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T H E D E V IL.
º
THE DE VIL
HIS ORIGIN, G REAT N ESS AND
D E C A D E N C E.
[Second Edition].
FROM THE FRENCEI OF THE
REVEREND ALBERT REVILLE, D.D.
1.
:
LONDON :
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE,
14 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, AND
20 SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH.
1877.
LONDON :
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET,
HAYMARKET, W.
7*: wer.º.46
é, a 4-37
<r
~
ºr-
º
º TRAN SLATOR'S PREFATORY NOTES.
“. LTHOUGH the appearance of this essay in the
Q Revue des Deua Mondes must have brought it
under the notice of a large number of educated English-
men, there remain not a few to whom a translation may
be serviceable. Of these, there are some who regard
belief in the personality of the devil as an essential of
true religion; there are others who have already come
to the conclusion that such belief makes faith in our
Heavenly Father's perfect wisdom, and man's free-will,
impossible,” and that this form of superstition not only
plies the weak with unworthy motives of conduct, but
is a far slighter check upon the misbehaviour of de-
praved persons than is commonly assumed by theo-
logians; and there are, doubtless, some who, not having
experienced in themselves, nor observed in others, its
injurious effects, regard the matter with indifference.
To those who thoughtfully reject the dark belief, this
interesting essay requires no comment; but among such
as hold it upon “Scriptural grounds,” there may be
some who are not too prejudiced to bear with the trans-
* Martin Luther writes : “The human will is like a beast
of burden. If God mounts it, it wishes and goes as God
wills: if Satan mounts it, it wishes and goes as Satan wills.
Nor can it choose the rider it would prefer, or betake itself
to him, but it is the riders who contend for its possession.”
Vi Translator's
lator while, in no carping spirit, he ventures to ask,
through the following questions, whether Scripture
authorizes as distinctly as it is generally supposed to
do, a doctrine which reason condemns as based upon no
evidence, and as a fruitful source of mischief.
Do Moses and the older Prophets appear to have so
much as heard of the devil 3
Is not the Old Testament satan a common noun,
meaning an adversary, a hindering influence? (1 Chron.
xxi. 1; Psalm ciz. 6). Is not, for instance, the Hebrew
word translated adversary in the narrative of Balaam
(applied there to the “Angel of the Lord ”), the word
which is translated elsewhere Satan? (Numbers xxii. 22).
[NOTE.-As the account of the Fall (Genesis iii.) is regarded
by many as containing a mention of the Devil, we may be
allowed to remark (apart from any question as to whether the
episode is mythical, allegorical, or a simple record of facts)
that, however general may be the notion, which Milton's
grand imaginings have done much towards establishing, that
the serpent was an incarnation of the Evil One, there is
nothing in the narrative to support it. “The serpent was
more subtle than any beast of the field.” What is there here
to show that the woman was surprised by any extraordinary
display of subtlety on the part of the serpent, or that the
animal was the mere instrument of an arch-fiend? Indeed,
the curse pronounced upon the serpent race is inconsistent
with such a supposition. S. Paul, in referring to the tempta-
tion of Eve (2 Cor. xi. 3), says nothing of the Devil's part in
it ; the serpent is not even a satan, but simply the serpent.]
Did not the Jews derive many of their notions of
devils and hells, so firmly held by the Pharisees of
Christ's time, from their long intercourse with the
Persians?
Prefatory Notes. vii
Have not our translators of the New Testament, per-
plexed by the ambiguity of the Greek idiom, sometimes
erred by their arbitrary suppression of the Greek article?
[Christ, for instance, is made to say, “Satan cometh,”
“Satan hath bound,” “I beheld Satan,” &c., instead of
the Satan.]
Is it not open to question whether, where Christ's
words seem to confirm the notion of a personal Satan,
he is doing more than accommodate his language to
the popular mode of expressing the power of evil?
When Christ declares that one of his disciples is a
devil, and when he addresses another as Satan, does he
not use the word in its sense of adversary; and have
these expressions any value in supporting the assertion
that he taught the personality of the devil?
Has not the arbitrary treatment by our New Testa-
ment translators of the Greek word diabolos, which
signifies an accuser, a slanderer, done much towards
personifying the devil? [Ev. gr., S. Paul (1 Tim. iii. 11)
says that the wives of deacons must not be “devils; ”
that (2 Tim. iii. 2, 3), in the last time men shall be
“devils;” aged women (Titus ii. 3) are to be exhorted
not to be “devils,” &c. Here we have, in our version,
“slanderers,” and “false accusers; ” but where the
word appears to the translators to point to the Orthodox
devil, the specific term is arbitrarily used.]
[NOTE.-The inquiry whether the “possessed of devils.”
were sufferers from physical infirmities which were popularly
attributed to the agency of evil spirits, deserves considera-
tion, but is distinct from the question of the diabolarchy.]
viii Translator's
Does the Temptation of Christ establish the per-
sonality of the devil, seeing that this episode in the life
of our Lord has by many orthodox expositors of ancient
and modern times been regarded as parabolical ?
In the oft-quoted passage in which the “adversary,
the devil,” of the converts to whom S. Peter wrote, is
described as “a roaring lion ” (1 Peter v. 8), does not
careful perusal of the context (iv. 14-19, &c.) make it
clear that the sharp exercise of the Roman rule, and no
hellish Tempter, is referred to ?
[NOTE. —The value of carefully comparing Scripture with
Scripture cannot be over-rated; but Reference Bibles not
unfrequently induce such comparison as misleads the student.
The passage just quoted supplies a case in point. In the
book of Job, where Satan answers the question, “Whence
comest thou?” by the words, “From going to and fro in the
earth, and from walking up and down in it,” reference will
be found to the above passage in S. Peter's epistle ; and, if
ouly the personality of the devil is first admitted, the two
accounts of his roaming habits will blend very readily. “He
roves,” Cruden writes, “full of rage, like a roaring lion,
seeking to tempt, to betray, to destroy us, and involve us in
guilt and wickedness.” But does the Satan of the book of
Job, a poem, be it remembered, of Gentile, not of Jewish
origin, bear any likeness to the Devil of the orthodox2 Satan,
in company with other “Sons,” or angels, of God, appears in
the presence of the Lord, and, both in questioning the
integrity of Job, and in chastening him with those trials that
result in his increased happiness, acts, not as the Arch
Rebel, but as the diligent servant of God. Again, in the
Epistle of Jude, i. 9, occurs the passage, “Yet Michael the
archangel when contending with the devil he disputed about
the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing
accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee.” We are
Prefatory Notes. ix
referred from Jude to Zachariah iii. 2. Here Satan stands,
it is true, with a capital S ; but a glance shows that here,
as in so many other instances, “an adversary” is the correct
translation.]
In 1 Cor. v. 5; and in 1 Tim. i. 20, is it possible to
understand by “Satan,” the diabolarch 3
[NotE.—No inquiries have been suggested as to the
“dragon,” “Satan,” “devil” of the Apocalypse, because it
is well known that the most opposite views have been taken
by divines as to the whole drift of the book of Revelation,
while there is hardly a passage in it that has not been used
to support contradictory theories; and because the canonicity
of the book—regarded in the second century as a forgery
of Cerinthus, omitted in the list of books of the New Testa-
ment by the Council of Laodicea, and passed over in silence
by Cyril of Jerusalem, Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia,
and Theodoret—is also well known to be a vexed question
with biblical scholars..]
And if in the above, and in other places, it is not con-
ceded that we should understand by Satan and Devil,
the adverse power of Rome, the obstacle opposed to the
spread of the Gospel by individuals within or outside
the Church, physical hindrance (2 Cor. xii. 7, and
1 Thess. ii. 18), or that “law of sin” which Paul
found within him, we may still be suffered to ask:
Is there any passage in the Epistles where the
dangerous endeavours of the Tempter of our race are
exposed?
How is it that where the nature of temptation is set
forth, as notably in the following passage, this special
business of the devil is altogether ignored ?
X Translator's Prefatory Notes.
“Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God, for
God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man. But
every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust and
enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin, and
sin when it is finished bringeth forth death.”—James i. 13–15.
[NOTE.-This passage goes far to confirm the opinion
of many that the serpent of the “Fall” symbolises carnal
pleasure.]
Are we at all warranted in supposing an implied
intervention of the devil when Christ speaks as follows :
And if “false-witness” is not the “father of lies,”
what is ?
“OUT OF THE HEART PROCEED EVIL THOUGHTS,
MURDERs, ADULTERIES, FoRNICATIONS, THEFTS, FALSE-
WITNESS, BLASPHEMIES.”—Matt. xv. 19.
H. A.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
HIS little book will be found to contain the sub-
stance and general plan of the two lectures I gave
at Strasburg towards the close of last autumn, and the
almost literal reproduction of the article published by
me in the Revue des Deua Mondes of the 1st January,
1870. The occasional alterations that may be remarked
are, perhaps, explained by the difference that naturally
suggests itself between a discourse, delivered in a Pro-
testant Church, and an article subjected to the con-
ditions of publication imposed by such a periodical as
the above, and, again, between this and a pamphlet
placed before the public upon the writer's sole authority.
These alterations, moreover, affect the form only of the
essay, and a few details; its basis, and the development
of the ideas, remain unchanged.
I would take advantage of this opportunity of thank-
ing my Strasburg hearers for the kind interest of which
they have given me so many proofs, and of which the
publication of this essay is at once a result and a new
mark.
A. R.
Rotterdam, January, 1870.
HISTORY OF THE DEVIL;
HIS ORIGIN, GREATNESS, AND DECADENCE.
MONG fallen majesties whom Time, still more
than sudden revolutions, has compelled to descend
slowly from the thrones they occupied, there are few
whose prestige has been as imposing and as prolonged
as that of the king of hell, SATAN. In speaking
of him, we may safely use the expression, fallen majesty.
for those among our contemporaries who still profess
belief in his existence and power, live absolutely as if
they held no such belief, we shall presently see how
those lived who did seriously believe in the devil,—and
when faith and life are no longer in harmony, we have a
right to say that faith is dead. I am speaking of course,
of our educated contemporaries; the rest can no longer
be taken into consideration in the history of the human
mind. To give a general view of the belief in a devil,
with an account of its transformations and evolutions,
will, we think, be interesting. It affords well-nigh a
biography. An opportunity of doing this is afforded by
2. History of the Devil.
a remarkable work for which we are indebted to a theo-
logical professor of Vienna. Notwithstanding its
occasional diffuseness, Professor Roskoff's book is an
encyclopædia of all that concerns the subject; and the
author will not grudge us the aid we shall derive from
his treasury of erudition. May the University of
Vienna, invigorated by the events which have changed
the face of Austria, pay the arrears she owes to European
scholarship by producing such books as this l
History of the Devil. 3
I.
