Introduction

Siam Bhayro and Catherine Rider

In many near eastern traditions, including Christianity, Judaism and Islam, demons have appeared as a cause of illness from ancient times until at least the early modern period.¹ Perhaps the best known examples are the New Testament accounts of ‘possessed’ people who were cured by Christ,^{[1] [2] but ancient sources from a variety of cultures, including Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece, mention similar phenomena.}

From the papers presented at the conference and published here, one common feature that is readily observable in many contexts is the necessity of demons. Despite their often differing conceptions, demons play a crucial role in the world-views of many historic cultures, occupying an important position in the created order. Thus, in ancient Egypt, the messenger demons fulfil an essential role in how the gods interact with humans, often bringing disease as punishment from an angry deity. In ancient Mesopotamia, they are also important with regard to illness and healing. Here they can act either malevolently, as bringers of disease, or benevolently, aiding an exorcist who is treating an afflicted patient.

Jewish magic, which often appeals to a demonic authority in a bid to restrict the activities of other demons. Even maleficent demons, however, can serve a higher purpose. In early Judaism, demons established their status and role on the earth as tormentors and tempters of humans by negotiating with God, who could be said to resemble their employer (e.g. Jub 10:8). In turn, this motif of negotiation manifests in the New Testament account of Jesus and Legion (e.g. Mark 5:9-13). From the Bible these conceptions of demons were transmitted to medieval and early modern Christian Europe. Again, demons could be seen as bringers of disease, especially (but not exclusively) mental illnesses. These illnesses were sometimes presented simply as the result of the demons' innate and indiscriminate malice, but demonic illnesses, like other forms of illness, could also be seen as a way in which God might test the faith of particular individuals in a similar way to some of the demons of the Old Testament. For this reason demonic assaults, and resistance to them, were described in detail in the lives of certain saints, such as the fourth-century hermit Saint Antony, whose Life (discussed in Sophie Sawicka-Sykes's chapter in this book) had a profound influence on later Christian ideas of sainthood.

For adherants to a monotheistic worldview, the necessity of demons is readily understandable, not simply as part of a general theodicy, but also as a means of giving hope to the faithful—in short, having someone to blame means we have someone with whom to battle, thus giving the possibility of relief. But the presence of similar ideas in polytheistic contexts shows that the need to have someone to blame is ubiquitous and probably an essential thera­peutic device. This did not necessarily exclude other explanations for illness— notably, ones which explained illness according to imbalances in the body's humours or other physical causes—but the widespread nature of demonic explanations for illness, and therapies which sought to address them, shows how powerful and persuasive demons might be as a model for understand­ing disease.

This brings us to the therapists—an impressive array of exorcists, sha­mans, scribes, priests, wise women, physicians and saints, spanning millen­nia and continents and operating either on their own or as part of officially sanctioned guilds or orders. This raises the important issue of the source of their authority in both the human and demonic realms. Generally therapists claimed some kind of specialist skill or knowledge which enabled them to interact with demons and, if necessary, drive them away from a sick person. In most of the contexts discussed here, that authority was conferred by an official religious status: priests appear as experts in demonic illnesses from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt into the early modern period, and temples or churches recorded and preserved healing rituals. However, interaction with demons was never the exclusive preserve of ‘official’ religious figures and insti­tutions. Other individuals might also claim religious authority, or be granted it defacto by believers. These included Christian hermits and saints, discussed in several papers in this volume, who were often approached by believers to perform miraculous cures, including cures of demonic illnesses. Many of these saints later became official figures, as local churches fostered their cults, and from c. 1200 onwards some were canonized by the papacy. Nevertheless, not all holy men and, especially, women achieved this official recognition and some individuals who sought to interact with demons, such as the authors of magi­cal texts discussed by Lauri Ockenstrom and Sebastia Giralt, were condemned by the official authorities. In periods of religious upheaval, the authority of cer­tain individuals to expel or control demons formed part of wider conflicts.

There were also alternatives to religious authority: in particular some strands of medical thought sought to challenge demonic explanations for ill­ness in favour of physical ones, and so to establish the authority of doctors, rather than priests or exorcists, to treat these so-called ‘demonic’ illnesses. These alternatives were not always rivals, however: in many societies the line between ‘medical’ and ‘religious’ knowledge was not clearly drawn and even when it was (for example, in later medieval and early modern Europe) medical language and concepts could be used to reinforce and add weight to religious explanations that saw illnesses as demonic.

