A concrete example is the Schlumberger No. 1 amulet shown on the right. [g] [63] [h] Several scholars have hinted that the she-demon here, which has been noticed to have fish- or serpent-like attributes below the waist, [54] may refer to Gello-Gyllou. [54] [65] The demon is being stabbed with a lance by a mounted figure (sometimes called the "holy rider" or "rider saint") [66] [38] which may be St. Sisinnios [54] or Solomon. [i] The inscription reads "Flee, detested one, Solomon, Sisinnios and Sisinnarios pursue you". [69] [70]
The same amulet has a second side, which depicts an eye as "Envy" (phthonos, φθόνος), attacked by weapons and animals. [68] [54] [65] One of the commentator has specifically connect the Evil Eye of Envy with the Gylou, [71] while the others connect it more vaguely to the child-stealing demon [65] or say that the beings labeled "Envy" are the ghost-demons (aōrē). [72]
Gello or Gylou's curse has been associated with the evil eye of Envy at least since the Byzantine period, according to commentators. [65] [68] [j] Sarah Iles Johnston views the Phtonos eye on the amulet and the Megaera ("Envious One") invoked in the entry for "galactite" in one Lithica (book of stones), [43] as not just a personfification of "Envy" but an aōrē (ghost demons) in their own rights, [72] and insinuates that these charms are meant to apply to one of her specific aōrē, the Lamia, the Gello, or the Mormo. She fortifies her thesis that these aōrē were regarded as envious by pointing to Greek grave-markers that blame "envious demons" for robbing a young child of its life. [72]
The story of St. Sisinnios assisting his sister Melitene against the demon Gyllou occurs in a group of different texts (These are also the texts in which Gyllou is compelled to reveal its "twelve and a half names"). These have been variously referred to as the "historiola" where in "the Greek tradition the woman is usually called Melitene",Spier (1993) , p. 36 or "Melitine charm", [56] or "Melitene type of Gylou story", [57] or gello exorcism texts. [58] The text group has been analyzed by Richard P. H. Greenfield in 1989, with the oldest example from a 15th century manuscript. [74] [75]
In the 15th century manuscript version, the tale is set in the time of "Trajan the King". [60] After losing six children to the Gyllou, Melitene gives birth to a seventh child inside a fortification she built at Chalcopratia (a part of the Constantinople). When her brothers, Sisinnios, Sines, and Sinodoros demand admittance, the "filthy" Gyllou [k] gains entry by transforming into a fly clinging to the horse, and kills the child. [60] [76] The saints pray and an angel appears who instructs them to pursue the Gyllou to Lebanon. The Saints compel the demon to bring back to life all of Melitene's children, which the demon accomplishes after obtaining the mother's milk from Melitene. The saints continue to beat Gyllou, who begs mercy in return for revealing that she could be kept away with a charm inscribed with the names of the saints and with all of her different names. [60] Then she proceeds to divulge her "twelve and a half names" (although what is meant by a "half name" is unclear):
My first and special name is called Gyllou; the second Amorphous; the third Abyzou; the fourth Karkhous; the fifth Brianê; the sixth Bardellous; the seventh Aigyptianê; the eighth Barna; the ninth Kharkhanistrea; the tenth Adikia; (…) [l] the twelfth Myia; the half Petomene. [60] [77]
A different version of this story was given by Leo Allatius in the 17th century. [78] [m]
Knowledge of a demon's name was required to control or compel it; a demon could act under an alias. Redundant naming is characteristic of magic charms, "stressing," as A.A. Barb noted in his classic essay "Antaura", [79] "the well-known magic rule that the omission of a single one can give the demons a loophole through which they can work their harm." [80]
In the aforementioned Leo Allatius version of the Legend of St. Sisinnos, the twelve-and-a-half names are given as Gylo, Morrha, Byzo, Marmaro, Petasia, Pelagia, Bordona, Apleto, Chomodracaena, Anabardalaea, [n] Psychoanaspastria, Paedopniktria, and Strigla. [78] [o] Although magic words (voces magicae) have often been corrupted in transmission or deliberately exoticized, [81] several of these names suggest recognizable Greek elements and can be deciphered as functional epithets: Petasia, "she who strikes"; Apleto, "boundless, limitless"; Paedopniktria, "child suffocator." Byzo is a form of Abyzou, abyssos, "the Deep," to which Pelagia ("she of the sea") is equivalent. [82]
The names of Gylo also include Chomodracaena, containing drakaina, "female dragon." In one text dealing with the gello, she is banished to the mountains to drink the blood of the drako; in another, she becomes a drako and in this form attacks human beings. In other texts, the child itself is addressed as Abouzin (Abyzou). [83]
In variant tellings, the role of St. Sisinnios is supplanted by the archangel Michael. [84] A 15th-century manuscript versions exists for this as well:
The archangel Michael said to her, 'Where have you come from and where are you going?' The abominable one answered and said, 'I am going off to a house and, entering it like a snake, like a dragon, or like some reptile, I will destroy the animals. I am going to strike down women; I will make their hearts ache, I will dry up their milk … I will strangle [their] children, or I will let them live for a while and then kill them' … . [85]
