Abstract
This chapter explores the conceptions and representations of space in early modern demonology, focusing on the contribution brought by cosmographical knowledge to demonology in the Renaissance. I start by examining the conception of the devil as an inhabitant of the air, free to invade the world of the living: a fundamentally mobile creature, the devil possessed a mastery of the sublunar world that made him akin to cosmographers. I then assess the extent to which demonologists incorporated geographical information into their treatises, and in particular material related to the new worlds discovered overseas. I argue that the publication of Olaus Magnus’s Description of the Northern Peoples (1555) marked a critical moment in the construction of this “cosmography of the devil,” and analyse one of its most striking examples: Le Loyer’s Discours et histoires des spectres (1605). The diabolical world map outlined by demonologists was a dynamic one, across which demons moved according to the flow of history. It expressed an anxiety beyond that of the fear of witchcraft: what is at work here is the idea of Europe being contaminated by the New World.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
Lestringant (1994, 59).
- 5.
- 6.
The presentation of these three inventions as emblems of modernity can be found throughout the period in the works of authors such as Rabelais, Fernel, Cardano, Bodin, Le Roy, Frobisher, etc.
- 7.
Rabelais’s Pantagruel (1532), Chap. 8: “Printing likewise is now in use, so elegant, and so correct that better cannot be imagined, although it was found out but in my time by divine inspiration, as by a diabolical suggestion on the other side was the invention of Ordnance.” (Rabelais 2005, 161) This opposition between the “divinely inspired” printing press and the “diabolical” art of artillery is also a humanist commonplace: see Hale (1966).
- 8.
Boureau (2006, 93‒118).
- 9.
On the emergence of this “cumulative concept of witchcraft,” see Levack (2006, 32‒51). For early fifteenth-century representations of the Sabbat, see Ostorero et al. (1999). Although absent from early treatises such as Kramer’s influential Malleus maleficarum (1486/7), the Sabbat becomes a central feature of demonology a century later. Even then, however, exists a body of demonological writing indifferent to the subject of witchcraft, and thus to the Sabbat: see Chesters (2011).
- 10.
On Faust and curiosity in the first printed versions of the legend, see Maus de Rolley (2011, 510‒523).
- 11.
Stephens (2002, 353).
- 12.
- 13.
Le Normant (1623, 303).
- 14.
For a description of the punishments of hell, see the exorcism of Louise Capeau on 14 December 1611 in Michaëlis (1614, 72–74). In the account of her demonic possession (published 1586), Jeanne Féry briefly narrates a visionary journey to hell (Buisseret 1586, f. 46 v°). For a similar account in a case of divine possession, see Thérèse d’Avila (1601, Chap. XXXII).
- 15.
Bodin (1580), f. 7 r°.
- 16.
- 17.
Augustine, Enarratio in Psalmum CXLVIII, cited in Cohn (1975, 66).
- 18.
- 19.
Vacant (1903‒50, iv, 1, col. 321‒409).
- 20.
- 21.
On this work and its influence on late Renaissance demonology, see Chesters (2011, 175‒185).
- 22.
Crespet (1590, f. 15 v°).
- 23.
Le Loyer (1605, 340): “Et pour les lieux particuliers que ces mesmes Esprits aiment & cherchent, ils sont presque infinis, pour n’estre les Demons exclus de lieu quelconque qui soit sous le cercle Lunaire. Aussi qu’ils sont Esprits de l’air, & comme au monde inferieur l’air est diffus par tout, de mesme les Demons sont diffus par le bas univers.”
- 24.
Cited in Boureau (2006, 25).
- 25.
Le Loyer (1605, 786): “Le diable ne cesse de tracasser et courir par toute la terre, et circuit icelle […] afin de chercher sa proye, qui est le pêcheur, le surprendre au despourveu, l’engloutir et devorer.”
- 26.
Le Loyer (1605, 786): “C’est son repos que cela, c’est son exercice coustumier, c’est la place mouvante, son lict branlant et tournoyant, son coche, sa litiere, son carrosse où il est branlé et agité dans cesse, et dont il ne voudroit estre osté, et se fasche contre le Magicien qui par ses charmes et paroles importunes le trouble et travaille, ce luy semble, en luy faisant quitter son travail qui est delectable, et l’excitant et arrachant du lieu où il estoit occupé.”
- 27.
