CHAPTER XVII.
DIABLERIE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.—EARLY TYPES OF THE DIABOLICAL FORMS.—ST. ANTHONY.—ST. GUTHLAC.—REVIVAL OF THE TASTE FOR SUCH SUBJECTS IN THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.—THE FLEMISH SCHOOL OF BREUGHEL.—THE FRENCH AND ITALIAN SCHOOLS, CALLOT, SALVATOR ROSA.
We have seen how the popular demonology furnished materials for the earliest exercise of comic art in the middle ages, and how the taste for this particular class of grotesque lasted until the close of the mediæval period. After the “renaissance” of art and literature, this taste took a still more remarkable form, and the school of grotesque diablerie which flourished during the sixteenth century, and the first half of the seventeenth, justly claims a chapter to itself.
The birthplace of this demonology, as far as it belongs to Christianity, must probably be sought in the deserts of Egypt. It spread thence over the east and the west, and when it reached our part of the world, it grafted itself, as I have remarked in a former chapter, on the existing popular superstitions of Teutonic paganism. The playfully burlesque, which held so great a place in these superstitions, no doubt gave a more comic character to this Christian demonology than it had possessed before the mixture. Its primitive representative was the Egyptian monk, St. Anthony, who is said to have been born at a village called Coma, in Upper Egypt, in the year 251. His history was written in Greek by St. Athanasius, and was translated into Latin by the ecclesiastical historian Evagrius. Anthony was evidently a fanatical visionary, subject to mental illusions, which were fostered by his education. To escape from the temptations of the world, he sold all his property, which was considerable, gave it to the poor, and then retired into the desert of the Thebaid, to live a life of the strictest asceticism. The evil one persecuted him in his solitude, and sought to drive him back into the corruptions of worldly life. He first tried to fill his mind with regretful reminiscences of his former wealth, position in society, and enjoyments; when this failed, he disturbed his mind with voluptuous images and desires, which the saint resisted with equal success. The persecutor now changed his tactics, and presenting himself to Anthony in the form of a black and ugly youth, confessed to him, with apparent candour, that he was the spirit of uncleanness, and acknowledged that he had been vanquished by the extraordinary merits of Anthony’s sanctity. The saint, however, saw that this was only a stratagem to stir up in him the spirit of pride and self-confidence, and he met it by subjecting himself to greater mortifications than ever, which of course made him still more liable to these delusions. Now he sought greater solitude by taking up his residence in a ruined Egyptian sepulchre, but the farther he withdrew from the world, the more he became the object of diabolical persecution. Satan broke in upon his privacy with a host of attendants, and during the night beat him to such a degree, that one morning the attendant who brought him food found him lying senseless in his cell, and had him carried to the town, where his friends were on the point of burying him, believing him to be dead, when he suddenly revived, and insisted on being taken back to his solitary dwelling. The legend tells us that the demons appeared to him in the forms of the most ferocious animals, such as lions, bulls, wolves, asps, serpents, scorpions, panthers, and bears, each attacking him in the manner peculiar to its species, and with its peculiar voice, thus making together a horrible din. Anthony left his tomb to retire farther into the desert, where he made a ruined castle his residence; and here he was again frightfully persecuted by the demons, and the noise they made was so great and horrible that it was often heard at a vast distance. According to the narrative, Anthony reproached the demons in very abusive language, called them hard names, and even spat in their faces; but his most effective weapon was always the cross. Thus the saint became bolder, and sought a still more lonely abode, and finally established himself on the top of a high mountain in the upper Thebaid. The demons still continued to persecute him, under a great variety of forms; on one occasion their chief appeared to him under the form of a man, with the lower members of an ass.
