Were there any proven instances (by modern scholars today) of the practice of demonology during the Middle Ages that resulted in the execution of actual practitioners or is that too difficult to prove at this remove?
Are you asking if anyone was ever found trying to call a demon, or something like that?
By demonology do you mean the study of demons and the demonic? Are you thinking of the Malleus Maleficarium by Heinrich Kramer in 1487? Or exactly what?
King James of Scotland (as in the King James Bible) also published a book titled Daemonology in 1597. He was convinced that witches were trying to kill him. The witch scare during his rule found hundreds of people “guilty” of witchcraft and executed an unknown number of them. I presume the majority, if not all, of the accused were actually innocent of witchcraft or demonology.
I have no idea how anyone would prove today that any of the accused actually were practitioners of witchcraft. However, looking for records of witch scares and seeing what factual information is known about them today would be a place to start.
Look at the “Were there any sort of witches” section of the following Wikipedia article.
I was thinking more in terms of invoking demons. I have searched but haven’t found any citations of actual sorcery or witchcraft.
Thanks for bringing the case Gilles de Rais to my attention. Still, his involvement in Satanism is viewed with skepticism today. I guess looking for an iron-clad case is probably futile.
Are you asking if someone actually invoked a real demon?
No simply an honest confession, not a forced one of trying to summon the devil. It would be simplistic to believe that wasn’t some interest among nominal Catholics to experiment in the occult. There were no doubt atheists and perhaps some did indeed practice devil worship despite it being an automatic death sentence if ever discovered. It’s impossible to prove conclusively. But I thought I would ask to find out if there were any plausible cases of satanic worship during the Middle Ages/the time of the Inquisition.
Nit-pick. One thing atheists won’t be doing is worshipping devils, or any other mythical being for that matter.
There certainly will still have been a reside of older religions that included belief in daemons, faeries, or the like.
In some ways, Satan worshippers must be classified as Christians (aberrant, but where else do they find Satan to worship?). But they are most certainly not atheists.
I do see the term atheist Satanists used online. But I do appreciate your point.
“Since the Devil falls under the protection of God, atheists do not believe in his existence”. Thanks again Francis_Vaughan.
There is a Church of Satan, who are actually atheists. They don’t believe devils, demons, etc. actually exist and don’t try to invoke them.
On a side note, IMHO, one of the best dark ambient recordings ever is Lustmord’s Rising, which is a recording of a live event he performed the music for - a satanic mass for the Church of Satan. He is on record as finding the whole thing as somewhat hilarious.
The history of the church as described in the above link is pretty hilarious as well. It reads like a rejected script for Life of Brian. Or a bunch of death metal freaks arguing over who is more hard core.
Back to the OP.
No doubt there was a lot of residual non-Christian beliefs in the community, just not in the nobility or anyone that really mattered. Country folk that left out offerings for the faeries, avoided offending the wee-folk, and the like. And self styled wise women. Basically lots of pagan and early superstitious beliefs that even now have never fully gone away. But which of these would involve demons, and the summoning thereof? The idea that there exist such demons (or daemons) that can be both summoned, and requested to do your will, is pretty specific.
Something that besets a lot of common modern ideas about earlier beliefs is the manner in which modern (where modern is perhaps the last hundred odd years) literature has created mash-ups of earlier beliefs and cultures that don’t represent anything like the reality. The middle ages were not a slice of the Disc-World.
Well, SOMEONE wrote those grimoires. Whether or not they ever tried the incantations would probably be discussed by Arthur Edward Waite or Aleister Crowley.
Indeed. Use of a grimoire means the user can read. So that lets out a goodly portion of the populace in the middle ages. Moreover, the user is educated enough to read other languages. So that gets us back to the clergy, and educated elite in society, people for which messing about summoning daemons would probably get noticed. Over-curious clergy would have been handled internally to the church, so may not be easy to trace now.
The Clavicule of Solomon and The Book of Honorius seem to be the grimoires of note that would have got you into trouble in the middle ages. There seems to have been a bit of a boom in the occult much much later that gives us many more grimoires, but too late in time to get you actually charged with summoning daemons. Just annoy the neighbours. (The stench of sulphur lingers for absolutely ages.)
Nevermind.
I just ran across a potential instance of demonology, although in the Renaissance. That should be close enough. It’s not like the people living at the time knew the Middle Ages were over and it was now time to Renais.
The supposed demonizing was by John Dee, Elizabeth One’s court magician. He may have conjured up a demon to magic into existence the British Empire. Or maybe he just did a blood sacrifice of Christopher Marlowe. Anyway, you can read all about it here:
The main evidence is that the location he performed the magic is at the intersection of two major ley lines. Ley lines are lines that connect major structures. In this case, virtually all the structures were built after Dee’s time. You may or may not find that convincing.
It is a pretty hilarious read. The usual drawing of random lines all over the map to find something nearby that could be vaguely interesting. Something impossible to avoid in a country as old as the UK. Given most of the intersections occur with things built after the alleged event it is even more amusing. But given the ultimate aim is to pitch the story as a movie script perhaps we should cut him some slack.
However, the article seems to imply that perhaps the demon summoning was successful. I think we might have a whole set of new and pressing questions to answer if it is so.