A brief history of the devil Brian A. Pavlac
Satan, the beast crunching sinners’ bones
in his subterranean lair.
Lucifer, the fallen angel raging
against the established order.
Mephistopheles, the trickster striking
deals with unsuspecting humans.
These three divergent devils are all based
on Satan of the Old Testament,
an angelic member of God’s court
who torments Job in the Book of Job.
But unlike any of these literary devils,
the Satan of the Bible was
a relatively minor character,
with scant information about his deeds
or appearance.
So how did he become the ultimate
antagonist, with so many different forms?
In the New Testament,
Satan saw a little more action:
tempting Jesus,
using demons to possess people,
and finally appearing as a giant dragon
who is cast into hell.
This last image particularly inspired
medieval artists and writers,
who depicted a scaled, shaggy-furred
creature with overgrown toenails.
In Michael Pacher’s painting
of St. Augustine and the Devil,
the devil appears as an upright lizard—
with a second miniature face
glinting on his rear and.
The epitome of these monster Satans
appeared in Italian poet
Dante Alighieri’s “Inferno.”
Encased in the ninth circle of hell,
Dante’s Satan is a three-headed,
bat-winged behemoth who feasts on sinners.
But he’s also an object of pity:
powerless as the panicked beating
of his wings
only encases him further in ice.
The poem’s protagonist escapes from hell
by clambering over Satan’s body,
and feels both disgust and sympathy
for the trapped beast—
prompting the reader to consider
the pain of doing evil.
By the Renaissance, the devil started
to assume a more human form.
Artists painted him as a man
with cloven hooves and curling horns
inspired by Pan,
the Greek god of the wild.
In his 1667 masterpiece “Paradise Lost,”
English poet John Milton depicted
the devil as Lucifer,
an angel who started a rebellion
on the grounds that God is too powerful.
Kicked out of heaven,
this charismatic rebel becomes Satan,
and declares that he’d rather rule in hell
than serve in heaven.
Milton’s take inspired numerous depictions
of Lucifer as an ambiguous figure,
rather than a purely evil one.
Milton’s Lucifer later became an iconic
character for the Romantics of the 1800s,
who saw him as a hero who defied higher
power in pursuit of essential truths,
with tragic consequences.
Meanwhile, in the German legend
of Doctor Faust,
which dates to the 16th century,
we get a look at what happens
when the devil comes to Earth.
Faust, a dissatisfied scholar,
pledges his soul to the devil
in exchange for bottomless pleasure.
With the help
of the devil’s messenger Mephistopheles,
Faust quickly seizes
women, power, and money—
only to fall into the eternal fires
of hell.
Later versions of the story show
Mephistopheles in different lights.
In Christopher Marlowe’s account,
a cynical Doctor Faustus is happy
to strike a deal with Mephistopheles.
In Johann Wolfgang van Goethe’s version,
Mephistopheles tricks Faust
into a grisly deal.
Today, a Faustian bargain refers
to a trade that sacrifices integrity
for short-term gains.
In stagings of Goethe’s play,
Mephistopheles appeared
in red tights and cape.
This version of the devil was often
played as a charming trickster—
one that eventually paraded
through comic books,
advertising, and film in his red suit.
These three takes on the devil
are just the tip of the iceberg:
the devil continues to stalk
the public imagination to this day,
tempting artists of all kinds
to render him
according to new and fantastical visions.