DEMON - In ecclesiastical language, it designates a fallen angel, through rebellion against God and punished in hell. While the “devil” or “Satan” is the head of the invisible powers of evil, the demon (τὸ δαιμόνιον) is one of the evil spirits (οἱ δαίμονες), usually τὰ δαιμόνια in the New Testament, who infest the world, performing a maleficent function opposed to that of the angels. Thus Jesus spoke of hell “which was prepared for the devil and his angels” (Mt. 25:41).
The devil is unique; he is not the same as the demon: the demons or daemons (δαίμονες and δαιμόνια do not differ) are a multitude.
I. HOLY SCRIPTURE – From the very beginning of humanity, evil spirits intervene as the cause of our fall: “Death entered the world through the envy of the devil” (Wis. 2:24). In the biblical text of Gen. 3, neither a demon nor Satan is named; the being that speaks and acts through the serpent is an evil spirit. Here the devil or Satan, or a demon acting on his own, works to accuse or destroy men before God (cf. Job 1:9-11; 2:5; Rev. 12:10), see DEVIL; SATAN.
In the Old Testament, demons often appear as fearsome mythical animals: the “hairy one” (šā'ṭr) and the “night hag” (lilith [see]) in Is. 34:14 (Vulg.: pilosus, lamia). In Lev. 17:7 it is strictly forbidden to sacrifice to the še'ṭrīm (Vulg. daemones); in Lev. 16:8-10, ‘Azā'zēl, connected with the še'ṭrīm, is an evil spirit opposed to Yahweh. To the true God is also opposed the šed (Deut. 32:17; Ps. 105:37), probably analogous to the Babylonian šidu. Šedim are also called false gods. Animals such as the serpent were considered connected with demonic forces (see DRAGON). The conceptions and classifications of demons became more complex in later Judaism, based on that popular animistic mentality which among the Arabs produced the multifarious jinn. In the New Testament, demons are mentioned more frequently (see TEMPTATIONS). In His public life, Jesus commands the demons, whether to cast them out of souls, as happened with Mary Magdalene (Lk. 8:2), or to drive them from the bodies of many possessed persons. He grants the power to cast them out to His apostles, who sometimes do so with ease (Mk. 6:13; Lk. 10:17), while at other times they fail to be obeyed by the more malignant demons, who are not cast out except by fasting and prayer (Mt. 17:14-20; Mk. 9:15-28; Lk. 9:38-40).
These isolated actions are manifestations of the more general mission that God entrusted to the Messiah and revealed to our first parents: the Son of the Woman par excellence would be bitten in the heel by the serpent, which would deprive Him of human life; but in the course of this struggle, which ends in death, the Savior would crush the serpent’s head (cf. Gen. 3:15). Jesus announced both this victory and the sacrifice by which it would be accomplished, when on the eve of His passion He said: “Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to myself” (Jn. 12:31-32).
God revealed to the angels in a prophetic vision the mystery of the Incarnation which He willed from all eternity (Rom. 16:26). Most of these pure spirits worshiped the future Christ. Satan, however, and other angels, following his example, refused. “And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they were not strong enough... And the great dragon was thrown down, the ancient serpent, he who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world. He was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him” (Rev. 12:7-9).
When God shall “again” bring into the world, no longer in figure but in reality, the “Firstborn of all creation” and command His angels to worship Him (Heb. 1:6), this will not be a surprise to them, since they already knew of this event, nor will they exist, since already at the time of their trial they had shown their submission by joyfully acclaiming together God and the future Christ: “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come” (Rev. 12:10). Cf. F. Risi, Sul motivo primario della Incarnazione del Verbo, IV, Rome 1898, pp. 128-47; P. Arrighini, Gli angeli buoni e cattivi, Turin-Rome 1937, pp. 156-70.
