From November 1, 1395, until August 25, 1396, a peasant widow who lived in Reims, named Ermine, went through one of the most extreme religious experiences of the Late Middle Ages.Footnote ¹ For about a hundred nights, Ermine de Reims, forty-eight years old, was systematically haunted, beaten, humiliated, and tortured by the devil and his hosts.

This is at least the content of what the horrified woman told her confessor, Jean le Graveur, a subprior at Saint Paul du Val-des-Écoliers in Reims.Footnote ² Actually, shortly after Ermine's death, it was the same Jean le Graveur who wrote a long manuscript in French giving details of his protégée's extraordinary life experience. This document was explicitly intended to transform Ermine into a local heroine, the first vernacular aspirant saint in the history of the two religious institutions that were sponsoring her: the canonical order of Val-des-Écoliers and the Abbey of Saint Denis, also in Reims. Nevertheless, the result of such an experiment was a piteous failure. No sooner did the manuscript containing the prolonged agony of Ermine reach John Gerson's hands, than the influential chancellor of the University of Paris advised the clergy to translate the text into Latin and do their utmost to restrict its dissemination.Footnote ³ Gerson did not find any heterodox elements in the incredible religious experience of the widow. But the excesses of her story demanded caution, especially within an age marked by the Great Schism, the secular war between France and England, and an apocalyptic fever with very few precedents in European history. Gerson's suggestion would prove fatal to Jean le Graveur's manuscript. The extremely scarce quantity of copies that have survived to date—two French versions and three Latin ones—confirms how successful this strategy of censorship and ecclesiastic silencing proved to be. The rediscovery of the French manuscript, which had been shelved in obscurity at the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris until recently, is an achievement of medievalist André Vauchez. In 1997, Vauchez's efforts bore fruit with the publication of the French version of Jean le Graveur's text.Footnote ⁴ This first modern edition unleashed a wave of interest in the extraordinary figure of Ermine de Reims that continues to this day.Footnote ⁵

The tribulations of Ermine take place in the context of one of the most profound political and religious crises in the history of Europe.Footnote ⁶ During the months in which the widow was constantly vexed by the devil, Christianity had, in fact, two different popes: the Neapolitan Pietro Tomacelli (Boniface IX), installed in Rome since 1389, and the Aragonese Pedro de Luna (Benedict XIII), elected in Avignon in 1394.Footnote ⁷ The beginning of the visions of Ermine coincides with a worsening of the political tension caused by the Great Schism. In January 1394, almost two years before the beginning of Ermine's diabolical experience, the French crown, taking advantage of a temporary improvement in the mental illness that affected King Charles VI, lifted the ban that prevented the University of Paris to discuss in public issues related to the crisis of the Church.Footnote ⁸ By then, both the Kingdom of France and the Sorbonne, concerned about the perpetuation of the schism, had begun the slow journey that would culminate in the final break with the Avignon papacy, definitively consummated during the failed Council of Pisa of 1409.Footnote ⁹

In spite of taking place far away from Ermine's cell, these dramatic events repeatedly burst into Jean le Graveur's narration. In this sense, the experiences of the widow, even though they occurred within the four walls of her tiny room, were not immune to the severe political crisis of the moment. In fact, a religious figure particularly admired by Ermine, the controversial hermit Jean de Varennes, was silenced, arrested, and prosecuted just a few weeks before the woman's death. This gifted preacher, to whom several miracles were attributed, had recently left the court of Avignon and adopted a hermit lifestyle outside the walls of Reims, where he received a large number of pilgrims. Following the election of Benedict XIII, Jean de Varennes withdrew his support to the Avignon papacy. But while the hermit shared this position with the French crown and the University of Paris, his behavior was far less cautious than the one adopted by the leading figures of the kingdom: Jean began to preach the necessity to deny obedience to both popes, considered the sacraments administered by unworthy priests invalid, and began to attack the archbishop of Reims, Guy de Roche, both because of the pomp and venality surrounding his figure and because the prelate still supported the Avignon pope.Footnote ¹⁰

In the narrative of the visions of Ermine, the subtle reproaches by which Jean le Graveur led the widow to put aside her admiration for the hermit and to adopt a more critical view of his behavior are clearly perceptible. For example, Jean le Graveur stresses that the first Eucharistic vision of Ermine took place in the context of the 1396 Corpus Christi procession, during which the holy sacrament had been carried by the archbishop himself. Moreover, most of the successive visions occurred during masses celebrated by priests ordained by Clement VII (Benedict's predecessor), which seemed to suggest that the true pope, as the archbishop of Reims held, was not in Rome but in Avignon.Footnote ¹¹

However, the veiled allusions to the Great Schism do not seem to be the justification for Jean Gerson's recommendation to the sponsors of the deceased widow to restrict the dissemination of Jean le Graveur's manuscript. The justification for the cautious silence suggested—maybe imposed—by chancellor Gerson probably derived from the actual content of the long diabolophany experienced by the widow, an extreme experience that threatened to scandalize a laity itself confused by the political crisis affecting the papacy.

