Among all the figures born of religious, mythological and cultural imagination, none has exerted an influence as persistent, multifaceted and fascinating as that of the devil. Present under countless names and faces – Satan, Lucifer, the Evil One, the Adversary, the Tempter – he runs through human history as a changing symbol, revealing the anxieties, beliefs and value systems of the societies that have represented him. The devil is never a fixed figure: he transforms according to the periods, takes on the features of the foreigner, the heretic, the monster or the rebel, appears in sacred stories as well as in artistic works, and ultimately becomes a contemporary cultural icon, where provocation, aesthetic fascination and irony blend together.
To understand representations of the devil is therefore to analyse how civilizations have conceptualised evil, disobedience, fear and chaos. It is also to discover how one and the same figure can oscillate between metaphysical abstraction and very concrete incarnation, between sacred terror and popular caricature. This article offers an in-depth exploration of the major stages that have shaped the image of the devil, from ancient myths to modern interpretations, via medieval thought, the Renaissance and Romantic literature.
In this first part, we will look at the ancient and biblical origins of the figure of the devil, its evolution in Judaism and early Christianity, as well as the first major iconographic representations in the Middle Ages. The second part will extend this examination up to the contemporary era, analysing the impact of art, literature, witch trials, intellectual revolutions and modern media.
At the origins: figures of evil in Antiquity
Evil as chaos, not as a person
Before the emergence of a personified devil, many civilizations conceived evil as an impersonal force: drought, disease, war or disasters. Among the Mesopotamians, for example, demons – utukku, alû, lilû – were harmful spirits, but not a central figure comparable to the later Satan. In ancient Egypt, the adversary par excellence was Seth, god of disorder and violence, but his attributes remain ambivalent: he protects the sun against infernal serpents while at the same time embodying destruction.
Thus, the devil in the Western sense – a personal entity radically hostile to the divine – did not yet exist. Evil was a cosmic phenomenon, sometimes embodied by a multitude of spirits, never by a single enemy of God.
Iranian dualism and the influence of Zoroaster
It is in Mazdaism, the religion of ancient Persia, that a truly dualistic conception appears. The prophet Zoroaster (or Zarathustra), probably in the 1st millennium before our era, presents the universe as the scene of a struggle between two principles:
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Ahura Mazda, the god of light and truth
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Angra Mainyu (Ahriman), the evil, destructive and deceitful spirit
Statue of Ahriman from a Mithraic temple
1st century BC – 3rd century AD
This structured, moral and eschatological opposition would profoundly influence Jewish and Christian traditions at the time when the Hebrews were living in exile in Babylon and were exposed to the religious influences of the region. Ahriman is one of the first historical models of what would become the figure of the devil: a cosmic adversary endowed with his own will, seeking to corrupt creation.
Greek myths: Titans, chimeras and the personification of passions
Greek mythology does not propose a single “devil”, but it does stage several figures that anticipate certain traits of the Christian demon:
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Typhon, a monstrous giant at war with Zeus,
Representation of the Greek deity Typhon (or Typhoeus). Engraving from “Mythologiae sive explicationes fabularum” by Natalis Comes. 1637
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Hades, master of the realm of the dead (although not evil),
Hades and Cerberus
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Pan, whose goat-like appearance would later inspire the medieval iconography of the devil.
Pan
Moral evil, meanwhile, was personified by allegories such as Discord (Eris), Deceit (Apate) or Hatred (Eris). This multiple and nuanced conception still departs from the idea of an absolute enemy, but contributes to the plastic and symbolic evolution of the diabolical figure.
We can thus discern one of the great features of future representations: the devil borrows the visual attributes of monsters and gods from pagan pantheons in order to become a formidable syncretism.
The devil in the Hebrew Bible: from heavenly accuser to adversary
A being still in the service of God
In the Old Testament, the term “Satan” is not yet a proper name but a title: ha-satân, “the adversary”, “the accuser”. He is not a rebellious being who fights against God, but rather a member of the divine court, comparable to a prosecutor charged with testing the faithfulness of human beings.
In the Book of Job, for example, Satan appears in the midst of the “sons of God”. He tests Job with God’s explicit permission: he is an instrument of trial, not a cosmic enemy. Likewise, in the Book of Numbers, a satân stands on Balaam’s path to block his way: he acts as a divine messenger.
Thus, in the pre-exilic Jewish tradition, Satan is not the master of evil. There is not yet a dualistic conception. Evil often arises from human disobedience or divine punishment, not from an autonomous demon.
Carved wooden devil head on Relics.es
Evolution after the exile: Persian and apocalyptic influences
After the Babylonian exile, Jewish apocalyptic texts (such as the Book of Enoch or the Qumran writings) bear witness to a major transformation: the figure of Satan detaches from the heavenly court, becomes leader of fallen angels and opposes God directly.
A key step is the legend of the fall of the angels, inspired by the enigmatic passage in Genesis (“the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair”) and amplified in intertestamental myths. The rebellious angels are now associated with:
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the corruption of humanity
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the teaching of occult practices
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the establishment of a nocturnal kingdom opposed to God
It is in this context that a diabolical figure is formed, no longer as a heavenly function but as a metaphysical adversary.
The devil in the New Testament: between temptation and apocalypse
With the appearance of Christianity, the figure of the devil acquires a new density. In the Gospel texts, Satan ceases to be a simple function – like the heavenly accuser in the Book of Job – and becomes a major actor in the spiritual drama. The Gospels assign him a direct role in the history of salvation, particularly in the life of Jesus. They identify him as the one who seeks to divert the Messiah from his mission, the one who manipulates, deceives, lies, possesses and sows doubt at the heart of humanity. This development marks the break with the Jewish tradition, in which the forces of evil often remained scattered or ambiguous, and with nascent Christianity, which consolidates these elements into a coherent and formidable figure.
Royaumont Bible, New Testament: the Angel chains the Dragon of the Apocalypse, a figure of the Devil, and locks the key of the abyss. Illustration from 1811.
The Tempter and the Father of Lies
The scene of the Temptation in the desert is one of the foundational moments of this new conception. After his baptism, Jesus goes into the desert, a symbolic place of stripping away, solitude and trial, and it is there that Satan comes to confront him. He does not appear as a monster or an irrational force, but as a calculating interlocutor, able to quote Scripture, to reason, to negotiate. This episode reveals the intelligence of the devil, his ability to exploit elementary needs – hunger, thirst, ambition, the fragility of the body – and at the same time his inability to understand the logic of divine love. Jesus responds not with an act of power but with fidelity to the Word. The devil’s defeat thus shows that his power rests not on brute force but on human consent.
