References to thedusii appear in the writings of theChurch Fathers, where they are treated asdemons.[6] Early Christian writers still regarded the traditional religions of antiquity as potent competing belief systems. Rather than denying the existence of rival gods, they often sought to demonstrate their inferior nature through theological argument, ridicule, or demonization.[7]Saint Augustine mentions thedusii in a passage criticizing the belief that early in the history of humanityangels could have bodily intercourse with mortal women, begetting the race ofgiants orheroes. Augustine redefines traditional beliefs within a Christian framework, and in this passage makes no firm distinction between the essential nature of angels and demons:[8]
One often hears talk, the reliability of which must not be doubted, since it is confirmed by a number of people who know from their own or others' experience, that Silvani and Pans, commonly called incubi, have often appeared to women as wicked men, trying to sleep with them and succeeding. These same demons, whom theGauls name Dusii, are relentlessly committed to this defilement, attempting and achieving so many things of such a kind that to deny it would seem brazen. Based on this, I dare not risk a definitive statement as to whether there might be some spirits, aerial in substance (for this substance, when it is set in motion by a fan, is perceived as sensation within the body and as touch), who take bodily form and even experience this sexual desire, so that, by any means they can, they mingle with women sensually. But that the holy angels of God in no way fell in like manner during that era — that I would believe.[9]
Isidore of Seville echoes Augustine closely, but expands the identifications with other divine figures:
The 'hairy ones'(pilosi)[10] are called inGreek Pans, inLatin Incubi, orInui from their entry(ineundo) with animals everywhere.[11] Hence also Incubi are so called becausewrongful sex[12] is incumbent on them.[13] For often the wicked ones come into the presence of women also, and succeed in sleeping with them. The Gauls call these demons Dusii, because they seduce[14] relentlessly.[15]
Isidore seems to be trying to derivedusius from theadverbadsidue, "persistently, diligently, constantly." The word may be related to ScandinavianTusse, "fairy."[16] More likely, it is related to asemantic field ofIndo-European words, some meaning "phantom, vapor," as for exampleLithuaniandvãse, "spirit, phantom,"[17] anddùsas, "vapor"; and others meaning "fury" (Old Irishdás-, "to be in a fury"), particularly in a divine sense, as Greekthuia, "bacchante," and Latinfuriae (theFuries). It is also possible, but less likely, that the word is anominalization of theGaulishprefixdus-, "bad" (cf. Greekdys-).[18]Whitley Stokes connected thedusii toSlavicdusi ("spirits"),dusa ("soul"),dusmus ("devil").[19] TheBreton wordduz, a type of fairy,goblin, orchangeling, is derived by many scholars fromdusios.[20]Duz sometimes has been proffered as the origin ofdeuce as a name for "devil" in the expression "What the Deuce!"[21]
Figs, interior exposedThe Dusios was identified withPan(pictured), Faunus, Silvanus, and Inuus as a rampantly fertilizing god
The lexicographerPapias, writing in the 1040s, says that theDusii are those whom the Romans callFauni ficarii.[22] Theadjectiveficarius comes fromficus, "fig," and is applied to Faunus frequently enough to suggest a divineepithet. "Figgy" may refer to the god's fructifying power,[23] or may be a lewd reference to thefauns' well-known habits of random penetration[24] (see alsoInuus), as "fig" wasGreek slang for "anus" and Latin slang for both "sore anus"[25] and later "vagina".[26] A fertility ritual involving twigs and sap from themale fig tree was carried out by Roman matrons forJuno Caprotina, later identified with the goatskin-wearing Juno Sospita.[27]
Pliny notes that the wild fig (calledcaprificus, "goat-fig,caprifig," because it was food for goats) spawns "flies" orfig wasps calledficarii (ficarios culices caprificus generat).[28] The adjectiveficarius characterizes the "figgy fauns" and their counterparts thedusii by their swarming, serial acts of fertilization.[29]
In the 8th-centuryLife of St. Richarius,dusii hemaones ordusii manes[30] also occur in a horticultural setting.Richarius, bornca. 560 inAmiens,Picardy, wasconverted to Christianity by Welsh missionaries. Hisvita records a belief among his fellow Picards in northern Gaul that thedusi, calledmaones in somerecensions, steal crops and damage orchards.[31] These agriculturally dangerous beings appear in other medieval authors asMavones,maones,manes and "Magonians," the latter being airborne crop-raiders from a mythical land located in the clouds.[32]
