Athenaeum, includes many MSS. and incunabula, and a 13th-century copy of Reynard the Fox. The archives of the town are of considerable value. Besides a considerable agricultural trade, Deventer has important iron foundries and carpet factories (the royal manufactory of Smyrna carpets being especially famous); while cotton-printing, rope-making and the weaving of woollens and silks are also carried on. A public official is appointed to supervise the proper making of a form of gingerbread known as “Deventer Koek,” which has a reputation throughout Holland. In the church of Bathmen, a village 5 m. E. of Deventer, some 14th-century frescoes were discovered in 1870.
In the 14th century Deventer was the centre of the famous religious and educational movement associated with the name of Gerhard Groot (q.v.), who was a native of the town (see Brothers of Common Life).
DE VERE, AUBREY THOMAS (1814–1902), Irish poet and critic, was born at Curragh Chase, Co. Limerick, on the 10th of January 1814, being the third son of Sir Aubrey de Vere Hunt (1788–1846). In 1832 his father dropped the final name by royal licence. Sir Aubrey was himself a poet. Wordsworth called his sonnets the “most perfect of the age.” These and his drama, Mary Tudor, were published by his son in 1875 and 1884. Aubrey de Vere was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and in his twenty-eighth year published The Waldenses, which he followed up in the next year by The Search after Proserpine. Thenceforward he was continually engaged, till his death on the 20th of January 1902, in the production of poetry and criticism. His best-known works are: in verse, The Sisters (1861); The Infant Bridal (1864); Irish Odes (1869); Legends of St Patrick (1872); and Legends of the Saxon Saints (1879); and in prose, Essays chiefly on Poetry (1887); and Essays chiefly Literary and Ethical (1889). He also wrote a picturesque volume of travel-sketches, and two dramas in verse, Alexander the Great (1874); and St Thomas of Canterbury (1876); both of which, though they contain fine passages, suffer from diffuseness and a lack of dramatic spirit. The characteristics of Aubrey de Vere’s poetry are “high seriousness” and a fine religious enthusiasm. His research in questions of faith led him to the Roman Church; and in many of his poems, notably in the volume of sonnets called St Peter’s Chains (1888), he made rich additions to devotional verse. He was a disciple of Wordsworth, whose calm meditative serenity he often echoed with great felicity; and his affection for Greek poetry, truly felt and understood, gave dignity and weight to his own versions of mythological idylls. But perhaps he will be chiefly remembered for the impulse which he gave to the study of Celtic legend and literature. In this direction he has had many followers, who have sometimes assumed the appearance of pioneers; but after Matthew Arnold’s fine lecture on “Celtic Literature,” nothing perhaps did more to help the Celtic revival than Aubrey de Vere’s tender insight into the Irish character, and his stirring reproductions of the early Irish epic poetry.
A volume of Selections from his poems was edited in 1894 (New York and London) by G. E. Woodberry.
DEVICE, a scheme, plan, simple mechanical contrivance; also a pattern or design, particularly an heraldic design or emblem, often combined with a motto or legend. “Device” and its doublet “devise” come from the two Old French forms devis and devise of the Latin divisa, things divided, from dividere, to separate, used in the sense of to arrange, set out, apportion. “Devise,” as a substantive, is now only used as a legal term for a disposition of property by will, by a modern convention restricted to a disposition of real property, the term “bequest” being used of personalty (see Will). This use is directly due to the Medieval Latin meaning of dividere = testamento disponere. In its verbal form, “devise” is used not only in the legal sense, but also in the sense of to plan, arrange, scheme.