The Archangel Michael and the devil with the book of the seven deadly sins
In other passages of the New Testament, evil takes on an even more interior dimension. The Gospel of John, in particular, names Satan “the Father of Lies”, a striking formula that associates the devil with the very root of falsification. He is not merely someone who lies: he is the origin of the lie, its first source. Through this expression, the text places the devil at the heart of a crisis of truth that has moral, spiritual and metaphysical implications. The lie is what turns one away from the light, what weakens the bond between God and man, what disturbs the perception of reality. Satan thus becomes the artisan of a distortion of the world, an invisible but omnipresent enemy, who acts in thoughts, in speech, in illusions.
The Devil tries to seduce Jesus; detail from a stained-glass window, around 1170–1180.
Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
The New Testament also assigns him a position within cosmic dynamics: he is called the “prince of this world”, an enigmatic appellation suggesting that he exercises a form of domination over human structures. This domination is not absolute – it exists only because of the Fall – but it is real and dangerous. We thus understand why, in the Gospels, the exorcisms of Jesus are not simple healings: they are victories, tangible signs of the reconquest of a wounded world.
This unification of the roles of the devil – tempter, seducer, possessor, liar, leader of the powers of evil – represents a major doctrinal turning point. The various scattered motifs of Jewish literature merge into a single, identifiable, coherent figure that will become the basis of Christian demonology.
The eschatological battle
While the Gospels show Satan at work in immediate history, the Apocalypse of John projects him into a cosmic war that goes beyond the earthly horizon. This text, saturated with symbols, offers one of the most powerful and influential representations of the devil. He appears there successively as a colossal dragon, as the ancient serpent of the Garden of Eden, as the one who deceives whole nations. This plurality of figures is not contradictory: it associates the cunning of the serpent with the violence of the dragon, the memory of the first sin with the expectation of the final battle.
The Fall of the Rebel Angels – Orazio Gentileschi
The Apocalypse presents Satan as the leader of a heavenly rebellion. He confronts Michael, the warrior archangel, in a battle in which the fate of creation is decided. The devil’s defeat leads to his expulsion from heaven: he is hurled down to the earth, not into a closed hell, but into the world of human beings, where he can still act for a time. This idea of a “fallen but active” devil would profoundly mark the medieval centuries: Satan is not yet vanquished; he wages a desperate war against God, even though he knows that his end is already written.
In this eschatological vision, the devil’s final destiny is clearly announced: chained for a thousand years, he will then be released for a short time, before being cast into the “lake of fire”. This image of eternal fire, of definitive destruction, will become one of the pillars of medieval art. Romanesque tympana, Gothic frescoes and illuminated manuscripts will adopt this flamboyant iconography with unparalleled fervour: crushed dragons, howling demons, armed angels, burning worlds.
The Apocalypse thus gives the devil a truly theatrical dimension. He no longer merely whispers in the shadows: he becomes a titanic actor in a cosmic drama, a colossal being rising up against God with desperate fury. The Christian imagination is thereby transformed. It is this vision of the fallen dragon, the seducer of nations, the great eschatological enemy, that will nourish religious sculpture, preaching, theology and even popular literature for centuries.
Engraving The Temptation of Saint Anthony on Relics.es
Iconographic origins: the birth of an aesthetic of evil
Hybrid demons drawn from paganism
When Christian art begins to imagine the face of the devil, it does so by drawing extensively on the forms of Antiquity. At that time there was no specifically Christian tradition for representing an evil creature: the first artists therefore turned to figures already associated with dark forces, instincts and chaos. The pagan pantheon offered a gallery of unsettling silhouettes, and it is from these models that the aesthetic of the demon gradually takes shape.
Church of Saint-Pierre de Chauvigny
Pan, with his horns and goat legs, provides one of the first visual reservoirs. Not because Christian theology posits any kinship with Satan, but because his appearance embodies raw animality, the world of untamed instincts, the opposition between wildness and spiritual discipline. The satyrs, lustful, unruly, bearers of orgiastic laughter, contribute to the same construction. Thus, from the first centuries onward, the image of the devil clothes itself with horns and hair, as if to signify a degraded nature, far removed from human dignity.
To this is added the influence of Greek tragic masks, with their gaping mouths, exaggerated teeth and eyes enlarged by paint. In early art, the devil’s face is not yet an individuality; it is a distorted surface, a grimace designed to suggest strangeness and rupture. Bat wings, for their part, appear as the reverse side of angelic wings: they express a fall, a darkness that is no longer that of natural night but that of a spiritual world without light. All of these iconographic choices do not aim to explain the theological nature of the Evil One, but to make his moral deformity immediately perceptible through visual deformity. Ugliness becomes the outward sign of a perverted soul.
The Art of the Catacombs and the Earliest Manuscripts
Despite this already rich iconographic foundation, representations of the devil remain extremely discreet in the catacombs. The first Christian communities seek above all to celebrate the victory of life, the promise of resurrection, and divine protection; they avoid giving too much space to fear or suffering. When evil appears in these underground environments, it does not yet have defined features: it is a shadow, an indistinct silhouette, sometimes a threatening figure whose identity is not clearly fixed. In certain scenes, one can perceive allusions to the devil, but they remain barely sketched, for lack of a stabilized iconographic language.
It is only from the Carolingian period onwards that the image of Satan takes on a more precise form. In illuminated manuscripts, often executed by monastic illuminators, the devil appears as a dark figure tucked away in the margins: he is not at the heart of the image but on its edges, like an unwelcome presence, an intruder still tolerated but clearly rejected. This peripheral position is intentional. It expresses both the real existence of evil and its being held at a distance. The devil is present, but he is denied the center, as if his mere physical existence had to be signaled while at the same time being relegated outside the sacred message.
In Ottonian and Romanesque manuscripts, this iconography becomes even more refined. The devil sometimes adopts simian features: long arms, a curved back, a suggested grunt. In the medieval imagination, the monkey represents that which imitates man without ever attaining him, which copies the human form while stripping it of dignity. Turning the devil into a kind of simian caricature is a way of asserting that Satan is a parody of a creature: a perverted freedom, an intelligence turned upside down, a being that apes divine greatness but produces only monstrosity.
Hell as a Visual Theatre
From the 9th century onwards, the Christian imagination undergoes a radical shift. Hell, which until then had been merely a concept or a vaguely evoked space, becomes a concrete, almost theatrical setting. This transformation has spiritual reasons — to make the reality of moral choices tangible for the faithful — but also social ones, since images become a language for largely illiterate populations. From then on, the devil is no longer just a secondary character: he becomes a sovereign.
