Aquinas’ Demons

This post is a follow-up to Augustine’s Devils, and best read after the earlier entry, as they are saintly partners in crime. By way of summary, Augustine seemed to have thought that devils, ‘incubi’, were ‘satisfying their lust’ upon wanton women. Here, in Summa Theologica, Aquinas accepts the story without hesitation:

As Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xv): “Many persons affirm that they have had the experience, or have heard from such as have experienced it, that the Satyrs and Fauns, whom the common folk call incubi, have often presented themselves before women, and have sought and procured intercourse with them. Hence it is folly to deny it. But God’s holy angels could not fall in such fashion before the deluge. Hence by the sons of God are to be understood the sons of Seth, who were good; while by the daughters of men the Scripture designates those who sprang from the race of Cain. Nor is it to be wondered at that giants should be born of them; for they were not all giants, albeit there were many more before than after the deluge.” Still if some are occasionally begotten from demons, it is not from the seed of such demons, nor from their assumed bodies, but from the seed of men taken for the purpose; as when the demon assumes first the form of a woman, and afterwards of a man; just as they take the seed of other things for other generating purposes, as Augustine says (De Trin. iii), so that the person born is not the child of a demon, but of a man.¹

Well, Aquinas certainly took Augustine’s stories seriously, and it’s probably from Aquinas that they reached the attention of the authors of the Malleus Maleficarum.

One thing to note is that the translation of Augustine’s City of God is quite different from that in the original Augustine post. Most importantly, the phrase “it were impudent to deny it” occurs here as “Hence it is folly to deny it”—a notably stronger interpretation.




CITATIONS:

1.  Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Question 53, Article 3, Reply to Objection 6. (Online here.)

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