Dispelling devils, just as mothballs dispel moths
Afavourite word among historians of religion who consider the period when the Medieval turned into the Early Modern, is apotropaic. I’ve mentioned it before but, I confess, I still do not know what it means.
Its literal meaning is “turning away” – from a Greek word – and the thing turned away is evil. Lytton Strachey, in Eminent Victorians, wanting to make fun of Gordon of Khartoum, depicts him adding “the apotropaic initials DV after every statement in his letters implying futurity”. It was as though Gordon touched wood lest his planned picnic be rained upon if he, too confidently, spoke of the treat in store.
Even if one wanted to mock Gordon, I’m not sure this is the right accusation. Rather than superstitious dread that things would go wrong, I think Gordon had a pious belief that he should not presume upon or tempt providence, and so invoked God’s will explicitly: DV, Deo volente.
It came from an excess of piety, not a fear of futurity.
But these things are hard to read aright. Why does the pious Muslim say inshallah
(God willing) all the time? Does he mean he’ll meet you on Monday, “all being well”, or is he religiously handing over to the will of God?
In the service of Baptism in the Book of Common Prayer, a cross is made on the child’s forehead. Now, of course, the sign of the cross is not scriptural. In St Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says: “Teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” But no instruction as to manual signs is given there.
Elizabethan Puritans took strongly against the command to make a cross on the child’s forehead, not unreasonably suspecting it of being an act of exorcism. In modern terms, it was apotropaic. The editors of the Book of Common Prayer in the next century took such objections seriously enough to add a note at the end of the service: “To take away all scruple concerning the use of the sign of the Cross in Baptism; the true explication thereof, and the just reasons for the retaining of it, may be seen in the xxxth Canon, first published in the year MDCIV.”
The explanation, such as it is, forms part of Church of England canon law still, averring that the Church “for the remembrance of the Cross, which is very precious to those that rightly believe in Jesus Christ, has retained the sign of it in baptism, following therein the primitive and apostolic Churches”. This is true, as far as it goes.
But if you believed, as most people had in the 15th century, that demons fled the sign of the cross, you might conclude that the primitive and apostolic Churches retained it for that very reason. The sign of the Cross would, in those times, be apotropaic, not in the sense of a prayer to God to rid us of demons, but apotropaic in the sense that demons really fled it.
A very popular prayer in England in the late Middle Ages was attributed to a letter received by Charlemagne. It was to be recited with signs made where marked: “Cross + of Christ be with me. Cross + of Christ is what I ever adore. Cross + of Christ is true health … May the Cross + of Christ banish all evil” … and so on. Often, manuscripts in which it circulated promised protection for women in childbirth, or to anyone at the hour of death, if it was duly recited.
Eamon Duffy, discussing this tendency in popular prayers in The Stripping of the Altars (1992), saw a “bizarre mixture of piety and magic”. But if to command demons is magic, then what would one call a godly sign of power that dispels demons as mothballs are hoped to dispel moths? Is something apotropaic always magic?