The Devil You Don't Know

Copyright © Josh Sanseri

Q. Wait a sec. Who's getting rid of Limbo?

A. The new Pope doesn't like Limbo (not to be confused with Purgatory). So if you get rid of Limbo, which was invented in the Middle Ages anyway, you've got to send these souls up to Heaven. The only other possibility is Hell. The Church was going to make its announcement to get rid of Limbo at the beginning of this very year, but the Pope sent it back to committee, because eliminating Limbo would mean eliminating Original Sin. You can see what a mess they've gotten themselves into.

Q. Whose job is it to oversee Hell?

A. That's Satan's last assignment. But Satan didn't live in Hell until the High Middle Ages. Originally, he was destined for Hell at the end of the world, but finally got this appointment, this Emperor of Hell job.

Q. That's where I'm confused. How can Satan still be "testing" people on Earth if he's stuck in Hell?

A. That's the thing. A lot of people may think that he's bound down there, you know, because of that "Harrowing of Hell" scene from the Gospel of Nicodemus. The people that are running Hell in that scenario are Hades and Death, shady characters. After Satan engineers the death of Jesus, then all of a sudden, he has a few doubts, and warns Hades and Death to be careful of him. But Jesus knocks down the gates of Hell and binds Satan and tells Hades to take custody of him. This is the first time Satan is down there in Hell, but he's not in charge because he's bound. So you get this contradiction. He's up on Earth tempting people, and he's punishing people in Hell, yet he's all tied up.

Q. I've always thought that Satan was too smart to do the things he's supposed to have done.

A. The most popular book in the Middle Ages was The Golden Legend by a Dominican friar named Jacopo de Voragine. And in there, the Devil is about as dumb as they come. At the same time, Voragine's colleagues, including Thomas Aquinas, are turning Satan into a pure spirit with a gigantic intellect far greater than that of human beings. So side by side you get the dumb devil and the really smart devil. And the latter is sort of what we think of now: very clever. But actually, people don't take the Devil really seriously.

Q. The Devil is a pop icon. Even you have a Satan-horned rubber duckie on your desk. Where'd that image come from?

A. Nowadays, probably from the stage-devil Mephistopheles in the Faust operas of Berlioz and Gounod. But the grotesque appearances began in the second, third and fourth centuries with the idea that Satan and the fallen angels were pagan gods and idols; this gave rise to the idea that satyrs particularly were demons. And that's where the appearance of Satan comes from, with the hooves and the horns.

Published Oct 1, 2006 12:00 AM