The first master of the construction business, according to Christian ideas, is, as you know, the Lord God himself - the Great Architect of the Universe. But sometimes the Devil himself is not averse to keeping him company.
“Satan's technical abilities are limitless,” writes the famous cultural historian A. V. Amphitheaters in his book "The Devil in Everyday Life, Legend and Literature of the Middle Ages" (1910). - He knows all arts, crafts and crafts, but, of course, does not exchange in their field for trifles and undertakes only work worthy of his dexterity and strength.
In Western Europe, where people have lived on stone from time immemorial, Satan gained a passion for architecture and construction. A great many bridges, towers, walls, aqueducts and the like are attributed to this strange architect and engineer."
It was he who allegedly built the famous wall on the border between England and Scotland - a Roman military defensive structure, erected by order of the Emperor Hadrian.
He also threw a bridge over the Rhone in Avignon and other so-called "devil's bridges", including the Devil's Bridge in the Alps, on the Saint-Gotthard Pass, which passed in 1799 under enemy fire, over a terrible abyss, A. V. Suvorov with his miracle heroes.
There is a bridge across the abyss in a brave arc
I bent over from rock to rock;
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He was not put by a mortal hand -
Who would a mortal touch him? -
F. Schiller wrote about the Alpine Devil's Bridge in the ballad Mountain Road (1804).
Two statues of the 12th century tell about the history of the construction of another "devil's bridge". in Regensburg (Austria).
“One statue is placed under the roof of the cathedral between other figures for the drainage of water, in the form of a man leaning down with his whole body, and the other on the bridge is in the form of a naked young man sitting astride a stone with the inscription:“How hot”and with his face turned to cathedral. The legend connected these two figures with the construction of the bridge over the Danube (1135-1182).
The builder of the bridge allegedly fought a bet with the architect of the cathedral, which of them would sooner finish his work, and with the help of the devil he outstripped his rival, who, out of chagrin, threw himself from the roof of the cathedral and was killed to death,”writes art critic V. P. Zubov in his article“Architect in the Middle Ages”.
The exclamation "How Hot" indicates not only the extraordinary drought in the summer of 1135, but also the hellish fire, the heat of which is already felt by the sinner who sold his soul to Satan in payment for the bridge built on time.
“The strangest thing is that the devil sometimes used his architectural talents also for the construction of churches and monasteries,” notes A. V. Amphitheaters. - But, of course, in this case he either pursued his secret goals, or was compelled by Will, the Strongest of him. So, they say, he made plans and other drawings for the Cologne and Aachen cathedrals, and the latter was even partly, if not all, built by him."
Aachen Cathedral was founded in 798 on the site of the destroyed Roman baths - the very place for evil spirits!
And in the construction of the Cologne Cathedral (laid down in 1248), according to several testimonies, Albert von Bolstedt, nicknamed Albert the Great (1193-1280), a professor of theology in Cologne and Paris, the head of scholasticism of his time, famous for his extensive works on theology, took part. philosophy and natural sciences, after death revered as a saint by the Dominican monks, in whose order he was.
In his posterity, he retained the glory of the great astrologer and alchemist, warlock and magician: he is one of the prototypes of Goethe's Faust.
“The legend says that, receiving King William and his guests in Cologne in 1248, Albert conjured a magic garden with flowering trees and songbirds in his palace at Christmas with his charms,” writes literary critic Acad. V. M. Zhirmunsky in his "History of the Legend of Faust".
"To feed his guests with oysters, he knocked on the window, and an invisible hand held out the desired dish to him."
According to his medieval biographers, he designed the choir of the Cologne Cathedral (of course, not without the help of an unclean one) "as the best architect according to the rule and laws of true geometry" and even "with his own hands embodied" the form and idea of this choir.
