Dreamers of the Dark: - Research Commons - The University of ...

Bernard Hamilton, in Religion in the Medieval West comments that :
Medieval people undoubtedly regarded the devil and his legions as a
source of power, but they did not apostatize from the Christian faith in
order to worship Lucifer in the place of God…the trappings of modern
Satanist ritual cannot be traced earlier than the seventeenth century and
had no place in the medieval world 17
This is a sentiment echoed by Norman Cohen:
There is in fact no serious evidence for the existence of Devilworshippers
anywhere in medieval Europe. One can go further: there
is serious evidence to the contrary. Very few inquisitors claimed to
come across these devil worshippers, and most of those few are known
to be fanatical amateurs… 18
The change in the understanding of Satanism that occurred with the Reformation
was that diabolism was no longer about the old-style medieval magic, in which
subjugated demons were summoned in lonely towers and laboratories and bound
by the will of a magus and the holy names of God; now Satan was an
uncontrollable, tangible social force, imperilling the souls of entire kingdoms.
Satan was evoked by Catholic and Protestant alike as being the spiritual
bankroller of the other side and was personified as the Luther, Pope, the Holy
Roman Emperor or any number of other leading figures. As the divisions
deepened and the wars became increasingly bitter, Satan became more powerful
and a very real agent of opposition to God’s will 19 . ‘Satanism’, ‘witchcraft’ and
‘heresy’ became synonymous as Catholics burnt Protestants (who were obviously
17
London, Edward Arnold, 1986. p167
18
Europe’s Inner Demons: The Demonization of Christians in Medieval Christendom (London:
Pimlico, 1993), p.78
19
Joseph Klaits, Servants of Satan: The Age of the Witch Hunts (Bloomington, Indiana University
Press, 1985) pp.60-61
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