Augustine With the Book of Vices,” a late 15th-century painted panel by Michael Pacher. Many medieval artists, however, in order to drive home their message, presented the devil in as terrifying a form as possible. When taking a physical form, the devil might choose as undiabolical an aspect as possible-a beautiful woman, for example, or a holy figure-the better to deceive his victim. Augustine regarded the devil as a fallen angel he was bad for having rebelled against God, but retained his angelic substance, and was not a physical being. Echoing Isaiah’s image, Jesus says in Luke 10:18: “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning.” At the dawn of the Middle Ages in the fifth century, authors began to apply the Vulgate term for Isaiah’s Lucifer to the rebellious angel leader in the Book of Revelation, cast into the pit along with his evil minions.Įarly Christian authors such as St. Isaiah 14 refers to an earthly king as Lucifer, meaning “bearer of light,” who falls from heaven. translation of the Hebrew Bible into Latin. The two devils of the Old and New Testaments are first connected in the Vulgate, a fourth-century A.D. By the Book of Revelation, Satan has become an apocalyptic beast, determined to overthrow god and heaven. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour” (I Peter 5:8). He is described as a hunter of souls: The First Epistle of Peter warns: “Discipline yourselves, keep alert. He tempts Jesus to abandon his mission: “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me” (Matthew 4:9). In the New Testament Satan has become a force of evil. The color of the holy kingdom in the sixth century, red became associated with hellfire and the devil in later centuries. Unlike later depictions, he is beautiful and radiant-not the horned, hoofed, red monster of later depictions. The blue figure may be Lucifer, the fallen angel later known as Satan. Both angels wear halos, a device originally seen as a symbol of power, but not necessarily of sanctity. Behind the sheep stands a red angel, and behind the damned is a blue angel.
He is separating the souls of the saved (symbolized by sheep) from the souls of the damned (the goats). The sixth-century mosaic shows Jesus Christ, dressed in royal purple, seated at the Last Judgment. The oldest representation of the Christian idea of the devil may be this mosaic in the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, Italy.
0 kommentar(er)
