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Satan the Heretic The Birth of Demonology in the Medieval West

ALAIN

BOUREAU

Translated by Teresa Lavender .fagan

Tht Uni'i'ersity of Chicago Pre.t1

0

Chfrago and London

The University of Chicago Press gratefully acknowledges a subvention frorn the government of France, through the French Ministry of Culture and Centre National du Livre, in support of the costs of

translating this volume. The lTniversity of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2006 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2006. Paperback edition 2or4 Printed in the United States of Arnerica 23 22 2r 20 r9 r8 r7 16 IS 14

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3 4 5 6

Originally published as Satan hiritique: Naissance de la dimonologie dans !'Occident Midiival (I280-I330), © :Editions Odile Jacob, 2004.

Contents Preface to the English-Language Edition ix

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-06748-3 (cloth) ISBN-13: 978-o-226-roo26-5 (paperback)

Acknowledgments xu1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Introduction

Boureau, Alain. [Satan hCrCtique. English] Satan the heretic : the birth of demonology in the medieval west Alain Boureau ; translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-226-06748-3 (cloth: alk.paper) t. Demonology-History of doctrines-Middle Ages, 600-1500. 2. Devil-History of doctrines1\/liddles Ages, 600-1500. 3. Heresies, ChristianHistory-Middle Ages, 600~1500. 4. Europe-Church history-600-1500. I. Title. BFr522.s68I3 2006 235'-40902-dc22 2005032847

Satan the }feretic: The Judicial Institution of Demonology

under John XXII 8 7'he Tree ofHistorians and the Forest o_fDocuments

IO

A Continuous E_ffert I4 An Ordinary Evil? I9 The Demonological Convictions ofJohn XX.II 22 A Portrait o_f]ohn XX.II as a Limb ofthe Devil 25 The .Emergence ofthe Fact 27 The Inquest and the Fact JI Procedural Questions 3J Trial and Majesty 37 Distrust ofthe Inquisition 39

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@This paper meets the requirements of ANsIINISO z39.48-1992 (Pern1anence of Paper).

I

Satanic Sacraments? Enrico del Carretto's Discovery 43 The Consultation

of IJ20

43

The Ten Experts 45 Results of the Consultation 49

Preface to the English-Language Edition This book may come as a surprise to American readers. In fact the history of the birth of the United States corresponds closely to the age of witch hunts and religious persecutions in F~urope. Thus the histo.ry of demonology appears to be inherent to Christianity inasmuch as the struggles of the Reformation led to a return to the Greek and Latin Church Fathers, to the early years of the Church, and therefore to a specific concern with hostile enterprises, including those of the Devil. American scholars have contributed a great deal to the study of demonology, especially that of the Reformation; l am proud that this translation of my book follows two important works, also published by the University of Chicago Press. 1 ln broader contexts, questions of genre, law, individualization, relationships between politics and religion, between the demon and social levels, and the like have also been explored in depth. 2 My approach in this volume is distinctive in that I focus on the tin1e between Augustine or c;regory and Scholasticism. In a sense, that long period can be reduced to very little since Augustine's descriptions and arguments, in this realm as in 1

x

Prej'ace to the .English-Language Edition

others, have been meticulously studied and cited. In another sense, however, everything changed: for a few centuries, the Devil appeared to have been defeated or confined. Without returning to the circumstances of this "triumph,!! I will simply mention the doctrine of Saint Anselm at the end of the eleventh century: evil is only a nonbeing, a defect, more than it is a true being. Saint Thomas himself didn't consider Satan to be a particularly active enemy. This is not to say one must exaggerate the irenicism of the Scholastics; there was no shortage of enemies. Heresies were in abundant supply. But those enemies were primarily humans, former pagans, present Saracens, or perpetual half-scholars. Their links with the Devil could come into play, notably in eschatological schemas, but such connections were not considered essential. Another Christianity, delivered from Satan, could have ensued. I am interested, then, in the return of the Devil and in the renewed obsession with the demoniacal. I focus on an important event in 1320, a consultation that PopeJohnXXII held with ten theologians and canonists, 3 who classified the frequenting of demons as heresy and delivered followers of the Devil to the Inquisition because of their practices and not simply for their opinions. This was a significant turning point. I then study the evolution that led to this choice, which became so very important for the beginning of witch hunts. It seems to me that during the thirteenth century, the political and religious theory of the fundamental importance of the pact, of which the Devil offered a prototype, and the concept of the human person as an unpredictable and sometimes empty vessel, capable of ecstasy or of possession, constituted the two principal factors for this new fear before Satan. Which means that this return is unique to a period in time and that the use of ancient sources was more a recourse, a justification, than it was a cause. It is not certain that this essential turning point was perpetuated with the same causalities. The continuity of the facts can mask a range in our understanding. In short, I believe I have uncovered a necessary but not perhaps sufficient condition for

Preface to the English-Language E'dition

the development of demonology in the time of the Reformation. My work proposes to shed light on an origin, not to be a substitute for the studies that have preceded it. I hope this change in perspective will be of interest to my American readers. Alain Boureau

xi

Acknowledgments Parts of this book have been presented and discussed during the past fifteen years or so in articles I have published in various journals (Medieva!es, Micro!ogus, Fait de !'Analyse, and Chimeres) and in lectures I have given at several universities (St. Andrews in Scotland; the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor; Cornell University in Ithaca, New York; Budapest University in Hungary). I thank the readers, publishers, and discussants who have helped me to advance in my research. I am gratefol to Irene Rosier-Catach for letting me see the manuscript of her book on the sacraments, soon to be published by Editions du Seuil. I owe many snggestions and much information to Etienne Anheim, Luc Fevrier, Charles de Miramon, and Sylvain Piron. My thanks to them. Finally, my gratitude goes to my wife, Laura Lee Downs, who has patiently and generously followed and participated in the slow development of this book.

Introduction The local inquest (in partibus) into the saintliness of Thomas Aquinas, which occurred in Naples from July 21 to September r8, 1 1319 under the energetic direction of Guillermo da Tocco, the promoter and witness for the case, included very odd testimony. Giovanni Blas.io, a judge in Naples and, according to his own testimony, an intimate friend of Qyeen Mary of Naples, recounted his memory of a personal encounter he had had many years earlier with Thomas (who died in 1274, that is, forty-five years before the inquest). !!is testimony was viewed with skepticism by the specialists on Thomas' s life, especially since he claimed to have heard Thomas preach for ten years and notably during an entire J_,ent on the Ave Maria, which did not e:Xactly correspond to the known biographical data. But up until now another aspect of Blasio's testimony has been neglected: Giovanni Blasio told of how one day when he was with Thon1as in his Dominican convent cell in Naples, he went out on the terrace with him, and a demon in the form of a black man dressed in black appeared to them. As soon as he saw hirn, 'I'hornas, his fist raised, ran up to the man and started to punch him while shouting, "Why have you come here to tempt rne?" But befOre the fist could reach its target, the demon disappeared and never appeared again. In itself the event is not surprising: ever since Christ in the desert 1

2

Introduction

and Saint Anthony, it was known that the struggle with the Devil was one of the attributes of saintliness. The emphasis on Thomas's agility and on the force of his fist [pugnus], despite his great corpulence attested to by nurr1erous sources, connected the saint, etymologically and typologically, to the group of athletes and fighters [pugiles] for God. Historians, however, have rarely been interested in the stupefying response that Giovanni gave to the investigators who asked him how he was able to recognize that the black figure on the terrace in Naples was indeed a demon. "He said that on other occasions he had seen the demon himself in a crystal, during a conjuration of demons for the purpose of finding a book that had been stolen from a university student; it was that demon he had recognized in the apparition with Brother Thomas." 2 Granted, the practice of conjuring spirits with the help of a crystal, a polished fingernail, or a sword in order to find a treasure or to recover a stolen object was well known at the end of the Middle Ages. 3 And granted, the beginning of the fourteenth century was a particularly active period of "necromancy'' (the term used for consulting demons), as illustrated by a series of famous matters and by the attempts of Pope John XXII to stem the flow of such activities. Nevertheless, this episode is remarkable in that it occurred so early (if, at least, we are to rely on the memory of the venerable Giovanni Blasio), and above all because of the ingenuousness with which the witness testified without being coerced. The canonization inquest was not inquisitorial in the strict sense of the term; the witness could well have justified his identification by referring to Thomas Aquinas's convictions or to the very classic aspect of that black and evanescent figure. Nor did anything require the judges to retain and record that testimony: when one looks at entire lists of testimonies during canonization inquiries, one notes the omission of certain depositions. 4 Guillermo da Tocco indeed knew that he was supposed to transmit the proceedings of the inquest to John XXII in the following months. The pope, a few years later (in 1326 or 1327), in his bull Super illius specula, threatened with immediate excommunication

Introduction J

all those who '(make or have made images, rings, rnirrors, phials, or other things for magic purposes, and bind themselves to demons. They ask and receive responses from them and to fulfill their most depraved lusts ask them for aid." 5 John .XXII, at the very beginning of his pontificate 1 was concerned about invokers of demons. Finally, it must be pointed out that Giovanni Blasio, by identifying the classic demon who threatened Thomas Aquinas with the auxiliary demon invoked in the crystal to repair a_ human wrong and damage done, neutralized the contrast that had long been maintained between white (beneficial) magic and black (malevolent) magic or, according to the terms of Richard Kieckhefer, between "demonology" and "daimonology." For the necromancers, the daimones, f8.llen or neutral angels, were not necessarily in concert with the Devil. It was precisely at this time that the Cistercian monk Jean de Morigny turned to the ars notoria, to formulaic conjuration, to call forth apparitions of the Virgin Mary. The calmness of Giovanni Blasio and the investigators shows that the beginning of the fourteenth century indeed was a turning point in the perception of demons. The event in Naples might be perceived as a sign of the end of a world, that of a tense but controlled coexistence with the forces of Evil. A few months later another event occurred, this time in Avignon; it was an indication of the emergence of another universe, one governed by fear before the power of Satan and his demons. Indeed, a consultation was launched by Pope John XXII in 1320: he sought to obtain from ten theologians and canonists arguments that would have permitted the invocation of demons and magic to be described as heresy. This was a major change, since thirteen centuries of Christianity had established that heresy could only reside in thoughts and speech, not in actions. This description opened the door to exceptional processes of inquest and of repression by inquisitional tribunals, connected exclusively to the pursuit of heresy. In fact, witch hunting was in part led by the inquisitors. This work shows that in contrast to what has previously been believed, an obsession with the Devil did not constitute an

4

Introduction

essential aspect of medieval Christianity but that it emerged rather suddenly between 1280 and 1330. The thematic and mythological content of the Sabbath was thus adventitious and secondary. This turning point was decisive: three centuries of demonic obsession weighed heavily on the development of Europe. It notably led to the manic persecution of sorcerers (witchcraze) from the end of the fifteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century, which pitted judges and inquisitors persuaded of the reality of Satanic enchantments and involvements against populations that apparently shared beliefs in the reality of evil spells and in the effective existence of the Sabbath-that occult gathering of sorcerers and demons.1:'he doctrine was new: the medieval Church, in its legislative and pastoral activities, had continually condemned or banished the practice of magic, but it was dealt with scornfully, as vain superstition. The Devil made people believe in his effectiveness through illusions that affected weak minds. The reality of his power remained limited and natural (in the Scholastic sense-nature encompassed all of the effects created by God).

Dozens of books have been written on the causes of witch hunting, that strange phenomenon that oriented the theological rationalism of the Scholastics toward fanaticism and obscurantism, and which caused beliefs that were imperceptible before to emerge in common perception. Simplifying greatly, one might say that in one century four explicative theses were progressively offered and were sometimes combined: (1) Beliefs in sorcery derived from ancestral forms of worship and rituals. An often-criticized and often-reprinted book by Margaret Murray has revealed this thesis 6 (2) The witches' Sabbath is a pure creation of clerics, assigned to victims of persecution through the use of violence (terror and torture). This is the thesis of Robert Mandrou, among others. 7 (3) The Sabbath was a "formation of compromise" according to which clerics transcribed into Christian terms forms of communication with the beyond that

Introduction

belonged to a vast network of representations which persisted through certain significant and partial forms. In this thesis one recognizes the work of Carlo Ginzburg. 8 (4) According to Stuart Clark, the existence of demons globally fashioned the intellectual and ordinary culture of Renaissance Europe, and witch hunting constituted only one particular aspect of that culture. 9 None of these theses takes into account the genesis of the obsession with demons which arose, completely armed with procedures and certitudes, around 1430-50, the time of the popularization of the Sabbath and of the beginnings of the systematic persecution of sorcerers. lt is precisely this genesis that now concerns us here. The period that includes the demonological turning point (r280-1330) coincides with a moment of high tension between the spiritual and the secular powers, between the papacy and the monarchies. What was at stake in the public pursuit of the adorers of demons can be easily understood within this context of institutional and ideological violence, which culminated in the capture of Pope Boniface VIII by the troops of King Philip the Fair in Anagni in rJ03. The presence of Satan alongside one or the other camp gave rise to special judicial procedures and important matters. But the concon1itanc~ is not enough; it is in terms of intellectual history that vve propose to examine the changes that first affected the guardians of Scholastic rationality, 10 the theologians and canonists who gave shape and strength to a concern with demons. Our "demonological turning point" might be placed in the terrible year 1277, which marked a halt in the development of a certain conquering rationality that had succeeded in Christianizing the philosophy of Aristotle. Indeed, the bishop of Paris, Stephen Tempier, in r277 published a list of 219 heretical or doubtful propositions that were apparently being taught at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Paris. A fair number of these propositions in fact, came out of the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas. In a certain sense, the attack represented the revenge of Franciscan theology, which favored will over reason and placed Aristotelian naturalism at a distance by liberating Goel from the limitations imposed by the laws of 1

1

1

s

6

lntr'Jduction

the natural world. 'fhe picture is simplified, since the Franciscan ()rder, in those years 1280-1330, was itself shaken by a great crisis surrounding the dernands of absolute poverty) which led to the bloody repression of the extremist Spiritual wing. In any event, it was indeed the opposition of two anthropologies) represented here by the l)ominican 'fhomas Aquinas and the l~~ranciscan J:>etcr of John Olivi, that contributed to the return of Satan in thoughts and doctrines. 'T'he concern with demons was born of the conjunction, the actualization, and the interaction of two ancient themes, that of

a pact made with the Devil and that of possession. The Satanic pact had taken on a fearsome actuality in the thirteenth century for two reasons-one political, the other theological. Ever since the vast move1nent of demographic expansion and of a concentration of living space that characterized the beginning of the first rnillennium) the forms of organization of collective life multiplied by being superimposed on each other (rural and urban counties, parishes, lordships, principalities, kingdoms, and the like). The complex and multilayered status of ownership within the feudal organization increased the opportunities fOr multiple associations. In the thirteenth century, after a period don1inated by competition, which led to progressive exhaustion of fallow land and of possibilities for expansion, there was a period of confrontations, of tensions between the various forms of organization. Sovereignties attempted to assert themselves without having the institutional or ideological means of doing so, whereas at the end of the century intense political reflection began to de·· velop both in the practical world and in Scholastic knowledge, notably after the introduction of Aristotle's Politics. The fear of plots and of conspiracies, manifested by famous incidents (such as that of the Templars at the beginning of the fourteenth century), consumed those who governed in both the lay and the religious realms. From the theological side, there was a gradual development, starting in the r23os, of a theory of sacramental causality, which promoted the idea of a pact between God and his human creatures. Of course that doctrine, by diminishing the necessity

lntroduclio11

of sacerdotal n1ediation, consequently weakenecl the protective

power of the Church and lefr the individual defenseless before the supernatural. Supernatural possession also gained in consistency in the thirteenth century: an anthropology, which ca1ne both from Cistercian descriptions of inner rn:1n and from Aristotelian science, developed around the strengths and weaknesses of the personal unity of man, which became essential to the doctrine of the sacrament. Jnsane or inspired individuals, crazy people, sleepwalkers, or the enraptured took on a singular relief as so rnany concave or convex mirrors of the human condition. 1~he female visionary and inspired mystic, who marked the end of the thirteenth century, settled into the confines of possession. The body and the soul of individuals became receptacles that were more widely open to supernatural influence. The individual power of the human being created strength out of its fragility; human autonomy subjected the being to Satanic subjugation. The coming of Satan was preparing a new Christianity.

7

T'he]udicial Institution oj'Demonology

other manuals for inquisitors had come befOre, the most famous

Satan the Heretic: ,..fhe Judicial Institution of Demonology under John XXII Demons have a very long history in Christianity, but the institution of a study of demons, a demonology, appears to be much more recent. Granted, one can reconstruct a certain patristic and Scholastic knowledge of the undertakings of the Devil and his bad angels; one can speak of demonology, however, only when an autonomous discipline no longer focuses on demons' mode of existence and action but is also, and above all, concerned with the relationships they form with humans, and with the techniques used in discerning evil spirits that enabled people to distinguish the possessed from the inspired. A practical knowledge, an art, based on a more or less precise doctrine, replaced or at least perfected the ancient gift of recognizing evil spirits. One of the concrete signs of the emergence of a new discipline is found in the writing of specific treatises that transmitted a cumulative knowledge or experience. That is why we have long dated the birth of demonology from the first known practical and theoretical treatise, the Malleus Malejicarum (The Hammer ofWitches), published in 1486 by the Dominican inquisitor Henry Institoris. 1 Granted,

of which were those of Bernard Gui (ca. 1323) and Nicholas Eymeric (ca. 1376), 2 but the hunting of demons and their allies, sorcerers and witches, did not play a major role in them. The pursuit of heretics in the strict sense and the technical questions of procedure were more important. This chronology is ofinterest in that it suggests that the beginnings of demonology coincided with those of "demonomania" as illustrated by the great witch hunt. Recent work, notably that of the group led by Agostino Paravicini Bagliani and that of Pierrette Paravy, 3 has, however, shown that a fundamental moment in the constitution of an early practical and theoretical demonology must have occurred around the end of the 1430s, with the first detailed sorcery trials in the Valais and documents of procedural doctrine such as the report by the chancellor Johan Friind on the sorcerers of the Valais, the Formicarius by the Dominican John Nider, the anonymous text titled Errores Gazariorum, or the treatise by the Dauphinois judge Claude Tholosan. The Council of Basel (1431-37) is believed to have played an essential role in the confrontation of experiences and doctrines. 4 I propose going back even farther, pushing back the invention of demonology more than a century and highlighting not the simultaneous beginnings of a doctrine and a pursuit, as occurred in the fifteenth century, but the considerable procedural mutation that assimilated invocations of the demon and sorcery with the crime of heresy, which led to new judicial displays and new revelations. Furthermore, the old theme of a pact with the Devil took on new doctrinal content, which took into account its universal action in the world, beyond cases of individual imprudence. This proposition might appear futilely nominal, for it would call simple evolutions in mentalities or doctrines a new "demonology." Every historical phenomenon has its prehistory, which one can construct into a history by erasing differences and accentuating similarities. However, the significance of this chronological displacement is great, if only for our historiographical

9

IO

T'he}udicial Institution oj"De1nonology

Chapter One

understanding of the phenomena of sorcery. By pushing demonology to the very end of the Middle Ages, medievalists rid themselves of a heavy burden that challenged Scholastic rationality, but in doing so they lost the opportunity to discover the theological and philosophical roots of the phenomenon. Witch hunting has long been associated with "modern" history; consequently, the clear distance between the light of the Renaissance and the persecutory medieval darkness forther accentuated the marginalization of demonological thinking, which was reduced to a powerful rearguard battle of dark and repressive forces that refused modernity. In the last twenty years, however, historians (Jacques Chiffoleau, Nicole Lemaitre, Denis Crouzet) have attempted to reestablish the continuities between medieval Christianity and the various forms of Reformation and CounterReformation. Our proposal is not entirely novel: Richard Kieckhefer has written a short stimulating book on the witch trials that in fact begins with the year 1300. 5 Further, a both famous and misunderstood bull by John XXII, Super i!!ius specu!a (1326 or 1327), has sometimes been considered to be the founding text of the new demonological obsession that gripped many clerics at the end of the Middle Ages. Joseph Hansen, who, at the beginning of the twentieth century, established contemporary studies on sorcery, placed this text among the very first in his famous anthology, Que!!en und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Hexenwahns und der Hexenverfolgung. 6 Thirty years later, the great historian of science, Lynn Thorndike, devoted a chapter of his work on magic to John XXII. 7 Qiite recently, the work of Nicolas Weill-Parat once again raised the question of the pope's interest in magic. 8 1

