Читать книгу Art of the Devil - Arturo Graf - Страница 2

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, The Bewitched Man, a scene from El Hechizado por Fuerza (‘‘The Forcibly Bewitched’’), 1798. Oil on canvas, 42.5 × 30.8 cm. The National Gallery, London, United Kingdom.

Anonymous, The Monstrous Spirit, 5000 to 3000 B. C. Tassili-n’Ajjer, Algeria.

Every one is familiar with the poetic myth of the rebellion and fall of the angels. This myth, which inspired in Dante some of the most beautiful lines of the Inferno and in Milton an unforgettable episode of Paradise Lost, was, by various Fathers and Doctors of the Church, variously fashioned and coloured; but it has no foundation other than the interpretation of a single verse of Isaiah[1] and of certain rather obscure passages in the New Testament.[2] Another myth, of far different but no less poetic character, accepted by both Hebrew and Christian writers, tells of angels of God who, becoming enamoured of the daughters of men, sinned with them, and in punishment for their sin were thrust out of the Kingdom of Heaven and from angels turned into demons.[3] This second myth received lasting consecration in the verses of Moore and of Byron.4[4] Each of these myths represents the demons as fallen angels, and connects their fall with a sin: pride or envy in the first case, criminal love in the second. But this is the legend, not the history, of Satan and his companions. The origins of Satan, considered as the universal personification of evil, are far less epic and at the same time far more remote and profound. Satan is anterior, not only to the God of Israel, but to all other gods, powerful and feared, that have left a memory of themselves in the history of mankind; he did not fall headlong down from heaven, but leaped forth from the abysses of the human soul, coeval with those dim deities of earliest ages, of whom not even a stone recalls the names, and whom men outlived and forgot. Coeval with these, and often confused with these, Satan begins as an embryo, like all things that live; and only by slow degrees does he grow and become a person. The law of evolution, which governs all beings, governs him also.

No one possessed of any scientific training any longer believes that the ruder religions have sprung from the corruption and decay of a more perfect religion; but he knows very well that the more perfect ones have developed from the ruder, and that in the latter, therefore, must be sought the origins of that gloomy personage who, under various names, becomes the representative and the principle of evil. If what we call the Tertiary Period in the history of our planet already saw man, perchance it saw him in so far like the brute that no religious feeling, properly speaking, could be discerned in him. The earliest Quaternary man is already acquainted with fire and understands the use of stone weapons; but he abandons his dead – a certain sign that his religious ideas, if he has any at all, are at best scant and rudimentary. We must come down to what is called by geologists the Neolithic Period, to discover the first sure traces of religious sentiment. What was the religion of our forefathers, in that age, we cannot know directly; but we can infer, by observing that of many savage races that still live upon the earth and faithfully reproduce the conditions of prehistoric humanity. Whether fetishism precedes animism or the latter precedes the former in the historic evolution of religions, the religious beliefs of those forefathers of ours must have been altogether similar to those still professed by tribal communities throughout the world. The earth, which, together with the traces of their dwellings, with their weapons and utensils, has also preserved their amulets, offers us proof of this. They conceived of a world crowded with spirits, souls of things and souls of the dead, and to these they attributed all things that befell them, whether good or evil. The thought that some of these spirits were beneficent, others maleficent, some friendly, others hostile, was suggested by the very experience of life, wherein profits and losses are constantly alternating, and alternating in such a fashion that, if not always, at least very often, the causes of profit and of loss are recognised as diverse. The sun that gives light, the sun that in springtime makes the earth once more green and blooming, that ripens the fruits, must have been regarded as a power essentially beneficent; the whirlwind that fills the sky with darkness, uproots the trees, tears apart and sweeps away the flimsy huts, as a power essentially maleficent. The spirits were gathered into two great hosts, according to men’s observation of whether they received from them benefit or bane.

