Demonology and Devil-lore Part 41

The retribution that followed was more ferocious than could have visited mere attempts by the poor and ignorant to call up spirits to their aid. Every now and then the prosecutions disclose the well-known animus of heresy, persecution, and also the fury of magistrates suspicious of conspiracies. In England, New England, and France, particularly, an incipient rationalism was revealed in the party called 'Saducees,' who tried to cast discredit on the belief in witchcraft. This was recognised by Sir Mathew Hale in England and Cotton Mather in New England, consequently by the chief authorities of church and state in both countries, as an attack on biblical infallibility, since it was said in the Bible, 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.' The leading wizards and witches were probably also persons who had been known in connection with the popular discontent and revolutionary feeling displayed in so many of the vindictive conjurations which were brought to light.

The horrors which attended the crushing out of this last revival of paganism are such as recall the Bartholomew ma.s.sacre and the recent slaughter of Communists in Paris, so vividly that one can hardly repress the suspicion that the same sort of mingled panic and fanaticism were represented in them all. Dr. Reville has summed up the fearful history of three hundred years as follows:--'In the single year 1485, and in the district of Worms alone, eighty-five witches were delivered to the flames. At Geneva, at Basle, at Hamburg, at Ratisbon, at Vienna, and in a mult.i.tude of other towns, there were executions of the same kind. At Hamburg, among other victims, a physician was burnt alive, because he saved the life of a woman who had been given up by the midwife. In Italy, during the year 1523, there were burnt in the diocese of Como alone more than two hundred witches. This was after the new bull hurled at witchcraft by Pope Adrian VI. In Spain it was still worse; there, in 1527, two little girls, of from nine to eleven years of age, denounced a host of witches, whom they pretended to detect by a mark in their left eye. In England and Scotland political influence was brought to bear upon sorcery; Mary Stuart was animated by a lively zeal against witches. In France the Parliament of Paris happily removed business of this kind from the ecclesiastical tribunals; and under Louis XI., Charles VIII., and Louis XII. there were but few condemnations for the practice of magic; but from the time of Francis I., and especially from Henry II., the scourge reappeared. Jean Bodin, a man of sterling worth in other respects, but stark mad upon the question of witchcraft, communicated his mania to all cla.s.ses of the nation. His contemporary and disciple, Boguet, showed how that France swarmed with witches and wizards. 'They increase and multiply on the land,' said he, 'even as do the caterpillars in our gardens. Would that they were all got together in a heap, so that a single fire might burn them all at once.' Savoy, Flanders, the Jura Mountains, Lorraine, Bearn, Provence, and in almost all parts of France, the frightful hecatombs were seen ablaze. In the seventeenth century the witch-fever somewhat abated, though it burst out here and there, centralising itself chiefly in the convents of hysterical nuns. The terrible histories of the priests Gaufridy and Urban Grandier are well known. In Germany, and particularly in its southern parts, witch-burning was still more frequent. In one small princ.i.p.ality at least 242 persons were burnt between 1646 and 1651; and, horribile dictu, in the official records of these executions, we find that among those who suffered were children from one to six years of age! In 1657 the witch-judge, Nicholas Remy, boasted of having burnt 900 persons in fifteen years. It would even seem that it is to the proceedings against sorcery that Germany owes the introduction of torture as an ordinary mode of getting at the truth. Mr. Roskoff reproduces a catalogue of the executions of witches and wizards in the episcopal town of Wurzburg, in Bavaria, up to the year 1629. In 1659 the number of those put to death for witchcraft amounted, in this diocese, to 900. In the neighbouring bishopric of Bamberg at least 600 were burnt. He enumerates thirty-one executions in all, not counting some regarded by the compilers of the catalogue as not important enough to mention. The number of victims at each execution varies from two to seven. Many are distinguished by such surnames as 'The Big Hunchback, The Sweetheart, The Bridge-keeper, The Old Pork-woman,' &c. Among them appear people of all sorts and conditions, actors, workmen, jugglers, town and village maidens, rich burghers, n.o.bles, students, magistrates even, and a fair number of priests. Many are simply entered as 'a foreigner.' Here and there is added to the name of the condemned person his age and a short notice. Among the victims, for instance, of the twentieth execution figures 'Little Barbara, the prettiest girl in Wurzburg;' 'a student who could speak all manner of languages, who was an excellent musician, vocaliter et instrumentaliter;' 'the master of the hospice, a very learned man.' We find, too, in this, gloomy account the cruel record of children burnt for witchcraft; here a little girl of about nine or ten years of age, with her baby sister, younger than herself (their mother was burnt a little while afterwards); here boys of ten or eleven; again, a young girl of fifteen; two children from the poorhouse; the little boy of a councillor. The pen falls from one's hand in recapitulating such monstrosities. Cannot those who would endow Catholicity with the dogma of papal infallibility hearken, before giving their vote, to the cries that rise before G.o.d, and which history re-echoes, of those poor innocent ones whom pontifical bulls threw into flames? The seventeenth century saw the rapid diminution of trials and tortures. In one of his good moments, Louis XIV. mitigated greatly the severity of this special legislation. For this he had to undergo the remonstrances of the Parliament of Rouen, which believed society would be ruined if those who dealt in sorcery were merely condemned to perpetual confinement. The truth is, that belief in witchcraft was so wide-spread, that from time to time even throughout the seventeenth century there were isolated executions. One of the latest and most notorious was that of Renata Saenger, superior of the convent of Unterzell, near Wurzburg (1748). At Landshut, in Bavaria, in 1756, a young girl of thirteen years was convicted of impure intercourse with the Devil, and put to death. Seville in 1781, and Glaris in 1783, saw the last two known victims to this fatal superst.i.tion.' [175]

