Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief by Walter Stephens (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 281 toriography of Protestantism in England. PETER CARLSON, School of Religion, Claremont Graduate University Walter Stephens, Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2003) xvi + 468 pp. In early modern Europe, those accusing a woman of being a witch would claim that she had committed a myriad of sins, often including copulation with a demon . Modern scholars have been fascinated with the representation of women’s bodies and sexuality in witchcraft literature (broadly defined), without paying attention to the related topic of their demonic sexual partners. In an exciting new book, Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief, Walter Stevens, professor of Italian literature at Johns Hopkins, argues that in the fifteenth century, a new theory emerged to prove the existence of demons that resulted in a uniquely Western European construction of the witch. Stephens uses a particular genre of literature as his source base: witchcraft treatises written by individuals whom he refers to as “witchcraft theorists.” He views the corpus of witchcraft treatises as a unified whole—documents that resemble one another and share a systemic logic (29). Steven’s work is smart because although he works with well-known and often-studied sources, he provides a creative approach to these well-worn texts that sheds fresh new insights . Unlike many other scholars, he does not begin by placing a theoretical— such as Lacanian or Freudian—framework on this corpus. Instead, he reads the sources as texts, arguing that before one proceeds further, he must first fully understand the genre (32). Therefore, his primary goal is to understand how these witchcraft theorists developed their ideas, and then how these ideas became part of orthodox thought. Throughout the book, he convincingly demonstrates that the genre was rather uniform and that the theorists espoused a coherent , homogeneous theory. In examining sex between witches and demons, Stephens shifts the focus from witches to demons. In doing so, he sheds new light on our preconceived notions of Early Modern constructions of women. He argues that the principal issue for witchcraft theorists was not misogyny, but rather proving that demons were real and not imaginary. The only way to do this was to show that they could physically interact with humans. The main argument is laid out in chapter 2. He begins with a close reading of the Malleus maleficarum (1487). In a complicated, yet ultimately convincing argument centered around the rewriting and editing of this seminal work on witchcraft, Stephens argues that Heinrich Kramer was not a misogynist interested in the gratuitous emphasis of women’s evil. Rather, the sections of the Malleus devoted to women’s predisposition to seeking sex—which some scholars have viewed as tirades against women— were instead necessary precursors to set up his more critical exposition of demonic copulation. Kramer did not waste his time woman-bashing, rather he had more important theological concerns—he needed to prove that demons were not imaginary, but very real. Stephens argues that Kramer was using Aristotelian logic—namely that sensory data and bodily experience serve as certain proof. Demons must be real because they have sex with witches. Kremer’s theories were then ratified by Innocent III’s bull Summis desiderantes, which established the reality of witchcraft through legislation and “implicitly identi- REVIEWS 282 fies demonic copulation as the origin of witchcraft” (55). Why this obsession with the corporality of demons then? Why was it so important to prove that they were real? This is where the “Crisis of Belief” found in the title becomes so critical. Stephens lays out his argument in chapter 4. From the twelfth century, theologians were interested in reconciling Aristotelian disbelief in the supernatural with church teaching. There was an increasing need to find worldly proof of the supernatural, and in each generation writers grew more and more skeptical. Even though these writers wrote extensively about demonic copulations to convince others, if one reads between the lines, it becomes apparent that the authors were first and foremost trying to convince themselves. Although witches were needed to prove the corporality of demons, this led eventually, in a rather circular logic to the construction of the Western European...