Tympanum of the Abbey Church of Sainte-Foy in Conques
In the sculptures of Romanesque tympana, this transformation erupts with unprecedented force. At Conques, Autun, and Moissac, artists carve in stone scenes of the Last Judgment in which the boundary between the world of the living and that of the damned is rendered visible as an architecture. Christ is enthroned at the center, but just below him appears another throne: that of the devil, a grotesque monarchy opposed to the heavenly kingdom. His henchmen torment souls, drag them, weigh them, mutilate them; they clamber over bodies, seize sinners like prey, while Satan orchestrates this chaos with a buffoonish solemnity.
Tympanum of the Abbey Church of Sainte-Foy in Conques
The carved hell is not a mere place of torture: it is a staging of absolute disorder. Everything in it functions as an inversion of the divine order. This principle of an anti-kingdom makes it possible to express a broader vision: Satan is no longer just the one who tempts; he rules an entire world built on distortion, cruelty and the grotesque. Here one of the most powerful aspects of the medieval representation of evil crystallizes: the idea that the devil governs a disordered universe that reflects his own inner confusion.
This iconography, far from being decorative, carries a moral purpose. It seeks to impress the eye, awaken fear, and remind us that human actions are not without consequence. The aesthetics of fear, so present in these tympana, serves a pedagogical intention: to make one feel that beauty and light are not just promised realities, but choices — and that refusing them leads to a world where ugliness becomes the norm.
The emergence of this infernal theatre marks a turning point: for the first time, the devil appears as a truly sovereign character in the Christian imagination. He reigns over a kingdom which, although grotesque, has its rules, its logic and its hierarchy. This vision, already firmly established in Romanesque art, will nourish all medieval iconography and remain, in the centuries that follow, one of the most persistent images of the Evil One.
The Devil in the Middle Ages: Between Theology, Folklore and Collective Fear
The Theological Devil: Subtle and Spiritual
In medieval scholarly thought, the devil occupies an essential yet paradoxical place. The great authors of the Christian tradition — Augustine, Gregory the Great, Thomas Aquinas — agree that he is not a rival of God and that his power depends entirely on divine permission. This dependence does not make him harmless, however. On the contrary, his seemingly limited power becomes all the more dangerous in that it manifests itself indirectly, slyly, in an almost psychological way.
For these theologians, Satan does not act as a brute force unleashed against humankind, but as a cunning spirit, an expert in suggestion. He observes weak points, slips into hesitations, manipulates inner representations. His favored domain is not the body, but the soul. Augustine’s view emphasizes the intellectual dimension of spiritual combat: the devil deceives by giving the illusion of good; he distorts desires; he does not drive man straight to pure crime, but to choices that resemble virtue while destroying its substance. Gregory the Great, for his part, describes an adversary who works in stages, insinuating small thoughts before amplifying them, like a patient strategist who knows the inner mechanisms of humanity better than anyone.
The Psalter of Henry of Blois is an illuminated psalter produced in the second half of the 12th century in England.
Thomas Aquinas, highly attentive to the workings of the mind, sees in diabolic action a kind of perverse sophistry: the demon does not compel, he persuades; he does not dominate, he diverts. He acts as an illusionist, a seducer, sometimes as a possessor — not through a brutal invasion, but through an occupation of inner space. In this light, possession itself is never a triumph of evil over God, but a state permitted in order to test humanity or reveal the limits of human pride.
Thus, over centuries of monastic reflection, a refined image of the devil is constructed: no longer a howling monster, but a formidable intellect, a subtle spirit, both close and unreachable, whose primary power is that of deception. Medieval evil is no longer just an external force: it becomes an inner dialogue with an invisible adversary.
The Folkloric Devil: Trickster, Grotesque or Lustful
Alongside this austere figure, conceptualized by theologians and discussed in cloisters, medieval common folk create a devil that has little in common with the fallen angel of theology. At fairs, in farces, plays, and popular performances, the demon becomes a loud, clumsy, often ridiculous character. He bangs into the scenery, trips over his own clogs, howls more than he speaks, and gesticulates without dignity. In religious mystery plays performed in public squares, he embodies a grotesque, turbulent presence, almost a jester. Actors play him in an exaggerated manner, with grimaces, tail-thwacks and forced laughter, in order to provoke fear and laughter at once.
This transformation is not just entertainment. It reveals a popular way of mastering fear: mocking the devil is already to triumph over him. Laughter acts as a social form of exorcism. Far from scholarly speculation, medieval men and women ward off evil through caricature, making ridiculous the one who frightens them in sermons. Thus the devil becomes, in the collective imagination, a lustful, foolish creature who is always the dupe of his own cunning — a deceiver who ends up deceived.
This comic version plays a fundamental role: it spreads the idea that evil can be overcome not only by grace, but also by everyday intelligence, by popular shrewdness, by a kind of disarming sense of humor. This devil, driven out by a theatrical gesture or ridiculed before a roaring crowd, paves the way for the satirical tradition of later centuries, in which the demon becomes a critical instrument, a grotesque mirror reflecting society’s faults.
Diabolical Pacts: A New Relationship to Evil
From the 12th century onwards, a profound shift occurs in the way evil is conceived: the devil ceases to be only a persecutor or seducer; he becomes a contracting party. The idea that a man might sell his soul is not yet common, but it gradually takes shape and eventually becomes one of the most powerful motifs in medieval literature. From now on, Satan does not merely snatch souls through deception: he acquires them by mutual agreement, like a merchant bargaining on equal terms with humans.
The motivations for these pacts vary from tale to tale, but they all follow the same pattern: the person wants to obtain what society or God refuses them. Some seek wealth, others power, forbidden knowledge, or impossible love. The devil then becomes the intermediary between frustrated desire and its fulfillment. He promises much and, in exchange, obtains the soul, delivered to him like a signature. This reversal is significant: evil is no longer merely suffered; it is chosen, negotiated, deliberately accepted in exchange for an immediate advantage. The devil is no longer just an enemy or mocker: he becomes a partner.
The legend of Theophilus of Adana provides the most famous example of this new relationship. Theophilus, a cleric in despair at having lost his position, concludes a pact with the devil to regain it. The contract is written, sealed, and kept as proof. This story, widely disseminated throughout the Middle Ages, already lays the foundations for the later Faust myth: a man ready to renounce his salvation in order to gain a fragment of power in this world. It also shows the growing fascination with a legalistic, almost bureaucratic devil, who acts not by violence but according to the forms of a formal agreement.
