The Medieval Devil: A Reader ed. by Richard Raiswell, David R. Winter (review)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Reviewed by: The Medieval Devil: A Reader ed. by Richard Raiswell, David R. Winter Arina Zaytseva Key Words Middle Ages, devil, demonology, demonic possession, Hell, apocrypha, Church Fathers richard raiswell, david r. winter, eds. The Medieval Devil: A Reader. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2023. Pp. 424. The Medieval Devil: A Reader is a welcome addition to the long-running line of collections of primary sources published under the auspices of the Readings in Medieval Civilizations and Cultures series at by the University of Toronto. Edited by historians Richard Raiswell and David R. Winter, this volume is a product of decades of teaching on the history of the Devil— most of the texts included in the volume were test-driven in classes held by such acclaimed historians as Gary Waite, Michelle Brock, Megan Lane MacDonald, Luke Baird, Maggie McEwen, as well as by Professors Raiswell and Winter themselves (xi). The aim of this volume is to provide “a new look at the development of medieval society by analyzing how the men and women of the period constructed its antithesis,” (xiii) i.e., the Devil. With a wealth of carefully selected texts hailing from different time periods and places and covering a variety of topics, the editors attempt to problematize and complicate the ongoing conversation on the image of the Devil, arguably the most popular, yet elusive, figure of Christian history. The Devil, in his manifold manifestations, from terrifying to comical, is an empty vessel to be filled with meaning and significance, in accordance with changing political, social, and personal beliefs. In the words of Raiswell and Winter, “his identity and potency at any particular historical instance were as much a function of the projection of communal tensions and anxieties as . . . of the musings of theologians and canonists” (xiii). The Medieval Devil: A Reader is divided into eleven thematic blocks, or chapters. The division is somewhat arbitrary, since some chapters follow major thematic topics in the development of the narrative about the Devil and his attributes, while others follow the chronology of such developments. Among the chapters dedicated to particular time periods in the development of demonological narratives are, for example, Chapter 2, “Development of a Narrative,” focused predominantly on biblical narratives, apocryphal texts, and the texts of early Church Fathers; Chapter 3, “Forging a Community,” which includes excerpts from early theologians; Chapter 4, “The Early Monastic Devil”; and Chapter 11, “Toward the Early Modern Age.” Other chapters are organized thematically and include texts pertaining to recurring demonological concepts, such as demonic possession (Chapter 7), the image of Hell (Chapter 6), demonization of the Other (Chapter 8), etc. This seemingly patchwork organization of contents reflects the multifaceted nature of the Devil’s image. Indeed, the major strength of this collection lies in its variety. The editors include a wide array of sources, from classical demonological accounts of [End Page 148] Tertullian, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Athanasius of Alexandria, Pope Gregory I, and others, to excerpts from more obscure works, such as the apocryphal Testament of Solomon, the Old English medical text, Leechbook III, and a peculiar legal manual, Satan’s Case Against the Divine Virgin before Judge Jesus. This collection does not shun incendiary texts, either (it includes, for example, an excerpt from the infamous Tultu sceptrum, a raunchy late medieval fabliau, and Peter Damian’s vitriolic attack on clerical sodomy, among other texts), touching upon dark and taboo topics connected to the image of the Devil. The editors tactfully comment on the shocking nature of some of the texts, while explaining that it is impossible to understand the hold the Devil had on popular and learned imagination without accounting for the powerful emotional and psychological effect his figure had on various communities (xvi). Fortunately, I had a chance to use this book in class. When I received the reader in Spring 2023, I was about to start teaching my first undergraduate course on the history of the Devil in Christianity. Not only did I get to read this wonderful collection, but I also had an opportunity to test it out during seminar discussions with a small group of first-year students, none of whom, save one, were humanities majors. The...
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; both teacher heads agree on what is shown here.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".