The Shifting of Demonic Nature

In Beowulf, dragons and other demons walked the Earth and tormented mankind. These monsters were described as living outside of the borders of the civilization that were described in the stories and the wilderness outside of the borders was considered to be Hell. In the Gospel according to Matthew, even the devil is described as living in the wilderness. Around 1000, the only mention of demons and monsters were allusions to the devil that resided in hell. As time passed, dragons and earthly demons seemed to disappear entirely. However, around the 1240s, Joinville wrote the Chronicles of the Crusades, where it becomes apparent that, through the use of a dragon metaphor and descriptions of their enemies, dragons and monsters had left the wilderness and found a new domain in the periphery of Europe. This was also made apparent in Urban’s Speech at Clermont, where Urban II described the Turks as a ‘vile race’ that worked with demons. In 1348, however, demonic figures once again appeared as the Black Plague began to spread. This return to the land of monsters showed that dragons and demons did not become extinct in the high Middle Ages. Instead, the domain of these monsters shifted location. Therefore, dragons and monsters represented the fear of the unknown, of the hellish creatures that existed outside of the civilizations. As these civilizations grew and retracted, the otherness shifted its location from the wilderness to outside of the world entirely. Then, when society began to break down and shrink again, the monsters reappeared in the periphery of Europe and then as close as the streets of a town during the Black Plague.

Out of the documents that we have studied, the Gospel of Matthew, which originated sometime during the 1st century, was the first time that devils or monsters were mentioned within the civilization, or at lease within the colonized land at the time. In Matthew 4, Jesus was led into the wilderness in order to be tempted by the devil. The...