Through these stories, evil becomes rationalized. It stops being an unpredictable event or a spiritual accident. It becomes a choice, a commitment, a contract. One no longer merely suffers it: one accepts it. This shift prepares the modern age, in which the devil will very often become the figure of the price to be paid for excessive ambition.
The Devil Between the 13th and 15th Centuries: Rise of Demonology and Medieval Terrors
From the 13th century on, Europe enters a period of historical turbulence that will profoundly transform its relationship to evil. The devil, until then an important but still relatively secondary figure in Christian culture, gradually becomes an obsessive, omnipresent, disturbing, almost palpable character. This metamorphosis is not the result of a single event, but of a rare convergence: the rise of scholastic thought, deep social changes, demographic collapse, collective anxieties and, above all, a new longing to give intellectual order to what escapes human control.
The world is changing. It is becoming fragile. And in this world in crisis, the devil also changes.
Last Judgment: detail of Hell. Damned souls tortured by demons. Fra Angelico (c. 1387–1455)
Scholasticism: The Devil Becomes an Object of Study
The rise of universities in the 13th century gives birth to a new way of thinking about the supernatural. Theologians no longer simply comment on Scripture or repeat the teachings of the Church Fathers: they construct, through rigorous reasoning, a coherent system of the invisible world. Demons quite naturally find a central place within it.
Thomas Aquinas, a key figure of the century, plays a decisive role here. His vision of evil is not mythical but rational. For him, the demon is not a vague creature, but a precisely defined spiritual being, with a specific nature, history, psychology and mode of action. This intellectual precision is new. Thomas describes the demon as a fallen angel whose angelic nature remains despite the corruption of his will. He is still a spirit of great intelligence, infinitely superior to human faculties; but this intelligence is definitively oriented toward evil.
Hell, right panel of the Triptych of Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation, c. 1485
Thus the devil acquires a paradoxical status: a brilliant yet perverted creature, powerless in the face of God but fearsome for human beings; limited in power but dangerous in influence; deprived of grace but endowed with a keen knowledge of human weaknesses. This theological analysis gives him a new psychological depth. The demon is no longer just a howling monster bursting from hell: he becomes a subtle entity, capable of persuasion, illusion and rational manipulation.
By systematizing the devil’s modes of action, scholasticism grants him a form of intellectual visibility. People discuss his nature, his hierarchy, his capacities, his limits. Universities become almost laboratories in which the demon is examined as a spiritual phenomenon. This moment can be seen as the birth of demonology in the strict sense: a structured body of knowledge, articulated and argued, aiming to understand how evil acts in the world.
This “rationalization of the devil” will have deep consequences: it gives scholarly legitimacy to popular fears and, conversely, provides common culture with intellectual substance for what was previously only a diffuse imaginary.
Master of Avicenna, Paradise and Hell, c. 1435.
A Stricken Continent: Fear, Disorder and the Search for Meaning
But the growing interest in demonology is not only the work of universities. The outside world is also changing brutally. The 13th century sees the rise of powerful kingdoms, feudal wars, crusades, but also cultural exchanges and the growth of cities. The following century, however, plunges into darkness: the 14th century is a century of disasters.
Successive famines ravage the countryside. Wars spread and drag on. Then, in 1347, the Black Death arrives. Within a few years, Europe loses nearly a third of its population. Entire cities are emptied, villages disappear, corpses pile up for lack of gravediggers. Death becomes omnipresent, absurd, savage, without clear explanation.
Faced with this devastation, medieval thought seeks meaning. Such scourges cannot be the product of chance: there must be a will, a cause, an agent. The plague, incomprehensible as it is, lends itself to every interpretation. In a deeply religious society, a catastrophe so monstrous can only belong to a spiritual struggle. The devil thus becomes a convenient, almost necessary actor for explaining phenomena that surpass human experience.
Marginalized groups become natural suspects. Rumors accuse certain religious minorities of having poisoned wells under the devil’s influence. Religious dissenters, such as surviving Cathars or certain mystical movements, are assimilated to demonic sects. Healers, midwives, solitary women quickly fall under suspicion of maintaining occult relations with evil powers. In a destabilized society, the devil becomes the cement of the social imagination: people see his hand everywhere, accuse him, and regard him as the hidden engineer of all suffering.
These processes of designating invisible enemies and searching for culprits pave the way for the great repressive enterprise that will be the witch hunts of the 15th and 16th centuries. Even before these hunts, the 14th century establishes a way of thinking: evil is not only moral, it is organized; it acts through human allies; it conspires against Christian society. Europe gradually invents not only the devil, but his plot.
Late Gothic Art: The Devil Becomes Spectacle
In this climate of fear, anxiety and obsession, medieval art also changes, in order to give visible form to collective terrors. With the late Gothic, the devil takes on new proportions. The imagination becomes darker, more violent, more exuberant. Artists adopt an aesthetics of excess: excess of forms, colors, movement.
Canavesio, The Devil and the Hanged Man. Fresco, 1492
The sculpted and painted demons are no longer vaguely animal creatures; they become hybrid compositions, made of almost monstrous assemblages. A single demon may bear several faces, as if his fractured identity betrayed an inner chaotic nature. Others have multiple arms, multiple mouths, multiple wings. The multiplication of limbs, far from being a mere graphic device, expresses the idea that evil spreads, fragments, and no longer knows unity. Where God is perfectly one, the devil is plural, unstable, torn.
Colors, too, take on a new symbolic force. Sickly greens evoke moral decay, sulfurous yellows corruption, deep blacks the absence of light, blazing reds the flames of hell. The medieval hell looks less like a cave than like an immense machine, where demons become operators of tireless cruelty. They devour, tear, crush, stretch and twist bodies. The damned, for their part, are subjected to inventive torments, sometimes grotesque, sometimes atrocious, always spectacular.
These images are not intended merely to arouse fear: they aim to make the invisible visible. Artists give the faithful the opportunity to contemplate what a world entirely deprived of God would be like. Hell becomes a reversed mirror of paradise, a kingdom in which everything is deformed: gestures, rules, hierarchies, even the very notion of humanity.
At the heart of this macabre theatre, the devil holds a sovereign place. He is no longer the isolated agent of an individual temptation, but the ruler of an empire of chaos. He commands his legions, organizes torments, and reigns over the damned like a disfigured monarch. This image of the devil-king will take deep root in the European imagination.
