Demonology at a Crossroads: The Visions of Ermine de Reims and the Image of the Devil on the Eve of the Great European Witch-Hunt

Abstract

From November 1, 1395, until August 25, 1396, Ermine de Reims, a peasant widow from Northern France, was systematically beaten and tortured by the devil almost every night. This is at least what the woman told her confessor, Jean le Graveur. This story takes place only thirty years before the formal beginning of the witchcraft repression in the Continent. For that reason I have opted to explore in this article a historical problem that lies at the very heart of the strange case of Ermine: the image of the devil on the eve of the great European witch-hunt. In particular, Jean le Graveur's narration can provide new evidence for assessing the continuities and ruptures between radical demonology and the previous theological conceptions of the devil. The overlap we find in Jean's manuscript between different traditions, contributes to demonstrate that the image of the devil that prevails in times of the early modern witchcraft persecution was not necessarily built in opposition to previous demonological paradigms. The new science of demons that began to emerge during the thirteenth century merely remarked certain traits of the devil of the Fathers, and therefore the differences between both mythologies arose from the decision of emphasizing different components of the very same demonological complex. The Satan of scholasticism, then, was not only an enhanced, revised and expanded version of the Augustinian devil, but the true consummation of the Patristic model, its fullest expression: one that would begin to emerge only at the end of time, on the eve of the Second Coming of Christ.