II. DOGMA – The starting point and solid foundation of theological speculation in the doctrine under consideration is the certainty that demons are fallen angels. This is a truth found not only in the Apocalypse (see above) but also in many other very explicit texts. Jesus said to His disciples: “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Lk. 10:18). The devil fell because “he did not abide in the truth” (Jn. 8:44). St. Peter expressly speaks of “angels who did not keep their own position but left their proper dwelling” (2 Pet. 2:4). And St. Jude (v. 6) refers to “angels who did not keep their own position but left their proper dwelling.”
If, then, demons are fallen angels, it is necessary to apply to them all the properties that Revelation attributes to the spiritual nature of angels, since a moral fault cannot alter the nature of the guilty party. It is not possible to attribute a body to them, as some ancient and some scholastic authors have done.
To say that demons are fallen, that they have sinned, that God has punished them, is implicitly to affirm that they became evil through their own fault and were not created as they now are, contrary to what certain Manichaean-inspired sects wished to affirm, later condemned by the Council of Braga in Portugal (a.d. 563) and by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 (cf. F. Cavallera, Thesaurus doctrinae christianae, 2nd ed., Paris 1936, nn. 612-39; Gelasius I [492-496], Dicta adversus Pelagianam haeresim, nn. 23-33, as well as the profession of faith imposed on the Waldensians by Innocent III [cited, nn. 632-635 and 638]). It must likewise be concluded that they were not created in a state of glory, nor confirmed in goodness, but in a state of grace, from which they fell without ever having enjoyed the beatific vision.
Given the spiritual nature of demons, one must absolutely reject an opinion widely held among some medieval writers (cf. E. Mangenot, Démon, in DTHC, IV, cols. 339-400), according to which these angels were condemned to hell for sexual relations with women. This opinion, now abandoned, was based on a false interpretation of Gen. 6:2 (cf. id., ibid., cols. 326-327). There is almost universal agreement in attributing the fault of the angels to an act of pride (cf. the letters of Popes Hormisdas and Gregory I, in Cavallera, op. cit., nn. 626 and 640). Tradition, however, is not clear in specifying what this act consisted of. Many doctors assert that Satan wished “to be like God,” but among them there is no consensus in determining the meaning to be given to this formula (cf. St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 1a, q. 63, a. 3). This opinion, moreover, has as its only foundation a reflection that Is. 14:13-14 attributes to the king of Babylon and which has been applied to Satan. Now the accommodative sense, still less than the mystical, cannot serve as a foundation for faith. Indeed, it presupposes faith. The only solid basis for determining the fault of the demons, together with its circumstances, is the literal-allegorical sense of Rev. 12.
Contrary to some ancient doctors, it must be held that the demons were punished immediately after sin (cf. Apoc. 12) and that they began at once to suffer the double penalty of loss, namely, privation of God, and of fire. It is by a special permission that they can harm men "for a little while" (ibid., 12, 12), that is, until the Last Judgment, without, however, being exempt from the torments of hell. The number of the demons is generally considered to be very large. According to Apoc. 12, 14, the dragon in his fall drew down "the third part of the stars of heaven," that is, of the angels. Various scriptural passages (Ez. 28, 14-16; Rom. 8, 38; Eph. 6, 12; 1 Cor. 15, 24) lead to the conclusion that the rebels belonged to different orders in the celestial hierarchy. Satan is seen exercising among them a real dominion (Mt. 9, 34; Lc. 11, 15), more that of a leader than of a head, since one cannot speak of a hierarchy and of proper subordination in a place which common faith rightly considers as the kingdom of disorder (cf. Iob 10, 22).
Hell is common to both reprobate angels and men, since reprobate men are cast into the fire "prepared for the devil and his angels" (Mt. 25, 41). Like that of men, the punishment of the demons is eternal and cannot undergo any mitigation, as Apoc. 2, 9-10 expressly states and as was defined by the Second Council of Constantinople (553), confirmed by Pope Vigilius (cf. Denz-U, no. 211).
The principal occupation of the demons until the end of time consists in tempting men to induce them to sin. They have succeeded so well that Our Lord Himself gave to Satan the title of "prince of this world" (Io. 12, 31; 14, 30; 16, 11). The Book of Job (chs. 1 and 2) clearly implies that Satan cannot harm unless God permits him to do so and to the extent that He permits.