I. The Tribulations of a Widow from Reims

Several traits of Ermine's war against the demons are extremely conventional. Such is the case of the varied range of apparitions that reaffirm the infinite protean potential conferred to evil spirits by the scholastic demonology.Footnote ¹² On occasions, demons appear to Ermine disguised as huge menacing monsters, “just like they are in hell.”Footnote ¹³ At other moments, they intend to deceive the woman, adopting the appearance of an endless list of holy figures, like Saint Mary Magdalen, Saint Leger, Saint Andrew, Saint John the Baptist, Saint Peter, Saint Remigius, Saint Elizabeth, Saint Gertrude, Saint Anthony, Saint Augustine, Saint Agnes, Thomas the Apostle, and Saint Nicholas, among others.Footnote ¹⁴ Occasionally the devil replaces all visual manifestations by auditive, olfactory, tactile, and even gustatory ones. In fact, if something characterizes the relationship established between Ermine and Satan is its overwhelming sensoriality. The widow does not think about the devil: she touches him, hears him, smells him, and licks him.Footnote ¹⁵

When he gets tired of showing himself in the traditional way, the devil becomes a trickster, a witty domestic gnome who spills the cups' contents, blows out the candles, destroys rosaries, transforms wooden bowls into precious metal chalices, or changes wine into a fluid similar to blood.Footnote ¹⁶

Nevertheless, the insurmountable originality of Ermine' experience is not merely this infinite variety of apparitions and domestic pranks. The circumstances that most overwhelmed and disconcerted her contemporaries were related to three specific aspects of the power of the devil: the merciless physical punishments, the audacious aerial transvections, and the multiple and ferocious attacks of wild animals and vermin.

The beatings started in mid-November 1395. Ermine herself expressed her shame because of the way she was addressed by her neighbours in the street: “here is the woman beaten by the demons every night.”Footnote ¹⁷ The attacks reached the summit of brutality on Wednesday 15, December. That day they hit her “with fists and feet in such a way that she was afraid they were going to kill her.” One of the assailants kicked her savagely in the thorax; as a consequence, “several days later, her breast became badly bruised.” Another aggressor raised her in the air and let her fall down so abruptly that Ermine hit her head against a bench and she risked to lose one of her eyes.Footnote ¹⁸

This last anecdote introduces us into the second area where evil epiphanies manifested themselves with particular extremism: the very frequent transvections, levitations, and flights reported by Ermine. As Enrico Castelli says, by inducing the saints to levitate demons essayed their greatest temptation: leading to the misunderstanding that they themselves could become instruments of elevation.Footnote ¹⁹ On Friday following the epiphany, Ermine suddenly woke up and found herself floating in the middle of her room, her body stuck to the ceiling.Footnote ²⁰ On February 13, 1396, demons made her fly across the courtyard of Saint Paul de Val-des-Écoliers.Footnote ²¹ On April 17, the evil spirits placed her on the roof of the priorate, at very high altitude.Footnote ²² But the most extraordinary night flight episode—the anecdote Jean le Graveur gives the largest space in his manuscript—took place on Wednesday, immediately after the first Sunday of Lent; just before dawn, when the walls of Reims where still closed, the devil forced Ermine to ride on a black horse and, in a few seconds, she was transported to the forest of Nanteuil, located about sixteen kilometers out of the urban area.Footnote ²³

The repeated attacks of ferocious wild animals and vermin are the third type of peculiar harassment that Ermine suffered during her last year of life: incommensurable swarm of flies that cover completely the widow's chamber; huge bears that left unusual amounts of urine on the floor; toads the size of dogs that jump into the bed, wake up the woman, and introduce their mouths into hers; snakes that crawl under her clothes or wrap around her neck trying to suffocate her; lizards that bite, causing horrendous wounds on her hands; crows, bats, and owls that leave scars on her face and risk permanent damage to her eyes; ferocious roaring lions that keep her from sleeping; and so forth.Footnote ²⁴

It is not necessary to underscore that a document as large, varied, and complex as the one we are introducing, allows various readings and approaches. We are dealing with an extremely valuable source for such subjects as the discernment of spirits or the relationships established by female visionaries with their confessors or spiritual directors.Footnote ²⁵ For this article, however, I opt to explore a historical problem that lies at the very heart of the dense narrative of the visions of Ermine: the image of the devil on the eve of the great European witch-hunt.

For several decades, witchcraft historiography has experienced a boom that still continues.Footnote ²⁶ Despite this, the study of the genesis of radical demonology did not begin until much later. While the foundational works of the new witchcraft historiography were published in the late 1960s, it was not until the publication of Thinking with Demons by Stuart Clark that the demonological discourse began to receive the attention it deserves.Footnote ²⁷ It was, in fact, Clark who succeeded in demonstrating the centrality that Christian demonology acquired in early modern European culture.Footnote ²⁸ However, Clark's monumental book did not explore in depth the origins of this new natural science of demons.

In the 1970s, several historians had ventured into the medieval foundations of early modern witch hunting. But usually these investigations only sought to identify the different traditions that converged into the sabbat stereotype, and therefore they did not intend to unravel the inner logic and transformations of the demonological discourse.Footnote ²⁹

The question about the genesis of the new science of demons was problematic for historians of early modern witchcraft since it was to be addressed either by modernists who were not afraid of venturing into medieval history, or by medievalists interested in explaining the discursive foundations of a phenomenon that reached its heyday after 1560. A clear example of the first group is the French historian Robert Muchembled, while a clear example of the second one is his compatriot Alain Boureau.Footnote ³⁰ In recent years, many medievalists (without venturing directly into the history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) included in their books entire sections devoted to analyze the connections between their specific objects of study and the early modern witchcraft persecutions.Footnote ³¹

One of the main problems that historians interested in the origins of radical demonology must resolve is the degree of originality that this discourse has regarding previous demonological paradigms. Historians have proposed different answers to this question. Muchembled, for example, argues that radical demonology implies a total break in regard to any previous theological tradition.Footnote ³² Hans Peter Broedel, on the contrary, concludes that scholastic demonology amends several elements of the Patristic tradition, without completely suppressing it.Footnote ³³ Alain Boureau, meanwhile, seems to oscillate between opposite positions, in some texts stressing the irreducible novelty of positive demonology while in others suggesting that this discipline arises naturally from the scholastic reflection on the human person.Footnote ³⁴ As we will see below, it is in the context of these debates that the analysis of the visions of Ermine de Reims can make a significant contribution to our understanding of the origins of the natural science of demons.

