ABSTRACT
Demons played small but central roles in daily life, whether in abstract theology or in attempts to negotiate the ups and downs of human existence. According to one line of modern analysis, as the history of early Christianity unfolded in the 2nd–6th centuries, ambivalently good and bad “daimons” are rethought as generally evil “demons.” For 2nd-century Christian authors, demons continued to persecute Christians individually and as a social group. Christian cultic demon rites warded them off demons instead, though once again following quite closely non-Christian demon discourse that, despite Christian rhetoric, was facing new demons as well. Far from the desert of Egypt, in Turkey the Cappadocian church fathers Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil offer a fine-tuned window onto demons, carefully outlined by Morwenna Ludlow. The demons continue to occupy a “liminal” space, so they are posed between good and evil.