The Tree

ofHistorians and the 1'orest o/Documents

In fact, it is essentially magical practices (the creation of images and various implements) that are condemned in the bull Super i!!ius specu!a, because they were considered to be directly related

to the worship of demons. Sorcerers "allay themselves with death and make a pact with he1L" 9 1.''he invocation of demons and associated practices were referred to as !'dogmas": "none of them ought dare to teach or learn anything at all concerning these perverse dogmas" [de dictis dogrr1atibus perversis]; designated as heresies, they were to be punished "by all of the punishments which by law heretics deserve" [penas omnes et singulas quas de iure merentur heretici]. This text rectifies the bull Accusatus by Alexander IV (1260), 10 which, in response to a request, specified that magical infractions were not under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, except if they "clearly represented heresy" [nisi manifeste saperent heresim]. Indeed, the exclusive mission of the Inquisition tribunals, created in the 1230s, was the pursuit of heresy. ,._fhe importance of categorizing the invocation of demons as heresy is obvious for the later construction Of demonology and the Sabbath, which was largely carried out by inquisitional work. The inquisitorial institution, by taking on the heresy of sorcerers, could devote its exceptional judicial powers, it; theological expertise, and its cumulative knowledge, transmitted through the numerous guides of the inquisitor and through his archives) whereas the episcopal and secular tribunals did not benefit from the same continuity-and any given bishop or civil judge might be indifferent to the pursuit of sorcerers. Furthermore, Super i!!ius specu!a, by taking the claims of sorcerers and invokers of demons seriously, abruptly broke with earlier Church tradition and notably with the canon Episcopi (tenth century), which considered spells and other deeds of sorcery or magic as only so many diabolical illusions that had no effective reality. This text, which was found for the first time in a canonical or penitential collection edited by Regino of Prum (ca. 904), and was then found regularly in other series before appearing in Gratian's Decretum, 11 has always fascinated historians, notably because it describes, five centuries in advance, certain forms of the witches' Sabbath: the author of the canon dismisses these beliefs as simple dreams, induced by the Devil, which cause weak minds to believe that they could derive some supernatural

II

12

The Judicia/ .fnstilution oj'Dcmonofugy

C'hapter One

strength from their evil contacts. None of the alleged facts had any physical reality, and those images of nocturnal rides are compared to normal nocturnal fantasies and dreams. What is more, the canon severely limited the powers of the Devil: "Whoever therefore believes that anything can be made, or that any creature can be changed to better or to worse or be transfOrmed into another species or sin1ilitudc, except by the Creator hin1self who made everything and through whom all things were made, is beyond doubt an infidel and is worse than a pagan." Despite this disparity, historians have had a tendency to make little of the Super illius specula. Critics have sometimes doubted its importance, questioning its novelty, its effects, or its authenticity. Its novelty may have appeared limited, on the one hand, because the imputation of heresy seems already to have appeared in the canon Episcopi and, on the other hand, because the reality of evil spells is not explicitly asserted in John XXII's bull. ln fact, the adorers of Diana and Herodias are presented as infidels, and in reference to them the author of the canon invokes a verse from the Epistle to Titus (po): "A man that is a heretic after the first and second adrr1on.ition avoid." However, that infidelity or heresy is attributed to "false opinion," to the belief in more or less Satanic divinities, and not to the act of invocation or magic itself. In John XXIl's procedural construction, it is the notion of "heretical deed/' beyond or in addition to opinion or error, that is important. We shall return to this. Further, the notion of heresy did not have the same meaning at all in the tenth and the fourteenth centuries; in the intervening years the great dissidences of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Waldensianism, Catharism, and Beguinism, led to the constitution of heresy as a mi~jor crime, related to the crime of lesernajeste since the time of Innocent III and his bull Vergentis, 12 and it was pursued following legal procedures and punished severely. It is true that a careful reading of John XXJI's bull does not allow one to attribute an effective reality to operations of magic and invocation. But as we shall see, the long series of normative

texts and the trials during his pontificate erase all doubt as to the beliefs of the pope and his entourage. The second objection, regarding the effects of the bull, is concerned above all with the lapse of time between its publication and its first textual reappearance fifty years later in the Direcloriurn Inquisitorum by the Dominican inquisitor Nicholas F~yrneric (1376) 13 who, n1oreover, reiterated the thesis of the invocation of dernons as a heretical activity. But this resurfacing is not related .only to the repressive fr1ntasies of the (~atalan inquisitor, who was famous for his excesses. In fact, tvvo years earlier, on August 15, r374, Pope Gregory Xl, who named Eymeric inquisitor, had sent the inquisitor of France, the Dominican Jacques de Morey, a letter that began precisely by mentioning Super spew/a militantis and that recomrr1ended he proceed in a summary fashion and without appeal against the invokers of den1ons [den1ones invocant], 14 especially when they were ecclesiastics. The pope's text helps explain one of the reasons for the delay in the application of]ohn XXII's directives; indeed, he rnentions the opposition of some people: i'Some, even the learned, are opposed to it, claiming that it does not belong to your responsibilities according to canonical decisions."l'l In fact, the main treatise on heresies, written around 1340 by Guido Terreni, who had been inquisitor of Majorca and a close collaborator of John XXII, nowhere mentions the adorers of demons among the definitions of heretics. 16 Well before the first coherent and corresponding descriptions of the witches Sabbath, beginning in 1430, the path was open to the inquisitorial treatment of invokers of demons: in 1398, the Faculty of Theology at Paris determined that sorcery carried out through an explicit or implicit pact with the Devil implied an apostasy of Christian faith and was thus related to heresy." We shall return to the issue of the delay in the effective application of the bull and even in a common perception of demons. 18 The third objection, regarding the authenticity of the text, cannot be avoided. Granted, it has been wrongly noted as being absent from the two canonical collections that completed the 1

13

I4

Chapter One

composition of the Corpus iuris canonici, while numerous decretals by John XXII, the Extravagantes ]ohannis XXII and the Extravagantes communes, ·were included in it; indeed, the first collection of twenty bulls by the pope was compiled in 1J25 by esselin de Cassagnes, who never had the time to return to it before his death. The second collection was assembled only much later, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, 19 at a time when John XXII's message on this point had become moot. But it is more surprising not to find a trace of the bull in the pontifical registers. 20 However, the fact that the enormous project of publishing John XXII's letters, undertaken more than a century ago, was never completed does not enable us to transform this surprise into doubt. Finally, the very status of this text is strange, since it is addressed to all Christians without distinction, inciting the guilty to give up their books of magic within eight days. Yet John XXII often preferred discreet and precise commissions assigned to men he trusted. Doubt may thus persist, but the bull Super i!!ius specu!a, that stunted and perhaps inexistent tree, has masked a very real forest and prevented the seeing of the great novelty of the demonology of John XXII. It is in that forest that we are going to travel, focusing first on the procedural aspects that qualified demoniacal magic as a heretical crime, and which indeed showed the continuity and the importance of the inquiry into the worshipers of demons.

J

A Continuous Effort The main element of the case we are examining involves a request for expertise that John XXII made of ten theologians and canonists in the autumn of 1320 concerning the description of magical practices and invocations of demons as heretical. It seems likely that the pope thus wanted to prepare new legislation. The doctrinal leap he proposed to effect necessitated serious doctrinal work. The text of the pope's questions and ten responses have been preserved in the Vatican library's Borghese manuscript 428, which

The Judicial Institution oJDemonology

was rediscovered by Anneliese JVIaier and whose corr1plete text I have published. 21 Granted, the first three questinns, to which we shall return, deal with various spells not explicitly connected with demonology, but the fourth question is clear: "Should those who make sacrifices to demons with the intention of worshipping them-so that, attracted by the sacrifice, the demons force someone to do what the sacrificer wanted-or should those who invoke the derr1on be considered heretics or sirnply casters of spells?" This consultation, despite the reticence of most of the theologians consulted, produced remarkable results by accrediting the new thesis of the "heretical deed"; one of the experts, Enrico del Carretta, even sketched a description of an effective Satanic sacrament, a description derived from the contractual theory of the sacrament perfected in the second half of the thirteenth century. 22 It is possible that the practices of some ecclesiastical judges preceded the doctrinal explanation of the question. This is what might be gathered from a letter dated July 28, 1319, from John XXII to the canon Seguin de Belegney, an ecclesiastical judge under Fontius d'Auch, the bishop of Poitiers. Seguin had unburdened himself to the pope about a scruple that had struck him: an accused woman had died after being tortured by order of the judge. The accused had had the soles of her feet burned on flaming coals. 23 The canon thus wondered whether he was incurring an "irregularity," that is, whether he would be unable to remain in the priestly order under the circumstances for having shed blood. The pope reassured Seguin by stressing that the victim had died some time after the torture and that "one could doubt that because of the torments she died more quickly than if she had died without having been tortured." 24 The judge's victim had been denounced [diffamata] publicly for crimes of sorcery and heretical perversion [super criminibus sortilegii et heretice pravitatis]. It is possible, although we cannot be certain, that it was the judge who associated sorcery, listed first, with heresy. Resorting to torture seems to have been dictated by the desire to uncover networks of complicity, a result that was

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indeed obtained and praised by the pope: "All that was thus discovered, to all appearances, would not have been revealed if that woman had not revealed it through the effects of torment.>' 25 One can note here a practical reason for assin1ilating sorce1y\vith heresy: resorting to torture in an ecclesiastical court had been introduced in 1252 [ad abolendam] by Pope Innocent IV, for tbe sole use of the inquisitors and not by episcopal judges. It was only in 1308, at the time when he created the episcopal commissions to judge the Templars, that Clement V extended the use oftorture to other official bodies (that is, for use by the episcopal courts), but it was always related to implications of heresy. Seguin must not have been very sure of this, since he claimed he hesitated to use torture until after he had consulted "very honest people who assured him that they had seen heretics in the Toulouse region who had been subjected to torture." 21' Another matter, known through a letter from the pope sent in July 1319 to Jacques Fournier, the bishop of Pamiers, associated the invocation of demons with heresy. The pontiff asked the bishop to pursue three people, a cleric, a Carmelite, and a woman, whom he accused of"creating in1ages, incantations, and consultations with demons, bewitchings [fascinationibus], using evil spells." 27 John XXII speaks later of their "errors" and, in his paragraph of exhortation, expresses the wish that "the Catholic faith, troubled by the above-mentioned errors, regain its clarity." A few weeks before the consultation with experts, on August 22, 1320, a letter was sent, in the name of Pope John XXII, by Cardinal Guilhem de Peyre Godin to the inquisitors of Carcassonne and Toulouse, Jean de Beaune and Bernard Gui. This time, and even more clearly than in the bull Super illius specula, the request for judicial action was concentrated on invocations of demons and on pacts concluded through them: Brother Guilhern, bishop of Sabina, through the effects of divine grace, sends his greetings to the man of religion ... inquisitor of heretical crimes in the region of Carcassonne. Our very holy father and master, Lord John XXII, pope through the effects of divine

The judicial Institution oj'L)en1onology

providence 1 fervently wishes to banish fron1 the center of God's house casters of evil spells vvho kill the flock of the Lord; he orders and confers the task to you to make inquiries and to proceed, while conserving the modes of procedure which the canons have set down for you, for you and the prelates, in n1atters concerning heresy> upon encountering those vvho sacrifice to demons or who vvorship them or pay homage to them. [Y'ou rr1ust also proceed] against those vvho make explicit pacts with those demons, or who create or have created any image or anything else to connect themselves to the demon or to perpetuate any evil. by invoking demons, against those who by abusing the sacrament of baptism, baptize or have baptized an image made of \.Vax or other materials, or who, through other means and with the invocation of de1nons, create or have created those images in some way, against those who, with full knowledge, reiterate baptism, the order or the confirmation, against those who use the sacrament of the Eucharist or the consecrated host and other sacraments of the Church or some part of these sacraments in form or in matter to abuse them for their sorcery or evil spells. And indeed, our master mentioned above> with sure knowledge> 28 expands and extends to all cases cited, without exception, the power given by right to the inquisitors as to the exercise of their function against heretics, as well as their privileges, and this until the time he judges he may revoke this extension. We signify all this to you by our present official letters through the special mandate that the Lord Pope has conferred to us, through the very oracle of his voice. Written in Avignon, August 22, 1320, in this fourth year of the reign of the Lord Pope. 29

One might wonder why John XXIl did not sign this letter himself: it is possible that the pontiff cautiously wanted to test the waters before broaching a consultation with ten experts. Why was Guilhem de Peyre Godin chosen to be the pope's spokesman to the inquisitors? Guilhem, born in Bayonne around 1260, had very early on, around 1279, entered the Dominican Order of Beziers before traveling around as a student to various convents and studia in the southwest (Orthez, Bordeaux, Condom), pursuing his studies in theology at Montpellier, then again making the rounds of the convents (Bayonne, Condom, Montpellier) as a

r7

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Chapter (Jne

lector. 1--Je spent only a short ti1ne at Paris, in 1292. His true university career) after a period of teaching in Toulouse (1296), began in 1306 when he was named lector of the Sacred Palace (professor at the pontifical university) alongside Clement V, who made him cardinal-priest of Sainte-Cecile in December 1312, during the same ordination of cardinals that included Jacques Dueze, the foture Pope John XX!l. Guilhem enjoyed both wide experience and reputation, since he was a reputed theologian (his commentary on Peter t,on1bard's Sentences, written around r300 was recognized as I~ectura Tho1nasiana, the official interpretation of the thinking of 'fhon1as Aquinas within the Dominican Order), an active member of the Dominican Order (general preacher of Narbonne in 1289; "definitor"-an organizational function in a Dominican chapter~in Caho rs in 1298; provincial prior of Provence in 1301), and curialist (assigned in 1309 by Clement V to see to the posthumous trial of Boniface VJII). John XXII appreciated his talents because he promoted him to cardinal-bishop of Sabina in 1317, then designated him as papal legate in Spain from 1320 to 1324. From this career it is clear that Guilhem de Peyre Godin had no legal training and represented the best Thomist orthodoxy; this detail is irr1portant, for the task of the inquisitors was associated more with theology than with law. Guilhem had not been consulted in 1320 on the question of the heretical classification of invokers of demons, perhaps because he had already left for Spain; in 1326, however, he received a new papal commission, alongside the cardinals Pierre d'Arablay and Bertrand de Montfavet, with the task of proceeding to the trials of several clerics and laymen of the dioceses of Toulouse and Cahors who had been accused of having created images out of lead or stone that were intended to invoke denions. 30 ,.fhe accused had been summoned first before the episcopal court of Toulouse before being referred to the king of France, probably because their images had been based on the model of the royal coinage [sub figura seu typario regio ).3 1 In 1328 Guilhern was assigned the task of organizing the local inquest with a view toward the canonization 1

r~/f)eniunology

trial of Nicholas of Tolentino; this event comprised broad demonological aspects. 32 'I'o this dense series of indications that show a continuous effort to classify demoniacal undertakings as heretical, one can add a notation by the J)ominican Bernard c;ui, who, strengthened from his experience as inquisitor, wrote his Practica ojftCii inquisitionis heretice pra·vitatis, most likely after 1324. For hirn the invocation of dernons was connected to heresy if it was done "at the same time as an i1nrnolation or as the sacrifice of some thing by making an offCring to those san1e dernons through sacrifices or inunolation." 33 ~ren years later on November 4 1330 John XXII sent two letters-one addressed to the archbishop of Narbonne, his suffragans, and the inquisitor of Carcassonne, Henri de Chamay; the other to the archbishop of Toulouse, his suffragans, and the inquisitor of that city, Pierre Brun. 34 Each letter contained a copy of the letter sent in 1320 by Guilhem de Peyre Godin to the inquisitors of Carcassonne and 1'oulouse and ordered the addressees to pursue the work that was more necessary than ever. 35 l-fowever, the text introduced an important corrective: the bishops were to get to work, and the inquisitors, alone or in collaboration with the bishops, were to complete the actions undertaken, but the latter were not to start new proceedings without a papal commission. This corrective did not imply that demoniacal invocations and other forn1s of magic were no longer to be considered heretical) since the inquisitorial activity was not suspended or simply transferred to the bishops; it simply reflected a certain distrust of the inquisitors, to which we shall return. 1

1

1

An Ordinary Evil? One might wonder what urgent peril the pope felt to act with such persistence. Magical practices, popular or learned, which were targeted in the articles of the consultation of 1320 1 appear to have been universal and frorr1 all time. Criminal or amorous bewitchment through the use of wax or terra cotta itnages has

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Chapter One

been found in Greco-Roman antiquity (notably under the name of diftxiones). 36 The magical diversion of Christian sacramental objects had long been noted. 37 As customs were Christianized, the old traditions of natural and beneficial magic borrowed from Christian liturgical rituals, without any true changes. ,..fwo factors no doubt explain the pope s anxiety. :F'irst, "scientific" magic, imported from the East or from Spain at the same time as naturalist science, had been developing widely in scholarly milieux since the beginning of the thirteenth century, as is noted by the concerns and the condemnations present in the work of William of Auvergne, a theologian and bishop of Paris from r228 to r249. Recent research has shown the range and the complexity of that knowledge. 38 Alchemical and astrological knowledge, endowed with great scientific prestige, could be combined with "necromancy" or with the magical arts. The ambivalence of the Church's attitudes vis-a-vis alchemy began to unravel at the end of the thirteenth century, 39 precisely at the moment when the conquests of natural science appeared to be dangerous to the faith, whereas astrology still maintained some legitimacy, in spite of suspicions about it. As we know, the famous condemnation pronounced in 1277 by the bishop Stephen Tempier, which dealt with 219 propositions believed to be held by members of the Faculty of Arts, was preceded by a prologue condemning "books, scrolls, or notebooks dealing with necromancy or containing experiments of sorcery, invocations of demons, or conjurations to harm souls."40 Alchemy, protected up until the r27os by the popes in quest of an elixir for long life, also began to become suspect: as Agostino Paravicini Bagliani notes, Cardinal Francesco Orsini, in his testament of 1304, ordered all his books on alchemy to be burned. 41 Astrology, despite its more academic appeal, attracted the same suspicions. The tragic destiny ofCecco d'Ascoli, who was a respected astrology professor at Bologna beginning in 1322 before being burned for heresy in Florence in 1327 along with his books on astrology, although unusual, perhaps indicates that ambivalence in attitudes. Astrology, in fact, despite its increasingly suspect status, grew in prestige during the 1

fourteenth century as much due to the progress it was making as it was to the common perception of the limits of Aristotelian science. The Robert ofMauvoisin case, followed closely by John XXll, confirms that ambivalence. Robert, the archbishop of Aix-enProvence, was judged in 1318 by a papal commission and had to abandon his post. 42 The status of that pursuit was uncertain) as was often the case in those commissions named directly by the pope: the action was in fact disciplinary, but it could have been criminal, depending on the evaluation of a given offense, which could have related either to the condemnable excesses of a prelate or to a crime. It is very possible that the description depended on a negotiation: the pope wanted to recover the post, and Robert sought to get himself out of the situation. But whatever the case may have been, the first of fifteen articles of accusation, the most developed, played a decisive role in the relative clemency of the commission. This article claimed that Robert, from the time of his studies in Bologna in the 1300s until the time of his prelature, had had recourse "to spells, to the magical arts [arti mathematice] and to divinations." The article specified that those practices were "condemned and forbidden by law." In his interrogation, Robert took care to constantly describe his various advisers as "astrologists" and to relate precisely the modes and the goals of his consultations. All the while asserting that he did not believe in those arts, Robert, as confirmed by a witness, maintained that he thought in good faith that those astrological practices were licit. It indeed seems that the new suspicion of astrology and alchemy, which was more or less shared by scholars and high dignitaries in the Church, was, for reasons that are difficult to determine, accompanied by a dissemination of the necromantic and alchemical culture in the lowest echelons of the Church. The second astrologer whom Robert of Mauvoisin consulted to evaluate his birth chart was a copyist [grossator] from the papal Curia. We noted earlier the pursuit of clerics and laymen who were accused of creating images by using the royal effigy. Their

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Chapter One

own confessions explicitly n1entioned the use of alchemy; here it is a question of the search for the "truth of alchemy" [veritatem alquimie]. To this general and ambivalent anxiety was added the personal concern of John XXll, who appeared to have determined that demons were directly involved in these suspect arts and exercised a fearsome role in the live::> and deaths of humans.

