66 demons in their stead. Indeed, Odilon, abbot of Cluny, instituted the Fête des Morts in order to release a multitude of suffering souls from purgatory, and to place them in paradise. He freed these souls, purified by the prayers of the living, from the demons who tormented them, to give them to the care of angels. Then," as a holy hermit relates, "frightful sounds were heard in Etna, and deafening explosions in the neighbouring isles." This uproar was caused by Satan and all his court, Satan and all his demoniacal retinue, who howled in despair, and with loud cries demanded back the souls lost to them since the day of this new Festival. The history of these imaginary monsters is much the same in the end, although they are called by different names; thus, the Serpent is called Graouilli at Metz; Gargouille at Rouen ;* Clair Sallé at Troyes; Grand Gueule at Poitiers; Tarasque at Arles.† "In France," says M. Alfred de Maury, "these legends do not date very far back, and the oldest, that of the Tarasque of Arles, is first mentioned by Gervais of Tilbury, an English writer, marshal of the kingdom of Arles, who lived in the beginning of the 13th century.‡ I now have to treat of the authors of conflagrations (incendiaries) in the history of the Devil. "One day," writes Frodoard, an historian, born at Epernay in 894, and who wrote the history of the Church of Rheims-" one day St. Remi, Archbishop of Rheims, was absorbed in prayer inside a little church in his beloved town. He thanked God for having been able to save from the snares of the demon all the most beautiful souls in his diocese, when some one announced to him that the town was on fire. Then the lamb turned to a lion; anger inflamed the face of the saint, who stamped on the flagstones of the church with terrible energy, and cried out, Satan, I detect thee. After all I am not yet rid of thee and thy wickedness.' The footprints where St. Remi 6 * Gargouille, from Low Latin gargola, which means a shout. Tarasque is derived from the name of a French town, Tarascon near Arles, where it was the custom on holidays to carry round the effigy of a monster or dragon. Légendes pieuses au Moyen Age, Maury, p. 147, n. 1. "Les miracles que Frodoard attribue aux premiers archevêques de Rheims ne sont pas racontés avec le génie d'Homère; cependant ils ont aussi excité l'enthousiasme populaire, ils ont aussi été admis et transmis de bouche en bouche avec une foi fervente; et le tableau de St. Remi chas furiously stamped on the flagstones at the door are still shown. Then the saint armed himself with his crosier and his cope, as a warrior with his sword and his cuirass, and flew to meet the enemy. He had scarcely advanced a few steps when he perceived the wreaths of fire and flames devouring, with irresistible fury, the wooden houses of which the city was built, and their thatched roofs. At sight of the saint the fire seemed to lessen and grow pale. Remi, who knew the enemy with whom he had to do, made the sign of the cross, and the fire retreated as the saint advanced. The fire slackened its hold and fled as if subjugated by the power of the bishop, or like some intelligent being that understood its own weakness. Some times it bore up again, took courage, and attempted to encircle the saint in fire, to blind him, and reduce him to cinders, but with the sign of the cross he parried the attacks and defeated its purpose. Thus forced back, and retreating from the houses, one after another, that had been enveloped in flame, the fire demon sank at the bishop's feet like a conquered animal, let itself be taken and led at the will of the saint, outside the town, into the moat by which Rheims is still fortified, and Remi opened a door leading to a subterranean chamber, and there thrust down the flames as a malefactor might be thrown into a pit; he made fast the door and forbade its ever being opened again under pain of anathema, -of ruin of body and death of the soul. Once an imprudent, curious, and perhaps sceptical man, wanting to brave this sant devant lui, de rue en rue, l'incendie qui consumait la ville de Rheims, n'est dépourvu ni d'énergie ni d'éclat." For legend see Frodoard, Hist. de l'Eglise de Rheims; Guizot, Mémoires relatifs à l'Histoire de France, p. 35. * It is to be regretted that the provenance of this illustration has not been ascertained.-[ED.] prohibition, and to force his way into the abyss, was driven forth by rolling masses of flame, scorched, and then retreated finally of themselves into the cave where the deathless will of the saint held them enchained."* In the Missal of Poitiers we see the Devil as at once the ruler and the guardian of hell (see Fig. 171). He is chained to its mouth as a dog to its kennel, and yet wields his trident sceptre as if monarch of the Hell he guards. Cerberus and Pluto in one, he is yet a Cerberus of Christian art, a demon more hideous and more filled with energy than Pagan art has offered. Mounted above the monkey demon whom we see here caught in the jaws of Hell and Death, this image figures the various aspects of infernal sin by its many faces, having a face on the breast as well as the head, a face on each shoulder and a face at each hip. How many more behind? With long ears like those of a hound, thick short horns of a bull, his legs and arms are covered with scales, and seem to issue from the mouths of the faces at his joints. He has a lion's head with tusks, and hands like the claws of a bear. His body, open at the waist, reveals a nest of serpents darting forth and hissing. In this monster we find all the elements of a dragon, leviathan, lion, fox, viper, bear, bull, and wild boar. It is a compound of each evil quality in these animals, embodied in a human form. One of the most extraordinary conceptions of Satan that has come down to us from the Middle Ages is that figure seated in the midst of the Hell which forms one of the four "Novissima" on the walls of the Campo Santo at Pisa, said to have been painted by Orcagna in conjunction with his brother Bernardo.† A vast rib or arch in the walls of pandemonium admits one into the gulf of Hell, in which Satan sits in the midst, in gigantic terror, cased in armour and crunching sinners. The punishments of the wicked are *See La France Littéraire, vol. iv. p. 174. (1841.) In another of the same series of frescoes in the Campo Santo, on the wall between the first and second entrance, demons are represented torturing St. Ranieri, which certainly date from the period when ideas and types belonging to the East begin to invade the West. These demons all have human faces, however. These scenes from the life of St. Ranieri, the patron of Pisa, were formerly held to have been painted by Simon di Martino of Siena, but this is contradicted by Kugler, who holds them to be the work of some unknown artist about the date 1360. |