But this classification did not constitute a true and absolute dualism. The beneficent spirits were not yet the sworn and irreconcilable foes of the maleficent; neither were the former always beneficent nor the latter always maleficent. The believer was not always sure of the disposition of the spirits that held him in sway; he feared to offend the friendly ones no less than the unfriendly, and with like practices he sought to render all favourable to him, not putting too much trust in any one of them. Between good and evil spirits there was no moral contradiction, properly speaking, but only a contrast in their works. They could not possess a moral character that was as yet lacking in their worshipers, scarcely yet emerged from the state of animalism; and only in so far can they be called good and evil as to primitive man everything seems good that helps him, everything evil that harms. Their savage worshipers conceived them as in all respects like themselves, inconstant, subject to passions, sometimes kindly, sometimes cruel; nor did they regard the good spirits as higher or worthier than the wicked.

Anonymous, Statuette of the Demon Pazuzu with an Inscription,beginning of the first millennium B. C. Bronze, 15 × 8.6 × 5.6 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris, France.

True, in the wicked ones there already appears a shadow of Satan, an outline of the spirit of evil, but of evil that is purely physical. Evil is that which harms, and an evil spirit is one that brandishes the thunderbolt, fires the volcanoes, engulfs the lands, sows famine and disease. This spirit does not yet personify moral evil, for the distinction between moral good and moral evil has not yet been made in the minds of men; of the two faces of Satan, the destroyer and the perverter, one only is presented by him. No special ignominy attaches to this spirit; there is no one to stand over him and command him.

But, little by little, moral consciousness begins to be distinguished and determined, and religion takes on an ethical character, which, earlier, it neither had nor could have. The very spectacle of nature, where forces are opposed to forces, where the one destroys what the other produces, suggests the idea of two opposite principles that mutually deny and combat each other; then man is not long in perceiving that beside the physical good and evil there is a moral good and evil, and he thinks that he recognises within himself that same contrast that he sees and experiences in nature. He feels himself good or evil, he conceives himself better or worse; but this goodness or badness of his he does not recognise as his own, as the expression of his own nature. Accustomed to attribute to divine and demonic powers his physical good and evil, he will likewise attribute to divine and demonic powers his moral good and evil. From the good spirit, then, will come not only light, health and all that sustains and increases life, but also holiness, understood as the complexus of all the virtues; from the evil spirit will come not only darkness, disease and death, but also sin. Thus men, dividing nature with merely subjective judgment into good and evil, and kneading into that physical good and evil the moral good and evil that belong to themselves, fashion the gods and the demons. Moral consciousness already awakened, naturally affirming the superiority of good over evil and longing for the triumph of the one over the other, makes the demon appear subordinated to the god and marked with an ignominy that becomes greater the more that consciousness grows active and dominant. The demon, who in his origin was confounded with the god in one order of neutral spirits capable of good as well as evil, now gradually becomes differentiated from the god, and finally is entirely dissociated from him. He will become the spirit of darkness, and his adversary the spirit of light; he, the spirit of hate, and his adversary the spirit of love; he, the spirit of death, and his adversary the spirit of life. Satan will dwell in the abyss, God in the kingdom of the heavens.

Anonymous, Siva Nataraja, Tamil Nadu, Late Chola, 12th century. Bronze. National Museum of India, New Delhi, India.

Anonymous, Winged Demon.Red pottery figure. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, France.

Abû Ma’shar, The Book of Nativities (Kitab al-mawalid). Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, France.

Thus is dualism established and determined; thus the concept of it develops through the slow travail of the ages from the concept that men have both of nature and of themselves. However, this history that I have hinted at is, so to speak, the schematic and ideal history of dualism, not the concrete and real one. Dualism is found, either fully developed or in embryo, either expressed or implied, in all, or nearly all, religions; but it moves in different planes, takes on various forms, and in varying manners it expresses itself, conforming to the diversity of the world’s civilisations.