Lancre (1612, 13): “C’est [= le monde] le Globe & le cerne que ceste beste sanglante va tournoyant estant tousjours en queste dequoy elle pourra remplir cest Enfer qui ne dict jamais (c’est assez).”
- 28.
Lancre (1612, 20).
- 29.
Michaëlis (1587, 68).
- 30.
I do not develop here these two questions of demonic possession and demonic “transvection” (i.e., the devil’s ability to transport bodies across space). For the former, see Certeau (2000), Caciola (2003), Ferber (2004), Levack (2013). For the latter, see Stephens (2002, 125‒144), Maus de Rolley (2011, 412‒539).
- 31.
Lancre (1612, 278): “Ces Esprits courent par tout au dessus & au dessous nostre Hemisphere, vont au centre de la terre, fouillent tous les coings & entrailles d’icelle, montent aux nues, font foudroyer, tempester & plouvoir, le tout par les agents naturels, ainsi que Dieu le permet.” Compare with the praises of astronomy and cosmography quoted in Maus de Rolley (2011, 101–106).
- 32.
Thorndike (1949, 239‒240).
- 33.
On the cosmographer’s “all-powerful gaze” (“regard tout-puissant”), see Lestringant (1994, 19‒26).
- 34.
Michaëlis (1587, 84): “Comme voyans qu’il pleut desja aux Indes, et que le temps est disposé pour porter les nuees vers les quartiers d’Egypte, [le diable] fait sçavoir à ses oracles qu’il pleuvra en bref en Egypte, et quand il voit que grande abondance de neige a fondu aux montagnes, ou commencé à fondre, il predit aussi que le Nil, ou autre grosse rivière débordera, mais il ne dit sinon ce qu’il voit.”
- 35.
For a reading of these demonic voyages, see Maus de Rolley (2011, 510‒539).
- 36.
For an example of these discussions, see Weyer (1998, 201‒202).
- 37.
For virtually all demonologists, true miracles were reserved to God alone. The devil could not overrule the laws of nature, and achieved most of his wonders by manipulating nature and its occult properties. His domain was not that of the supernatural, but of the preternatural, i.e., the realm of deviant and prodigious phenomena that were yet within nature. See Clark (1997, 151–178).
- 38.
Le Loyer (1586, 485).
- 39.
I am thinking here of Bachelard’s “Poetics of Space” (Poétique de l’espace, 1957).
- 40.
The fact is noted by Lancre (1612, 68‒69) but also by modern historians. See Roper (2004, 109): “At the height of the witch craze, when accused witches described the dances, the sites they described were often tucked away locally, by the mill perhaps, a place associated with boundaries between the wild and the settled, and situated usually on an isolated area or at the edge of habitation; or in the woods.” See also Roper’s remarks on the “narrowness of [village witches’] geographical imagination” in sixteenth-century Germany: Roper (2013, 6).
- 41.
Lancre (1622, 629‒630): “l’esprit délicat qui n’a jamais bougé d’une grosse ville, et n’a jamais rien veu, que ce qui se voit à grosses troupes, qui n’a rien ouy des Demons, que ce qu’il en a peu apprendre dans les livres. […] Ce n’est pas dans les delices d’une grosse et puissante Cité où les Demons se font voir ou sentir: la multitude infinie du Peuple, les Eglises, la devotion, la conversation, chassent ordinairement tout cela.” Compare for instance with Léry (1990, 21–22). For a reading of Lancre’s Tableau de l’inconstance as a narrative of discovery, similar to those written by travellers back from the New World, see Jacques-Lefèvre (2008).
- 42.
Moshe Sluhovsky has demonstrated that the outburst of mass possessions cases in seventeenth-century France and Europe had a rich “pre-history”. Most of the sixteenth-century cases, though, remained “cloaked in silence,” some of them being known to us only from a list compiled by Weyer in the 1568 edition of his treatise. See Sluhovsky (2002, in particular 1385–1386). On the possession at Aix-en-Provence, see Ferber (2004, 71–88).
- 43.
- 44.
Le Loyer (1605, 702): “En ce cartier d’Endor ou Fribolet y avoit force bois, force landes et pastures, force collines, outre les monts Tabor et Gelboé, qui en estoient proches. Et cecy je ne le dis point pour neant, parce qu’aux femmes simples qui gardent leurs bestes és pastures et colines, et aux pasteurs et bouviers des champs les Diables s’insinuent plus facilement qu’à d’autres qui ont plus de ruse et se sçavent mieux garder des embusches Diaboliques. Davantage parmy les landes, prairies, collines, montagnes, pastures, forests y a plus de Sorciers et Sorcieres qu’és villes et villages, esquels hantent et frequentent les hommes.”
