Accidia e malessere psico-emotivo: il demone di mezzogiorno come metafora della depressione

Maddalena Terraneo

Abstract:

The expression «noonday demon» has been used by both modern and contemporary authors to signify a variety of psycho-emotional states which may be experienced throughout life. Not only has it been interpreted as the demon of midlife crisis and of melancholic ennui, but also of the more clinically defined depression.
But how is the noonday demon – an entity originally feared in the Christian monastic context – involved in the depiction of such medical condition? Its use is not that of a simple metaphor, as its strong symbolic value may suggest.
This article will show how the apllication of the religious concept of «noonday demon» in the medical field is not unjustified.
After depicting the evolution of the daemonium meridianum from the Egyptian monastic literature to some early medieval sources, this paper will consider ancient Greek medical literature in order to find a connection between the evagrian demon of akedía and the later illness-related demon.