The Reformation swept away in Northern countries, for the upper cla.s.ses, as many Christian saints and angels as priestcraft had previously turned to enemies for the lower. The poor and ignorant simply tried to evoke the same ideal spirit-guardians under the pagan forms legendarily a.s.sociated with a golden age. Witchcraft was a pathetic appeal against a cruel present to a fair, however visionary, past. But Protestantism has brought on famine of another kind--famine of the heart. The saints of the Church have followed those of paganism; and although one result of the process has been a vast increase in enterprise, science, and wealth, man cannot live by these alone. Modern spiritualism, which so many treat with a superciliousness little creditable to a scientific age, is a cry of starved sentiment and affections left hopeless under faded heavens, as full of pathetic meaning as that which was wrung from serfs enticed into temples only to find them dens of thieves. Desolate hearts take up the burthen of desolate homes, and appeal to invisible powers for guidance; and for attestation of hopes which science has blighted, ere poetry, art, and philanthropy have changed these ashes into beauty. Because these so-called spirits, evoked by mediums out of morbid nerves, are really longed-for ideals, the darker features of witchcraft are not called about them. That fearful movement was a wronged Medea whose sorrows had made Hecate--to remember the dreadful phrase of Euripides--'the chosen a.s.sistant dwelling in the inmost recesses of her house.' Modern spiritualism is Rachel weeping for her children, not to be comforted if they are not. But the madness of the one is to be understood by the plaintive appeal of the other.

CHAPTER XXV.

FAUST AND MEPHISTOPHELES.

Mephisto and Mephitis--The Raven Book--Papal sorcery--Magic seals--Mephistopheles as dog--George Sabellicus alias Faustus--The Faust myth--Marlowe's Faust--Good and evil angels--El Magico Prodigioso--Cyprian and Justina--Klinger's Faust--Satan's sermon--Goethe's Mephistopheles--His German characters--Moral scepticism--Devil's gifts--Helena--Redemption through Art--Defeat of Mephistopheles.

The name Mephistopheles has in it, I think, the priest's shudder at the fumes of the laboratory. Duntzer [176] finds that the original form of the word was 'Mephostophiles,' and conjectures that it was a bungling effort to put together three Greek words, to mean 'not loving the light.' In this he has the support of Bayard Taylor, who also thinks that it was so understood by Goethe. The transformation of it was probably amid the dreaded gases with which the primitive chemist surrounded himself. He who began by 'not loving the light' became the familiar of men seeking light, and lover of their mephitic gases. The ancient Romans had a mysterious divinity called Mephitis, whose grove and temple were in the Esquiliae, near a place it was thought fatal to enter. She is thought to have been invoked against the mephitic exhalations of the earth in the grove of Albunea. Sulphur springs also were of old regarded as ebullitions from h.e.l.l, and both Schwarz and Roger Bacon particularly dealt in that kind of smell. Considering how largely Asmodeus, as 'fine gentleman,' entered into the composition of Mephistopheles, and how he flew from Nineveh to Egypt (Tobit) to avoid a bad smell, it seems the irony of mythology that he should turn up in Europe as a mephitic spirit.