It is less than evident howdusii could be a surviving form of the RomanManes, infernal gods who were shades of the dead, or be thought of as aerial pirates. Isidore offers a clue when he says themanes are gods of the dead, but their power is located between the Moon and the Earth, the same cloud region through which the Magonians traveled.[33] This airborne existence recalls Augustine's characterization of the Dusii as "aerial in substance," and points toward theArthurian "histories" involvingincubi daemones, "creatures who mingle the angelic and the demonic, inhabiting the uncertain space between sun and moon." Medievalromance narratives suggest that women fantasize about these sexual encounters, though a visitation is likely to be represented by male authors as frightening, violent, and diabolic.[34]
Dusii are among the supernatural influences and magical practices that threaten marriages, as noted byHincmar in his 9th-century treatiseDe divortio Lotharii ("OnLothar's divorce"): "Certain women have even been found to have submitted to sleeping with Dusii in the form of men who were burning with love."[35] In the same passage, Hincmar warns of sorceresses (sorciariae), witches (strigae), female vampires (lamiae), and magic in the form of "objects bewitched by spells, compounded from the bones of the dead, ashes and dead embers, hair taken from the head and pubic area of men and women, multicoloured little threads, various herbs, snails' shell and snake bits."[36]
The formDusiolus, adiminutive, appears in asermon with the beingsaquatiquus (fromaqua, "water") andGeniscus, possibly a form of the RomanGenius or the GallicGenius Cucullatus whose hooded form suggested or represented aphallus.[37] According to "country people" (rustici homines), these and witches (striae) threaten infants and cattle.[38]
Gervase of Tilbury (ca. 1150–1228) deals withdusii in his chapter on lamiae and "nocturnal larvae". Although he draws directly on Augustine, calling thedusii incubi and comparing them to Silvanuses and Pans, he regards them as sexually threatening to both men and women.[39]
Thedusios merges later with the concept of thewild man; as late as the 13th century,Thomas Cantipratensis claimeddusii were still an active part ofcult practice and belief. In hisallegory on bees,[40] Thomas declares that "we see the many works of the demon Dusii, and it is for these that the folk used to consecrate thecultivated groves of antiquity. The folk inPrussia still reckon that theforests are consecrated to them; they don't dare cut them down, and never set foot in them, except for when they wish to make sacrifice in them to their own gods."[41] In the 17th century, Johannes Praetorius rather wildly conjectured thatdusios ought to bedrusios, connected to the godSilvanus and the woodlands and to the word "druid."[42] The 19th-century Irish folkloristThomas Crofton Croker thought thedusii were a form of woodland or domestic spirits, and deals with them in a chapter onelves.[43]
^Xavier Delamarre,Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise (Éditions Errance, 2003), p. 158. TheLatinized form would bedusius, most often in the pluraldusii.
^Perhaps adeus. As late as the 13th century,Thomas Cantipratensis asserted that some people still regard groves as consecrated todusii and entered them to sacrifice to "their own gods" (suis diis,dative plural ofdeus); see discussion underSurviving tradition below. The 19th-century CeliticistHenri d'Arbois de Jubainville regarded thedusii as divinities who might be compared toaquatic deities of theHomeric tradition in Greece as lovers who begat children with mortal women; see "Esus, Tarvos trigaranus,"Revue Celtique 19 (1898), pp. 228, 234–235, 251online. With reference to a highly speculative etymological connection betweendusios and the English word "dizzy," Arbois de Jubainville saw the effects of these spirits as comparable to those of the Greeknymphs or Italiclymphae. J.A. MacCulloch,The Religion of the Ancient Celts (Forgotten Books edition 2007, originally pub. 1911), p. 232online thought that thedusii "do not appear to represent the higher gods reduced to the form of demons by Christianity, but rather a species of lesser divinities, once the object of popular devotion."
