Monthly Archives: August 2021

Satan Bound for 1,000 Years

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Satan chained and bound by the angel (Beatus Apocalypse illumination). Medieval illuminations often depict Satan as an African Muslim, similar to the Moors who invaded Spain; the Moors personify the Enemy, the Other.

Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven with the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent who is Devil and the Satan, and bound him for a thousand years…. When the thousand years are ended, Satan will be let loose from his prison. (Apocalypse 20:1-2, 7)

Satan is bound in prison for 1,000 years. This period of 1,000 years is taken by most early interpreters to mean the entire period of human history from the Crucifixion to the Last Days. Satan is bound in chains by Christ but not totally incapacitated–his minions still tempt and harass the human race. St. John describes each Christian’s victory over Satan, usually by martyrdom, as the “first resurrection;” the “second resurrection” is the General Resurrection of all the dead on Judgement Day.

Satan is loosed at the end of human history not so that he can unleash his anger any more against the human race; he is loosed so that he can be finally and definitively be cast down. Many early preachers used the image of a chicken or a snake beheaded to describe Satan: slain by Christ on the Cross, yet still able to make a mess and scare humans by spewing blood from the fatal wound but seeming to still be alive, running around–“like a chicken with its head cut off!”–or wriggling about.

Satan is often described or painted as having dark or black skin; often, a devil is described as looking like “an Ethiopian” by early Christian monks. Having black skin is not necessarily a dishonor in the Old Testament; the bride in the Song of Songs is “dark and beautiful.” Neither is appearing dark always associated with evil by other cultures: Clare Rothschild points out that “the Nile received its name from the Greek word νεῖλος (‘valley’). Since the river deposits black sediment after it floods, the Egyptians called the river ‘Ar’ (‘black’)…. Black is used of Egyptian gods and goddesses as an honorific: kmwr = ‘Great Black One’ for Osiris and km as epithet used with the name of the god (e.g. Hathor, Apis, Min, Thoth, etc.) or kmt, goddess (e.g. Isis)….” But the “counter-divine” is described as black by Sophocles.

Rothschild suggests that the devils and Satan were associated with Ethiopia because Ethiopia was outside Roman-Byzantine imperial control and was therefore associated with lawlessness. Several church fathers use the illustration that all humans were once Ethiopians (lawless) but have now been brought from lawlessness to righteousness by Christ. Pamela Patton suggests that medieval Spanish interpretations of the Apocalypse–such as the Beatus Apocalypse illumination above–align Satan and Ethiopians as a way to equate Satan with the Moors who invaded the Iberian peninsula and personified the Other, the Enemy.

Rothschild points out many fascinating associations with the color black that might also have influenced the depiction of Satan.

A Rider Faithful and True

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The rider Faithful and True on his white horse in the Tolkovy Apocalypse (Moscow, early 17th century).

And I saw Heaven wide open, and behold, a white horse; its rider’s name was Faithful and True and in righteousness he judges and makes war…. he was clothed in a cloak dipped in blood , and he was called the Word of God. (Apoc. 19:11, 13)

Christ, the Word of God, rides into battle and emerges victorious. The Word of God, the Logos, is the divine blueprint for the universe while the Wisdom of God is the practical application of that blueprint.

The New Testament tells us that the Word was made flesh (John 1:14) and the Old Testament tells us that Wisdom leaped down from the heavenly throne in the middle of the night to save the Hebrews in Egypt. This image of Wisdom coming to earth at midnight (Wisdom 18) to slay the enemies of Israel was first used by the Church to describe Christ’s descent into Hell and his Resurrection during the night between Holy Saturday and Easter morning but then the image of Wisdom’s descent to earth at midnight also suggested the birth of Christ at Bethlehem and eventually resulted in our celebrations of “Midnight Mass” on Christmas Eve.

The Word was made flesh. Wisdom came to earth. To say that “Wisdom built herself a house” on earth is the poetic equivalent of saying “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” (Pope St. Leo the Great, Tome 2) The victory of the Word over the enemies of God is the victory of Wisdom over the enemies of God.

Christ is the Wisdom of God made flesh but because Wisdom—“Sophia” as she is identified in the oldest manuscripts of Proverbs—is a woman’s name, Wisdom has also been considered an allusion to Christ’s most pure Mother, the ever-blessed Virgin Mary. The victory of the Word-Wisdom is also the victory of the Mother of God, the Second Eve, treading on the head of the serpent that overcame the first Eve. Our Lady of Victory, although a feast to commemorate a victory over the Turks, is also an allusion to the victorious Mother of God who shares in the victory of her Son. She makes her Son’s victory possible by giving him flesh in her womb.

Fallen is Babylon the Great

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“A mighty angel lifted up a stone like a great millstone and hurled it into the sea, saying, “Thus will Babylon, the great city, be hurled down with violence, never to be seen again” (Apoc. 18:21). Images of the angel and the millstone from the Val-Dieu Apocalypse (left; from Normandy during the 1320’s and is part of a group of four manuscripts from northern France that were modelled artistically on a now-lost 13th century English manuscript) and the Las Huelgas Apocalypse (right; the Las Huelgas Apocalypse is the largest and latest [1220] of a five-hundred-year series of medieval illuminated commentaries on the Apocalypse by the monk Beatus of Liébana. The series is considered Spain’s most important contribution to medieval manuscript illumination).

“Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a dwelling for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean and loathsome bird. For all the nations of the world have drunk the wine of her fornication…. ” (Apoc. 18:2)

The whore of Babylon is overthrown and the seer of the Apocalypse sings a series of dirges over the fallen city–both Babylon and Rome, capitals of the fallen world’s opposition to the Kingdom of God. The ruins have become the home of vile and loathsome monsters–some natural, some unnatural–as kings and sailors and merchants and those who grew wealthy from the imperial exploitation of the world mourn their losses.

It is easy–perhaps, too easy–to see the fall of Babylon-Rome as the condemnation of all economic systems that depend on the exploitation of the natural world or the labor of others. Certainly the “mark of the beast” and the refusal to let those who will not worship the Beast to participate in the economic life of society reinforces this interpretation. The Apocalypse seer insists–in many ways throughout the text–that Christians must segregate themselves from the larger society; he does not see how the Church and the fallen world can co-exist or cooperate in any way. He only sees persecution and conflict between the two, much as Augustine describes the “two cities” struggling against each other throughout human history in his classic City of God.

Another way to read the fall of Babylon is to see the city’s destruction as the overthrow of all false teaching, which is at the root of all exploitative systems. It is the misunderstanding of God’s relationship with the world, the human race and our misunderstanding of our relationship with each other that gives rise to all subsequent exploitation.

The fall of Babylon the great is the overthrow of Arius, Nestorius, and all the heresies that the Church has struggled against in the past and will continue to struggle against until the End of Days.