Demonic Influence and Symptoms of Melancholia
‘Manic’ behaviour is only one manifestation of mental illness in the Middle Ages. From classical times other, quieter forms of mental disturbance were recognized, often referred to as melancholia, or ‘partial insanity’, which resulted from an imbalance of black bile.[676] Galen, the founding father of western medicine, had written about the physiological condition of melancholia in his treatise, On the Affected Parts, in which he explained how black bile might rise in ‘smoky vapours’ to the head, and literally cloud the mind[677] Characterized by sadness, despair and a sense of loss, melancholia—like mentis alienatio—was an appropriate metaphor for spiritual alienation in the Christian world.
In her medical treatise, the twelfth-century abbess, theologian and medical writer, Hildegard of Bingen, linked melancholia to original sin and the fall of Adam[678]Melancholia is not identified by name in the English sources under review and it is likely that Constantine the African’s influential eleventh-century treatise on the subject had little impact in England at this time[679] Nonetheless, melancholic symptoms—despondency, agitation, fear, delusion, and suicidal thoughts—certainly do appear in the English miracula, often under more general terms such as amentia (madness). Moreover, it is under the auspices of these quieter forms of madness that we find a different type of demonic agency appearing in miracle narratives. These are cases in which demons are not imagined as physically inhabiting the bodies of their victims as in demonic possession, but are shown adversely affecting an individual’s mental health from afar. The targets of such indirect attacks are usually said to be ‘seduced’ or ‘deceived’ by the cunning influence of the demon. In one example, a girl suffering from amentia is describing trying to commit suicide by throwing herself into a mill stream ‘at the suggestion of the devil’ (suggestione diabolic^)88
More frequently, however, demons manifest themselves as tangible realities in the narratives, and it is the act of seeing or hearing them which triggers the unbalancing of the victim’s mind.
In a chilling story from the Miracles of the Hand of St James, the daughter of a cleric is accosted by a ghoul—a dead man in a shroud—as she goes about her milking duties at daybreak. The story relates how, on catching sight of the unholy figure, the blood freezes around the girl’s heart, causing her to lose her senses and ‘act like a madwoman’. Rushing home, she tries to burn herself with coals from the fire.[680] [681] In a similarly sinister story another young woman, harvesting nuts in a wood, becomes speechless and mad (amens) as the result of hearing the sound of ghostly musical instruments and demons’ voices in the trees.[682]These last two stories use the word ‘phantom’ (phantasma) to describe ghostly apparitions. This choice of word is significant because, in medieval Latin, a phantasma was not a supernatural reality as in modern-day usage, but an illusion[683] Medically speaking, phantasmata were disease-induced figments of the imagination, caused either through damage to the front ventricle of the brain or when morbid humours collected in the eye[684] Classical medicine also interpreted such erroneous perceptions as symptoms of mental illness.[685] [686] The illusionary nature of phantasmata is made explicit in a miracle story in which a love-struck youth follows what he takes to be his beloved into the woods. The trees seem to be burning ‘with phantasmic fire’ (phantastico igne), but the young man finally discovers that he has, in fact, been ‘deceived’ (delusus) by an illusion.44 The fact that the youth is said to have been deluded ‘by a demonic illusion’ (d&momaco figmento) implies that the delusion was a demonic creation. Here, and in the previously mentioned stories, supernatural forces cause symptoms of madness. However, cause-and-effect is subtly reversed in some late-twelfth- century cases of phantasmata so that seeing phantoms becomes a symptom, not a cause, of madness. Physical assaults by illusory demons in association with madness are common in miracle stories. The knight, Stephen of Hoyland, reported that he had been oppressed (oppressus, literally ‘pressed-down-upon’) and suffocated (suffocatus) by a nocturnal demon for thirty years, while a wealthy Winchester man is described being reduced to a gibbering wreck as the result of nearly being suffocated (suffocatus) by three female spectres.46 A similar story is told of Nicholas, a Cluniac novice from Pontefract, who awoke his fellow brethren one night by leaping out of bed, running around the dormitory, and shouting that he was being suffocated (suffocatus) by malignant spirits. In this last example, we are told several times that the victim is suffering from an illusion (illusio), a mind-generated demon.[689] In addition to this illusory element, there are several interesting medical facts to note about ‘phantom’ stories in the miracula. The first is connected to the occasional tendency of writers to link demons with the classical pagan world: thus Elward of Selling’s pursuer is identified as a larva and the three madness-inducing demons which assault the Winchester man are described, by the narrator, as Eumenides. The second important point to make about ‘phantoms’ in miracle stories is that the symptoms of ‘suffocation’ (suffocatus) and ‘oppression’ (oppressus) with which they are frequently associated, immediately bring to mind a third kind of classical fiend. This is the demon renowned for ‘pressing-down-upon’ their victims: the incubus. The incubus—‘one who presses upon or crushes’— had its origins in the Greco-Roman world, and ideas about this demonic nighttime predator were transmitted into the medieval West through the writings of Jerome, Augustine, Gregory the Great and Isidore of Seville.[690] [691] [692] [693] [694] Interestingly, Jerome connected female versions of the incubus, the succubus, with the Eumenides, which provides a further strand of signification to the story of the Winchester man suffocated by three Eumenides, particularly as the description of the victim's ordeal is suggestive of sexual assault^1 Although Jerome was thinking about the succubus in purely ‘demonic' terms, in the Greco-Roman tradition the word incubus also had a medical provenance, because it pertained to a pathological condition. Although the incubus medical syndrome was known about in early medieval Europe—transmitted to the West through the writings of Oribasius of Pergamon (325-403) and Paul of Aegina (625-90)—it is less easy to establish whether hagiographers in twelfth-century England would have been acquainted with this area of medical knowledge. However, the symptoms described by Soranus certainly find parallels in the miracle accounts of phantasmata mentioned above, and the story of Stephen of Hoyland provides an intriguing possibility that the similarities between hagiographical descriptions of demonic suffocation and Soranus's medical symptoms may be more than mere coincidence. Vexed for many years by his recurring phantasma, the beleaguered Stephen is said to have visited physicians who disagree with him that his condition is caused by a daemon; they instead diagnose it as a medical complaint, superincumbentus—that is, incubus.54 This seems to be an instance where pathological and demonological explanations for madness rub up against one another in a less than comfortable way, with the knight perhaps representing popular belief in demonic causation, and the physician providing the perspective of medical authority. It is an interesting point to which the chapter will return. The more usual victim of incubus attack in medieval writing, of course, is female. In twelfth-century hagiography, the incubus normally preys on chaste and pious women, trying to tempt them away from lives of virtue. The stories of the seduced wife and the bedevilled virgin doubtless tapped into a popular culture which readily believed in the reality of incubi and other malign spirits. However, it should also be noted that the exact nature of these women's sexual adversaries is decidedly ambiguous. The stories can be read morally as well as literally. From a literal perspective, the villains are real demons cunningly disguised as men. From a moral perspective, however, they are real men whose evil intent metaphorically turns them into demons.57 A figurative interpretation of these women-seducing incubi would, indeed, be consistent with what we know about the religious mindset of the time, which saw a new interest in the emotions and the inner workings of the individual soul. In what has been called ‘a major shift of attitudes', churchmen and lawyers of the twelfth century were beginning to look beneath outward behaviour and action, in favour of privileging an ‘ethic based on intent.’[698] Not only were theologians generally less disposed than in other periods to believe in the reality of incubi and demons, but greater concern for intentionality and interiority allowed room for the development of a different sort of mental aberration: the notion of the demon within.5[699]