HE origin of the belief in the devil carries us back
to very early times; and, as is the case with
all more or less dualistic faiths,—faiths, that is, based
upon the radical opposition of two supreme principles,—
we must seek it in the human mind, developing itself in
the bosom of a Nature whose aspect is now favourable,
now hostile. There is a certain relative dualism, an
antagonism of the ego and the non-ego which reveals
itself from man's birth. His first breath is painful to
him, for it makes him weep. To learn to eat, to walk,
to speak, is a struggle to him ; and, later, the work
upon which his preservation depends will reproduce this
perpetual struggle under other forms. When the
religious sentiment awakens within him, and, at the
onset, searches its object and its food in the visible crea-
tion, he finds himself face to face with phenomena
which he personifies, which are, on the one hand,
lovable and loved, as the aurora, and the life-sustaining
vegetation, with the rain that refreshes and fertilizes it ;
and, on the other hand, frightful and terrible, as storm,
thunder, and darkness. Hence come good gods and evil
gods. As a general rule, and in virtue of that naïve
egotism which alike characterizes the childhood of indi-
viduals and of peoples, the dreaded gods are more adored
than the loving deities who always do good of their own
accord and unasked. This way, at least, the remarks
converge of all the voyagers who have closely observed
those peoples of both hemispheres who retain their
Savage state. We need not add that their divinities
have, properly speaking, no moral character. They do
good or harm according to their nature; and that is all.
4. History of the Devil.
Herein they do but resemble their worshippers. Man,
indeed, always projects his own ideal upon the divinity
he adores; and, if we consider the matter carefully, it
is still thus that he arrives at the possession of all he
can understand of divine truth. He has always a feeling
that his god is perfect; and this is the main point; but
the features of that perfection are always more or less
those of his ideal. Two young swine-herds in a remote
province of Austria, were once asked, “What would you
do if you were Napoleon?” “I,” said the younger,
“would always use up the whole butter pot on my
bread.” “And I,” said the other, who no doubt thought
this answer lacked poetry, “I would watch the pigs on
horseback.” In like manner, a Bushman, when invited
by a missionary who had instilled into him some notions
of morality to give a few proofs that he could distinguish
between right and wrong, said, “It is wrong for another
man to come and take away my wives; it is right for
me to go and take his.” The gods of Savages are,
necessarily, savage gods. They have, for the most part,
frightful forms; just as their worshippers think it proper
to make themselves look hideous when they go to battle,
or even when they adorn themselves. The odd, the gro-
tesque, is to them the beautiful; whatever is uncommon
is mysterious; and the unknown is terrible. The poet
must pardon us if we assert that the religion of peoples
of this category is simply the adoration of genii or
demons of bad repute. When, passing from Savage
peoples who live solely by hunting and fishing, we come
to pastoral and, especially, to agricultural races, this
adoration of evil deities is no longer so exclusive. Still,
even among these the worship of the terrible gods pre-
dominates. Take by way of illustration the simple
prayer of the Madagascans, who acknowledge, among
many other, two creating divinities, Zamhor, the author
of good things, Nyang, of evil things:–
“O Zamhor / To thee we offer no prayers. The good
god needs no asking. But we must pray to Nyang.
History of the Devil. 5
Nyang must be appeased. O Nyang, bad and strong
spirit, let not the thunder roar over our heads / Tell the
sea to keep within its bounds ! Spare, O Nyang, the
'ripening fruit, and dry not up the blossoming rice l Let
not our women bring forth children on the accursed days.
Thou reignest, and this thou knowest, over the wicked;
and great is their number, 0 Nyang. Torment not,
then, any longer, the good folk.”
It would be easy to multiply the facts which show
that the large place fear has in their piety compared
with veneration or love, is a characteristic feature of the
religion of primitive peoples. Hence come the enormous
quantity of mischievous beings of a lower rank, recog-
nized by all inferior religions, and which we meet with
in the popular superstitions which adhere so perti-
naciously to religions of a more exalted spiritual level.
In the grand mythologies, as those of India, of Egypt, or
Greece, the apparent duality of nature is reflected in the
distinction between the gods of order and production,
and those of destruction and disorder. The feeling that
in the long run order gains the upper hand in the contest
between the opposing forces of nature, inspires myths;
thus, Indra overcomes the storm-cloud; Horus avenges
his father Osiris, wickedly slain by Typhon; and Jupiter
vanquishes the Titans. Brahminism, when developed,
shows us Siva, the god of destruction, concentrating and
arranging the elements which disturb the universe.
Siva is still the most adored of the Hindoo gods. In
Semitic polytheism, dualism becomes sexual; or else the
sun, always the chief object of adoration, the supreme
god, is conceived under two forms, one smiling, the other
terrible,_Baal or Moloch.
This two-fold character of the adored divinities is no
less remarkable when we study the most poetical and
serene of polytheisms, that of Greece. Like all the
others, it has its root in the worship of the visible
world; but more than elsewhere, unless we except
Egypt, the Greek gods join to their physical nature a
B
6 History of the Devil.
corresponding moral physiognomy. They conquered the
agents of confusion who, under the name of Titans,
Giants, Typhons, threatened to disturb established
order. They are, then, the invincible preservers of the
established order of things; but as, after all, this regular
order is far from being always in conformity with man's
physical and moral good, it follows that the Greek gods
have, all of them, in varying proportions, their pleasing
and their sombre aspect. Phoebus Apollo, for instance,
is a god of light, a civiliser, the inspirer of art, the
purifier of the earth and of the soul; and yet, he sends
also plague, he is pitiless in his vengeance, and it is not
very prudent to form close friendships with him. The
same may be said of his sister Diana, or, rather, of the
moon, who appears now with the charming features of
a fair and chaste virgin, now with the sinister physio-
gnomy of Hecate, of Brimo, or of Empusia. The azure
horizons of the sea are at first beautiful blue birds;
then, sea-maidens, of surpassing beauty to the waist,
who bewitch navigators by their sweet love-songs: but
woe to those who allow themselves to be seduced 1 This
physiognomy, in which good and evil are mingled, is a
common feature of the Hellenic pantheon, and repro-
duces itself unfailingly, from the Supreme pair, Jupiter
and Here (Juno), to the wedded occupants of the lower
world, Ædoneus or Pluto, and his wife Proserpina, the
strangler.
Like reflections are suggested by the Latin mythology;
and, where original, this is even more dualistic than the
polytheism of Greece. It has its Orcus, its Stryges, its
Lares and Lemures. The Sclavonic mythology has its
white and its black god. The divinities of our Keltic
forefathers were by no means attractive, and the Ger-
mano-Scandinavian gods possessed valuable qualities
allied with faults which made all intercourse with them
very awkward, to say the least. Wherever in our own day
belief in brownies, white-ladies, fairies, goblins, sprites,
and the like has survived, we find the same admixture
History of the Devil. 7
of good and evil qualities. These fragments of the
great divine host of olden times are at once graceful,
attractive, and generous, when they are in the mood;
but also capricious, spiteful, and dangerous. We must
keep this distinctly before us in entering upon an inquiry
into the origin of our devil; for we shall find that he is
of the composite order, and that many of his essential
features connect him with the sombre elements of all
the religions which preceded Christianity.
But there is among those religions one which, from
this special point of view, deserves that we ponder awhile
over its fundamental doctrines, namely, that of the Zend
Avesta, or, in more common parlance, the Persian reli-
gion. For here it is that we see the divine hierarchy
and creeds under the sway of a systematic dualism which
extends over the whole world, including moral evil. The
gods of light and the gods of darkness divide time and
space between them. We do not speak here of Zarvan-
Akarana, the Endless Time who gave birth to Ahura-
mazd, or Ormuzd, the good god, and to his brother
Angramainju, or Ahriman, the god of evil; for this is a
philosophical notion of much later date than that origi-
nal and characteristic point of view of the Zend reli-
gion which simply recognizes two equally eternal powers
which are constantly struggling together, and which
meet in combat on the surface of the earth as well as in
the hearts of men. Wherever Ormuzd plants good,
Ahriman sows evil. The history of the moral fall of
the earliest men, due to the treachery of Ahriman, under
the form of a serpent, presents the most surprising ana-
logies with the parallel account given in Genesis. Hence
the assertion that the tale is merely borrowed from the
Persian. I think this opinion is ill-founded, for in the
Iranian myth the evil genius is disguised, while in the
Hebrew account it is a genuine serpent that speaks and
acts, and who involves his race in the punishment he
entails upon himself. We must, then, concede to the
latter history the advantage of greater antiquity, if not
8 History of the Devil.
as to its actual form, at least with regard to its original
idea. The substituting a god in disguise for an animal
that reasons and speaks, points to a reflection unknown
in the ages that gave to myths their earliest form. Such
reflection, in later times, led the Jews to see their Satan
under the features of the serpent of Genesis, although
the canonical text by no means countenances such a sup-
position. I prefer, therefore, to regard the two myths,
Hebrew and Iranian, as two unequally ancient variations of
one and the same primitive theme, traceable, possibly, to
the times when Iranians and Semitics still lived together
under the shade of Ararat.
However this may be, one thing remains clear, that in
the most seriously moral polytheism of the old world we
meet with a religious conception which approaches very
nearly to that which Semitic monotheism has handed
down to us under the name of the devil or Satan.
Ahriman, like Satan, has his legions of bad angels,
whose only thought is to torment and ruin mortals. It
is not solely physical ills, storms, darkness, floods, diseases
and death, that are attributed to them, but bad desires
and sinful deeds. The good man is, therefore, a soldier
of Ormuzd, fighting under his command against the
powers of evil; while the wicked man is a servant and,
at last, an instrument of Ahriman. The Zend doctrine
taught that at last Ahriman would be overcome, and
would even be a convert to good. This trait distin-
guishes him advantageously from his Jewish-Christian
brother. But here again we may ask in how far this
fair hope formed part of the primitive religion.* Cer-
tain it is that there is a very close likeness between the
Jewish Satan and the Persian Ahriman ; and in this
there is nothing strange, if we bear in mind that the
Persians are the sole polytheistic people with whom the
Jews, emancipated by them from the Chaldean bondage,
maintained a long and friendly intercourse.
* There were some among Christian theologians, Origen, for
instance, who believed in the final conversion of Satan.
History of the Devil. 9
Still, we must dissent from the wide-spread opinion
which sees in Satan a transplanting of the Persian
Ahriman into the religious soil of Semiticism. It is
true that the Jewish, as well as the Christian, devil owes
much to Ahriman. From the moment when the Jewish
Satan makes his acquaintance, he imitates him, adopts
his methods, his conduct and his tactics, and forms his
infernal court upon the same pattern : in a word, he
transforms himself into his likeness. But ere this,
obscure and ill-defined as was his life, Satan existed.
Tet us endeavour to sum up his history as traced in the
Old Testament.
The Israelites, and this is now clearly demonstrated,
in common with other Semitic peoples, long believed in
the plurality of gods; and the dualism which is at the
bottom of all polytheisms has, as a necessary conse-
quence, re-appeared among them under the forms pecu-
liar to the ethnic group to which they belong. In pro-
portion as the worship of Jehovah became more and
more exclusive, this dualism changed its forms. The
fervent worshipper of Jehovah, while he still believed
in the real existence of the neighbouring deities, such
as Baal and Moloch, could not but regard these immoral,
cruel, and hostile gods with much the same eye as was
turned upon the demons of a later age. We may go so
far as to suspect some débris of a primitive dualism, or
of an antagonism between two once rival gods, in that
enigmatical being, the despair of exegetists, who, under
the name of Azazel, haunts the desert, and to whom, on
the day of atonement, the high priest sends a goat on
whose head he has laid the sins of the people. But we must
add, that in historic times the meaning of this ceremony
seems to have been lost to those who performed it; and
that, in truth, nothing can be more in opposition to any-
thing like dualism than the Jehovistic point of view in
all its strictness. With the exception of the books of
Job, Zechariah, and Chronicles, all three of which are
among the least ancient of the sacred collection, not a
:
:
:
IO History of the Devil.
