Thursday, February 29th at 5:00 PM in GILH 106

Across the cultures and religions of the Late Ancient Mediterranean, people understood spiritual powers to be active around them. For those suffering illness, unusual behavior, or temptation to immoral action, demons could be blamed as the source. Christians, Jews, and polytheistic Greeks and Romans all wrote about demons, though their descriptions of them and methods for combatting them could differ.

Through this colloquium, Dr. Miller aims to introduce the complex, often contradictory, world of demons through a collection of Late Antique sources. Through a mixture of Biblical, apocryphal, religious, philosophical, and historical accounts from Christians, Jews, and polytheists of Greece and Rome, Dr. Miller will show a variety of combat methods employed against demons that reveal a multifaceted market of opportunities. We will consider the ways that Egyptian monks confronted and combatted shapeshifting demons, multiple exorcism accounts, magical talismans, medical remedies, and a monastic handbook for identifying demonic thoughts within your own mind.