medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On 11/25/13, Andrew Larsen wrote:
> How about Machiavelli's play Belfagor Achidiavolo, "Belfagor, the Devil Who Took A Wife"?
That's an early sixteenth-century play, whereas the original query called for "some good medieval (i.e. <1500) examples of the devil as a figure of comedy or in literature or in drama". The same consideration disqualifies what would have been my suggestion, the comic demons of the Digby play _The Conversion of St. Paul_ (now dated to between 1500 and 1530). Denis Hüe has already suggested André de la Vigne's _Farce du meunier qui vendit son ame au diable_ (1492) and I suspect that one could find other later fifteenth-century dramas that would qualify. Whether in this context one could argue persuasively that there's a meaningful distinction between dramatic treatments of the devil -- or, presumably, of subordinate demons -- in the late fifteenth century on one hand and, on another, in the early sixteenth century is of course another matter. Indeed, relying solely on very late medieval comic treatments (with "medieval" defined as <1500) could in a fairly obvious way call into question the validity in this context of that particular temporal distinction.
Best,
John Dillon
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