In fact, the religious experience lived by Ermine takes place only thirty years before the massive persecution that broke out in the canton of Valais in early 1428, the formal beginning of the witchcraft repression on the Continent.Footnote ³⁵ Very few documents dated shortly before the witch-hunt debut provide such a great deal of references to Satan and his followers as can be found here. What are the characteristics of the devil that harasses Ermine, terrifies her neighbors, fascinates her confessor, and scandalizes Jean Gerson? Are the evil spirits that torture this woman similar to the demons put on stage by early modern demonologists? Or, instead, do they continue to embody many of the distinctive features of ancient demonological paradigms?

II. The Devil in the First Millennium: Satan, Minister of God

In an excessively conventional way, specialists in the history of the devil establish a clear difference between the devil of the first millennium with an accentuated Augustinian flavor, and that of the second millennium with features distinctly Thomistic.

The most important church fathers were also demonologists;Footnote ³⁶ and the most influential among them, Augustine of Hippo, wrote extensively on the nature of demons.Footnote ³⁷ What are the features of the devil configuration of the first millennium? For Saint Augustine, the devil is the tempter par excellence, a tireless inducer of deviant behaviors.Footnote ³⁸ The image of a strong inner demon comes out of this idea, compatible with the anti-Manichaean doctrine of moral evil. Evil is not a substance. It cannot be considered a principle opposed to goodness: evil is a deficient cause, a perversion of the will.Footnote ³⁹ Therefore, Satan's favorite scenario to enact is the soul of man, his consciousness, his mind, his fantasy.Footnote ⁴⁰

Patristic demonology does not deny demons the capacity for producing real effects in the material world. These actions may acquire, at times, the nothingness of illusion, the non-corporeal features of a mirage. In De Divinatione Daemonum, for example, Augustine compares Satan to jugglers and theater stagehands (funambuli, theatrici artifices, mechanici),Footnote ⁴¹ whose performances presuppose fantasy and reality at the same time.Footnote ⁴² In certain circumstances, however, the devil was able to transcend the role of a mere buffoon and produce effects of an overwhelming materiality; an example of these can be seen in the Dialogorum by Gregory the Great, where Satan pull walls downFootnote ⁴³ or throw vulnerable children into the fire.Footnote ⁴⁴

No matter the case, Patristic demonology stresses once and again that the devil can never produce any effect in the material world without a sine-qua-non pre-requisite: God's permission. This non-negotiable doctrine transforms the enemy into a powerful but strictly limited entity.Footnote ⁴⁵ That is why Augustine says in Enarrationes in Psalmos: “the devil is a certain power, but most of the time he wants to hurt and he cannot, because he is a power that is under other power.”Footnote ⁴⁶ The same doctrine drives Isidore of Seville to express, with surprising optimism, that the devil has an objectively valuable dimension because he continues obeying God.Footnote ⁴⁷

Nevertheless, the devil obtains permission through hidden divine intentions to act in the world quite frequently. The aim of this plan is to punish the wicked and to test the righteous.Footnote ⁴⁸ As Origin says, “God gives permission and also induces the opposite virtues to fight us.”Footnote ⁴⁹ The demons of the fathers are, therefore, functional to a new conception of evil linked to the volitive faculty, whose exercise is only possible thanks to the presence of an opponent.Footnote ⁵⁰ When Saint Anthony the Great reproaches the deity for his lack of intervention during some of the brutal beatings he suffered at the hands of the evil spirits, God replied: “I was there Anthony, but I waited in order to watch your fight.”Footnote ⁵¹

Satan and his followers play a specific role in this perspective, main characters in the Christian economy of salvation. Even against their own interests, demons become vectors of the divine will. The church fathers never doubted Satan's ministerial quality.Footnote ⁵² And it is this thesis that makes understandable one of most famous maxims on the Moralia in lob by Gregory the Great: “even when the will of the devil is always unfair, any power exerted through divine permission is fair.”Footnote ⁵³

Thus we get to the foundations of this audacious Augustinian theodicy. The divinity could not ignore that the most beautiful and powerful of the angels would become evil by a movement of his own free will. What reason led God to proceed with this creation, anyway? It was because he also foresaw the great goodness that could be obtained from such unfortunate rebellion.Footnote ⁵⁴ Augustine's God is a numen who judged as “more worthy of his Almighty essence and goodness” the “fair use of evil rather than to forbid it.”Footnote ⁵⁵ For the Bishop of Hippo, divine providence restrains evil, thus preventing it from causing, ultimately, real damage.Footnote ⁵⁶

This exaggerated Augustinian providentialism is, in short, relatively incompatible with a genuine fear of the devil. The followers of the Christian God should not fear Satan, The Shepherd of Hermas vehemently insists: “do not be afraid of the devil. If you fear the Lord, you will triumph over the devil because he has no power. And who has no power, does not inspire fear.”Footnote ⁵⁷ The faith of the righteous transforms the devil in an entity as weak as the muscles of a corpse.Footnote ⁵⁸ In fact, both Athanasius of Alexandria and Gregory the Great agree that sometimes it is the devil himself who trembles, frightened to approach the Christian God's protégés.Footnote ⁵⁹

It is clear that the devil of the first millennium expresses a particularly optimistic version of the ancient combat myth.Footnote ⁶⁰ For the church fathers, Satan was already defeated. The eternal agon between good and evil had already been solved. Dozens of stories and images during those centuries emphasize the defeat of the enemy.Footnote ⁶¹ The Acts of Peter, an apocryphal text of the mid-second century, represents the devil as an Ethiopian slave girl, wrapped in filthy rags, with an iron collar on her neck, and her hands and feet chained.Footnote ⁶² The powers of the devil, in fact, decrease at an accelerated pace, says John Cassian in the early fifth century; he does not have the same strength he had two centuries before, in times of the first fathers of the desert.Footnote ⁶³ Origen also imagined Satan's hosts as an almost defeated army: every time the saints fought victoriously, “they made the devilish army weaker, almost as if they killed a lot of their own.”Footnote ⁶⁴

III. The Scholastic-Thomist Approach to Demonology: The Paradoxical Materiality of a Non-Material Devil

Even though the devil had always been a matter of deep consideration for Christian theologians during the first millennium, there is no doubt that European intelligentsia began to be intensively obsessed, as never before, by his figure from the twelfth century onward.Footnote ⁶⁵ Texts referring to the most diverse literary genres—theological treatises, encyclopedias, collections of exempla—devoted, with increasing frequency, entire sections theorizing about the nature and powers of the fallen angels.Footnote ⁶⁶ This growing interest for Satan and his angels is also reflected in the monumental theological production of Thomas Aquinas;Footnote ⁶⁷ it could not be otherwise.