A Total Devil
Between the 13th and 15th centuries, the figure of the devil attains a new level of complexity. He is no longer just a tempter; he becomes a system. He is no longer a marginal figure; he becomes the center of a cosmology. Theology, art, everyday life and historical crises converge to give him a psychological, social and visual density that did not exist before.
The late medieval devil is simultaneously a brilliant spirit, a conspirator, a corrupter, an infernal monarch and a projection of human anxieties. He is both a response to the world’s disorder and a moral warning; a figure studied in universities and a fantastical beast in villages; an artistic subject of unprecedented richness and a player in very real fears.
Michael Pacher, Altarpiece of the Church Fathers (detail), 1483. Munich, Germany.
This mixture of rationality, symbolism, fear and fascination constitutes one of the most fertile periods in the history of evil in the West — and prepares the even more violent explosion of the following centuries, when the devil will become the cornerstone of the witch hunts.
The Devil of the Codex Gigas: A Unique Appearance in Medieval Art
At the heart of the Codex Gigas, a huge 13th-century manuscript often nicknamed the “Devil’s Bible”, is one of the most striking and mysterious depictions of the demon in the entire history of medieval art. This image, occupying a full page, stands apart entirely from all contemporary iconographic traditions. It resembles neither the grotesque devils of Gothic margins, nor the composite monsters of Romanesque tympana, nor the grimacing demons of hell scenes. It is something else: a raw, isolated, monumental, almost overwhelming apparition.
What strikes the viewer at once is the isolation of the figure. The devil is not surrounded by damned souls, tortures or flames. He stands alone, imprisoned in a kind of architectural niche that evokes as much a sacred frame as a cage. It is an empty space, without decor, without narrative, without distraction: everything is designed to focus attention on the single figure of the demon. In this visual isolation, the devil takes on an almost physical presence, like a being that appears before the reader, not as an actor in a drama but as an absolute entity.
The physical appearance of this figure is equally remarkable. The devil of the Codex Gigas is shown as massive and squat, with a body of human yet exaggerated proportions, covered in dark fur. His skin takes on an animalized, almost bestial aspect, evoking an underground creature more than a fallen angel. His powerful claws are rendered with unusual precision for a manuscript, as if the scribe wanted particularly to emphasize the creature’s predatory nature. The red, long, serpent-like tongue seems to spring from his mouth with a disturbing vitality. As for the face, it is fixed and frontal, with two wide-open eyes that give the demon an expression that is both intent and implacable.
This frontality is exceptional. While most medieval depictions of Satan show him in action — tormenting, tempting, judging or orchestrating the damned — the devil of the Codex Gigas stares directly at the reader. He does not participate in any scene: he presents himself as a presence. He is there, facing you, without mediation, without story, without justification. He does nothing: he is.
This sheer existence, imposed by an entire page of the manuscript, grants the demon a silent, almost intimidating authority.
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this image lies in its relationship to the rest of the book. Opposite this page dominated by the devil is a depiction of the Heavenly City. The contrast is total: on one side, darkness, massiveness, hell evoked solely by the creature; on the other, luminous, geometric, pure order. The manuscript does not merely oppose good and evil: it places them face to face, as two poles of the same world, two options, two paths. The reader, turning these pages, literally plunges into this symbolic confrontation.
We do not know why the scribe — probably a Benedictine monk — chose to devote a full page to the devil, or why he depicted him with such raw monumentality. This lack of historical explanation has fueled legends for centuries: people say that the manuscript was produced in a single night with the help of the devil himself, that the image is a kind of demonic signature, or even a symbolic pact. These tales, of course, belong to popular mythology. But they testify to the fascination this image exerts: it seems too powerful, too disturbing to be merely decorative.
In the history of medieval art, the depiction of the devil in the Codex Gigas occupies a unique place. Not only is it one of the largest images of the demon ever painted in a manuscript, it is also one of the most stripped-down, most direct, most mysterious. It tells nothing, proves nothing: it confronts the reader with evil in a direct face-to-face encounter.
It is this frontality, this solitude, this monumentality that make it one of the most haunting icons in the whole history of the devil. Even today, despite thousands of analyses, the image retains intact power: one sees in it less an illustration than an apparition interrupting the text, a sudden irruption of shadow into the brightness of the pages. Perhaps that is why the Codex Gigas became “the Devil’s Bible”: not because of its contents, but because of this single image, which seems to look at the reader rather than being looked at.
Renaissance and Baroque: A More Subtle, More Psychological, and Also More Theatrical Devil
With the Renaissance, the devil enters a new era. The medieval centuries had built up a composite image of him: sovereign of a grotesque kingdom, master of misshapen legions, patient tempter, cunning spirit, yet often contained within doctrinal rigidity. From the 15th century onwards, however, this figure is profoundly transformed. The world is changing, mindsets shift, humanism infuses thought, and the devil reshapes himself in the likeness of new concerns. Less monstrous, less shrill, he becomes an inner presence, more subtle, more intellectual, but at times also more seductive and more dangerous, precisely because he draws closer to human aspirations.
The Renaissance places man at the center of the cosmos. It exalts reason, beauty, freedom, and individual ambition. It grants new dignity to human faculties and opens the way to an unprecedented confidence in the capacity of human beings to act upon their own destiny. This change transforms the understanding of evil. Temptation is no longer just an external assault; it becomes a dialogue, a face-to-face between two freedoms: that of God and that of man. In this context, the devil gradually loses his most grotesque features. His appearance smooths out, refines, becomes polished. He sometimes appears as a dark yet elegant courtier, a subtle diplomat, a brilliant and unsettling conversationalist. He ceases to be the absolute Other: he becomes an inverted alter ego, a possible double of man, embodying not so much primitive terror as fascination.
This humanization of the devil reinforces the idea that evil is not always recognizable by appearances. The Renaissance, passionate about psychology, ambiguity, and inner depth, prefers a devil capable of seducing by the very qualities that humans admire: intelligence, wit, learning, self-control. Artists and writers discover that evil can hide within beauty itself — in the perfect line of a fallen angel’s body or in the subtle arguments of an overly charming interlocutor. The devil becomes a mirror in which man sees his own excessive desires, his dreams of grandeur, his will to overstep the limits set by God.
One of the great revolutions of this period lies in the fact that Satan appears not only as a corrupter, but as a revealer. He brings to light what man really wants, sometimes in secret.
