I will sell my soul to the Devil: the price, conditions and consequences of the infernal concordat

The sale of a Christian soul to Satan is one of the most popular subjects in world art. This topic was addressed by most medieval authors, Goethe, Wilde, Bulgakov and many others. Today we perceive the mention of such a deal as a figurative expression or a joke, but there were times when things were different.

The very principle of obtaining any profit from the human Enemy by paying with the soul was confirmed by official science back in 1398 by the learned men of the University of Paris. By means of research or logical conclusions unknown today, it was determined that the only means of payment for the Devil's help is exclusively the soul.

Variants were excluded, and even the Latin word maleficium (atrocity) itself was derived from maleficia (sorcery). The list of things that could be obtained for an immaterial substance was quite large: wealth, power, wisdom, popularity with the opposite sex, and even immortality.

Everyone knows that the contract was signed in blood, and the deal was sealed with a "devil's seal", which could have the appearance of a birthmark, a scar of a special shape or just a place insensitive to pain on the skin. The search for such marks was a favorite pastime of the medieval Inquisition and, most often, it was completed successfully. There are a lot of marks on the body of any person, the origin of which, with a biased study, can be interpreted as Satanic.

But even if there was nothing unusual on the body of the person accused of selling the most valuable to Lucifer, then this was not at all a reason to apologize to him and let him go home. The inquisitors possessed a whole arsenal of excellent ways to expose witches and sorcerers, which practically did not leave the accused any chance of salvation.

The easiest way was to read the Bible in front of the suspect. If excerpts from this touching literary work for all God-fearing people did not cause tears of emotion in the subject, then this was a sure sign of his guilt. They could also be forced to read "Our Father" — the one who read the prayer from memory without a single hesitation is theoretically an honest Christian.

But it would be foolish to let the prey out of the clutches because of some simple prayer, so usually the checks continued. The most reliable and completely confirming the innocence of a person's test was his immersion for a long time under water.

The elements did not accept the devil's spawn and sold to Satan could not drown. But if a person was pulled out of a river or a bucket drowned, then this greatly increased the chances of his posthumous acquittal. True, he was no longer of any use to an innocent person in this world.

All information concerning transactions with the devil was contained in the grimoire books of witchcraft. This word came from the Old French grammaire — grammar. It was believed that there were several such books — the most famous of them were The Heptameron, or Magical Elements, The Grimoire of Honorius and The Key of Solomon.

These folios described in detail how to summon the Devil, how to negotiate with him and how to control various dark forces when the soul is sold. Grimoires were recognized as partially living beings, since they had to be fed with human blood.

Uninitiated in the mysteries of black magic, a person could not use grimoires. The books were written in the secret languages of warlocks, and besides, an outsider did not see the secret writings protected by witchcraft, or even burned on the binding.

The confession in the concordat with Satan was not always drawn out by force. Often the recognition and even the bravado of connections with the master of Hell were part of the delirium of mentally ill people. The example of the Austrian painter Christoph Heitzmann, who in 1669 wrote a strange document with the following content, is well known:

Inspired by his delusional idea, the artist creates one of his most famous paintings — the triptych "Contract with the Devil". The left part of the painting depicts the meeting of Heitzman himself with Satan, who appeared with a contract for the sale of his soul in the guise of an ordinary well-dressed citizen. Here the author signs the document with ordinary ink.

The right part is devoted to the second appearance of the Devil, already in the form of a frightening dragon-like creature. This time, the original contract was sealed with the artist's blood. The central part of the triptych depicts the Virgin Mary forcing Satan to terminate the contract with Christophe.

Creativity has always gone hand in hand with madness and devilish machinations. Many musicians did not escape the accusation of transactions with the Unclean — such a fate awaited Niccolo Paganini and Giuseppe Tartini, as well as the great violin master Antonio Stradivari.

It was believed that one of Tartini's works, "The Devil's Trill" or "The Devil's Sonata", was created in collaboration with evil spirits. The composer himself liked to tell that a demon appeared to him in a dream and offered to exchange the sonata for a soul. Most likely, it was a special way of self-promotion, almost harmless in the enlightened era of the musician's life.

It should be mentioned separately that in Russia the diabolical paperwork was somewhat different from the European one. In order to sell his soul to Satan, an Orthodox Christian was supposed to sign the "renounced scriptures" — special papers with blasphemies and refusal to recognize God's word and Christian shrines.

The intermediaries between ordinary citizens and otherworldly dark forces were blasphemous magicians. Often these people used artisanal spells in rituals, some of which cannot but cause a smile.

One of their blasphemous magicians of the late XVIII century, Serpukhov peasant Peter Yakovlev, communicated with spirits through a basin of water. Over the filled container, the sorcerer pronounced spells like this: "Far, far away in the open field stands the throne of Christ, and in that throne is the Lady of the Most pure Theotokos."

The mystical conspiracies especially helped those of Peter's clients who suffered from male impotence: "when someone does not have a secret uda." Mystical powers, according to sources, helped blasphemer to effectively deal with other ailments of people and livestock.

The abnegated writings of the blasphemers were considered such God-abominable documents that even in court it was not supposed to preserve the original. After reviewing the manuscript, it was immediately burned with the appropriate Orthodox rites. Instead of this agreement, a manuscript compiled from memory appeared, which opened up the widest scope for creativity and abuse of monks-scribes and court clerks.

If there was no one to rewrite the original or there was a need to save the real paper, then it was kept with a strict prescription: "To keep a letter concerning magic in the judicial chamber with a seal, so as not to give further temptation to the occasion."

Sometimes the petitioner turned to the Devil without intermediaries, composing "self-made" letters of God. Such authors were called "godless detractors" and persecuted no worse than warlocks. Most often, the creator of such a document was interested in a small-scale private benefit: the location of a young lady, the punishment of an enemy, promotion.

The classic was the case that occurred in 1733 with the monk of the Sarov desert, Georgy Zvarykin. A young monk came to the Moscow Synodal office with a sincere confession that he had sold his soul to the Devil.

According to the young man, an unfamiliar blind wanderer sent him to the German Weitz, who could make sure that "all people were kind." The monk came to a foreigner with whom he signed a contract in an unfamiliar language, for which he received a purse with a thousand gold pieces.

The German persuaded George to completely renounce Christianity, promising to fulfill his wishes for this. Having failed to get a clear answer, the enraged Weitz tore the cross from Zvarykin's chest and began shouting incomprehensible spells.

Suppressing the will of the guest, the German sorcerer forced him to utter a blasphemous speech: "I deny Christ and repentance, and I am ready to follow Satan and do his will" and sign on some scroll with my blood. After that, George repeatedly visited the German, played chess with him and listened to blasphemous speeches. The Synod could not find the participants in this story, so only the hapless Satanist monk was punished with strict penance.

The contract concluded between the devil and man, according to many philosophers, is, most often, not an act of renunciation of God and Christian values, but one of the peculiar ways of knowing the sacredness. A person can consciously strive for evil or be mistaken, while he often tries to test the strength of religious foundations that he doubted.

Witch hunting, being a medieval savagery, has not outlived itself in our time. Periodically, information appears in the media that people suffer because of superstition and stupidity, even in the XXI century.