- 45.
- 46.
On the imagination of space in Nider’s Formicarius, see Céard (2008).
- 47.
See the maps in Kramer (2009, viii).
- 48.
Most of these treatises have been compiled in Abbiati et al. (1984).
- 49.
- 50.
- 51.
See for instance Castañega (1994, 22): “Tierras remotas y estrañas.” These stereotyped formulas recall the mention, in the famous Canon Episcopi (10th century), of the “great spaces of earth” (multa terrarum spatia) supposedly traversed “in the silence of the dead of night” by the wicked women seduced by the illusions of Satan. (Translation and presentation in Kors and Peters (2001, 60‒63)).
- 52.
Le Franc (1999, iv, vv. 17842–17843).
- 53.
The most notable exception would be Castañega’s reference to idolatrous cults in New Spain: Castañega (1994, 26‒27).
- 54.
- 55.
Lestringant (2004, 45).
- 56.
- 57.
Zika (2007, 224‒226).
- 58.
Mitchell (1997).
- 59.
Torquemada (1982, 444): “la principal habitacion de los demonios.” Torquemada’s Jardín de flores curiosas (1570) is a miscellaneous book in six treatises (hence its French title, Hexaméron) which could hardly be described as a demonological work as a whole; however, its third treatise, on demons and ghosts, is a demonological discourse in the true sense. Besides, demons, ghosts and witches reappear in parts V and VI, two cosmographical treatises on the Far North heavily indebted to Olaus Magnus. As such, Torquemada’s Jardín played an important part in the diffusion of Olaus Magnus’s discourse on Nordic superstitious beliefs, especially in France, where Gabriel Chappuys translated it in 1579.
- 60.
- 61.
See for instance Magnus (1996, III, Preface, 147): “I must tell how the malignity and craft of the devil have for so many past centuries held that country [Lithuania] in frightful delusions (as indeed ever other nation), until in recent years it has been summoned to the communion of the Catholic faith. […] [Lithuania is] freed now from the worship of demons.” Lestringant argues that Olaus Magnus’s discourse is somewhat more ambivalent, caught between the desire to exalt the marvels of the Far North and the necessity to denounce the progress of evil in those regions (Lestringant 2004, 51).
- 62.
- 63.
I do not develop here the question of the influence of demonological thought on early modern travellers and, more generally, on the European perception of the New World. For elements of analysis, see the references listed above in Footnote 3.
- 64.
See Lestringant (1985).
- 65.
Machielsen (2015, 255).
- 66.
Weyer (1998, 22).
- 67.
- 68.
Holtz (2008).
- 69.
See Pic de la Mirandole (2007, 24‒27).
- 70.
Magnus (1996, 155).
- 71.
Daneau (1579, 26): “Car Satan a de tout temps depuis le monde creé, esté semblable à soy-mesme, & tel qu’il est aujourd’huy.”
- 72.
Weyer (1998, 22).
- 73.
Bodin (1580, f. E4 v°): “Je deduiray en son lieu la convenance et accord perpétuel d’histoires semblables des peuples divers, et en divers siecles rapportées aux actions des Sorcieres, et à leurs confessions.”
- 74.
- 75.
Le Loyer (1605, 326‒340).
- 76.
Le Loyer (1605): “C’est assez parlé de l’Ecosse, passons la mer, et entrons au pays de Dannemarch et de Norvège” (328); “Mais ayans parlé des Indes Orientales et Occidentales, tournons voile vers nostre Hemisphere, et dessus l’Ocean et Mer Atlantique, voguons jusques en l’Afrique, laissans derriere nous le Cap de Bonne Esperance” (338); “Je laisseray l’Afrique, & passant le destroict de Gibraltar, je me reposeray en l’Isle de Cephalenie, comme j’ay commencé par l’Isle d’Escosse” (339). On the rhetorics of the periegesis, see Jacob (1981).
- 77.
On the figure of the cosmographer as aerial traveller, see Maus de Rolley (2011, 371‒408).
- 78.
Le Loyer (1605, 194): “Des Demons, et de leurs noms et appellations, qui se remarquent en diverses langues.”
- 79.
