Sexuality in Christian demonology
To
Gender of demons
Traditional demons of Christianity, such as Satan, Beelzebub, and Asmodeus are almost invariably assigned a male gender in religious and occultist texts. This is true also for succubi, who despite taking a female shape to copulate with men, are often thought of as male nonetheless.[3]
The Testament of Solomon,[4] an early treatise on demons of Judeo-Christian origin, presents the demon Ornias, who assumes the shape of a woman to copulate with men (though in other versions he does it while in the shape of an old man[5]). After meeting him, King Solomon asks Beelzebub if there are female demons, suggesting a difference between male shapeshifting demons (incubi/succubi) and genuine female demons. Similarly, angels in Christianity have also masculine genders, names and functions.
John Milton, in Paradise Lost, specifies that although demons may seem masculine or feminine, spirits "Can either Sex assume, or both; so soft And uncompounded is thir Essence pure". Nonetheless, these feminine shapes may be just temporal disguises to deceive people, just as at one point Satan takes the shape of a toad. Everywhere else demons are described as male, and Satan is the father of Death with Sin, a female spirit. In Paradise Lost, Adam explicitly states that all angels of heaven are masculine:
Oh, why did God,
Creator wise, that peopled highest Heaven
With Spirits masculine, create at last
This novelty on earth, this fair defect
Of Nature, and not fill the world at once
With men as Angels, without feminine?[6]
Gregory of Nyssa (4th century), as well as Ludovico Maria Sinistrari (17th century), believed in male and female demons, or at the very least demons having male and female characteristics.[citation needed]
Lust in demons
Lust in demons is a controversial theme for Christian demonology, and scholars disagree on the subject.
Early advocates
Early opponents
Intermediate views
Augustine, Hincmar and Psellos thought that lust was what led demons to have sexual relationships with humans. William of Auvergne conceived the idea that demons felt a particular and morbid attraction to long and beautiful female hair, and thus women had to follow the Christian use of covering it to avoid exciting desire in them. Tauler had the opinion that demons were lascivious and thus they wanted to have sexual intercourse with humans to satisfy their lewdness. Sinistrari supported the idea that demons felt sexual desire, but satisfaction and pleasure were not the only motivation to have sexual relationships with humans, another reason being that of impregnating women.[citation needed]
Plutarch wrote that demons could not feel sexual desire because they did not need to procreate; his work inspiring later Remy's opinion. Thomas Aquinas asserted that demons could not experience voluptuousness or desire, and they only wanted to seduce humans with the purpose of inducing them to commit terrible sexual sins. Remy wrote that "demons do not feel sexual desire inspired by beauty, because they do not need it to procreate, having been created since the beginning in a predetermined number".[This quote needs a citation] Boguet said that demons did not know lust or voluptuousness "because they are immortal and do not need to have descendants, and so they also do not need to have sexual organs", so demons could make people imagine that they were having sexual relationships, but that actually did not occur. Vignati agreed with Boguet saying that sexual relationships with demons were imaginary, a mere hallucination provoked by them, and Johann Meyfarth agreed too.[citation needed]
By supporting the idea that demons could rape women and sexual relationships with them were painful,
In literature
Supporting the idea that demons had feelings of love and hate, and were voluptuous, there are several stories about their jealousy.
The first story of this type is narrated in the
Another of these stories about demonic lewdness and passionate love is told in The Life of Saint
A story referring to demonic jealousy was told by Erasmus (16th century), who blamed a demon for the fire that destroyed a village in Germany in 1533, saying that a demon loved deeply a young woman, but discovered that she had also sexual relationships with a man. Full of wrath, the demon started the fire.[citation needed]
Sexual relations
Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335 – c. 395) said that demons had children with women called cambions, which added to the children they had between them, contributed to increase the number of demons. However, the first popular account of such a union and offspring does not occur in Western literature until around 1136, when Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote the story of Merlin in his pseudohistorical account of British history, Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain), in which he reported that Merlin's father was an incubus.[7]
Anne Lawrence-Mathers writes that at that time "... views on demons and spirits were still relatively flexible. There was still a possibility that the
It was only beginning in the 1150s that the Church turned its attention to defining the possible roles of spirits and demons, especially with respect to their sexuality and in connection with the various forms of magic which were then believed to exist.[7] Christian demonologists eventually came to agree that sexual relationships between demons and humans happen, but they disagreed on why and how.[7] A common point of view is that demons induce men and women to the sin of lust, and adultery is often considered as an associated sin.
In 1546, the
See also
- How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?, an expression whose equivalent in several Romance languages refers to debating whether angels are sexless or have a sex.
- Sorcery (goetia)
Notes
References
- ^ "Angelo". Dizionario dei modi di dire - Corriere.it (in Italian). Retrieved 2017-07-13.
- ^ "Discuter sur le sexe des anges". L'Internaute. CCM Benchmark. Retrieved 14 November 2020.
- ^ Sebastian Michaelis, "The admirable history of the posession and conuersion of a penitent woman"
- ^ Testament of Solomon
- ^ James Charlesworth (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: Apocalyptic literature and testaments
- ^ Milton, John (1667). Paradise Lost. Samuel Simmons (original). p. 354.
- ^ ISBN 978-0300253085.