:
ſº*
.
word is said about Satan in the Old Testament, not even
—and this we repeat because in spite of the evidence of
the text, the mistake we point out is so common—not
even in Genesis. Jehovah, when once adored as the one
true god, has not, could not have, a rival. Nothing
happens, nothing is done on earth, which is not subject
to his will; and more than one Hebrew author attributes
to him directly, without the least reservation, the sug-
gestion of errors and faults that are afterwards referred
to Satan. Jehovah hardens those whom he will harden;
Jehovah destroys those whom he chooses to destroy; and
no one has a right to question his justice. But, as he was
believed to be supremely just, it was admitted that in
hardening the heart of the wicked, he did so that they
might dig their own graves; while in distributing accord-
ing to his will good and evil, he did so in such sort as to
reward the righteous and punish wrong-doers. It was
impossible to adhere constantly to this notion, so con-
venient in theory, but so often belied by experience; but
it was long held, and a proof of this will be seen in the
kind of religious ideas out of which we shall see Satan
come forth.
Hebrew monotheism did not exclude belief in heavenly
spirits, in sons of God (beni Elohim), in angels whose
office it was to surround the throne of the Eternal, like
a holy guard.* They awaited his orders, performed his
will, and were in some sort the agents of divine govern-
ment. Upon them devolved the direct application of
the punishments and mercies of God. Consequently,
there were among them some whose offices inspired fear
rather than confidence. We find, for instance, an angelic
* Nor did it exclude the oriental belief in spirits of darkness, a
kind of Djinns spoken of in Isaiah and Jeremiah, and whose
character was harmful rather than otherwise. Still, anything like
adoration of these gloomy genii was forbidden. A female demon of
this kind called by Isaiah Lilith, the nocturnal, served in later
times as a pretext for a host of Rabbinical fancies. They made of
her a wife of Satan and a temptress of Adam.
History of the Devil. I I
messenger punishing Saul for his misdeeds, by troubling
him with dark fancies which David's harp alone can dis-
sipate. It is an angel of the Eternal who appears with
a naked sword in his hand to Balaam, as if ready to pierce
him through, or who destroys in one night a whole
Assyrian army. In course of time an angel was distin-
guished among the rest whose special function in the
heavenly court was that of accuser of men, and whom
we might regard as the personification of a guilty con-
science. Sovereign justice doubtless decided alone, and
in the fulness of its power; but not until after some
adverse debate. Now, he whose profession it was to
prosecute men at the divine tribunal was an angel whose
name Satan simply means adversary, in both the legal
and proper sense of the word. Such is clearly the Satan
of the Book of Job; he is a member of the heavenly
court, and is one of the sons of God, although it is his
special concern to accuse men. He has become so sus-
picious through his constant practice as public prosecutor,
that he believes in no human being's goodness, not even
in that of Job the just ; and supposes the purest mani-
festations of piety to result from interested motives. We
see the character of this angel begin to tarnish; and
the history of Job shows that when his purpose is to
exhaust the resignation of a just man, he spares nothing
to effect it. It is again as the accuser of Israel that
Satan appears in the vision of Zechariah (iii. 1). This
special character of his, together with the settled belief
that angels took part in human affairs, caused Satan,
unaided by any help from Ahriman, to be feared by the
Israelites as the worst enemy of mankind; and a ten-
dency arose, under both public and private misfortunes,
to suspect his evil agency. It resulted from this that
those fatal inspirations which earlier Jehovism attributed
immediately to Jehovah himself, came to be regarded as
proceeding from Satan. In the history of David we
have a curious instance of this evolution of religious
belief. David one day was possessed by the unlucky,
I 2 History of the Devil.
and—to the theocratic republicanism of the prophets of
his time—impious idea of numbering his people. In
the second book of Samuel (xxiv. 1) we are told that
“the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and
he moved David” to give the necessary orders for this
census; while, on the other hand, where the self-same
history is related in the first book of Chronicles (xxi. 1),
we have these words:– “And Satan stood up against
Israel and provoked David to number Israel.” Nothing
could show better than these parallel passages the change
that had come about during the interval between the
composition of these two books. From this time forward
the monotheist will attribute to the Adversary the evil
thoughts and the calamities which in former times would
have been traced directly to God. We may even pre-
sume that this solution of certain problems that had
begun to trouble him carried with it some religious com-
fort; for in proportion as our conception of God becomes
more elevated, it becomes harder to rest content with
the childish theories that satisfied less thoughtful ages.
In the part of adversary of mankind, of mar-plot, we
find the true origin of the Jewish and Christian devil,
We must not, therefore, identify him too readily with
, the more or less wicked divinities of polytheistic reli-
gions. That he has affinities with them which grow
closes and closer, we admit fully; but the certificate of
his birth is clearly written ; and if even the Jews had
never come into contact with the Persians, Jewish tra-
dition would still have given us a fully-equipped Satan.
Satan, then, is neither the son nor even the brother of
Ahriman; but a time came when the resemblance was
so great, that it was easy to confuse them. We may
say, in short, that while Ahriman is physical evil that
has become moral evil also, Satan is moral evil becom-
ing physical evil. This is the secret of his increasiug
sway.
Indeed, in the so-called apocryphal books of the Old
Testament, distinguishable from the canonical books of
History of the Devil. I 3
the same volume by the Alexandrine and Persian ele-
ments which they contain, Satan is seen growing in im-
portance and influence. The Seventy, in translating his —
name by diabolos, from whence comes our word devil,
retain the exact definition of his early character of accuser.
But he comes to be something very different from that.
He is an agent provocateur of the highest order; a very -
exalted personage, who, jealous to rise to a still loftier
eminence among angels of the highest rank, was banished
from heaven with the other spirits who were his accom-
plices in ambition. To hatred of men he now adds
hatred of God; and it is here that the imitation of
Ahriman begins. Like the Persian demon, he is at the
head of an army ef evil beings who execute his orders.
Many of these we know by name. Among others is
Asmodeus, the demon of pleasure, who plays an import-
ant part in the book of Tobit, and whose Persian origin
has been rendered unquestionable by the learned re-
searches of M. Michel Bréal. YTh"coffsequence of his T
growing importance and his absolute separation from the
faithful angels, Satan has a distinct kingdom, and a
residence in the subterranean hell. Like the Persian
Ahriman, he sought to spoil the work of creation, and
waged war on men, whose innocent happiness was in-
supportable to him. And then it is agreed that he it
was who, like Adam, beguiled the first woman under the
guise of the serpent. It was he who introduced death
with all its horrors; and hence his most formidable an-
tagonists are those who through their great holiness are
able to warn their fellows against his insidious attacks.
A multitude of diseases, those especially which through
their singularity and the absence of external symptoms
defied natural explanations, as madness, epilepsy, St.
Vitus's dance, dumbness, certain forms of blindness, &c.,
were attributed to his agents. Millions of fiends, obe-
dient to his commands, were supposed to stream constantly
from the depths of hell, and—like the night demons of
the old faith—preferred for their haunts deserts and
I 4 History of the Devil.
- wildernesses. But there they grew weary, they were
thirsty, they wandered about and found no rest; and
their great resource was to take up their abode in a
human body, that they might absorb its substance and
refresh themselves with its blood. | Sometimes many of
them would occupy the same frame. Hence the demoniacs
and the possessed of whom we read so often in the gospel
narrative. Still, the Jewish mythology did not press to
the utmost this likeness to Ahriman. Satan never wages
war directly upon God. Certain formulas, in which the
name of the Most Holy is the chief, sufficed to exorcise,
- to drive away, him and his angels. His power was
strictly limited to the circle which it had pleased the
divine wisdom to trace; so that the dualism remained
very incomplete. But, for the Jewish Satan, no conver-
sion was considered possible. As Prince of incurable
evil, and knowing that the divine decrees doomed him
to a final and irremediable defeat, it was held that he
would persist in wickedness, and serve as executioner to
supreme justice by tormenting for ever those whom he
had drawn into his dreadful toils.
Such was the feeling on this head among the Jewish
people when the gospel was first preached. The deve-
lopment of the Messianic ideas did much towards enrich-
ing the popular faith. If, as they believed, the devil
dared not encounter God himself, nor even the highest
of his angels, still he did not fear to resist openly his
* servants on the earth. Now the Messiah was to be the
servant of God par excellence. He was to appear in
order to establish the kingdom of God among the human
race, which was almost wholly in the power of the devil
and his angels; so that Satan would defend his domi-
nions to the utmost against the Messiah, whose work
might be summed up as consisting in a close and victori-
ous struggle with the “prince of this world.” This
point of view we must never allow to escape us in our
study of the gospels. Satan and the Messiah personified,
on either hand, the power of evil and the power of good,
History of the Devil. I 5
fighting over every contested point a battle in which no
quarter was given. Never, therefore, could Jesus have
passed for the Messiah in the eyes of his countrymen, if
he had not been accounted stronger than the evil spirits,
whenever those possessed were brought to him.
Modern theology, which has well-nigh repudiated the
devil, has dwelt much upon the question whether Jesus
himself shared the belief of his contemporaries in regard
to Satanism. To treat this question adequately, it would
be necessary to enter upon inquiries which are foreign
to the history of the devil. We will simply remark that
there is no authority for thinking that Jesus, out of con-
sideration for popular beliefs, would have feigned a faith
which he did not hold ; to which we would add, that
the principles of his religion were not in themselves
favourable to this kind of faith. The idea that God is
the Father of all, is not easily reconciled with the exist-
ence of a devil. Nowhere does Jesus make belief in the
devil one of the conditions of admission into the Kingdom
of God; and were the devil a mere idea, a bare symbol,
these considerations would remain literally the same.
Purity of heart, thirst for justice, love for God and man,
these are all of them essentials which are entirely inde-
pendent of the question whether Satan exists or not. So
that, whenever Jesus speaks in a general, abstract sense,
without regard to the circumstances of time and place,
he removes the person of Satan from his field of instruc-
tion. He declares, for instance, that our evil thoughts
come from our heart; while, according to the satanic
theory, they ought to be referred to the devil. Still, he
evidently availed himself of the popular belief on this
head, as a form or image to which he attributed no
positive reality. It furnished him with matter for
parable. He addressed as Satan, one of his disciples
who sought to withdraw him from approaching sufferings,
and who, through very affection, became a momentary
tempter. A like observation suggests itself in studying
the theology of St. Paul—at least, in his authentic
I6 - History of the Devil.
epistles. St. Paul evidently believes in the devil; and
yet with him moral evil is connected with the earthly
nature of man, and not with the external and personal
action of the fiend. In a word, the teaching of Jesus
and Paul does not anywhere combat the belief in the
devil; but it can do without, and tends to do without it.
In our own day we see abundance of good Christians who
do not at all concern themselves about the king of hell;
but this belief was one of those germs (of which the
Gospel contains many) which required another intel-
lectual atmosphere for their development. What pre-
cedes has explained to us why there is so much more
about the devil in the New than in the Old Testament.
