In the Texts
Evagrius named the demon who comes at the sixth hour and makes the monk hate his cell, watch the sun that will not move, and long to be elsewhere, and who leaves him restless and drowsy by turns; Cassian carried it to the Latin West and the Scholastics made it a sin. The exorcists’ remedy was the one Evagrius gave: stay in the cell, work with the hands, recite the text.
What Medicine Makes of It
The description is depression, with anhedonia at its centre, and the seasonal form with its sleepiness and winter onset (Rosenthal, 1984); Jackson (1986) traces the merging of the demon with the physician’s melancholy. Evagrius’s remedies are behavioural activation: a structured day, work, and the refusal of the impulse to leave, which the trials of behavioural activation (Jacobson, 1996) have found as effective as the cognitive therapy that contains it.
The Evidence
- Evagrius Ponticus (c. 375) described the demon of acedia as the noonday demon of Psalm 91, who makes the monk’s cell hateful, the day endless, and the work pointless, and who leaves him restless and sleepy by turns; Cassian carried the picture to the West, and Gregory the Great folded it into sloth.
- Wenzel (1960) traced the concept from the desert to the Scholastics, where it became a sin of the will, and Jackson (1986) followed its merging with melancholy, so that the monk’s demon and the physician’s black bile became one patient.
- The description, apathy, loss of interest, restlessness, a wish to be elsewhere, sleepiness, and the sense that the work is worthless, maps onto the diagnostic criteria for depression, with the exception of its restriction to the solitary and the noon hour; Altschule (1965) made the identification, and the DSM’s anhedonia is its centre.
- Solomon (2001) took the name for his account of depression, The Noonday Demon; the Evagrian remedies, staying in the cell, manual work, and the recitation of texts, are what behavioural activation prescribes.
- The seasonal form, with its winter onset and sleepiness, was described by Rosenthal in 1984 and answers to bright light; the monks who found the demon worst in the dark months were observing it.
Where They Part
The monk’s account makes the sufferer responsible and gives him something to do; the clinical one removes the blame and gives him a drug. The modern synthesis, which keeps the structured day and adds the drug, is what the monastery and the clinic agree on.
In the Materia Medica
Sources
- Evagrius Ponticus. Praktikos 12, trans. Sinkewicz (2003).
- Wenzel, S. (1960). The Sin of Sloth: Acedia in Medieval Thought and Literature. University of North Carolina Press.
- Jackson, S. W. (1986). Melancholia and Depression: From Hippocratic Times to Modern Times. Yale.
- Solomon, A. (2001). The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression. Scribner.
Historical and interpretive; not medical advice.