We have seen that maleficent spirits already appear in the rudest and least differentiated religions; but ill-defined and, as it were, diffused among objects. In the loftier religions, as their organic structure becomes circumscribed and complete, the maleficent spirits show themselves better defined, they begin to acquire attributes and personality. Among the great historic religions, that of ancient Egypt is the one of which we possess earliest and surest knowledge. Over against Ptah, Ra, Ammon, Osiris, Isis and others – beneficent divinities, bestowers of life and prosperity – are set the serpent Apepi, personifying impurity and darkness, and dread Set, the ravager, the troubler, father of deceit and of lies. The Phoenicians opposed to Baal and Asherah, Moloch and Astarte; in India, Indra the begetter and Varuna the preserver had, as their opposites, Vritra and the Asuras, and dualism even forced its way into the Trimurtri itself; in Persia, Ormuzd had to contend with Ahriman for the lordship of the world; in Greece and in Rome, a whole race of maleficent genii and monsters rose against the divinities of Olympus (themselves not always beneficent), and there appeared Typhon, Medusa, Geryon, Python, evil demons of every sort, lemures and larvae. Dualism likewise appears within the Germanic mythology, the Slavic, and, in general, in all the mythologies.

In no other of the ancient or modern religions has dualism the full and conspicuous form that it attained in Mazdaism, the religion of the ancient Persians, as revealed to us through the Avesta; but in all these religions it can be perceived, and in all, to some degree at least, it can be connected with the great natural phenomena, with the alternation of day and night, with the interchange of the seasons. The various concepts, images and events wherein it takes form and reveals itself furnish a picture, not only of the character and civilisation of the people that give it a place in the system of their own beliefs, but also of their climate, of the natural conditions of their soil, of the changes in their history. The dweller of a torrid region recognises the work of the evil spirit in the wind of the desert which scorches the air and blasts the standing corn; the dweller of the northern shores recognises it in the frost that benumbs all life around him and threatens him with death. Where the earth is rocked with frequent earthquakes, where volcanoes belch forth destructive ashes and lava, man easily imagines subterranean demons, wicked giants buried beneath the mountains, the vents of the infernal regions; where frequent tempests convulse the heaven, he imagines demons that fly howling through the air. If an enemy invades the land, subdues and conquers it, the conquered people will not fail to transfer to the evil spirit, or spirits, the most hateful of the characteristics of the oppressor. Thus, religion is the composite result of a multiplicity of causes, which cannot always, it is true, be traced and pointed out. The Greeks really had no Satan, neither had the Romans; and it may appear strange that the latter, who deified a great number of abstract concepts, such as youth, concord, chastity, never imagined a true divinity and power of evil, even though they did imagine a goddess Robigo, a goddess Febris and others of like character.[5] Nevertheless, there are not lacking in the religions of the Greeks and Romans antagonistic powers and figures that present a sort of double aspect; and if one delves a little more deeply into the character of the two peoples, and into their living conditions and their history, he sees that among them dualism could not have assumed a form very different from that which it actually did take. Let it be borne in mind, furthermore, that in Greece and in Rome there was no sacred book of morals, no theocratic code properly so called.

Dualism takes on form and special characteristics, first in Judaism, next in Christianity; and though in other religions, even in the primitive ones, there may be discerned a sort of phantom of Satan, a sort of form which – to borrow a term from chemistry – might be called allotropic, a form variously named, sometimes enlarged, the real Satan, with the qualities that are peculiarly his own and that go to make up his personality, belongs only to these two religions, and more particularly to the second one.

Satan holds, as yet, only a humble position in the Mosaic system; I might say that there he merely reaches his childhood or adolescence, without being able to arrive at maturity. In Genesis, the serpent is merely the most subtle and cunning of the beasts,[6] and only by virtue of a late interpretation is he transformed into a demon. The whole Old Testament recognises Beelzebub only as a divinity of the idolaters;[7] in which connection it is worth noting that the Hebrews, before they came to deny the existence of the gods of the Gentiles – a decision that they were very late in reaching – , believed that these were indeed gods, but less powerful and less holy than Jehovah, their own national god. In fact, the first commandment of the Decalogue does not say, “I am thy God, and thou shalt not believe that there are any other gods beside me,” but rather, “I am thy God, and thou shalt not worship any other gods beside me”. Now it is well-known that many times the Hebrews did suffer themselves to be drawn away to worship other gods than their own. Azazel,[8] the unclean spirit to whom in the wilderness was turned over the scapegoat, laden with the sins of Israel, very probably belongs to a system of beliefs anterior to Moses; but his figure lacks clarity and outline, and perchance he is nothing more than a pale reflection of the Egyptian Set and a memory of the years of bondage endured in the land of the Pharaohs.