In England, Crowland Abbey in Lincolnshire is considered the building of the devil. The mischievous little devils bothered the monks for a long time, frightened them, unexpectedly spoke to them, etc. Daniel Defoe, in his Journey to Great Britain (1724-1726), speaks ironically of these rumors - and in his time, 200 years after the closure of the monastery, the district was still full of them.
“The miracle of the devil's buildings was not only in their perfection,” emphasizes A. V. Amfitheatrov, “but also in the speed with which they were built. Often the devil was given no more than one night for them, and he did it, unless people cheated him, which in relation to the devil, it seems, no one has ever considered a sin.
Having pledged to build a church during one night, the devil transferred to the construction site from the most distant places whole granite rocks, blocks and slabs of colored marble, sometimes even columns stolen from some ancient pagan temple, centuries-old oaks and spruces, metal beams and beams, and, tirelessly, he chopped, planed, drilled, hewed, forged, poured, polished, dug, folded, plastered, painted, painted, painted, sculpted.
So, with the onset of morning, the first ray of the sun was already lighting apples of excellent polished gold on the towers and reflected in the art painting of huge lancet windows. And for such a building there was nothing to fear that in a year or two, the ceiling would collapse in it or the wall plaster would collapse.
The only thing the devil systematically avoided was to crown his building with a cross. And even then, once the hellish architect contrived and built the highest cathedral with a cross for the Swedish king Olav the Holy. But once the holy king, having risen to the roof of the cathedral, saw with horror that what seemed to people from below as a cross was in reality a golden figure of a kite with outstretched wings.
Describing in the novel Our Heart (1890) the famous abbey of the 12th century Mont Saint Michel in Normandy - “a kind of reserve of Gothic art” (L. D. Lyubimov), erected on a rock, at high tide, surrounded by the sea from all sides, Guy de Maupassant unobtrusively emphasizes in him a certain otherworldly, diabolical principle:
"The tall building rose in the blue sky, where its details were now clearly visible: a dome with bells and turrets, a roof bristling with gutters in the form of grinning chimeras and shaggy monsters …"
Maupassant's heroes, "amazed at the striking structure," come closer to him along the sandy spit that emerged from the water at low tide.
“Above them, in the sky, rose a bizarre chaos of arrows, granite flowers, arches thrown from tower to tower - incredible, huge - and light architectural lace, as if embroidered on azure, from which it protruded, burst out, as if for takeoff, a fabulous and a terrible bunch of gutters with animal faces …"
There is something surreal in it - if you walk around and look at it from the side of the sea, it turns out that it can change its appearance, like the ghostly castle of Fata Morgana:
“From this side, the abbey, having suddenly lost the appearance of a Gothic cathedral, which is so striking when you look at it from the shore, acquired, as it were in a threat to the ocean, a warlike appearance of a feudal castle with a high battlement wall cut through with picturesque loopholes and supported by giant buttresses, cyclopean masonry which has grown into the sole of this bizarre mountain."
A native of Normandy, Maupassant knew from childhood the legend of how this architectural wonder was created.
“The devil was so proud of his architectural talent that one day he summoned the Archangel Michael, his old enemy, to a competition who would build a more beautiful church on Mount Saint-Michel. The archangel, as one should expect, won, but the devil also did not hit his face in the mud; Moreover, the Archangel's church was taken to heaven for its beauty, so that the sinful world cannot judge it, but the one erected by the devil remained on earth, and tourists still admire it as a gothic masterpiece”(AV Amfitheatrov).
According to legend, the devil also took part in the construction of Notre Dame Cathedral and even portrayed himself in the image of one of the chimeras - the famous Devil the Thinker (c. 1220).
In the historical novel by M. A. Aldanov's "The Thinker" (1921-1927) is a spectacular scene: a mysterious stranger who sculpted the Devil-Thinker of Notre Dame leads the heroes to watch his work, and they wonder why he did not carve his name on the statue - after all, the descendants will ask what the name master.
“No,” said the sculptor with liveliness. "Whoever sees my statue will not ask this."