Satanic ritual dagger with figure of the devil
The Tempter Devil: A Seductive and Unsettling Character
At this time, diabolical temptation changes in nature. It is no longer a brutal attack, as in Romanesque frescoes, but a proposal, a conversation, a bargain. The devil becomes the spokesman of unlimited freedom: he shows what might be done if man were no longer confined by moral, social or religious constraints. He embodies transgression not just as a peccadillo or madness, but as an inner experience. He also becomes a figure of carnal desire, not only through lust but through the glorification of the body, through the exaltation of human passions. In his own way, the Renaissance devil carries within himself part of the new philosophy: the idea of the human being as a creature capable of greatness, able to surpass itself, yet also liable to fall precisely because of this aspiration.
In the literary portraits of the period, the devil sometimes becomes a surprisingly elegant character. He speaks well, knows human beings, and wields irony and a smile with skill. He is no longer only the spirit of evil: he becomes the spirit of the world, the breath of secret ambitions, the one who promises what the Church deems impossible or dangerous. Instead of being repelled at a glance, he becomes a conversational partner one may actually listen to — and that is his greatest danger.
The Faust Myth: Temptation as a Quest for Transcendence
This shift finds its most perfect form in the legend of Faust, one of the cultural pinnacles of the 16th century. Originally an obscure figure of a dissatisfied scholar, Faust becomes, thanks to German literature, the paradigmatic example of a man who makes a pact with the devil not out of weakness but ambition. He seeks neither gold nor political power nor merely carnal pleasures: he seeks knowledge, ultimate understanding of the world, penetration of nature’s secrets. He wants to transcend his human condition.
Mephistopheles in this story is no longer the grimacing monster of the Middle Ages. He is an ironic, cultivated, strategic spirit, at times even melancholic. He guides Faust with a patience that is almost friendly and yet perfectly calculated. His temptation has nothing vulgar about it: it consists in offering man what he most desires — freedom, mastery, total experience.
CANDLESTICKS THE DEVIL AND THE WITCH
In the Faust myth, the devil plays an unprecedented role: he becomes the agent of dangerous knowledge. It is no longer magic that leads to damnation, but an excess of learning. Not lust alone anymore, but intellectual pride. Faust does not fall because he abandons himself to his passions, but because he wants to understand what lies beyond the boundaries of the human condition.
Thus, the Faust myth introduces a new form of responsibility: man is no longer the devil’s victim; he becomes his partner. Evil is no longer solely external; it is born from a choice. The devil ceases to be an executioner; he becomes an interlocutor. And man, through this choice, becomes the architect of his own downfall. This vision establishes a new modernity of temptation: it is no longer a trial imposed from without, but a decision consciously embraced.
Renaissance painters: symbolic abundance and visual subtlety
The image of the devil also evolves in painting. In his hallucinatory universe, Hieronymus Bosch creates an infernal bestiary of unprecedented density. Evil is not a single force but an organic multitude, a crowd of small hybrid creatures—grotesque, disturbing, or comical. His devils are not only threatening: they are baffling, sometimes tiny, sometimes ridiculous, sometimes fascinating. The viewer then understands that evil is not always enormous and spectacular: it can be discreet, insinuating, abundant, almost ordinary. Bosch makes the devil a daily, fragile, plural phenomenon that slips into the simplest gestures.
Brueghel, heir to this imaginative tradition, also populates his canvases with strange, grotesque, or hybrid beings: flying fish, giant insects, animals with human limbs. In his work, fear mingles with satire; evil takes the form of small visual absurdities that in reality denounce the vices of men.
Grünewald, for his part, offers in his Isenheim Altarpiece one of the most terrifying visions of the demon. Here, evil is no joke: it is a palpable, almost physical force, made of anatomical distortions, delirious colors, and convulsions. His devil is a living wound, an embodied nightmare. Through these very different representations, the Renaissance proposes a full spectrum of devils—from the most subtle to the most monstrous, from the most seductive to the most repulsive.
The Baroque: the theatre of evil and the beauty of the fall
The seventeenth century opens a new stage: the Baroque. It is a century of violent contrasts, religious tensions, wars, but also of flamboyant artistic creativity. In this context, the devil becomes a theatrical character. His image is dramatized. He appears in motion, in spectacular falls, in celestial battles where angelic bodies plunge into darkness.
Baroque painters delight in depicting the fall of the rebellious angels: bodies of perfect beauty, inspired by ancient statuary, carried away in a whirlwind of light and shadow. Evil then acquires a new aesthetic grandeur. The aim is no longer to frighten through deformity, but to move through lost majesty. The baroque devil is often an overturned angel, splendid but condemned, noble in defeat, sublime in damnation.
This vision creates a new tension: evil does not only frighten—it fascinates. The devil becomes dramatic, almost tragic, and the viewer sometimes feels an involuntary admiration before the radiance of those who fall.
a devil of desire and ambiguity
Thus, between the Renaissance and the Baroque, the figure of the devil undergoes a fundamental transformation. He ceases to be only God’s enemy; he becomes man’s reflection. He accompanies human ambitions, embraces their failings, explores the secret recesses of psychology. He embodies what man wants to be, what he wishes to dare, what he dreams of in the silence of his conscience.
The devil then becomes less a hellish creature than a metaphor for human freedom—sublime or dangerous, depending on the choice man makes.
The devil in the age of witch trials: collective fear and fascination
Between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Europe passes through one of the darkest and most obsessed periods in its history. It is no longer merely the theologians’ devil, nor that of Romanesque tympanums or medieval visions. It is an incarnate, omnipresent devil, ingrained in the social fabric, who appears in fields, behind household doors, in stables, in the gazes of neighbors. Evil is no longer a concept: it is a suspicion. An intimate threat. A collective haunting.
18th-century engraving, sorcerers' sabbath
The society of the time is shaped by deep fears: fear of disease, fear of war, fear of economic change, fear of marginality, fear of the feminine and its mysterious power, fear of nature escaping control. The devil becomes the common language that makes it possible to explain the inexplicable, to give form to diffuse anxieties, to designate visible culprits for invisible evils.
This period sees the rise of the great witch trials. Contrary to popular belief, the witch hunt is not a direct legacy of the Middle Ages: it belongs to emerging modernity. It is the daughter of printing, the centralized state, early judicial bureaucracies, and religious reforms. And it is fed by an unprecedentedly intense imagery of the devil.
The Malleus Maleficarum: birth of a manual of terror
In 1486, a work appears that would become the pivot of several centuries of persecution: the Malleus Maleficarum by Kramer and Sprenger. This book, which presents itself as a theological and legal treatise, is in reality a work of extreme violence, constructed to convince civil and religious authorities that witches are an imminent threat to social order and must be exterminated methodically.