Mephistopheles is the embodiment of all that has been said in preceding chapters of the ascetic's horror of nature and the pride of life, and of the mediaeval priest's curse on all learning he could not monopolise. The Faust myth is merely his shadow cast on the earth, the tracery of his terrible power as the Church would have the people dread it. The early Raven Book at Dresden has the t.i.tle:--'

? ? ? D. J. Fausti ? ? ? Dreifacher Hollen-Zwung und Magische (Geister-Commando) nebst den schwarzen Raaben. Romae ad Arcanum Pontificatus unter Papst Alexander VI. gedruckt. Anno (Christi) MDI.' In proof of which claim there is a Preface purporting to be a proclamation signed by the said Pope and Cardinal Piccolomini concerning the secrets which the celebrated Dr. Faust had scattered throughout Germany, commanding ut ad Arcanum Pontificatus mandentur et sicut pupilla oculi in archivio Nostro serventur et custodiantur, atque extra Valvas Vaticanas non imprimantur neque inde transportentur. Si vero quiscunque temere contra agere ausus fuerit, Divinam maledictionem latae sententiae ipso facto servatis n.o.bis Solis reservandis se incursurum sciat. Ita mandamus et const.i.tuemus Virtute Apostolicae Ecclesiae Jesu Christi sub poena Excommunicationis ut supra. Anno secundo Vicariatus Nostri. Romae Verbi incarnati Anno M.D.I.

This is an impudent forgery, but it is an invention which, more than anything actually issued from Rome, indicates the popular understanding that the contention of the Church was not against the validity of magic arts, but against their exercise by persons not authorised by itself. It was, indeed, a tradition not combated by the priests, that various ecclesiastics had possessed such powers, even Popes, as John XXII., Gregory VII., and Clement V. The first Sylvester was said to have a dragon at his command; John XXII. denounced his physicians and courtiers for necromancy; and the whispers connecting the Vatican with sorcery lasted long enough to attribute to the late Pius IX. a power of the evil eye. Such awful potencies the Church wished to be ascribed to itself alone. Faust is a legend invented to impress on the popular mind the fate of all who sought knowledge in unauthorised ways and for non-ecclesiastical ends.

In the Raven Book just mentioned, there are provisions for calling up spirits which, in their blending of christian with pagan formulas, oddly resemble the solemn proceedings sometimes affected by our spiritual mediums. The magician (Magister) had best be alone, but if others are present, their number must be odd; he should deliberate beforehand what business he wishes to transact with the spirits; he must observe G.o.d's commandment; trust the Almighty's help; continue his conjuration, though the spirits do not appear quickly, with unwavering faith; mark a circle on parchment with a dove's blood; within this circle write in Latin the names of the four quarters of heaven; write around it the Hebrew letters of G.o.d's name, and beneath it write Sadan; and standing in this circle he must repeat the ninety-first Psalm. In addition there are seals in red and black, various Hebrew, Greek, and Latin words, chiefly such as contain the letters Q, W, X, Y, Z,--e.g., Yschyros, Theos, Zebaoth, Adonay. The specimen (Fig. 22), which I copied from the book in Dresden, is there called 'Sigillum Telschunhab.' The 'Black Raven' is pictured in the book, and explained as the form in which the angel Raphael taught Tobias to summon spirits. It is said also that the Magician must in certain cases write with blood of a fish (Tobit again) or bat on 'maiden-parchment,'--this being explained as the skin of a goat, but unpleasantly suggestive of a different origin.

In this book, poorly printed, and apparently on a private press, Mephistopheles is mentioned as one of the chief Princes of h.e.l.l. He is described as a youth, adept in all arts and services, who brings spirit-servants or familiars, and brings treasures from earth and sea with speed. In the Frankfort Faust Book (1587), Mephistopheles says, 'I am a spirit, and a flying spirit, potently ruling under the heavens.' In the oldest legends he appears as a dog, that, as we have seen, being the normal form of tutelary divinities, the symbol of the Scribe in Egypt, guard of Hades, and psychopomp of various mythologies. A dog appears following the family of Tobias. Manlius reports Melancthon as saying, 'He (Faust) had a dog with him, which was the Devil.' Johann Gast ('Sermones Conviviales') says he was present at a dinner at Basle given by Faust, and adds: 'He had also a dog and a horse with him, both of which, I believe, were devils, for they were able to do everything. Some persons told me that the dog frequently took the shape of a servant, and brought him food.' In the old legends this dog is named Praestigiar. [177]

