THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
their power over the weather (Polycraticus, chaps, viii.-xiii.).
According to the medieval theology the devil is at the head of a realm of demons divided into prelacies and demonarchies. Pride was the cause of Lucifer's fall. The region where the devil was cast down is the tenebrous air, where, in pits of darkness, he and his followers are reserved till the day of final judgment, and not till then will their full degree of torment be meted out to them (Peter Lombard, u. 6). Albcrtus Magnus, of all the schoolmen, speaks with most precision upon the locality There are three zones or interstices in the air, and it is the middle zone which is inhabited by the devil and his angels (" Sentences," II. vi. 5, ed. Borgnet, xxvii. 152). There the tempests are bred and the hail and the snow are generated. There the demons start the clouds on fell missions and send forth the thunders and other natural terrors to frighten and hurt men. For until the time of their final torment they have power to trouble men (Thomas Aquinas, Summa, I. Ixiv. 4; Peter Lombard, II. vii. 6). As for their mental power, the devU and his angels are more acute than men, and their long experience enables them to foretell the future. Albertus Magnus says they are far more shrewd in watching the stars and predicting future events than are the astronomers. The miracles they perform are for the most part legerdemain and juggleries by which they deceive and outwit. But, as Thomas Aquinas asserts {Summa, I. cxiv. 4), quoting Augustine, they have also supernatural power and cause sickness and death, blast the crops, produce all sorts of freaks upon the progeny of men, and make women sterile. About 1250 the witchcraft craze began to sweep through Europe. From the time when Gregory IX. issued his bull on the subject in 1233 the punishment for such Satanic influence and heresy went side by side, for heresy also was considered the work of the devil (see Inquisition). Thomas Aquinas gave full doctrinal statement to, the popular \icw, declaring that all practisers of witchcraft and sorcery were in league with the devil, and advocated the penalty of death. From that time pope after pope issued orders not to spare those who were under the direct agency of the devil (see Witchcraft).
The popular writers of the Middle Ages, Csesarius of Heisterbach (Dialogus), Thomas Cantimpratensis {Bonum universale de apibus), and Jacobus de Voragine in his " Golden Legend," are full of the most marvelous postures and feats of the evil one and his minions. They saw them with their eyes. Usually they were clad in black. Sometimes they had the face of a woman and were veiled. The devil himself appeared
3. Popular in meetings of witches and other per-
Notions. sons as a great black tom-cat but also as a dog, a Moor, and in other shapes. Sometimes the demons had the forms of children with faces of iron. In convents the devil was a frequent visitor. Sometimes poor monks lost their minds through the devil's influence Sometimes he imparted to them an unusual gift of preaching. The most gruesome of all these tales are those
which represent the devil as tormenting the naked soul after death and driving his sharp claws into it (Caesarius of Heisterbach, i. 32, v. 10, etc.). These stories were fully believed, and all these experiences are in accord with the principles laid down by the great schoolmen, Peter Lombard, Bonaventura, Thomas Aquinas, and Albertus Magnus. The schoolmen, following Anselm (who wrote a special treatise, De casu diaboli) in his Cur deus homo, set aside the old view that Christ's death and sufferings were a payment made to Satan. Thomas Aquinas {Summa, III. xlviii. 3) says, "Christ offered his blood, which is the price of our redemption, not to the devil, but to God."
The Reformation brought only partial relief from these harrowing medieval notions. In Protestant lands persecution went on for those who were supposed to be under the special influence of Satan. Luther threw his inkstand at the devil, and on one occasion when he was awakened by a noise from sleep he finally composed himself by saying, " I heard one walking on the
4. Luther, floor above my head, but, as I knew
it to be only the devil, I went quietly to sleep." He said, " Let a Christian know this, that he is sitting in the midst of devils, and that the devil is closer to him than his coat or shirt or even his very skin." Nevertheless, in the domain of theology Luther made an advance when he denied to the devil all right to us and power over us (" Recht und Macht "). Christ's death was not a payment to him, but to the wrath of God (cf. R. Seeberg, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, ii., Leipsic, 1898, p. 252).
In more modern times there have been theologians who have denied wholly the personality of the devil; for example, the German rationalists, beginning with the eighteenth century. Even Schleiermacher combated the view of a personal Satan (see above, II., § 2). Later theologians like Martensen, Nitzsch, Twesten, Julius Mtiller, Dorner, and others hold firmly to his personality. Martensen says he was "Christ's younger brother, and became God's adversary because he was not content to be second, but wanted to be first; because he was unwilling to bear the light of another, and wanted to be the light itself." Jakob Bohme says: "Lucifer envied the Son his glory; his own beauty deceived him, and he wanted to place himself on the throne of the Son." An attempt has even been made to fix the date of his apostasy. Lange thought it occurred on one of the days of the creative week; while Kurtz and others held that the formless and void chaos of the world (Gen. i. 2) was the result of Satan's fall. Whatever may
be said of these theories, evangelical
5. Modern theologians agree in three points: (1) Views. The possibility of Satan's apostasy is
as conceivable as the fall of man; (2) The inveterate liostility of Satan to the kingdom of Christ makes the denial of eternal punishment on the ground of the divine compassion untenable; (3) In proportion as the Christian consciousness of sin is deep does the belief in the personal agency of Satan prevail. In the New Testament the apostles feel that they are participants in the struggle