It is a commonly accepted opinion that only after the Babylonian captivity did the Hebrews have any clear and precise ideas regarding demons. Finding themselves, during that period, in continuous if not intimate contact with Mazdaism, the Hebrews had the opportunity to learn certain of its teachings and, in part, to adopt them; and among these doctrines, that concerning the origin of evil must have found easy access to their minds, prepared and predisposed as they were by their recent misfortunes and by forebodings of a gloomy future. Such an opinion leaves room for some doubt, and more than one objection can be raised against it; nevertheless, it is no less certain that, if the idea of maleficent spirits and a belief in their workings were not lacking among the Hebrews before the exile, Satan does not begin to take on the figure and characteristics that are peculiar to him save in writings that are posterior to the exile itself. In the Book of Job, Satan still appears among the angels in Heaven[9] and is not properly a contradicter of God and a hinderer of His works. He doubts the holiness and constancy of Job and provokes the test that is to plunge him from the height of happiness to the lowest depth of misery. Notwithstanding this, he is not a fomenter of sin and worker of woe; yet he does doubt holiness, and some of the ills that befall the innocent patriarch come from him.

Little by little, Satan grows and becomes complete. Zechariah represents him as an enemy and accuser of the chosen people, eager to defraud them of divine grace.[10] In the Book of Wisdom, Satan is a disturber and corrupter of the work of God; he it was who through envy impelled our first parents to sin.[11] He is the poison that wastes and defiles creation. But in the Book of Enoch, and particularly in the older part of it, the demons are merely enamoured of the daughters of men and thus entangled in the snares of matter and sense, as if one sought by a fiction of this sort to avoid acknowledging an order of beings originally diabolic; while in the later portion of the same book the demons are giants born of these unions.

In the teachings of the Rabbis, Satan acquires new features and new characteristics; but in the Old Testament, his figure has as yet but little prominence and may even be called evanescent in comparison with that which he possessed later. There may be several reasons for this; the principal one, however, is doubtless to be sought in the very nature of Jewish monotheism, which is so constituted that only with great difficulty can it find room for any positive dualistic concept. Jehovah is an absolute god, a despotic lord, extremely jealous of his own power and authority. He cannot suffer that there rise up against him beings, less powerful indeed than he, but beings who venture to withstand him, who pose as his adversaries, who dare to thwart his work. His will is the one and only law, which governs the world and holds subject to itself all powers save, perhaps, those divinities of the Gentiles, whose existence is not denied, but who do not enter as living elements into the organism of the religion of Jehovah. Therefore, in the Book of Job, Satan appears, more than aught else, to be a servant of God, an instigator of divine trials and experiments. But there are other reasons. One needs only to examine somewhat the character of Jehovah to perceive at once that, where such a god exists, a demon no longer has much reason for existence. In Jehovah, the opposing powers, the mutually contrasted moral elements, which, when distinct and separate, give rise to dualism, are as yet intermingled after a fashion. Jehovah is jealous, savage, inexorable; the punishments that he inflicts are out of all proportion to the faults committed; his vengeances are frightful and brutal; they strike indiscriminately both the guilty and the innocent, both men and beasts. He torments his worshipers with absurd prescriptions which cause them to live in perpetual dread of sin; he bids them smite the populations of the captured cities with the edge of the sword. He says, through the mouth of Isaiah: “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things”.[12] In him, God and Satan are still united; the separation that slowly takes place between the two, and the definite antagonism resulting from this, are signs of the near approach to Christianity.

Anonymous, Scenes from Hell,west wall, south portal, 1125–1130. Église Saint-Pierre, Moissac, France.

Anonymous, Last Judgment (detail), tympanum, west portal, 1105–1110. Église Sainte-Foy, Conques, France.

Gislebertus, Last Judgment (detail), tympanum, west portal. Cathédrale Saint-Lazare, Autun, France.

Nicolas de Verdun, Chapel Ambon (detail), 1180. Klosterneuburg Abbey, Klosterneuburg, Austria.