The belief in the devil and the expectation of the Mes-
siah had a parallel growth. Be it remarked, however,
that if the New Testament often speaks of Satan and
his angels, of spirits “ of the air,” and of the devil,
“quarens quem devoret,” its descriptions of them are
almost colourless. A kind of spiritual reserve still veils
all conceptions of this order. The devils are invisible;
no palpable body is attributed to them ; and a multitude
of superstitions which will grow out of the idea that
they can be seen and handled, are as yet unknown.
Nevertheless, from this point of our history we may con-
– sider the origin of Satan as closed. We see him here as
the link that connects polytheistic dualism with just that
degree of relative dualism which Jewish monotheism
could support. We are now to see him develop himself
under new forms; but he has already attained a shape
which we can no longer ignore. He stands before us the
old Satanas, the bugbear of our forefathers, in whom is
centred all that is unholy and frightful and lying—in a
word, he is the ideal of evil.
History of the Devil. 17
II.
HE earliest ages of Christianity, far from developing–
that side of the Gospel which tended to banish
the devil to the regions of symbolism and personal use-
lessness, served to extend his dominion, by multiplying
his interventions in human affairs. He served as a =
scape-goat upon which the first Christians could expend
their horror of heathen institutions. For some time
Christians did not draw a very distinct line between the
Roman Empire and the empire of Satan. This essenti-
ally Jewish point of view did not last long; but the
favourite theme of most apologists was to attribute
whatever polytheism presented, whether fair or foul,
good or bad, to the devil’s cunning and pride. Wherever
the beautiful and the good were found united, this, in
their eyes, was neither more nor less than so much truth
artfully mixed by the enemy of mankind with fearful
error, in order to retain a better grasp upon man, who
could not be held under the sway of sheer falsehood.
The Alexandrian School alone was more reasonable; but
it had little hold upon the mass of the faithful. And
now the idea spread that Satan was at bottom but a
ridiculous, though for long a powerful, rival of the one
adorable God. Led by a thirst for honour and dominion,
he had aped, as well as he could, the divine perfections,
but had only succeeded in producing a hateful caricature.
But, such as it was, the caricature had blinded the
nations. This subject suggested to Tertullian one of
those characteristic sayings in which his satirical temper
delighted: “Satan,” said he, “is God's ape;” and the -
saying lived. The Graeco-Roman gods became to Chris-
tians, as well as to Jews, demons who had usurped
I 8 History of the Devil.
divine rank. The licentiousness of pagan customs, too
often consecrated by traditional religious ceremonies,
furnished a sort of popular justification to this view,
which was heightened by the moral superiority which
the early Church had, generally, a fair right to contrast
with the corruptions that surrounded her. Satan, there-
fore, became, more than ever, the “prince of this
world.”
But let us not forget one very important circumstance,
namely, that other currents external to the Christian
Church contributed to spread abroad the belief in evil
spirits. Polytheism in its decline obeyed its true nature;
it became more and more dual. Its latest forms, those
for instance which were marked by what they derived
from Platonism and Pythagorism, were all saturated
with dualism, and thus opened a large field to the
imagination for the creation of every kind of evil genius.
At that epoch, asceticism, which consists in slowly kill-
ing the body under the pretext of developing the soul,
was not peculiar to the most exalted members of the
Christian Church, but was found wherever a religious
morality was practised. The ecstacies which were physio-
logically generated by fasting, gave all the appearance of
reality to the imaginary beings they evoked. Apollonius
of Tyana drove away as many foul spirits as a Christian
saint. As Professor Roskoff very justly observes, the
doctrine of angels and devils presented to both Jewish
polytheism and Christian monotheism a sort of neutral
territory on which, to a certain point, they could meet.
The religious movements known under the name of
gnostic sects, which represent, in various proportions,
a mixture of heathen, Jewish, and Christian views, have
as a common feature the belief in fallen angels who are
the tyrants of men and the rivals of God. The great
success of Manićheism, that confluence of Persian dual-
ism and Christianity, is due to the leaning of public
opinion towards whatever portrayed a systematic
struggle between the genius of evil and the genius of
History of the Devil. I 9
good. The Talmud and the Kabbala were subjected
to the same influence. We must not regard Christianity v
as alone responsible for the prominent place Satan took
in the concerns of this world; it was a universal ten-
dency of the epoch, and we should be more correct in
regarding Christianity as affected thereby in common
with all other contemporaneous forms of religion.
The Jewish Messiah became to Christians the Saviour
of guilty humanity. This is why we see the radical
antagonism between Satan and the Messiah reflected in
the primitive doctrine of redemption. From the close
of the second century, this doctrine is summed up in a
grand drama in which Christ and the devil are the prin-
cipal actors. The multitude were contented to believe -
that Christ, descending into hell, had, in virtue of his
right as the stronger of the two, taken from Satan the
Souls he had carried captive. But this rude idea under-
went a refinement. Irenaeus taught that man, after the
fall, having become Satan's rightful property, it would
have been unjust on the part of God to deprive him by
violence of his own ; and that Christ, as a perfect man,
and therefore independent of the devil, offered himself
a ransom for the human family, which bargain the devil
accepted. Soon, however, it became clear that the devil
had made a very foolish reckoning, as Christ did not
remain, after all, in his power. Origen, whose ecclesias-
tical teachings must not always be taken as literally
exact representations of his real opinions, became the
organ of views which freely admitted that both Christ
and Satan had played their parts very cleverly, seeing
that the devil believed he should keep in his power a
prey which was worth more to him than the whole
human race, while Christ knew very well that he should
not remain in Satan's hands. This view, which made –
Jesus the deceiver at the cost of Satan, scandalous as it
appears to us, was, nevertheless, a success, and long pre-
dominated in the Church. Ecclesiastical poetry, popular
preaching, and even pontifical assertion, extended it in
2C) s History of the Devil.
all directions, dramatised it, consecrated it. One can
readily understand that this way of regarding redemp-
tion did not go towards diminishing the devil's sway over
men's minds. Nothing did more to increase fear of the
enemy than vague descriptions of the immensity of his
power, and of the risk run by exposure to his attacks;
especially as, by a singular contradiction from which the
ancient theology never succeeded in extricating itself,
the devil, although declared vanquished, overthrown, and
rendered powerless by his victor Christ, did not the less
maintain his infernal sway over a large majority of man-
– kind. The saints alone could count themselves safe from
his ambushes; and, according to the legends which now
began to spread, great was the prudence and energy they
– required to escape him Everything turned upon this
- constant state of watchfulness. Baptism dwindled into
an exorcism. To become a Christian, was to renounce
— the devil with his pomps and works. Expulsion from
the fold of the Church, whether for immoral behaviour,
or for heterodoxy, was the being “delivered over to
Satan.” It was thus that during this period the doc-
trine of the fall of the evil angels was developed. We
now find it taught that devils were referred to in that
mythic passage of Genesis where the “sons of God saw
the daughters of men that they were fair, and took
them wives of all that they chose,” licentiousness being
considered as the original sin and never-ending concern
of evil spirits; and again, as this hypothesis did not
explain the anterior presence of a wicked angel in the
earthly paradise, the fall of the rebel fiends was dated
from the moment of the Creation. Augustine thought
that in consequence of this fall, their bodies, which were
formerly subtle and invisible, became dense. And here
we have the beginning of a belief in the visible appari-
...tions of the devil. Then came another notion, that
devils, in order to gratify their lust, took advantage of
the night to surprise young persons while asleep; and
hence the succubaº and incubi which played such a
History of the Devil. 2.
prominent part in the middle ages. Saint Victor,
according to the legend, was overcome by a demon who
had artfully assumed the form of a young seductress who
had lost her way at night time in the woods. The
councils, from the fourth century, enjoined bishops to
keep a close watch over those in their dioceses who prac-
tised magic arts, the inventions of the devil; and wicked
women are spoken of who are supposed to run the fields
by night in the train of Diana and other heathen god-
desses. But as yet these imaginary sabbaths are regarded-
as but dreams suggested by Satan to those whose vicious
inclinations gave him a hold over them.
Ere long, however, all became real and material. –
There was not a Saint to whom the devil did not at least
appear once under a human form. Saint Martin even
met him so disguised as to represent Christ. For the
most part, however, in his quality of angel of darkness,
he appeared as a man, and quite black, under which
colour he was wont to escape from the heathen temples
and idols that had been thipwn down by the zeal of con-
verts to the new religion. MAnd then came the idea that v
one could make an agreemént with the devil, by which
the soul might be exchanged for the object of one's
greatest desire. This notion dates from the legend of
Theophilus, a sixth century saint. He, in a moment of
wounded pride, made himself over formally to Satan;
but, being devoured by remorse, he got the Virgin, Mary
to recover the fatal document from the evil one.* !
This legendary episode, written with the express ob-
ject of extending the worship of Mary, necessarily had
important results. The devil, moreover, saw his pres-
tige increase still further, when the conversion of the
* The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine teaches us why -
Satan was not content to take a simple verbal promise. “The
Christians,” said he, “are cheats; they make all sorts of promises
as long as they want me, and then leave me in the lurch and
reconcile themselves with Christ as soon as, by my help, they have
got what they want.”
C
2 2. History of the Devil.
invaders of the Empire, and the missions sent into coun-
tries that had never formed part of the Roman dominions,
introduced into the bosom of the Church a mass of
grossly ignorant people, who were still impregnated with
polytheism. The Church and State, which had been
united since Constantine's time, and were still more
closely cemented under Charlemagne, did what, they
could to refine the coarse minds of those whose teachers
they had become; but, to do this effectually, the tem-
poral and spiritual powers had need to be themselves
less under the sway of the very superstitions they de-
sired to repel. If some among the more clever of the
Popes succeeded in combining with their political plans
a certain amount of toleration for customs and errors
that seemed ineradicable, the great majority of bishops
and missionaries firmly believed that by insisting upon
the extirpation of polytheism they were fighting against
the devil and his host. They inoculated their converts
with the same belief; and thereby considerably pro-
v longed the existence of the heathen divinities. The
good old rural spirits died hard. The sacred legends
contain many of them, and comparative mythology re-
cognises not a few ancient Keltic and Teutonic gods
among the patron saints of our ancestors. Saint
Nicolas, Saint Victor, Saint Denis with the “head-
carrying ” saints in general, Saint Ursula (Horsela),
Saint Venetia, and many others of less fame, enter into
– this category. For a long time, and without its being
looked upon as a renunciation of the catholic faith, it
was usual in England, France, and Germany, to offer
presents, now out of gratitude, now through fear, to the
spirits of the fields and forests, women especially ad-
hering to such old customs. But as the Church still
regarded as demons and devils all superhuman beings
who were not saints or angels, seeing that the character
of the old gods had nothing angelical in it, an inter-
change, or, rather a transformation, was effected. The
good side of these deities served, under new names, to
*
History of the Devil. 2 3
enrich the kingdom of the saints, the kingdom of the
demons had what was left. Belief in the devil, which –
in the earlier ages had something elevated in it, became
simply gross and stupid. At the beginning of the
middle ages certain animals, as cats, toads, rats, mice,
black dogs, wolves, were regarded as specially selected
by the devil and his servants for symbols, auxiliaries,
and even as temporary disguises. In our own times
even, we generally find these animals were consecrated
or sacrificed to the divinities whom demons have re-
placed. Traditions of human sacrifices offered up in
honour of the ancient gods, account doubtless for the
notion that Satan and his slaves have a relish for human
flesh. The were-wolf who eats children has been by
turns a god, a devil, and a sorcerer who went to the
sabbath under the guise of a wolf that he might not be
recognised. We all know that there is no witch without
her cat. Vermin, that sore which then as now was but too —
common a scourge among populations devoid of all sense
of cleanliness, was also to be laid at the door of the
devil and his servants.” A time came when the idea -
* Nearly twenty years ago, while labouring as a pastor in a village
in the north of France, I was sent for by a poor and ignorant workman,
who was living with his wife and six children in the greatest misery.
