Demonology and Devil-lore

by Moncure Daniel Conway

And heap God’s heavy wrath upon thy head!

Read, read the Scriptures:—that is blasphemy.

So, dying away amid the thunders of the Reformation, were heard the echoes of the early christian voices which exulted in the eternal tortures of the Greek poets and philosophers: the anathemas on Roger Bacon, Socinus, Galileo; the outcries with which every great invention has been met. We need only retouch the above extracts here and there to make Faust’s aspirations those of a saint. Let the gold be sought in New Jerusalem, the pearl in its gates, the fruits in paradise, the philosophy that of Athanasius, and no amount of selfish hunger and thirst for them would grieve any ‘Good Angel’ he had ever heard of.

The ‘Good Angel’ has not yet gained his wings who will tell him that all he seeks is included in the task of humanity, but warn him that the method by which he would gain it is just that by which he has been instructed to seek gold and jasper of the New Jerusalem,—not by fulfilling the conditions of them, but as the object of some favouritism. Every human being who ever sought to obtain benefit by prayers or praises that might win the good graces of a supposed bestower of benefits, instead of by working for them, is but the Faust of his side—be it supernal or infernal. Hocus-pocus and invocation, blood-compacts and sacraments,—they are all the same in origin; they are all mean attempts to obtain advantages beyond other people without serving up to them or deserving them. To Beelzebub Faust will ‘build an altar and a church;’ but he had probably never entered a church or knelt before an altar with any less selfishness.

A strong Nemesis follows Self to see that its bounds are not overpassed without retribution. Its satisfactions must be weighed in the balance with its renunciations. And the inflexible law applies to intellect and self-culture as much as to any other power of man. Mephistopheles is ‘the kernel of the brute;’ he is the intellect with mere canine hunger for knowledge because of the power it brings. Or, falling on another part of human nature, it is pride making itself abject for ostentation; or it is passion selling love for lust. Re-enter Mephistopheles with Devils, who give crowns and rich apparel to Faustus, dance, and then depart. To the man who has received his intellectual and moral liberty only to so spend it, Lucifer may well say, in Marlowe’s words—

Christ cannot save thy soul, for he is just:

There’s none but I have interest in the same.

Perhaps he might even better have suggested to Faust that his soul was not of sufficient significance to warrant much anxiety.

Something was gained when it was brought before the people in popular dramas of Faust how little the Devil cared for the cross which had so long been regarded as the all-sufficient weapon against him.[3] Faust and Mephistopheles flourish in the Vatican despite all the crosses raised to exorcise them. The confession of the cross which once meant martyrdom of the confessor had now come to mean martyrdom of the denier. Protestantism put its faith in Theology, Creeds, and Orthodoxy. But Calderon de la Barca blended the legend of Faust with the legendary temptation of St. Cyprian, and in ‘El Magico Prodigioso’ we have, in impressive contrast, the powerlessness of the evil powers over the heart of a pure woman, and its easy entrance into a mind fully furnished with the soundest sentiments of theology. St. Cyprian had been a worshipper of pagan deities[4] before his conversion, and even after this he had once saved himself while other christians were suffering martyrdom. It is possible that out of this may have grown the legend of his having called his earlier deities—theoretically changed to devils—to his aid; a trace of the legend being that magical ‘Book of Cyprianus’ mentioned in another chapter. In his tract ‘De Gratia Dei’ Cyprian says concerning his spiritual condition before conversion, ‘I lay in darkness, and floating on the world’s boisterous sea, with no resting-place for my feet, ignorant of my proper life, and estranged from truth and light.’ Here is a metaphorical ‘vasty deep’ from which the centuries could hardly fail to conjure up spirits, one of them being the devil of Calderon’s drama, who from a wrecked ship walks Christ-like over the boisterous sea to find Cyprian on the sea-shore. The drama opens with a scene which recalls the most perilous of St. Anthony’s temptations. According to Athanasius, the Devil having utterly failed to conquer Anthony’s virtue by charming images, came to him in his proper black and ugly shape, and, candidly confessing that he was the Devil, said he had been vanquished by the saint’s extraordinary sanctity. Anthony prevailed against the spirit of pride thus awakened; but Calderon’s Cyprian, though he does not similarly recognise the Devil, becomes complacent at the dialectical victory which the tempter concedes him. Cyprian having argued the existence and supremacy of God, the Devil says, ‘How can I impugn so clear a consequence?’ ‘Do you regret my victory?’ ‘Who but regrets a check in rivalry of wit?’ He leaves, and Cyprian says, ‘I never met a more learned person.’ The Devil is equally satisfied, knowing, no doubt, that gods worked out by the wits alone remain in their abode of abstraction and do not interfere with the world of sense. Calderon is artful enough to throw the trial of Cyprian back into his pagan period, but the mirror is no less true in reflecting for those who had eyes to see in it the weakness of theology.

‘Enter the Devil as a fine gentleman,’ is the first sign of the temptation in Calderon’s drama—it is Asmodeus[5] again, and the ‘pride of life’ he first brings is the conceit of a clever theological victory. So sufficient is the doorway so made for all other pride to enter, that next time the devil needs no disguise, but has only to offer him a painless victory over nature and the world, including Justina, the object of his passion.