As for the man Faust, he seems to have been personally the very figure which the Church required, and had the friar, in whose guise Mephistopheles appears, been his actual familiar, he could hardly have done more to bring learning into disgrace. Born at the latter part of the fifteenth century at Knittlingen, Wurtemberg, of poor parents, the bequest of an uncle enabled him to study medicine at Cracow University, and it seems plain that he devoted his learning and abilities to the work of deluding the public. That he made money by his 'mediumship,' one can only infer from the activity with which he went about Germany and advertised his 'powers.' It was at a time when high prices were paid for charms, philtres, mandrake mannikins; and the witchcraft excitement was not yet advanced enough to render dealing in such things perilous. It seems that the Catholic clergy made haste to use this impostor to point their moral against learning, and to identify him as first-fruit of the Reformation; while the Reformers, with equal zeal, hurled him back upon the papists as outcome of their idolatries. Melancthon calls him 'an abominable beast, a sewer of many devils.' The first mention of him is by Trithemius in a letter of August 20, 1507, who speaks of him as 'a pretender to magic'

('Magister Georgius Sabellicus, Faustus Junior'), whom he met at Gelnhaussen; and in another letter of the same year as at Kreuznach, Conrad Mudt, friend of Luther and Melancthon, mentions (Oct. 3, 1513) the visit to Erfurth of Georgius Faustus Hemitheus Hedebeyensis, 'a braggart and a fool who affects magic,' whom he had 'heard talking in a tavern,' and who had 'raised theologians against him.' In Vogel's Annals of Leipzig (1714), kept in Auerbach's Cellar, is recorded under date 1525 Dr. Johann Faust's visit to the Cellar. He appears therefore to have already had aliases. The first clear account of him is in the 'Index Sanitatis' of Dr. Philip Begardi (1539), who says: 'Since several years he has gone through all regions, provinces, and kingdoms, made his name known to everybody, and is highly renowned for his great skill, not alone in medicine, but also in chiromancy, necromancy, physiognomy, visions in crystal, and the like other arts. And also not only renowned, but written down and known as an experienced master. Himself admitted, nor denied that it was so, and that his name was Faustus, and called himself philosophum philosophorum. But how many have complained to me that they were deceived by him--verily a great number! But what matter?--hin ist hin.'

These latter words may mean that Faust had just died. He must have died about that time, and with little notice. The rapidity with which a mythology began to grow around him is worthy of more attention than the subject has received. In 1543 the protestant theologian Johann Gast has ('Sermones Convivialium') stories of his diabolical dog and horse, and of the Devil's taking him off, when his body turns itself five times face downward. In 1587 Philip Camerarius speaks of him as 'a well-known magician who lived in the time of our fathers.' April 18, 1587, two students of the University of Tubingen were imprisoned for writing a Comedy of Dr. Faustus: though it was not permitted to make light of the story, it was thought a very proper one to utilise for pious purposes, and in the autumn of the same year (1587) the original form of the legend was published by Spiess in Frankfort. It describes Faust as summoning the Devil at night, in a forest near Wittenberg. The evil spirit visits him on three occasions in his study, where on the third he gives his name as 'Mephostophiles,'

and the compact to serve him for twenty-four years for his soul is signed. When Faust pierces his hand, the blood flows into the form of the words O h.o.m.o fuge! Mephistopheles first serves him as a monk, and brings him fine garments, wine, and food. Many of the luxuries are brought from the mansions of prelates, which shows the protestant bias of the book; which is also shown in the objection the Devil makes to Faust's marrying, because marriage is pleasing to G.o.d. Mephistopheles changes himself to a winged horse, on which Faust is borne through many countries, arriving at last at Rome. Faust pa.s.ses three days, invisible, in the Vatican, which supplies the author with another opportunity to display papal luxury, as well as the impotence of the Pope and his cardinals to exorcise the evil powers which take their food and goblets when they are about to feast. On his further aerial voyages Faust gets a glimpse of the garden of Eden; lives in state in the Sultan's palace in the form of Mohammed; and at length becomes a favourite in the Court of Charles V. at Innsbruck. Here he evokes Alexander the Great and his wife. In roaming about Germany, Faust diverts himself by swallowing a load of hay and horses, cutting off heads and replacing them, making flowers bloom at Christmas, drawing wine from a table, and calling Helen of Troy to appear to some students. Helen becomes his mistress; by her he has a son, Justus Faustus; but these disappear simultaneously with the dreadful end of Dr. Faustus, who after a midnight storm is found only in the fragments with which his room is strewn.

