perceived a likeness to the “strong man armed”[16] whom Christ had come to conquer, and who, conquered, had become bolder and more aggressive than before. And his soul was filled with consternation and terror; how was he to guard himself against the wiles, how defend himself from the attacks, of an enemy more venomous than the Hydra, more multiform than Proteus? Tertullian will warn him, others too will warn him, not to seek the company of pagans, not to take part in their festivals and games, to engage in no calling that can, directly or indirectly, serve the worship of idols; but how is he to observe such a prohibition and live? Or how, if he does observe it, is he to make certain of keeping his heart pure, when the very ground he treads, the air he breathes, are formed of impurity and sin?
Nor is Satan content with mere enticements and wiles; with yet other weapons does he endeavour to regain what he has lost. He storms from every side the scarcely yet founded Church, and like a bronze-headed battering ram, day and night he buffets and shatters its walls. He stirs up frightful persecutions and strives to drown the new faith in terror and in blood. He fosters the great heresies and snatches countless lambs from the flock of Christ. Sad times! Life full of danger and of woe! No, Christ’s kingdom is not yet come; but those saddened spirits to whom Faith lends her wings believe that they can catch a distant glimpse, in apocalyptic visions, of its radiant glory, and they proclaim the second coming of the Redeemer and the final overthrow of the “old serpent”.[17]
Vain dreams! Deluded hopes! The Redeemer comes not, and the old serpent, grown more venomous than ever, multiplies his coils, and ever closer and closer enfolds the world. Proof after proof of this may be had from the teachings of certain sects that plagued the Church, more particularly during the first three centuries, all striving to introduce into Christianity a dualism differing but little from that of the Persians. These teachings, taken collectively, constitute what is called Gnosticism, and the more extreme among them have the common tendency of attributing to Satan an even higher degree of importance than he formerly possessed, of considering Satan as the creator of our bodily nature, of making evil an original and independent principle, not sprung from defection and decadence, but co-eternal with good and at war with good. In this way Satan’s power increased, the work of redemption became more difficult, salvation more uncertain. Clement of Alexandria and Origen had maintained that all creatures would return to God, their common beginning; but Saint Augustine thought that God would save only a few elect and that the greater part of the human race would become the prey of the Devil.
Pol de Limburg, The Fall and Judgment of Lucifer, from The Luxurious Hours of the Duke of Berry (Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry), beginning of 15th century. Illuminated manuscript. Musée Condé, Chantilly, France.
Master of the Rebel Angels, St. Martin Sharing his Coat and The Fall of the Rebel Angels, c. 1340–1345. Oil on wood mounted on canvas, 64 × 29 cm (recto). Musée du Louvre, Paris, France.
It is by no means easy, amid the clash of opposing doctrines and the contrariety of influences, through the speculations of philosophy, especially the Neoplatonic and Cabalistic, the brilliant fantasies of the Gnosis, and the already wavering orthodox dogma – it is not easy to form for one’s self a clear and exact concept of the changes and accretions that Satan underwent in the first centuries of the Church. Whoever knows to what a strange and monstrous syncretism the religion of Rome had arrived, can easily imagine that from this indistinguishable hodgepodge of absurd beliefs and crazy practices Satan would naturally derive more than one of the elements of his renewed personality. Truly, the Christian Satan is the result of the meeting and mutual interpenetration of varying civilisations, of opposing philosophies, of hostile religions; and when the Church triumphs, when the dogma is established, he extends over the world a fearful dominion.
The incurable corruption of paganism gives new emphasis to the idea of evil and raises to gigantic proportions the personifier of this idea. The Christians believed that the pagan world was the work of Satan; instead, it is the pagan world that, to a great degree, gives Satan his form in the imagination of the Christians. Without the Roman Empire, Satan would have become far different from what he is or was. All the foulness, all the devilishness, scattered throughout pagan civilisation, is gathered together and condensed in him; on him, naturally, is cast the blame for everything that to the pious and stubborn Christian conscience appears as sin – and that includes an infinite variety of thoughts, customs and deeds. The divinities that had formerly had their own altars and temples, do not die nor disappear, but are transformed into demons, some of them losing their former seductive beauty, but all retaining and increasing their ancient wickedness. Jove, Juno, Diana, Apollo, Mercury, Neptune, Vulcan, Cerberus and fauns and satyrs outlive the worship that was rendered them, reappear amid the darkness of the Christian Hell, crowd the minds of men with strange terrors, give rise to fearful fantasies and legends. Diana, changed to a noonday demon, will assail those imprudent ones who are too heedless of their health; and by night, across the silent tracts of the starry heavens, she will lead the flying squadrons of the witches, her pupils. Venus, ever burning with passion, no less fair as a demon than as a goddess, will still ply her ancient arts on men, will inspire them with unquenchable longings, will usurp the couches of wedded wives, will bear away in her arms, to her subterranean abode, the knight Tannhäuser, drunken with desire, caring no longer for Christ, greedy for damnation. One of the popes, John XII (made pope in 955, deposed in 963 by the Emperor Otto I), guilty, according to his accusers, of having drunk to the health of the Devil, when casting dice will invoke the aid of Jove, of Venus and of the other demons. Satan will oftentimes be represented in the figure of a faun, a satyr or a siren.
Master of the Rebel Angels, St. Martin Sharing his Coat and The Fall of the Rebel Angels, c. 1340–1345. Oil on wood mounted on canvas, 64 × 29 cm (verso). Musée du Louvre, Paris, France.
When the Church finally triumphs, the history of Satan appears to be known in every detail and his figure to be complete. Men know – or think they know – his origins, the earlier and later vicissitudes of his career, his processes and his works. The Fathers have portrayed and described him. Satan was created good, and made himself wicked; he fell through his own sin, drawing after him in his ruin an innumerable multitude of followers. Later on, it will be told that a tenth part of the heavenly host was cast down and plunged headlong into the abyss; and there will be pictured an array of neutral angels, neither rebels against God nor opposed to Satan, mere spectators of the battle waged between the two; angels whom Saint Brandan[18] will meet in the course of his adventurous wanderings; whom Parsifal will hear recalled in the farthest East, where the holy relic of the Grail is guarded;[19] whom Dante will place in the vestibule of Hell together with those wretched dastards “who never were alive”.[20]
But Satan has not yet ceased to grow, his personality is not yet complete; long, indeed, is his history, and when one era of it has closed another is beginning. The ascetics, who had thought to escape him by escaping the world and in the desert had found him again, more malignant and powerful than ever, and who had experienced his countless wiles and suffered his savage insults, did not yet know him under all his aspects.
To the ancient calamities succeeded new ones; on an age of deepest corruption there followed an age of violent dissolution, which seemed to be wrenching the world from its hinges. Already out of the dim North the barbarians are bursting in like a sea that has broken down the opposing dikes, and under the shock the Empire of Rome crumbles in crashing ruin. The wicked and accursed pagan civilisation is quenched, but only to give place to the hopeless darkness of barbarism, wherein it is impossible to descry any gleam of salvation. It seemed as if the human kingdom were about to end, or that a brute kingdom were about to begin on earth. This horrible disaster, described with fiery
Luke xi, 21.
Revelation xii, 9; xx, 2.
Saint Brandan of Clonfert, born in 484, died in 577 is reported to have made a voyage (the “Navigation of Saint Brandan”) in search of the terrestrial paradise and to have landed with his companions on a miraculous island in the Atlantic.
In the ninth book of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s