DEVIL (Gr. διάβολος, “slanderer,” from διαβάλλειν, to slander), the generic name for a spirit of evil, especially the supreme spirit of evil, the foe of God and man. The word is used for minor evil spirits in much the same sense as “demon.” From the various characteristics associated with this idea, the term has come to be applied by analogy in many different senses. From the idea of evil as degraded, contemptible and doomed to failure, the term is applied to persons in evil plight, or of slight consideration. In English legal phraseology “devil” and “devilling” are used of barristers who act as substitutes for others. Any remuneration which the legal “devil” may receive is purely a matter of private arrangement between them. In the chancery division such remuneration is generally in the proportion of one half of the fee which the client pays; “in the king’s bench division remuneration for ‘devilling’ of briefs or assisting in drafting and opinions is not common” (see Annual Practice, 1907, p. 717). In a similar sense an author may have his materials collected and arranged by a literary hack or “devil.” The term “printer’s devil” for the errand boy in a printing office probably combines this idea with that of his being black with ink. The common notions of the devil as black, ill-favoured, malicious, destructive and the like, have occasioned the application of the term to certain animals (the Tasmanian devil, the devil-fish, the coot), to mechanical contrivances (for tearing up cloth or separating wool), to pungent, highly seasoned dishes, broiled or fried. In this article we are concerned with the primary sense of the word, as used in mythology and religion.
The primitive philosophy of animism involves the ascription of all phenomena to personal agencies. As phenomena are good or evil, produce pleasure or pain, cause weal or woe, a distinction in the character of these agencies is gradually recognized; the agents of good become gods, those of evil, demons. A tendency towards the simplification and organization of the evil as of the good forces, leads towards belief in outstanding leaders among the forces of evil. When the divine is most completely conceived as unity, the demonic is also so conceived; and over against God stands Satan, or the devil.
Although it is in connexion with Hebrew and Christian monotheism that this belief in the devil has been most fully developed, yet there are approaches to the doctrine in other religions. In Babylonian mythology “the old serpent goddess ’the lady Nina’ was transformed into the embodiment of all that was hostile to the powers of heaven” (Sayce’s Hibbert Lectures, p. 283), and was confounded with the dragon Tiamat, “a terrible monster, reappearing in the Old Testament writings as Rahab and Leviathan, the principle of chaos, the enemy of God and man” (Tennant’s The Fall and Original Sin, p. 43), and according to Gunkel (Schöpfung und Chaos, p. 383) “the original of the ’old serpent’ of Rev. xii. 9.” In Egyptian mythology the serpent Apap with an army of monsters strives daily to arrest the course of the boat of the luminous gods. While the Greek mythology described the Titans as “enchained once for all in their dark dungeons” yet Prometheus’ threat remained to disturb the tranquillity of the Olympian Zeus. In the German mythology the army of darkness is led by Hel, the personification of twilight, sunk to the goddess who enchains the dead and terrifies the living, and Loki, originally the god of fire, but afterwards “looked upon as the father of the evil powers, who strips the goddess of earth of her adornments, who robs Thor of his fertilizing hammer, and causes the death of Balder the beneficent sun.” In Hindu mythology the Maruts, Indra, Agni and Vishnu wage war with the serpent Ahi to deliver the celestial cows or spouses, the waters held captive in the caverns of the clouds. In the Trimurti, Brahmă (the impersonal) is manifested as Brahmā (the personal creator), Vishnu (the preserver), and Siva (the destroyer). In Siva is perpetuated the belief in the god of Vedic times Rudra, who is represented as “the wild hunter who storms over the earth with his bands, and lays low with arrows the men who displease him” (Chantepie de la Saussaye’s Religionsgeschichte, 2nd ed., vol. ii. p. 25). The evil character of Siva is reflected in his wife, who as Kali (the black) is the wild and cruel goddess of destruction and death. The opposition of good and evil is most fully carried out in Zoroastrianism. Opposed to Ormuzd, the author of all good, is Ahriman, the source of all evil; and the opposition runs through the whole universe (D’Alviella’s Hibbert Lectures, pp. 158-164).
The conception of Satan (Heb. שָׂטָן, the adversary, Gr. Σατανᾶς, or Σατᾶν, 2 Cor. xii. 7) belongs to the post-exilic period of Hebrew development, and probably shows traces of the