The demons which tormented St. Anthony became the general type for subsequent creations, in which these first pictures were gradually, and in the sequel, greatly improved upon. St. Anthony’s persecutors usually assumed the shapes of bonâ fide animals, but those of later stories took monstrous and grotesque forms, strange mixtures of the parts of different animals, and of others which never existed. Such were seen by St. Guthlac, the St. Anthony of the Anglo-Saxons, among the wild morasses of Croyland. One night, which he was passing at his devotions in his cell, they poured in upon him in great numbers; “and they filled all the house with their coming, and they poured in on every side, from above and from beneath, and everywhere. They were in countenance horrible, and they had great heads, and a long neck, and lean visage; they were filthy and squalid in their beards, and they had rough ears, and distorted face, and fierce eyes, and foul mouths; and their teeth were like horses’ tusks, and their throats were filled with flame, and they were grating in their voice; they had crooked shanks, and knees big and great behind, and distorted toes, and shrieked hoarsely with their voices; and they came with such immoderate noises and immense horror, that it seemed to him that all between heaven and earth resounded with their dreadful cries.” On another similar occasion, “it happened one night, when the holy man Guthlac fell to his prayers, he heard the howling of cattle and various wild beasts. Not long after he saw the appearance of animals and wild beasts and creeping things coming in to him. First he saw the visage of a lion that threatened him with his bloody tusks, also the likeness of a bull, and the visage of a bear, as when they are enraged. Also he perceived the appearance of vipers, and a hog’s grunting, and the howling of wolves, and croaking of ravens, and the various whistlings of birds, that they might, with their fantastic appearance, divert the mind of the holy man.”
No. 155. St. James and his Persecutors.
Such were the suggestions on which the mediæval sculptors and illuminators worked with so much effect, as we have seen repeatedly in the course of our preceding chapters. After the revival of art in western Europe in the fifteenth century, this class of legends became great favourites with painters and engravers, and soon gave rise to the peculiar school of diablerie mentioned above. At that time the story of the Temptation of St. Anthony attracted particular attention, and it is the subject of many remarkable prints belonging to the earlier ages of the art of engraving. It employed the pencils of such artists as Martin Schongauer, Israel van Mechen, and Lucas Cranach. Of the latter we have two different engravings on the same subject—St. Anthony carried into the air by the demons, who are represented in a great variety of grotesque and monstrous forms. The most remarkable of the two bears the date of 1506, and was, therefore, one of Cranach’s earlier works. But the great representative of this earlier school of diablerie was Peter Breughel, a Flemish painter who flourished in the middle of the sixteenth century. He was born at Breughel, near Breda, and lived some time at Antwerp, but afterwards established himself at Brussels. So celebrated was he for the love of the grotesque displayed in his pictures, that he was known by the name of Peter the Droll. Breughel’s “Temptation of St. Anthony,” like one or two others of his subjects of the same class, was engraved in a reduced form by J. T. de Bry. Breughel’s demons are figures of the most fantastic description—creations of a wildly grotesque imagination; they present incongruous and laughable mixtures of parts of living things which have no relation whatever to one another. Our cut No. 155 represents a group of these grotesque demons, from a plate by Breughel, engraved in 1565, and entitled Divus Jacobus diabolicis præstigiis ante magnum sistitur (St. James is arrested before the magician by diabolical delusions). The engraving is full of similarly grotesque figures. On the right is a spacious chimney, and up it witches, riding on brooms, are making their escape, while in the air are seen other witches riding away upon dragons and a goat. A kettle is boiling over the fire, around which a group of monkeys are seen sitting and warming themselves. Behind these a cat and a toad are holding a very intimate conversation. In the background stands and boils the great witches’ caldron. On the right of the picture the magus, or magician, is seated, reading his grimoire; with a frame before him supporting the pot containing his magical ingredients. The saint occupies the middle of the picture, surrounded by the demons represented in our cut and by many others; and as he approaches the magician, he is seen raising his right hand in the attitude of pronouncing a benediction, the apparent consequence of which is a frightful explosion of the magician’s pot, which strikes the demons with evident consternation. Nothing can be more bizarre than the horse’s head upon human legs in armour, the parody upon a crawling spider behind it, the skull (apparently of a horse) supported upon naked human legs, the strangely excited animal behind the latter, and the figure furnished with pilgrim’s hood and staff, which appears to be mocking the saint. Another print—a companion to the foregoing—represents the still more complete discomfiture of the magus. The saint here occupies the right-hand side of the picture, and is raising his hand higher, with apparently a greater show of authority. The demons have all turned against their master the magician, whom they are beating and hurling headlong from his chair. They seem to be proclaiming their joy at his fall by all sorts of playful attitudes. It is a sort of demon fair. Some of them, to the left of the picture, are dancing and standing upon their heads on a tight-rope. Near them another is playing some game like that which we now call the thimble-rig. The monkeys are dancing to the tune of a great drum. A variety of their mountebank tricks are going on in different parts of the scene. Three of these playful actors are represented in our cut No. 156.