It is certainly true that the devil is not the origin of every temptation (v.). He does not necessarily intervene in all the evils to which we may be subject; it is not at all repugnant to the holiness of God to be the immediate cause of a moral trial (as the temptation of Abraham, Gen. 22), or of a physical evil (cf. Iob 3, 6: "Shall evil befall a land, and the Lord hath not done it?"). But the Scriptures, on the other hand, attest that the demons are sometimes the cause of our misfortunes and infirmities (cf., besides Job 1 and 2, Mt. 12, 22; 17, 14-17). Moreover, prowling like a lion seeking prey (1 Pt. 5, 8), they do not refrain from fanning the flames of passions or discord. Some ancient authors have wished to assert that to every man, from birth until death, a wicked angel is given to oppose the guardian angel. This theory is not founded either on tradition or on Scripture, and therefore deserves no credence (cf. S. Weber, *De singulorum hominum daemone impugnatore*, Rome 1938).
Giovanni Francesco Bonnefoy
III. IN ART
The devil makes his significant appearance in Christian art not before the 6th century. One of the oldest figurations of the devil is found in a fresco of the Egyptian church of Bāwīt (6th century). Others of the same period are found in miniatures of the Bible of St. Gregory Nazianzen, preserved in the National Library of Paris. Characteristic of these representations is the almost angelic aspect of Satan. From the 12th century onward until the end of the Middle Ages, and one may add, until about the second half of the 16th century, the demonic image undergoes a radical transformation: order is dominant. The seduction of the beautiful gives way to the seduction of the horrible. Terror is the strongest diabolical weapon, and the artists of the Romanesque period constantly emphasized the monstrous as an aspect of the demonic. Particularly noteworthy for this are the sculptures of the capitals of the cathedrals of Autun, Moissac, Beaulieu, and Vézelay in Burgundy (c. 1150). The accentuation of asymmetry in the architecture of Romanesque sacred buildings is due, besides aesthetic considerations, to the belief that the diabolical tended toward the geometric. The geometric is what admits no escape. It was a common opinion in the Middle Ages that logic was the *ars diaboli*, hence the two contrasting characteristics of diabolical temptation: encircling (closing in a circle) and terrorizing, that is, destroying the forces necessary for right conduct. Architectural asymmetry is opposed to encircling, and the representation of the monstrous is the due denunciation of the true nature of the demonic by artist-theologians.In the numerous representations of the temptations of monks and in particular of St. Anthony the Abbot, of the 14th and 16th centuries, the demonic is always represented as an assault of the horrible.
Noteworthy is the great pictorial work of Flemish and Dutch artists of the 15th and 16th centuries: Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450-1516; remarkable are the *Temptation of St. Anthony* in the museum of Lisbon and that in the Prado), Peter Huys, Lucas van Leyden, Jan Mandyn, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (*Dulle Griet* in the Museum van den Bergh in Antwerp, and *Fall of the Rebel Angels* in the Royal Museum of Brussels), Hendrik Met de Bles, Joachim Patinier. Among German artists: Stefan Lochner, Martin Schongauer, Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach, Niklaus Manuel, and above all Matthias Grünewald (*Isenheim Altarpiece* in Colmar).
Italian art of the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries (Giotto, Gaddi, Traini, Taddeo di Bartolo, and later Signorelli and Michelangelo) did not have the same characteristics as the Temptations and Hells of Flemish-German art, where the influence of the theological-mystical doctrines of Henry Suso and Ruysbroeck is evident, as well as of some heretical sects (especially that of the "Brethren of the Free Spirit"). While until the end of the 16th century the theological concern is dominant in the artist, from the 17th century onward this disappears, and the representations of infernal scenes (Callot, Teniers, Goya) are pictorial pretexts not corresponding to apologetic ideals. The grotesque and the demonic become confused. — See pl. XC.