What is it about?
This chapter analyzes the place of demons in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century religious reform movements. It concludes that the Reformation movements contained two contradictory tendencies: first, the desire to cleanse a community of godlessness to avert divine wrath and, second, an emphasis on salvation as a personal or internal affair. The first trend made the Devil even more frightening and real, contributing to bloody Reformation conflicts and the revival of witch hunting. The second tendency was taken to its logical extreme by spiritualists such as the Dutch nonconformist David Joris who argued that the Devil was nothing more than the inner voice of temptation. Neither position was a necessary outcome of Reformed thought, but particular circumstances could lead individuals in one direction or the other or to try to maintain the two in a tension.
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Why is it important?
The Devil remains a powerful tool in religious and political disagreements and conflict, leading often to the demonizing and prosecution of minority groups or opponents. In the sixteenth century, those seeking to reform the church were typically identified by those opposing such transformations as agents of the Devil. Catholics so viewed Lutherans and Reformed Protestants, while both Protestants and Catholics targeted Anabaptists as demonic. The result was horrific conflict and persecution, and increased fear over other alleged demonic agents: witches. Even so, some of those who were persecuted developed alternative approaches to demons; the Dutch Anabaptist/Spiritualist David Joris, for example, argued that demons did not exist external to the human conscience. He was the first to publish that argument in the vernacular, and it helped shape attitudes among dissenter groups, such as liberal Dutch Mennonites, skeptical of the growing fear of the demonic.
Perspectives
I have been studying the Devil in the Reformation for over three decades, and I continue to find new and exciting discoveries. I continue to pursue the history of this mythic figure, now including the modern era, for despite the Devil's demise in the Enlightenment (which spiritualists like Joris and the Dutch Mennonites contributed to), he has returned as a rhetorical device to condemn opponents and to "other" minorities. I'm particularly interested in the Satanic Ritual Abuse panics of the 1980s and 1990s, and the polarizing rhetoric involving "Satan" in contemporary political and religious discourse.
Gary Waite
University of New Brunswick
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This page is a summary of: The Devil in the Reformations, August 2025, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004536449_007.
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