Satan hérétique: Histoire de la démonologie (1280–1330) (review)

In this rich and informative study, Alain Boureau breathes new intellectual life into an old task—to explain the major European witch hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by reference to conditions in late medieval European society. Such founding fathers of the field of witchcraft studies as the American Henry Charles Lea and the German Joseph Hansen argued that the mentalities and legal procedures that supported early modern witch-hunting stemmed directly from the repressive qualities of the medieval church. More recently, a number of European and American scholars (including myself ) have focused on the earliest witch hunts and major treatises on witchcraft from the fifteenth century. It is widely recognized that these trials and particularly these treatises were premised on authorities’ overt hereticization of demonic magic and even more fundamentally on a growing concern over the scope and reality of demonic power in the world. Boureau proposes to examine the origins of these conditions. The critical shift, he argues, came during the pontificate of John XXII (1316–34), and was rooted in a number of intellectual developments stretching back into the late thirteenth century.

That medieval Christian authorities would regard the performance of demonic magic to be heretical might seem to require no explanation. In fact, however, this position necessitated a dramatic overhaul of earlier opinion. Heresy entails incorrect belief, whereas the performance of demonic magic is an act into which incorrect beliefs had to be read. Moreover, the presumption that this act would produce real effects by which one could work harm in the world required that demons be deemed capable of doing more than just tempting humans into error. Both of these conditions are fairly clearly developed in John XXII’s important decree Super illius specula (1326), in which he summarily excommunicated anyone who invoked demons for magical purposes. Boureau contrasts this decree effectively with the canon Episcopi, which had been a major (although by no means exclusive) authority on magical and demonic operations since the tenth century. The canon clearly implied that demons had little real power beyond the ability to create deceptive illusions. The main error that it imputed to those who interacted with demons was the belief that demons could achieve other effects.

In order to explain the shift from Episcopi to Super illius specula, Boureau enters into many steams of high- and late-medieval intellectual and religious culture. He begins most immediately with John XXII, his personal concerns over demonic magic, his fears that such magic was being used against him, and his use of charges of demonic magic against political enemies. Boureau also notes that John’s obsession with demons might well reflect the fact that many of his enemies, especially the Spiritual branch of the Franciscan order, accused him of being the Antichrist or at least a minion of Satan. Essential to John’s thinking, though, was the classification of actions, as opposed to beliefs or intentions, as heretical. This Boureau links to a larger trend in what might be termed inquisitorial thought. For the previous two centuries, church authorities investigating heretics confronted the problem that beliefs and intentions are so easily dissembled. They began to focus on actions and the general reputation (fama) derived from actions as evidence of belief. Yet Boureau is not interested merely in some narrow, institutional explanation for shifting concerns around 1300. He extends his observations into many areas of medieval culture.

Boureau links concern over effective demonic magic, for example, to increasingly precise ideas of sacraments. Demonic magic—a ritual achieving its effect through the more or less automatic operation of demonic power—was seen by many as a corollary to the sacraments—rituals that functioned through the more or less automatic operation of divine power. Central to the condemnation of magic as heretical was the idea that magicians bound themselves to demons via pacts. While the notion of the demonic pact was age-old, Boureau argues that it took on new resonance...