The Demonological Convictions ojJohn XXU As seen in the _judicial practices he developed, John XXII's insistence on the dangers of demoniacal invocations is also reflected in the many accusations that were made either as the primary reasons for an arrest, 41 or secondarily, when someone was arrested on other charges, such as the bishop of Cahors, Hugues Geraud, the archbishop of Aix, Robert of Mauvoisin, or the Franciscan Bernard Delicieux, who was accused of seriously impeding the work of the inquisitors. Looking briefly at some of these cases will help us understand the pope's personal concerns about magic and demoniacal invocations. On February 27, 1318,JohnXXII spoke to Barthelemy, bishop of Frejus, Pierre Tissier, prior of Saint-Antonin, near Rodez, and the provost of Clermont-Ferrand, to ask them to undertake legal action following summary procedure without the possibility of appeal against several clerics who were devoting themselves to "black magic, geomancy, and other magical arts." 44 Those magical arts were closely connected to the invocation of demons; they were "the arts of demons, derived from a plague-ridden association between men and evil angels." Magicians "fi·equently use mirrors and images consecrated following their execrable rite and, standing in a circle, repeatedly invoke the demons that they seal up in the mirrors) circles, or rings." Through these invocations the accused attempted to harm or to predict the future. 45 Another aspect of their activity, mentioned later in the letter, was also a papal concern: "'I'hey are not afraid to assert that with the help of libations or food, but also by uttering a single word,

The Judicial Institution ~j'Dernonology

it is possible to shorten or prolong the life of men." This brings to mind, of course, the various research and practices sponsored by the popes of the thirteenth century who sought ways to prolong their lives, as revealed in the work of Agostino Paravicini 46 Bagliani. The great English alchemist John Dastin, who had written books of alchemy for Cardinal Napoleone Orsini, an acquaintance and enemy of the pope, sent John a letter regarding drinkable gold, believed to be capable of prolonging 47 life. As the trial of Boniface VIII had shown, the boundary between the magical arts and alchemy, between the legal wish to prolong the li!C of popes and the underhanded wish to shorten them, was quite murky. The octogenarian John XXll, elected as a transitional pope, knew that his life was fragile and his succession anticipated. The first important judicial matter of the pontificate, a few months after the accession of John XXII, implicated the bishop ofCahors, Hugues Geraud, who was accused of having made an attempt on the lives of the pope and the cardinals by using poison, but also by creating wax effigies that had been given the names of the victims and that were stuck with needles, according to the precise description the pope gives in his letter of commission of April 22, 1317, concerning the matter. 48 Thus one can understand John XXII's obsession with supernatural manipulations of nature, especially since certain alchemists or doctors, including Arnold of Villanova, had recently developed strong ties with the Franciscan Spirituals or with the Orsini and Colonna clans of the Curia. The case brought against the Franciscan Bernard Delicieux in 1319 illustrates this conjunction very well. Bernard Delicieux was pursued essentially for his attacks against the Inquisition and his attempts to liberate southern cities from the power of the inquisitors. The matter was already quite old, but the Franciscan had recently worsened his case by defending the Spiritual Franciscans called to Avignon in 1317. Articles 24-31 of the act of accusation brought against him deal with his attempts to murder Benedict Xl by use of incantations and acts of magic. 49 In this list of charges, as in the accusations made against Robert ofMauvoisin,

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T'hc judicial lnstitufi(Jn oj'l)onono!ugy

Chapter One

the magical practices of Bernard DClicieux are not related to an invocation of demons) as if natural magic was only punishable

for its evil ends. It was as if]ohn XXII, the heir of his predecessors) fascination with the power of the occult sciences, was still hesitating to link magic wi.th demoniacal activities, which would explain the urgency and irnportance of the consultation of 1320. A few years later, those uncertainties no longer existed. On August 23, 1326, 50 the pope sent a letter to Cardinal Bertrand de _Montfirvet ordering him to pursue an inquest into the activities of Bertrand d'Audiran, canon of Agen, who was involved in "pluribus et diversis dampnatis scientiis et artibus" and "not without a transgression of the Catholic faith, canon law, and civil law." The suspect used books, writings, vases made of glass) clay, and wood in which he blended powders and fetid potions. "And above all, this Bertrand, by using and abusing these sciences and arts, was trying to tempt demons and to invoke evil spirits and to apply to that end conjurations and other illicit and condernned things. And such practices were effective: "There resulted terrifying thunderclaps, shaking, lightning, storms, floods, all blows by demons, attacks and the deaths of men and other countless damage." Bertrand had accomplices, two of whom are named in the letter. They had been caught in the act when they were seen carrying off from the gallows two heads and an arm of the hanged. The layman had confessed and had been burned at the stake; the cleric was imprisoned in the dungeon of the bishop of Agen. The bishop had Bertrand taken to the papal prison at Avignon. The inquest was assigned to Bertrand de Montfavet and to the cardinal Pierre Tissier, who then died (in 1323). The length of the proceeding, which was entirely in the hands of the pontiff, indeed shows that John XXII sought to learn more before sentencing. Another letter shows JohnXXII's concern in the face of supernatural mysteries and notably when confronted with the possibility of extraordinary transport, which perhaps foretells one of the most spectacular aspects of the Sabbath, the flight of demoniacs through the air. On March 3, 1325,John XXll wrote to the bishop 11

of Paris: the parish priest of Saints-Innocents had disappeared one evening frorn inside his locked room. The pope ordered an inquest "surnmarie, simplicitcr ac sine strepitu et figura judicii" in order to find out "where the said rector had gone, or was carried off1 or transported" [dictus rector iverit, vel asportatus aut trans-

latus fuerit]. 11 The urgent and anguished tone of the letter and the mention of the possibility of supernatural transport, without actually evoking the Sabbath, show a true anxiety in the pope's reaction to this srnall matter. At the time of the famous controversy over beatific vision which the pope launched in 1331, one of the arguments he produced to prove the partial and limited nature of individual judg1nent consisted of insisting on the freedom of demons befOre the Last Judgment. In a sermon of 1332 the pope said: "Indeed, the damned, that is, demons, could not terr1pt us if they were secluded in hell. That is why one must not say they reside in hell, but in fact in the entire zone of dark air, whence the path is open to them to tempt us. "52 1

A Portrait o/John XXJI as a Limbo/the Devil If John XXII was so adamant about pursuing demons and their worshipers, doubtless it is because he hi1nself was sometimes presented as a creature of the Antichrist or of the Devil, es-

pecially in the various milieux influenced by the Franciscans of the Spiritual movement (Beguins, Fratricelli). This description was partially an insult and partially the reflection of convictions. Indeed, on the one hand, the Spiritual Franciscans, believers in absolute poverty, who had enjoyed relative tranquility under the pontificate of Clement V, endured the violent repression ofJohn XXll at the start of his pontificate: four Spiritual Franciscans were burned in Marseille in 1318; a series of bulls from I.JI7 to 1328 condemned certain groups and then the very doctrine of absolute poverty and its foundation in Christ. This led to the schism of 1328, when Michael of Cesena and a few brothers fled frorn Avignon to join the court of the emperor Louis of Bavaria)

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who created the brief schismatic pontificate of Nicholas V. ln the volumes of the Franciscans' battle writings, the pope was often depicted as Satanic. But there was more. In the writings of Peter of John Olivi, who was the chief inspiration behind these movements, the eschatological schema derived from the thinking of Joachim of Fiore, modified and perfected throughout the thirteenth century, revealed the conviction that the present time was that of the passage to the sixth period in the history of the Church, itself the annunciator of the third and final age of humanity. While reading the Apocalypse, Olivi had discovered that the Antichrist, whose ultimate defeat was to initiate a long period of peace before the end of time, was divided into a "mystical" antichrist (that is, hidden) and the great, manifest Antichrist. This mystical antichrist was believed to be a pseudo-pope. If Olivi, who died in 1298, was unable to advance the identification further, his disciples, convinced by the persecutions, proceeded with this assimilation of the pope with the mystical antichrist. On this point, an odd testimony provides a true mythical founding tale of the origins of John XXII's hatred for the Spiritual Franciscans. In 1333 a knight from Roussillon, Adhemar de Mosset, was arrested for his Beguin sympathies, under the initiative of King James II ofMajorca. 53 The king, in his third article of accusation, relates a personal memory. One day when he was traveling with Adhemar, the conversation turned toward Pope John XXII and the persecution of the Spirituals, for which the knight strongly reproached the pontiff. Adhemar asked the king if he knew why the pope, who at the beginning of his pontificate had been a holy and good man, had come to that. James didn't know, but the knight informed him: at one time John XXII loved Angelo Clareno, one of the principal leaders of the Spirituals, very much. One day he asked him to question God, to find out whether his state [status J was pleasing to Him or not. 54 Angelo began to pray and "then saw a large group of Devils who were carrying a chalice full of sinful poison; he asked them where they were going, and what they were going to do with the chalice.

'J'he Judicial Institution of' Demonology

They answered that they were going to the pope to convince him to drink from the chalice of iniquity." Angelo asked them to come see him on their way back, which they did. They informed him that the pope had drunk, and they advised Angelo henceforth to beware of him. When Angelo revived from that vision, the pope asked him the outcome of his consultation; the Franciscan refused to speak but was ordered, in the name of the principle of obedience, to provide the information, which he did. "And ever since that time the Lord Pope wished ill to befall him, on him and all the other Beguins." Adhemar de Mossel, who had been in the service of Philip of Majorca, the regent of the kingdom while Jam es II was a minor and an active partisan of the Beguins, probably sympathized with the dissidents, without being directly involved in their battle and without having either their theological or exegetic training; it is probable that he was transmitting a widely known anecdote. Ifwe are to better understand the development of the personal involvement of the pope, we must now seek to understand the modalities of his struggle and what was at stake in it.

The Emergence '!fthe fact The doctrinal revolution launched by the pope consisted of dealing with acts, with deeds, considered to be heretical, in contrast to an ancient and continuous Church tradition that presented heresy as an opinion. This creation of the factum hereticale, quite present in the questions put to the experts of the commission of 1320, cannot be reduced to a simple desire for an increase in criminal prosecution. John XXJI had no need of that description to severely punish magical and demon-associated acts. The issue was epistemological: by default, the deed had become an essential argument of certainty. At the end of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth, great interrogations were held into the possibility of proving dogma or of establishing it in reason. The fertile association between reason and faith, at work in writings from Saint Anselm of Canterbury

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The Judicial Institulion of.De1nonology

to Thomas Aquinas, was dissolving. Given the reality of limited proof and demonstration, the solidity of facts, deeds, gathered and authenticated by tradition, offered some recourse. The mysteries of truth and the obscurity of error could not nor should be separated from the facts that manifested them, and which induced confidence and faith. Confronted with the extreme diversity of opinions and schools, it was necessary to grasp onto facts.John:XXII, exactly like William ofOckham, concluded that faith rested on a certain confidence in all of Christian tradition, as confirmed by facts provided by the Scriptures. One of the most vehement reproaches that John XXII made against the Spiritual Franciscans, whom he persecuted violently had to do with their rejection of the factual data in the Scriptures. In the Gospel, Jesus had property and gave his money to Judas. But through the artifices of interpretation, said the pope, the Franciscans destroyed those facts in support of their interpretation. The great bulls condemning the Franciscan doctrine of absolute poverty stress the destruction of the factual data that established the articles of faith. 55 In the bull Cum inter nonnullos (November 12, 1223), the pope said: 1

Since among not a few scholarly men it often happens that there is called into doubt, whether to affinn pertinaciously, that Our l~e­ deemer and Lord Jesus Christ and His Apostles did not have anything individually, nor even in common, is to be censured as heretical, diverse and opposite things being opined concerning it, We, desiring to put an end to this contest, after [having taken] the counsel of our brothers [the cardinals] by this perpetual edict do declare that a pertinacious assertion of this kind, when sacred scriptures, which assert in very many places that they had not a few things, expressly contradict it, and when it supposes openly that the same sacred scripture, through which certainly the articles of orthodox faith arc proven in regards to the aforesaid things, contains the ferment of falsehood, and consequently, as much as regards these things, crnptying all faith in them, it renders the Catholic Faith doubtful and uncertain, taking away its demonstration, is respectively to be censured erroneous and heretical. 56

More generally, the Spiritual Franciscans, imagining that Christ and the apostles practiced de facto usage without any judicial appropriation, constructed a story that had no respondent, no verification in the "nature of things" [natura rerum], where the consumption of goods rested either on a right or on an offense. Their use of the word fact upset the natural order of the world. 57 The Franciscans became heretics by rejecting evangelical facts and by reconstructing their own, with the help of a strengthened ideology and the collective identity that they created. It was thus pointless and dangerous, insofar as heresy was concerned, to wait for the clear expression of an error 1 when deeds and facts indicated it. This epistemological conviction vvas confirmed by an analogous evolution in moral and judicial judgments. 58 • As we know, thinkers in the twelfth century, from Peter Abelard to Peter the Cantor, produced a morality of intention. The actual fact was relativized. Let's look at an example: John is killed. Paul killed him. This is an occurrence. The moral theology of intention asserts that this occurrence in itself signifies nothing before it is qualified according to the intentions of Paul, for whom the event represented (1) a murder (he wanted and planned the act, out of a long-standing hatred); or (2) injuries inflicted without the intention of murder (following a scuffle, for example); or (3) an accident (Paul, during a hunt, was aiming for an animal, not at John); or (4) a meritorious act (Paul rid Christianity of a persecutor, along the lines of Judith killing Holofernes). The "death of John" event, emptied of its intrinsic significance, becomes what I call a weak fact, a simple residue of reality. Throughout the thirteenth century there developed a progressive reaction against the morality of intention) an attempt to objectivizc moral and judicial judgment. This phenomenon is probably related to the moverr1ent of writing normative texts and to the constitution of law as a type of knowledge that was increasingly independent of moral theology. 19 The fact was

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Chapter One

considered the necessary but insufficient subject of the transcen-

was essentially reducible. I--Iowever, a certain development in

dent independence of the law, which the caste ofjurists attempted to extract from the contingencies and compromises of everyday affairs. An attachment to factuality was also related to a reaction by the Church against heretical undertakings based on a reliance on secrets and ambiguity. 60 The sanctuary of one's inner life could appear as a hiding place for criminals. The persecution of the Cathars and the Beguins shows this clearly: inquisitors perfected techniques for uncovering dissimulation. This· evolution tended to replace the weak fbct of the morals of intention with the strong fact of the tribunals of inquest. Does this mean that at the tribunal any excuse concerning the circumstances of the act was rejected? Most certainly not, but the presumptions and the circumstances, aggravating or extenuating, were themselves subjected to an objectification. Here are two examples of this: the notion of irresponsibility, granted to obvious classes of individuals (the insane, children, sleepwalkers), was defined at the beginning of the fourteenth century in a decretal of Clement V. 61 1~\irthennore, in inquisitorial proceedings a preliminary inquest into the reputation (Jama) of suspect individuals delegated the evaluation of motives to an external body befOre the inquest would actually correlate the evaluation with the precise facts. 62 Granted, the .fama was largely derived by the inquiries themselves, but judges beld to its objective and measurable nature. l)uring inquisitorial trials, regarding canonization as well as in criminal or heretical matters, the judges or commissioners frequently asked witnesses to define the meaning of the word.fama, its place of origin, its extension. Some even went so far as to ask a witness to quantitatively evaluate the rninin1al number of opinions or murrr1urings necessary to constitute a reputation. Might this medieval positivism, whose judicial and moral roots we have atternpted to discern, be linked to a more ·widespread evolution than is found in the history of the sciences? The question is delicate, for the dominant physics of the time, inspired by Aristotle, was concerned more with causes than with phenomena, as Alexandre Koyrc has shown. The phenomenon

scientific factuality has been observed precisely in those final years of the thirteenth centu1y in engineers such as the famous Pierre de Maricourt, who described and experimented with the properties of the magnet in the goal of improving the compass. A thinker such as Roger Bacon, champion of experirncntat.ion, succeeded in combining theology optics, and alchemy in his work by hunting down facts through observation. The catchall category of "marvels" (mirabi/ia) began to disappear in favor of a simultaneous expansion of miraculous phenornena and natural phenomena. Finally, a non-Aristotelian physics, arguing about borderline cases and connected to a real but rare factuality, was making headway. 61 1

1

The Inquest and the fact On the level ofjudicial pursnits, the notion of facts tended to beco1ne important beginning in the r23os, when the search for

heretics, within largely complicit populations, became extremely widespread and demanded broader criteria and more effective methods than individual interrogation. An order from the archbishop ofTarragona was drawn up in May r242 with the help of the Don1inican Raymond of Penafort, 64 the great jurist vvho also became the superior-general of the Order of 'Preachers, so that "one might look more clearly into the fact of heresy [circa factum heresis ]."Granted, the wordfactum here still had the meaning of judicial imputation that it had had in Roman law, but the detail of the order shows that it was henceforth important to consider acts tbat did not come directly from belief. Indeed, the text distinguishes seven population categories linked to heresy. 65 But only the first is named as heretical, because it professes beliefs while continuing in error. The second category, the "believers" [credentes], is assimilated with heresy (one rnust, of course, realize that they were singled out before the salutary warning that would transform them, in case they refused to recant, into heretics in the strict sense).

32

The Judicial Institution oj'.Demono!ogy JJ

Chapter One

Then come those "suspected" of heresy. Only actions and facts determine this categorization: listening to the preaching or the lectures of heretics (in this case it was a rnatter of insahbatici, of heretics who were difficult to identify and who were cited in the company ofWaldensians) or kneeling in their company. An element of belief can, however, be added: the suspects believe that the heretics in question are "good men." Depending on whether such actions are repeated, suspicion would be simple, vehement, or very vehement. Then come the passive accomplices: the "nondenouncers" [celatores], who abstain from revealing the public presence of heretics; the "dissimulators" [occultatores], "who have made a pact not to reveal anything" [fecerunt pactum de non revelando]; the "hosts" [receptatores], who welcome into their homes-at least twice-heretics or gatherings of heretics; the "defenders" [defensores], who take the side of heretics in words or in deeds [verbovel facto], either through speech, or with material assistance. 66 These last four categories were gathered into the single category of"supporters" [fautores] of heresy. For Raymond there were degrees of offenses linked to heresies [magis vel minus], whereas heresy itself implied a strictly binary structure in which the true was in opposition to error. It fell to positive law to convert that dust of circumstances into a heretical fact: in contrast to the ministry of the confessor, who, in the depths of his conscience, in jbro conscientiae, dealt with the continuum of sins and omissions, the task of the inquisitor in Jure consisted of reducing a plethora of unclear circumstances and actions to the binary purity of the accusation. Later in the century the notion of the "presumption of the law" strengthened this tendency. But there was still a great deal of hesitation: the fourth point of the order dealt with the classification of the one who embraced a heretic, or who prayed in his company or hid him, as heretical: "Must he be judged as a believer in the error of the heretic?" The answer was negative. However, farther on, the text suggests that the bones of those who had supported heresy should be exhumed, because "support [fautoria] is the continuation and the complement of heresy." A few years earlier, in 1235, in one of

the first texts devoted to the mies of the Inquisition, Raymond of Penafort believed that those who harbored heretics (in this case, Waldensians) should be judged as heretics, because they believed that the Church was wrong to pursue heretics 67 As we can see, ever since the beginning of the Inquisition, the temptation to construct heretical facts was enormous. When on June 14, 1303, Guillaume de Plaisians presented his accusations against Pope Boniface VIII at the Louvre, he reproached the pope for having forced priests to reveal secrets that had been told to them during confessions in order to divulge and use them. He concluded this article by saying: "Because of that, he appears to have been heretical regarding the sacrament of penitence" [propter quod in sacramento penitentie hereticare videtur]. It was thus indeed an act, manifested in Latin by the active verb hereticize, that passed as a manifestation of heresy. 68 As Jean Coste notes in his edition of the "trial," Cardinal Pietro Colonna, who had a better knowledge of canon law, had added in an analogous article: "The same Boniface doctrinally proclaimed [dogmatizabat] that he had the right to act thusly."69 The judges assigned to the trial of Bernard Delicieux in 1319 made the leap, at least in their act of accusation of October 23, 1319. They began their accusation in a very legislative tone, but without invoking the law, by declaring that any man, whether a lord, a ruler, or a judge, who dares to liberate the prisoners of the Inquisition, to refUse to execute its mandates, to prevent sentencing or trials, or is opposed in any way to the pursuit of heretics, "incurs ipso facto a sentence of excommunication and, if he incurs it with a resolute will for a year, is then condemned as a heretic." 70

Procedural Questions Faced with the threat of demons, it was important to act effectively and quickly; these two demands were contradictory, however, for effectiveness assumed the slow and laborious establishment of truth. The pontiff had a multitude of judicial

J4

Chapter One

solutions that implied differences in the types nf procedure to employ, in jurisdictional choices, and in the modalities of an inquest. The Church encouraged the development of the inquisitorial procedure (through inquests) over the accusatory mode, following a movement launched by the decretals of Innocent III, beginning in rr98, the maturation of which is seen in canon 8 of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215). As we know, the accusatory procedure, dominant up until the twelfth century, which continued in British and U.S. common law, limits incrimination to an accuser, who initiates the accusation and might suffer from it. The judge and the jury are merely arbitrators. The two stages of the legal action are made up of (1) the meticulous construction of the case, which must be rigorously demonstrated (in Roman terms, this is the phase of litis contestatio), and (2) deliberation. Inquisitorial procedure, by contrast, favored official accusation, formulated by a judge or a prince, following a "defamation," obtained by listening to accusatory hearsay. The trial involved two successive inquests: the first established the Jama, the reputation, either good or bad, which led to indictment or acquittal; the second inquest determined the truth of the facts introduced by thefama.

