Chapter 11: On the gods of the heathen

1. They whom the pagans assert to be gods are known to have been men at one time, and in accordance with the life and services of each one they began to be worshiped among their own people after their death, as, in Egypt, Isis; in Crete, Jove; among the Moors, Juba; among the Latins, Faunus; among the Romans, Quirinus.

2. ... And in their praises the poets, too, have helped, and by writing poems have raised them up to the heavens.

3. It is said that the invention of certain arts has given rise to worship, as medicine for Aesculapius, craftsmanship for Vulcan. And they get their names from their activities, as Mercurius because he is in charge of merchandise; Liber from liberty.

4. There were also certain brave men and founders of cities, upon whose death men, because they loved them, made images of them, so as to have some comfort from the contemplation of their likenesses, but this error, it is now plain, so insinuated itself among later men by the influence of demons, that the persons whom earlier men honored for the sake of memory and nothing else, were believed by their successors to be gods, and were worshiped.

5. The use of images arose when, because of longing for the dead, likenesses or representations were made of them as if they had been received into heaven. And demons substituted themselves to be worshiped on earth in their place, and persuaded deceived and wretched men that sacrifices should be made to them.

12. While wicked pride, whether of men or of demons, commands and desires this worship, on the other hand pious humility, whether of men or of holy angels, refuses it when offered to them and shows to whom it is due.

15. Demons, they say, were named by the Greeks as if δαήμονας, that is, clever and knowing about things. For they foreknow many things that are to come, and because of this they are wont to give some responses.

16. For there is in them a knowledge of things greater than is in human weakness, partly by the keenness of their subtler sense, partly by the experience of very long life, partly by God’s command as revealed by the angels. They are strong in the nature of their aerial bodies.

17. Before their transgression, indeed, they had celestial bodies. But they fell and changed to an aerial quality, and they are not allowed to occupy the purer stretches of yonder airy space, but those misty parts, and this serves as a sort of prison for them until the time of judgment. These are the apostate angels, and their chief is the devil.

18. The devil (_diabolus_) in Hebrew means flowing downward (_deorsum fluens_), because he despised a calm station at heaven’s height and fell in downward ruin by the weight of his pride; but in Greek devil means accuser, whether because he reports the guilty deeds to which he is himself the tempter, or because he accuses the innocence of the elect with false crimes. Whence the angel’s voice says in the Apocalypse: “The accuser of our brethren has been cast down, who accused them in the sight of God day and night.”

19. _Satanas_ signifies in Latin the adversary, or deserter. He is the adversary, for he is the foe of truth, and struggles to resist the virtues of the holy; and the deserter, because he became an apostate and did not stand by the truth in which he was created; and the tempter, because he demands that the uprightness of the just be tried, as is written in Job.

20. Antichrist is so named because he is going to oppose Christ. It is not as certain simple-minded persons understand, that he is called Antichrist because he is going to come before Christ, that is, that Christ will come after him; not so, but Antichrist in the Greek means in the Latin _contrarius Christo_, for ἀντὶ in Greek means _contra_ in Latin.

21. For when he comes he will say falsely that he is Christ, and he will fight against him, and will oppose the sacraments of Christ, in order to destroy the Gospel of truth.

22. For he will try to repair the temple at Jerusalem and to restore all the ceremonies of the old law; moreover he is Antichrist who denies that Christ is God, for he is opposed to Christ; all who go out of the church and are cut off from the unity of faith are themselves Antichrist.

37. They say that _Janus_ is the gate (_janua_), as it were, of the universe, or the heavens or the months; they make Janus with two faces because of the East and the West; when they make him with four faces and call him the double Janus they refer this to the four quarters of the universe or to the four elements or seasons. But when they make this pretence they make a monster, not a god.

56. They say that Diana [Apollo’s] sister is at the same time Luna and the divinity of roads. And they represent her as a maiden because nothing grows on a road. And both [Apollo and Diana] are falsely represented as having arrows because the sun and moon send their rays from heaven down to the earth.

81. _Pan_ is a Greek name; the Latin is _Silvanus_; the god of the country people whom they invented to represent nature, whence he is called Pan, that is, _all_. For they pretend that he is made out of every kind of element.

82. For he has horns to represent the rays of the sun and moon; he has a skin, marked by spots, because of the stars of heaven; his face is red to represent the ether; he carries a Pan’s-pipe of seven reeds because of the harmony of the heavens in which are seven sounds, and the seven notes of the voice.

89. These[320] and others are the fabulous imaginations of the heathen, and, being rightly understood, they are such that their worship, though in ignorance, brings damnation.

[320] The reference is to heathen gods.

100. They say _manes_ are the gods of the dead, whose power, they assert, is between the moon and the earth....

101. _Larvae_ they say are demons made from men who have been wicked. It is said to be their nature to terrify little ones and to gibber in dark corners.