Seminar: “Demons from the Outside: Topography of the Devil in Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogus Miraculorum”
František Novotný (Mellon Fellow, PIMS)
Caesarius of Heisterbach, the early thirteenth century Rhineland Cistercian famous for his exempla and miracle story collections, was frequently dealing with the topic of demonic forces in his works. The narratives he recorded contain numerous motifs of demonic apparitions, vexations, possessions, and even deliberate collaboration of a man with the Adversary. This presentation will discuss spatial distribution of demonic encounters in Caesarius’ stories, with special attention paid to the role of the monastery. I will attempt to show that in comparison to other twelfth/thirteenth century Cistercian collections of miracle stories, like the anonymous Collectaneum exemplorum ac visionum Clarevallense or the works of Heribert of Clairvaux and Conrad of Eberbach, Caesarius put a distinctive emphasis on the occurrence of demonic encounters in open landscapes, typically during the night, yet often in proximity to monasteries and their religious inhabitants. I will try to provide some preliminary ideas about how to interpret this tendency in Caesarius’ pivotal work, the Dialogus miraculorum, with respect to the author’s broader conception of the relation between a monastery and the world outside.
Image: Düsseldorf, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, Ms. C 27, fol. 1r