Le Loyer (1605, 207): “Les autres Indiens Orientaux ont leurs Diables, Goya, Permal, Haminant, Muthiam. Les Japonais appellent du nom de Goquis les Diables qui leur apparaissent en forme humaine: Et en l’Inde Occidentale, ceux de la province de Saincte Croix, voisine du Peru & Paragay ont leur diable Toboroccoce, les Peruviens leur Xixarama, & Noachah, les Floridiens ont leur Aignan, les Taopinambaux, leur kagerre ou Demon Forestier, les Caribbes ou Canibales leur Chiappan, les habitans de Canada, & Hochelaga leur Gougou, Diable femme & une autre Lamie, & leur Cudruagny, qu’ils peignent, ce dit Jacques Cartier, ni plus ni moins que nous peignons les Diables avecques deux cornes en teste.”
- 80.
For other demonological readings of this episode, see Holtz (2008, 172‒177).
- 81.
Le Loyer (1605, 207).
- 82.
Le Loyer (1605, 207).
- 83.
Mac Cormack (1995, 87‒88).
- 84.
Le Loyer (1605, 207).
- 85.
Lestringant (2004, 53).
- 86.
Bodin (1580, f. 120 r°): “La publication de la Loi divine a bien fort diminué la puissance de Satan.”
- 87.
Ibid., f. 14 v°.
- 88.
Acosta (2002, 254).
- 89.
Massé (1579, f. 49 v°): “Les diables fuient des terres neuves où ils estoient, chassés par la prédication et réception de l’Evangile et reviennent en ces terres ici dont ils avoient esté autrefois chassés.”
- 90.
Massé (1579, f. 49 v°): “[le diable] retourne [en Europe] comme post liminium, c’est-à-dire par droit de recouvrance.”
- 91.
Crespet (1590, f. 194 v°): “[le diable] s’est venu fourrer parmy la France dés lors que la foi a esté plantée és terres neuves, & pays estranges.”
- 92.
Ibid.
- 93.
Blendecq (1582, f. 102 r°): “Nous sommes quinze mille dix huict cens qui sommes sortis des Indes, dont les quatre cens sont en ce pays par le commandement de Dieu.”
- 94.
Lancre (1612, 80): “de grandes troupes de démons en forme d’hommes épouvantables passer en France.”
- 95.
Lancre (1612, 569‒570).
- 96.
- 97.
On demonology and eschatology, see Clark (1997, 335‒345).
- 98.
The phrase is used by a “Spanish Catholic theologian” quoted by Roper (2004, 27).
- 99.
On this point, and more particularly on “the conflation of witchcraft with Amerindian cannibalism,” see Zika (2007, 219).
- 100.
Lancre (1612, 99, 129 and 136).
- 101.
Massé (1579, f. 49 v°): “La cruauté des Canibales mang’hommes se transfere.”
- 102.
Certeau (2000, 121).
References
Primary Sources
Abbiati, Sergio, Attilio Agnoletto, and Maria Rosario Lazzati (eds.). 1984. La Stregoneria: diavoli, streghe, inquisitori dal Trecento al Settecento. Milan: Mondadori.
Acosta, José de. 2002. Natural and moral history of the Indies, ed. Jane E. Mangan and Walter D. Mignolo. Trans. F. López-Morillas. Durham: Duke University Press.
Blendecq, Charles. 1582. Cinq histoires admirables. Paris: Guillaume Chaudiere.
Bodin, Jean. 1580. De la demonomanie des sorciers. Paris: Jacques du Puys.
Buisseret, François. 1586. Histoire admirable et veritable des choses advenues à l’endroict d’une religieuse professe du couvent des sœurs noires de la ville de Mons. Paris: Gilles Blaise.
Castañega, Martín de. 1994. Tratado de las supersticiones y hechizerias y de la possibilidad y remedio dellas (1529), ed. J.R. Muro Abad. Logroño: Instituto de Estudios Riojanos.
Crespet, Pierre. 1590. Deux livres de la hayne de Sathan et malins esprits contre l’homme, et de l’homme contre eux. Paris: Guillaume de la Nouë.
Daneau, Lambert. 1579. Deux traitez nouveaux tres-utiles pour ce temps, le premier touchant les Sorciers […], le second contient une breve remonstrance sur les jeux de Cartes et de Dez. [Gien]: J. Baumet.