Studying these issues lends itself well to a comparative approach because, for intellectuals in many cultures, the starting point for thinking about the relationship between illness, demons, magic and the supernatural has been the Bible. Perhaps the most famous example is the account of the future king David playing the lyre to calm Saul’s mental anguish, which was caused by an evil spirit (1 Sam 16:14-23). This passage clearly influenced later thinkers, par­ticularly Jewish and Christian—Jewish examples include the famous Dead Sea Scroll’s list of David’s compositions (part of 11Q5),^[3] and Christian examples include Basil's Homily on the First Psalm.^[4] Because the Bible had a profound effect on later thinkers this volume will examine the reception of these bib­lical traditions and ideas in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Such biblical traditions, however, originated in the ancient Near East and so must also be considered in this context.^[5] It is necessary, therefore, to look at demons and illness in ancient societies, especially those closest to the biblical world— Egypt and Mesopotamia.

However, scholars who seek to study demons and illness comparatively also face a variety of challenges. One is the nature and survival of the the sources themselves. These differ markedly from context to context. For example, for ancient Mesopotamia, we have letters from the royal courts, which describe medical and magical practices, literary texts containing lists of therapies, and the practical results of such therapies (personalised texts). Such a com­prehensive picture is lacking for late antique Jewish magic, however, for which we have the practical results, such as magic bowls and amulets, but not the handbooks from which the various formulae were drawn. Examples of such handbooks are preserved in later periods, and it is sometimes possi­ble to discern a link between medieval Jewish magic handbooks and earlier Jewish magic texts. For the medieval period, Christian saints' lives and mira­cle narratives present accounts of possession or demonic assault followed by miraculous healing. By contrast, medical texts from the same period are far more likely to focus on the physical factors which might underlie apparently ‘demonic' illnesses, explaining even the most extravagant symptoms as the result of imbalances of the humours.^[6] Both of these strands of thought are found in earlier periods: the miracle narratives are modelled, ultimately, on the New Testament, while attempts to reject demonic explanations for illness in favour of physical ones go back at least to ancient Greece and the Hippocratic treatise On the Sacred Disease. Nevertheless, despite these continuities each set of sources is the product of its own particular context and requires extensive knowledge of its period and genre.

As scholars, we are thus hostage to the surviving sources and, alas, our com- petance to engage with them. It is no coincidence, therefore, that the amount of work being done on Sumerian, Akkadian and Arabic sources is compara­tively small, on account of the relatively few scholars who possess the nec­essary linguistic skillls, and some fields, such as medieval Jewish and Islamic magic, are still very much in their infancy. Furthermore, for some periods, we have both insider and outsider sources, whereas, for others, we are limited to hostile witnesses or the practical results of magical practices that give us very little idea of how they were produced, who produced them, or whether any rit­uals accompanied their production and use. In contexts where unauthorized dealings with demons were forbidden, many authors of magical texts were, unsurprisingly, unwilling to identify themselves.

Another basic problem for the comparative approach is the issue of terminology—when we compare ancient and late antique near eastern sources with medieval and early modern european sources, are we really comparing like with like? For example, the ‘demons' referred to by Christian intellectuals, from the early church onwards, were presented as invariably evil and malicious, whereas the ‘daemones' discussed by pagan thinkers could be more neutral spiritual beings. And when we choose to use the term ‘demon' to refer to spiritual beings from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, is this poten­tially misleading? Fortunately, in the papers presented here, the authors are not insensitive to such potential pitfalls, and the respective terminologies are clearly discussed. What became clear, both during the conference itself and again when editing these papers, is that the comparative approach does indeed have much to offer, as long as we continue to keep these issues in mind.

Such an approach is still in its infancy, but promises to accomplish much. Two recent examples, that also treat a wide variety of traditions from various places and periods, are the proceedings of the Ritual Healing and Continuity and Innovation in the Magical Tradition conferences, held respectively at the Warburg Institute in London and the Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem, both in 2006.^[7] As a direct result of the Exeter Demons and Illness conference, the Egyptian and Jewish Magic in Antiquity conference, which was devoted to such a comparative approach, was recently hosted by Gideon Bohak, Rita Lucarelli and Alessia Bellusci at the Rheinische Friedrich- Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn. It is clear, therefore, that some momentum has already developed for this comparative approach in scholarship relating to ill­ness, magic, and the supernatural.