Various judicial bodies might have taken on the invokers of demons: the episcopal court, with its various tribunals, the tribunal of the Inquisition, and ad hoc papal commissions. As we have noted, the Inquisition was created by the papacy- beginning in rz33 with the goal of pursuing heresy, and it kept that specialization for a long time. This required the recruitment of judges who were more theologians than jurists. It is diflicult to make an unbiased judgment on the medieval Inquisition, since its image has been the object of violent controversies. Some rnedievalists have tried, not without some reason, to reject the idea of persecutory madness associated with that image. Edward Peters has shown how a veritable dark myth about the Inquisition was constructed over the years; a fascinating article by Richard Kieckhefer has placed doubt on the institutional reality of the

The Judicial Institution oj'Den1ono!ogy 35 71

Inquisition. In fact comrnon opinion has often conflised the implacable realities of the Roman Inquisition (created in r542) and above all the Castilian Inquisition (a state institution estab·· lished in 1481-82) with the limited and often incoherent attempts of the medieval Inquisition. And yet the medieval Inquisition indeed existed as a powerful institution, in spite of its weak foundation. The Inquisitor was named by the Holy See but remained closely connected to the religious order he belonged to (in most cases the Dominican Order, but also the Franciscan and · to a lesser extent the Carmelite Order). Its daily practice put it in close contact with secular power. The special commissions of the pope in a sense derived frorn the assigned legality of the pontiffs, established since the twelfth century, but they assumed a special irnportance under the pontificate of John X:XII, for reasons we shall examine later. His anxiety about the power of demons led John X:XII to suspend many judicial and beneficent guarantees and to refer conspiracy cases involving suspicions of magical or demoniacal practices to papal commissions, which made use of surnmary procedure. 72 The notion of summary procedure had slowly developed in canon law since the end of the twelfth century. This was a matter of formalizing the efforts of the preceding decades in matters of arbitrage or compromise within the Church, as a reaction to the excesses ofjuridicism that had been denounced by Saint Bernard in his fascinating treatise De consideratione. The notion of "canonical equity" was contrasted with the rigor iuTis of the civilists. The procedure slowly gained its form from scattered elements in Roman law, through a collection ofindependent clausules: if the parties were in agreement, the cognitio summaria (translated in our texts by the adverb summarie or simpliciter) implied lightening the demands for proof; one could make do with "half-full" proof (a simple statement, a witness, or a single document). The strictly procedural phase of the trial was also reduced: the composition of a "record" (libel/us) and the debate of the !itis contestalio (which established the judiciary roles and what was at stake in the trial) became optional. The mention of a de piano procedure, which 1

3h

Chapter One

The judicial llfstitution oj"Dentonology .17

referred to the uselessness of formally sitting in a court, insisted n1ore on speed and the absence of external elements. Finally, the clausules sine strepitu judicioru;n (without the din of trials) and sine/igurajudicii (without the form of the trial) simplified things further by insisting on the elimination of lavvyers and the noisy fr)rms of opposition and recourse.

In the time of John XXII, this formalization of ecclesiastical arbitrage had just been completed with the publication of two decretals by Clement V: Dispendiosam, produced for the Council of Vienna in

1311-12,

and Saepe, written in

1314.

Dispendiosam

declared very succinctly that the summary procedure could be applied to cases that had already been previewed by the canon law of the thirteenth century regarding the Church's own al~ fairs ("elections, requests and provisions, attributions of dignities or £Unctions, offices 1 canonicates, revenues or any ecclesiastical

benefices" the exacting of tithes), but also regarding questions of marriage and usury. 73 This extension was considerable: it ended

up providing for the possibility of a summary procedure in almost all matters brought by the Church. Only successions were not mentioned, but they necessarily came into matrimonial cases.

The decretal Saepe detailed the specificities of the summary procedure at greater length and carefully summed up the aspects that had been assembled for close to a century. 74 The parallel use of the summary procedure in matters pertaining to the pursuit of heresy is somewhat puzzling, for it is quite unrelated to the doctrine of arbitrage. The only point in connnon between the two procedures relates to the essential role of the judge, who was responsible for the procedure, the instructions, and the decision. liowever, it was not before the decretal Statuta quedam, promulgated by Boniface VIII in his Liber Sex/us in 1296-28, that summary procedure was explicitly granted for the inquisitorial process: "While collating certain statutes by our predecessors of fond memory) Innocent, Alexander, and Clement, and while interpreting and adding certain points, we grant that in the affairs of inquisition on heretical perversion, one may proceed in a simple and informal way, without din nor the appearance of

lawyers and judgn1cnts [_procedi possit simpliciter et de plano) et absque advocatorurn ac judiciorurn strepitu et figura]." The rest of the decretal justifies keeping the narnes of the witnesses or accusers secret, fOr security reasons.

Trial and Majesty All the levels and distinctions we have just sketched were blended together in judicial practice, since the Inquisition was largely based on inquisitorial procedure, whereas the bishops 1 such as Jacques 'F'ournier, the famous bishop of Pamiers, or ("'juido

Terreni, bishop of Majorca then of Elne, received their functions as inquisitors in their dioceses from the pope.

John XXII, however, had little confidence in the justice of the bishops. He knew that they often preferred the peace of their diocese to the demands for truth. Thus, the effective and zealous Jacques fossession

Chapter Six

one with a strong corporeal soul and the other with a strong spiritual body. Thus, at the beginning of the twelfth century, in his little treatise on the soul, Gilbert Crispin breaks with the heroic theology of evil of his master, Saint Anselm, to adopt traducianism. 23 This doctrine, with its Augustinian fOundation, while remaining in circulation for many centuries, could not offer a truly satisfying option, for it was too clearly opposed to the idea of divine creation. But at the end of the thirteenth century, the great theologian Henry of Ghent showed that original sin was certainly not transmitted either through the soul or through the body but through the effect of a sort of unhealthy disposition that remained in the limbs, which was deactivated through baptism but nevertheless remained. 24 Henry even compared the transmission of original sin through one's parents to that of leprosy, which was propagated through heredity and not through direct contact. From the twelfth to the sixteenth century, evil continued to be incarnated.

Plurality ofthe Person Thomism was not the dominant system in the thirteenth century, despite what is suggested by the official Thomism of the end of the Middle Ages or the neo-Thomism of our time. The adversaries of Aristotelian 1.''homism, who are called "neoAugustinian," of whom there were many in the ranks of the Franciscans but who were also present arr1ong the Dominicans (Robert Kilwardby) or among the seculars (Henry of Ghent), defended the idea of a plurality of substantial forms in man. The human subject was thus made up of various autonomous strata: one could, for example, define one corporeal form, one vegetative fOrm, and one sensitive form. Various systerns explained the connection between these layers of the human being: for example, the matter of one level could constitute the form of the inferior level, and so forth. The detail of the constructions is not important here; the pluralist theory proposed a federative or even confederative structure of the subject.

We can easily sec what was at stake in the debate. On the one hand, the pluralists gave the soul back the autonomy that it had had in Augustinianism through a pendulum motion that was inherent in the history of Christianity; on the other hand, the pluralists took greater account of evil, of the action of demons, of sin, while preserving the divinity of the soul. The levels of the human being then functioned as security doors, fOr whenever evil penetrated one part of man, one had only to close the upper levels. . The advent of the witches' Sabbath, of the reality of possess10n, occurred when Scholastic knowledge had to confront two contrasting but equally established statements: (r) Every person is formed of a single personality stamped by the seal of God; and (2) Every person is formed of two or several personalities. The first statement, which carne out of an ancient theology that firmly joined man's body and soul by following the model of the incarnation, was considerably refined through the thought of Thomas Aquinas. ~fhe second statement, more natural to human reflection, was based both on a traditional refusal of the flesh and on a new psychology developed in the thirteenth century through contact with medical science. ~fhis contradiction, virtually laid down in Christianity, burst forth in the thirteenth century; but the theological dispute between the partisans of the single substantial form (the Thomists) and those of the multiple substantial form (the "nco-Augustinians") took a sharp tum when judicial a.nd political stakes were added and when the notion of ~espon­ s1b1hty, of a moral person, was worked into canon law. 25 The invention of objective sorcery, that complete innovation of the notion of possession, occurred with the introduction of a third statement, which, through c·reative quantification, reconciled the first two: (J) Certain people, through a supernatural exception, have a double or multiple personality.

Man and His Double In the next chapter we look at the internal splitting of the personality, which caused the soul of the individual and a divine

16I

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Chapter Six

or Sat:1nic guest to cohabitate within the same body. But we must point out that this splitting could be external and strap the subject with a familiar double, an angel or a demon, which was the. result of the subject's susceptibility to supernatural influences when it required or called upon either a protective presence or demonic assistance. ln an earlier study I pointed out the relevance of the biblical book of Tobias in the thirteenth century to 26 the development of an individualistic and p.ietistic spiritua.lity. Now, in this tale, the archangel Raphael behaves exactly like a guardian angel. The oldest Life of Raymond of Penafort, written at an uncertain date, between 1318 and 1351, reports that the Dominican had a "familiar angel of God" who woke him up in the morning before the matins bell-" By contrast, man could be endowed with a personal demon, an extension of his own personality. Pope Boniface VIII, according to the accusations leveled against him first by Guillaume de Plaisians, 28 then as picked up and developed by the cardinal Pietro Colonna, had bis individual demon, a familiar that he called Boniface. The pontiffs master, in matters concerning necrornancy and the invocation of demons, was a certain Boniface the Lombard, from Vicenza, which would have enabled the pope to engage in great verbal exaltation when the master ofVicenza asked hi1n for news of his demon: "Boniface answered, on the subject of Boniface, that Boniface, solemnly given to Boniface by Boniface has indeed begun his work and I am beginning to truly appreciate him."29 Angelo Clareno, the great director of the Italian Spirituals, had been able to identify the familiar demon Furcio, who inhabited certain heretics such as Gerard Segarelli or Fra Dolcino. 30

From Demonic Possession to Divine Possession Boniface's exaltation befOre his demon leads to a reversal in the perception of the openness of the human creature. Whereas in a Thomist anthropology any depravation of a faculty diminishes the cognitive and spiritual power of man, in an Augustinian

A Scholastic Anthropology oj.Posscssio!l

anthropology, that li1nitation could be transforrned into an open,· ing. This is what is seen in a small text by Peter of John Olivi, which radically alters an understanding of the sleepwalker. The text of interest to us is found in his quodlibetical questions. 31 ''fhe question raised is as follows: "l1ow is it that certain half-sleepers [scn1idormientes] see, hear, speak, walk, and ride a horse with much more confidence than if they were folly awake? Similarly we ask the question about the blind who walk and act with rnuch rnore confidence than do many of those who can see." Olivi invented the term "half-sleeper," which he substitutes for "sleeper" [dormicnsJ, from the medical and Scholastic tradition of the thirteenth century. This use, and the unusual connection with the motor ability of the blind, indeed indicates a desire to grant a positive existence to the sleepwalker, whereas up until then he had appeared as a being deprived of control over his soul. Following the structure of the medieval disputation, Olivi begins by setting forth the thesis he will dispute: It n1ust be said that somc 1 against the explicit authority of Augustine, say that reason can produce no act during sleep. But it is the imagination [fantasia_], that asse1nbler of sensory intentions, that engenders all the acts of reason that sometimes appear to be produced in this circumstance. For we reason in the state of wakcfUlnt;;ss: our fantasy and our i1nagination are then put into motion by reason, and an imprint of that reasoning is placed in the1n; according to the same 1ncchanisn1, from such an imprint left in it, imagination is induced, during sleep, to certain acts similar to acts of reason. And the cause of this inability of reason to act itself resides, fr>r them, our adversaries, in the imaginative form [species fi1ntasmatum], which is then not

presented as the form of an absent thing, but as a thing present in a material and sensory way. 'fhis form is thus not offered to reason under the intelligible mode that enables abstraction, but under the carnal and corporeal n1ode; now, his 1nodc is quite distanced from the process of intellectual abstraction which, for our adversaries, is accon1plishcd through the agent intellect.

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Chapter Six

The Thornists, who are targeted here, therefore contrast tvvo types of externally similar acts (the sleepwalker's stroll is identical to that of a man who is awake). But if the effects appear identical, the mechanism is different: the sleepwalker's act is related to what we call "reflex"; the imagination mechanically, passively stores a signal that releases a series of gestures. This process is infrarational, for the imagination (fantasia) constitutes one of the links of the sensorial mechanism: the five senses offer sensations, which are coordinated by the common and unified sense through the imagination. Up to that point, the process is the same for man and the animals. Then, intermediary faculties, the cognitive and the memorative (rational and human specifications of the estimative and memorative faculties of the animals), gradually produce the intelligible form [species], the emanation of the reality of the thing rid of the animal detritus of sensation. Reason intervenes, then, in its most elementary form of classification and abstraction. Henceforth high reason, the agent intellect, a function delegated by God, can deal with these forms, which are capable of the abstraction that alone belongs to the intellect. This Christian development of Aristotle's psychology confines the sleepwalker in the low and pre-individual forms of animality, which are normally integrated into the unity of the personality desired by God, who creates souls as "substantial forms of bodies.') The nescience of the sleepwalker amounts to an exceptional accident. Olivi considers this construction to be "stupid and ridiculous" for several reasons, which I present neither in order nor in detail. The facts contradict Thomist psychology: the distinction betvveen conscience and nescience is not superimposed on the contrast between wakefulness and sleep: "Often, during sleep, we think [cogitamus] that we are asleep and sometimes, while sleeping, we wonder whether what we see in a dream indeed corresponds to reality or is only appearing in the mode of images, of dreams." In contrast, diurnal sensations can trick us, although we have reason and free will. The conclusion is stark: "Reason can be mistaken and, consequently, produce sinful acts."

A Scholastic Anthropology of Possession

Next, Olivi continues to destroy the Thomist system by attacking the essential element of its cognitive theory, the notion

of "intelligible form" that assures the reality and the trnth of knowledge and the infallible nature of human reason. Now, if the form accounts for the essence of the thing, how could it be different depending on the subject's state of wakefulness or sleep? How would it be less susceptible to abstraction? ln fact, says Olivi, every form of knowledge is a variant of the form of memory and constructs only a human equivalent of the object. I-i: constitutes not a representative, but a representation, an active process by the subject. Reason thus has a function, capable of turning [converti] toward an object. The confusion between the real presence or absence of an object comes from a failure in reason's capacity for synthesis. The break with the Thomist construction of knowledge-a continuity beginning with sensations up to the use of the agent intellect (the only active polarity in a passive process)-appears clear: on one end, reason, distinct from consciousness, is always available, beginning with the stage of sensation; on the other end, a knowledge of universal terms and intellectual concepts (such as notions of generosity, faith, charity) transcends all sensorial experience and can be acquired only through analogous participation. Olivi thus turns the Thomist pyramid of knowledge, established on the wide base of perception, then rationalized progressively through the imagination, then through intellection, upside down. For him, every cognizant activity is rooted in reason; but this reason must not be confused with consciousness, as is shown in the example of the sleepwalker. This deep root is called free will. This authority, which alone gives the subject his "personality" [personalitas], cannot be described by any function - it is a radical mystery of the self. From this authority there emanates an aspectus, literally an "aim," an adjustment of one's orientation. In a common situation, the straight line of this aim passes through imaginative then sensorial functions to reach natural objects. Or the aim is adjusted differently, moving away from the imaginative and sensorial strata to reach, through its own strength

r65

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Chapter Six

(and through the power inspired by analogous participation), universals and concepts. In other cases, the arc of representation leans directly toward the sensorial zones without going through all the forms of the imagination that determine consciousness; the unconscious sleepwalker is testimony to this. 'T'he superior confidence of his behavior comes from the fact that he has neutralized the estimative function, the inducer of fear. Thus the unexpected connection with the blind person is explained: the removal of one sense concentrates and intensifies the radius of intention, the path of the aim; the memorative function, freed of the weight of the visible, exhibits more instrumental capabilities. The different adjustments in the still active subject produce a dynamic, a situation in which one loses by what one gains and one benefits from what one loses. Reacting against the unitary machine of the subject, a closed monad, opening only toward the heights of the divinity, but also against the abilities of the confederal descriptions that juxtaposed the levels, Olivi develops a federative system in which the only common authority is situated in the obscure root of the being, in his ability to produce intentions, the highest and most agile of which got around the weight of consciousness. 'Nescience, positive or negative, no longer constitutes a limit but a rnodality of the self, here named free will. The praise of the sleepwalker and of the blind person says this well: the subject exists only in the alternating eclipses and lunations of intention.

Fragility of the Character As we have seen, Innocent III had attempted to protect the transcendence of the sacrament against the fragility of the subject by creating or disserninating the notion of character) which armed the weak structure of the human personality. But a few decades later, the doctrine of the sacramental pact reduced character to very little. Olivi, in a question from his commentary on book 3 of the Sentences, denies that the baptized child acquires a habitus of grace, that is, becomes the "holder" or "possessor" of grace.

A Scholaslic Anthropology oj'Possession

Rather than the notion of habitus he prefers that of habitudo, of 32 relation, which does not necessitate a sign any more than the contract requires a written charter. ,_fhe contractual document is only a support, without absolute value, compared to the effectiveness of the contracting wills. Olivi cites Pseudo-Dionysius, who.sc .translation~ contains the vvord habitus, while immediately specrfymg that th.ts word should not be understood in relation to the idea of a possession of the effective sign: 'I'hc bapti.srr1al transmission of our regeneration is a principle for sacred action, that is, for the obsenrance of the sacred commandments and it directs our internal farces fhabitus anlmales J with a view to

the adequate possibility of reception of other sacred words and act~ons and with a view to the speculative attainment of supercclcstlal rest; and this rnust not be understood as the formation or the figuration of the soul, as through the effect of an acquired intellec-

tual quality [habitum intellcctualem], that some call the baptismal character. 33

Henceforth, the character is only an aspect of the sacramental operation and not an autonomous reality: "By the name of character [the saints] mean consecration in a passive sense, consecration through which the entire person of the baptized, in his body and hrs soul, always remains consecrated and dedicated to God inasmuch as that derives from the strength of the sacrarnent."34' . One of the character's functions is to serve as a sign of Christian adherence, one meant to repel demons: the sign invisible to man appears to separated substances, including demons. Olivi anributes the dissuasive effect of baptism not to the reading of a sign but to the recognition of a will, assured by the transparency of the spirit or by memory: This relationship is completely apparent to the saints vvho see the will of God; it is indicated to demons in part through the continual mcm~ry of the sacred baptismal action organized around this relationship, in part through a strong and hidden effectiveness of the power of the divine presence and of angelic protection. This effectiveness keeps the demons away from the baptized as if by a secret force of baptism

I6J

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Chapter Six

and 1nakcs thcrn trcmble 1 to the extent) however, it is appropriate to the holiness of baptism and to the goodness or the malice of the baptized. 'T'his character is not obvious to 1nen, except throug~ a vision or through the memory of the transmission or the reception ofbaptisn1 and through the filith that is added to such a memory.

I--Iere, again, the character is reduced to the memorial trace of

a permanent will that could only be known through supernatural visions. We must note Olivi's slight hesitation: the repulsive action of baptisn1 that repulses demons is accomplished either through the human mode of memory (the demon knows that the will of God is at work in this person whose baptism rs being remembered) or through the mode of divine assistance {we may recall that the verb assistere denotes the presence of God during a contractual sacrament) or of angelic protection. 35 This need to multiply the divine presence pushes Olivi, in the following' sentence, to envision "something like a secret force o.f baptis~," which would come close to the ontological reality of the character. Criticisn1 of the ontological reality of the character was pursued after Olivi, notably at the beginning of the fourteenth century by John Duns Scotus, William ofOckham, Durand de_ SaintPouryain, and Peter AurioL Duns Scotus supported the idea of character only because Pope Innocent III had proclaimed its necessity. I---Iowever, this notion was hugely important t~ Roman ecclesiology. If the supporters of the contractual causality of the sacran1ent focused on the individual and his direct relationship with God while ignoring the mediation of the Church, the same was not true for the theologians who placed the Roman Church at the center of the history of salvation. Thomas Aquinas had undertaken a considerable reworking of the doctrine of character by making it the indelible mark received during the sacrament of the order, and no longer fron1 baptism. Instrumental causality thus received full ecclesiological justification: the effectiveness of the sacrament passed through the divine choice to confer a permanent ministry, indicated by the perenniality of the pnestly

A Scholastic Anthropology oj.Pussessio11

character and conveyed, a111ong the faithful, by the character of baptisrn and that of confinnation. The "J'homist construct was threatened at the beginning of the fr)l1rtecnth century by the considerable attraction of contractual

causality that extended well beyond the Franciscan circles of the Bonaventure-Olivi-Duns Scotus line. We find a clear example of it in the Carmelite John Baconthorpe, who was master of theology at Oxford. In the 1330s, in a version of his commentary on the Sentenres of Peter l_,ombard) he raises the fOllowing question: "Can the creation of character or of grace or of all other being be con1municated to the creature?" It is a rnatter, then, of knowing how finite creatures can enjoy the divine power to create, that is to produce in the world some ex nihilo being, and not through generation. The very fact of extending the creation of character to every being indicates that the question comes from a very general theological difficulty, as ifBaconthorpe wanted to show that one could not make a specific case from the creation of character without addressing the issue of the limits of human power. To resolve this difficulty, the Carmelite distinguishes three models for the communication of this power of creation. The first, which he attributes to Avicenna, consists ofa series of delegations of divine power: God, primary intelligence, creates a secondary intelligence very close to him, \vhich is capable of creating a third intelligence, and so forth. The second model, explicitly attributed to Thomas Aquinas, rests on an instrumental causality: "Even though the sacran1ents, through their own natural strength cannot as principal agents create anything, however, they can receive from (}od in a meditative way an infused strength, through which they can be the instrument of God, the principal agent and in an instrurnental way create the sacramental character." Finally, the third model, attributed to Henry of Ghent and to Bonaventure, is constituted by contractual causality: "God, himself, is a participant and present at the sacraments [insisteret aut assisteret sacramentisJ and, through that unique presence at the sacraments, as if through a certain pact [quasi ex quodan1 pacto], the sacraments would confer grace." 1

