I saw two angels with two flaming swords - - Their garments were, which by their verdant pinions As faculty confounded by excess.1 When Dante wrote these words the Byzantine period had passed, and Cimabue and Giotto were painting angels more like men from the waist upward, but for spirituality's sake deprived them of feet. In the Vita Nuova 2 Dante says that he was busy one day drawing an angel, when he looked up and saw worthy men watching him. After they had gone he returned to his work, that is, of drawing angels. What were they? Had they feet? Were they naked? or clad, like all the angelic figures of Cimabue and Giotto? Had they beards or other evidence of sex? We shall never know, and yet it would not be amiss to suppose that they were naïve figures, winged fantasies, but far less spiritual than the angels limned with a goose quill on the first manuscript of the Divina Commedia. CHAPTER IV THE DEVIL AND HIS BROOD1 Io udi' già dire a Bologna2 Del Diavol vizii assai, tra i quali udi' Ch' egli è bugiardo, e padre di menzogna.3 By the year 1300 the Devil was in his prime. Miniaturists painted him in as many shapes as tradition sanctioned or imagination could devise. Hewn in stone, he still haunts the spires and balconies of the great Gothic cathedrals. Men fear him no longer, but he, being of stone, still leers over towns and cities as in the days when he shared with God the ever ripening harvest of souls. Through the Devil's pride came his fall and the 1 The reader may like to consult the following useful and interesting works on Demonology: Arturo Graf, Il Diavolo, Milan, 3d ed., 1890 (delightful, but fails to give sources), also his Demonologia di Dante, in Miti, Leggende e Superstizioni del Medio Evo, Turin, 1893; DR. PAUL CARUS, The History of the Devil and the Idea of Evil, London and Chicago, 1900 (scientific and richly illustrated); ANDREW D. WHITE, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology, especially chapter on 'Possession,' and chapter entitled, From the "Prince of the Power of the Air" to Meteorology,' New York, 1898. ROSKOFF, Geschichte des Teufels, Leipzig, 1869, is rather antiquated and makes dull reading. 2 Giovanni Villani says that Dante went to Bologna. Cf. what Dante says in Conv. I, iii, 20-33. 8 fall of man.1 'Through envy of the Devil came death into the world.' Men had free will, yet he was the cause of their sins. Men were fondly watched by God and his angels, but the Devil contrived somehow to get at last the greater part of mankind, whom he carried off to a region of ingenious sufferings that should never end. Not only was he the Tempter, but he brought diseases, poverty, drought, and storms.3 Though Hell was his lair, the Devil roved wherever there were men; 4 times in the shape of a monster, sometimes as a man or embodied in the likeness of a noxious beast, he sought his prey. There were few or none he had not tempted. By many visionaries, and by churchmen whose word is worthy of equal trust, he had actually been seen. Who will doubt such authorities as St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and Luther? 5 some The Devil, then, existed and was greedy for men's souls. But how did he make shift to get them? Had he in general a real body made of 'dust' like yours and mine? Or was he incorporeal? How much intelligence had he? Could he speak and converse with other devils and with men? The opinions of the theologians differed considerably on all these points, though all—to a monk 1 Parad. XXIX, 55–56. 2 Inf. XXXIV, 36. De Mon. III, iii, 47. 3 See A. D. WHITE, op. cit. I, 323-372; II, 27–30. Lactantius, in MIGNE, Patrologia, vol. 6, col. 332. 5 Richalmus (1270 A.D.) opined that devils take on the shapes that fit their enterprises. See PEZII, Thesaurus Anec. novis., t. I, pars ii, col. 376 seq.; Beati Richalmi . . . Abbatis ord. Cist. liber Revelationum de insidiis et versutiis Dæmonium adv. Homines. See ROSKOFF, op. cit. I, 305, 342, and St. Jerome, MIGNE, Patrologia, vol. 26, col. 530 and 531. - believed that he existed. That was the pivotal idea on which all theories swung. In the Middle Ages every sin was conceived by many to have its special demon; so Dante sets over the various realms of Hell fiends whose habits match the wickedness of the damned.2 His fiends, however, are never beautiful, as they so often seemed to those they tempted on earth; but we come upon them, naked and horrible, in their own domain, wherein, all occasion for temptation being absent, they have no reason to assume bewitching forms. Dante's fiends are not abstractions of evil, but correspond corporeally to what various devils of folklore and ancient mythology had come to be in his time. How came there to be demons? One answer, from theology's point of view, is naïve and plain. Inspired by pride, Satan raised his brows against his Maker.3 For this he was cast out of Heaven with a host of rebellious or neutral angels, so soon after his creation that you could not count twenty. As these angels had been arranged in orders before the fall, so, afterward, they maintained a kind of system. Dante's fiends hardly seem to rove at will, but rather to be set over special regions of Hell. Nearly all his greater devils, such as Charon, Minos, Cerberus, Pluto, the Furies, the Minotaur, the Centaurs, the Harpies, and the Giants except Nimrod, had figured as demigods or demons in Græco-Roman mythology. 1 One offence laid at the door of Averroes was that he did not believe in the devil. See RENAN, Averroès et l'Averroïsme, p. 299. 2 Cf. ST. THOMAS AQUINAS, Summa Theol. Pr. pars, sec., qu. cix, art. I and 2. 8 Inf. XXXIV, 35. The early fathers, following the sentence of St. Paul, made the gods of the Gentiles devils.1 To these we may add certain demoniacal beasts; for such are Dante's ounce, lion, wolf, and also his black bitches, his serpents, his dragon, as well as certain gadflies, and wasps that torture the sluggards.2 Though Dante, in his treatise De Vulgari Eloquentia,3 denies that devils speak, in the Divina Commedia he not only endows them with language, but lends them keen wits, as we shall see. Minos expresses his opinion with his tail, Cerberus barks, the Minotaur is dumb, so is Geryon; Lucifer busies his three mouths crunching three traitors; but most of the other devils speak, and one of them is a logician.1 Hardly had the two poets entered through the awful Gate when they drew near to those sinners who had lived without infamy or honour. They were mingled with the wretched band of those that were neutral when Lucifer fell.5 The out-and-out rebels were met at the gate of Dis, whither Dante and Virgil had been ferried by Phlegyas across the Stygian pool. How these fiends look, Dante fails to say; but there were more than a thousand that had rained down from heaven, and they wrathfully tried to keep the two poets from going farther. It is of these that St. Augustine wrote as follows: 'That some angels sinned and were thrust into the 1 See, also, Vulgate and all early versions of Ps. xcvi, 5; and GRAF, Demonologia di Dante, pp. 86-87. 2 See separate chapters on these various animals. * I, ii, 22-33. 4 Inf. XXVII, 122–123. D 5 Inf. III, 37-42. 6 Inf. VIII, 82-130. |