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

The expression “noonday demon” has been employed by both modern and contemporary authors to denote a variety of psycho-emotional states experienced at different stages of life. It has been interpreted not only as the demon of the midlife crisis and of melancholic ennui, but also as a representation of the more clinically defined condition of depression. Yet how did the noonday demon, an entity originally feared within the Christian monastic tradition, become associated with this medical condition? Its use cannot be reduced to that of a mere metaphor, despite the powerful symbolic resonance it has acquired over time. This article argues that the application of the religious concept of the daemonium meridianum to the medical sphere is neither arbitrary nor unjustified. After tracing the development of the daemonium meridianum from Egyptian monastic literature to selected early medieval sources, the paper turns to ancient Greek medical texts in order to identify possible connections between Evagrius Ponticus’ demon of akēdía and the later conception of a demon associated with illness and depression.