Anti-demonological discernment of spirits in 16th century Europe

DEL OLMO, ISMAEL

Erlangen

Congreso; Christian discourses of the holy and the sacred in the 16th and 17th century; 2018

Facultad de Filosofía y Letras / Friedrich Alexander Universitat

This paper traces diverse early modern uses of the tradition of discretio spirituum or discernment of spirits, that is, the inquiry into the pneumatological causes of behavior ⸻supernatural, diabolical, or natural? We will highlight in which ways discernment was frequently attached to the discourse of demonology in order to reinforce the demonic character of certain behaviors and events such as prophecies, mysticism, and false miracles, which were part of the rich pneumatological religiosity of the period. Nevertheless, we will see that Michel de Montaigne?s ?Des boiteux? (1588) and Reginald Scot?s Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) established alternative links between discretio and demonology. With his Fideist and Skeptical outlook, Montaigne denied that extraordinary events could be deemed diabolical without explicit supernatural evidence. This evidence could be found in Scripture, since Revelation attests to instances of witchcraft and other demonic behavior. But contemporary cases of purported demonic activity, given that they occur outside the realmof the Bible, could not be discerned with any certainty. Scot, for his part, turned the discourse of discernment of spirits against demonology, arguing that proper discretio shows that devils could not intervene in the material world, and that demonologists were incapable of discerning spirits. On the contrary, they themselves were inspired, not by God, but by the devil.