The Malleus is distinguished above all by its ambition: it does not merely describe what witches are supposed to be; it theorizes their existence, their organization, their malice, their alleged powers, their intimate relationship with the devil. It proposes a logical, almost mechanical system in which every human gesture can become suspect and every event can be interpreted as a demonic act.
In this book, the devil is no longer an isolated tempter: he appears as the leader of a vast conspiracy against Christendom. He is shown prowling at night, seducing women, making pacts with them, teaching them blasphemous rites and magical practices. He is schematized as the absolute enemy of social, economic, moral, and religious order.
The Malleus also reinforces a dangerous idea, deeply rooted in the mentality of the time: that of female vulnerability. The authors emphasize the supposed “weakness” of women, their alleged emotionality, instability, and uncontrolled sensuality. Under the pens of Kramer and Sprenger, woman becomes naturally suspect, almost predestined to demonic seduction. This systematic misogyny will serve as justification for thousands of trials in which the accused were condemned before even being heard.
The iconography of the demonic sabbath then explodes: nocturnal flights astride animals, obscene kisses on the devil’s “backside,” repugnant banquets, inverted ceremonies, reversal of the sacraments. The witch becomes the priestess of chaos and the devil her nocturnal lover.
This vision spreads like wildfire, irrigating courts, sermons, pamphlets, and popular beliefs. The devil of the Malleus is methodically mapped, analyzed, rationalized. He becomes almost an administrative figure: the one whom justice must hunt by hunting those who are supposedly subject to him.
The witch: the human face of the devil in the countryside
In European villages, the figure of the witch becomes the human symbol of evil. She crystallizes centuries of fears, taboos, jealousies, and tensions. The witch is not only an accused woman: she is a social role, a stereotype, almost a dramatic archetype upon which communities project their internal conflicts.
In small rural communities, everything depends on a fragile balance: a failed harvest, a sick cow, a dead child may suffice to upset the community. A culprit must be found. The witch—often a marginalized, elderly, widowed, isolated woman, a traditional healer, or simply someone different—becomes this convenient figure. She bears the accumulated suspicions, resentments, and economic tensions.
18th-century engraving, Arrival at the Sabbath
Female sexuality, long perceived as mysterious or dangerous, is regularly associated with the devil. The masculine imagination of the period fears the autonomy of the female body, its reproductive power, its opacity. Thus, the witch becomes the place where fears of fertility and fears of destruction intertwine, as if the same force could give life and take it away.
In this context, demons take familiar forms. They become black cats, goats, toads, crows: everyday silhouettes that suddenly carry an unsettling meaning. The devil becomes discreet, lurking in the animals surrounding the witches. The boundaries between nature and the supernatural blur. Evil becomes a neighborhood presence.
Thus, the devil is no longer solely in the theologians’ books: he lives in stables, in gardens, in attics, in ordinary gestures. He becomes a diffuse presence, a breath behind every misfortune, an immediate explanation for life’s accidents.
This shift is crucial: the devil is no longer an abstraction. He becomes a pretext for persecution. He becomes a weapon.
18th-century engraving, preparation for the witches' sabbath
The devil in the arts, literature, and pamphlets of the seventeenth century
The seventeenth century witnesses the devil’s imaginary reaching an almost hysterical intensity. Never, perhaps, has the devil been so frequently represented, described, and fantasized. Europe prints, dreams, paints, sculpts, narrates, and dramatizes evil with boundless inventiveness.
Engravings circulate through cities and countryside alike: frenzied sabbaths, scenes of monstrous births, pacts signed in blood, animal metamorphoses, theatrical exorcisms. Artists oscillate between grotesque horror and biting satire. Some images inspire nightmares: horned demons, naked witches flying in the moonlight, crowds of bloated spirits pressing around a cauldron. Others take on an almost comic tone: ridiculous devils, improbable sabbaths, infernal buffoonery.
The devil forces his summoners to conclude a pact — excerpt from the Compendium Maleficarum by Francesco Maria Guazzo (1608).
In sermons, the devil becomes an omnipresent character. Preachers describe him with almost clinical precision: his smell, his tricks, his promises, his military organization. His appearances, signatures, and lies are recounted. The seventeenth-century devil is a master of deception: he hides in details, in gestures, in words, in daily life.
Plays, sometimes clandestine, also exploit this fascination. The devil often appears as a disturber of social order, an agent of chaos, a grimacing but dangerous character. Pamphlets, for their part, circulate widely, feeding fears, inventing entire sabbaths, accusing individuals, describing imaginary demonic plots.
Thus, in the seventeenth century, the devil is everywhere: in art, in rumors, in courts, in sermons, in winter gatherings. He structures the collective imagination. He becomes an obsession, a fixed point around which the anxieties of the era revolve.
a social, political, and intimate devil
The age of the witch trials marks one of the moments when the figure of the devil had the most devastating consequences. It is no longer merely a matter of representation: it is a matter of shattered human lives. The devil becomes an instrument of control, a pretext for repression, a key for understanding social tensions, a distorted mirror of sexuality, poverty, and the fear of the other.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, the devil is no longer a theological creature. He is a political, psychological, and social actor.
An imagined predator, yet one with very real impact.
An invisible character whose shadow alone was enough to set Europe ablaze.
The Devil in the Age of Enlightenment: Reason, Satire, and Desacralization
With the 18th century, the devil finds himself facing an unexpected opponent: reason. Whereas the previous centuries had nurtured a true demonological obsession, the Enlightenment set out to deconstruct ancient beliefs. Philosophers challenged superstition and denounced the credulity inherited from the Middle Ages. They refused to see natural phenomena as diabolical interventions and mocked the witch trials—those cruel episodes in which innocent people were condemned on the basis of theological fictions or collective fears.
Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Saint Francis Borgia assisting an impenitent dying man, 1787–1788. Cathedral of Valencia, Spain.
Voltaire, in particular, makes the devil a favorite target. For him, the figure of Satan becomes a rhetorical tool used to criticize obscurantism, abuses of authority, or popular credulity. This Voltairian devil has nothing of the medieval monster; he is merely a grotesque shadow, a naïve construction of societies dominated by fear. Satirical writers eagerly seized upon him, turning him into a clumsy, ridiculous, sometimes even pitiful character. He thus loses all metaphysical depth and becomes a tool for social analysis. Demonology, once a serious discipline, collapses into the realm of the burlesque.