His household was in the most wretched state, being infested with
vermin which it seemed impossible to get rid of. Every one, the
poor people feared, would soon hear of their state, and refuse them
work. A liard—liards were still in circulation—that had been seen
to move alone, had, they firmly believed, brought them their bad
luck; and the sorcerer, they were no less sure, was a neighbour who
bore them a grudge. f . all the trouble in the world in keepin
the father of the family from avenging himself upon the j
sorcerer, whom he wished to throttle, and in persuading him to
take a note I gave him to the village apothecary; nor did I succeed
in driving from his head the notion that the liard which “went
alone” had to do with his misfortune. On picking up from under
an article of furniture the dreadful liard which he dared not touch,
and bringing it to him to show there was nothing to fear, he said,
“It’s all very well for you, Sir ; you understand Latin.” Under- ~
standing Latin was to those poor folk what “reading the runes"
was among the old Scandinavians. How many such scenes must
have been enacted during the middle ages, when the clergy, far
from opposing such absurdities, were themselves but too ready to
believe in them "
24. History of the Devil.
that the devil had a distinct bodily shape became
settled; and this form was that of the ancient fauns and
Satyrs, with horns, protruding legs, hairy skin, tail,
cloven foot or horse's hoof.
It would be easy to accumulate here semi-burlesque,
semi-tragic details. But we prefer marking the salient
points of the development of belief. We have reachcd.
a period at which we must look at it under a new light.
Among the Jews of the times immediately preceding
the Christian era, Satan had become the adversary of the
Messiah; with the early Christians he was the direct
~antagonist of the Saviour of mankind: but to the
middle ages Christ was up in heaven, far away; and the
immediate, living organism in which his kingdom on
earth was to be realised was the Church, between which
and the devil the war was thenceforward to be waged.
The faith of the peasant consists simply in believ-
ing what the Church believes. Ask him what the
Church believes, and he will answer boldly, “What
– I believe.” And if in the times of which we are
speaking the question had been put, “What does the
devil do?” the answer would have been, “What the
Church does not do ;” while to the question, “And
what is it that the Church does not do?” the response
would have amounted to this, “What the devil does.”
The sabbaths which the ancient councils, when referred
to thereupon, treated as appertaining to imaginary
v regions, had now been something very real. The Ger-
manic idea of fealty, the idea that fidelity to the suze-
rain was the first of virtues, just as treason on the part
of the vassal was the greatest of crimes, was introduced
into the Church, and contributed not a little to give to
aught approaching infidelity to Christ the colour of the
blackest depravity. The wizard was as faithful to his
master the devil as was the good Christian to his
heavenly liege; and just as vassels came yearly to render
homage to their lord, so did the feudal servants of
Satan hasten to pay him like honour, either on Some ac-
History of the Devil. 2 sº
ºf
customed day or at a special convocation. The weird-
chase through the air of wizards and witches, as they
hastened to the nightly rendezvous, was no other than a
transformation of the Keltic and German myth of the
Wild Huntsman. But the master who awaited them
was a sort of god; and in the grand assemblies of the
devilish horde he was honoured by the celebration of a
burlesque of the mass; the spirit of evil being wor-
shipped by reversing the ceremonies which serve to
glorify the author of good. The very name of sabbath
came from the confusion of devil-worship and mere non-
catholic rites; the Church having placed on the same
footing Jews, excommunicate persons, heretics, and
necromancers. To this confusion there was one circum-
stance which contributed greatly. Into most of the sects
that had revolted against the Church (and above all the
one which holds so exalted and so sad a place in French
history, that of the Albigenses) the old gnostic and
Manichaean leaven had thoroughly instilled itself.
Dualism was the principle of their theology.” This
accounts for the idea that at their religious meetings,
which rivalled the mass, they simply said the mass-
service backwards, a mode of worship which was in high
favour with Satan. If, bearing this in mind, we re-
member how easily in mediaeval times the State allowed
itself to be persuaded that its main business was to ex-
terminate heretics, we shall cease to wonder at the
severity of the penal laws directed against supposed sor-
CererS.
The absorbing nature of the belief in the devil during
the middle ages is the point we wish to make clear.
—e
* I am, of course, speaking here of the leaders and the initiated,
for the multitude could not fathom the complicated doctrine of
cantharism. They saw in it nothing more than a violent expression
of hatred of the priesthood. Thence comes another misunder-
standing, not uncommon in our own days, between the Vaudois,
who are free from all dualism, and the Albigenses, whose dualism
was, in some sort, the official belief.
gº
26 History of the Devil.
Those who have still this faith can hardly imagine to
what a degree it then controlled men's whole lives. It was
the one fixed idea with every one, particularly from the .
thirteenth to the fifteenth century, the period at which
we may consider this superstition to have reached its
– climax. A fixed idea tends, among those whom it pos-
sesses, to centre everything in itself. When, at the pre-
sent day, we observe closely those of our contemporaries
who devote themselves to spiritualism, it is surprising to
see how fertile their imagination becomes when they
are busy in interpreting in favour of their hobby the
most trifling and unimportant circumstances. The un-
latching of a half-closed door, an insect describing
arabeques in its flight, the fall of a badly-balanced
article, the creaking of furniture at night-time, any one
of these petty accidents suffices to give wing to their
fancy. If we generalize such a mental state, by substi-
tuting faith in the incessant interventions of the devil
for the harmless illusions of our spiritualists, we shall
get a fair notion of what took place in the middle ages.
Among the numberless records from which we might
Quote, we will take the Revelations of the Abbot
Richalmus, who lived in Franconia some seven hundred
years ago, and who belonged to the Cistercian order.”
These Revelations, though now forgotten, had formerly
a wide-spread fame. Abbot Richalmus boasted the pos-
session of a special power of discerning and detecting
the machinations of Satan’s satellites, who moreover, ac-
cording to the abbot, were especially given to playing
their impish tricks upon churchmen and good Christians.
And right diabolically did they worry the poor man
—From his distraction during mass to the nausea that too
often troubles his digestion, from the discords of the
choir-men to the fits of coughing that interrupt his ser-
mons, all is of fiendish agency. “For instance,” says
* Liber Revelationum de Insidiis et Versutiis Daemonum adversus.
Homines.
History of the Devil. 27
he to his attendant, “when I sit down to holy studies,
the devils make me feel heavy with sleep. Then I
stretch my hands beyond my cuffs to give them a chill.
Forthwith the spirits prick me under my clothes like
So many fleas, which causes me to put my hands there;
and so they get warm again, and my reading grows care-
less.” They love, he tells us, to make people ugly. To
one they give a red nose, to another cracked lips. If a
man likes to close his mouth decently, then they make
his lower lip droop. “Come,” he says to his acolyte,
“just look at my lip; for twenty years has an imp clung
to it, just to make it hang down.” And so on, in
the same strain. When asked whether there are many
devils who thus wage war with man, the abbot Richal-
mus replies that each one of us is as closely surrounded
by them as a man when plunged in the sea is by the
waves. Fortunately, the sign of the cross was generally—
enough to disconcert them ; but not always, for they
understand well the human heart, and know how to take
advantage of its weak side. One day, when some monks
were gathering together stones under the abbot's orders,
for the purpose of building a wall, he heard a young
devil who was hidden under them call out very distinctly,
“What a troublesome task " " This he did that he might
dispose the monks to grumble at the labours imposed
upon them. To the sign of the cross, he tells us, it is –
often useful to add the aid of holy water and salt. Evil
spirits cannot bear salt. “When I am at dinner, and
the devil has taken away my appetite, as soon as I have
tasted a little salt it comes back to me; and if, shortly
afterwards, I lose it again, I take some more salt, and
am once more an hungered.” Here we have the old –
idea that salt was preservative, vivifying, agreeable to
gods and men; and, consequently, opposed to whatever
is ungodly. In the hundred and thirty chapters which v
make up his Revelations, the abbot scarcely does anything
but subject to his one fixed idea the most trivial events
of domestic and, particularly, of convent life. But the
28 History of the Devil.
popularity this book, which was published after his
death, enjoyed, proved that he had simply abounded in
the notions of his contemporaries. Innumerable
parallels may be found in the literature of the age.
The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine, one of the
most popular books of the middle ages, would suffice as
an illustration.
This incessant turning of the thoughts devilward, had
two equally logical consequences, though they were of a
very opposite character. It had its comic and its serious
v. aspect. Through seeing Satan everywhere, a familiarity
with him was engendered, and by a kind of unconscious
mental protestation against the imaginary monsters
"created by traditional teaching, people got so bold as to
— manage his horned majesty very easily. The legends
pictured him always as so miserably outdone by the
sagacity of Saints and holy priests, that his reputation
for cleverness gradually waned. It was thought by no
means impossible to turn his stupidity to account. Had
he not, for instance, been such a simpleton as to get
architects out of hobbles by supplying them with
splendid plans for the cathedrals of Aix-la-Chapelle
and Cologne : It is true that at Aix he had bargained
for the soul of the first person who entered the church,
and at Cologne for that of the architect himself; but
then he was outwitted, after all. At Aix, a wolf was
goaded into the newly-finished church ; at Cologne, the
architect, having got possession of the promised plan,
instead of giving Satan a proper deed by which his soul
was made over, suddenly draws from under his gown a
bone of one of the eleven thousand virgins, which he
thrusts into the evil one's face, who makes off with a
– thousand oaths. It is well known how prominent was
the part assigned him in the mediaeval religious plays.
, The popular imagination still pictured the redemption as
a divine stratagem by which the enemy of mankind was
fairly duped ; and thus it was easy to conceive a host of
other cases in which Satan was caught in his own net.
History of the Devil. 29
What laughter his scrapes excited among the good folk!— .
There are ample reasons for believing that he became —
the personage who was the most to their taste, if he did
not gain the largest share of their sympathy. The rest
of the dramatis personae had their parts traced out for
them by tradition; in his case there was always room
for a little extemporaneous acting. For a long time he
represented the comic element of the sacred drama.
His character, half mountebank, half grim, was con-
veniently flexible. In France, where there has always —
been an inclination to subject the theatre to precise
rules, there were popular pieces called devilries, vulgar
and often obscene masquerades, in which at least four
devils were expected to display their gambols, and, from
which it would seem we get the expression, faire le
diable à quatre. In Germany, too, the devil was an
amusing character on the stage. There is an old Saxon
“mystery” of the Passion, in which Satan repeats as a
mocking echo the last words of Judas while he hangs
himself; then, when according to the sacred tradition
the bowels of the traitor gush out, he puts them into a
basket, and sings an appropriate ditty as he carries
them off.