Satan is already partly formed, but he attains the fullness of his being only in Christianity, the religion that claims to seek the fulfillment of that Judaism from which it sprang, yet in so large a measure denies it. Here we find ourselves confronted by a maze and tangle of moral causes and historic causes, all of which have the effect of ever exalting, colouring and enhancing the sinister figure of Satan. On the other hand, Jehovah is transformed into a God incomparably milder and kinder, into a God of love, who necessarily rejects, as non-assimilable, every Satanic element; and when Christ also shall have been raised to the godhead – the gentle, radiant figure of the deity who for love of men himself became man, who for their sake shed his blood and suffered ignominious death – , by this very contrast he will bring out in altogether new relief the grim and gloomy figure of the Adversary. The human tragedy, fused with the divine tragedy, will reveal the inner causes of his miraculous progress, awakening in the minds of men new moral concepts, new images of things, a new picture of heaven and of earth. It is true, then, that Satan led our first parents to sin and, by virtue of the offence provoked by him, robbed God of the human family and of the world in which it lives. How great must be his power, how firm his usurped dominion, if in order to ransom the lost it is necessary that the very Son of God shall sacrifice himself, shall give himself up to that death that entered the world precisely through the agency of the Enemy! Before God set his hand to the work of redemption, Satan could rest secure in his possession; but now that this redemption is completed, even before it is completed, will he not be bound to exert his power to the utmost in order to contest with the victor the fruits of victory and to regain, at least in part, what he has lost? Yes, he even dares to tempt the Redeemer himself, and the apostle pictures him as a roaring lion in quest of prey that he may devour.[13]

But if the conditions of the ransom, if the rank of Him who was to bring it about, gave Satan a degree of greatness and importance that he could not have had otherwise, the redemption itself did not rob him of all the prey that he had taken or that he was yet to take, and the victory of Christ did not so completely overthrow his power as the desire of the ransomed would fain have hoped. Saint John said that the world must be judged and the prince of this world be cast out;[14] Saint Paul declares that the victory of Christ had been full and complete and that with his death he had destroyed the king of death;[15] yet the prince of this world was not really deposed, yet the king of death was not slain; but rather he continued, as before, to scatter death broadcast – eternal death no less than temporal. Christ breaks through the gates of Hell, he bursts into the kingdom of darkness, he depopulates the abyss; but behind him the gates close again, the darkness gathers anew, the abyss is repeopled. Strange to tell, never was Satan so much talked of among men, never was Satan so much feared, as after the victory of Christ, after the completion of the work of redemption!

Nor did this come about through any simple error of judgment, through any logical contradiction. Evil has been printed in the book of our life in such characters that no mere religious doctrine, no dream of faith and love, is able to erase it. The discouraging spectacle of a world in dissolution presented itself on every side to the eyes of the new believers; the delicate, fragrant flower of Christ’s teachings unfolded in the midst of Satan’s midden. Was not the work of the eternal prevaricator to be seen in that multicoloured polytheism that had so charmed and seduced men’s spirits? Were not Jove and Minerva, Venus and Mars, and all the gods that peopled Olympus, incarnations of him, or servants of his will, executors of his designs? That lusty, joyous civilisation of paganism, those flourishing arts, that bold philosophy, those riches and honours, those scenes of love and idleness, those boundless debaucheries – were not all these his inventions, his tricks, forms and instruments of his tyranny? Was not Rome’s empire the empire of Satan? Yes, in fact: Satan was worshiped in the temples, lauded at the public festivals; Satan sat on the throne with Caesar; Satan ascended the Capitoline with the Triumphatores. Who knows how often the devout faithful, gathered in the Catacombs, hearing the roar and turmoil of that life passing over their heads, trembled lest the diabolic tempest should engulf the bark of Christ, and in the very arms of the Cross felt themselves threatened and overwhelmed.

Anonymous, Missal Used at the Saint-Nicaise Church in Reims (Missale Remense), between 1285 and 1297. Parchment, miniature, 23.3 × 16.2 cm (text: 14.7 × 10.5 cm). Russian National Library, St. Petersburg, Russia.

