We may therefore discard learned theories and sage conjectures concerning Gog and Magog, and attribute them to the poverty of invention and the barbarity of taste which prevailed in the ages of faith.
Souls Weighed in the Balance. (Bas-relief of the Autun Cathedral.)
One of the subjects most frequently chosen for caricature during this period was that cunning and audacious enemy of God and man, the devil—a composite being, made up of the Satan who tested Job, the devil who tempted Jesus, and the Egyptian Osiris who weighed souls in the balance, and claimed as his own those found wanting. The theory of the universe then generally accepted was that the world was merely a field of strife between God and this malignant spirit; on the side of God were ranged archangels, angels, the countless host of celestial beings, and all the saints on earth and in heaven, while on the devil's side were a vast army of fallen spirits and all the depraved portion of the human race. The simple souls of that period did not accept this explanation in an allegorical sense, but as the most literal statement of facts familiarly known, concerning which no one in Christendom had any doubt whatever. The devil was as composite in his external form as he was in his traditional character. All the mythologies appear to have contributed something to his make-up, until he had acquired many of the most repulsive features and members of which animated nature gives the suggestion. He was hairy, hoofed, and horned; he had a forked tail; he had a countenance which expressed the fox's cunning, the serpent's malice, the pig's appetite, the monkey's grin. As to his body, it varied according to the design of the artist, but it usually resembled creatures base or loathsome.
Struggle for the Possession of a Soul between Angel and Devil. (From a Psalter, 1300.)
In one picture there is a very rude but curious representation of the weighing of souls, superintended by the devil and an archangel. The devil, in the form of a hog, has won a prize in the soul of a wicked woman, which he is carrying off in a highly disrespectful manner, while casting a backward glance to see that he has fair play in the next weighing. This was an exceedingly favorite subject with the artists of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. They delighted to picture the devil, in their crude uncompromising way, as an insatiate miser of human souls, eager to seize them, demanding a thousand, a million, a billion, all; and when one appeared in the scales so void of guilt that the good angel must needs possess it, he may be seen slyly putting a finger upon the opposite scale to weigh it down, and this sometimes in spite of the angel's remonstrance. In one picture, described by M. Mérimée in his "Voyage en Auvergne," the devil plays this trick at a moment when the archangel Michael has turned to look another way.