^Galli as designated byAugustine and Isidore (see following). In antiquity,Galli refers both to inhabitants of the geographical regionGallia as it was delineated by the Greeks and Romans, and to peoples who spoke a form ofCeltic (that is, who spokegallice, "in Gaulish") or who were perceived by the Greeks and Romans as ethnically "Celtic." See J.H.C. Williams,Beyond the Rubicon: Romans and Gauls in Republican Italy (Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 1–17et passim.
^Bothancient Greek andLatin categorize nouns within threegrammatical genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. Although grammatical gender is distinguished from biological gender, Latin places humans (homines), animals (animalia), andanthropomorphic beings perceived as having sexual characteristics in their gender-specific category. Some "monsters" are neuter (the sea monsterketos in Greek, for instance). Thedusii are masculine in both grammatical gender and in their sexual behavior in all the sources in which they appear, with the possible exception ofGervase of Tilbury, who seems to think they can also be female; see below. The Greco-Roman deities to whom they are compared are aggressively masculine, often depicted asithyphallic.
^The multiplicity of the group of deities to which thedusii belong — Pan/panes, Faunus/fauni, Inuus/inui, Silvanus/silvani, Incubus/incubi — is related to the question ofmonotheistic tendencies in ancient religion: "Lower gods were executors or manifestations of the divine will rather than independent principles of reality. Whether they are called gods, demons, angels, ornumina, these immortal beings are emanations of the One": Michele Renee Salzman, "Religiouskoine in Private Cult and Ritual: Shared Religious Traditions in Roman Religion in the First Half of the Fourth Century CE," inA Companion to Roman Religion (Blackwell, 2007), p. 113. The name of Pan was sometimesetymologized as meaning "All"; although scientific linguistics has shown this derivation to be incorrect, it appears in theHomeric Hymn to Pan (6th century BC) and influenced theological interpretations in antiquity, including the speculations of Plato: seeH.J. Rose and Robin Hard,The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology (Routledge, 2004), p. 215online, andDavid Sedley,Plato's Cratylus (Cambridge University Press) pp. 96–97online, where Pan as "all" is connected to thelogos: "This is the climax of the divine etymologies." The "all-ness" of Pan accounted for his multiple manifestations, reflected bynominal plurals. On the distinction between modern scientific and ancient theological etymology, see Davide Del Bello,Forgotten Paths: Etymology and the Allegorical Mindset (Catholic University of America Press, 2007).
^For an extended discussion, see Carlos A. Contreras, "Christian Views of Paganism,"Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.23.1 (1980) 974–1022, noting, for instance, the Church Fathers' habit of "applying Christian conceptions to pagan ideas in order to condemn them" (p. 1010online). "Our knowledge of such things comes from Christian writers who are openly concerned to discredit all aspects of pagan idolatry," states Peter Stewart,Statues in Roman Society: Representation and Response (Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 266, note 24online.
^Corinne J. Saunders, "'Symtyme the fende': Questions of Rape inSir Gowther," inStudies in English Language and Literature. 'Doubt Wisely': Papers in Honour of E.G. Stanley (Routledge, 1996), p. 296online.
^Augustine of Hippo,De civitate Dei 15.23:Et quoniam creberrima fama est multique se expertos uel ab eis, qui experti essent, de quorum fide dubitandum non esset, audisse confirmant, Siluanos et Panes, quos uulgo incubos uocant, inprobos saepe extitisse mulieribus et earum appetisse ac peregisse concubitum; et quosdam daemones, quos Dusios Galli nuncupant, adsidue hanc inmunditiam et temptare et efficere, plures talesque adseuerant, ut hoc negare inpudentiae uideatur: non hinc aliquid audeo definire, utrum aliqui spiritus elemento aerio corporati (nam hoc elementum etiam cum agitatur flabello sensu corporis tactuque sentitur) possint hanc etiam pati libidinem, ut, quo modo possunt, sentientibus feminis misceantur. Dei tamen angelos sanctos nullo modo illo tempore sic labi potuisse crediderim; for an alternative English translation by Marcus Dods, fromNicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series, vol. 2 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887), revised and edited by Kevin Knight, seeNew Advent.
