User blog:Triuberit/History of the Devil's Appearance

Introduction and Disclaimer
This blog post is inspired by Carey Dunne's article "The Changing Face Of Satan, From 1500 To Today" which is, in turn, inspired by a 2014 exhibition entitled Sympathy for the Devil: Satan, Sin, and the Underworld.

Mothy is well-known to make use of references from real-word sources - historical accounts, fictional fables, and the like - in order to tell his own fictional tale. This is a foolhardy yet determined approach to see how prominent sinners of the Evillious Chronicles series have parallels to illustrations and/or perceptions made by people, most notably in the Christian religion, to describe an adversary of doing good; an epitome of evil, which will be from this point on called the Devil.

In order to compare the series with real world counterparts, this article assumes that a year in the Evillious Chronicles timeline (i.e. EC 485) may be a reference to a year in the real world which is 1000 years ahead (i.e. 1485). This leads to many historical inaccuracies but, for the sake of this article, would be used to prove a point. This theoretical year, which is a thousand years after EC, would be dentoed as EM - Evillious after a Millenium. For the rest of this article, years like EC 485 may be called EM 1485, which shares traits with the real-world year 1485.

Before reading, you are given two warnings. One, this blog may include blasphemous or disturbing imagery & ideas. Two, I have no histroic credibility whatsoever and have no intention to push my beliefs towards other people. If you feel like I'm convincing you to believe in another religion, you may stop reading now. Constructive criticism, however, would be greatly appreciated.

Luxuria and its Horns
For many centuries, the Devil has been illustrated as the beautiful angel Lucifer who was banished from heaven. There were no intentions of illustrating the entity as one which would cause terror among people but simply just an adversary. It wasn't until the 13th century when artists like Coppo di Marcovaldo let their imaginations run wild. In the late 1260s, Marcovaldo created a mosaic named "The Hell" which depicted the Devil as a hideous beast that had a blue head, a green body, horns, and animal ears which sprout serpents. This illustration was a lot closer to modern religious art depicting the Devil than old art depicting him as an angel. This, of course, started the notion of the Devil as a horrific monster that is not only hideous in the inside but also on the outside.

To parallel this in the Evillious series, is the Venomania event of EM 1130s. The way Sateriasis Venomania's ears and horns are positioned look similar to how Coppo di Marcovaldo would illustrate the devil. This suggests that within this timespan (EM 1135- EM 1270), this is how people generally perceive what the Devil looks like.

Bernard Barryte says that the idea of the Devil having horns came "from the gods of various cults in the near east". This reminds one of Sateriasis Venomania, who also happens to live in a country that was inspired by the Near East.

Moreover, Venomania's demonic form seems to be a transition state between the angelic Lucifer of early paintings to the Marcovaldo devil. His face was beautiful as it was enchanting; akin to an angel. But his claws, legs, and demeanor seems to suggest the opposite - a beast as horrifying as Marcovaldo's. This coincides with the fact that Venomania lived a hundred years before EM 1265-70, which is the parallel year when Marcovaldo was able to make "The Hell".

Gula and the Color Red
The concept of having an adversary of the color red was not an idea during or before Marcovaldo's devil. In fact, the color of choice was the color blue. Just as color of Marcovaldo's devil head, the angels who were against God's will was depicted as wearing blue, which was said to be a more sinister color in the 6th century. The concept of red as a color of the Devil could be dated as early as the 14th century, just as Banica Conchita lived throughout the 4th century EC.

"he had three faces: one in front bloodred;"

- Canto XXXIV, Inferno by Dante Alighieri

In Dante Alighieri's Inferno (1320), he allegedly saw Satan (aka the Devil), in the ninth and deepest circle of Hell as he devours three traitors in each of its three faces. His face on his center was described to be as red as blood as he munched on the traitor Judas Iscariot. Similarly, Banica Conchita ate three prominent people (Carlos, Arte, Pollo) in her song Evil Food Eater Conchita.

Much like how Satan is fated to eternally chew on three traitors as he weeped, Banica Conchita was forced to finish her food even though her parents see her crying. It could also be noted that Satan's appearance seem to parallel the young Conchita. Giotto di Bondone is one of the artists who, like Conchita, had a large fat belly in his painting "The Last Judgement". The painting was dated 1304-1305, just after EM 1302, the time when Banica Conchita was forced food down her throat; eventually leading to obesity.