This comparative work builds on a growing body of studies focused on particular contexts and periods. Scholars have begun to explore the relation­ship between the supernatural and medicine in a variety of contexts in recent decades. For Antiquity, the work of Tzvi Abusch and Markham Geller on the ancient Near East is particularly noteworthy, as is that of Rita Lucarelli (who has contributed to this volume) for Egyptology.^[8] For Late Antiquity, we have been blessed with two recent monographs on early Jewish sources by Gideon Bohak and Yuval Harari,^[9] while the recent work of Dale Martin and David Frankfurter has proved particularly illuminating regarding early Christianity.^{[10] [11]} For medieval sources, there has been work on demonic possession in miracle narratives and canonization processes in particular. Much of this has focused on the later Middle Ages but Peregrine Horden has examined earlier Byzantine sources.11 There has also been a smaller amount of work on other medieval Christian sources, including the liturgy for exorcism, theological treatises, sermons and medical texts.^{[12] [13] [14] [15] [16] A study of madness in medieval Islamic society by Michael W. Dols has looked across religious boundaries and at a long time period, surveying the evidence for beliefs about demonically induced insanity not only in Arabic sources but also in the earlier pagan, Jewish and Christian texts that influenced them.13 However, the early modern period has attracted the most substantial attention, thanks to the numerous sources generated by the period's witchcraft trials, which often mentioned demons or witchcraft (which was believed to be done with the help of demons) as causes of illness. Particularly influential here has been Stuart Clark's important study of demon­ology and witchcraft, and Clark has also published a shorter article dedicated to how medical writers thought about witchcraft as a cause of illness.14 In part thanks to Clark's work, a number of other scholars have examined early mod­ern medical views of demonic illnesses.15 Early modernists have also produced several detailed, recent studies of demonic possession, but, although these do not ignore medical perspectives which viewed possession as a form of illness, their main focus is often on the religious aspects of these cases?6}

These studies show the richness of the field and the source material, and demonstrate what scholars who study demons and illness can learn about reli­gious concerns and rivalries, medicine and illness, and magic, to name a few possibilities. However, with the exception of Dols' work, they have focused on producing detailed studies of a single context or set of sources. This volume seeks to go beyond these valuable studies to explore continuities and changes comparatively.

In order to trace the different contexts and strands of influence involved when we consider the relationship between demons and illness, the present volume is divided by period into four sections—Antiquity, Late Antiquity, Medieval and Early Modernity. The first section contains four papers—one on Egypt and three on Mesopotamia. In the first, Gina Konstantopoulos con­siders the ambiguity of Mesopotamian demons, focussing specifically on the udug and the lama. In an important departure from the type of analysis that attempts to categorise these demons according to their intrinsic character­istics, Konstantopoulos analyses their role by text genre. She concludes that the role played by the udug or the lama very much depends on what the text requires rather than their intrinsic characteristics. Konstantopoulos's contri­bution also includes an edition of a British Museum tablet that contains a scapegoat ritual. In the second paper, Andras Bacskay discusses the natural and supernatural approaches to understanding and treating fever in ancient Mesopotamia. Naturally, fever was understood in terms of a strong or burning heat, whereas, supernaturally, it was a demonic attack, often by the Lamastu or Asakku demons. Treatments included amulets and phylacteries, which could be classed as supernatural, and cooling ointments, bandages, and drinks, which are natural. In the third paper, Rita Lucarelli discusses the classification of demons in Egyptian sources, identifying two classes—stationary/guardian demons and wandering/messenger demons. It is the latter that can function as disease carriers, particularly in gangs. Interestingly, it becomes clear that the same approach, which combines both medicine and magic as comple­mentary therapies, can be observed in both ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. In the final paper of this section, Lorenzo Verderame discusses how ancient Mesopotamian sources treat the problem of the aetiology of evil and illness. As in ancient Egypt, demons function as messengers of the gods and are subject to them, but they also represent a constant threat. Just as with the biblical book of Job, the removal of divine protection can result in this threat being realised.

