Stories about the victory of the saints over the Devil and his minions remained popular throughout the Middle Ages. One of the most memorable anecdotes of this kind involved a struggle between Saint Dunstan (ca. 909–88) and a demon who tempted him in a smithy. The demon had already contrived Dunstan’s downfall while he was a young man at the court of King Æthelstan. Exiled from the king’s palace, the saint retired to a small cell at Glastonbury, where the demon visited him once again. The legend of Dunstan’s tongs first appeared in the twelfth-century account of his life written by Osbern of Canterbury and thereafter became a popular element of the saint’s tradition in art and literature.
But lest the devil seem to pity the poverty of Dunstan, whom he previously did not allow to live in the palace, now he strove to expel him from his shack. Thus, the deceitful demon, covered in the deceitful likeness of a man, sought out the cell of the young Dunstan under a gloomy evening sky, stuck his head through the window of his shack, saw that man occupied in the work of a smith, and asked him to forge some piece of work for him. Dunstan, however, neither noticing his cunning nor acknowledging his rudeness, turned his thoughts to the requested work. Meanwhile, that devil began to produce words in a perverse composition, to introduce the names of women, and to recall lustful thoughts; next he started to show scruples, only to repeat the same things again. Then truly the athlete of Christ, perceiving who this was, set into the fire the tongs with which he held firmly a piece of iron and invoked Christ under his breath. And when he saw that the tips of the tongs were white-hot, driven by a holy rage, he quickly snatched them from the fire, caught the devilish face with the tongs, and, struggling with all his strength, dragged the monster inside. At that moment, Dunstan was applying his strength while holding his ground. As the one who was held escaped from his captor’s hand, the wall collapsed and the devil howled with such a savage roar, growling: “O what this bald man has done; O what this bald man has done!” For indeed, Dunstan had thin but beautiful hair, and he cried out such things about the man of God. Moreover, when the morning arrived, not a small multitude of nearby people flocked to him, asking what that clamor could have been, which had frightened them with such vehemence while they were sleeping. “It was that rage of the demon,” he said, “which on no occasion suffers me to live, and also attempts to evict me from my cell. Be wary of that demon; because if you could not bear the voice of him enraged, how will you be able to endure the society of the damned?” After this day, Dunstan prepared for war, ready to provoke the devil to a contest in strength, to weaken his own body by fasting, and to fortify his spirit with prayers, knowing that the devil could be overpowered by nothing more than what the Lord said: “in fasting and prayer.”[2] With the chastity of his body, he obtained such a cleanliness of the heart that he could just escape whatever the sinister spirit had undertaken.