Another trivial thing to think about is how the body of Conchita's ancestor, Germaine Avadonia, was used by Irina Clockworker to form the identity I. Santa, which is an anagram of the word Satan, the name of the adversary in Dante's Inferno and the name of a demon that is usually illustrated nowadays as a beast that's red in color.

Superbia and the Bat Wings
The idea of a human sucking blood from others has long been thought in medieval Europe. This lead to exorcism by the use of bricks shoved into the mouths of others. But its fictional undertones that lead to vampyrism didn't come about until the 15th century, about the time when Riliane was born in EM 1485.

The bats entered the vampire mythology when people from the New World returned to Europe in the 15th and 16th centrury with stories of flying mammal that drank the blood of their livestock overnight. Eventually, this evolved to turn into ideas of men who are part bat and continued until Bram Stoker's 1897 novel "Dracula".

Bats were also linked to witches in medieval times; wherein they were regarded as the witches' familiars. This could be associated with the Witch Hunt Order, a hunt that Kyle Marlon lead to find the murderer of Michaela - someone that Riliane wanted and ordered to die.

One may be curious why does the illustration of Dante's Satan above shows bat wings for the devil. It may be because it as illustrated in the 19th century and not during the time of Dante. Dante Alighieri only wrote of Satan six wings, not indicating its batlike appearance.

Acedia, Heroism, and Slyness
"嫌な現実　叶わぬ想い　忘れられるわ (you can forget your cruel reality and unrequited thoughts.)"

- Margarita Blankeheim

In Thomas Stothard’s 1790 "Satan Summoning His Legions ", the image of the Devil seemed to be very different from the usual medieval illustrations. As opposed to the Marcovaldo demon, this guy seeems to more of a hero than anything. And a heroic sinner is just what we saw in the song Gift from the Princess who Brought Sleep. Apparent in the quoted lyrics above is the fact that Margarita Blankenheim showed heroic motives when she was giving out her gift to people. She wanted to help the people escape their cruel realities and let them rest, even just for a while. But of course, these actions were only for her ulterior motives - to poison them and be into eternal slumber.

This idea of a sly demonic entity started to be illustrated in art when works like Goethe’s Mephistopholes in Faust and Mark Twain’s Mysterious Stranger were published. These works showed the Devil to be not a gobbling/terrifying monster but instead a cunning demon who would trick you into his plans.

Essentially, more human attributes begun to be incorporated during this time.

Invidia and Beyond
Strangely, seemingly ordinary human activities started to be added into the mix. In 1978, Jerome Witkin finished a painting called "Devil as Tailor", which only showed a man who sewed uniforms. The uniforms he was making was for the Nazis during World War II. This painting lead to comments from the philosopher Hannah Arendt stating ""The devil has become us, in a way." This could be linked with Kayo Sudou, who despite being just a tailor, brutally murdered a family of four.

This idea of ordinary humans being able to be the epitome of evil extended to people of power. An example would be Andres Serrano's "Heaven and Hell" in 1978. His photograph shows a smiling cardinal beside a woman suffering while bound by ropes. The cardinal is known for knowing the laws written in the Bible that people must abide to, much like how a judge like Gallerian Marlon must know the constitution. This makes the law a lot more distorted since the people who should have full knowledge of it is apparently the Devil.

The cardinal is also known as a person who could lead a lot of people in the church. The idea of a leader being the Devil is also seen in Evillious when Nemesis Sudou commanded soldiers to follow her plans for mass destruction.

Conclusion
The devil's history is our world has some kind of similarity to how Mothy characterizes his sinners throughout the years. Although everything probably was just a coincidence, I find it really nice how we create a superstious character and soon take off all of its traits. One may think that it shows how we evolved to understand there really aren't any demons but us. But I like to think that it shows that we, as humans, learned to live without a demon that should terrify us to do something that is morally or cultually appropriate. We gained higher emotional intelligence and evolved to have the ease of persuasion and change - hopefully for the better.