“Violentia” and the Devil. Early Modern Narratives of Demonic Possession and Catholic Anthropology

The chapter investigates the uses of the Latin term violentia and related words (the adjective violentus, the adverb violenter, the verb violentare) in early modern European treatises for exorcists. One might think that the setting of exorcism is quintessentially “violent”, giving this word the meaning we tend to use today. Nevertheless, the occurrences of violentia and derivatives are very rare in the literature in question, and when referring to the action of the Devil upon humans they mean “sudden”, “unnatural”, and “involuntary”. Aristotelian-Thomistic physics and metaphysics underlie this meaning, as shown also in coeval manuals for confessors and moral theology treatises.