Although the name Gylou is not found on any surviving amulets, Michael is the adversary Gylou encounters most often in medieval Byzantine texts. [86]
Parallels to the lore of a child-killing demon forced to confess its secret names occur as historiola or folktales surrounding magic spells, in medieval manuscripts of many languages, including Greek, Coptic, Ethiopian, Armenian, Romanian, Slavonic, Arabic, Syriac, and Hebrew. [87]
The earliest examples, [87] dating to the 5th or 6th century are the Aramaic versions of the historiola found as long inscriptions on objects: a silver lamella (metal-leaf sheet) from Palestine [88] and two incantation bowls. [89] In these Aramaic examples, the demon bears the name Sdrws (or Sideros, which in Greek would mean "iron"), and the female victim whose twelve sons are taken is called Smamit ("lizard" or "spider"). [87] [90] This reading is considered to be corroborated by the name of the female demon in the Ethiopian version, Werzelya, which also means "iron". [91] The Ethiopian tradition explains that Werzelya was the evil sister of the Saint Sūsenyōs (which Budge identifies as Sisinnios), and the saint sought out to kill her. [92] [93]
In his Life of Tarasius, Ignatios the Deacon of the ninth century recounts an actual case in which two women were charged as gelloudes and brought before the father of Tarasios of Constantinople, who acquitted them. [29]
The psychological aspects of Gello were observed also by Leo Allatius in his work De Graecorum hodie quorundam opinionibus ("On the beliefs of the Greeks today"). Textual sources he collected on the Gello included Sappho's poem, the Suda , [94] exorcisms, a church history, the Life of Tarasios, and proverbs. Allatios's purpose was to demonstrate the continuity of customs and morals, [95] but also to show that these beliefs distorted or ran contrary to Christian doctrine. Sometimes the acts characteristic of Gello were attributed to "poor and miserable old crones," who could be accused in court as gelloudes and might even claim or confess to have acted as such.
A different penance was prescribed gelloudes, distinguished from infanticides in the Nomocanons of the 17th century theologian Jean-Baptiste Cotelier. [96] Michael Psellos, however, rejected the notion that human beings could transform into demonic beings, and so there would be no need for a particular penance; the official position of Orthodoxy was that such creatures did not exist. [97]
Despite her official non-existence, the gello is named in exorcisms, which required the attendance of a priest, and in prayer formularies. The Virgin Mary is invoked against the child-harming demon gylo:
Therefore I pray, my Lady, for your swiftest aid, so that the children of these your servants N and N may grow up, [p] and that they may live and give thanks in the sight of the Lord for all the days of their lives. Thus let it be, my Lady. Listen to me, a sinner and unworthy servant and although I am a sinner, do not despise my poor and miserable prayer but protect the children of your servants and let them live and send the Angel of Light so that he may protect and defend them from all evil, from wicked spirits, and from fiends which are in the air, and do not let them be singled out by other [demons] and by the accursed gylo lest harm comes to them and their children. [98]
In one exorcism of the gello, no fewer than 36 saints are invoked by name along with Mary and the "318 Saints of the Fathers", with a final addendum of "all the saints." [99] Some prayers resemble magic spells in attempting to command or compel the saints, rather than humbly requesting aid. [100] Exorcisms emphasize that Christian families deserve exclusive protection. [101] Gello continued to be named in exorcisms into the 20th century. [95]
The old church regarded childbirth involving blood as impure, and a newborn had to wait several days before it could be baptized, while its mother could not rejoin the community for much longer. At this time, the child was considered at greater risk in the birth mother's sphere of influence, as she would be likely to attract female demons seeking blood. [102]
In the story of Melitene, sister of the saints Sisinnios and Sisynodorus, the child is in peril until it is "returned" to the hands of men. In one version, the gello swallows the child and must be forced by the male saints to regurgitate it alive. This cycle – death by swallowing, regurgitation, new life – may be symbolized in initiation ceremonies such as baptism, which marked the separation of the child from the taint of its mother's gello-attracting blood. [103]
The Greek folk belief continued into the modern era. [104]
One exorcism text dating from around the turn of the 19th–20th century gives Baskania as a name for the gello as well as for the evil eye. [105]
Scholarly discussions of Gello associate her with and analyze the meaning of her narrative traditions in relation to the following demons and supernatural beings:
Γελ(λ)ώ : είδωλον Ἔμπούσης το τών ἀώρων, τών παρθένων
in Byzantine times the evil creature is Gyllou, or Gyllo, the destroyer of little children, and Sisinnius is the deliverer., cited by Fulghum (2001), p. 142.