Love in the Time of Demons: Thirteenth-Century Approaches to the Capacity for Love in Fallen Angels
Juanita FEROS RUYS
Original title: O amor em tempos demoníacos: diferentes abordagens no século XIII para a capacidade de amar dos anjos caídos
Published in Emotions in the Ancient and Medieval Mediterranean World
Keywords: Demons, Free will, Friendship, Natural love, lust.
Demons in the Middle Ages were primarily known as creatures that could feel only envy, anger, and malicious glee. But there remained an undercurrent in both scholastic thought and monastic tales that also understood demons as creatures once capable−and perhaps still so−of love. This paper examines the capacity for love and friendship attributed to demons in the thirteenth century. It shows how love could be seen as the motivating emotion in their original fall from Heaven, and explores the role love is subsequently thought to have played in both their relationships with each other and their amatory and sexual relationships with humans.
The Dante’s Inferno and the seventh circle symbology
Solange Ramos de ANDRADE and Daniel Lula COSTA
Original title: O Inferno de Dante e a simbologia do sétimo círculo
Published in Paradise, Purgatory and Hell: the Religiosity in the Middle Ages
Keywords: Dante, Demons, Hell, Middle Ages, Violence.
The period between XI to XIII century was remarkable for the expansion of Christian hell. The belief in evil increased the fear of unknown and enabled the structure of a punitive hell. The poet, Dante Alighieri, made a geography for Christian hell, paradise and purgatory by means of collective representations of medieval man. We’ll use the concept of representation to discuss the symbolism of Dante’s inferno, focusing in the structure of its seventh circle, where the violent souls are punished.
The transcendence of War and Peace by the spiritual sense of Christian Theology
Eirini ARTEMI
Published in The Kingdom of the Spirit
Keywords: Demons, Passions Christian Teaching, Peace, Theosis, War.
“War” and “peace” are subject to theological, philosophical, moral, and political construction. In Christian theology, “war” and “peace” have to do with the relations of people with God, with themselves and with the other people in every place of this earth. The transcendence of the war and peace has literal and spiritual meaning. In the Christian view of peace, it is necessary to relate to justice and includes the dimensions of inner peace or a spiritual peace. This understanding is different from a more secular outlook means peace at the level of exterior dimensions –outer dimension–. As far as the word “war” can mean spiritual struggling with our passions or with the demons and with the other people in our daily life. The teachings on peace and on war, deriving from the sacred texts of Christianity, effectively guide adherents to attain inner peace, to extend it outwardly and to try to get rid of the passions which are cause of war. The latter relates to our passions and sins.