This transformation also manifests itself in the performing arts. In fairy tales, comic operas, or fairground theaters, the devil descends from the infernal throne on which the medieval centuries had placed him and becomes a secondary character—often singing, dancing, talkative, incapable of carrying out his own schemes. He appears as an unlucky seducer, a spiteful yet harmless spirit, almost endearing. His iconographic downfall is complete: where he once terrified entire crowds, he now entertains fashionable salons.
Under the influence of the Enlightenment, the devil loses his real power. He becomes an abstract figure, a literary symbol more than a threatening being. He is invoked to provoke laughter, to denounce, to caricature; he is no longer feared. This desacralization heralds modernity: hell is no longer a place but a myth; the devil, no longer a cosmic adversary but a cultural character.
Candlestick representing the devil on relics.es
Romanticism and the 19th Century: Lucifer, Tragic Hero and Symbol of Revolt
Yet the devil has not spoken his last word. In the 19th century, as rationalism triumphs, another current emerges—almost as a reaction to this intellectual coldness: Romanticism. Romantic writers, poets, and artists restore a deep dimension to the devil, but transform him radically. He is no longer the bestial creature of the Middle Ages, nor the comic puppet of the Enlightenment: he becomes a symbol of rebellion, a tragic figure, sometimes even a hero.
The Romantics see in Lucifer the perfect image of the individual who refuses to submit. He becomes the champion of absolute freedom, the one who prefers damnation to obedience, the one who dares to say “no” to divine power. In Byron, Shelley, or Goethe’s Faust, the devil appears as a brilliant, skeptical, ironic, yet also melancholic interlocutor. He no longer represents raw evil but a state of consciousness: doubt, cruel lucidity, the suffering of one who knows he is condemned yet continues nonetheless.
Milton, in Paradise Lost, offers the devil one of his most sublime literary incarnations. Lucifer becomes a magnificent fallen angel, splendid yet doomed, whose rebellion carries the resonance of tragic grandeur. This image deeply shapes Western culture. The Romantic devil is no longer the enemy of humanity: he is sometimes its most heroic, passionate, and tragic reflection.
The painting of the 19th century embraces this new vision fully. Delacroix, Moreau, and Rops give the devil forms that are far more psychological than theological. He is no longer merely a figure of hell but the visible embodiment of inner temptation, desire, unease, and vertigo. He appears as a seductive being—sometimes androgynous, sometimes radiant, sometimes dark—but always charged with an emotional intensity that transcends dogma. This approach makes the devil a symbol of the human soul itself, of its duality, its desire to escape norms, its taste for extremes.
In literature, the figure becomes even more complex. Dostoevsky, in The Brothers Karamazov, imagines an aged devil, speaking with weariness, reflecting the protagonist’s anxieties and contradictions. Baudelaire, in Les Fleurs du mal, transforms Satan into a perfume, an atmosphere, an inclination, an inner temptation; the devil becomes aesthetic, a dizziness, a way of perceiving the world. Never perhaps was he so intimately linked to the human psyche.
The 20th Century: Psychoanalysis, Cinema, and the Explosion of Imaginaries
In the 20th century, representations of the devil multiply and diversify radically. Psychoanalysis turns him into a symbol of the unconscious. Freud sees in him the figure of repressed impulses, forbidden desires returning to haunt the subject. Jung, for his part, makes him the “shadow”—that ignored part of ourselves which contains what we refuse to acknowledge. The devil thus ceases to be an external adversary and becomes a component of the human soul. He no longer needs pitchforks or wings to exist; he is our guilt, our fears, our traumas, our most secret impulses.
Cinema eagerly seizes upon this malleable figure. It turns him alternately into a terrifying monster, a metaphysical presence, a charismatic seducer, or a comic troublemaker. In horror films like The Exorcist, The Omen, or Rosemary’s Baby, the devil becomes frightening again, the embodiment of an evil that surpasses humanity. But Hollywood also gives him seductive traits, as in The Devil’s Advocate, where Al Pacino plays a brilliant, modern, manipulative Satan, master of contemporary illusions. Other productions choose to ridicule him: in comedies or animated films, he becomes a quirky character, a bureaucrat of hell or a lover of jokes. This plurality makes the devil omnipresent: he is capable of all metamorphoses depending on dramatic or commercial needs.
Music follows suit. Blues, rock, and metal use the figure of the devil as a symbol of rebellion, transgression, or freedom. The legend of Robert Johnson selling his soul at the crossroads fuels the musical imagination of the 20th century. Rock bands play with satanic codes to shock or affirm a rebellious identity. The devil becomes an emblem—sometimes provocative, sometimes ironic, but always laden with symbolic power.
In comic books, video games, and manga, Satan is alternately adorable, calculating, tragic, grotesque, or sublime. He reflects the artistic styles and sensitivities of each medium. He loses his exclusive link to religion and becomes a pop icon, one character among many, sometimes even a sympathetic one.
The Contemporary Devil: A Universal Metaphor
Today the devil is almost no longer perceived as a religious figure. He has become a symbol, a tool, a language. Artists use him to denounce political corruption, technological excesses, the madness of power, the mechanisms of capitalism, the temptation of inhumanity. He is no longer God’s enemy: he is the shadow cast by modern humanity.
In contemporary culture he may be ironic, weary, overwhelmed, transformed into an administrative manager of hell or a melancholic antihero. This postmodern version of the devil shows how profoundly the sacred has changed: what once terrified now amuses, and what once made crowds tremble now serves as material for humor.
But behind these infinite variations lies a constant: the devil remains a mirror. He reflects what societies wish to criticize, what they wish to understand, what they refuse to confront directly. He is the dark side of human freedom, the embodiment of our contradictions, the symbol of this permanent tension between what we are and what we wish to be.
Conclusion: A Dynamic Figure, a Revealer of Humanity
From the 18th to the 21st century, the devil undergoes a true metamorphosis. He moves from the status of metaphysical threat to that of cultural symbol. He is criticized by reason, exalted by the Romantics, dissected by psychoanalysts, magnified or ridiculed by popular culture. In every era he changes mask, role, and discourse.
But through all these variations, one thing remains: the devil is never an autonomous figure. He is always shaped by the needs, fears, dreams, and excesses of human societies. His exceptional plasticity makes him a privileged witness to our history: he has been monster, tempter, clown, philosopher, revolutionary, icon, or trauma.
In short, the figure of the devil tells as much about the evolution of human representations as about evil itself. And it is precisely because he constantly changes that the devil remains, even today, one of the most powerful, ambiguous, and fascinating symbols in all of Western culture.
Devil letter opener, 19th century
Devil candelabrum with snakes, 19th century
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