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Baconthorpe demonstrates that the first tvvo solutions are

equivalent in that they show the difficulty of communicating a creative power to the creature, whereas the third model is absolutely free of any difficulty. The rest of the demonstration tends to prove meticulously that, whatever the precautions taken, the meditative communication of a divine attribute is impossible, for it involves denial of the absolute incommensurability between nothingness and something. The details of this demonstration do not relate to our subject, but the conclusion implies that only contractual causality enables one to imagine character. Does this mean that Baconthorpe is joining forces with a "Franciscan" theology, which was, moreover, quite foreign to him? Not at all, because for Olivi or Duns Scotus, the question raised by Baconthorpe would not be relevant. Specifically, as we have seen, Olivi rejected the idea of creation of new beings through the effect of g;ace: for him, the sacrament creates nothing; it only manifests the existence of the pact between God and his creature. This is why character has scarcely more importance than Theophilus' s charter, which was revocable only through the will of God. The question of creation is not raised. Baconthorpe attempts to preserve a strong existence of character while favoring contractual causality in the name of an institutional ecclesiology. We see this in another ofBaconthorpe's questions, one that derives from canonical (that is, legally oriented) questions regarding Peter Lombard's Sentences, written and copied with the speculative questions looked at above. Regarding distinction 17 from book 4, the Carmelite asks whether the keys of spiritual power should be distinguished as two absolute qualities, or as two relationships established in order to exercise different duties. In his response, 36 Baconthorpe constantly associates keys as a principle of ecclesiastic authority with the sacerdotal character, as if it were a matter of a single case with multiple variants. In fact, during his response, he speaks of the pontifical character, a category unknown up to then. We must certainly understand that the keys, as a sign of papal authority transmitted by Peter, have exactly the same status as the baptismal

A Scholastic Anthropology of Possession

character for the faithful or as the character of the Order for the priest. Baconthorpe immediately notes tbe ecclesiological stakes of the question by noting that the implicit solution of Lombard, who deals with the keys as beings and not as relationship, "seems to be in favor of the lord pope; indeed, this solution implies that the authority or the sacerdotal character is something absolute in the soul, as are theological virtues, sacramental grace, and other realities of this type, for if the key was not something absolute, it could not establish diverse relationships with diverse acts."37 This final point emphasizes what was rather specifically at stake, which was confirmed by a response to the positions of the Franciscan Peter Auriol, who, following Olivi and Duns Scotus, reduces the character to a pure relationship. Peter Auriol, according to Baconthorpe, had asserted that the powers that could be separated are not identical. Now, "the keys of knowledge and of power are of that type, for the authority necessary for the knowledge of causes can be conferred to someone without his being conferred the authority to judge."38 Henceforth, there would not be a single pontifical character but a series of formed relationships around the pontiff. Baconthorpe rejects this argument while recognizing that God, through his absolute power, could have seen that these two keys were conferred at different times but that through his ordered power, which alone is important in this area, he didn't do so. Pope John XXII had had the opportunity to defend a position analogous to that of Baconthorpe's, in his bull Quia quorumdam mentes of November ro, 1324. 39 lt was meant to refute an argument of the Spiritual Franciscans, who asserted that the pope could not revoke the determination of one of his predecessors when it had been pronounced by virtue of its key of knowledge, distinct from the key of power, or the key of jurisdiction. Of course, the Spirituals referred to the bull Exiit qui seminat (1279) of Nicholas IIJ, which legitimized the concept of the use of poverty. Since it was impossible to claim that a pontiff was not authorized to rectify constitutions or disciplinary or pastoral dispositions, it was necessary to create these strong distinctions between the two keys. John XXI! thus argued

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against the separation of the two keys by inserting the metaphor that when one wishes to open one's door at nigh ti it is necessary to illuminate with a candle (the light of knowledge) in order to open (deliberate and judge). 'Baconthorpe thus concludes with the existence of an absolute pontifical character in the form of the reception of keys. I-Ienceforth, the notion unde1went a strong extension; in another canonical question the Carmelite broaches the theme of episcopal character. 4'l In passing he mentions that the question of knowing whether the episcopate was an order (as to an impression of character) was raised under the pontificate of John XXII. According to Baconthorpe, theologians qualify the order as a sacrarnent and an office dedicated to the creation of the body of Christ; in this sense, the episcopal function was not an order but presupposed the order. To this Baconthorpe contrasts another meaning of order, as dignity and power, which imprints character. Henceforth, all indelible power is received through a character: among the analogous arguments he uses to support his thesis, Baconthorpe in fact brings up the character of chivalry (character militiae), which is not reiterated when the knight recovers the grace of the prince. Similarly, when royal coinage is manufactured by counterfeiters under the sign of the monarch and the guilty parties are caught and punished, the coins are not taken out of circulation. ln another question, the Carmelite mentions the character that indelibly marks the heretic or the prostitute. 'I'hese sornewhat extravagant analogies are compatible with Baconthorpe's political thought, as he was one of the most radical thinkers on sovereignty, 41 but they tend to materialize a spiritual notion and to relativize, by inflating it, the notion of the sacrament. In this lineage that goes from Thomas Aquinas to John Baconthorpe, it was thus important to reinforce the solidity of the Church around the notion of character, which occurred extensively in the Carmelite; but for Baconthorpe, precisely because character had a strong ontological status, it was also necessary to combine the asserted creation of a substance of character with

A Scholastic Anthropology of.Possession

a mode of production through a pact. (]rantedJ this pact concluded by the Church and not by the faith fol, lost the subversive value it had in Franciscan thought. But John Baconthorpe's exercise of acrobatic thinking showed the power and the potential danger of the doctrine of contractual effectiveness of the pact: the institution delegated to the constitution of the pact had only to be challenged for the individual freedom of the faithfo! or the collective will of a group to take the eminent place of contractant. 42 And there were many candidates for that position. 1

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Supernatural invasions

7 Supernatural Invasions: Mystical Models of Possession In exploring the li1nits of action and consciousness, Scholastic anthropology had described the zones of emptiness and fragility in the human personality. Now, supernature, far from being repulsed by human emptiness, seemed welcome in it. 'fhe considerable rise of the mystical, beginning in the second half of the thirteenth century, shows this new invasion of the supernatural. Mystics spoke, dictated, or wrote a lot; people listened to them attentively. Divine rapture was the mirror irr1agc of diabolical possession, which itself was held in the obscurity of extracted confessions, denials or medical loopholes. The analogous nature of possessions, either divine or diabolical was the result of a similarity in the n1odes of action of the spiritus, of the divine spirit, either angelic or demonic. 1

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From Ambivalence to Suspicion The disquieting ambivalence of losing one's faculties to the supernatural was not new. In the primitive Church, discerning spirits (discretio spirituum) was one of the charismas necessary for the good government of the Christian community. But up until

the rise of the n1ystical in the thirteenth century, that ambivalence was focused pri1narily on supernatural agents: a demon was able to take on angelic appearances, whereas an angel (such as Raphael in Tobias) and the divinity sometimes assumed humble or vile appearances. Gesus could appear as a poor rnan or as a leper in hagiographical tales.) The new attention paid to the ways in which a subject who had fallen prey to the supernatural n1ight be stricken was turned more toward the human element of arnbivalence. Women, who were absent from the paradigm of weak beings susceptible to sleepwalking, played a major role in the category that invoked suspicions of the inspired. 1 The great mystical movement at the encl of the thirteenth century was predominately female. As shown in the work of Nancy Caciola, clerics were inclined or forced to compensate f{)r the anc~ent and rare gift of discerning spirits through the use of human techniques and arts based on the rneticulous observation of the phenornena of trances, convulsions, and excessive ascetic lifestyles, which pointed out the fragility of the woman, her susceptibility to the works of Satan, and, quite rarely, her divine inspiration. 2 This attention was not completely new, but its meaning changed. Barbara Newrnan has shown that among the clerics inspired by the renewal of the apostolic life at the beginning of the thirteenth century, the possessed resumed the ancient function of"energurnens," those possessed individuals who were driven to publicly confess the defeat of their temporary master, Satan. 3 1'he new techniques of the inquest brought the hope that the truth could be wrung out of the possessed. At the end of the century, fear before the power of Satan gradually caused the loss of that confidence in the possibility of "turning around" the possessed. Suspicion prevailed. During the fourteenth century the suspicion of demonic possession took precedence over curiosity or perplexity. '"'f'hus, in r377, Pope Gregory XI, who, as we have seen, had relaunched the heretical classification of invocations of the demon and narned Nicholas Eymeric inquisitor, favorably greeted the protests of

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a cleric from Cahors, Jean de L'lsle, who had had visions: "In some way ravished in spirit, he had many and varied visions, unknown by human reason, about which he wondered if they proceeded from the spirit of God or from diabolical illusion."4 He then consulted priests and scholars, who advised him to write down the visions and submit his account to them. The scholars concluded that the visions came from the spirit of God because they contained nothing that disagreed with the faith. The Dominican Raymond Roger asked to see the texts. He confirmed the judgment of the priests and scholars, but at the same time he led Jean, without judicial citation or convocation, to the inquisitor of Toulouse, the Dominican Hugues of Verdun, who asked him to write another account in his own hand. Jean de L'Isle began writing in the presence of Raymond Roger and concluded his account with the following sentence: "I do not believe [in the Catholic authenticity of these revelations], because I do not know if I must believe or not" [non credo, quia dubito an credere debeam vel non]. Raymond then asked him to strike the non from the sentence, and when Jean refused, the Dominican crossed the word out himself. The two men went back to the inquisitor, who read the text and asked Jean if he believed in his revelations. Jean repeated his doubts. The inquisitor responded that he himself believed in Jean's adherence and asked him to cease adhering to them and to never mention them again. Furthermore, since he had believed in the Devil, he risked excommunication and thus had to request absolution (which implied confession). Jean reiterated his doubts, but before the terrifying insistence of the inquisitor, "wanting to choose the safest path," he asked for absolution. The inquisitor consented only ifhe obtained letters of absolution from the Inquisition, with a monetary fine. Jean, afraid less of the fine than of the blot on his reputation (his Jama), 5 decided to bring the matter before the pope, who referred the complete file to Amie! de Lautrec, bishop ofCouserans, asking him to act according to summary procedure. This brief involvement of the pope says a great deal about the manipulations of the Inquisition

Supernatural Invasions

and of those close to it, who were inspired both by greed and by the systematic practice of universal suspicion. We are far from the long and meticulous inquiries ofJohn XXII, who, even when he was certain of the judgment to come, attempted first to know and to understand. The demons had prevailed. In this chapter we look at the intermediate phase of the inquisitional process, which was characterized by a tension between a suspicion of the inspired and a wonderment before new modes of revelation. The Church's view of the uncertain or doubtful nature of the line between the two forms of possession is shown well in the cases of two mystics from central Italy, Clare of Montefalco and Angela ofFoligno, both of which unfolded at the same period in time. Both mystics died under the pontificate of Clement V, had ties to the Franciscan Order, and both were venerated but also aroused suspicion. In the first case, that of Clare, an extraordinary miracle noted after her death illustrates an internal reproduction of the divine, its corporeal transformation through a conformation to Christ. The second wornan, Angela, while she was alive, caused Christ and the Holy Spirit to speak with and inside her. The inspired woman, in both cases, turned herself into a living temple of God: the spiritual temple of the soul became miraculously material. The body of the mystic was sculpted from inside to welcome divine spirits into it. These two forms of divine possession, incorporation and inhabitation, are explored in this chapter.

Clare ofMontejalco and the Incorporation

ofthe Divine

In r318 John XXII was opposed to the canonization of Clare of Montefalco, who had produced a miracle analogous to that of the stigmata of Saint }"'rancis: the vehemence of her meditation on the suffering of Christ had formed the material and perfect imitation of the instruments of the Passion on her heart. 6 Because Clare often said she bore Christ in her heart, her heart was dissected upon her death in 1308, and in it was found, in perfect miniature 1 the instruments of the Passion. The articles of the inquest during

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the canonization trial mention these facts precisely: "Article 159: The syndic and procurer affirm and intend to prove that the saint had in her heart, where they were found after her death, the mystery and insignia of the Passion of the Christ, that is, the cross, or more exactly, the image of the crucified Christ, the whip or stick with five lashes, the column at the same time as the other insignia of the Passion."7 The parallel with Saint Francis of Assisi is clear: in 1224, during one of the saint's solitary rneditations on the Passion of the Christ, his skin had been imprinted with the five wounds ofJesus, on his feet, his hands, and on the right side. These stigmata had remained hidden until his death in r226, when brother Elijah, in charge of his succession, proclaimed the miracle in an encyclical letter addressed to the Franciscans. Well before the canonization trial of Clare, the miracle of the sculpted heart incited lively debates. Among the parties in the battle one finds on one side Ubertin de Casale, disciple of Peter of John Olivi, who was present at the recognition of the instruments of the Passion in 1309, along with the cardinals Napoleone Orsini and Jacopo Colonna, former adversaries of Pope Boniface VIII and future enemies of John XXII. On the other side was the Franciscan Thomas Bono de Foligno, who belonged to the conventual branch of the Order, which was protected by John XXII. Much was at stake in Clare's case: miracles produced by barely literate, untaught, simple believers risked competing with the ecclesial management of the supernatural. But above all, the corporeal production of internal signs of inspiration and election opened a breach in the anthropology of the person by favoring a faculty that up until then was held in suspicion or in disdainthe faculty of imagination. The case of Saint Francis ceased to be unique and was henceforth interpreted more generally, which inaugurated the possibility of an individual appropriation of the human body through divine work. We see this in the reinterpretation of Saint Francis's stigmata, which occurred during the same period as the trial of Clare and the debates of the commission on demons.

The Stigmata and the Imagination

of Saint francis

'fhe miracle of the stigmata of Saint Francis constitutes a very

rich case, for right after the saint's death it gave rise to heated controversies that have been analyzed by Andre Vauchez and Chiara F rugoni. 8 The wealth of the material makes it difficult to handle, especially since the opinions on miraculous causality could well have been biased by the violent reactions provoked by Francis and his Order. A quodlibet from the Franciscan Peter Thomas (ca.r280-ca.1350) shows how great the interest was in a detailed discussion on the causes of the stigmata. We know almost nothing about the author; he is believed to be Catalan and a student of Peter Auriol in Toulouse. Upon reading his texts, we can without hesitation note his Scotist inspiration. His question, written around 1320) is worded thus: "Could ·Saint F'ranc.is have had stigmata through natural effects?" 9 In fact, nature, a possible agent in the production of stigmata, is reduced here to the imagination: was the exceptional power off"rancis's imagination able to mark his flesh? A contemporary reader might tend to sense behind this possibility, which was vigorously rejected by Peter Thomas, some rationalist reduction establishing an explanation based on hysterical or psychosomatic autosuggestion. It is nothing of the kind. Indeed, in the rzSos, a sermon by the Dominican Jacobus de Voragine on Francis had evoked the power of Francis's imagination. Voragine exalts three aspects of the stigmata, taken as "indications of the highest charity," as "standards of the highest familiarity" [with God] and as "an argument for the truth in all its modes." 10 In the first point he establishes the power of the imagination as an instrun1ent for the saint's cooperation with the divinity, whose own action is developed in the two final points of the sermon. The saint "produced marvels on his own flesh" [in came sua faciebat mirabilia]. If there is still any doubt about the Dominican's veneration of Francis, one need only contrast a text of the Franciscan Roger Marston, who raised the same question around 1284 and provided the identical answer: the stigmata

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a complete Scholastico-mystieal tendency that lodged in human

lJsing analogous reasoning, this time taken fi·orn Augustine's f)e 'J}initale, we find that the irnagination, through the construction of a desirable ferninine forrn, provokes nocturnal pollution. Finally, the irnagination can shape that form made up of the humoral complexions of which the fetus is cornposed. A striking or strange image brandished in front of a pregnant won1an or anin1al influences the form of the being to be born. Peter Thomas

nature the possibility of natural cooperation with supernatural 1 causality. An examination of _Peter ,_fhomas s text will thµs en-

reports, in this regard, the biblical example of Jacob producing spotted lambs (Gen. 30:37-40) and ends with observations of

able us to grasp both this tendency and the forces that opposed it. Peter Thomas's question did not follow the ordinary laws of the quodlibetic genre; it did not begin witb an outline of

SaintJerorne and C2.11intilian on the conforrnityof children to the beings seen by their mother. 13 Peter 'fhon1as admits this influ-

a response to the question, but with a demonstration of the

case since humors are converted into flesh. If the irr1agination can influence the "plastic and soft" matter, how can one attribute a durable effect on con1pact corporeal n1atter to it? It is here that

existed "partially through the efTects of nature." Let us note that son1e of the arguments refuted by Peter l''homas are found in the texts of Vorag.ine and Marston) particularly the argument

of Aristotle/Avicenna's chicken, to which we shall return. There is thus every reason to assun1e that Peter "fhon1as was responding not to naturalist, impious, or anti-F'ranciscan arguments but to

powers and the limits of the imagination (article r). Then the author applies these general considerations to the case ofFrancis's stigrnata (article 2), before presenting the series of the seven

arguments of his adversaries and refuting them (article 3). Peter Thomas first concedes that the imagination has some

power over the body. Borrowing from Augustine, he notes that it can deregulate the cognitive system. It disconnects the attention

of the senses: when I think of something else while listening to son1eone speak, I believe I haven't heard, whereas the sensation has been produced in n1e. ]'he imagination can falsely produce nonexistent sensations as occurs in the case of sleepers

or madmen. It can make my body fall by creating in my mind a constraining idea of falling: as Avicenna said, a man will fall more

easily from a beam up above than from a beam on the ground. The third argurr1ent of the "naturalists" (article 3) cites another passage fi·om Avicenna, who asserts that the enlargernent of a man's n1ernber can result from a distinct representation [apprehension] of corporeal passions. 1--.he imaginative faculty, still according to Avicenna, influences corporeal humors and thus one's health.

ence while also admitting his doubts: the fetus offers a borderline

Peter Thomas draws the line between what is acceptable and what is unreasonable; up to then, he admits the arguments of his adversaries without granting them the least relevance regarding the question of stigrnata. It was different with the first argument of the naturalists, that of Avicenna's chicken, which is indeed found in the dernonstra-

tions of Jacobus de Voragine and Roger Marston. According to Avicenna, again borrowing from Aristotle, "the hen, when it prevails over a rooster in a battle, will behave like a rooster and sometirr1es it grows a spur on its foot, as there exists on the rooster's foot. One can then understand how natural rnatter

obeys the thoughts of the soul." 14 l:>eter ~rhomas's response consists first of denying the possibility of this phenomenon: who has ever seen such a victory and such a physiological consequence? Then, even if one ad1nits the possi-

bility of it, how can one compare this growth on a body part with such diverse wounds affecting various parts of the body? How

Here again, Peter Thomas's adversaries brandished another text

can one co1npare the subjects of this mutation in form [ deforn1i-

fro1n Avicenna, which advanced the possibility of a "permutation of complexion in corporeal matter" acquired without action or

tas]? Clearly, Peter Thomas relates the example of the chicken to marvels [mirabilia] whose source is always doubtful and whose

passion from the body (article 3, argument 2)-"

realrn of application is lirnited to the inferior levels of nature.

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The Franciscan imposes limits on the irnagination's abilities to induce corporeal transformation: it cannot affect completely the shaping of embryos, otherwise a pregnant woman ·would need only to imagine in order to determine the sex or the beauty of a child. Nor can it shape solid and complete matter [materiam quietam et terminatam) or perforate any body, otherwise it would be enough to imagine and to want to make oneself taller, to recover a lost limb, or to gain eternal youth or corporeal immortality. We can indeed see what was at stake and vvhat metho.ds were used in the debate. Peter Thomas starts with a description of natural causality to show its inadequacy in the miracle of stigmata. Granted, the name of :F'rancis is not yet mentioned, but the allusion to the perforation of the body, the specific case of the impossible process, refers to the evidence of stigmata.

