Illustrations 9
Preface 11
1. The Life of Lucifer >9
2. The Devil in Byzantium 28
3. The Muslim Devil 52
4. Folklore 62
5. Early Medieval Diabology 92
6. Lucifer in Early Medieval Art and Literature 129
7. The Devil and the Scholars •59
8. Lucifer in High Medieval Art and Literature 208
9- Lucifer on the Stage 245
10. Nominalists, Mystics, and Witches 2 74
11. The Existence of the Devil 302
Essay on the Sources 3*3
Bibliography 331
Index 347
■)
List of Illustrations
Christ separating the sheep from the goats, mosaic, sixth
century 24
Meister of Schloss Lichtenstein, The Temptation of Christ, oil on
canvas, fifteenth century 33
Christ raises Lazarus from the dead, Byzantine manuscript
illumination 39
Christ pointing out the traitor Judas, manuscript illumination,
eleventh century 45
Cernunnos, the Celtic horned god of the wilderness, detail
from the Gundestrup cauldron, second or first century b.c. 70
The legend of Theophilus, manuscript illumination, c. 1200 75
Demons in hell depicted as stylized monsters, manuscript
illumination, fifteenth century 109
Saint Jerome tempted by an imp-like Devil, manuscript
illumination, fifteenth century * * 3
Angels beheading the Beast of the Apocalypse, manuscript
illumination, eleventh century 116
An Anglo-Saxon portrayal of the magician James, manuscript
illumination, eleventh century >37
to List of Illustrations
Hell as a giant monster swallowing the damned, manuscript
illumination, eleventh century ’43
Christ leading John the Baptist and the Hebrew patriarchs out
of hell, manuscript illumination, c. 1150 146
Christ drawing the just out of hell, manuscript illumination, c.
1200 ’5°
Saint Michael and a demon disputing the fate of a soul, altar
frontispiece, thirteenth century ’79
The archangel “binds the Dragon,” manuscript illumination,
eleventh century i8z
Giotto, Judas receiving payment for his betrayal of Christ, oil
on canvas, 1306 186
Satan torturing the damned while he is bound to a fiery grill,
manuscript illumination, fifteenth century ’9’
Michael Pacher, Saint Wolfgang and the Devil, oil on canvas,
fifteenth century 228
Dante surrounded by hell, purgatory, the heavenly spheres,
and heaven, tempera on wood, fourteenth century 229
Demons tormenting sinners for avarice and usury, fresco by
Taddeo di Bartoli, 1362-1422 234
Eve and the serpent, statue, thirteenth century 258
The Devil as an amorphous monster devouring sinners, fresco
by Giusto da Menabuoi, fourteenth century 262
Witches bestowing the osculum infame on the Devil’s posterior,
manuscript illumination, fifteenth century 289
Goya, Aquelarre, oil on canvas, 1794/1795 294
The witch of Berkeley being carried off by the Devil,
woodcut, fifteenth century 298
Preface
This third volume in the history of the concept of the Devil follows
The Devil (1977) and Satan (1981). The first volume traced the concept
through the period of the New Testament; the second took it to the
mid-fifth century, by which time its basic lines had been drawn. The
present volume describes ideas about the Devil that were prevalent in
the Middle Ages. It includes Eastern Orthodox and Islamic views but
emphasizes Western Christian thought, which gives the Devil most
due. Because I do not know the languages requisite to a study of Islam
in detail, I offer only a brief comparative description of its view of the
Devil. The primary components of Christian diabology in the medi­
eval period are patristic, scholastic, and mystical theology; art, liter­
ature, and drama; popular religion, homiletics, and saints’ lives; and
folklore.
Although a few medieval literary works distinguish between the
persons of Satan and Lucifer, the tradition as a whole affirms their
unity and uses the terms indiscriminately as names of a single person­
age, the Devil, the personification of evil. The name “Lucifer” was
born through the association of the great prince of Isaiah 14, the
morning star, Helel-ben-Shahar, who falls from the heavens through
his pride, with the cherub of Ezekiel 28, who was “perfect in his ways
12 Preface
from the day he was created until iniquity was found in him,” and of
both with Satan, prince of this world and obstructor of the kingdom of
God. Exactly when the three concepts came together is uncertain, but
Origen treated them as a unity in the third century.
Throughout these volumes I have been drawing the history of a
concept. My philosophy is unabashedly idealist; it assumes that ideas
are important in themselves and that the social context in which they
arise is less important for understanding the ideas than the other way
around. I differ from the materialism presently dominant in the histor­
ical profession and deny that modern materialism possesses any objec­
tive framework within which or by which ideas are to be judged.
Rather, the first function of history is to open our minds to the infinite
wealth of possible world views and to help us to understand that our
own view, whatever it may be, is precarious, limited, and open to
sudden and radical change.
The social context influenced diabology only in a broad sense—
early medieval culture, dominated by monasticism, followed the tradi­
tional view of the Devil developed by the desert fathers; later, the rise
of towns permitted the growth of universities and the scholastic ap­
proach to diabology and theology in general. But the similar develop­
ment of Christian and Muslim ideas of the Devil and the closeness of
seventeenth-century Protestant views to thirteenth-century scholastic
ones indicate that vastly different social settings could produce nearly
identical ideas.
On the whole diabology changed during this period in refined detail
rather than on main points. This unusual consistency follows from the
general consistency of Christian theology in the Middle Ages, which
can be attributed to its relative cultural isolation and security from
threatening new ideas. Only from the late seventeenth century, when
Europe was awash with new ideas, did Christianity come under a
broad criticism that forced it to amend its views in fundamental ways.
Diabology was more consistent than other aspects of theology, proba­
bly because a useful means of dehumanizing one’s opponents was to
accuse them of being tools of Satan. Diabology was not subjected to
serious attack until the witch craze of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries had produced intolerable cruelties founded on and justified
by belief in the Devil.
Because the sources are much more numerous for medieval than for
earlier diabology, this book can offer only a rational selection. Certain
themes important in themselves but tangential to the personification of