Devils, Demons, and Witchcraft

244 Illustrations for Artists and Craftspeople

Ernst and Johanna Lehner

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780486132518
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

"Throughout history, artists have grappled with the problem of depicting clearly and forcefully the principles of evil and suffering in human existence." With this view, the Lehners have collected 244 representations, symbols, and manuscript pages of devils and death from Egyptian times to 1931. Reproductions from Dürer, Holbein, Cranach, Rembrandt, and many other lesser-known or unknown artists illustrate the fascinating history. The fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries are stressed.
The book is divided into 12 chapters, each with a separate introduction. Most of the illustrations are collected in five of these chapters: Devils and Demons, including Belial, Beelzebub, and the Anti-Christ; Witches and Warlocks, their animals, forms, and rituals; The Danse Macabre, with the Dance of Death Alphabet by Holbein and representations of all classes leveled by the common force of death; Memento Mori, including a skull clock, a macabre representation of the Tree of Knowledge and Death, and the winged hourglass and scythe; and Religio-Political Devilry, the fight between the Papists and the Reformers, and symbols of devils in other political disputes. There are also chapters on the Fall of Lucifer, Faust and Mephistopheles, Hell and Damnation, The Apocalyptic Horsemen, Witch-Hunting, The Art of Dying, and Resurrection and Reckoning.
Anyone curious about witchcraft, death, and devils will be interested in this book. It is particularly useful to teachers, artists, and illustrators who need clear reproductions for the classroom, for models, or for commercial uses. Death, devils, and their history are very much with us today.

Memento Mori

A memento mori (Latin for “remember that you must die”) is an object or pictorial symbol associated with death. Such symbols include skulls, bones, coffins, urns, angels of death, upside-down torches, graves and gravestones, hourglasses, scythes, spades, toads, serpents, worms, owls, ravens, cypresses, weeping willows, tuberoses, parsley, and many more. A good number of these associations (and of our present-day funeral practices) can be traced back to antiquity. These emblems of mortality have long been used as items of adornment: Mary, Queen of Scots, owned a skull-shaped watch; Martin Luther had a gold ring with a death’s-head in enamel; even today skull motifs are used in all sorts of jewelry and bric-à-brac.

172. Scribes counting the severed heads of slain enemies after a battle. After an Assyrian-Babylonian wall relief, Konyunjic Palace.

173. Page from an Egyptian papyrus Book of the Dead, which was placed into the tomb with the mummies as a guide for the souls of the departed.

174. Death as mounted hunter and as reaper. From Der Ackermann aus Böhmen (The Ploughman from Bohemia), Bamberg, 1463.

175. A skull-watch.

176. One of the earliest extant printed labels for a poison bottle, representing Death as a worm-eaten corpse. By an unknown Rhenish artist, 1480–90.

177. Allegoric representation of Death. From Le grant kalendrier et compost des Bergiers, printed by Nicolas le Rouge, Troyes, 1496.

178. The Tree of Death (burial tree on the Island of Caffolos). From Sir John Maundeville’s Travels, printed by Wynkyn de Worde, London, 1499.

179. Death leaping from Hell on his charger with arrow and coffin, to claim his rights over mortals. From Le grant kalendrier, printed by Nicolas le Rouge, Troyes, 1496.

180. Emblem of Death, with the motto “Everybody afterwards.” Designed by Master A. F., from the Heiligtumbuch (Book of Relics), Vienna, 1502.

181. Death in the cloister. From Robert Gobin’s Les Loups Ravissans (The Ravishing Wolves), printed by Antoine Vérard, Paris, 1503.

182. The Angel of Death taking the soul, in the form of a child, from a dying man. From Reiter’s Mortilogus, printed by Oegelin and Nadler, Augsburg, 1508.

183. Coat-of-arms of Death. Engraving by Albrecht Dürer, Nuremberg, 1503.

184. Death leaving the mouth of Hell and hunting a victim. From The Boke named the Royal...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• INTRODUCTION
• Devils and Demons
• Casus Luciferi
• Faust and Mephistopheles
• Hell and Damnation
• The Apocalyptic Horsemen
• Witches and Warlocks
• Witch-Hunting
• Ars Moriendi
• Danse Macabre
• Memento Mori
• Resurrection and Reckoning
• Religio-Political Devilry