Art of the Devil. Arturo Graf

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      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 СКАЧАТЬ