But all this did not prevent the devil's generally-
causing terrible fear. To go to the play was, in the
middle ages, much the same as going to church. When
there, there was nothing to hinder one's making a butt
of the hated being whose malice was powerless to harm
the actors in the Sacred performances. But listening -
to mysteries could not be made the main business of
life; and the realities of every day soon restored his
prestige. The number of persons who were suspected
of having dealings with Satan was enormous; so great,
that when the success of an enemy or of a bold plot
seemed otherwise inexplicable, it was at once set down to
Satanic agency. Enguerrand de Marigny, the Templars, v
poor Joan of Arc, and many other illustrious victims
of political hatred, were convicted of witchcraft. Among
zº
3O History of the Devil.
the Popes themselves, some, as John XXII., Gregory
VII., and Clement W., encountered the same suspicion.
At this epoch the notion arose that agreements made
with the devil must be signed with the blood of those
in league with him, that it might be clearly understood
— that their persons and lives were his ; while the old
Italian superstition was resuscitated by which one's enemy
was destroyed by mutilating or piercing little waxen
figures, made in his image, and placed under a spell.
Councils were summoned expressly to check the sup-
posed spread of witchcraft. Pope John XXII., himself
accused of necromancy, declared, in a bull promulgated
in 1317, what bitter grief was caused him by those
compacts made with the devil by his physicians and
courtiers, by which other men were led to take part in
the like impious doings. From the thirteenth century,
the crime of sorcery was placed on a level with the
greatest offences; and popular ignorance was but too
— ready to furnish fuel to the zeal of the inquisitors. At
Toulouse a noble lady, fifty-six years of age, Angela de
Labarète by name, was the first who was burned as a
sorceress, in which special quality she formed part of
the great auto-da-fé which took place in that city in
1275. At Carcassonne, from 1320 to 1350, more than
four hundred executions for witchcraft are on record.
v Up to the end of the fourteenth century, however, these
horrible displays were localized; but in 1484 a decree of
Pope Innocent VIII. extended trial for witchcraft over
the whole of Christendom. Then began in Europe that
hideous witch-hunt which marks the climax of the be-
lief in the devil, which concentrated and condensed it
during more than three centuries; and which at last,
succumbing to the moral force of modern times, was to
carry away with it the dark belief from which it arose.
History of the Devil. 3 I
III.
N the fifteenth century a momentary lull of orthodox
fanaticism rendered the inquisitor's task somewhat
difficult in the treatment of heresy proper. On the banks
of the Rhine as well as in France, people seem to have
begun to weary of the insatiable ghoul that threatened
everybody, while it healed none of the ills of the Church
to which it had been applied as a sovereign remedy.
Faith in the Church itself as a perfect and infallible
institution was tottering, and the inquisitors carried to
the Holy See their murmurs at the increasing obstacles
placed in their way by local powers and parish clergy.
Still, even those whose faith in the Church was shaken,
and who inclined towards religious toleration, did not
propose to leave a free course to the devices of the devil
and his agents. It was at this time that the famous
bull Summis desiderantes appeared, by which Innocent
VIII. added to the power of the officers of the Inquisition
that of prosecuting those guilty of witchcraft, and of
applying to them the rules which hitherto had only been
aimed at depravatio hasretica. Long is the list of
machinations enumerated in the pontifical bull, from
tempests and the destruction of crops to the spells cast
upon men and women to prevent, the increase of the
human family. Armed with this bull, which thundered
the severest pains and penalties against, the refractory,
and which was confirmed by other decrees of the same
sense and origin, the inquisitors Henry Institoris and
Jacob Sprenger wielded that Witch-Hammer, Malleus
Malificarum,--which was long throughout Europe the
standard code of action against those suspected of sorcery.
It received the sanction of the Pope, and the approval
32 History of the Devil.
of the Emperor Maximilian and of the theological faculty
of Cologne. The perusal of this heavy and wearisome
treatise can hardly fail to provoke a shudder; a careful
study of the false put in the stead of the true, of the
repeated sophisms with which the book abounds, of the
pedantic folly with which its authors heap together
whatever can give a shadow of likelihood to their night-
mares, together with the cold-blooded cruelty which dic-
tates their prosecutions and summonses,—this could not
but disgust the modern student, were it not his duty to
bring to the bar of history one of the most lament-
able aberrations that have warped the conscience of
humanity. -
Everything is explained in this conjuring-book. We
learn why the devil” enables his servants to change
themselves reali transformatione et essentialiter into
wolves and other dangerous animals; why it is heresy
to disbelieve in the power of magic; how the incubi and
succubae work their ends: why the number of witches
is greater than ever; why David in olden time drove
away the spirit that troubled Saul by showing him a
harp in the form of the cross, &c. We are told, again,
that the reason why there are more witches than wizards
lies in the fact that women are more ready than men to
be beguiled by the devil's promises; and this, because
the fluidity of their temperament makes them more easily
acted upon by his inspiration; in a word, because being
weaker than men they readily seek supernatural aid in
order to satisfy their vengeance or their sensuality. All
manner of recipes are recommended to persons who have
the good sense to guard themselves against the charms
that may be practised upon them. The sign of the cross,
holy water, the judicious use of salt, and of the name of
the Holy Trinity, are among the principal exorcisms.
* The authors gravely state that the word diabolus comes from
dia or duo and bolus, quod est morsellus, because the devil, they
say, kills two things, scilicet corpus et animum.
History of the Devil. 33
The sound of bells is accounted a very energetic pre-
servative; and therefore it is well to ring them during
storms, as the evil spirits, who cannot support the sacred
Sound, are thereby driven away, and checked in their
work of perturbation. This superstitious custom, which
has lasted to our own day, denotes clearly the confusion
of demons ecclesiastic with the old divinities of storm
and tempest.
But what is above all worthy of attention, is the mode
of criminal action developed in this book, and which
became law everywhere. It is exactly based upon the
prosecutions instituted by the Inquisition against heretics.
As witchcraft was the outcome of a league with the devil –
it presupposed the abjuration of the baptismal vow, and
was, consequently, a kind of apostacy, a heresy of the
gravest order. Denunciations without proof were ad-
mitted. Even public hearsay sufficed to bring the
charge under the judge's scrutiny. The depositions of
all comers were received, no matter how infamous, no
matter whether or not they were the enemies of the
accused parties. The trial was to be as summary as
possible, and useless formalities cut short. The witch
was to be cross-questioned until something peculiar was
detected in her life that served to strengthen the sus-
picions which hung over her. The judge was not obliged
to name her accusers. She was allowed a defender, who --
knew no more of the matter than she did, and who had to
limit what he said to the defence of the person accused,
but not of her criminal acts, as this would turn suspicion
upon himself. Confession was to be obtained by torture,
together with all the circumstances connected with the
offence. -
In order to obtain full and prompt confession, her life —
might be promised her; but—and this is expressed in so
many words—such promise was not binding. Torture
was to be repeated every three days; and the judge was
to use all needful caution lest its effects should be neu-
tralised by charms hidden about the person of the accused.
34 History of the Devil.
He was even to abstain from looking her in the face,
seeing that witches had been known to be gifted by the
devil with an influence which made judges who thus
gazed on them unable to pronounce their condemnation.
—When at last she had been well and rightly convicted,
she was to be delivered over to the secular arm, to be
put to death without further parley.
This rapid glance is enough to show that the unhappy
creatures who fell into the clutches of this terrible
tribunal, might well leave all hope at their prison door.
There is nothing more shocking than an attentive exami-
nation of witch trials. Women were always, as we have
seen it learnedly explained, in the majority. Hatred,
jealously, vengeance, and, more than all, suspicions
caused by wretchedness and ignorance, found in these
trials a vent of which they did not fail to avail them-
selves. Not unfrequently, poor creatures were the
victims of their own imagination, stimulated by an
hysterical temperament, or by the fear of hell fire.
-Those who in our own day have had an opportunity of
examining cases of religious mania know how readily
women believe themselves fallen from grace and given
over to the power of the evil one. All such sad cases,
which are now treated with the greatest tenderness in
institutions devoted to their care, were then looked upon
as “possessions” of the devil, or as witches, and, horrible
to think of, not a few of them believed it themselves |
Many related that they had been to the sabbath, and
had given themselves up to the most shameful excesses.
Greatly must such confessions have aggravated the danger
of those who denied with the firmness of innocence that
they had committed the abominations of which they
were accused Torture was at hand to tear from them
what they refused to say, and thus the belief took deep
root in the minds of the judges, even when they were
comparatively humane and just, that over and above
crimes committed by natural means, there was a long
list of offences the supernatural origin of which made
History of the Devil. 35
them doubly heinous. And how was it possible to deal
too sharply with such offences?
In the single year 1485, and in the district of Worms —
alone, eighty-five witches were delivered to the flames.
At Geneva, at Basle, at Hamburg, at Ratisbon, at
Vienna, and in a multitude of other towns, there were
executions of the same kind. At Hamburg, among
other victims, a physician was burnt alive because he
saved the life of a woman who had been given up by
the midwife. In Italy, during the year 1523, there
were burnt in the diocese of Como alone more than
two hundred witches. This was after the new bull
hurled at witchcraft by Pope Adrian VI. In Spain it -
was still worse; there, in 1527, two little girls of from
nine to eleven years of age denounced a host of witches,
whom they pretended to detect by a mark in their left
eye. In England and Scotland, political influence was
brought to bear upon sorcery; Mary Stuart was ani- —
mated by a lively zeal against witches. In France, the –
Parliament of Paris happily removed business of this
kind from the ecclesiastical tribunals; and under
Louis XI., Charles VIII., and Louis XII. there were but
few condemnations for the practice of magic; but from
the time of Francis I., and especially from Henry II.,
the scourge re-appeared. Jean Bodin, a man of sterling
worth in other respects, but stark mad upon the question
of witchcraft, communicated his mania to all classes of
the nation. His contemporary and disciple, Boguet,
showed how that France swarmed with witches and
wizards. “They increase and multiply on the land,”
Said he, “even as do the caterpillars in our gardens.
is e e Would that they were all got together in a
heap, so that a single fire might burn them all at once.”
In Savoy, Flanders, the Jura Mountains, Lorraine, Béarn,
Provence, and in almost all parts of France, the frightful
hecatombs were seen ablaze. In the seventeenth century-
the witch-fever somewhat abated, though it burst out
here and there, centralizing itself chiefly in the convents
36 History of the Devil.
of hysterical nuns. The terrible histories of the priests
Gaufridy and Urban Grandier are well known. In
Germany, and particularly in its southern parts, witch-
– burning was still more frequent. In one small prin-
cipality at least 242 persons were burnt between 1646
and 1651 ; and, horribile dictu, in the official records of
these executions we find that among those who suffered
were children of from one to six years of age In
1657 the witch-judge, Nicholas Remy, boasted of having
burnt 900 persons in fifteen years. It would even
seem that it is to the proceedings against sorcery that
Germany owes the introduction of torture as an ordinary
mode of getting at the truth. Mr. Roskoff reproduces
a catalogue of the executions of witches and wizards
in the episcopal town of Würzburg in Bavaria, up to
the year 1629.” He enumerates thirty-one executions in
all, not counting some regarded by the compilers of the
catalogue as not important enough to mention. The
number of victims at each execution varies from two to
seven. Many are distinguished by such surnames as
The Big Hunchback, The Sweetheart, The Bridge-keeper,
The Old Pork-woman, &c. Among them appear people of
all sorts and conditions, actors, workmen, jugglers, town
and village maidens, rich burghers, nobles, students,
magistrates even, and a fair number of priests. Many
are simply entered as “a foreigner.” Here and there is
added to the name of the condemned person, his age and
a short notice. Among the victims, for instance, of the
twentieth execution figure “Little Barbara, the prettiest
girl in Würzburg;” “a student who could speak all
manner of languages, who was an excellent musician
vocaliter et instrumentaliter ;” “the master of the hos-
pice, a very learned man.” We find, too, in this gloomy
account, the cruel record of children burnt for witchcraft;
* In 1659 the number of those put to death for witchcraft
amounted in this diocese to 900. In the neighbouring bishoprick
of Bamberg at least 600 were burnt. -
History of the Devil. 37
here, a little girl of about nine or ten years of age, with
her baby sister, younger than herself (their mother was
burnt a little while afterwards); here, boys of ten or
eleven ; again, a young girl of fifteen; two children
from the poor-house ; the little boy of a councillor
. . . . The pen falls from one's hand in recapitulating
such monstrosities. Cannot those who would endow
catholicity with the dogma of papal infallibility hearken,
before giving their vote, to the cries that rise before God,
and which history re-echoes, of those poor innocent ones
whom pontifical bulls threw into the flames?