Kors, Alan C., and Edward Peters (eds.). 2001. Witchcraft in Europe, 400‒1700: A documentary history. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Kramer, Heinrich. 2009. The hammer of witches: A complete translation of the Malleus Maleficarum, ed. and trans. Christopher S. Mackay. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lancre, Pierre de. 1612. Tableau de l’inconstance des mauvais anges et demons. Paris: Jean Berjon.
Lancre, Pierre de. 1622. L’incredulité et mescreance du sortilege plainement convaincue. Paris: Nicolas Buon.
Le Franc, Martin. 1999. Le champion des dames, ed. R. Deschaux. Paris: Champion.
Le Loyer, Pierre. 1586. Quatre livres des spectres ou apparitions et visions d’esprits, anges et demons se monstrans sensiblement aux hommes. Angers: Georges Nepveu.
Le Loyer, Pierre. 1605. Discours et histoires des spectres, visions et apparitions des esprits, anges, demons, et ames, se monstrans visibles aux hommes. Paris: Nicolas Buon.
Le Normant, Jean. 1623. Histoire veritable et memorable de ce qui c’est [sic] passé sous l’exorcisme de trois filles possédées és païs de Flandre. Paris: Nicolas Buon.
Léry, Jean de. 1990. History of a voyage to the land of Brazil, ed. and trans. J. Whatley. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Maldonat, Jean [Juan Maldonado]. 1607. Traicté des anges et démons. Trans. F. de la Borie. Paris: François Huby.
Massé, Pierre. 1579. De l’imposture et tromperie des diables, devins, enchanteurs, sorciers, noueurs d’aiguillettes, chevilleurs, necromanciens, chiromanciens, & autres qui par telle invocation diabolique, ars magiques & superstitions abusent le peuple. Paris: Jean Poupy.
Michaëlis, Sébastien. 1587. Pneumalogie, ou discours des esprits, en tant qu’il est besoing pour entendre et resouldre la matiere difficile des sorciers. Paris: Guillaume Bichon.
Michaëlis, Sébastien. 1614. Histoire admirable de la possession et conversion d’une pénitente. Paris: Charles Chastellain.
Nider, Johannes. 2005. Des sorciers et leurs tromperies (La fourmilière, livre V), ed. Jean Céard et al. Grenoble: Jérôme Millon.
Olaus Magnus. 1996. Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus (Description of the northern peoples), Rome, 1555, trans. P. Fisher and H. Higgens, ed. P. Foote. London: The Hakluyt Society.
Ostorero, Martine, et al. (eds.). 1999. L’imaginaire du sabbat: edition critique des textes les plus anciens (1430 c.–1440 c.). Lausanne: Cahiers lausannois d’histoire médiévale.
Pic de la Mirandole, Jean-François [Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola]. 2007. La Sorcière. Dialogue en trois livres sur la tromperie des démons [Strix, sive de ludificatione daemonum, 1523], ed. and trans. A. Perifano. Turnhout: Brepols.
Rabelais, François. 2005. Gargantua and Pantagruel. Trans. T. Urquhart and P.A. Motteux. New York: Barnes & Noble.
Serclier, Jude. 1609. L’Antidemon historial. Lyon: Pierre Rigaud.
Taillepied, Noël. 1588. Psichologie, ou Traité de l’apparition des esprits. Paris: Guillaume Bichon.
Thérèse d’Avila [Teresa de Avila]. 1601. La vie de la mère Thérèse de Jésus […]. Nouvellement traduite d’espagnol en français. Trans. Jean de Bretigny and Les Pères Chartreux de Bourgfontaine. Paris: Guillaume de La Nouë.
Thorndike, Lynn (ed.). 1949. The sphere of Sacrobosco and its commentators. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Torquemada, Antonio de. 1982. Jardín de flores curiosas, ed. G. Allegra. Madrid: Castalia.
Weyer, Johann. 1998. Witches, devils, and doctors in the Renaissance: Johann Weyer, De praestigiis daemonum, ed. G. Mora et al. Trans. J. Shea. Tempe, AZ: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies.
Secondary Sources
Baschet, Jerôme. 1993. Les justices de l’au-delà: Les représentations de l’enfer en France et en Italie (XIIe-XVe siècles). Rome: Ecole française de Rome.
Becker, Thomas. 2006. Walpurgis (Walpurrigs) Night. In Encyclopedia of witchcraft: The Western Tradition, ed. R.M. Golden, 1178–1179. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
Bernand, Carmen, and Serge Gruzinski. 1988. De l’idolâtrie: Une archéologie des sciences religieuses. Paris: Editions du Seuil.