The second section contains seven papers—four on early Judaism and three on early Christianity. The first two papers are concerned with the Second Temple period, and focus particularly on the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the first, Ida Frohlich provides an excellent introduction to ancient Jewish demonology, with particular attention to the Enochic traditions, the book of Tobit, the Dead Sea Scrolls Genesis Apocryphon, and two practical apotropaic texts (4Q560 and 11Q11). The latter two texts are discussed in detail and reveal much about early Jewish notions of demons and how to counteract them, with 11Q11 in particular providing some hints of how the Feast of Passover may have been perceived by certain Jewish sectarians in Antiquity. Following this, David Hamidovic pres­ents a more detailed analysis of 4Q560 with reference to a wide array of other sources, including the Torah, the Genesis Apocryphon, the Damascus Document, the book of Tobit, Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews, the Greek magical papyri, and the Aramaic magic bowls. Hamidovic then takes a similar approach, albeit briefer, to 11Q11, 4Q510 and 4Q511 (the Canticles of the Sage), and, finally, 4Q242 (the Prayer of Nabonidus). Taken together, these two papers provide an excel­lent foundation for what follows.

The next two papers move beyond the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Second Temple period, considering a wider array of sources from Late Antiquity and beyond. First, Gideon Bohak begins by providing a general survey of late antique Jewish sources regarding demons—including rabbinic texts (e.g. the Mishna, Talmudim and Midrashim etc.), as well as amulets and magic bowls— which are both abundant and complex. Faced with this rich and yet potentially bewildering array of evidence, as a means of attempting to organise the mate­rial in a coherant way Bohak proceeds to ask how ancient Jewish conceptions of demons compare with our present day conceptions of germs. Points of com­parison include invisibility, mortality and the ability to procreate, how they are detected, their effects (for good or ill), and both prophylactic and thera­peutic methods for counteracting them. Points of contrast include the range of ill effects, the onus on individual or communal action, what motivates their harmful behaviour, and, perhaps most significantly, the personal or impersonal nature of the threat—i.e. while one would not take the onslaught of germs personally, one would certainly take a demonic attack personally. Following this, Alessia Bellusci discusses late antique Jewish sources relating to sleep disorders, specifically aggressive magical practices that aimed to induce dis­turbing or erotic dreams in another person, or to inflict imsomnia on a victim. Bellusci’s analysis includes an impressive array of sources, including two late antique Jewish magical texts—Sefer ha-Razim and Harba de-Moshe—as well as the Mesopotamian Aramaic magic bowls, Greco-Egyptian magical texts, and texts from the Cairo Genizah, and demonstrates the persistence of the notion that sleep disturbances and bad dreams result from demonic attack.

The first paper that focusses on early Christianity is Chiara Crosignani’s analysis of Athenagoras and Tatian—two second-century Christian apologists who both discuss the origin, nature and effects of demons (particularly on the human mind), but who take different approaches that reflect their differ­ent backgrounds. While Athenagoras attempts to bring together Christianity and philosophy, Tatian rejects Hellenistic traditions as pagan—this contrast necessarily impacts on their demonologies. Interestingly, in terms of origin, while Athenagoras accepts the Enochic traditions (mentioned by Frohlich and Bohak in this volume), Tatian appears to reject them. While, for Athenagoras, demons can attack the mind at any time, and their effect will be determined by the piety of the victim, for Tatian the demonic attack will often be linked with an existing sickness. In a detailed and well-informed discussion, numerous other important early Christian writers and texts are also discussed, including Justin Martyr and Erma's Shepard, insofar as they illuminate the context for Athenagoras and Tatian. In the second paper, Sophie Sawicka-Sykes also exam­ines the influence of older ideas on an important late antique Christian writer. She looks at how late antique Egyptian monastic literature treats the subject of anti-music, i.e. discordant shouts and chants that reflect demonic activity and the resulting spiritual disorder, focussing on the works of the fourth-century writer Athanasius of Alexandria (Life of Antony, Letter to Marcellinus, Against the Heathen). Sawicka-Sykes sets the scene by discussing ancient attitudes to music and harmony (Platonic, Pythagorean and Stoic), and, interestingly, her subsequent analysis identifies how Stoic ideas in particular appear to manifest in the works of Athanasius and the later Evagrius Ponticus. In the final paper in this section, Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe analyses two early fifth-century accounts of exorcisms that cured victims who were caused by demons to eat excessively, to consume disgusting materials and to behave in other horrifying ways associ­ated with gluttony. The accounts are found in a hymn by the ascetic Paulinus and a miracle account penned by the bishop Palladius. The former was written for the feast of Felix, so it may have served as a cautionary reminder of the dan­gers of gluttony during the mid-winter festivities. On the other hand, the latter appears to be a general warning against greed and the accompanying neglect of charitable works. Both sources reflect similar ascetic principles.