Thus Satan attained gigantic proportions from all the greatness of the pagan world centring in himself. In every aspect of that life which cramped him in on every side, the Christian perceived a likeness to the “strong man armed”[16] whom Christ had come to conquer, and who, conquered, had become bolder and more aggressive than before. And his soul was filled with consternation and terror; how was he to guard himself against the wiles, how defend himself from the attacks, of an enemy more venomous than the Hydra, more multiform than Proteus? Tertullian will warn him, others too will warn him, not to seek the company of pagans, not to take part in their festivals and games, to engage in no calling that can, directly or indirectly, serve the worship of idols; but how is he to observe such a prohibition and live? Or how, if he does observe it, is he to make certain of keeping his heart pure, when the very ground he treads, the air he breathes, are formed of impurity and sin?

Nor is Satan content with mere enticements and wiles; with yet other weapons does he endeavour to regain what he has lost. He storms from every side the scarcely yet founded Church, and like a bronze-headed battering ram, day and night he buffets and shatters its walls. He stirs up frightful persecutions and strives to drown the new faith in terror and in blood. He fosters the great heresies and snatches countless lambs from the flock of Christ. Sad times! Life full of danger and of woe! No, Christ’s kingdom is not yet come; but those saddened spirits to whom Faith lends her wings believe that they can catch a distant glimpse, in apocalyptic visions, of its radiant glory, and they proclaim the second coming of the Redeemer and the final overthrow of the “old serpent”.[17]

Vain dreams! Deluded hopes! The Redeemer comes not, and the old serpent, grown more venomous than ever, multiplies his coils, and ever closer and closer enfolds the world. Proof after proof of this may be had from the teachings of certain sects that plagued the Church, more particularly during the first three centuries, all striving to introduce into Christianity a dualism differing but little from that of the Persians. These teachings, taken collectively, constitute what is called Gnosticism, and the more extreme among them have the common tendency of attributing to Satan an even higher degree of importance than he formerly possessed, of considering Satan as the creator of our bodily nature, of making evil an original and independent principle, not sprung from defection and decadence, but co-eternal with good and at war with good. In this way Satan’s power increased, the work of redemption became more difficult, salvation more uncertain. Clement of Alexandria and Origen had maintained that all creatures would return to God, their common beginning; but Saint Augustine thought that God would save only a few elect and that the greater part of the human race would become the prey of the Devil.

Pol de Limburg, The Fall and Judgment of Lucifer, from The Luxurious Hours of the Duke of Berry (Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry), beginning of 15th century. Illuminated manuscript. Musée Condé, Chantilly, France.

Master of the Rebel Angels, St. Martin Sharing his Coat and The Fall of the Rebel Angels, c. 1340–1345. Oil on wood mounted on canvas, 64 × 29 cm (recto). Musée du Louvre, Paris, France.

It is by no means easy, amid the clash of opposing doctrines and the contrariety of influences, through the speculations of philosophy, especially the Neoplatonic and Cabalistic, the brilliant fantasies of the Gnosis, and the already wavering orthodox dogma – it is not easy to form for one’s self a clear and exact concept of the changes and accretions that Satan underwent in the first centuries of the Church. Whoever knows to what a strange and monstrous syncretism the religion of Rome had arrived, can easily imagine that from this indistinguishable hodgepodge of absurd beliefs and crazy practices Satan would naturally derive more than one of the elements of his renewed personality. Truly, the Christian Satan is the result of the meeting and mutual interpenetration of varying civilisations, of opposing philosophies, of hostile religions; and when the Church triumphs, when the dogma is established, he extends over the world a fearful dominion.