Besse, Jean-Marc. 2003. Les grandeurs de la Terre. Aspects du savoir géographique à la Renaissance. Lyon: ENS Editions.
Bonomo, Giuseppe. 1985. Caccia alle streghe: La credenza nelle streghe dal secolo XIII a XIX, con particolare riferimento all’Italia. Palermo: Palumbo.
Boureau, Alain. 2006. Satan the heretic: the birth of demonology in the medieval West. Trans. T. Lavender Fagan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Caciola, Nancy. 2003. Discerning spirits: divine and demonic possession in the middle ages. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Céard, Jean. 2008. Voyager avec Jean Nider dans le monde diabolique. In Voyager avec le diable. Voyages réels, voyages imaginaires et discours démonologiques (XVe-XVIIe siècles), ed. G. Holtz, and T. Maus de Rolley, 139–150. Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne.
Certeau, Michel de. 2000. The possession at Loudun. Trans. M.B. Smith. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Cervantes, Fernando. 1994. The devil in the New World: the impact of diabolism in New Spain. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Chesters, Timothy. 2007. Demonology on the margins: Robert Du Triez’s Les Ruses, finesses, et impostures des esprits malins (1563). Renaissance Studies 21/3: 395‒410.
Chesters, Timothy. 2008. Pierre Le Loyer et la cosmographie du spectre. In Voyager avec le diable. Voyages réels, voyages imaginaires et discours démonologiques (XVe-XVIIe siècles), ed. G. Holtz, and T. Maus de Rolley, 183–192. Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne.
Chesters, Timothy. 2011. Ghost stories in late Renaissance France: walking by night. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Clark, Stuart. 1997. Thinking with demons: the idea of witchcraft in Early Modern Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Clark, Stuart. 2006. Demonology. In Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: the Western Tradition, ed. R.M. Golden, 259–263. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
Cohn, Norman. 1975. Europe’s inner demons: an enquiry inspired by the Great Witch-Hunt. London: Sussex University Press.
Couzinet, Marie-Dominique. 1996. Méthode et histoire à la Renaissance: une lecture de la Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem de Jean Bodin. Paris: Vrin.
Ferber, Sarah. 2004. Demonic possession and exorcism in Early Modern France. London: Routledge.
Foote, Peter. 1996. Introduction to Olaus Magnus, Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus (Description of the northern peoples), Rome, 1555, trans. P. Fisher and H. Higgens, ed. P. Foote, xiii‒lxxxix. London: The Hakluyt Society.
Hale, J.R. 1966. Gunpowder and the Renaissance: An essay in the history of ideas. In From Renaissance to Counter-Reformation: Essays in honour of Garrett Mattingly, ed. C.H. Carter, 113–144. London: Cape.
Holtz, Grégoire, and Thibaut Maus de Rolley (eds.). 2008. Voyager avec le diable. Voyages réels, voyages imaginaires et discours démonologiques (XVe-XVIIe siècles). Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne.
Holtz, Grégoire. 2008. Démonologues et voyageurs: le démon de l’analogie. In Voyager avec le diable. Voyages réels, voyages imaginaires et discours démonologiques (XVe-XVIIe siècles), ed. G. Holtz, and T. Maus de Rolley, 165–181. Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne.
Holtz, Grégoire. 2010. Les démons africains dans la littérature des voyages du XVIe siècle. In Camaren, Cahiers Moyen Âge et Renaissance 3: 197‒211.
Houdard, Sophie. 1992. Les sciences du diable: Quatre discours sur la sorcellerie (XVe-XVIIe siècles). Paris: Editions du Cerf.
Jacob, Christian. 1981. L’œil et la mémoire: sur la Périégèse de la Terre habitée de Denys. In Arts et légendes d’espaces. Figures du voyage et rhétorique du monde, ed. C. Jacob and F. Lestringant, 21‒97. Paris: Presses de l’Ecole Normale Supérieure.
Jacques-Lefèvre, Nicole. 2008. Pierre de Lancre: Du traité démonologique comme récit de voyage en terre sorcière. In Voyager avec le diable: Voyages réels, voyages imaginaires et discours démonologiques (XVe-XVIIe siècles), ed. G. Holtz, and T. Maus de Rolley, 193–205. Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne.
Johannesson, Kurt. 1991. The Renaissance of the goths in sixteenth-century Sweden. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lecercle, François. 2011. Le Retour du mort: débats sur la sorcière d’Endor et l’apparition de Samuel. Geneva: Droz.