The third section of the book moves on to consider the Middle Ages, con­taining six papers which again focus on a wide range of types of source— including miracle accounts, magical texts and medical treatises—which often drew ideas from earlier periods. Anne Bailey and Claire Trenery's papers both focus on one of the genres of medieval text which discusses demonic illnesses most often: accounts of miracles performed by the saints. These miracle narra­tives were an important part of saints' Lives from late antiquity onwards,^[17] and were written throughout medieval Europe. Accounts of miracles were often recorded by monks or other clerics at the saints' shrines as evidence of the saint's holiness, and from the thirteenth century onwards they also appear in formal canonization procedures. They have received a great deal of attention from scholars in recent decades, and this includes studies of what they can tell us about medieval attitudes to health, illness and healing,^[18] but given the large volume of surviving source material more remains to be done. Miracle narra­tives most commonly mention demons when they tell of how the saint cured ‘possessed’ people, many of whom might seem to a modern reader to have suffered from mental illnesses. These accounts were often modelled on Jesus’ cures of ‘possessed’ people in the New Testament but both Bailey and Trenery argue that their details can tell us much about medieval attitudes to demonic illnesses. Thus Bailey highlights how many twelfth-century English miracle narratives do not simply reproduce a template set by the New Testament, but also add new ways of thinking and writing about mental illness. In particular she discusses how twelfth-century authors incorporated medical ideas and vocabulary drawn from Hippocratic-Galenic medicine into their accounts of demonic possession. This was part of a wider trend in twelfth-century hagi­ography to include medical terminology, but it meant ‘possession’ could be interpreted in a variety of ways: as a physical illness, a demonic assault, or a combination of the two, for example if the trauma of seeing or hearing demons led to mental disorder.

Claire Trenery also focuses on twelfth-century English miracle narratives, and in particular on one of the largest of these collections: the records of around seven hundred miracles performed at the shrine of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury from 1171 onwards. As in Bailey’s sources, the Becket miracles most often associated demons with mental disorder. Like the writers studied by Bailey, the authors of the Becket miracles also included medical vocabu­lary in their discussions of possession and insanity. Trenery explores the ways in which demons were believed to interact with their host’s physical body. Demons might physically occupy the human body, as they did with Matilda of Cologne, who was described as ‘filled with a demon’, or they might simply attack it from the outside, as they did with Elward of Selling, who was driven insane by a demon that pursued him. She also identifies differences in attitude among the different authors who recorded Becket’s miracles. Some were more precise and detailed in their descriptions of demonic illness than others, and some were more willing than others to link demons to mental disorder. Both Trenery and Bailey therefore argue that medical and religious understandings of demonic illnesses were compatible for twelfth-century educated writers. Moreover, not all forms of mental disorder were linked to demons, and even those that were might be described in physical terms using medical vocabulary.

The other four medieval papers, by Carolina Escobar Vargas, Sebastia Giralt, Lauri Ockenstrom and Liana Saif, deal with another valuable category of sources which are usually discussed separately from the miracle narratives. These are scientific and medical treatises, categories which included many works that certain readers (both in the medieval period and since) would cat­egorize as magic. Carolina Escobar Vargas examines a thirteenth-century set of lapidaries (treatises on the properties of precious stones) commissioned by King Alfonso X of Castile. Alfonso's lapidaries drew on a mixture of intellec­tual traditions, incorporating Greek, Arabic and Jewish material and among the illnesses they discussed was demonio. Various stones could cure this if they were ground up and ingested, worn around the neck, or burned and the fumes inhaled. Escobar Vargas argues that in the lapidaries demonio was connected to epilepsy and shared some of the same remedies, but she notes that the over­lap between the two conditions was not complete, and the Alfonsine lapidary did also discuss epilepsy without mentioning demons. Again we see that the boundaries between ‘natural' and demonic illnesses were flexible. Moreover, this case study tells part of a much longer story. Debates over whether epilepsy was caused by physical, divine or demonic forces went back to antiquity and persisted into the early modern period.^[19]