In many respects, Aquinas revalidates the foundations of first-millennium demonology. The providentialism that deeply influenced Augustinian theory of evil repeatedly arises in Saint Thomas's discourse.Footnote ⁶⁸ It can also be argued that, generally speaking, the Thomistic devil is not more powerful than Saint Augustine's. For both thinkers, the miracle is an area closed to intermediate beings. Angels and demons can only manipulate natural forces if they do not ever alter the principles that regulate the cosmos. In summary, similar ranges of possibility set the pattern for the operation of evil spirits in both cosmologies.Footnote ⁶⁹ For this reason, it would be an extremely reductionist approach to oppose the patristic and scholastic demonologies in a simplified way. Notwithstanding, even if Aquinas does not modify the directives of Augustinian theodicy and satanology, he introduces a series of innovations in the mythology of the Christian devil that qualify and, sometimes, alter the tone of first-millennium demonology. These variations developed by Saint Thomas in the second half of the thirteenth century led to the emergence of a science of the devil that, strictly speaking, should be characterized as Augustinian-Thomistic, a peculiar fusion of archaic and modern characters that will lay the foundations of the paradigm on which early modern witch-hunt would be grounded.Footnote ⁷⁰

Following is a provisional list of the main corrections incorporated by Thomas Aquinas to a scholastic-Aristotelian devil conception that is never ready to cast off from the previous millennium evil theory:Footnote ⁷¹

First, the immateriality of angelic natures. Thomas Aquinas is the first Christian theologian who radically and explicitly stated the doctrine of the absolute immateriality of angelic natures.Footnote ⁷² For the Italian saint, angels and demons are “separate intellectual substances.”Footnote ⁷³ They do not possess any degree of materiality.Footnote ⁷⁴ During the first millennium, however, an overwhelming majority of the church fathers, led by Augustine of Hippo, argued that angels and demons had subtle ethereal bodies.Footnote ⁷⁵ This broad consensus began to break down by the mid-twelfth century.Footnote ⁷⁶ By the 1230s, William of Auvergne unmistakably postulates the complete immateriality of the intermediate beings.Footnote ⁷⁷ But it was Aquinas who, thanks to a deeper understanding of the metaphysical structure of the creation, and the Aristotelian distinction between act and potency, managed to provide theoretical consistency to the thesis of the immateriality of angelic natures. He could express this neither removing from the angelic natures their quality of creatures nor giving them the ontological simplicity that God exclusively claims for himself.Footnote ⁷⁸ Dyan Elliott recently attributed this audacious Thomistic theoretical turn to the demands of the anti-Cathar controversy.Footnote ⁷⁹ But whatever its practical value, the immateriality theory soon generated dangerous inconsistencies and contradictions. How could it be plausibly justified from the point of view of the most important disciplines of that period, that non-material entities had the capacity to produce real effects in the material world? Aristotelian syllogism should be applied to the extreme in order to demonstrate that intangible angels and demons keep their capacity for operating in the universe. This ambitious theological operation reached its highest degree of sophistication with the rationale that Aquinas developed to demonstrate that, in spite of lacking bodies-naturally-attached-to-them, separate substances can carry or move objects, and also can have intercourse with human beings.Footnote ⁸⁰ Aerial transvections and copulation with demons were, therefore, much more than colorful anecdotes; as Walter Stephens argues, they were the ultimate proof that corporeal interaction between human beings and the metaphysical world could nonetheless be possible.Footnote ⁸¹

Second, the intellect of fallen angels. Once and again Augustine of Hippo stressed that Lucifer's rebellion irremediably corrupted the intellect of fallen angels. A state of blindness, silliness, and madness characterizes the degraded rationality of the devil and his followers.Footnote ⁸² Thomas Aquinas, on the contrary, unceremoniously rejected Augustine's point of view; the natural knowledge of demons “was not suppressed, not even diminished.”Footnote ⁸³ “Demons are illuminated by the light of their intellectual nature,” as it can be read in the Summa Theologiae.Footnote ⁸⁴ The intellect of pure spirits has not been affected after their failed rebellion since no subtraction of any part of their beings is admitted by the simplicity of the angelic substance. In fact the devil's knowledge does not decrease; quite the opposite, it increases throughout the centuries—his science sharpens as time goes by.Footnote ⁸⁵

Third, the ontological superiority of angels and demons. As can be discerned from De divinatione daemonum, Saint Augustine strongly denies that demons should be considered superior to human beings based on the fact that they possess a keener perception derived from the subtlety of their ethereal bodies. Otherwise, priority could be given to dogs over humans because of their strong sense of smell, or to eagles because of their extraordinary sight.Footnote ⁸⁶ But Thomas Aquinas contradicts his illustrious predecessor once again. Immateriality is the origin of knowledge for the Italian theologian.Footnote ⁸⁷ Therefore, the angelical natures not only exceeded humans in metaphysical, physical, and intellectual termsFootnote ⁸⁸ but they also are in fact, among all creatures, the closest to God, the most similar to Him.Footnote ⁸⁹ Angels and demons reproduce the form of divine understanding on account of their intelligible way of being.Footnote ⁹⁰ Therefore, it is not exaggerated to describe the intellect of pure spirits as deiform.Footnote ⁹¹ Finally, it is necessary to make clear that angels and demons in Thomistic theology not only approach God because of the perfection of their mindsFootnote ⁹² but also on account of the peculiar process of individuation that is their distinctive trait as separate substances.Footnote ⁹³

