Art of the Devil. Arturo Graf
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works of love or enmity fulfill.”[28]
Let us try, for a moment, to recover our bearings in the midst of this infernal masquerade. The devils, ugly by nature, could by artifice acquire an appearance that was beautiful and seductive; they could also acquire a deformity that was different from their own. According to their plans and needs, they assumed sometimes one aspect, sometimes the other.
That the devils, especially in ancient times, should appear to Christians under the guise of one or another of the pagan divinities, will seem strange to no one. Saint Martin, the famous bishop of Tours, was made to see them disguised as Jupiter, Mercury, Venus and Minerva. But Saint Martin lived in the fourth century, at a time when paganism, if not flourishing, was yet alive; and for that reason his visions are easily accounted for. Not so easily, however, do we account for the fact that devils in the form of Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, Bacchus and Hebe, were still seen by Saint Rainaldo, bishop of Nocera, in the thirteenth century. In this second case, we are forced to recognise the effects of certain readings of classic authors, and the symptoms of the near approach of the Renaissance. The same reasons that led the demons to masquerade as pagan divinities could also lead them to clothe themselves in the likeness of illustrious men of old. In the tenth century, there appeared one night to a grammarian of Ravenna, Vilgardo by name, certain devils in the guise of Virgil, Horace and Juvenal; and thanking him for the diligence with which he was devoting himself to their writings, they promised to make him after his death a sharer in their own glory.
Very often the devils, who generally possessed one human form, would assume another – also human, but better adapted to their need. Countless histories of saintly men tell us of demons appearing in the form of attractive women, while numberless histories of female saints tell us of demons hiding themselves under the semblance of handsome and saucy youths. I shall return to the subject of these perilous apparitions when I come to speak of the Devil as tempter. Not seldom did the devils conceive the idea of presenting themselves before the man or woman they wished to annoy, under the guise of friends, kindred, or persons otherwise well-known and familiar; whence there might result, and ofttimes there did result, great damage and scandal. The venerable Mary of Maille discovered the Devil beneath the garb of a hermit, reputed by all a holy man. To the blessed Gherardesca of Pisa, and to other holy women, the Devil appeared in the guise of their husbands; in the form of a gallant he issued one day from the bedchamber of Saint Kunegund (1002–1024). On another occasion, he was guilty of even grosser conduct. He assumed the appearance of Saint Silvanus, bishop of Nazareth, discovered his passion to a young girl, and suffered himself to be found beneath her bed. Standing one day at a window, Thomas Cantipratensis, a Dominican of the thirteenth century, beheld the Devil in the form of a priest, who was exhibiting himself in a most indecent attitude. The monk shouted, and in a trice the demon vanished. This same Thomas tells how, in the year 1258, there was seen near Cologne a great mob of devils in the guise of White Friars, running and dancing across the meadows.
Albrecht Dürer, Knight, Death and the Devil, c. 1513. Engraving, 24.4 × 18.7 cm. Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe, Germany.
Vittore Carpaccio, St. George and the Dragon, 1516. Oil on canvas, 180 × 226 cm. San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, Italy.
Quite often, the devils let themselves be seen in the forms of various animals. As for the dragon, I am uncertain whether that was the natural form of some devils or one assumed incidentally. As a dragon, it is true, Satan appears in the Apocalypse; and many are the saints to whom diabolic dragons showed themselves. In the eighth century, John of Damascus (700–754) described the demons as dragons flying through the air. Sometimes the dragon seems to be a creature intermediate between demon and beast. But countless were the other animal forms that the demons were wont to don in order to torment, to frighten, or to annoy the righteous souls of the faithful. Saint Anthony, afar in the desert, was made to see them in the forms of roaring, howling beasts of prey, of serpents and scorpions; and more than a thousand years later, Saint Colette still saw them transformed into foxes, serpents, toads, snails, flies and ants. In the thirteenth century, Saint Giles recognised the demon under the shell of an enormous tortoise. In the form of a lion, the demon killed a child, who was restored to life by Saint Eleutherius (456–532), bishop of Tournai; to many persons he showed himself in the form of a raven. In the legend of Saint Vedast (sixth century) it is related that the demons were once seen obscuring the sunlight under the form of a cloud of bats. As a dog, the Devil became the companion of Pope Silvester II (Pope 999–1003), suspected of practicing magic arts; as a dog he appeared to Faust, and as a dog he was seen guarding treasures hidden underground; as a huge he-goat, he showed himself at the revels of the witches; as a cat, he rubbed his back in their kitchens; as a fly, he buzzed persistently about the heads of honest folk. In short, there is no savage creature, no hideous or disgusting one, under whose semblance the demons have not some time hidden themselves.
All this diabolic zoology should occasion us no surprise. Not only was it natural that the demons, in order to gain their particular ends, should take on whatever animal forms best suited them; but between the animals themselves – some of them, at least – and the demons, there was a certain affinity, there was sometimes an actual identity of nature. Aside from the fact that in Christian symbolism some creatures, such as the serpent, the lion or the ape, represent the Devil; aside from the fact that the demons themselves are very often called beasts; it is also true that certain animals are rightly transformed into demons, or confused with the demons. In an ancient formula for exorcism, God is asked to preserve the fruits of the earth from caterpillars, mice, moles, serpents and other unclean spirits. On the other hand, I remember having seen in an ancient “Bestiary”, or zoological treatise of the Middle Ages, the Devil catalogued along with the other beasts. I have already called attention to the fact that the dragon formed a sort of connecting link between demon and beast; the same can also be said of the basilisk. The toad, which very often appears in company with the witches, turns out, in certain tales, to be far more demon than beast. To prove this, I need only to cite the following frightful story, related by Caesarius von Heisterbach. A child finds a toad in the field and kills it. The dead toad pursues its slayer, giving him no rest either day or night; when it has been killed again and again, it still continues to pursue him, and does not desist even after it has been burned and reduced to ashes. The poor persecuted child, finding no other means of freeing himself, lets himself be bitten by his enemy, and then escapes death by quickly cutting away with a knife the flesh which the venomous jaws have penetrated. Its vengeful fury appeased, the terrible toad was seen no more.
Saint Patrick (396–469), Saint Geffroy (died in 1115), Saint Bernard (1091–1153) and several other saints, excommunicated flies and other noxious insects, or even reptiles, and rid houses, cities and provinces of their presence. The trials of animals, conducted in the Middle Ages and even in the height of the Renaissance, are famous in the annals of superstition; the beasts were arraigned, as were the devils. In 1474 the magistrates of Basel tried and condemned to the flames a diabolic cock which had ventured to lay an egg. If animals transform themselves into demons, it was but just that the demons should transform themselves into animals.
Nor were they satisfied with transforming themselves into animals only; nay, they even turned themselves into inanimate objects. Saint Gregory the Great relates the pitiful case of a nun who, thinking that she was eating a leaf of lettuce, ate the Devil and retained him in her body for a season. A disciple of Saint Hilary, abbot of Galeata, once beheld the Devil in the shape of a tempting cluster of grapes. To others, according to circumstances and conditions, the Devil caused himself to appear in the semblance of a goblet of wine, a gold-piece, a purse full of money, a tree-trunk, a rolling cask and even a cow’s tail. It is not without reason, therefore, that the Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch, and several others among the most famous painters of devils, often animated with diabolic life trees, stones, fabrics, pieces of furniture and kitchen utensils.
But not even here do these diabolic masqueradings reach their limit; and if those that I have related give proof of no small degree of natural versatility and no slight power of imagination, there are yet others which reveal the greatest audacity and a truly diabolical impudence. More than once did Satan venture to assume the venerable