The incurable corruption of paganism gives new emphasis to the idea of evil and raises to gigantic proportions the personifier of this idea. The Christians believed that the pagan world was the work of Satan; instead, it is the pagan world that, to a great degree, gives Satan his form in the imagination of the Christians. Without the Roman Empire, Satan would have become far different from what he is or was. All the foulness, all the devilishness, scattered throughout pagan civilisation, is gathered together and condensed in him; on him, naturally, is cast the blame for everything that to the pious and stubborn Christian conscience appears as sin – and that includes an infinite variety of thoughts, customs and deeds. The divinities that had formerly had their own altars and temples, do not die nor disappear, but are transformed into demons, some of them losing their former seductive beauty, but all retaining and increasing their ancient wickedness. Jove, Juno, Diana, Apollo, Mercury, Neptune, Vulcan, Cerberus and fauns and satyrs outlive the worship that was rendered them, reappear amid the darkness of the Christian Hell, crowd the minds of men with strange terrors, give rise to fearful fantasies and legends. Diana, changed to a noonday demon, will assail those imprudent ones who are too heedless of their health; and by night, across the silent tracts of the starry heavens, she will lead the flying squadrons of the witches, her pupils. Venus, ever burning with passion, no less fair as a demon than as a goddess, will still ply her ancient arts on men, will inspire them with unquenchable longings, will usurp the couches of wedded wives, will bear away in her arms, to her subterranean abode, the knight Tannhäuser, drunken with desire, caring no longer for Christ, greedy for damnation. One of the popes, John XII (made pope in 955, deposed in 963 by the Emperor Otto I), guilty, according to his accusers, of having drunk to the health of the Devil, when casting dice will invoke the aid of Jove, of Venus and of the other demons. Satan will oftentimes be represented in the figure of a faun, a satyr or a siren.

Master of the Rebel Angels, St. Martin Sharing his Coat and The Fall of the Rebel Angels, c. 1340–1345. Oil on wood mounted on canvas, 64 × 29 cm (verso). Musée du Louvre, Paris, France.

When the Church finally triumphs, the history of Satan appears to be known in every detail and his figure to be complete. Men know – or think they know – his origins, the earlier and later vicissitudes of his career, his processes and his works. The Fathers have portrayed and described him. Satan was created good, and made himself wicked; he fell through his own sin, drawing after him in his ruin an innumerable multitude of followers. Later on, it will be told that a tenth part of the heavenly host was cast down and plunged headlong into the abyss; and there will be pictured an array of neutral angels, neither rebels against God nor opposed to Satan, mere spectators of the battle waged between the two; angels whom Saint Brandan[18] will meet in the course of his adventurous wanderings; whom Parsifal will hear recalled in the farthest East, where the holy relic of the Grail is guarded;[19] whom Dante will place in the vestibule of Hell together with those wretched dastards “who never were alive”.[20]

But Satan has not yet ceased to grow, his personality is not yet complete; long, indeed, is his history, and when one era of it has closed another is beginning. The ascetics, who had thought to escape him by escaping the world and in the desert had found him again, more malignant and powerful than ever, and who had experienced his countless wiles and suffered his savage insults, did not yet know him under all his aspects.

To the ancient calamities succeeded new ones; on an age of deepest corruption there followed an age of violent dissolution, which seemed to be wrenching the world from its hinges. Already out of the dim North the barbarians are bursting in like a sea that has broken down the opposing dikes, and under the shock the Empire of Rome crumbles in crashing ruin. The wicked and accursed pagan civilisation is quenched, but only to give place to the hopeless darkness of barbarism, wherein it is impossible to descry any gleam of salvation. It seemed as if the human kingdom were about to end, or that a brute kingdom were about to begin on earth. This horrible disaster, described with fiery eloquence by Salvianus (born in the fifth century), made men doubt Providence, and offering a spectacle of evils hitherto unknown, numberless, measureless, set forth in new relief, as was but natural, the figure of him who is the source and the promoter of all evils. Satan grew through the deeds of the barbarians; but at the same time he grew through many of their beliefs, attracting to himself everything in their religion (and that was not a little) that he found consistent and homogeneous with his own character. In contact with Greek and Roman life, he became in a certain measure Hellenised and Romanised; in contact with the northern barbarians, he became Germanised. Numerous figures out of the Germanic mythology, Loki, the wolf Fenris, elves, sylphs and gnomes, are transfused into Satan and confer on him new aspects, new characteristics and new activities. Thus Satan is being built and shaped, with accretions that are sometimes swift, sometimes gradual; by means of successive stratifications and continuous infiltrations, changing unceasingly, passing through all the steps of a long and wearisome evolution. Originally a simple elemental power, he gradually acquires the moral character that belongs to him; and when we behold him in his maturity, when we examine his inner nature, we are astounded at his greatness, perceiving the multiplicity and diversity of the elements of which he is compounded. Not only the forces of nature, not only the gods of different mythologies have become Satan, but so also have human beings. In poems and legends of the Middle Ages, Pilate, Nero and Mohammed are converted into devils.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Fall of the Rebel Angels, 1562. Wood, 117 × 162 cm. Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, Belgium.

