Paulinus, Hymn 26

Paulinus' insistent figuring of demons as bestial helps to explain the animal­istic behaviour of a ravenous man (ll. 309-23 and ll. 348-53) as demonically influenced, and demonstrates what Peter Brown has vividly described as ‘the horror of the collapse of the categories that defined a human being.'ⁿ Indeed, it also elides the behaviours of subtle-bodied spiritual rational creatures (demons) with those of more thickly embodied, irrational creatures (animals). This elision is exemplified by the comment with which Paulinus introduced the anecdote of the hyperphagic demoniac: that this single instance of pos­session would allow his audience to learn that demons have ‘bestial feelings' (sensus ferinos, l. 308). He then recounted the effects of the demon on his vic­tim in vivid detail:

Not long ago a man was distended by a demon so prodigious that he devoured in an easy gulp not only customary human foodstuffs, or, if it was offered, a table heaped up with a great feast; but also, having snatched hens from the thresholds of those living nearby, as soon as he had seized them, he mangled them with a mad mouth and devoured them raw with­out choking on their feathers. He even used to thirst for the blood of the dead, and lick their bones; chewing the cast-off carcasses of cattle, he was the ominous dining-companion of dogs. Look at him now, this man [once possessed] by so great a demon; he works soberly on a small rented farm far away, and by the healing of God in the holy church of Felix, he was restored to his own self; he [God] demonstrates well enough by this clear sign that Felix, powerful by his merits and by Christ's name, tames frightful beasts and conquers flames.^{[591] [592]}

Paulinus' choice of vocabulary in this anecdote suggests that the demon's indwelling was a painfully physical activity in which the demon filled up and stretched its human host.

Paulinus' syntax suggests that the demoniac's dramatically expanded appetite was a direct result of the demon's own size or nature: the man ‘was distended by a demon so prodigious that... he devoured' (tam prodigiali ut... consumeret) all kinds of foodstuffs. Later, the demon's size or quality is again emphasized, when it is described as ‘such a great demon' (daemone tanto, l. 318). That is, the demon's nature, size, or appetite was notably great, indeed comparably greater than that of other demons, and the demon's dis­tinctively enormous appetite was being exercised through its human host. Now, demons were not generally thought to be capable of ingesting solid foodstuffs in their own subtle bodies; indeed, aery demonic bodies were often said to be sustained by different kinds of foods than human bodies, especially by the fumes of sacrifices.^{[593] [594] [595] [596] That said, comparative evidence from earlier Christian texts such as the pseudo-Clementine Homilies suggests that one of the demons' motivations for possessing a human body was to delight in the senses other­wise lacking to their own more rarefied existence?5 The fact that Paulinus' demoniac guzzled a combination of human banquets, uncooked meats, and carrion thus suggests the insatiable quality of a great demon's appetite exer­cised through a human body, with a bestial lack of regard for the refinements of human cookery.}

We encounter this demonic expression of animal instincts again in the size and objects of the demoniac's appetite which crossed all the normal bound­aries of propriety and progressed from the human to the bestial: ordinary foodstuffs (notos /... cibos hominum, ll. 310-11), tables laden with banquets (congesta... / multa mensa dape, ll. 311-12), hens grabbed from nearby house­holds (et gallinas habitantum limine raptas, l. 313), and a bloody array of carrion (funeream saniem... ossa /... pecudum proiecta cadavera, ll. 316-17). As struc­turalists have demonstrated with regard to classical culture, eating meat raw as opposed to cooked was one of the most fundamental and polarizing distinc­tions between humans and animals in Greco-Roman antiquity?⁶ The demo­niac's snatching and eating live animals thus rendered him akin to a beast, and in turn assimilated him to the bestial barbarians and demonic beasts evoked elsewhere in this poem. The image of a human frantically rending raw flesh may also have evoked Bacchic associations?⁷

In Hymn 26 Paulinus did not meditate on how this particular demoniac had come to be possessed, nor did he offer a judgment about whether he had deserved to suffer this unpleasant experience. However, in other hymns Paulinus speculated at some length about why demons infiltrated human beings. For example, in Hymn 23, delivered in 401, the year before Hymn 26, Paulinus explained that Felix prolonged the presence of demons in some peo­ple ‘so that punishment may oppress the evil foe for longer; or so that the people who have merited serving as vessels for evil spirits may experience a deserved delay in gaining the remedy, and may more fully expiate the whole of their sin by this lapse of time...’^{[597] [598] There are two somewhat contradictory suggestions in this passage: firstly, that possession punished the demon, and secondly, that it punished the human host and simultaneously offered an opportunity for atonement.}

However, later in Hymn 23 Paulinus undercut the idea that possession was punishment for the possessed: ‘They are free of pain who appear to be endur­ing pains in the body, and their souls are unaffected; they watch the torments of others in their own limbs.