Imagination and Love In a second development Peter Thomas concedes that love has the same power over the body as the imagination has, because the imagination and what it produces are subject to love: thus, it is love "that pushes the imagination to form images of the loved thing and of the hated thing." This discussion of the corporeal power of love also refers to Francis. As we have seen regarding Jacobus de Voragine, those who believed in the saint's cooperation in the miracle argued for the unique strength of his "charity." We know that in the spiritual literature, love and charity are synonyms. The Franciscan thus sums up the thesis of his adversaries: "Such is the unique mode [ratio] of love, to transform the one who loves into the one loved; thus there could be a love for Christ that was so great and so intense in Saint Francis that his love transformed him into that Christ whom he loved." Peter Thomas's response reveals a trick of language: love's power of transformation could only be mental and not corporeal. The phrase on transformation through love refers indirectly to Hugues of Saint-Victor, who was himself invoked by 15 Saint Bonaventure in a sermon devoted to Francis in 1255. But

.Supernatural Invasions

in Hugues' text, it is not the mode [ratio] oflove but its strength [vis] that is at issue. The change appears rninimal; however, Peter restricts Hugues' words to a psychology of affect and takes it out of its mystical context. In fact, in the first article Peter Thomas refers to an Aristotelian psychology: love, coupled with hate, subsumes the imagination in the chain of a cognitive process that goes from sensory givens to reason, following increasing degrees of abstraction. For Aristotle, as we have seen, all knowledge proceeds from ·perception: the external senses capture the real; common sense assembles the sensory data. ~The imagination then enables one to restore the sensations in the absence of stimuli. 1"'he estimative faculty orients these givens according to their attractive or repulsive character (love or hate), and finally, memory records the successive stages of this treatment of the data, which reason can use thanks to a supplementary degree of abstraction. In this briefly summed-up schema, the direction of the cognitive trajectory is dual, since both reason and will can leave in the quest for data necessary to a mental operation through the imagination. The Christianization of the process, fully undertaken by Saint Thomas, could be done rather easily by adding to the natural cognitive apparatus the operative powers (reason, will, and memory) infused by God. 16 In this schema, which Peter Thomas borrows implicitly, the practical will and the imagination can absolutely not offer the instruments for a cooperation with God. The potential strength of Franciscan charity has no more relevance than the desire to conceive a beautiful child or to recover a lost limb. On the contrary, in the neo-Augustinian schema, to which we shall return, consciousness is born of God; the will and the imagination can participate fully in charity. What is at play in this debate is indeed the possibility or the impossibility of a thaumaturgical cooperation inscribed in the very structure of the conscious man. The second article of the question applies these natural considerations to the case of Francis. A natural impression of the stigmata is impossible; indeed, every natural passion proceeds from an external or internal agent. No external agent pierced

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the body of the saint. The only possible interior agent would be imagination or love; the first article proved the in1possibility of the perforation of compact and completed matter such as the human body. The rest of the argument proceeds a minori: how can one envision a miraculous exception in favor of Francis when not Christ, nor Mary, nor Paul experienced it? And yet the vehemence of the imagination of Christ was much stronger than that of the common man and the flesh of Mary much more tender than that of Francis. The mention of Christ in passing brings up another extraordinary fact that gave rise to a dispute: to establish the vehemence of Christ's imagination, Peter Thomas asserts that, according to some, "the sweating of blood was produced in him by the effect of the vehemence of the imagining of his passion." This proposition had been defended around 1270 by John Peckham, a neo-Augustinian Franciscan whose positions were not far from those of Roger Marston and the neo-Augustinians. Peckham's quodlibet concludes precisely with the naturality of the sweating of blood. 17 The same authors explain the final cry of Christ in agony by the extreme vehemence of his imagination, that is, of the function that in human beings links the body and soul. In wanting to prove too n1uch, Peter Tho1nas weakened his position and returned to the imagination its mystical role. The allusion to Paul directs us to an essential passage that concludes the Epistle to the Galatians and contains the only use of the word stigmata in Christian literature. The naturalist adversaries of Peter Thomas had, moreover, cited that text: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus" [Gal. 6:17]. Peter Thomas then refutes the argument by referring to Church tradition and to the gloss that paraphrases Paul's assertion in this way: "I bear the marks in my body, that is, I cherish works that conform to Christ, and bodily afflictions are Christ's cross." Until recently, the exegesis had been upset by Paul's phrase, hesitating between a literal interpretation (the stigmata designate the scars and wounds of persecution) and the allegorical interpretation recalled by Peter Thomas. It appears probable that in the context of the Epistle,

Sllpernatura! fn,vasions

which refutes the need for circumcision, the stigmata is consti-

tuted by the invisible trace of baptism. 18 But Peter Thomas's problem was worsened by the possible consequence of a protoFranciscan interpretation of the stigmata of Paul: Saint Francis would no longer be the only saint to have experienced stigmata. The repetition reforred to an identical causality, inscribed in the imaginative nature of the saints. The final argument in Peter's text confirms this obsession: for his adversaries, basing their argurr1ents on paintings produced by "frauds" [trufatoribus], "Lady I1elen" (the Dominican Helen of Hungary, d. ca. 1270) would have been stigmatized. Unfortunately, the manuscripts do not give Peter Thomas's refutation on this point. But one notices one thing that was at stake in the debate: the natural-mystical causality blurred the boundaries between nature and supernature. In addition, it"opcned the path to an increase in miracles and to an individualization of the marks of and means for salvation. Through an incorporation of the divine, mystics were transformed into living relics. They reached glorification in this life through the partial incorporation of the body of glory, which was promised at the Last Judgment. Another mystic, a neighbor of Clare's, found this individual salvation in an inhabitation, in her inner dialogue with the divinity.

Angela ofFofigno: The Paradoxes ofa Spiritual Autobiography . Angela ofFoligno is of interest here because in her work she combines the proclamation of a divine possession-of the presence of a personal inspiration in her and next to her-and the assertion of an irreducible uniqueness. She may indeed be considered the founder of the systematic practice of organized subjectivity in one type of text, the mystical autobiography. This classification might seem surprising. Granted, she is attributed with two books that give an account of her religious experience. But Angela probably didn't know how to write, and these books were, at best, dictated

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Chapter Sc71e11

to her confessor. Certain chapters of her Instructions were written

only after her death and well afrer that of her confessor (around qoo). Second, her work is not truly biographical. After perusing the roughly three hundred pages copied in Angela's name, the reader doesn't know who she 'was: there is no mention of events, dates, or places, except a pilgrin1age to Rome and a few journeys to the neighboring city of Assisi; the only notable event consists of a rnysterious scandal in a church. F'ro1n testirnonies of the ti1ne and archival documents, one can derive a few n1eager biographical elen1ents: Angela was born around r248 in the little town ofFoligno in Umbria, probably of well-off parents; she secrns to have been married around 1270 and to have given birth to several sons. The husband and children were no longer alive around 1288. ]'here are slightly more precise facts concerning her relationship with the Church: in 1285 she felt an intense need to confess and encountered (or chose) Brother Arnoldo a Franciscan from Foligno, who became her confessor and her "secretary.)' In 1291 she experienced an essential vision, went to Rome, and entered into the Third Order of Saint Francis. Angela then continued to live at home, with help from her servant Masazuola. Her Memorial, the first of her two books, gives the chronicle of her visions, her n1editations, and her crises. This source, poor in fi1cts con1pleted by ecclesiastical documents and testimonies, gives a glimpse of the guiding principles in that reclusive life: in 1292 Angela visited lepers in the hospital of Foligno and drank the water in which the patients washed their rotting limbs. Between r294 and 1296, a profound crisis shook her. In 1298 she contributed to the "conversion" ofUbertino da Casale (who later led a dissident group within the Franciscan Order). She died on January 4, 1309, the only precise fact in this so little-known life. The murky profile of Angela doesn't allow us to envisage an individual face. The contents of her visions and the direction of her devotion do not seem specific, and are the result rather of a large European culture of female mysticism or even of the .religiosity that was expressed precisely at the end of the thirteenth 1

1

century in the Spiritual branch of the Franciscan ()rder. F'or exatnple, the fiunous episode of her visit to lepers, which struck so rnany readers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in1itated a gesture of Saint F'rancis himself 1~he no less famous devotion

to the Sacred Heart ofJesus has many parallels among the female tnystics of the tirne, such as c;ertrude of [-·'ielfa. Angela n1ight even appear to have been n1anipulatcd: her second Instruction, written after her death, reports in detail the public penitence she had hoped to perforrn. f~ven though the text is written in the first person, it reproduces alrnost literally the life of Saint Margaret of Cortona, written in that neighboring city a few years earlier. The unknown cleric who continued the task of scribe that had fallen to Brother Arnoldo had probably attempted to reconstruct Angela's words in conformity with the ideal type of fen1ale saintliness, while keeping certain rnore specific objectives in sight; another passage frorn the Instructions gives the tale of an important pilgrimage that Angela undertook to Portiuncula, the tiny church restored by Saint Francis that had become the principal holy place of the Spiritual branch of the Franciscans. And it is precisely during the years 1300-1310, when the Instructions were written, that the legitimacy of the Spiritual party was challenged, shortly before Pope John XXll traced the demarcation line between orthodoxy and heresy within the Franciscan Order. Angela's individuality as a wotnan and as an author thus tended to be erased, and her inert \vork appears as a textual compromise between a female mystical aspiration, the religious demands of the Spiritual F'ranciscan wing, and clerical control. Moreover, this comprornise was crowned with success: in spite of Angela's suspect relationships with heterodox groups her work was disseminated widely and she was herself beatified by the Roman Church. 1

Two Types of Subjectivity It is important to place Angela's work within the banality of its context and to step back from an essentialist concept of mystical

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literature, which has often taken certain episodes and certain phrases of this mystic literally, turning them into a direct expression of an exceptional inspiration or of a precocious feminism.

On the one hand, readers have singled out her visionary message, which confirmed certain delicate points of theology and revealed a direct and affective relationship with Christ, which also suggested a new significance in the Eucharist. On the other hand, emphasis has been placed on the imperious way in which she inverted the clerical hierarchy, on her conversion of speculative theology into affective theology, and even on her explicit wish to be rid of her husband and children (she mentions a prayer that in fact led to their deaths). Western Europe favored a particular model of subjectivity, which endowed individuals with two essential traits: interiority and unicity. 19 The modern autobiography favors the absolute unicity of the subject, 20 derived from a stable identity, acquired or reinforced through a long series of vicissitudes and episodes (which one calls a "life"). Henceforth, interiority appears secondary in the constitution of the genre, even if it is required at the moment of writing and is presented as a time of reflection, as an attempt to assemble the primary unicity. The self is represented: it is assumed to have existed before its expression and to have experienced an interiorization before an inner judge and a public exhibition before the court of public opinion. If one defines autobiography by this relationship between the reconstitution of an entire life (or at least of a long period of a life) and a moment of reflection, one easily understands why this type of expression was not found before the eighteenth century. Indeed, the construction irnplies a particular attention paid to the birth and the childhood of the subject. 21 But, as we know, such attention developed only gradually and later in the West. 22 One then readily sees that the cultural conditions necessary for the autobiographical genre were not yet present in the Middle Ages. In fact, Angela of Foligno's Memorial does not correspond to this modern category of autobiography. However, in it one finds the two major ingredients ofWestern subjectivity, unicity

Supernatural Invasions

and interiority, but in inverse proportions: absolute interiority unfOlds before an uncertain and relative unicity, targeted by the

act of writing or dictating. Nor is Angela's autobiography aimed at representation but at manifestation. The self proclaims its individual existence through a process that is not autobiographical but "endolalical": inner speech is contrasted to the writing of the self. Instead of a single writer, we encounter a multiple subject; a succession of internal states takes the place of the biographical material of the modern autobiography; finally, a severely disturbed self is contrasted to the individuality of the person.

A Sacramental Tale 1'he text of the Memorial, written between 1291 and 1296, is not

easy to interpret-" Most of the manuscripts are later (fifteenth century), and the first editions have blended the different layers of the text by erasing its complicated structure. It was not until a few years ago, with the remarkable philological edition of Fathers Thier and Calufetti, 24 that we have been able to begin to grasp Angela's uniqueness. The various layers of the text show that we are not dealing with a clerical treatise bearing Angela's name, nor with an autobiographical affirmation travestied by a blind censure or by pious decency, but with the transcription of a blending of voices. The Memorial is presented as the text of a confession in the strict sense, which implies an appropriation of part of the sacrament of penitence. The book is composed of thirty "steps" [passus], following a common Christian imagery, that of the road of the cross or of the Pilgrim's Progress. 25 The story is supposed to have begun in 1285, when Angela was looking for a confessor. This initial moment represented a conversion: according to another common element of Christian devotion, a true confession 1 a new commitment to tell the truth, constitutes a new baptism. The reasons for this "conversion" remain unknown: Angela's allusion to enormous sins can be interpreted either as her assumption of general responsibility for the sins of every human being or as

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the mark of a specific sense of guilt (certain biographers have suggested, without proof, that it concerned the sin of adultery). The sacramental aspect of this tale is sketched firmly with the first four steps, which correspond to the ideal unfolding of a private confession. In takjng the first step, the penitent recognizes the presence of the sin in herself; in theological terms) this is the moment of"contrition.)) The second step leads to the confession itself, to the oral confession made to the priest. The third step is directed toward penitence or "satisfaction." Finally, the fourth step directs the penitent toward the conclusion of the sacramental act: acts of grace manifest a new awareness of divine forgiveness. The rest of the tale is made up of a series of rather loosely recounted visions, which nevertheless can be read as a succession of reiterations of the initial confession: the guilt could not be abolished immediately. The first confession, then, is presented as a conversion, followed by repeated confessions bringing frequent communion, a new trait of female spirituality in the thirteenth century. A controversial issue of her time clarifies Angela's appropriation of the sacrament of penitence: between r28r and 1290, a crucial debate opposed prelates and the mendicant orders on the subject of the sacrament of confession. In 1281 a bull by Martin IV granted the mendicant orders the privilege of hearing confessions without the authorization of the bishop or the parish priest. The prelates protested, referring to the obligation of the annual confession to the parish priest that had been imposed by the Fourth Lateran Council in I215; the brothers, on the opposite side, favored the individual choice of the faithful, the importance of true contrition and of repeated confession as opposed to the satisfaction obtained by an external penitence. We must note the remarkable absence of any parish priest in Angela's tale. In r285 she chose her confessor, a Franciscan, herself. Arnoldo does not play an essential role in tbe sacramental process: contrition, the most important part of confession, is taken in hand by Angela and by her divine inner counselor. During her voyage with the Holy Spirit, Angela becomes completely

SttjJernatural Invasions

~ware of her sins; specifically the human .impossibility ofknow1ng all one's sins constituted a strong argument against strictly annual and parish confession. -Frequent communion derived directly from that state of permanent contrition. 1

The Uncertainties ofthe Franciscan Scribe Brother Arnoldo's position in relation to that self-confession reveals the arr1bivalence of clerics vis-8.-vis mystical uniqueness. The Franciscan began to write down Angela's words at the twentieth step: This beginning was not premeditated; it corresponded to a precise event (the scandal of Assisi), which called for an interpretation: Afte.r the talc that begins here, there is another, which belongs specifically to the step that was noted as the twentieth step: this was the beginning.and the source of everything that I, brother scribe [ego frater scriptorJ, have vvrittcn of these divine words. I had begun by rapidly and inattentively jotting a fCw notes on a little piece of paper, as a sort of personal "men1orial," for I thought I would have little to write. 1'hen, after I had obliged her to speak n1ore, it was revealed to

the faithful of Christ [Angela] that I was to use a large notebook and not a simple sheet of paper. But, because I only half believed her, I wro~e on tvvo or three blank sheets that I had in a notebook. Finally, later, 1t became necessary for 1ne to use a notebook with inore paper.

After this chance initial recording of events that had happened to Angela) Arnoldo sums up the first nineteen steps, which constitute the first chapter of the ultimate form of the Memorial. The tale was then clearly structured and offered the possible sacramental reading that we have noted. Throughout the years, Arnoldo bad to record as he could the flood of Angela's visions and meditations) while sometimes losing_ direct contact with her as a result of bans issued by the Franciscan convent or the bishop. At those times a young man, whose na~e is not known, served as intermediary by transmitting the approximate contents of Angela's message. Arnoldo was no

I9.l

If)2

Chapter

5,'upernalural fn,vasions

Se11i:n

longer in a position to follow the rigorous series of the: thirty steps: 1 no longer knew how to continue, for, at that time it was only on rare occasions that 1 was able to speak to her to note what she was saying. And after the nineteenth step, I did my best to assen1ble what frl'ilowed in seven steps or .revelations. My guiding principle was to divide the 1naterial according to the states of grace that I perceived in the fi1ithful of Christ, or according to what I perceived and learned ofhc.r spiritual dcvcloprncnt; I also relied on what seemed to me the 1nost correct and 1nost appropriate.

Arnoldo thus shows the limitations of the transcription: limited access to the source; partial transrnission of the message; and a desire to adapt the revelations to a religious norm (vaguely designated by the words "correct" and "appropriate")" The complete absence of explanation of the thirty steps envisioned by Angela, which are set aside but suggested nonetheless, indicates there was a significant difference between Angela's oral text and Arnoldo's transcription. Arnoldo's rendering leaned toward the theological contents, so that for him the steps played the role of a theological table of contents, whereas Angela rnust have assigned a much less abstract n1eaning to the steps. For Arnoldo, the steps were "revelations," whereas Angela called them "transformations." F'urthermore, Arnoldo persisted in reconstructing the message and inserted his notes within a chronological framework. In a second writing, he ernphasized the continuity of Angela's tale by inverting certain passages, by inserting annunciative signs, and by justifying at length the central episode at Assisi, which became the apogee of her spiritual progress, followed by more serene rneditations. I-lowever, the various insertions of his voice are not 1nixed in but juxtaposed. In his parallel commentary to the tale, Arnoldo himself hesitates between the first-person plural, when he accentuates the general importance of the rnaterial ("we have written"), and the first-person singular, which underscores the uncertainty of the scribe's efforts ("! have written")" As for the tale itself, it is

divided arnong three voices that constantly shift: .Angela spe:1ks often in the first person, but frequently her visions and n1editations are described in the third person, attributed to "the soul of the faithful of Christ"" Finally, from time to time Arnoldo the narrator [ego frater scriptor] gives his own account. f-1e himself notes the dispersal of these voices in the text; he remarks that, paradoxically, it is the third person that can account rnost directly for Angela's experience: "She spoke to me of herself in the first person, but because ti1ne was of the essence, I someti1nes wrote the text in the third person, and I didn't correct it. I had to transcribe her words very quickly, at the n1oment when she said therr1, for the obstacles and the bans I encountered a111ong 111y brothers forced me to hurry." 26 A text entirely in the first person would have required either a complete assimilation of Angela's discourse or a literal transcription; the first possibility could not have been accompEshed very easily" "In truth, I wrote, but I had so little grasp of the meaning of these words that I felt like a filter or a sieve that could not hold the most precious and finest parts of the flour, but only the coarsest." Angela's judgtnent of this difficult task was even rnore severe, according to Arnoldo: 1

One day when 1 had read to her what I wrote, so that she could continue to dictate to me, she said with astonishment that she didn't recognize a thing. Another tin1c when _l reread what I had transcribed to her, so that she could provide correctioi:ls, she responded that my words \.Vere dry and without savor, and that plunged her into distraction. And yet another ti1ne she said to 1ne: "Your words re1nind inc what I told you, but they arc quite obscure. The words you have read to rne do not transn1it the meaning I wanted to transmit and the result is that your writing is obscure!' She also said: "What you have \vrittcn is flat, weak, doesn't rhyme, and for what is precious in what my soul fcelsi you have writt1.:n nothing."

Angela's cornplaints about the dryness of the results were due precisely to the fact that they emphasized the theological contents of her narrative, whereas what was important to her was

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Chapter Se-ven

the fluctuating relationship she was maintaining with divine

figures. The author is thus divided between two individuals, each of them multiple: 27 Angela in the first person, Angela in the third person, Angela the judge of her words; Arnoldo the scribe, Arnoldo the confessor, Arnoldo the writer (the one who sums up the first nineteen steps and who rewrites everything a second

time), Arnoldo verifying his text with Angela. At the end of the book, another voice lnteJVenes, in contrast to the severe

evaluation of Arnoldo's scribal work: After I, the brother scribe, wrote almost everything that one can find

in this little book, I asked the faithful of Christ to speak to God and to pray so that if I had written something false or useless He would deign, in His forgiveness, to reveal those errors and point them out to me, so that both of us could know the truth of God Himself The

faithful of Christ responded with these words: "Before you asked this of me I, myself, asked God to let me know if, in what I have said or what you have written there were false or useless words, so that at least I could confess. God answered me that everything that I have said and that you have transcribed is completely true and contains nothing false or useless."

Supernatural Invasions

Then He added: 'I place My seal on it' [sigillabo]. Since I didn't understand what He meant by 'I place My seal on it,' He explained these words by saying 'I will sign"' [firmabo]. This linguistic detail is important, for it raises the question of which language was used between God and Angela: either it was Latin, and in that case Christ glossed "to seal" (sigillare) with the verb "to sign" (/irmare, which is a Latin transliteration of the Italian word firmare ), or the language of the revelation was Italian, in which the verb sigillare exists but is of rare and scholarly use. This linguistic uncertainty adds another crack in the "me" of Angela, between the use of Latin or the vernacular language." The double mea.ning offirmare and ofsigillare, "to sign" and "to confirm," places God and Angela in analogous positions: Angela signs the book that is confirmed by Christ, whereas she confirms the divine truth uttered by Him. Thus, when Angela is questioned about the validity of the contrast between absolute power and power ordered by God (a very difficult question, which was clarified a fow years later by Duns Scotus), Angela confirms, through her experience and her visions, the validity of this distinction,

but without providing any proof or examples. She confirms and signs.

In a sense the ultimate authority guaranteeing Angela's testimony fell to God, but Angela virtually kept the last word and control of her own position by noting that, ifthere had been something false or useless, she would have pursued her confession (and we know that her entire book is a confession).

The disagreement in the two assessments is only partial:

Inhabitation and Scandal Angela's tale records the highs and the lows of her ~xperience, the succession of doubts and certainties. The divine voices are sometimes garn1lous and comforting, sometimes rare and obscure.

Angela's criticisms bear on the weakness of the transcription 1

The apogee of beatitude can lead immediately to pride and sin.

which remains true but insufficient. Arnoldo notes:

The Memorial indeed relates a conversion, but this conversion

She also said to me that I had watered down what God had said to her, for there had been many things that He had said to her that I could have written down, and that I hadn't done. "God," she said, "told me: 'Everything that has been written has been so in conformity with My will and comes from Me, comes out of Me.'

must endlessly be renewed and differs from the two great models of Christian conversion. In Paul a sudden shock brings on temporary blindness and induces a definitive transformation, whereas

for Augustine a long process is developed in doubt, through influenc~s, reflections, suggestions, but is completely and definitively

achieved after the famous episode of the Tolle, lege.

