§ 136. DEMONOLOGY AND THE DARK ARTS. 879
gen zur Gesch. des Hexenwahns und der Hexenverfolgung iin MtA., Leip., 1901. — GRAF VON HOENSBROECH : D. Papstthum in seiner sozialkulturellen Wirksamkeit, Leipzig, 2 vols. 1900; 4th ed., 1901, vol. I. 207-380. Eor special lit. on Witchcraft, 1300-1500, see next volume.
At no point do the belief and experience of our own age differ so widely from the Middle Ages as in the activity of the devil and the realm of evil spirits. The subject has already been touched upon under monasticism and the future state, but no history of the period would be complete which did not give it separate treatment. For the belief that the satanic kingdom is let loose upon mankind was more influential than the spirit of monasticism, or than the spirit which carried on the Crusades.
The credulity of monk and people and the theology of the Schoolmen peopled the earth and air with evil spirits. The writings of popular authors teem with tales of their personal appearances and malignant agency, and the scho lastic definitions are nowhere more precise and careful than in the department of satanology. After centuries of Chris tian culture, a panic seized upon Europe in the first half of the thirteenth century about the fell agency of such spirits, a panic which continued powerfully to influence opinion far beyond the time of the Reformation. The persecution to which it led, was one of the most merciless forms of cruelty ever practised. The pursuit and execution of witches con stitute a special chapter in the history, but it is not fully opened till the fifteenth century. Here belong the popular and scholastic conceptions of the devil and his agency before the Avitch-craze set in.
The sources from which the Middle Ages derived their ideas of the demonic world were the systems of classical antiquity, the Norse mythology, and the Bible as interpreted by Augustine and Gregory the Great. In its wildest fancies on the subject, the mediaeval theology was only following these two greater authorities.
The general term for the dark arts, that is, the arts which were supposed to be under the control of satanic agency, was maleficium, a term inherited from the Romans.
880 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
The special names were magic, sorcery, necromancy, divina tion, and witchcraft. Astrology, after some hesitation, was included in the same list.1
I. The Popular Belief. — The popular belief is set forth by such writers as Peter Damiani, Peter the Venerable, Caesar of Heisterbach, Jacob of Voragine, Thomas of Chantimpre, Etienne de Bourbon, and the French writers of poetry. Even the English writers, Walter Map and John of Salisbury, both travelled men and, as we would say, men of the world from whom we might have expected other things, accepted, with slight modification, the popular views. Map treats Ceres, Bacchus, Pan, the satyr, the dryads, and the fauns as demons, and John discusses in six chapters the pestiferous familiarity of demons and men — pestifera familiaritas dcemonum et hominum.2
Peter Damiani, the contemporary of Hildebrand, could tell of troops of devils he had seen in the air with his own eyes, and in all sorts of shapes.
Caesar of Heisterbach furnishes a storehouse of tales which to him were as much realities as reports of the Dark Conti nent by Stanley or Speke would be to us. This genial writer represents an old monk setting at rest the doubts of a novice by assuring him that he himself had seen the devil in the forms of a Moor, an ox, a dog, a toad, an ape, a pig, and even in the garbs of a nun and a prior. Peter the Ven erable likewise speaks of Satan as taking on the form of a bear.3 He also assumed the forms of a black horse, rooks, and other creatures. French poetry and the popular imagi nation invested him with horns, claws, and tail.4
The devil made his appearance at all hours of the day and night, in the time of health, and at the hour of death. The monk was no more exempt from his personal solicitations
of Hales distinguished eight sorts of demonic agency through human instrumentalities, mantic, sortilegium, rnaleficium, augurium, prestigium, mathesis or astrology, ariolatio, and the interpretation of dreams
2 De nug. curalium, Wright's ed., II. 14; Pulycmt., Bk. I. VIII. -XIII. Migne, 199. 404 sqq. 3 De mir., Migne, 189. 883.
4 The Eoman de la Hose, 1280, is an exception and makes light of tail and horns, and the belief that women are transported through the air at night.