The seventeenth century saw the rapid diminution of
trials and tortures. In one of his good moments,
Louis XIV. mitigated greatly the severity of this special
legislation. For this he had to undergo the remon-
strances of the parliament of Rouen, which believed
society would be ruined if those who dealt in sorcery
were merely condemned to perpetual confinement. The
truth is, that belief in witchcraft was so wide-spread
that, from time to time, even throughout the seven-
teenth century, there were isolated executions. One of
the latest and most notorious was that of Renata, Saen-
ger, superior of the convent of Unterzell, near Würz-
burg (1748). At Landshut, in Bavaria, in 1756, a
young girl of thirteen years was convicted of impure
intercourse with the devil, and put to death. Seville, in
1781, and Glaris, in 1783, saw the last two known victims
to this fatal superstition.
38 History of the Devil.
IV.
WEAPON has sometimes been framed against
A. Christianity out of these brutal deeds. It has
been affirmed that they are traceable to a belief with
which Christianity alone had inoculated nations who
would have otherwise ignored it. This point of view
is superficial, and historically inaccurate. The fault
really lies at the door of dualism, which is far older
than the Christianity it has outlived. Pagan an-
tiquity had its necromancers, its magicians, its old
ghoul-like lamiae and veneficae, who were no less feared
y than our witches. We have shown that dualism is in-
herent in all forms of nature-worship; that these
“natural” religions, when at their full development,
result, as in Persia, in India, and even in the latest evo-
lutions of Graeco-Roman paganism, in an eminently
dualistic conception of the forces or divinities which
direct the course of events:—that the Jewish Satan
owes, not his personal origin, but his growth and total
depravity, to his contact with the Persian Ahriman:
and that the Satan of the Christians inherited in his
turn, and his angels with him, the worst side of the
character of the vanquished divinities, together with the
most frightful of their symbolisms. Indeed, the devil
of the middle ages is at once heathen, Jewish and
Christian. He is Jewish and Christian, because moral
evil is his proper domain; for the physical evils of
which he is the author arise solely out of his eager
desire to corrupt men's souls, which, for their part,
only give themselves up to him for criminal purposes:
and he is so inasmuch as his power, great as it may
be, cannot transcend the boundaries it has pleased divine
History of the Devil. 39
authority to mark out. He is heathen in all that he
retains of the old polytheistic belief. The medieval
faith in demons may be regarded as paganism taking its
“revenge,” or as the non-absorbed residuum of poly-
theism, perpetuating itself under new forms.
It was not solely the authority of the Church that V
prolonged the reign of Satan and his angels; it was
mainly the intellectual condition which is betrayed, up
to an epoch approaching our own, by all works of any
scientific pretension during the whole period anterior to
Bacon and Descartes. Anything like real knowledge of
nature did not exist; that her laws were inviolable, had
yet to be declared. Alchemy, astrology, and the medical /
practice of the time, all turned upon magic; they, no
less than the theology of the age, were based upon belief
in occult influences, in talismans, in the power of words,
and in impossible transmutations. Even after the Renais-
sance, what a mystic and superstitious medley is pre-
sented in the physiological doctrines of Cardan and
Paracelsus and Van Helmont l The general state of vº
men's minds, determined, I acknowledge, to a great
extent by the Church, but by the Church while herself
undergoing the influence of preponderating ideas—has
been the real cause of that long series of follies and
abominations which constitutes the history of the devil
in the middle ages and in modern times. The proof of
this may be seen in the fact that, at a time and in coun-
tries where the Church was still very powerful and by
no means lenient, the belief in the devil gradually faded
out of real life, suffered repeated attacks, and at last fell
into ridicule without such a grave change in the ideas
of enlightened Europe being signalised by any remark-
able persecution. The imagination of the ages of ignor-
ance sometimes takes a prophetic flight. The old writer
tells us how that at the hour of night appointed by the
king of hell for the sabbath of his faithful followers,
demons, witches, and wizards assemble from all parts of
the rendezvous. The place of meeting is generally a
4O History of the Devil.
waste heath, a forest glade, or a naked mountain-top.
They come from every quarter of the horizon, breath-
less, dishevelled, frenzied. Scarcely have they alighted,
ere they turn towards Satan to pay him their dismal
homage. He contemplates with pride the great army of
the accursed. They are his, body and soul. The wind
moans as it passes over the hellish gang. The moon
scarcely dares to peer through the dark fringes of the
heavy clouds. Bats, owls, osprays hover in its pale rays.
Soon the sacrilegious ceremony ends, and the orgies
begin: nameless dances, contortions, yells, the blas-
phemies of the damned,—a deafening rout ! Woe to
the benighted wanderer who becomes the unwilling wit-
ness of these hideous revelries! . . . . But suddenly a
low but clear sound is heard. It is the crow of a cock
in the neighbouring village. A ray of light silvers the
horizon. With it, everything vanishes; every vestige
of the whirling throng is gone. The very grass shows
no trace of the footsteps of the gang. What has hap-
pened? . . . . The old writers learnedly explain the
*transformation. Neither Satan nor his followers, they
tell us, can bear the daylight.
It is light, then, that drives away devils, wizards, and
wº. did those who said this know how truly
they spoke. It is, in very truth, the light of a purer
religion and of a more genuine science that has dispelled
the night-mare of the middle-ages.
. . The two great causes which worked a deep change in
the general state of the intellect, and thereby brought
about the irretrievable decadence of belief in the devil,
were the indirect influence of the Reformation, and the
progress of science. It may seem surprising that we
mention the Reformation here. The sixteenth centu
reformers in no sense opposed faith in the devil. Luther
held to it closely; and so did most of his friends. It
was owing to a certain coolness of intellect, to a distrust
of whatever gave too free play to the imagination, that
Calvin was always very cautious in speaking of a subject
History of the Devil. 4. I
which turned the best heads; but he did not the less
share the common notions of Satan and his power; and
he asserted them more than once. It was an indirect,
but not on that account a less cogent, influence to which
we refer. What, among the nations who embraced the
Reformation, struck the first blow, and a very telling
one, at his infernal majesty, was, that all fear of him
was taken away by virtue of the newly proclaimed prin-
ciples. The idea of the absolute authority of God,
which was so all-absorbing among the Protestants of the
seventeenth century, that idea which they pushed to
the paradox of predestination,-quickly led them to
regard Satan as a mere instrument of the divine will,
and his doings as simply the means it pleased God to
use in accomplishing his hidden designs. The Chris-
tian's faith enabled him to despise the rebel angel, who
was powerless to harm the elect. We know what sort
of reception he had when he paid Luther a visit at
Wartburg. The simplification of the ritual, and the
discredit of the supernatural power that had been attri-
buted to the clergy, tended greatly to free the minds of
the simple from the weary incubus. Exorcisms, whether
at baptism, or in supposed cases of demoniacal posses-
sion, were done away with ; those performances, that so
terrified the imagination, in which the priest, flourishing
his holy-water brush, attacked the devil with dashes of
water, repaid by the evil one in frightful blasphemies,
were at an end. People ceased to believe in incubi and
succubae. If, here and there, a person was thought to be
possessed, prayer and moral exhortations were the only
remedies employed; and ere long it became a very rare
thing to hear demoniacs spoken of among Protestant
peoples. The idea that the Bible miracles were the only
true ones, illogical as it was, led people to live on from
day to day without fearing or expecting any more to
occur. The devil's miracles were the first to lose their
credit when the decline of belief in the supernatural
began. Thus Satan lapses into just what he was in the
*
gº...?
42 History of the Devil.
first century, or even to something less, a tempting, in-
visible, impalpable spirit, whose suggestions must be
resisted, and from whom regeneration alone delivers us,
and that surely. Even his old part in the drama of the
redemption is no longer conceded to him. All now is
transacted immediately between the faithful and his God.
For it is now God, and no longer Satan, who is held to
take the ransom offered by Jesus for the deliverance of
sinners. In a word, without as yet thinking of denying
Satan's existence and power, the Reformation, while still
making great use of his name in popular teaching and
preaching, by slow degrees dismisses him to an abstract,
ideal sphere, without any clear connection with every-
day life. Had he been looked upon simply as a con-
venient personification of the power of moral evil in the
world, Protestant piety would have been but little
affected.* French catholicism in its palmiest period,
the seventeenth century, while influenced much more
than is generally supposed by the Reformation, presents
a very similar character. With what moderation do its
most illustrious representative men, Bossuet, Fénelon,
and even such preachers as Bourdaloue, treat this part
of Catholic doctrine ! Good taste takes with them the
place of rationalism ; and who, after reading their works,
wonders that a Louis Quatorze, scant as was his tender-
ness in dealing with religious questions, could show
himself sceptical in the matter of witchcraft, and less
Superstitious than the Parliament of Rouen 3
– Even in ages of the darkest ignorance, there were
disbelievers in witches and wizards. The Lombard law,
by a remarkable exception, forbade the prosecution of
masks, as sorcerers were called in Italy. A king of
Hungary of the eleventh century forbade mention to be
v/
~ * The confirmation of what we advance here may be found in two
facts, which are equally well-known though differing in character,
namely, the conduct of the Protestant physician Duncan in the
case of Urbain Grandier, and the poetical transformation of Satan
under the pen of Milton in the midst of rigorous orthodoxy.
History of the Devil. 43
made of them, for the simple reason that they did not
exist. Agobard, Archbishop of Lyons, classed belief in
sabbaths among the absurdities bequeathed by paganism
to the ignorant. The Malleus Maleficarum certainly
had in view opponents who denied not only witchcraft,
but also the intervention of the devil in human concerns,
seeing that it insisted upon both in laboured scholastic
arguments. At the time when trials for leagues with
the devil were in full vogue, there was a brave Jesuit
named Spee, whose humane feelings got the better of
the spirit of his order. While engaged in the charge of
souls in Franconia, it was his duty to accompany to the
stake, during a few years, more than two hundred per-
sons convicted of witchcraft. One day the Archbishop
of Mayence, Philip of Schoenborn, asked him why he, a
young man of scarcely thirty, had grey hair already.