Fourth, epistemological potential of the science of the devil. Saint Augustine's demonology is permeated by a clear gnoseological pessimism. The detailed and precise knowledge of the angelical order escapes any human possibility: “what angels can do according to their nature even though they do not put it into practice because it has been forbidden to them, and what is it that their natural condition does not allow them to do, it is very difficult to say if not really impossible.”Footnote ⁹⁴ Aquinas not only disagrees with Saint Augustine's resignation but also reverses his reasoning. Thus we read in De Malo: “anything that can be visibly produced in this world can be produced by demons, not only through their own virtue but also through natural active principles.”Footnote ⁹⁵ And in the Summa Theologiae he added: “anything that an angel or any other creature does by means of its own virtue falls within the order of nature.”Footnote ⁹⁶ We have to underscore the tremendous consequences that these premises have on human knowledge: intermediate entities are part of the same universe as the animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdoms; and angels and demons obey the same natural laws as the rest of the creation as a whole. Then, this non-mystifying perspective strengthens the possibility of knowing the physiology of the devil. In fact, while linking the power of pure spirits more closely to the functioning of nature, scholastic theology contributed to transform demonology into a natural science, an angelic physics, a theologically informed biology.Footnote ⁹⁷

Fifth, the autonomy of the diabolical will. The devil of the first millennium, transformed against his will into an instrument of God's plans, always tended to appear as a figure that lacked independence, initiative, or freedom. Thomas Aquinas reasserted this theory of divine supervision, but he introduced a distinction that tended to increase the degree of autonomy held by Satan and his angels. When they act to punish sinners, demons are directly commissioned by the deity; but when they act to tempt humans, evil spirits are not sent by God. In the latter case, the creator limits himself to allow a course of action that he does not want, that does not express his supreme will.Footnote ⁹⁸ Now then, as Hans Peter Broedel argues, in order to make this distinction meaningful, God's permission had to turn into a more generous kind of supervision, a passive supplement of God's active will.Footnote ⁹⁹ Therefore, the new Thomistic theory—extremely coherent with the wider significance Aquinas gave to what was called causae secundae in the operation of the cosmos—redefined the permissio Dei theory, reducing it from the original claim that nothing evil occurs outside of the divine will, to an authorization from the divine that ensured the devil a weak general permission to operate in the world.Footnote ¹⁰⁰

Sixth, organization and hierarchization of the forces of evil. The demonization of the perceived enemies of Christianity can already be appreciated in the synoptic Gospels and the Pauline epistles. It is not surprising, then, that the demonization of the adversaries of the Church became one of the distinctive hallmarks of primitive Christian thought.Footnote ¹⁰¹ For the church fathers, fallen angels and impious men are members of the same enemy coalition.Footnote ¹⁰² This thesis resurfaces strongly in the eleventh century, when heresy reappeared in the West after half a millennium of absence.Footnote ¹⁰³ By then, monastic chroniclers even imagined alliances between domestic enemies and foreign opponents of Christianity.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ But it was no doubt the soundness and attractiveness of Catharism that proved to be the factor in strengthening as never before the stereotypes and invectives of this ancient Patristic rhetoric.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ These precedents are the explanation for the qualitative leap noticeable in Thomistic demonology. In fact, the way Aquinas tends to conceive the forces of evil goes further than any other images in the first millennium. In the Doctor Angelicus, Lucifer and his hosts represent a kind of sophisticated corporation, designed to enhance the efficiency of the fight against the forces of good. “Friends are those who have only one and the same enemy: hence, having the intention of harming humans further, demons are allied with each other in order to design a better offensive strategy.”Footnote ¹⁰⁶ So, this is a sealed alliance based on criteria of strict coexistence. It is typical for the impious to join and submit themselves to those whom they imagine more powerful.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ The infernal world is undoubtedly a hierarchical structure, a perfect counterpart of the papal theocracy envisioned by the Gregorian Reform.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ But Thomas Aquinas will go even further: the devil is, in fact, the vortex that unifies the forces of evil that work in the cosmic ecosystem.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ He is the head of all evildoers.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Therefore, Satan not only rules despotically over the rebel angels but he is also the prince of the wicked men.Footnote ¹¹¹ In the Thomistic rhetoric, this solid union of the enemies of Christ at times takes the worrying appearance of a corpus mysticum.Footnote ¹¹² The hostile powers that threatened Christian society were a group of beings alienated from grace, a frightful army with two generals—Satan and the Antichrist, which like the Christian trinity are not separate beings but only one.Footnote ¹¹³

On the basis of this series of nuances that Thomas Aquinas introduced into Patristic demonology, the devil that appears in his summae could be “perceived” as a more menacing figure, a being more autonomous and more obviously present in the daily world than the Satan that we find in the writings of the church fathers. Leaving the foundations of Augustinian providentialism untouched, the redefinition of God's permission proposed by Thomism grants Satan a degree of freedom in his interaction with humans that contrasts with the limits often imposed by Patristic theologians.

