Some hard torment
They must have,
It was wrought for them in punishment,
Their world was changed:
For their sinful course
He filled hell
With the apostates.
Fig. 3.—Satan Punished.
Whether this spirited description was written by Cædmon, and whether it is of his century, are questions unimportant to the present inquiry. The poem represents a mediæval notion which long prevailed, and which characterised the Mysteries, that Satan and his comrades were humiliated from the highest angelic rank to a hell already prepared and peopled with devils, and were there, and by those devils, severely punished. One of the illuminations of the Cædmon manuscript, preserved in the Bodleian Library, shows Satan undergoing his torment ([Fig. 3]). He is bound over something like a gridiron, and four devils are torturing him, the largest using a scourge with six prongs. His face manifests great suffering. His form is mainly human, but his bushy tail and animal feet indicate that he has been transformed to a devil similar to those who chastise him.