“Through grief,” he replied, “for the many wizards I
have had to prepare for death, no one of whom was
guilty.” It was he who wrote a Cautio Criminalis,
printed under his name in 1631, and which, without
denying witchcraft, or even the lawfulness of the penal-
ties directed against it, entreats inquisitors and magis-
trates to increase their precautions against condemning
so many innocents to capital punishment. Before Spee's
time, a Protestant physician attached to the person of
Duke William of Cleves had written in the same strain
a book of considerable learning for the age, the fruit of
distant voyages and numerous observations, in which,
while he admitted the reality of magic, he denied witch-
craft properly so called, and sharply charged the clergy
with keeping alive popular superstitions, and making
good folk believe that the troubles they could not help
them through were the work of sorcerers who had sold
themselves to the devil. It required no little courage to
speak out thus in those days. To take the part of
wizards was to expose one's-self to the charge of witch-
craft; and in these sad annals examples are not rare of
judges and priests who, victims of their humanity or
44. History of the Devil.
their justice, were sentenced and burned with those
whom they had sought to save. The French physician
Gabriel Naude undertook the same treatment of the
question in his Apology for Men accused of Magic
(1669). But the causes the slow influence of which
we have described had not yet so far transformed men's
minds that they were able to emancipate themselves
– from the devil. A total demolition of the edifice was
necessary on the one hand, and, on the other, a religious
justification of this destruction. Here, as elsewhere,
progress could only go on effectively upon the condition
that religious sanction was blended with purely rational
arguments. This law of human progress verifies itself
in all times and with regard to all questions. If it is
resisted, public opinion divides itself into two camps,
which mutually hold one another in check; frowning at
each other, without advancing a step. What had come
through the Church, must pass away through the
– Church. The honour of striking a decisive blow at the
superstition we are examining is due to the Dutch pastor
Balthazar Bekker, who appeared in the lists, not only in
the name of good sense and humanity, but as a theolo-
gian, and published his famous work, entitled, The
Enchanted World (1691-1693). Four thousand copies
exhausted in two months, the rapid translation of this
thick book into all the languages of Europe, and the hot
controversies it excited, all of which it has survived,
suffice to show what a mark the work made upon the
age.
It is quite true that the demonstrations of the Dutch
– theologian would not have like value in our eyes. Not
yet venturing, for instance, to emancipate himself from
the Scriptures, which he regarded as of infallible
authority, he twists and turns the text in such a manner
as to pare away the doctrine of a personal devil who
busies himself with the actions and thoughts of men.
He succeeds, however, in drawing attention to many
details, not hitherto noticed, which go to prove that the
History of the Devil. 45
Scriptural teaching about the devil is neither definite,
nor harmonious, nor in conformity with the opinions of
the middle ages. He subjects to a pitiless criticism all
the threadbare arguments that, on the ground of expe-
rience, had been used to uphold popular prejudice. His
discussion of the trial of Urbain Grandier and the
Ursulines of Loudun, which was still within every one's
memory, must have greatly struck his readers. A fact
like this, that could be analysed with the documents in
one's hands, threw a clear light upon a heap of other
more obscure cases of an older date, which had been
constantly appealed to by the partisans of the devil.
For the first time, too, universal history was laid under
contribution to show that belief in devils established an
incontestable relationship between the polytheistic and
Christian faiths. The whole spirit of the book is
summed up in the aphorisms with which it ends:—
“There is no witchcraft where there is no faith in it ; /
do not believe in it, and it will cease to be. . . .
Get rid of all these silly old-wives' fables, and exercise
yourselves in godliness.” Here was true prophecy; but
it was not given to the author to see it fulfilled. To
making light of Satan he added the offence, a very
grave one in the eyes of Dutch orthodoxy, of being a
zealous Cartesian. He was deprived of his living by a-
synod, and died soon afterwards. But the career of his
book could not be checked; and it made its way well.
From the date of its appearance, the cause of the devil
may be considered as rejected by the tribunal of scientific
theology. The progress of the human mind, and the
knowledge of nature and modern philosophy, did the
rest.
The spirit of science, as constituted since the time of
Bacon and Descartes, no longer tolerates the hurried con-
clusions that so easily gained the assent of the ages in
which imagination bore rule, and in which men's readi-
ness to pronounce judgment upon obscure questions was
proportioned to their ignorance. Experimental philo- V
46 History of the Devil.
sophy, the only true method, gives as much solidity to
the theses it verifies, as it inspires distrust of whatever
— avoids the scope of examination. Beyond all doubt there
are essential truths which we cannot subject to the test
of experience; but these, to say the least, compensate us
for that drawback by their close affinity with our nature,
our life, and our conscience. If, for instance, it could be
said that belief in the devil commended itself to us on
account of its great moral usefulness, in that it improves
those who share it, and elevates a man's character by
making him more pure and brave and unselfish, then
there would be good motives for trying to save it from
the formidable attacks of modern reason. But the re-
y verse is the case. Belief in the devil necessarily tends
to blunt the sense of individual culpability. If I do
wrong, not because I am bad, but because another, whose
power is stronger than my own will, has driven me into
wrong-doing, then my fault is certainly lessened, if not
annulled. We have passed under review the wretched
superstitions, the dangerous follies, and terrible crimes,
which this belief so long inspired. But the disproof of
witchcraft carries with it, some may urge, no disproof of
the existence of a personal evil genius, against whom
men must defend themselves, as against a foe who goes
about perpetually seeking to lead them on to sin. But
let such reflect whether witchcraft can be so easily
severed from the principle of which it is the offspring.
Once admit the devil, and wizards follow as a matter of
— course. If there is really a being of superhuman strength,
who seeks, as it is said, to work our moral ruin, for his
private satisfaction, is it not evident that, in order the
better to accomplish his end, he will try to catch weak
souls, by putting in their way the means of procuring
what they desire? It is quite consistent that belief in
the devil should have found its definite outcome in belief
in sorcerers, and that this latter, having succumbed be-
fore experience, should have carried in its ruin the belief
– in the devil himself. If there is, in good sooth, a devil,
History of the Devil. 47
2'
then there are wizards; and since there are no such things
as wizards, it is clear there is no devil. This is what the
condensed good sense of the three last centuries authorises
us to conclude; and this conclusion still awaits refutation.
The eighteenth century made the mistake of supposing
that traditional beliefs could be destroyed by turning
them into ridicule. When a belief that has for awhile
been derided has deep roots in the human conscience, it
easily survives the sarcasms of which it has been the
object; and the time comes when those sarcasms no
longer move laughter, for they chafe the innermost
feelings of religious persons, and the good taste of the
sensitive. But in the devil's case the laughter of the
eighteenth century has remained victorious. The truth—
is, the devil is ridiculous. That being who is presented
to us as so cunning, so malicious, so cleverly selfish, who
strives unceasingly to carry on the troublesome business
of corrupting men's souls, turns out to be very foolish.
When, brought down from the heights where poetry and—
mystery have sometimes succeeded in placing him, he is
subjected to close inspection and confronted with plain
truth, Satan becomes a mere absurdity; and ever since
this has been clearly seen it has become impossible to
honour him by acknowledging his real existence.
We could have lengthened our retrospective study of
the works which, during the eighteenth century, and
even in our own times, have continued a controversy that
will henceforward be aimless. Ever since a true know-
ledge of the constitution of the universe has dissipated
the allusions which formed an indispensable frame to
the picture of the Satan of olden time—a fixed dome —
above, an earth in the midst, and a hell under the earth,
—ever since we have been compelled to see God’s pre-
sence live and move in all things, there is no more room
left in the world for the devil. Nothing could be more
wearisome and puerile than the endeavours of certain
reactionary theologians, in Germany and elsewhere, to
restore a shadow of reality to the old phantom, while at
48 History of the Devil.
the same time escaping the gross superstitions to which
even these retrograde divines can no longer commit
themselves. In vain is an attempt made to preserve for
him something like an honourable position in some few
dogmatic treatises, and in pietistic hymns. This, when
not met by sheer indifference, does but annoy those of
the clergy and laity who are pervaded by a healthy tone.
- By them Satan is still tolerated as an expression, a type,
a symbol which the language of religion has sanctioned;
and this is all. But to allow him any place in civil or
domestic codes, to admit him into actual life, this is
now quite out of the question; non possumus.
But is there absolutely no good to be got out of this
error of such long standing, which occupies so much
space in the history of religions, and dates from their
very sources? Must we admit that, in this particular,
the human mind has for all these centuries been feeding
— upon what is absolutely false ? This cannot be so. There
must surely be something in human nature which has
pleaded in its favour, and has maintained from gene-
ration to generation a faith which is contradicted by
y experience. I will not assert, with some who have
thought upon the matter, that the explanation lies in
the ease with which this doctrine of the devil solved the
problem of the origin of evil; for the truth is, that it
solved nothing. It carried into heaven the problem that
seemed insoluble on earth. But what did this avail?
The main stay of faith in the devil, or the one consti-
tuent of that faith, is the power of evil in and around
us. I wonder at the singular tranquillity with which
almost all our French philosophers face this question, or
rather forget it, while they dilate in eloquent phrases
upon free-will. Let us look at the facts as they really
stand. The truth is, that the best among us is a long
way behind the ideal that he sets before him; he is too
weak to realise this ideal; and, if he is sincere, he
acknowledges his shortcomings. The truth is, that our
weak morality is too often at the mercy of those surgings
History of the Devil. 49
within us of the “Old Adam,”—that animal, carnal man,
we carry within us, which has so often given the lie to
the proud satisfacit we bestow upon ourselves so com-
placently. Another truth is this, that we are at every
moment carried into evil by the social influences that
surround us, and against the mischievous and impulsive
current of which few have energy enough victoriously to
hold their own. We must not fall into the extreme of
those theologians who have taught the total depravity
of the human race, and with it a method of regeneration;
as if even a miracle could regenerate a totally corrupted
nature. Observation proves that we are selfish, but y
capable of loving; that we are naturally sensual, but not
less naturally attracted by the splendour of the true and
the good; that we are very imperfect, but still perfec-
tible. The first condition of progress is to feel wherein v
we fail. This is why the “Kingdom of heaven” is
promised to the “poor in spirit,” to those, that is, who
are conscious of their poverty. If we would so live as to
satisfy our conscience, we must learn to repel victoriously
those attacks with which selfish sensuality, flesh and blood,
and worldly fascinations assail us. This is the devilish
power from which we must set ourselves free. There is a y
sense in which we may say we are all of us more or less
“possessed.” The mistake lies in personifying this power
of evil. When theists say there is a personal God, they
do not ignore the faultiness of the notion of personality
as derived from our own human nature; but as it is im-
possible for us to conceive any other mode of existence
save personality and impersonality, and as God must pos-
sess all perfection, they declare, lacking a better term,
that he is personal because he is perfect, and because im-
personal perfection is a contradiction. Evil, on the other
hand, which is the diametrical opposite of the perfect, is
necessarily impersonal. Against its baneful seductions,
against its ever direful sorcery, must we wrestle, so that
our true human personality, our moral personality, may
triumphantly disengage itself from the soil allotted for
5O History of the Devil.
our growth. Upon this condition depends its attaining
to the regions of pure and steadfast morality, where
nought that has the likeness of Satan can hinder our
ascent God-ward. This alone remains of the doctrine of
the devil. But this alone concerns our moral health;
and this must never be forgotten.
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