Satan's Rhetoric
Subtitle: A Study of Renaissance Demonology
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Published: September 1, 2001
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 256
ISBN-13: 9780226501321
Subjects: Christian theology; European history: c 1750 to c 1900; Satanism & demonology; New Age / Body, Mind & Spirit; Religion; Europe; Cults; Occultism; Satanism; Religion / Cults, Demonism, the Occult; Europe - General; Demonology; History of doctrines
First sentence: "THE CONNECTION between the human kind expelled from the earthly paradise and the devil banished from heaven is founded on their common accident," Leon d'Alexis remarks in the opening section of Traicte des energumenes, a brief Renaissance essay on demonology that may serve as a basic introduction to this study.
Description: "According to Christian theology, fallen angels hold key similarities to human beings because they share our outcast condition. Cast to Earth and wandering in search of respite, their chief activity is their engagement in dialogue with humanity. With this probing new contribution to the study of Christianity, Armando Maggi examines this dialogue, exploring how evil spirits interacted with mankind during the early modern period.

Reading innumerable treatises on demonology written during the Renaissance, including Thesaurus exorcismorum, the most important record of early modern exorcisms, Maggi finds repeated attempts to define the language exchanged between the fallen progeny of Adam, and the most notorious fallen angel of them all, Satan. Using points of departure taken from de Certeau and Lacan, Maggi shows that Satan articulates his language first and foremost in the mind. More than speaking, the devil tries to make human beings understand his language and speak it themselves.

Through sodomites, infidels, and witches, then, the devil is able to infect humanity as it appropriates his seductive rhetoric."--BOOK JACKET.