Question Three of Chapter Five of the Third Decade
On the many ways by which a demon deceives human beings
It is asked whether demons deceive human beings in any ways besides those already described.
To this it is answered that, in addition to the modes adduced above, the devil also strives to deceive human beings in two other ways.
First, through the deception of apparent truth or apparent good.
Second, through the illusion of dreams.
First, through the deception of apparent truth or good. For although demons are most mendacious, they nevertheless avoid lying to those who consult them, so that by speaking in this manner with virtue as a covering they may conceal their iniquity and engender the opinion that, as though they were gods, they do not lie; and so that at the end they may oppress more grievously those who believe them.
For since they are excellent logicians, they know how to deceive human beings by reasoning fallaciously through all thirteen fallacies of the Philosopher.
Thus a demon deceived the first woman by syllogizing through the fallacy of equivocation upon the word “you will die.” For God had said, “On whatever day you eat, you will die,” namely, by spiritual and eternal death. And the demon said, “You will by no means die,” namely, by temporal death at that time.
In this manner a certain confined demon deceitfully deceived King Manfred in Apulia. When Manfred was preparing himself for war against Charles, king of France, he consulted his own confined demon as to what would happen to him in his war. The demon responded: “No, no: the Frenchman will overcome the Apulian.” For even now it is customary, when someone wishes to deny something emphatically, to repeat the negation twice.
Therefore Manfred, believing that he would be victorious, went to war and was overcome by Charles. For two negations make one affirmation.
In the same way a demon deceived another man who consulted it concerning the arrival of his enemies. According to the demon’s answer, he believed that they would come to him peaceably in order to negotiate peace. For the demon had said to him, “Your enemies will indeed come to you suaviter.” In this the demon deceived by the fallacy of equivocation, since the consultant understood suaviter as “kindly,” but the devil as “swiftly.”
Another man also consulted Apollo, as Valerius says, as to whether, if he went to his enemies, he would be captured or would return. Apollo responded: “You will go you will return not you will die in war.” He was deceived through the fallacy of composition, because the demon placed the stop at “not,” while the consultant placed it at “you will return.”
Hence sometimes the words of the devil must be interpreted by their contrary. I learned from my reverend lord Gonzalo Fernández de Heredia, archbishop of Tarragona and now Governor of the City, a man of illustrious blood, of most proven prudence of mind and life, that the following was done through a man’s dexterity and marvelous quickness of intellect.
In the year of Christ 1473, on the sixteenth day before the Kalends of October, Master Francisco de Toledo—later datary to Pope Sixtus IV and thereafter bishop of Coria—was sent as an envoy by the Duke of Milan to the Genoese. When affairs had meanwhile turned to war, he was detained and ordered not to write anything to the duke unless it had first been examined by them.
But with the exceedingly keen ingenuity which he possessed, perceiving the things that could occur on either side, he had agreed beforehand with the duke that his letters should be read by the latter backward and in Hebrew order.
After obtaining permission to write and showing the letters to the senate, he sent the letter below, which, if read backward, displayed to the duke the entire disposition and condition of the Genoese.
Postergatis assertionibus asserentium aliter. Istos alit bonitas, atque fides, nec invidia inflammat eosdem, quidam ordinatis tramitibus se gubernant, nec separant voluntates eorum: Nempe praeteritae quaestionis, memoria cumulata non diffidunt, sed confidunt ad invicem: Nulla fortuna adversari debet eis, sed diu nec pauco tempore durare debent, quod clarissime constat auditu profecto susceperunt benevolo voto legationem meam, nec nomen domini mei mittentis oderunt, quieta amoenitate non cupida sub rapina vivere delectatos. Unde viderunt me usibus claris, et placidis non facto aliquo tumultu omnium terrigenarum, et forensium esse praesentata causa requisitionis meae pariter, et adventus, et cetera.
“The assertions of those who assert otherwise having been set aside: goodness and faith nourish these men, and envy does not inflame those same men. Certain persons govern themselves along ordered paths, and do not divide their wills. Indeed, because the accumulated memory of the preceding question remains, they do not distrust but trust one another. No fortune ought to oppose them; rather, they ought to endure for a long time and not for a short time. This is most clearly evident by report. They certainly received my embassy with a benevolent wish, and they do not hate the name of my lord who sent me, being delighted to live in tranquil pleasantness, not covetously under plunder. Hence they saw that, by clear and peaceful usages and with no disturbance made, the cause of my request and likewise of my arrival had been presented to all the natives and foreigners,” and so forth.
A similar verse is the following, which, when pronounced straightforwardly, befits Abel, but when pronounced obliquely, Cain:
“I shall give a fat sacrifice, nor shall I sacrifice a lean one.”
Demons, therefore, do not deceive openly or lie plainly. Rather, they deceive beneath the cloak of truth and goodness: either through syllogistic fallacies, through external objects presented to the senses, through various false apparitions, prophecies, phantastic revelations, and addresses, or through falsigraphic—that is, falsely written—persuasions, by altering, as we have said, the phantastic or imaginative power.
Because of the multiple modes of deception and fallacy, and because of the powers of these malign spirits, Scripture says in Genesis 3: “But the serpent was more crafty”—that is, according to another translation, “wiser”—“than all the living creatures of the earth which God had created.”
And Christ calls the devil “a strong man armed” in Luke 11.
And Job 41 says: “There is no power upon earth that may be compared with him.”
And cause 16, question 2, chapter Visis, says The devil has a thousand modes and arts of harming.”
And Paul says in Ephesians 6: “Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness.”
And Revelation 12 says: “Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has descended to you, having great wrath,” that is, power.
Second, the devil also deceives through the illusion of dreams. For sometimes, through the operation of demons, certain phantasies appear to those who sleep, in which certain things are revealed to them.
Sometimes, indeed, these are certain true things, whether concerning spiritual things—as Augustine relates in Book XVIII of The City of God, where a certain philosopher expounded certain Platonic teachings to a man in dreams, which Augustine says was done through the operation of demons—or concerning present or future corporeal things, especially to those with whom demons have illicit pacts. To these they sometimes reveal things of which they themselves are the causes, and sometimes things whose signs they know beforehand but which are nevertheless hidden from human beings.
At other times they send false and deceptive dreams. This is evident from Gregory in Book IV of the Dialogues, chapter 50, where he says that, when a certain man paid close attention to dreams, the devil promised him through a dream long spans of life. When he had indirectly gathered much money for the expenses of a long life, he was deceived by the demon and suddenly died, leaving his ill-gotten money untouched.
This is likewise evident in the account found in the Lives of the Fathers concerning a man who, when he heard the miracles of Moses, began to prefer Moses to Christ. When the devil appeared at night, he saw in a dream Christ in the choir of human beings, clothed in black garments, and Moses in the choir of angels, clothed in white garments. Because of this dream the man departed from the faith; but afterward, having been enlightened, he understood the fallacy and returned to Christ.
Therefore all such revelations and responses in dreams are not to be desired but execrated and disbelieved.
First, because they frequently reveal false things, since the devil himself is “a liar and the father of the lie.”
Second, because, even granted that he sometimes reveals true things, he nevertheless always intends the destruction of human beings. He therefore very often says true things in order to accustom human beings to believe him, and so intends to lead them to something harmful to human salvation.
These things are from Henry of Assia upon Genesis.
Addition
Because the demon is perverse by nature, crafty, and wicked, he always abuses against us a craftiness which we cannot explain, since he has a thousand arts of harming. Pope Leo, gathering together these acts of craftiness in a sermon, says: “The ancient enemy does not cease,” and so forth.