The satyr as representation of the devil (Didron; Stokes; Millington, trs., Christian iconography, 1886, vol. 2)

Text: "The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; the screech owl also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest." Isaiah 34:14

Quote:





[...] The devil has his phases according to the style of the architecture to which he belongs: he is Byzantine or monstrous at Constantinople and Jerusalem; ugly but human in Rome, among the Latins; animal, yet his brute form modified by his human form among the Romans; human, but taking the forms of the beast among the Goths; and finally, with the Renaissance, returning to an ancient Satyr, which has the feet and horns of a goat, but the body and head of a man. ["A time came," says M. Reville, "when the idea that the devil had a distinct bodily shape became settled; and this form was that of the ancient fauns and satyrs, with hoofs, protruding legs, hairy skin, tail, cloven foot or horse's hoof." The foregoing illustration is drawn from a panel of the ivory case of the flabellum or fan of Tournus, described in the Benedictine Annals (No. LXIII.).

   This case is believed by some antiquaries to have been originally intended to contain a copy of the works of Virgil, and to date from the fifth century. It is the opinion of M. Charles le Normand that in the twelfth century the monks of Tournus used it as a box for the flabellum. The designs carved in the compartments are apparently illustrations of the Eclogues of Virgil.]

Didron, Adolphe Napoléon; Stokes, Margaret; Millington, E. J., trs., Christian iconography; or, The history of Christian art in the Middle Ages, 2 vols., London: George Bell and Sons, 1886, vol. 2, pp. 134-135.

Online Source: https://archive.org/details/christianiconogr02didruoft

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