Luca Giordano, The Fall of the Rebel Angels, c. 1655. Oil on canvas, 83 × 60 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria.

Satan reaches the highest degree of his development and of his power in the Middle Ages, in that troubled and unhappy period wherein Christianity shows itself most vigorous. He reaches maturity at the same time as the various institutions and peculiar types of that life, and when Gothic art flourishes in lofty-spired temples, the myth of Satan flourishes also, gloomy and stupendous, in the consciousness of the Christian peoples. After the close of the thirteenth century he begins to decline and languish, as do the papacy, scholasticism, the feudal spirit and the spirit of asceticism. Satan is the child of sadness. In a religion like that of the Greeks, all radiant with life and colour, he could not have held any prominent role; in order that he may grow and thrive, there is need of shadows, of the mysteries of sin and of sorrow, which like a funeral shroud enfold the religion of Golgotha. Satan is the child of fear; and terror dominates the Middle Ages. Seized with an unconquerable dread, the souls of men fear nature, pregnant with portents and monsters; they fear the physical world, opposed to the world of the spirit, and its irreconcilable foe; they fear life, the perpetual incentive and tinderbox of sin; they fear death, behind which yawn the uncertainties of eternity. Dreams and visions torment men’s minds. The ecstatic hermit, kneeling long hours in prayer before the doorway of his cell, sees flying through the air aweinspiring armies and riotous hordes of apocalyptic monsters; his nights are lighted up by flaming portents; the stars are distorted and bathed in blood, sad omens of impending evil. In seasons of pestilence that mow men down like ripened stalks of grain are seen darts, hurled by invisible hands, cleaving the air and disappearing with hissing sounds; and ever and anon, across the face of terror-stricken Christendom runs, like a tremor presaging the world’s end, the sinister word that Antichrist is already born and is about to open the fearful drama foretold in the Apocalypse.

Satan grows in the melancholy shadows of vast cathedrals, behind the massive pillars, in the recesses of the choir; he grows in the silence of the cloisters, invaded by the stupor of death; he grows in the embattled castle, where a secret remorse is gnawing the heart of the grim baron; in the hidden cell, where the alchemist tests his metals; in the solitary wood, where the sorcerer weaves his nightly spells; in the furrow, wherein the starving serf casts, with a curse, the seed that is destined to nourish his lord. Satan is everywhere; countless are they who have seen him, countless they who have conversed with him.

This belief had taken firm root, nor did the Church fail to favour and strengthen it. The Church made good use of Satan, employed him as a most effective political tool, and gave him all possible credit; since what men would not do through love of God or in a spirit of obedience, they would do through fear of the Devil. Satan was presented under all guises, painted or carved, to the dismayed contemplation of the devout; Satan rounded out each period of the preacher, each admonition of the confessor; Satan became the hero of a legend unending, that offered counterparts and examples for all the vicissitudes of life, for every action, every thought. Not a few of the Visions of the Middle Ages show what sort of application could be made of the Devil to politics in general; certainly, to ecclesiastical politics the Devil rendered far better service than did the Inquisition and the fagot, though both of these rendered service enough. As early as the year 811, Charlemagne, in one of his capitularies, accused the clergy of abusing the Devil and Hell for the sake of filching money and seizing estates.

But great as was the fear that men had of Satan, the hatred that they cherished against him was no less.

Such hatred was not, indeed, unjustified, since in hating him one hated the author of all evil, and the more one loved Christ the more one ought to hate His enemy. But in this case also, fear and hatred produced their customary results, extravagance in opinions and exaggeration in beliefs. The figure of Satan had to suffer the consequences of this; and this excess, being noted by some one of more moderate spirit, gave rise to the proverb, “The Devil is not so black as he is painted”.