Demonic Machinations and Cognitive Mechanisms: Cognitive Insights into Early Monastic Demonology

Abstract

This contribution aims to gain new insight into early monastic demonology by situating the relationship between monks and demons in the context of the monastic discipline of attention (προσοχή, νῆψις), as it was practiced by the desert fathers and their followers. For late antique Christian monks, the effort to train and purify attention had both a psychological and a demonic aspect: the effort to focus attention on the thought of God was simultaneously an attempt to resist demonic influences that pulled attention in other directions. This contribution examines the monastic attempt to train attention and resist demonic distraction from a joint historical and cognitive viewpoint. It draws on cognitive research of attention to shed light on the challenges involved in this attempt as well as on its beneficial potential and self-formative role.