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Supernatural In·vasions

Angela, a victim of division and instability, finds her unicity

far as the church of Sa.int Francis; no one will notice. I want to

in the feeling of being chosen and loved. But this inhabitation of divine love opened a breach between her and her future selves, between her and her surroundings. This unbearable double breach led to the scandal of 1291, which constitutes the heart of the

speak to you on this path and my discourse will be constant. you will be able to do nothing except listen to me because I have bound you very tightly. And I will not leave you until you enter the church a second time. You will no longer have this specific consolation, but 1 will never abandon you .if you love me." In fact, during the entire journey the Holy Spirit never stops talking to Angela with tender words of love, which assures her of her own unicity: "I love you so much, and much rnorc than any other

book. As we have seen, Arnoldo 1 s work as a scribe began with that extraordinary event. Let's look at his account: The true reason for my undertaking is as follows. One_ day) the above-mentioned person, the faithful of Christ, ca1ne to the church of Saint Francis in Assisi where 1 was residing as a brother at the convent. She began to shriek very loudly the moment she was seated at the entrance to the church. 1, who was her confessor, her cousin and also her principal and special advisor, I felt great shan1e fi:om this, especially because a number of brothers who knew us both had come to hear her cry and shriek.

·woman in the valley of Spoleto.)) Angela's own speech derives

newm1ity from it. Since she still doubts that it is really the Holy Spmt and believes it is perhaps her vanity that is speaking in her and to her, she puts it to the test, on the suggestion of the Holy Spirit. She tries using a language of vanity by pretending to praise. herself for her spiritual superiority. In vain. Her interiority, mhab1ted by the Spirit, is obtaining the privilege of integrity and

Then Arnoldo notes that some witnesses looked at Angela with

un1c1ty.

"reverence,') but

When Angela returns to the church the second time, the Spirit "disappears, in such a soft and gradual way"; that is when the shocking event occurs: "I began to cry and to shriek without any shame: 'Love still unknown, why did you leave me" I could cry out and cried out nothing but: 'Love still unknown, whv, why h >"'Th e Lat1n . words are close to the transcription of the , cry:' w y.

nevertheless, my pride and my honor were so strongly wounded that, seized with en1barrassment and indignation, I turned away fro1n her; I waited for her to finish crying and shrieking and when she had gotten up from the porch and carr1c toward me, I had difficulty talking to her calmly. I said to her that henceforth she should never return to Assisi) since it was in that place that the Devil had taken

hold of her.

Shortly afterward Arnoldo returns to Foligno and asks about the causes of that attack. Angela at first refuses to explain; in mentioning his doubts about the episode, Arnoldo forces her to give her own account. Arnoldo takes detailed notes, hoping later to consult a wise and independent expert. Angela then gives a detailed explanation of the scandal of Assisi. A few weeks after her pilgrimage to Rome, after deciding to enter into the Third Order of Saint Francis, she goes to Assisi. At a crossroads she hears a voice, the Holy Spirit, which says to her: "I am going to accompany you and to inhabit you as

"Qyare? Qgare? Qyare?" But the force of the emotion contracts

those words into a completely private language, another sign of uni city: "Further, these words cried out were so strongly pressed m my throat that the words became unintelligible." Why, then, did she leave the church after her first visit? To have lunch. And this lunch opens the first possibility of separation since the encounter at the crossroads, whereas the Spirit, as a true

lover, says to her: "All your life, how you eat or drink or sleepeverythmg that you do will please me." But the crying at Assisi cannot be understood only as the simple plaints of the abandoned one. Im,:ndiately after her return to F oligno, she feels profoundly happy: I felt so at peace and so filled with divine sweetness that I couldn't find the words to express what was happening to me."

1

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Supcrnalural ln'uttsions

Chapter Si:1.ie11

'T'he crying, however, cannot be boiled down to a personal expression of subjectivity. 'l'he word used stridebatrt1 rare in J..,atin to designate a human cry) seems to refer to a sharp impersonal sound issued from an inert material and could be translated as ,-. "there was stridency in me" or "I resounded with cries." ,_fhis 1

cry could be compared witb the sharp sound of rhombes, those religious instrun1ents of Amerindian cultures that, when agi~ tated by the blowing of the wind, produce a raucous, continuous sound. ~fhe scandal, then, involves the public manifestation of a serious mental disturbance, in both senses of the word: from the exterior, before /\rnoldo's writing, Angela was perceived as being possessed by evil (Satanic or pathological); from the inside, the scandal represented a strangeness in the self that had to be proclaimed-for it was an election-but that could not be articulated, for it was a secret. The Assisi scandal is not without precedent in Angela's tale: on two occasions she publicly laughed about a preacher in Foligno. The Latin word is be!Jare, the transliteration of an Italian word that implies a somewhat uncontrolled laugh: it concerns an evil and aggressive mockery generally connected to an imitation or a parody. The scandal, an emblem of an irreducibly individual election, infused the entire book: Brother Arnoldo erased the suspicion of his convent; Cardinal Colonna, Angela's protector, who directed the cotnmission responsible for examining her work, "ran the risk of a scandal."

The Subjectivity ofPandora 1

(Jne rnight see Angela s story 'as an illustration of the emergence

of a new type of subjectivity. On the one hand, the thirteenth century introduced the design for what I call a "substantial individualisrn," refCrring to a famous definition of the person by Boethius, which was fully developed by Thomas Aquinas: "The person is the individuated substance of rational nature." Such a substance exists by itself and enjoys certain attributes-for example, individual natural rights. It is assured a certain continuity,

due to its rational nature. ()n the other hand, the "accidental individual/' illustrated by Angela, is dependent on a substance and suffers fron1 passivity and discontinuity as a result of her intermittent inhabitation by the divinity. rrhe deficiency of this subjectivity assures her susceptibility to divine invasion, as is seen in the exactly contemporary case of l\1arguerite Porete 1 a mystic and author of the Miroir des sirnples ilnies, who was accused of heresy and burned in Paris on June 1, 1310. With l\1arguerite, it was precisely the annihilation of the substantial self that divinized the si1nple soul. We may recall that two of the mernbcrs of the corntnission of 1320 had participated in Marguerite's trial. However, she rnight have experienced the same doubt as Clare or Angela: a few years earlier (}odfrey ofFontaines, a renowned Parisian rnaster, had approved of her book. In a period during which institutions were be~ng shaken up, the inspired otTered the awesome iJ.nage ofa religious individualism that tended to erase, indeed to reject, the Church's n1ediation between (}od and men. As we have said, the contractual causality

of the sacrament reduced the importance of the priesthood. Beginning in the 1290s the fear of this autonomy in the believer was crystallized in the clerical construction ofa new heresy, that of the Free Spirit-a heresy of which M_arguerite Porete was accused. 29

The followers of the Free Spirit were accused ofautotheism (they divinized then1selves by assimilating with the divinity present in them) and of antino1nianisn1 (their divinization dispensed the1n from all laws). The divinization of the devout soul or of the noble soul, derived from a theology of the Holy Spirit, corresponded well to a movement of thought that is found notably in the Dominican Meister Eckhart, himself pursued for heresy despite his great reputation. But a disdain for the laws or the deliberate practice of transgressions was borrowed from ancient scheinas and added to the files of accusation. The situation of the inspired candidates for divination tnight suggest that of fallen angels. This is indeed what struck Duns Scotus in his Lectura of Peter Lombard's Sentences at the end of the thirteenth eentmy. As he often did, the "subtle Doctor"

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borrowed the arguments of his colleague Peter of John Olivi. Olivi, as we saw in chapter 4, considered the sin of angels to be a love of self and no longer pride. Duns Scotus clarified this analysis by showing that ill will proceeded from an immoderate desire for beatitude, the various traits of which corresponded rather precisely to the suspicions the Church raised about the mystics: the angel ''loves God more insofar as he is present in it than God in hin1self"; he wishes for an "acceleration ofbeatitude" [acceleratio beatitudinis], which he wishes to obtain through his own pure nature [ex puris naturalibus]; and thus, "he uses God" [sic ut uteretur D eo l :lO It was precisely against such an acceleration of beatitude that, in the r33os, John XXII instituted decrees that denied the possibility of beatific vision, that is, of a direct vision of God, the source of beatitude before the Last Judgment. Saintly souls, even separated from their bodies, had to wait. The old pontiffs propositions caused a scandal, and his successor, Benedict XII, reestablished the hope for beatific vision, the guarantee of a graded relationship with God. But John XXII had signified that the new mystical Pandoras carried within them a fearsome box that was soon to be opened-·and demons were going to escape from it.

Epilogue Around r320, demons seemed ready to swoop down on humans. Tales of possession and invocation became credible and significant. We have uncovered a transformation here: the end of a confidence in the confinement of demons. 'fhree essential traits mark this shift. First, modes ofaction and relationships with people had been discovered among the population of demons, modes that endowed them with effectiveness-the pact and the Satanic sacrament, which tapped into the natural powers of demons. The reassuring theme of the diabolical illusion was losing ground. A second trait confirmed this extension of activity: the victim.s and accomplices of the evil work were no longer the vetule, the lit-

tle old credulous ones, but all human beings in their fragile and porous constitution and in their openness to the supernatural. Finally, strong eschatological tendencies explained the annunciative signs of the liberation of demons into this world. Any uncertainty of the deciphering was compensated for by a process of research and repression that seemed accepted in the Church. This first result in itself appears important. Indeed, witch hunts seem to have come out of Scholastic demonology. The great manias in the Malleus Maleftcarum are primarily narrative, but the doctrinal part of the manual does not exceed the capabilities of Scholastic demonology. One must thus reject two

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Epilogue

contrasting historiographical attitudes that dominated this field of research: some have attempted to place the witch hunt beyond the medieval world; others, by contrast) have turned it into the direct expression of an oppressive and repressive tendency in the Church and in the monarchical governments of the Middle Ages. Scholastic rationality constituted neither a principle for a resistance to the madness nor the cause of a distraction; at most one can say that the incessant pursuit of the inquest, the continuous concern with reviewing traditional categories, and the growing individualization of a search for the truth had opened dangerous fields of reflection and had awakened ancient demons. The construction of a science of rnan, a true innovation of Scholasticism, was paid for at this price. We must still, of course, attempt to explain the gap of a century between the constitution of a new demonology and a new procedure, on the one hand, and the beginning of the systematic persecution of magicians and sorcerers, on the other. How were the convergent virtualities obsenred in this book carried out? In the first chapter we noted the reticence of the civil, and sometimes ecclesiastical, authorities to resort to the inquisitional process. The anti-inquisitional reaction is well documented, but it does not explain everything. The civil tribunals, so active in the sixteenth century, could have grabbed onto the struggle against demons. Our hypothesis is that the new demonology brought only plausible arguments and produced a complex and conditional statement that we formulate as follows, by joining together the various new propositions that we have discovered in this book: When the time of danger approaches, demons have a huge potential for destroying the Christian community through individuals who are sensitive to supernatural influence and are able to form themselves into heretical and avowed networks of accomplices of Satan. In this hypothesis, the hypothetical or temporal condition indicated by the conjunction "when" was universally acceptable and corresponded to a common knowledge about the end of time. Those who thought of an imminence of the end were in the minority (the Spiritual Franciscans and the Beguins,

Epilosue

notably). During the fourteenth century, such a conclusion appeared increasingly close to reality; of course, one n1ust men-

tion the great plague of 1348 and the common recurrence of that scourge. Granted, recent historiography has chosen to emphasize

the absence of visible (notably aesthetic) traces of traumatisms that followed the great carnage of the plague, and we must think rather of a progressive accumulation of signs that rendered the imminence of the end more probable. Only the economists of the present time can grasp the amplitude and the duration of it, but the sharp reversal of fortune in the 1310s, .inaugurating the "little glacial period" of the world, had already sprinkled the universe with bad signs. At the end of the century, the great schism of 1378 gave meaning to one of the terms of our thesis, concerning the destruction of the Christian community. The West had lived through many pontifical divisions, but this one affected an institution that was much more present in the practical lives of Christians; furthermore, the support of different national churches and monarchies for a given pope endowed the image with a profound, perhaps irremediable division. Agostino Paravicini Bagliani's hypothesis that the councils of Constance and Basel, which put an end to the schism, played an important role in the dissemination of a new doctrine on sorcery supports this interpretation. The radical renewal of the theme of the diabolical pact led to the hypothesis of the existence of heretical networks, constituted into irreducible enemies of Christian unity, of which the sorcerer and the invoker of demons were only examples. The idea of a threatening covert equivalency of heresies was confirmed during the fourteenth century by a growing certainty about the impossibility of conversion. The Waldensians, after more than two centuries of error, proliferated throughout Europe. Islam endured and spread. The Jews held on. They were, moreover, the principal victims of this new fear of the failure of conversion. A wonderful book by Michael Shank has shown how the establishment of the University of Vienna, at the end of the century, attracted Parisian doctors (notably Henry of Langenstein),

203

204

Epilogue

Epilogue 1

who Joined a national pontifical obedience; these doctors) at the t;nfortunate end of a Scholastic career, brought with the.m assertions on the complete impossibility of rationally proving the ,_frinitarian propositions in theology. Aristotelian logic, the

only common language of the three religions of the Book, was silenced. lt is possible that the terrible laws on the !impieza de sangre in fifteenth-century Spain corresponded to this certainty that the conversion of]ews could only be apparent and false. A century later, c;eorge of Hungary, a Christian frorn Transylvania and a Dominican who had been held captive by the Turks for tvventy years, published the same certainty on the absolute irnpossibility of the conversion of Muslims, in a tre~tise that often 2 cited Joachim of Fiore on the imminence of the End ofTime. The historical geography of persecutions might confirm this equivalency of the uncovertables. A.s we know, the first systematic pursuit of sorcerers occurred at the beginning of the fifteenth century in the Alpine Arc. Two maps drawn by Pierrette Paravy give a precise spatial representation of the judicial action in the Dauphint: one details the location of Waldensian communities; the other, the places of sorcerers' activity. These crin1inal zones (or zones of heresy, according to the equivalency introduced between sorcery and heresy) exactly covered all of the high Alpine valleys. Furthermore, the distribution of the tvvo heresies is complementary1 with not very much overlap. Moreover, according to the observations of Guido Castelnuovo, contiguous Savoy produced almost no witch trials at the same time, even though its border with the Dauphine represented the arbitrary nature of medieval boundaries and was sin1ply the other of two sides of the same valley. By contrast, tbe other border region of Savoy, the Valais, was also a dense zone of sorcery. What can \'Ve conclude from these observations? 1'hc similar distribution ofWaldensians and sorcerers can be explained either bv internal causes-the Waldensian ethos didn't tolerate magical p,ractices, or the cohesion of these little communities precluded divisions that might engender the aggressive practices of black

1nagic~or

by external causes: episcopal repression considered every inhabited rnountain to be a dangerous refuge for dissidence) and where there were no Waldensians who were easily recognizable, the judges and investigators meticulously sought other forrns of errors and found thcm as they could find then1 anywhere. 1'his perception of the n1ountains as places of retllge for heresy was partially rnirrored in the Pyrenees, wherei from west to east, there was a zone of sorcery (the Labourd, though not v~ry mountainous); then, beyond the Bearn, a land of Cathars, 1

1

Waldensians, and Beguins (the current department of Aricgc); and continuing on toward an eastern Languedoc taken over by Beguins (as far as Narbonne and Montpcllier). The Savoyard and Btarnais exceptions should give us pause: the Savoy, in all of the Alps, was the only region to have a strong secular power. The l)auphint was in the process of integrating into the kingdorn of F'rance, in the last moments of a weak seigneury, whereas the Valais was subjected to the bishops of Lausanne. In the Pyrenees, the Bearn also constituted the only place of intense and direct political don1ination. Does this mean that strong civil powers protected the populations from persecutory n1adness? 'rhis rule suffers fro1n too many exceptions to be acceptable. Furthermore, although the Beam was unaffected by religious dissidence or sorcery, it produced the only example of a caste in Europe, with the Cagot population. Our hypothesis, difficult to prove, is that the Cagots, frequently named "Christians," constituted the rernains of a dissident religlous group that was transposed into a hereditary category during the fourteenth century. In other words, the .civil power was satisfied with social stratification, whereas the Church intended to purge societies through the individual pursuit of dissidents. Indeed, the great climax of the Central Middle Ages could well be the simultaneous and concurrent emergence of politico-religious individualisrns and powerful sovereignties. 'rhe sovereign state intended to transfOrm individuals into subjects or citizens but encountered the faithful of God or the her~chmen

20s

206

E'pilogue

of Satani asse1nbled in societies of the elect or in sects. The long period of the hunt for dissidents and sorcerers (the fifteenth to the beginning of the seventeenth centu~; th~s cove.red t.he slow and bloody development of the adage Cu.1us reg10, e.1us reh. gio" (To each country its religion). A sad epilogue to Scholastic

universalism!

Notes Abbreviations r. Coulon-ClCmencet: John XXII, Lettres secretes et curia/es du pape jean XXII {rJI6-r334} relatives a la France, ed. A. Coulon and S.

Clcmencet (Paris, r965). 2. DD: Thomas Aquinas, De malo, in De demonibus, :Edition LConinc, vol. 23 (Rome, 1982). 3. l'CCM· II processo di canonizzazione de Chiara de Montefa!co, ed.

Enrico M.enesto (Florence, 1984). 4. ])Cf_A: Analecta .F'ranciscana: Processus Canonization is et Legendae varie Sancti Ludovici OFM, episcope Tholosani, vol. 7 (Qyaracchi, 1951). 5. PCNT: Nicola Occhioni, I! processo per la canonizzazione di S. Nicolas de Tolentino (Rome, 1984).

6. PCPM: Peter Morrone (trial): F. X. Seppelt, "Die Akten des I(anonisationsprozess in dem Codex zu Sul.mona," in Monumenta Coelestiniana: Quellen zur Geschichte des Papstes Coelestin V (Paderborn, 1921), 249-50. 7. PCTA(N): Thomas Aquinas (canonization trial): Sancti Thomas Aquinatis vitae fontes praecipuae, ed. Angelico Fern1a (Alba: Edizione Dominicane, 1968). 8. PCTC:Acta sanctorum, October, 1:585-696.

9. PCYH: A. de La Borderie,J. Daniel, the R. P. Perquis, and D. Tempier, Monuments originaux de l'histoire de saint Yves (Saint-Brieuc, 1887).

208

Notes to Pages

Preface r. I am referring here to the work of Walter Stephens, cited in the introduction, and that of Armando Maggi (Satan's Rhetoric: A Study of Renaissance De1nonology 1 2oor), which I have not cited due to the different time period and subject of Maggi's work. 2. See the work of Robert Lerner, David Burr, Ed\vard Peters, and many others, among medievalists alone. 3. Alain Boureau, ed. and annotator, Le pape et !es sorciers: Une consultation de jean XXII sur la mat,-rie en I320 (1nanuscript B.A. V. Borghese 348) (Rome: Ecole Fran~aise de Rome, 2004), iii-146. Introduction r. Before it was completed by a second inquest in F ossanovai November ro-20, IJ2L 2. Sancti ThomasAquinatis vitae/on/es praecipuae, ed. Angelico Ferrua (Alba: Edizione Dominicane, 1968), 3or4 [hereafter PCTA(N)]. 3. Sec, for example, the superb text edited by Richard Kieckhcfer in his book Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of'' the f'~fteenth Century (University Park: Pennsylvania State lJniversity Press, 1998). For the continuation of this type of practice in the Renaissance, see Jean-Michel Sallmann) Chercheurs de trfsors et jetcuses de sorts: La quete du surnatural aNaples au XVIe sii:cle (Paris: Aubier, 1986). 4. This is the case in the trial of Saint Nicholas of'f olentino, which \Ve look at later in this volume. 5. In Alan C. Kors and Edward Peters, eds., Witchcrqft in Europe II00-I700: A Documentary Elistory (London, r973), 82; see also nevv edition (Philadelphia, 2001).-TRANS. 6. Margaret Murray, The Witch Cult in Western Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, r921). 7- Robert Mandrou, Magistrats et sorciers en France au XVII e sii:cle: Analyse de p.rychologie historique (Paris: Plon, 1968). 8. Carlo Ginzburg, Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 9. Stuart Clark, Thinking with De1nons: The Idea ~f Witchcraft in Early Medie·val Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). The summary rve just presented refers only to the great causalities, without incorporating the countless more descriptive works that have brought much to a knowledge of sorcery.

Notes to F;ages 5-II

Io. In this se~sc, I share the points of view of Walter Stephens, IJe~on Lov~rs:· Wttchcrqft, Sex, and the Cris£r ef Be/iif(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002) 1 Vlrho, however, focuses on a later

period. Chapter One L Th: work is also signed by Jacob Sprenger) but recent historiography attributes the writing of the book to I'Ienry Institoris alone. [Sec I(ors and Peters, Witchcrqft in Europe) u3-89.-'rRANs.J 2. Bernard Gui, Manuel de !'inquisiteur, ed. G. Mollat (Paris: Belles-Lettrcs, 1926-27),

3· ~ierr~tte Paravy, De la chriitiente romaine a fa Riforrne en r:,auph:ne: EvJques,fidi:!es et diiviants (vers I34o~vers .r53o) (Rome: Ecole Frans::a1se de Rome, 1993). 4· L 'imaginaire du sabbat: Edition critique des texts /es plus anciens (.r430 c. -I440 c.), collected by Martone Ostorero, Agostino Paravicini Bahliani, I(athrin Utz Tremp, in collaboration with Catherine Chene (Lausanne, 1999).