From the exclamatory ecce in the closing lines of this anecdote, it appears that Paulinus pointed out the cured demoniac to the congregation as visible proof of the episode's happy resolution; he was now the model of a civilized small farmer, soberly working a small farm far away (sobrius ecce procul con­ductum exercet agellum, l. 319). The demoniac was thus not only restored to himself, but also incorporated back into agricultural society, the congregation, and liturgical life, illustrating what Peter Brown has called the ‘drama of rein­tegration' effected by exorcism.^{[600] [601] [602] [603] We are told that the cure was effected by God (curante deo, l. 320), and that it occurred within Felix's church (sancta Felicis in aula, l. 320). There is also a vivid description of the internal mechanics of saint Felix's exorcistic operation:}

Felix comes between spirits joined by a hostile compact within a single body; in its secret heart he, being more subtle, dissolves the thin spirits, separating soul from demon. Once [the demon] has been driven away, the free mind recovers the man.22

Here, Paulinus described the dead saint Felix entering in aery form into the body of the demoniac, where he was able to dissolve the compact of evil spir­its, separate the demon from the human soul and drive it away.2³ Thus what initially was presented as a non-exorcistic cure turns out to have involved Felix miraculously battling and expelling demons.

As in Hymn 23, Paulinus' reflections on the effect of exorcism suggest a par­ticular rhythm to the demoniac's departure from and return to his human self: once the demon has been expelled, ‘the free mind recovers the man' (libera.../ mens hominem recipit, ll. 342-3). Paulinus had already reassured his congrega­tion that the demoniac's cure had ‘returned him to himself' (redditus ipse sibi, l. 321) and later claimed that he was now once more again ‘completely and only a man' (totus vel solus homo, l. 352) and ‘returned to his own laws' (in sua iura reversus, l. 352). This latter phrase perhaps plays with the legal notion of being sui iuris, under one's own jurisdiction or power, as opposed to being alieni iuris, such as was the case for children, women and slaves under the power of the patriarch, in patria potestas.2⁴ Again, the emphasis is on the demoniac being completely under the control of the demon.

After a brief interlude hymning Felix's powers, Paulinus then returned to this particular demoniac, characterizing the contrast between his former state (nunc) and his current state (iam) in vivid sensory terms:

... that man who but recently was puffed up with a bitter devil, the taste of vipers [coming] from his foaming lips, who with shaking of his sides and hiccupping from open throat, more oftenjumping up and down, used to belch bitter breaths, now completely and only a man, has been returned to his own laws. He smells sweet, he breathes health, and he speaks calmly.^{[604] [605] [606]}

The features of this retrospective portrait of the possessed man suggest that his body accommodated its demonic visitor only with difficulty, leaking and belching forth signs of its inhabitant. That is, the indwelling of a subtle demonic body was shown to be disruptive, poisoning internal processes of both breathing and digestion. This occupation of internal systems tallies with Paulinus' earlier description of the demoniac as both distended (as if by food, evoking ingestion) and puffed up (as if by aery substance, evoking inhala­tion). Comparative evidence from late antiquity suggests that there co-existed notions of demons entering through the mouth and nose, whether breathed in or breathed out, and exiting through either mouth or nose, or being excreted out; we must, filling in the gaps, imagine that demonic possession was thought to entail occupation of both digestive and breathing processes?⁶

Overall, then, this hymn reveals a good deal about ideas of demonic posses­sion and appetite. However, this episode may also have had another paraenetic purpose, given the social context of the poem's performance. The feast of Felix was, like other church festivals, the occasion for a welcome mid-winter blow­out for the wider agricultural community, and some of Paulinus' other natali­cia reveal, albeit inadvertently, the scale of the celebrations at Nola. In Hymn 20 on the feast of 406, Paulinus admitted that although he had lacked resources with which to mount a feast, he was miraculously provided with two hogs and a calf.2⁷ In Hymn 27 on the feast of 403, Paulinus chastised the merriment of feasting rustics in terms reminiscent of Augustine’s worry about refrigeria at saints' shrines: ‘I only wish they would channel this joy in sober prayer, and not introduce their winecups within the holy thresholds... they wrongly believe that saints are delighted to have their tombs doused with reeking wine.’^[607]

Paulinus’ modest ascetic community, which adhered to a frugal regime of a single vegetarian meal a day, must have been challenged by this scale of feasting.2^[608] Paulinus had been advised by Jerome in a letter of the mid-3gos to follow the examples of monks like Paul, Antony, Julian, Hilarion and the Macarii, to adopt a coarse diet, to despise the appetite, and to sleep often on an empty stomach, and he tells us about the simple meals prepared for him by Victor in a letter to Sulpitius Severus.^[609] In another letter to Severus of about 399, Paulinus offered a caustic and cautionary contrast between his own pal­lid monks, and the gluttony of the visiting courier Marracinus^{[610] [611] The latter is described in terms which overlap with the demoniac of Hymn 26; he is ‘blown up’ (inflato) with wine, and has the ‘breath of a belching Thraso’ (flatum Thrasonis ructantis).32 The overeating demoniac of his Hymn 26 was thus not just frighteningly bestial and demonic, but exemplified the dangerous greed and self-indulgence which attended all-too-human feasting and drinking.}