The Devil Wins

Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Is It Ever Acceptable to Lie? 1 Part One: Theologians Ask the Question Chapter One. The Devil 21 Six Days and Two Sentences Later 21 The Devil and the Lie 22 Making Sense of Genesis 1, 2, and 3 28 The Devil's Lie from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages 35 The Devil's Lie from the Middle Ages to the Reformation 47 The Prince of This World 52 From Satan's Stratagems to Human Nature 55 Chapter Two. God 62 Can God Lie? 62 On Lions, Fishhooks, and Mousetraps 67 Divine Deception and the Sacrament of Truth 77 Luther, Calvin, and the Hidden God 88 Rene Descartes, Pierre Bayle, and the End of Divine Deception 94 Chapter Three. Human Beings 105 Every Lie Is a Sin 105 Every Sin Is a Lie 110 Biblical Liars 116 Augustine among the Scholastics 119 Institutional Transformations 131 Equivocation, Mental Reservation, and Amphibology 135 From Pascal to Augustine and Beyond 145 Part Two: Courtiers and Women Ask the Question Chapter Four. Courtiers 153 Flatterers, Wheedlers, and Gossipmongers 153 Early Modern Uncertainty and Deception 158 Uncertainty and Skepticism in the Medieval Court 163 Entangled in Leviathan's Loins 169 Christine de Pizan and Just Hypocrisy 175 From Lies to Civility 181 Bernard Mandeville and the World Lies Built 190 Chapter Five. Women 199 Lessons about Lies 199 All about Eve, All about Women 205 The Biology of Feminine Deceit 211 Christine de Pizan, Misogyny, and Self-Knowledge 216 All Men Are Liars 226 Madeleine de Scudery, the Salon, and the Pleasant Lie 237 Conclusion: The Lie Becomes Modern 247 Notes 257 Bibliography 303 Index 327

Dallas G. Denery II is associate professor of history at Bowdoin College. He is the author of Seeing and Being Seen in the Later Medieval World: Optics, Theology, and Religious Life and the coeditor of Uncertain Knowledge: Scepticism, Relativism, and Doubt in the Middle Ages.