5· Richard Kieckhefcr, European Witch Triah: Their f;II~-XVe s1ecle) _(Pans, 2002), 37/85; and iden1, "Les intellectuels, l Eghse et la magic clans la premiere moitiC du XIVe sieclc," master's thesis, Paris, 1990.

9· "Qpod cum morte ftdus incunt et pactum faciunt cum inferno. Demonibus namque immolant, hos ado rant." 10. Liber Sextus, V.ii, chap. 8. IL. ?ratiani J?ecr:tu1n, cause 26, question 5, chap. 12, in Corpus Juris Canonict, ed. Emil Friedberg (Leipzig) 1879), voL 1, col. 1080. [Sec Kors and Peters, Witchcraft in Europe, 28-31.-TRANS. J

209

2Io

;Votes

f(J

Pages

I2-I5

r2. Sec Alain Boureau, "De la fClonie ~- la haute trahison. l.Jn episode: I_,a trahison des clercs (version du XIle siecle)," Genre liuniain r6-r7 (i988): 267-·9r. r3. Nicholas Eyrneric, J)irectoriu1n lrtquisitorurn (Venice, 1595), XLIJI.9, pp. 341-42. [See !(ors and Peters, Witchcrqfi in .Europe, 8492.·-TRANS .]

r4. "Simpliciter et de plano ac sine strcpitu ct .figura judicii ... appellatione re1nota." Letter published in Jean-Marie Vidal, Bu/laire de /'Inquisition Jranraise (Par.is, 1913), no. 284, pp. 403-4. I). "Nonnulli ct.iam quandoquc literati in hoc se opponunt, pretcnde.ntes id ad tuun1 non expcctarc officiu1n secundum canonicas sanctiones." 16. c;uido 'ferreni, Sununa de haeresibus (Venice, 1525). i7. Sec Jean-Patrice Boudet, "Les condamnations de la magie a Paris en r398," Revue Mabi!lon, n.s. 12, 73 (2001): r2r-57. r8. In a letter of 1336 addressed to the official of Avignon, Benedict XJJ, successor of John XXll, again ranks spells among the crin1cs that affect the faith (Vidal, Bu/faire, no. 153, pp. 229-30). In 1405, Benedict XIII nullified the privileges of the inhabitants of the diocese of Puy ,..vho claimed that the inquisitor of Carcassonne could not pursue them for casting evil spells (Vidal 1 Bu/faire, no. 332, pp. 473-74). r9. 'I'he first edition was prepared by Jean Chappuis in 1500. For the constn1ction of the two collections, sec A. M. Stickler, Historia Juris Canonici: IrZJtitutiones Acadamicae, vol. r: flistoria Fontiunz (R in secundum librurn sententiarum,

ed. B. Jansen, l:z72-90 (O;iaracchi, 192.1). 44. See the appendix "De effectibus baptismi parvulorun1" to the question "Qtaeritur an Christus plene satisfecerit pro nobis et meruerit nobis gratiam et gloriam, quod est quaercre an sit pe:rfectus red emptor et mediator hominum," in Peter ofJohn Olivi, Quaestiones de incarnatione et redemptione, ed. P.A. Emmen, 153-54 (Grottaferrata, 1981). Chapter .Four r. Matt. 4:1-u and Luke 4:1-13. 2. We know that the word devil (diabolus in Latin, from the Greek diabolos, the "divider" in Greek) transposes the flebrew Satan. 3. JCrOme Baschet, a great connoisseur of diabolical images from the Middle Ages, notes that the devil is almost completely absent from Christian images until the ninth century; Baschet, ".Diable," in Dictionnaire raisonnC du Moyen A'ge, ed. Jacques Le Goff :ind JeanClaude Schmitt (Paris: Fayard, 1999), 260. 4. Gregory the Great, Dialogues, ed. A. de VogiiC, Sources Chretiennes 260 (Paris: Cerf, 1979), l.4, 7, pp. 42-44. 5. Mark 5:6-13.

6. Jerome, Super Mattheum, IV, chaps. 26, 54, in Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. 26, col. 208; Corpus Christianorum [CCL]: Series .Latina (Turnholt: Brepols, 1953), 77:258. 7. Thomas Aquinas, De malo, question r6, in De demonibus, f,,dition Leonine (Rome, r982), 23:z79-334 (henceforth DD, followed by the article number and page number in this edition). For all questions regarding dating in 1"homas Aquinas's work, and for putting his doctrine into perspective, we follow the essential work of J.P. Torrell, Initiation a saint Thoma:; d'Aquin: Sa personne et son oeuvre (Fribourg/Paris: :Editions Univcrsitaires/Cerf, 1993; expanded ed., 2002). 8. We should note the extreme paucity of the contemporary bibliography on Scholastic demonology. Whereas almost all the themes and notions dealt with by Thomas Aquinas have been the object of constant research, the only study on demons that we know of in Saint Thomas consists of a monograph of 1940, intended to cleanse Thomas of all responsibility in the witch hunts of the end of the Middle Ages:

225

226

Notes to Pages

96~98

Charles Edward Hopkin, The Share q(ThornasAquinas in the Growth qfWitchcraft (Philadelphia, 1940i several reprints). 9. Pierre de Falco, Questions diJput!:es ordinaireJ, ed. A. ]. Gondras (Leuven/Paris: Nauwclaerts, 1968), questions 2I-24, 3:722842. IO. Olivi, Quaestiones in .'iecundurn librum Jententiarum, questions 42-48, I:702-63. IL Jean C2.!-_1idort 1 Commenlaire sur !es "Sentences": Reportation, vol. r, ed. Jean-Pierre Muller, Studia .Ansclmiana 47 (Rome, 1961). 12. Notably the commentary by Gilles of Rome, written 'in the 1270s, on the second book of Peter Lombard's Sentence:;. 13. Naturally, the question of the reality of Cathar dualism remained hotly disputed; what is important to us here is the notion Jacques Fournier had of it. 14. "Qyintus, quod malus angelus in principio suac creationis fuit malus, et numquam fuit nisi malus." Chartulariu111 Uni·versitatis Parisien:;is, ed. H. Denifle and E. Chatelain (Paris, I889), vol. r, no. I2r8, p. 17r. 15. Lombard, Sentences, bk. 2, dist. 3, chap. 4., a.2, 1:343-44. Peter l,ombard added that the proponents of this opinion based their belief on two phrases of Saint Augustine, which he cited in the following paragraph. In fact, as pointed out by the editor of Peter Lombard, Ignatius Brady, the master of the Sentences confused two opinions, one that asserted evil creation and the other that) following Augustine, evoked a fall that came very soon after creation. 16. DD, 4, 298. lJ. See the beginning of the introduction to this volu1nc. IS. Bernard Silvestris, De mundi universitate, ed. C. S. Barach and J. Wrobel (Innsbruck: Watncr, 1876), ll.5.191-95. pp. 45-46. 19. Guerric of Saint-Qyentin, Quaestiones de quolibet, ed. W. H. Principe and J. Lord, with an introduction by J.-P. Torrell (1'oronto, 2002), appendix 2 (de aureola), 401. Guerric was no doubt one of the first masters to practice the quodlibetical question, that essential exercise of Scholasticism: tvvice a year, a master responded publicly to any question asked by anyone. 20. Rev. 12:12. 21. For a masterful analysis of the philosophical role of the angels in Scholasticism, see Tiziana Suarez-Nani, Les anges et la philosophie:

iVotes to Pages 99·"1I6 Subjectivite etfOnction cos1nologique des substances sCjJarCes afa fin du XII!e sidcle (Paris: Vrin, 2002). ·

22. DD, I, 28L 23. DD, 3, 295. I,

24. On the use of the word arreptus, sec the following chapter. .DD, 282.

, ..25. 1bomas Aquinas, De substantiiS separatzS, ed. H. F. Dondaine, Ed1t1.on Leonine (Ron1e 1982), 40:41-80. . 26. S~c Pasq~ale Porro, F'orme et mode/ii di durata nel pensiero medteva!e: L aevum, ii te111po discreto, la categoria "quando" (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1996). 27. At least this is the date vve believe can be established; in Bourcau, Theologie, science et censure. 28. William de la Mare, Correctorium, ed. Palemon Glorieux, in Le Correctorum Corruptorii "Quare" (.I(ain, 1927). 9· DD, 7, 317· 30. On ~strological in1ages in the Middle Ages, see the important work by We1ll-Parot, "lniages astro!ogiques" au Moyen Age; and idem, "Intellectuels." 2

31. Qyidort, Commentaire, 97. 32. Pierre de Falco, Questions disputtes ordinaires, question pp. 734-35.

21

,

33· Olivi, Quaestiones in secundum !ibrum sententiarurn, question 2, 4 p. 718. 34. Ibid., 719-20. .3~· Andrea A. Robiglio, L 'impossibile volere: Tomma.w d'Aquino, i tomtsft e la volontii (Milan: Vitae Pensiero, 2002). . . 36 .. See. A.l~in Boureau, "Les cinq sens clans l'anthropologie cogr11t1ve franc1scame de Bonaventure a Jean Peckham et Pierre de Jean Olivi," Micrologus IO (200 2 ): 27194 . 37. Olivi, Quaestiones in secundum !ibrum sententiarum, 7 9. 4 38. See Boureau, Thtologie, science et censure. 39. Su1nn1a theologica, II, 758. . 40. Remarkable word play by Olivi [the phrase "for the product10~ of pears"]:. the piramidatio designates both the process of producing pears [p1ru1n] and the pyramidal and hierarchical order. Ibid.,

759. 41.

Ibid., 753.

227

228

Notes to Pages £18-£23

42 . 'fc1npier,

Candantnation parisienne 1 n8-19. C?ne of the anuscripts of the fourteenth century includes a marginal annota111 tion: "contra Thomam." See Roland .Hissette) Enqui!te sur /es 219 articles conda111 nf5 cl Paris le 7 niars 1277 (l,ouvain/Paris: Publications (_Tnivcrsitaries/Vandcr-C)ycz, r977), 262-63. On the bitterness and the complexity of the debate on this point, sec Ludvvig Hi~dl 1 :Non est nialitia in voluntate: _Die magistrale Entschcidung der Pa.riser fhcologen von r285/r 2 86 in der Diskussion des Johanne~ de Polliaco, ?Yodl. I, q. ro," Arrhi·ves d'liistoire })octrinale et l.itti!raire du Mayen Age 66

(1999): 245-97Chapter F'i·ve . ._ . .. , r. rf'he trial was published in A.. de La Bordene, J. l)an1el, Fr. Perquis, and 1). Tempier, Monu111ents originaux de f'histoire .de saint Yves (Saint-Brieut\ r887) (henceforth J->(,171-l). The anecdote 1s found

on 419-20. . . . Studies on the canonization trials owe much to the p1oncenng 2 work of Andre Vauchez, La saintetf en Occident aux derniers si£cles du MoycnAge d'11pr£s !es proo}s de canonisation et !es docu111ents hag1:ogr~ph'.'qu~s (Ron1e: :Ecole Fran~aisc de Rome, 1981), which, beyond its intnns1c interest relaunched the publication of sources. . rial of Peter Morrone; text published in F. X. Seppelt, "Die 3 Aktcn des J(anonisationsprozess in dem Codex zu Sulmona," in !Ylonuntenfa (7oelestiniana: Quellen zur Geschichte des Papstes Coe!estin V

'f

(Padcrborn, r92r), 24r50 (hereafter PCPM). . W cleave aside the case in the preli1ninary inquest into Raymond 4 of Penafort, held in 1318. This very thin file contains only thirteen n1iraclcs which are concerned exclusively with the healing of bodily illnc;ses and resurrections. The material was edited by JosC Rius Serra, in Raymond of Penafort, Opera 01nnia, 3:205--65. A sup~lernen­ tarv list of rniraclcs that arc difficult to date, but were earlier than y;. , incntions a single case of loss of consciousness in a quasi alienatus 1 1 man (310). . rfhe thin file of the trial of Peter Morrone (Pope Celestine V), 1 coin Piled in 1306, presents cases of three demoniacs and one madman

[infatuatus]: ibid., 230, 249, 254, and 315. 6. As Jean-Marie Fritz rcn1arks in .Le discours du Jou au Mayen Age (Paris: PlJF, 1992), 271, n. 3, the Church al"'.ays attempted to distinguish carefully between madness and possession. A testimony

Notes to Pages

123··~£29

included in the inquest of'I'rCguier concerning Yves l--ICloI)' shovvs this confusion, which enabled 1nadncss to be attributed to a rnoral cause: Michel de Fontarebie beca1ne 1nad after spitting in the hand of a poor person who was begging for alrns (J)CYJ-1, 421). J. Published as Processus Canonizationis et l,egendae ·varie Sancti Ludo·vici OFM, ejJiJcope Tholosani: Analecta fi'ranciscana, vol. 7 (Qyaracchi, 1951) (henceforth PCLA). 8..Article 21, PCLA, 13. ()ne 1night wonder if the constant rivalry of the Franciscan and Do1ninican Orders did not inspire this episode, which recalls the apparition of a dcinonical cat in Fanjeaux. 9. PCLA, 214. 10. By contrast, another mad person, described as an1enJ and not as cle1noniata, cornmitted blasphen1y. PCIA, 218. rr. On this episode see Boureau, Thi!ologie, science et censure. 12. Sec David Carpenter, "St. Thornas Cantilupe: His Political Career," in St. 7!.101nas, Bishop o/·Herefort!.· E\rays in His Honour, ed. M. Jancey, 57-81 (Hereford, 1982); John R. Maddicott, Simon de Mont.fort (Ca1nbridge: Ca1nbridgc lJnivcrsity Press, 1994). 13. Bull Unigenitu.1jiliu.1, ed. G. Fontanini, Codex Con.1titution111n, lJJ. r4. Partial publication of the canonization trial of 'rhon1as Cantilupc in Acta Jancton1Jn 1 October, 1:585-696 (henceforth PC7L'). Vauchez has published the Su1111narit11n of the trial and fragn1ents of the inquest in Sainte!!?, 63r-52 and passim. I5. What was at stake politically in the canonization appears in a miracle in the initial inquest, which was not retained by the cornn1issioners in r307: a n1ad1nan received the advice to go to 'fhon1as's grave. In his wanderings he answered that this saint seen1cd to have the satne power as Si1non de Montfort, whom one designated as a saint and who was buried in Evesham. l''he popular cult of the great rebel baron was in fact supported by docun1cnts of the ti111e. 16. PCTC, 686. IJ. Augustine, (;ity ~f·c;od, 2:4. 18. PCTC, 632. 19. PCTC, 67r78. 20. Vauchez, Saintcti!. 2r. The entire text of the local inquest \Vas published in Nicola Occhioni, II processo per la canonizzazione di S. Nicolas de Tolentino (Rome, 1984), 148 (henceforth PCN'I).

229

230

Notes to Pages I29-133

22 . Many popular traditions attribute some danger to the shadow of the walnut tree. 23 . PCNT, 260. Note in passing the almost contractual tactics of this pilgrim: half of the amount is paid at the time of the visit to the grave and the other half upon his return to his house, where the healing takes place. 24. PCNT, 336. 25. PCNT, 278-86. 26. On medieval suicide, see the recent (and still incomplete) commentary of Alexander Murray, Suicide in the Middle Ages,. vol. r: The Violent against The111selves, and vol. 2: The Curse on Self-Murder (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998 and 2000). 27. PCNT, 195-96. 28. PCNT, 598. 29. PCNT, 580. 30. Testimony of Nucius Rogerii (PCNT, 55r) and of Nastasia Malgotti (356). 31. PCNT, 4. 32. PCNT, 265-66. 33. PCNT, 445. 34. PCNT, 303.

35. Rainaldo de Brunforte: 'fhis concerns a known historical personage, a local lord who had led a ferocious struggle against San Gincsio, notably in the years r274/8. See I. Walter, "Brunforte, Rainaklo da," in Dizionario biograjico degli Italiani, r4:588-91 (Rome, 1972). PCNT, 328.

36. See Jean-Claude Schmitt, Les revenants: Les vivants et !es morts dans la soci£t£ m£di£vale (Paris, 1994). [English edition: Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society, trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan (Chicago: lJniversityofChicago Press, 1998).TRANs.J 37. Angelo Clareno: see Lydia von Auw, Angelo Clareno et !es spirituels italiens (Rome: Storia e Litteratura, 1979), 7 and 39, n, 20. Peter of Macerata: G. 'Pagnani, San Liberato e ii suo convento, con ampi cenni sui rapporti tra i communi di S. Genesio e Sernano e ii movimento degli Spirituali nelle Marche (Falconara, 1962). Scholars have often wondered about

the meaning of this name chosen by Peter of Macerata and whether it designates his having been exorcised successfully (liberatus).

Notes to Pages 133-139

38. This is the hypothesis of Sylvain Piron. 39. In this logic of suspicion, Clare got a taste of her own medicine: during the canonization inquest, she was accused by the Franciscan 'fhomas Bono, chaplain of the monastery, of imposture and of frequenting heretics. See II processo di canonizzazione de Chiara de Montifalco 1 ed. Enrico Menesto (Florence, 1984), 434-36 (henceforth PCCM). Sec also Andre Vauchez, "La naissance du soupyon: V raie et fausse saintete a~~ dern~ers siCcles du Moyen Age, " in A. Vauchcz, Saints, prophetes et ·vts1onna1res: Le pouvoir surnaturel au Mayen Age , 208-19 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1999). 40. PCCM, 45. 41. PCCM, 21. 42. In this tale, madness and demonic possession are not at all distinguished, which further emphasizes the novelty of the distinctions made in the canonization trials of the beginning of the fourteenth century. . 4?· Thomas of Cantimpre, Bonum universa!e de apibus, lI.57, 68, cited in the translation by Henri Platelle, Exemples du livre des abeilles, 26r1o. 44. Ibid., 20-21. 45· The tale was published in the Sanctuariurn of Mombrizius, September. 46. PCNT, witness 20, pp. 135-3747' PCNT, witness 21, pp. r38-41. 48. PCNT, witness 22, pp. 141-42 . . 49· Since several nuns with the same first names testify, l add ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd) to the names, according to their order of appearance in the acts of the inquest. 'fhis homonymy is responsible for introducing many errors into the index of the edition and also the erroneous statement that the same nun testified twice. 50. PCNT, witness 124, p. 326. 51. PCNT, witness 123 1 pp. 322-26. 52. The demons and the devout shared this familiar way of addressing the saint, using a scornful or affectionate diminutive. Peter Morrone was called Petruccius by a demoniac (PCPM, 249). On May 3, 1310, during the informal depositions ofwitnesses against Boniface VIII, Nottus Bonacursi asserted that Boniface blasphemed against the Virgin Mary by saying: "I do not believe in Mariola" and by calling her

23I

.z?2

Notes to Pages 139-I52

"Mariolai Mariola 1 Mariola"; text edited by Coste, Boniface VIII en prods, 532. PCCM, 500. 53. Johanna: PC:NT, witness 293, p. 292; Bellaflos: PCN1: witness

35, P· i6r. S4· PCTA(N), 22, 232, 235, 243, 2441 253, 283. In 13r7 the pope called the accotnpliccs ofl-Iugues Geraud "sons ofBeliaL" Boniface VIII hi1nself is called a "son of Bclial"; text edited

55.

by Coste, Boniface VIII en prod:c, 435.

Chapter Six L CorpusjuriJ Canoniri (Friedberg), voL 2, col. n84. 2. Gratian, Decretum, case 33 1 question 2.22.llL. 3. On the belated fortune ofGuillaun1e's ideas on the two forms of communion, I refer to A. Boureau, "Le calicc de saint Donat: Legcndc, autorite et argument dans la controversc hussite (1414-1415)," Mediivales

16-17 (1989): 209-15. 4. Guillaume de Montlauzun, Apparatus C'onstitutionum Cletnentis Papae Quinti (Caen, 1512), 84. 5. Aline Rousselle, Croire et guirir: La.foi en Gaule dans l'Antiquite tardive (Paris: Fayard, 1990), 13r53· 6. The treatise that is someti1nes attributed to Alcher is edited by Migne arr1ong the works of Augustine, in Patrologia Latina, vol. 40,

cols. 779ff. 7. Sec Isaac de l'Etoile, De anilna, in Migne, Patro!ogia Latina, vol. 194, cols. 1876;7; and Bonaventure, Itinerarizun, in Opera 01nnia, 5:297 (Qyaracchi, 1898). See "Ame (son fond, ses puissances et sa structure d'aprCs les mystiques)," in Dictionnaire de spiritualiti (Paris: G. Beauchesne, 1932-95) 1 voL r, cols. 444 and 446. 8. See A. Gardcil, La Jtructure de l'irn1e et !'experience 1nystique (Paris: Vrin, 1927). 9. Richard of Saint-Victor, Benjarninus Minor. ro. See A. Boureau, "La chute commc gravitation rcstrcinte: Saint Anselme de CantorbCry et le mal," Nou·ve!le Revue de Psychanalyse 38 (1988): 129-45. n. Gratian, Derretuni,, prima pars, VI.r, in Corpus Juris Canonici (Friedberg), voL r, cols. 9-10. 12. See The .Prose Salernitan Questions, edited from a Bodleian Manuscript: An Anonyn1ous Collection dealing with Science and Medicine

Notes to Pages r52-r6r Written b;1 an Englishman c. I200, with an Appendix of Ten Related Collections, ed. B. Lawn (London 1 1979). I refer to this volume by in