Lauri Ockenstrom also discusses texts that were written in a Christian context but drew on Greek and Arabic material and straddled the borders between magic and science: works of natural magic and astrological image magic. Natural magic relied on the ‘occult' or hidden properties of natural objects, which could not be explained by the usual categories of medieval science (Alfonso's lapidary might be one example) while astrological image magic involved the making of images which could draw down the power of the stars to achieve effects on earth. Although astrological image magic texts often claimed to draw on natural or celestial forces, many of them also mentioned demons or other unspecified spirits and so were viewed as magic by many medieval churchmen. Sometimes these works presented demons as harmful agents who needed to be repelled, but astrological image magic texts, in par­ticular, also gave instructions to allow the operator to control demons, to ask them questions or even to compel the demons to harm others. Ockenstrom argues that these texts therefore show an unusually wide range of attitudes to demons, some more orthodox from a Christian perspective than others. The relationship between demons and illness was one part of this but was bound up with the texts' wider promises to let their operators control and interact with spirits.

Sebastia Giralt focuses on a work which took a very different view of these magical texts and the men who read them. The Epistle on the reprobation of the deception of necromancy by the Catalan physican Arnau de Vilanova (d. 1311) criticized necromancers who sought to control demons by means of the operations set out in astrological image magic texts and other magical works. Arnau argued that it was impossible for human magicians to compel demons in the ways that magical texts promised, a position shared by most theologians. More unusually, Arnau also asked why the necromancers could believe something which was so obviously false and absurd. He argued that they did so because they were suffering from a form of melancholia, a men­tal illness which impeded their reason. Arnau's argument was unusual, but as Giralt shows it drew on a longer Greek and Arabic medical tradition which linked melancholia with demons. These Greek and Arabic works did not claim that demons caused melancholia or other mental illnesses: instead, they listed delusions, including visions of demons, as one of the symptoms of melancho­lia. Arnau's treatise therefore shows yet another way in which medical writ­ers might conceptualize the relationship between demons and illness, which regarded the demons not as a cause but as a symptom. He also emphasizes that medical writers were interested in offering physical explanations for apparently demonic phenomena, a theme picked up by Pierre Kapitaniak and Harman Bhogal's papers on the early modern period.

Liana Saif's paper moves away from the Christian Middle Ages to show that medieval Muslim writers also discussed the relationship between demons and illness in detail. Muslim physicians who wrote about the causes of illness drew on many of the same ancient Greek medical authorities as did Latin writers such as Arnau de Vilanova. They also drew on neoplatonic theories about the influence of the stars and planets on human health, citing late antique writers such as Plotinus. However, many other perspectives are also recorded. Writers on occult philosophy and magic assigned spirits to the planets, and magical texts such as the eleventh-century Ghayat al-Hakim, or Picatrix, described how the magician could harness these spirits to cause or cure illness. These ideas were later transmitted to western Europe when magical texts such as the Picatrix, and the others described in Lauri Ockenstrom's paper, were translated into Latin. A further perspective on spirits and illness was provided by the north African Sufi writer al-Buni. Al-Buni suggested how verses from the Qur'an could be used to cause illnesses, in a process that was, according to Saif, ‘further from medicine and placed firmly in the domains of religion and/or subversive occultism.' There were similarly different perspectives on the cure of demonic illnesses. Saif therefore emphasizes that medical theory in the Islamic world was diverse, and different authors, writing in different genres, conceptualized the relationship between spiritual entities and illnesses in a variety of ways.

The volume ends in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a period which marked many important religious and scientific changes, but also a period in which demons and demonic illnesses were still part of many people's world views. As Stuart Clark has shown, for many early modern intellectuals demon­ology was a branch of natural science, and witchcraft, demons and demonic illnesses were taken seriously by writers in a variety of disciplines, including medicine and theology, as well as by many less educated people.^[20] Religious and legal changes generated new kinds of source material, however. In par­ticular the period 1570-1650 saw trials for witchcraft peak in many parts of Europe, although in some areas the peak came later. Many witch trials began with an accusation that the witch, aided by demons, had caused an illness or other misfortune and so they include important information about beliefs relating to demonic illnesses. In addition to trial records, the availability of popular print encouraged the publication of a wide variety of works which discussed witchcraft and other demonic phenomena, such as possession. Harman Bhogal's paper focuses one such work: a treatise relating to a posses­sion case which occurred in Nottingham in 1597. In response to this contro­versial case, two preachers, John Deacon and John Walker, published in 1601 Dialogicall Discourses of Spirits and Divels. This work explored theological and natural ideas about possession as part of a wider Protestant reassessment of all miracles and other supernatural phenomena. Unusually Deacon and Walker argued that possession—in the way that it was usually understood as the phys­ical entry of a demon into a person's body—was in fact impossible because it contravened the laws of nature. Bhogal's analysis of their argument shows how they formulated a radically different view of what possession was and why it occurred compared with many of their contemporaries, as well as how their ideas influenced later writing on possession.