At the same time, keeping unmodified the essence of the powers of the devil—which lay in his ability to manipulate the forces of nature in his own benefit—the progress in the understanding of natural phenomena characteristic of the late medieval centuries provoked a remarkable increase in the potentia diaboli, in Satan's capacity for producing real effects in the material world. Therefore, for instance, Saint Thomas recognizes that demons can cause violent storms and induce changes in the atmosphere by moving, pushing, or agitating air masses;Footnote ¹¹⁴ it is indeed a power that first-millennium theology generally refused to grant to evil spirits. All this can be found in the famous eighth cannon of the Council of Braga of 561,Footnote ¹¹⁵ and also in the influential Contra insulsam vulgi opinionem de grandine et tonitruis, by Agobard of Lyons (circa 815–817).Footnote ¹¹⁶ Similarly, Aquinas believes that Satan's knowledge about the natural world allows him to select the physical traits of the children whose birth he provokes through the manipulations of incubus and succubus, as reflected in a chilling excerpt from the Scriptum super Sententiis Magistri Petri Lombardi: “Demons can know the quality of the semen through the disposition of the man from whom it has been extracted. They can know, as well, the woman suitable for the reception of the semen and even the constellation which can be helpful for the corporeal result (that is, to achieve the optimum complexion of the person thus engendered). In case all these circumstances occur, it is possible that people born in this way have big and strong bodies.”Footnote ¹¹⁷

IV. The Image of the Devil in the Visions of Emine de Reims: Variations on the Same Theme

It is time to return to our source, to compare the behavior of the demons that unceasingly haunt Ermine with the demonological paradigms discussed in the preceding pages.

There is no doubt that the invisible thread that links each of the tribulations suffered by the widow from Reims demonstrates strong Augustinian providentialism. Forty years before the appearance of the foundational texts of early modern radical demonology—the Formicarius by Johannes Nider; the anonymous Errores Gazariorum; and Ut magorum et maleficiorum by Claude TholosanFootnote ¹¹⁸—the narration of Jean le Graveur presents a demon that mimics the tenacious opponent of the hermits and cenobites of the first millennium.

The spirits that tortured Ermine had their operation restricted to the narrow bounds imposed by the supreme power that supervised their action. Aware of this, the widow frequently reminds the demons of this truth: “you cannot do me more harm that what God allows you. If He wants you to beat me, do it. If He wants you to kill me, do it. I deserve it.”Footnote ¹¹⁹ On several occasions, the fallen angels operated as useful instruments of conversion, reminding Ermine of old sins and transgressions that she could not have revealed to her confessor had it not been for the help of the wicked spirits.Footnote ¹²⁰

At the same time, a deep sense of providential control emerges in the narration from the moment the author unveils the extraordinary anecdote of the transvection to the forest of Nanteuil. Saint Paul the Simple makes, within the context of this amazing tribulation, his first appearance to play the role of a second narrator. He will be in charge of disclosing the celestial script in which Ermine is unwittingly starring.Footnote ¹²¹ The interventions of this ancient hero of the desert give sense to the overwhelming superimposition of humiliations the widow has to endure. With the same purpose, an unidentified celestial voice frequently makes comments on the most violent episodes and gives courage to the tormented woman. The Tuesday before Pentecost, for instance, a sweet voice comforts Ermine as follows: “Woman, do not be afraid: demons will not withhold you much longer.”Footnote ¹²² On May 29, 1396, shortly before the celebration of Corpus, Paul the Simple gives even more details about Ermine's future: “you still have to endure many tribulations but they will cease after Corpus Christi.”Footnote ¹²³ On Tuesday, June 6, when the woman was laying on the floor as a result of another beating, the holy hermit raised her, placed her on her bed, and covered her with a blanket, saying: “Ermine, beautiful girl, I am the hermit who rescued you from the forest and the roof of the church; I have already come to help you in many other opportunities.”Footnote ¹²⁴ On more than one occasion a sacred figure entered the scene, drove away the demons, and temporarily put an end to the suffering of the widow. As usual in the stories featuring the desert fathers, God revoked his license and interrupted the combat when one of the contestants went too far.Footnote ¹²⁵

As in the monastic exempla, the constant harassment of the devil is the instrument that facilitates the emergency of the virtuous self of a new Christian saint.Footnote ¹²⁶ According to Homi Bhabha, stereotyped speeches are usually effective because they trigger subjectivization processes that allow the emergence of new identities.Footnote ¹²⁷ This is why, following the classical formulas of hagiographic narrations, Ermine asks the deity to spare no punishment or torture to her: “Lord, do not spare me anything,” she claims, after spending a sleepless night haunted by crows, flies, snakes, lizards, and toads.Footnote ¹²⁸ The white martyrdom that evil spirits caused her to suffer soon began to bear fruit; by mid-January 1396, the widow hears a sweet voice that gives assurance on the effectiveness of this brutal penitential regime: “my friend, do not be so afraid. God has granted you a great grace: all your sins have been forgiven.”Footnote ¹²⁹ As in countless occasions in the past, Satan and his minions were unwittingly contributing to the creation of a new Christian heroine.Footnote ¹³⁰

It is not surprising, therefore, that our source repeatedly stresses the failure of Satan. The subject of the weak and defenseless woman, who defeats a powerful adversary with supernatural help, appears in Christian hagiography in the story of Saint Perpetua, martyred in Carthage on March 7, 207: shortly before being thrown to the arena, the fragile young woman defeats in a dream, very easily, a huge dragon, whose head she crushes with her delicate foot.Footnote ¹³¹ Jean le Graveur had no doubt that a similar moral crowned the story of Ermine de Reims: “all power, science, strength and cunning of the infernal enemies were deployed against a simple and ignorant poor woman, who nevertheless, . . . after a brief time, managed to defeat all of her assailants.”Footnote ¹³²

Although Augustinian demonology works as basso continuo of the curious story of Ermine de Reims, the first millennium paradigm never monopolizes the image of the devil that can be found in Jean le Graveur's narration. Other more recent demonological traditions also contribute to this extraordinary hybrid image of Satan in the manuscript.

