Belphagor
Story
BY NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI
This story of the devil Belphagor, who was sent by his infernal chief Pluto up to earth, where he married an earthly wife, but finally left her in disgust to go back to hell, is also of mediaeval origin. It was first printed by Giovanni Brevio in 1545, and appeared for the second time with the name of Machiavelli in 1549, twenty-two years after the death of the diabolical statesman. The two authors did not borrow from each other, but had a common source in a mediaeval Latin manuscript, which seems to have first fallen into the hands of Italians, but was later brought to France where it has been lost. The tale of the marriage of the devil appeared in several other Italian versions during the sixteenth century. Among the Italian novelists, who retold it for the benefit of their married friends, may be mentioned Giovan-Francesco Straparola, Francesco Sansovino, and Gabriel Chappuys. In England this story was no less popular. Barnabe Riche inserted it in his collection of narratives in 1581, and we meet it again later in the following plays: Grim, the Collier of Croydon, ascribed to Ulpian Fulwell (1599); The Devil and his Dame by P. M. Houghton (1600); Machiavel and the Devil by Daborne and Henslowe (1613); The Devil is an Ass by Ben Jonson (1616); and Belphagor, or the Marriage of the Devil (1690). In France the story was treated in verse by La Fontaine (1694), and in Germany it served the Nuremberg poet Hans Sachs as the subject for a farce (1557).
The Encyclopaedia Britannica is authority for the statement that Machiavelli’s own married life had nothing to do with the plot of his story.
“The notion of this story is ingenious, and might have been made productive of entertaining incident, had Belphagor been led by his connubial connections from one crime to another. But Belphagor is only unfortunate, and in no respect guilty; nor did anything occur during his abode on earth that testified to the power of woman in leading us to final condemnation. The story of the peasant and the possession of the princesses bears no reference to the original idea with which the tale commences, and has no connection with the object of the infernal deputy’s terrestrial sojourn” (J. C. Dunlop, History of Fiction). To this criticism Mr. Thomas Roscoe replies that “part of the humour of the story seems to consist in Belphagor’s earthly career being cut short before he had served the full term of his apprenticeship. But from the follies and extravagances into which he had already plunged, we are now authorized to believe that, even if he had been able longer to support the asperities of the lady’s temper, he must, from the course he was pursuing, have been led from crime to crime, or at least from folly to folly, to such a degree that he would infallibly have been condemned” (T. Roscoe, Italian Novelists).
The demon of Machiavelli offers no features of a deep psychology, but he distinguishes himself from the other demons of his period by his elegant manners. Like creator, like creature.
Belphagor, the god of the Moabites, like all other pagan gods, joined the infernal forces of Satan when driven off the earth by the Church Triumphant.
The parliament of devils, which we find in this story, was taken from the mystery-plays where the ruler of hell is represented as holding occasional receptions when he listens to the reports of their recent achievements on his behalf, and consults their opinion on matters of state. Satan, who has always wished to rival God, has instituted the infernal council in imitation of the celestial council described in the Book of Job. The source for the parliament of devils is the apocryphal book Evangelium Nicodemi. An early metrical tract under the title of the Parlement of Devils was printed two or three times in London about 1520. A “Pandemonium” is also found in Tasso, Milton, and Chateaubriand. The Parlement of Foules (14th century) is but a modification of the Parlement of Devils, for the devil and the fool were originally identical in person and may be traced back to the demonic clown of the ancient heathen cult (cf. the present writer’s book, The Origin of the German Carnival Comedy, p. 37). A far echo is Thomas Chatterton’s poem The Parliament of Sprites.
This story recalls to us the saying that the heart of a beautiful woman is the most beloved hiding-place of at least seven devils.