^For a discussion of "hairy demons", in early sources sometimes translated assatyrs, seeUnclean spirit.
^"Everywhere" = Latinpassim; as with the theological interpretation of Pan's name as "All," the ubiquity of this type of divinity is emphasized.
^Latinstuprandum,gerund fromstupro, stuprare, refers to illicit sexual activity, including adultery and other sex outside marriage, participation in which renders the woman impure; consent is not at issue. The word is not a synonym for "rape," but does not exclude forced sex;Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982, 1985 reprinting), entries onstuprum (noun) andstupro (verb), p. 1832. See also discussion byElaine Fantham, "Stuprum: Public Attitudes and Penalties for Sexual Offences in Republican Rome," inRoman Readings: Roman Response to Greek Literature from Plautus to Statius and Quintilian (Walter de Gruyter, 2011); and Victoria Emma Pagán,Conspiracy Narratives in Roman History (University of Texas Press, 2004), p. 58online, where the penetration of the male as an act ofstuprum is an emphasis.
^A literal translation fails to capture the etymological echoes ofincubi andincumbendo: "Hence also the Incubi are named from 'lying on,' that is, from having wrongful sex."
^Again Isidore's etymological echoes betweenDusios andadsidue are lost in a literal translation; "because they relentlessly achieve this defilement."
^Isidore of Seville,Etymologiae 8.11.103:Pilosi, qui Graece Panitae, Latine Incubi appellantur, sive Inui ab ineundo passim cum animalibus. Unde et Incubi dicuntur ab incumbendo, hoc est stuprando. Saepe enim inprobi existunt etiam mulieribus, et earum peragunt concubitum: quos daemones Galli Dusios vocant, quia adsidue hanc peragunt immunditiam; Katherine Nell MacFarlane, "Isidore of Seville on the Pagan Gods (Origines VIII. 11),"Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 70 (1980), pp. 36–37.
^MacFarlane, "Isidore of Seville on the Pagan Gods," p. 37.
^Ken Dowden,European Paganism: The Realities of Cult from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (Routledge, 2000), p. 306, note 57, finds the Lithuanian only "coincidentally similar,"contra Delamarre following.
^Delamarre, entry ondusios,Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise, p. 158.
^Whitley Stokes,Transactions of the Philological Society (1867), p. 261, as cited by A. Smythe Palmer,Folk-Etymology, A Dictionary (London, 1882), p. 623. Additional etymological conjecture not necessarily premised on modern scientific linguistics include George Henderson,Survivals in Belief among the Celts (1911), p. 46;Charles Godfrey Leland,Etruscan Roman Remains in Popular Tradition pp. 126–129, with amusing anecdotes.
^Dowden,European Paganism, p. 306, note 57;Édouard Le Héricher,Glossaire etymologique Anglo-Normand (Paris, 1884), p. 43online.
^Palmer,Folk-Etymology, p. 623; Henderson,Survivals in Belief, p. 73.
^Papias,Elementarium:Dusios nominant quos romani Faunos ficarios vocant, as quoted byDu Cange in his 1678Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis (Niort: Favre, 1883–1887), vol. 3,online.
^Katherine Nell MacFarlane, "Isidore of Seville on the Pagan Gods," p. 36, citingW.F. Otto's entry on Faunus inPW.
^Ficus was a medical term forhemorrhoids or anal sores, but theimperial-era poetMartial makes jokes that depend on understanding the sore anus as resulting from too much penetration (for example, 12.96ff.); see Adams,Sexual Vocabulary following.
^J.N. Adams,The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982). p. 113.
^Sarolta A. Takács,Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion (University of Texas Press, 2008), pp. 51–53.