In fact, many of the corrections introduced by Thomas Aquinas into the Patristic demonology are clearly perceived in the collection of anecdotes compiled by Ermine's biographer. We have already seen that the absolute immateriality of angels and demons definitively prevails in the theological discourse from the second half of thirteenth century onward, thus offering an orthodox framework that the subtle nuances suggested by the Franciscan school fail to alter.Footnote ¹³³ The disembodiment of separate substances becomes, therefore, one of the basic tenets of early modern radical demonology. The story told by Jean le Graveur certainly expresses, with peculiar conclusiveness, one of the main problems that affected any demonology subsequent to the Summa Theologica: the obsession to demonstrate that even though evil spirits lack bodies-naturally-attached-to-them, they can nevertheless produce real effects in the material world. In Ermine's story, the aerial bodies assumed by Satan and his hosts always have a consistency that the narrator strives to maintain. Once, while trying to get rid of the spirit that disturbed her sleep, Ermine “threw a punch and hit something.”Footnote ¹³⁴ When she threw away a toad that had jumped to her face, “[the alleged animal] made a soft noise and screeched ‘Oing’ while reaching the floor.”Footnote ¹³⁵ When she received blows, the devil's fist seemed “hard as iron.”Footnote ¹³⁶ The paradoxical and overwhelming physicality of these bodiless demons provoked in Ermine a kind of reasoning that seems designed to help remove any doubts the doctrine of the complete immateriality could have induced. “There is something very surprising here,” she explained: “it is said that demons are made of nothing but in this very same moment, I am rolling them like balls just in front of me.”Footnote ¹³⁷

It is important to note that in Jean le Graveur's narration, there is also a vast list of anecdotes that reveals that through local movement evil spirits can transport any kind of material objects, a theory that Saint Thomas had justified using arguments drawn from Aristotelian physics.Footnote ¹³⁸ In addition, Ermine's biographer makes a remarkable effort to prove that the air transvections she reports had indeed taken place; thus, one of the incontrovertible pieces of evidence that proved that the woman had been actually transported through the air to the forest of Nanteuil was the fact that the walls of the city were still closed at the time of the episode.Footnote ¹³⁹

It is very suggestive that when it comes to inducing temptations, Ermine's familiar spirits have the same high degree of autonomy and independence that Saint Thomas attributes to them. The devil, in fact, continued torturing the widow even if Saint Paul the Simple had announced her tribulations would cease after Corpus Christi. The hermit explains to the widow the reasons for this apparent contradiction: the demons had appeared before the deity, motu proprio, to request that “during the octaves of [Corpus] they were allowed to cause you whatever harm they were empowered to, and God had accepted.”Footnote ¹⁴⁰ Satan and his angels were taking advantage of the customs of the catholic liturgical calendar, which usually extended the celebration of certain feasts up to eight days immediately after them! The anecdote makes clear that the decision to torment the woman did not always come from God.

Finally, it is easy to observe that for Ermine as well as for her confessor, the impious enemy they were facing sometimes acquired the traits that Aquinas attributed to the forces of evil—those of a close alliance between evil spirits and wicked men, designed to launch a coordinated attack against the forces of good. Actually, on two occasions Ermine was accosted by hostile men on the street. The first brandished a dagger and told her, “next time I come across you I will severely kill or hurt you.”Footnote ¹⁴¹ The second cursed her in front of some astonished passers-by: “Where do you go, whore? To prostitute yourself? . . . You only live for promiscuity, dirty slut.”Footnote ¹⁴² These assaults in broad daylight occurred simultaneously with the attacks that the demons launched against the woman every night. Thus, both episodes contributed to establish the disturbing feeling that the enemy Ermine had to face was, in fact, a compact unit in which aggressors of flesh and blood symbiotically complemented the brutal attacks of disembodied spirits.

The obvious references to the Thomistic demonology do not exhaust the variations that Jean le Graveur introduces into the image of the devil structured around the Augustinian principles of the first millennium. The misfortunes of Ermine de Reims also include several episodes that allude directly to the radical demonology of the centuries to come. The idea of a diabolic pact, one of the key pieces of what has been called the cumulative concept of witchcraft, appears more than once in the text.Footnote ¹⁴³ One of the greatest merits of the widow was, according to Jean le Graveur, that she “never consented to pay tribute to any of the spirits that she saw.”Footnote ¹⁴⁴ The devil demanded the woman pay homage, which she refused: “serve me, love me, fear me,” Satan insisted a few weeks before the Ermine's death.Footnote ¹⁴⁵ From the earliest witchcraft persecutions, Satan offered money and wealth as a recruitment strategy.Footnote ¹⁴⁶ In Jean le Graveur's manuscript, in fact, such offers appear on five different occasions.Footnote ¹⁴⁷ The diabolic sacraments, to which Alain Boureau attributed the qualitative leap that radical demonology experienced during the 1320s, are repeatedly used by the devil to tempt the widow;Footnote ¹⁴⁸ for example, on February 6, 1396, Satan made a surprising proposal to Ermine: “I will see you receive communion well and honorably, privately in your chamber, and as frequently as you like.”Footnote ¹⁴⁹

The episode of the forest of Nanteuil also relates how, in a few seconds Ermine was transported to a place almost twenty kilometers away from the city of Reims. No doubt this impressive anecdote foreshadows the nocturnal flights that future witches took part in the following decades. Moreover, the scene the woman sees after being left in a clearing in the forest takes the appearance of a still immature sabbat, in which devils in human form take the place that decades later will become the terrestrial allies of the devil. According to Jean le Graveur, “all around Ermine there were so many demons in human form that she could not count them.”Footnote ¹⁵⁰ Many of the spirits that surrounded her in the forest had taken the appearance of inhabitants of the village where Ermine had lived before moving to Reims. A few decades later, inquisitors and secular judges would begin to ask for the names of the neighbors who the suspected witches had reportedly seen at the sabbat; at this point, the ghosts seen by Ermine in the protosabbat of Nanteuil would finally become a threat of flesh and bone.