Several of these legends are modifications of those current before Faust's time. The book had such an immense success that new volumes and versions on the same subject appeared not only in Germany but in other parts of Europe,--a rhymed version in England, 1588; a translation from the German in France, 1589; a Dutch translation, 1592; Christopher Marlowe's drama in 1604.

In Marlowe's 'Tragical History of Doctor Faustus,' the ma.s.s of legends of occult arts that had crystallised around a man thoroughly representative of them was treated with the dignity due to a subject amid whose moral and historic grandeur Faust is no longer the petty personality he really was. He is precisely the character which the Church had been creating for a thousand years, only suddenly changed from other-worldly to worldly desires and aims. What he seeks is what all the energy of civilisation seeks.

EVIL ANGEL. Go forward, Faustus, in that famous art Wherein all Nature's treasure is contained: Be thou on earth as Jove is in the sky, Lord and commander of these elements.

FAUST. How am I glutted with conceit of this!

Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please, Resolve me of all ambiguities, Perform what desperate enterprise I will?

I'll have them fly to India for gold, Ransack the ocean for orient pearl, And search all corners of the new-found world For pleasant fruits and princely delicates; I'll have them read me strange philosophy, And tell the secrets of all foreign kings; I'll have them wall all Germany with bra.s.s, And make swift Rhine circle fair Wertenberg; I'll have them fill the public schools with silk, Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad.

For this he is willing to pay his soul, which Theology has so long declared to be the price of mastering the world.

This word d.a.m.nation terrifies not him, For he confounds h.e.l.l in Elysium: His ghost be with the old philosophers!

The 'Good Angel' warns him:

O Faustus, lay that d.a.m.ned book aside, And gaze not on it, lest it tempt thy soul, And heap G.o.d's heavy wrath upon thy head!

Read, read the Scriptures:--that is blasphemy.

So, dying away amid the thunders of the Reformation, were heard the echoes of the early christian voices which exulted in the eternal tortures of the Greek poets and philosophers: the anathemas on Roger Bacon, Socinus, Galileo; the outcries with which every great invention has been met. We need only retouch the above extracts here and there to make Faust's aspirations those of a saint. Let the gold be sought in New Jerusalem, the pearl in its gates, the fruits in paradise, the philosophy that of Athanasius, and no amount of selfish hunger and thirst for them would grieve any 'Good Angel' he had ever heard of.

The 'Good Angel' has not yet gained his wings who will tell him that all he seeks is included in the task of humanity, but warn him that the method by which he would gain it is just that by which he has been instructed to seek gold and jasper of the New Jerusalem,--not by fulfilling the conditions of them, but as the object of some favouritism. Every human being who ever sought to obtain benefit by prayers or praises that might win the good graces of a supposed bestower of benefits, instead of by working for them, is but the Faust of his side--be it supernal or infernal. Hocus-pocus and invocation, blood-compacts and sacraments,--they are all the same in origin; they are all mean attempts to obtain advantages beyond other people without serving up to them or deserving them. To Beelzebub Faust will 'build an altar and a church;' but he had probably never entered a church or knelt before an altar with any less selfishness.

A strong Nemesis follows Self to see that its bounds are not overpa.s.sed without retribution. Its satisfactions must be weighed in the balance with its renunciations. And the inflexible law applies to intellect and self-culture as much as to any other power of man. Mephistopheles is 'the kernel of the brute;' he is the intellect with mere canine hunger for knowledge because of the power it brings. Or, falling on another part of human nature, it is pride making itself abject for ostentation; or it is pa.s.sion selling love for l.u.s.t. Re-enter Mephistopheles with Devils, who give crowns and rich apparel to Faustus, dance, and then depart. To the man who has received his intellectual and moral liberty only to so spend it, Lucifer may well say, in Marlowe's words--

Christ cannot save thy soul, for he is just: There's none but I have interest in the same.

