{"id":12102,"date":"2022-07-05T04:02:21","date_gmt":"2022-07-05T04:02:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booksofall.com\/es\/?post_type=product&p=12102"},"modified":"2022-07-11T03:55:32","modified_gmt":"2022-07-11T03:55:32","slug":"defining-the-demonic","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/www.booksofall.com\/es\/defining-the-demonic\/","title":{"rendered":"Defining the Demonic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although Jacques Collin de Plancy\u2019s\u00a0Dictionnaire infernal<\/em>, a monumental compendium of all things diabolical, was first published in 1818 to much success, it is the fabulously illustrated final edition of 1863 which secured the book as a landmark in the study and representation of demons. Ed Simon explores the work and how at its heart lies an unlikely but pertinent synthesis of the Enlightenment and the occult.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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T<\/span>here, between the entry for a seventeenth-century Anglican theologian<\/a> named Assheton and one for the Levantine goddess Astarte, is the demon Astaroth. As depicted by the French artist Louis le Breton for his fellow countryman Jacques-Albin-Simon Collin de Plancy\u2019s\u00a0Dictionnaire infernal<\/em>, Astaroth is a skinny man with reptilian claws punctuating long hands and feet, hobbled over on the back of a lupine demon sporting a massive pair of bat wings and a serpentine tail. His face \u2014 described by Collin de Plancy<\/a> as that of a \u201cvery ugly angel\u201d \u2014 is rendered by le Breton as thin and effete, almost equine, with eyes dismissive and uncaring, a slight sneer of cold command. Ignoring Astaroth\u2019s claws and demon mount, his look of calculated intelligence could easily be that of one of the armchair intellectuals who dined with the philosophes of the Enlightenment Paris of Collin de Plancy\u2019s youth.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Not an entirely inappropriate connection, for the Dominican inquisitor Sebastian Michaelis, who classified the demons he encountered as an exorcist at the infamous monastery of Loudun in the seventeenth century, associated Astaroth with the new rationalist philosophies that were just being born in France. Michaelis\u2019 Astaroth was a kind of hellish Ren\u00e9 Descartes, who drew the nuns and priests of Loudun astray with the pernicious promises of Epicureanism and invitations to \u201cDo what thou wilt\u201d. Perhaps for Collin de Plancy, born almost two centuries later amidst the convulsions of revolution, the thin, reptilian demon with the aristocratic bearing still represented some of the dangers of the new learning, for Astaroth \u201cwillingly answers the questions he is asked about the most secret things, and . . . it is easy to have him talk about creation\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Astaroth is a convenient symbol for the oddity of Collin de Plancy\u2019s\u00a0Dictionnaire<\/em>, for the demon represents a muddle of cultural forces: rationalism and superstition, systematization and the occult, the Enlightenment and the Romantic movement. When the\u00a0Dictionnaire<\/em>\u00a0was first published in 1818, Collin de Plancy was a dutiful student of the new rationalism who set out to catalogue what he called \u201caberrations and germs or causes of errors\u201d. As he labored at subsequent editions, however, the secular folklorist found himself more and more pulled in by the lure of demonology, a passion which would eventually lead him, by the 1830s, to enthusiastically embrace Catholicism. By the\u00a0Dictionnaire<\/em>\u2019s final edition of 1863, the publishers could assure the reader that the \u201cerrors\u201d previously highlighted had now been eliminated, the catalogue now fully congruent with Catholic theology. The preface authoritatively claimed that Collin de Plancy had \u201creconfigured his labors, recognizing that superstitious, foolish beliefs, occult sects and practices . . . have come only from deserters of the faith.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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All together, across nearly six hundred pages, Collin de Plancy provided entries for sixty-five different demons, including favorites from the pages of Dante, Milton, and others, such as Asmodeus, Azazel, Bael, Behemoth, Belph\u00e9gor, Belzebuth, Mammon, and Moloch. The most interesting edition of the text is the final one of 1863, illustrated with creepy exactitude by le Breton, whose brilliant Dor\u00e9-esque engravings elevate the work beyond the relative staidness of previous editions.<\/p>\n

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Ed Simon<\/span>\u00a0is a staff writer for\u00a0The Millions<\/em>, which the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0has called the \u201cindispensable literary site\u201d. A specialist in early modern and early American literature, he holds a PhD in English from Lehigh University, and his most recent book is\u00a0Printed in Utopia: The Renaissance’s Radicalism<\/em><\/a> (Zero Books, 2020).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"