Philip C. Almond
Autore di The Devil: A New Biography
Sull'Autore
Philip C. Almond is Professor Emeritus of Religion at the University of Queensland. His ten previous books include The Witches of Warboys: An Extraordinary Story of Sorcery, Sadism and Satanic Possession (2008), The Lancashire Witches: A Chronicle of Sorcery and Death on Pendle Hill (2012) and The mostra altro Devil: A New Biography (2014), all published by I.B. Tauris. mostra meno
Fonte dell'immagine: http://researchers.uq.edu.au/researcher/185
Opere di Philip C. Almond
The Witches of Warboys: An Extraordinary Story of Sorcery, Sadism and Satanic Possession (2007) 33 copie
Demonic Possession and Exorcism in Early Modern England: Contemporary Texts and their Cultural Contexts (2004) 23 copie
Mystical experience and religious doctrine : an investigation of the study of mysticism in world religions (1982) 8 copie
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- Opere
- 21
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- 1
- Utenti
- 285
- Popolarità
- #81,815
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- 3.5
- Recensioni
- 3
- ISBN
- 63
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- 5
Discussing the 3rd century Alexandrian scholar, Origen, and his contribution, Almond writes, “In terms of the story of the Devil, Origen’s legacy was twofold. He had given a new name to the Devil – Lucifer – through his identification of the Devil with the Day Star of Isaiah 14. And, perhaps more important, his locating of the revolt of Satan and his angels before the creation of the world as the result of the sin of pride became a commonplace” (pg. 46). The Gospel of Nicodemus linked Satan with the harrowing of Hell. According to Almond, “for the first time in Christian demonology, we have demons in hell both tormented and tormenting the damned. Satan has at last, in principle at least, assumed the role of the overseer of the punishments of the damned in hell” (pg. 59). Demonology grew during the thirteenth century. According to Almond, “this was the consequence of four intellectual moments during that period: first, the rise of the Cathars; second, the rise of academic angelology and its demonological counterpoint; and third, the arrival in the West of Arab learning and the occult sciences. Finally…it was the result of an apocalyptic thematic in the theology of Joachim of Fiore” (pg. 70).
Discussing witchcraft, Almond writes, “In the 1430s, there developed the notion that magicians were part of a secret heretical sect that rejected Christianity, gathered regularly in the presence of the Devil to worship him and performed evil deeds by magic. From this time onwards, in the history of Western thought, magic and witchcraft developed along separate intellectual paths” (pg. 96-97). Works like the Malleus Maleficarum linked witchcraft with femininity as, “no longer the involuntary victims of Satanic assaults, female witches were now willing participants in Satanic sex. Thus, female sexuality and evil were intimately connected” (pg. 103). Furthermore, “the pact between the Devil and the magician or the witch was perceived as a precondition of any and all magical powers. Following Augustine, superstitious practices in general, and witchcraft and sorcery in particular, were viewed as originating in a compact between men and demons. The pact could be either explicit or tacit” (pg. 129).
Later Protestants identified “the papacy with the Antichrist, together with an historicist approach to the book of Revelation, [which] became the key to Reformation Protestant readings of history and its completion. Secular and sacred history, the history of kingdoms and the Kingdom of God coalesced. As a consequence, the book of Revelation assumed an importance it had not previously had” (pg. 184). By the eighteenth century, “the gradual exclusion of the spiritual – both the supernatural (miracles worked by God) and the preternatural (wonders, often worked by demons) – from the domain of the natural. It signalled [sic] the development of new forms of Christian spirituality that grounded personal faith and religion not in divine revelation, Scripture or the presence of the divine or the demonic world, but in the rational contemplation of a disenchanted world” (pg. 198). Almond writes in the wake of this tradition, showing how the Devil, as an idea, continues to influence our culture through these various permutations he experienced over the centuries.… (altro)