The demeanor of demons in early medieval visionary literature was more intimidating than their conduct in the lives of the saints. These narratives followed a specific pattern. A devout individual, usually a monk, died and then returned to life to narrate to friends and family a vision that he had received of the afterlife. In the company of an angel, the man’s soul had made the journey to the outskirts of Hell to witness the terrifying torments of the damned. This kind of literature had a moral agenda; it was intended as a warning for readers to cultivate virtue in this life in order to avoid punishment in the world to come. In this story told by Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People (completed in 731), demons near the lip of Hell were dangerous and daunting as they intimidated the soul of Dryhthelm, who was especially vulnerable in the absence of his angelic guardian.
Around that time, a remarkable miracle occurred in Britain similar to those that happened long ago. For in order to arouse the living from the death of the soul, a certain man who was already dead returned to life and he recounted many things worthy of remembering that he had seen. I think that it is worth gathering some of them together briefly in this work. There was a man, the father of a family in the region of Northumbria called Cunningham, who was leading a religious life with the rest of his household. Laid low by a bodily illness and brought to death’s door as it grew worse day by day, he died in the early hours of the evening. When the sun rose, however, he returned to life and immediately sat up. Everyone who had been sitting around his body in mourning was struck with a great fear and turned in flight. Only his wife remained, for she loved him very much, though she trembled with fright. He consoled her by saying: “Do not fear, for truly I have now risen from the death by which I was held and I have been permitted to live among humankind once more. Nevertheless, from this time forward I must conduct my life very differently than I had before.” He immediately got up and went to the oratory in the village, where he prayed well into the day. Soon thereafter he divided everything that he possessed into three separate portions. He gave one portion to his wife and another to his sons, but the third he retained for his own good by giving it directly to the poor. Not long thereafter he abandoned the cares of this world by entering the monastery at Melrose, which is enclosed almost entirely by a bend in the river Tweed. Once he had received his tonsure, he entered his own secluded cell, which the abbot had provided for him. There until the day of his death he lived a life of great repentance of mind and body, so that even if his tongue was silent, his life would have revealed that this man had seen many things either dreadful or desired that have been concealed from other men.
He told us what he had seen with the following words: “A man with a luminous appearance and bright clothing was my guide. We went forth without speaking in what seemed to me to be the direction of the rising of the sun at the solstice. As we walked, we arrived at a valley that was very broad and deep and seemed to stretch on forever to our left. One side of the valley was very terrifying with raging flames; the other was equally intolerable owing to fierce hail and cold blasts of snow gusting and blowing away everything in sight. Both sides were teeming with the souls of men, which seemed to be thrown back and forth, as though by the onslaught of a storm. When those poor souls could no longer endure the intensity of the immense heat, they leapt into the midst of the deadly cold. And when they could find no respite there, they leapt back to the other side to burn in the midst of those unquenchable flames. Since a countless number of misshapen souls was subject to the torture of this alternating misery far and wide as far as I could see without any hope of respite, I began to think that perhaps this was Hell, for I had often heard stories about the agonizing torments there. My guide, who walked ahead of me, answered my thought: ‘Do not believe this, for this is not the Hell you are thinking of.’
“But when he led me a little way further on, completely shaken by this terrifying scene, suddenly I noticed that the places before us began to grow gloomier and covered in darkness. As we entered this place, the shadows became so thick that I could see nothing else except for the outline and garment of my guide. As we progressed ‘through the shadows in the lonely night,’ behold suddenly there appeared before us thick masses of noisome flames spouting up into the air as though from a great pit before falling back into it again. When we arrived in this place, my guide suddenly disappeared and abandoned me alone in the midst of the shadows and this terrifying scene. As the masses of flames spouted to the heights and plunged to the depths of the pit over and over again, I saw that the tips of the rising flames were full of human souls, which like sparks ascending with smoke shot up to the heights and then, when the flames withdrew, fell back into the depths once again. Moreover, an incomparable stench poured forth with these flames and filled this entire realm of shadows. And after I had stood there for a long time, unsure what I should do or which way to turn or what fate awaited me, suddenly I heard behind me the sound of a great and most wretched wailing and at the same time raucous laughter as though some illiterate rabble was hurling insults at enemies they had captured. And as the noise became louder and finally reached me, I saw a crowd of evil spirits cheering and laughing as they dragged the souls of five people crying and wailing into the midst of the shadows. I could discern among these people one tonsured like a priest, a layman, and a woman. Dragging the souls with them, the evil spirits descended into the midst of the burning pit, and it happened that, as they went further down into the pit, I could not clearly distinguish the wailing of the people and the laughter of the demons, for the sound was confused in my ears. In the meantime, insubstantial spirits rose up out of that flame-spitting abyss and rushing forward, they surrounded me. With flaming eyes and blowing a putrid flame from their mouths and nostrils, they tormented me. They also threatened to grab me with the fiery tongs that they held in their hands, but although they terrified me, they never dared to touch me. Surrounded on every side by enemies and blinded by the shadows, I cast my eyes this way and that way to see if by chance the help that I needed might arrive from somewhere. Back on the road along which we had come there appeared something like the brightness of a star shining among the shadows, which grew little by little as it hastened quickly towards me. When the light approached, all of the vile spirits who were trying to seize me with their tongs scattered and fled. It was in fact my guide whose arrival put the spirits to flight. Presently he turned to the right and began to lead me in the direction of the rising sun in wintertime. Without delay he led me out of the shadows and into gentle breezes of serene light.”