Focusing on the same context—England in the early seventeenth century— Pierre Kapitaniak explores the ways in which medical writers conceptualised demonic and magical illnesses. As he notes, many early modern physicians wrote about illnesses caused by witchcraft and demons, discussing them as a medical rather than a theological problem. Like Deacon and Walker, the physician John Cotta discussed how far apparently demonic illnesses had a medical basis. Kapitaniak shows that Cotta's attitude seems to change dra­matically between his first work, published in 1612, and his second, published in 1616. He argues that this apparent difference can be explained by the dif­ferent genres of the two works, which led Cotta to cite different authorities, as well as by witch trials that Cotta had witnessed in the intervening period. Kapitaniak therefore shows how complex intellectual debates about demons and illness were in this period: there were no ‘right’ answers and many differ­ent approaches to demonic illnesses were possible, even for a single author.

20

In Catholic southern Europe—Spain, Portugal and Italy—the legal con­text within which authors wrote about demons was different. Here witchcraft, magic and ‘superstition’ fell primarily under the jurisdiction of the inquistion rather than the local secular or religious authorities. Although inquisitors regarded magic and superstition as serious issues they were often compara­tively lenient in their punishments, and more sceptical than northern European judges of the more extravagant accusations made in some witch trials. Instead they focused on other issues such as ‘superstitious’ healing, which forms the focus of Bradley Mollmann’s paper. Mollmann shows how the role of demons in ‘superstitious’ healing practices was discussed by early modern inquisitors and theologians, who were concerned to distinguish between miraculous, nat­ural and demonic forms of healing, but he focuses on how these intellectual debates were played out in the cases which came before the Toledo inquisition in central Spain. Witnesses, defendants and lawyers, as well as the inquisitors themselves, used these categories to argue for the legitimacy (or not) of par­ticular healing practices. Like Kapitaniak and Bhogal Mollmann highlights the continuing importance of ideas about demons and illness in this period, and he shows how these were not merely intellectual debates but had profound implications for the lives of folk healers and their clients.

These papers highlight the variety of sources for studying demons and ill­ness and the variety of possible approaches. Nevertheless, several important themes run through the different sections and recur in many time periods. These include the relationship between religion and medicine; the question of what kinds of illness are most likely to be linked with demons and why; and the ways in which magic can be linked to demonic illnesses, especially through the use of ‘magical’ cures. All these themes deserve further detailed exploration. At all times, it is important to keep in mind that the changing nature of the primary sources will have an impact on such comparisons: as many of the papers show, the interests and emphases of a medical writer may be very different from those of a theologian, and topics that interested an academic audience of physicians or theologians might seem less relevant to the sick people who appear in miracle narratives and witch trials. The sources also reflect shifting views of what was deemed possible or acceptable. This could reflect changes which took place over time: for example the belief in miracles which was criticized so harshly by Protestant writers like Deacon and Walker was accepted by many pre-Reformation writers. It could also reflect debates that took place within a single period, or between different authors or genres of text: some religious writers were more willing to employ medical terminology and ideas than others, and some magical texts written in Christian Europe offered views that would have seemed unorthodox or heretical to mainstream thinkers. These debates—over time, between genres, and between different intellectual traditions, all deserve further attention. Moreover, as Peregrine Horden’s epilogue shows, exploring demonic illnesses and the debates associated with them has much to tell us about wider cultural changes such as the ‘disenchantment’ that it has sometimes been argued took place during the early modern period.

Thus while this volume highlights important themes which run through the study of demons and illness, it is also apparent that more work is needed. In particular, research into the medieval and early modern periods tends to be focused on Christian cultures, drawing on miracle narratives, medical texts, and (later) the records of trials held by the secular authorities and the inquisi­tion, and the papers in this volume reflect this. More could be done to explore Islamic and Jewish ideas about demons and illness in this period, to build on the important studies of early Judaism and the rich source material highlighed by Liana Saif’s paper. We therefore hope to stimulate further research into a varied and fascinating area, as well as showcasing the work which is already being done by numerous scholars in many different countries and disciplines.