The word sorcière (witch) also appears in Jean le Graveur's narration. By mid-July 1396 Satan tried to frighten the widow. The devil reminded her that many people in the city had already begun to grow suspicious of her, suggesting a potential shift in popular perception of her from tormented by the devil to allied with the devil:Footnote ¹⁵¹ ”a rumor has been spread in town that you have been many times tormented by the Enemy, and that he has frequently spoken to you; you may therefore be thrown in jail and tortured as a witch, to make you confess.”Footnote ¹⁵²

V. Radical Demonology and Christian Apocalypse: On the Verge of the Modern Witch Hunt

Based on the arguments of the previous sections, it is clear that the extreme experience of Ermine de Reims can provide new evidence for assessing the continuities and ruptures between radical demonology and the previous demonological paradigms.

The question we must pose now is whether the consolidation of the new natural science of demons demanded, as Muchembled and Boureau suggest, the replacement of Patristic demonology by a radically different conceptualization of Satan. How different is the Augustinian devil from the image of Satan that predominated during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?

In Jean le Graveur's narration, an atmosphere of great tension can be observed between different demonological paradigms that in fact do coexist, and not always in a traumatic manner. Some demonological paradigms of a folk nature could even be added to those already analyzed;Footnote ¹⁵³ more than once, for instance, the devil who harassed the widow acted like a nightmare demon, one of the classical components of the European popular mythology.Footnote ¹⁵⁴

From the previous analysis, it is clear that the overlap found in Les Visions d'Ermine de Reims between (1) an Augustinian conception of the devil with a very strong providential content, which highlights the restrictions and limits imposed to Satan; (2) a Thomistic demonology, which enhances the paradoxical capacity of a disembodied devil to act in the material world, and his unprecedented autonomy as tempter and instigator of deviant behaviors; and (3) a radical demonology under construction in which we can already perceive the emergence of the conspiracy theory and of the sect of devil worshippers, help to demonstrate that the image of the devil that prevails in times of the great European witch hunts is not necessarily in opposition to the previous demonological paradigms.

Part of the importance of Les Visions d'Ermine de Reims, in which references to the devil abound, is that it demonstrates the inconvenience of a rigid opposition between the demonologies of the first and the second Christian millennia. From a strictly doctrinal point of view, the demonological postulates of scholasticism do not contradict the essence of Patristic demonology. The new science of demons, which began to emerge during the thirteenth century, merely emphasized specific traits of the devil of the fathers and, therefore, the differences between the two mythologies did not arise from the existence of deep contradictions but from the decision of emphasizing different components of the same demonological complex. What I am trying to suggest is that the Satan of scholasticism was not only an enhanced, revised, and expanded version of the Augustinian devil but the true consummation of the Patristic model, its fullest expression—one that would begin to emerge only at the end of time, on the eve of the Second Coming of Christ.

In brief, the image of the devil that becomes the basis of the witchcraft repression of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is merely a late-scholastic construction that corrects, clarifies, and qualifies postulates of a clear providentialist nature, whose essence the new science of the devil will never deny. A much more accurate analysis of the natural powers of the devil and a re-signification of the doctrine of God's permission proved to be sufficient to transform the pathetic devil of the Patristic sources—an involuntary slave of an omniscient and omnipotent providence—into a gruesome monster, the fierce opponent of the Christian deity that radical demonology would make popular from the mid-fifteenth century onward.

After all, Augustinian demonology admitted the prophecy included in the cryptic text that completes the sacred canon of the New Testament: immediately before the Parousia, the devil was thought to be temporarily freed from the constraints that God imposed after the incarnation of the Word. On the eve of the Second Coming of Christ, it was believed that God would grant Satan a series of unprecedented permissions that will preannounce the final combat between the forces of good and evil. Augustine explains this with crystal-clear arguments in the famous book XX of De civitate Dei:Footnote ¹⁵⁵

In many senses, the radical demonology of early modern times is the child of this special clause of the demonology of the first millennium. Then, it was not accidental that a text like Jean le Graveur's was created within the framework of one of the golden ages of Christian apocalypticism.Footnote ¹⁵⁷ Ermine's confessor shared the eschatological enthusiasm influencing Europe, then immersed in the uncertainties of the Great Schism. In fact, Jean le Graveur eagerly set forth his certainty for the imminent coming of the antichrist in the very same foreword of the manuscript: “Since God has revealed the coming of the Antichrist in the Apocalypse, through the very words of Saint John the Evangelist, and given that the time for this happening is imminent…, I think that everything that may follow . . . will be a true example, a model of teaching, where we can safely learn how to protect ourselves from the perfidy and stratagems of this wicked Antichrist.”Footnote ¹⁵⁸

As can also be seen in the radical demonology of the witch hunters of centuries to come, the enemy that systematically vexed Ermine is none other than the Augustinian Satan: a spirit that, on the eve of the agonic struggle that was to trigger the end of time, has been freed from the restrictions of an overly narrow divine permission. After all, in the words of Augustine, “if [the devil] were never loosed, we should know less about his evil power, the most faithful patience of the holy city would not be tested enough, and to conclude, it would be less evident what good use the Almighty makes of his great evil.”Footnote ¹⁵⁹

In general terms, then, Ermine's adversary already had all the features of the stubborn opponent of early modern witch hunters. In the final years of the fourteenth century, however, there was still no secular or ecclesiastical authority prepared to launch the final battle against the forces of evil and its earthly allies. Just a few decades later, in the Western Alps, the ultimate political decision would be made, and the fires of the first stakes would begin to illuminate a continent that expected to hear, at any moment, the terrible trumpets of the Last Judgment.