Perhaps he might even better have suggested to Faust that his soul was not of sufficient significance to warrant much anxiety.

Something was gained when it was brought before the people in popular dramas of Faust how little the Devil cared for the cross which had so long been regarded as the all-sufficient weapon against him. [178]

Faust and Mephistopheles flourish in the Vatican despite all the crosses raised to exorcise them. The confession of the cross which once meant martyrdom of the confessor had now come to mean martyrdom of the denier. Protestantism put its faith in Theology, Creeds, and Orthodoxy. But Calderon de la Barca blended the legend of Faust with the legendary temptation of St. Cyprian, and in 'El Magico Prodigioso'

we have, in impressive contrast, the powerlessness of the evil powers over the heart of a pure woman, and its easy entrance into a mind fully furnished with the soundest sentiments of theology. St. Cyprian had been a worshipper of pagan deities [179] before his conversion, and even after this he had once saved himself while other christians were suffering martyrdom. It is possible that out of this may have grown the legend of his having called his earlier deities--theoretically changed to devils--to his aid; a trace of the legend being that magical 'Book of Cypria.n.u.s' mentioned in another chapter. In his tract 'De Gratia Dei' Cyprian says concerning his spiritual condition before conversion, 'I lay in darkness, and floating on the world's boisterous sea, with no resting-place for my feet, ignorant of my proper life, and estranged from truth and light.' Here is a metaphorical 'vasty deep'

from which the centuries could hardly fail to conjure up spirits, one of them being the devil of Calderon's drama, who from a wrecked ship walks Christ-like over the boisterous sea to find Cyprian on the sea-sh.o.r.e. The drama opens with a scene which recalls the most perilous of St. Anthony's temptations. According to Athanasius, the Devil having utterly failed to conquer Anthony's virtue by charming images, came to him in his proper black and ugly shape, and, candidly confessing that he was the Devil, said he had been vanquished by the saint's extraordinary sanct.i.ty. Anthony prevailed against the spirit of pride thus awakened; but Calderon's Cyprian, though he does not similarly recognise the Devil, becomes complacent at the dialectical victory which the tempter concedes him. Cyprian having argued the existence and supremacy of G.o.d, the Devil says, 'How can I impugn so clear a consequence?' 'Do you regret my victory?' 'Who but regrets a check in rivalry of wit?' He leaves, and Cyprian says, 'I never met a more learned person.' The Devil is equally satisfied, knowing, no doubt, that G.o.ds worked out by the wits alone remain in their abode of abstraction and do not interfere with the world of sense. Calderon is artful enough to throw the trial of Cyprian back into his pagan period, but the mirror is no less true in reflecting for those who had eyes to see in it the weakness of theology.

'Enter the Devil as a fine gentleman,' is the first sign of the temptation in Calderon's drama--it is Asmodeus [180] again, and the 'pride of life' he first brings is the conceit of a clever theological victory. So sufficient is the doorway so made for all other pride to enter, that next time the devil needs no disguise, but has only to offer him a painless victory over nature and the world, including Justina, the object of his pa.s.sion.

Wouldst thou that I work A charm over this waste and savage wood, This Babylon of crags and aged trees, Filling its coverts with a horror Thrilling and strange?...

I offer thee the fruit Of years of toil in recompense; whate'er Thy wildest dream presented to thy thought As object of desire, shall be thine. [181]

Justina knows less about the philosophical G.o.d of Cyprian, and more of the might of a chaste heart. To the Devil she says--

Thought is not in my power, but action is: I will not move my foot to follow thee.

The Devil is compelled to say at last--

Woman, thou hast subdued me, Only by not owning thyself subdued.

He is only able to bring a counterfeit of Justina to her lover.

Like Goethe's Mephistopheles, Cyprian's devil is unable to perform his exact engagements, and consequently does not win in the game. He enables Cyprian to move mountains and conquer beasts, until he boasts that he can excel his infernal teacher, but the Devil cannot bring Justina. She has told Cyprian that she will love him in death. Cyprian and she together abjure their paganism at Antioch, and meet in a cell just before their martyrdom. Over their bodies lying dead on the scaffold the Devil appears as a winged serpent, and says he is compelled to announce that they have both ascended to heaven. He descends into the earth.