Lestringant, Frank. 1985. Jean Bodin, cosmographe. In Actes du colloque interdisciplinaire d’Angers (24‒27 mai 1984), ed. Jean Bodin, 133–145. Angers: Presses de l’Université d’Angers.
Lestringant, Frank. 1994. Mapping the Renaissance world: the geographical imagination in the age of discovery. Trans. D. Fausett. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lestringant, Frank. 2004. Une altérité venue du froid: démons et merveilles d’Olaus Magnus (1539‒1555). In Self and other in sixteenth-century France: proceedings of the seventh Cambridge French Renaissance Colloquium 7‒9 July 2001, ed. K. Banks and P. Ford, 45‒70. Cambridge: Cambridge French Colloquia.
Levack, Brian P. 2006. The Witch-hunt in Early Modern Europe. Harlow: Pearson.
Levack, Brian P. 2013. The devil within: possession & exorcism in the Christian West. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Machielsen, 2015. Martin Delrio: demonology and scholarship in the counter-reformation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
MacCormack, Sabine. 1991. Religion in the Andes: vision and imagination in early colonial Peru. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
MacCormack, Sabine. 1995. The limits of understanding: perceptions of Greco-Roman and Amerindian paganism in Early Modern America. In America in European consciousness, 1493‒1750, ed. Karen Ordahl Kupperman, 79‒129. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Maus de Rolley, Thibaut. 2011. Elévations: l’écriture du voyage aérien à la Renaissance. Geneva: Droz.
Mello e Souza, Laura de. 2003. The devil and the land of the holy cross: witchcraft, slavery, and popular religion in colonial Brazil. Austin: University of Texas.
Mitchell, Stephen. 1997. Blåkulla and its antecedents: transvection and conventicles in Nordic witchcraft. Alvíssmál 7: 81–100.
Ossa-Richardson, Anthony. 2013. The devil’s tabernacle: The pagan oracles in European thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Perifano, Alfredo. 2007. Introduction to J.-F. Pic de la Mirandole, La Sorcière. Dialogue en trois livres sur la tromperie des démons [Strix, sive de ludificatione daemonum, 1523], ed. and trans. A. Perifano, 5‒33. Turnhout: Brepols.
Portone, Paolo. 1990. Il noce di Benevento. Milan: Xenia.
Roper, Lyndal. 2004. Witch craze: terror and fantasy in Baroque Germany. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Roper, Lyndal. 2012. The witch in the western imagination. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
Shapiro, Judith. 1987. From Tupã to the land without evil: the Christianization of Tupi-Guarani cosmology. American Ethnologist 14(1): 126–139.
Sluhovsky, Moshe. 2002. The devil in the convent. American Historical Review 107: 1379–1411.
Stephens, Walter. 2002. Demon lovers: witchcraft, sex, and the crisis of belief. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Timotin, Andrei. 2010. La démonologie platonicienne: histoire de la notion de daimon de Platon aux derniers platoniciens. Leiden: Brill.
Vacant, Alfred et al. 1903‒50. Dictionnaire de théologie catholique: contenant l’exposé des doctrines de la théologie catholique, leurs preuves et leur histoire, vol. 30. Paris: Letouzey et Ané.
Williams, Gerhild S. 2013. Demonologies. In The Oxford handbook of witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and colonial America, ed. B.P. Levack, 69–83. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wolper, Roy S. 1970. The rhetoric of gunpowder and the idea of progress. Journal of the History of Ideas 31(4): 589–598.
Zika, Charles. 2007. The appearance of witchcraft. London: Routledge.
Acknowledgments
Most of the research for this chapter was supported by a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship held at Oriel College, Oxford (2010‒12). I would like to acknowledge the support and encouragement of Timothy Chesters and Wes Williams, both of whom gave constructive comments on early versions of this essay. I also thank Grégoire Holtz, Jan Machielsen and an anonymous reviewer for their useful feedback. Last but not least, I am grateful to Emma Claussen, who translated it from the French. All translations of non-English quotations are mine except where otherwise noted.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Maus de Rolley, T. (2016). Putting the Devil on the Map: Demonology and Cosmography in the Renaissance. In: Vermeir, K., Regier, J. (eds) Boundaries, Extents and Circulations. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 41. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41075-3_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41075-3_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-41074-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-41075-3
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)