^MacFarlane, "Isidore of Seville on the Pagan Gods," p. 36. For the dual meanings officarius, see also Forcellini'sLexicononline and Du Cange'sGlossariumonline. Thefauni ficarii are adduced in the entry on the adjectiveunfæle, "evil, bad," inAn Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Based on the Manuscript Collections of the Late Joseph Bosworth, edited by T. Northcote Toller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1882), p. 1103online, citingThomas Wright's privately publishedVocabularies (1857), p. 17, gloss 20 (unfæle men, wudewásan, unfæle wihtu) and p. 60, glosses 23–24. In listingficarii orinuii (forinui, plural ofInuus) with theAnglo-Saxon glosswudewasan (woodwose), following (due to a probable transposition error with the previousSatyri orfauni, glossed asunfæle men), Wright notes that the entry "furnishes us with a very curious and instructive example of the long preservation of words connected with popular superstitions": "Supplement to Alfric's Vocabulary of the Tenth or Eleventh Century," p. 188online. Among the interests evidenced in this particular vocabulary are "a few words connected with the ancient religious belief" (p. 168). Discursive treatment of this group of beings, including thedusii, with remarks on the meaning of "fig," inRichard Payne Knight's "On the Worship of the Generative Powers During the Middle Ages of Western Europe" inTwo Essays on the Worship of Priapus (London, 1865), pp. 149–153online, a work that should be consulted with an awareness of the biases and preoccupations of its own era.
^In otherrecensions, thedusi(i) appear asmaones, which may be equivalent tomanes.
^Vita Richarii I, 2,MGH SRM 7, 445, as cited by Bernadotte Filotas,Pagan Survivals, Superstitions and Popular Cultures in Early Medieval Pastoral Literature (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2005), p. 80.
^Pagan Survivals pp. 80–81, noting that "unknown peculiarities ofIberoceltic orVisigothic belief brought into Gaul by Spaniards fleeing the Moorish onslaught may lie behind such tales," and pp. 220, 272–273.
^Corinne J. Saunders, "'Symtyme the fende': Questions of Rape inSir Gowther," inStudies in English Language and Literature. 'Doubt Wisely': Papers in Honour of E.G. Stanley (Routledge, 1996), pp. 295–296onlineet passim. Legendary heroes were sometimes thought to have been begotten by such encounters; Henderson,Survivals in Belief, p. 73.
^Quaedam etiam faeminae a Dusis in specie virorum, quorum amore ardebant, concubitum pertulisse inventae sunt:De divortio, XV Interrogatio,MGH Concilia 4 Supplementum, 205, as cited by Filotas,Pagan Survivals, p. 305.
^Although characteristic of Gaul, these figures also appear elsewhere in theRoman Empire. See, for instance, the bronze lamp in the form of a phallic cucullatus described by Clairève Grandjouan, "Terracottas and Plastic Lamps of the Roman Period," inThe Athenian Agora 6 (1961), p. 72, and two examples described as "negroid" pp. 80–81. See alsoTelesphoros.
^Filotas,Pagan Survivals, pp. 78–79;Sunt aliqui rustici homines, qui credunt aliquas mulieres, quod vulgum dicitur strias esse debeant, et ad infantes vel pecora nocere possint, vel Dusiolus, vel aquatiquus, vel geniscus esse debeat, cited by Du Cange as Homel. ex Cod. reg. 5600. fol. 101. See alsoMythology in the Low Countries.
^Dusiorum daemonum opera multa percepimus, et hi sunt quibus gentiles lucos plantatos antiquitus consecrabant. his adhuc Prussiae gentiles silvas aestimant consecratas et eas incidere non audentes, numquam ingrediuntur easdem, nisi cum in eis diis suis voluerint immolare; cited by Du Cange asThomas Cantipratensis,Bonum universale de apibus lib. 2 cap. 57 n. 17. Passage quoted and discussed by J.W. Wolf, "Lichtelben,"Beiträge zur deutschen mythologie (Göttingen, 1852), p. 279. See also Dowden,European Paganism, p. 109.
^Johannes Praetorius,Blockes-Berges Verrichtung (1668),[1] as cited by Leland,Etruscan Roman Remains, pp. 128–129.
^Thomas Crofton Croker,Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland (London, 1828), p. 127.
