Pocket Miscellanies #3: Temptation by the devil

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The temptation of Eve is the biblical story that precipitates the rest of human history. Humans were tempted to eat from the tree of knowledge by the devil disguised as a snake: Eve was directly convinced by the snake; Adam was persuaded by Eve. Retellings of the story have been used to justify medieval misogyny and to imply that, because of their greed and lustfulness, they brought damnation upon the entire human species.



In most textual reinterpretations of the story, Eve’s temptation by the devil is not just an act of disobedience and greed, but carries (hetero)sexual undertones; Eve is seduced by the devil, then herself seduces Adam in turn. In this unusual depiction of the temptation from around 1200 the devil is anthropomorphised and masculinised by default.

Monstrous bipedal devil Psalter (Belgium, c.1200) Morgan Library MS M.338 f.45r



The biblical story, of course, only mentions the snake as the disguise of the devil. Nonetheless, even in his snake form the devil is thought – by some Jewish and Christian heretical strands (Bogomils, Cathars) – to have sexually seduced Eve and, with the help of its phallic morphology, to have had sex with, and even inseminated her (Hildegard of Bingen, Tertullian).

Winged snake tempting Eve Bible (France, c1230) Avranches, Bibliotheque municipale, MS 2 f.5r



Much more often Eve is seduced by a snake that has feminine characteristics, most often ‘feminine visage’, since ‘like emboldens like’. The homoerotic transgressive possibilities of this tempter’s embodiment were doubtlessly clear to contemporaries. In the Furtmeyr Bible, the serpent looks very much like Melusine, a mythical nymph associated with sex.

Devil as huge Eve-headed snake Furtmeyr Bible (Germany, 15c) Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Cgm 8010, f.10r



The female serpent often displays not only a female face but also a female torso, complete with breasts. The hybridity of the devil displaying female and animal (reptilian, wings) characteristics is nonetheless accentuated. The two elements visualise the recognisability of devil’s disguise as human but also betrayal of its true nature as non-human.

Winged snake with a woman’s torso La Vie Nostre Dame (France, 16C) Bibliotheque Nationale de France, MS Français 985 f.9r



A very unusual image of a devil that surpasses its human and animal elements can be found in a 14th C illustrated bible. If the devil turned into a serpent with a human face in order to lure Adam and Eve with its resemblance to them – as the first humans themselves resembled God’s image – then the serpent’s faces themselves duplicate to reflect them, as ‘like emboldens like’.

Double-human-headed, multi-tailed snake Bible historiée (Italy, 14C) Bibliotheque Nationale de France, MS Français 9561 f.8v



The imagery of the female-faced snake resulted from the need to explain how the devil-turnedserpent would communicate with the first humans. This also cemented the associations between woman and sinful human nature. Peter Comestor wrongly attributes this image to Bede; in fact Comestor himself influenced the popularity of this feminine hybrid.

Devil as a snake-tailed woman  James le Palmer, Omne Bonum (England, c.1375) British Library Royal 6 E VI f. 2r



The practical need for feasible theatrical representations of the temptation in later middle ages gave birth to a different type of devil, one that could move by itself on hind legs. Therefor the change in media created a change in the morphology of the tempter, still in line with original descriptions of the devil assuming a snake- or dragonlike appearance.

Devil as woman-dragon creature Book of hours (Dutch, ca. 1480) Harvard, Houghton Library Typ 253 f.15r



The hybrid imagery of the tempter serpent was so captivating that it gained an entry in medieval bestiaries, as Draconcopedes. Due to the vague description and the vast imagination of medieval illuminators, instances of strange hybrids, like this French ostrich-like feathered dragon with a life-sized human head, appeared in visualisations of the temptation.

Devil as a human-headed ostrich  Speculum Humanae Salvationis (France, 1475) Marseille Bibiotheque Municipale MS 89, f.2r


If you want to learn more: Pocket Miscellanies #1: Adam and #2: Eve Kelly (1971) The Metamorpheses of the Eden Serpent during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Viator Jerman, Weir (2013) Images of lust: sexual carvings on medieval churches Higgins (1998) Playing the serpent: devil, virgin or mythical beast? European Medieval Drama

COVER: coiffured scaly devil  Book of Hours of Leonore of Vega (Spain, 1490s) Biblioteque Nacional d’Espania, MS Vitr/24/2 f.27r



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