Summary
Title: A History of the Devil from the Middle Ages to the Present
Author: Robert Muchembled
Publisher:Polity Press
ISBN: 0745628168
Pro:
• New and interesting lens for viewing European history and culture.
Con:
• No images of the many paintings Muchembled discusses
• Very complex
Description:
• Discussion of the role of the devil in European history
• Argues that the nature of the devil played an important part in European self-understanding
• Explains how the nature of the devil changed over time
Book Review
Originally published in France in 2000, Robert Muchembled’s A History of the Devil from the Middle Ages to the Present attempts to fill this gap by addressing the role and nature of the Devil in European culture from the 13th through the 21st centuries. Muchembled, a professor of history at the University of Paris XIII, tackles witch-hunts, paintings, advertising, Hollywood movies, and more.
Muchembled’s basic argument is that the Devil cannot be reduced to a literary figure, a religious icon, or just a symbol for things that are going wrong. No, the Devil has been a basic part of the fabric of European life — a shadow that not only lurks behind everything that Europeans have done but also a dark driving force for European culture. Muchembled writes:
- He has been...integral to the development of the European world, an active player in a process that has seen the emergence and global triumph of a new way of being human, of a specific common way of leading life, of producing hope and of inventing worlds. The Western devil cannot therefore be reduced simply to a myth, whether religious or, as more recently, secularized, for example in the Romantic imagination of nineteenth-century France.
More than simply a history of the devil, then, Muchembled’s book is also a history of western culture — specifically, the way in which modern western culture grew out of the Middle Ages. Changes in how Europeans have viewed of the devil — the devil in themselves, in society, and in nature — reveal a great deal about the social, political, and cultural changes in Europe generally.
Understanding the role of the devil in European history requires understanding the two-fold nature of how evil has been viewed: on the one hand is the literal devil lurking in hell with his demonic armies, looking to take over the planet, and on the other hand is the beast lurking in the hearts of all people, seeking the divert them from the path of righteousness.
Today images of the devil are ubiquitous, but it is easy to project our own ideas back on an age that wouldn’t have recognized them at all. Muchembled’s focus comes after the 13th century because, prior to that, the figure of the devil in popular imagination was pretty pathetic. He was little more than a trickster — one who could himself be tricked by a clever peasant — and hardly the leader of hordes of demons. “[T]he world was too enchanted for Lucifer alone to be the focus of dread, fear and anxiety. The poor devil had too many competitors to reign supreme”
