De Veil, Louis De Compeigne

De Veil, Louis de Compeigne an English theologian and author, of the same family as the foregoing, embraced the Romish religion in early life, but afterwards renounced it for the Protestant faith, left France, where he had been the king's interpreter of Oriental languages, and went to England in 1679, where he immediately joined the Established Church. He published several books exhibiting considerable learning, chiefly relating to Jewish literature. See Bogue and Bennett, History of Dissenters, 2d ed. 1:477.

Representations of the devil as the final tormentor of men belong to mediaeval rather than to primitive art. Probably the earliest existing representation of hell is in the mosaics of Torcello, as that painted by Methodins, even if its story be true, has perished. In early art the devil generally appears in the form of a serpent as the tempter of man in this world. Didron, however, in the Iconographie du Serpent, mentions a gnostic combination of human and serpentine form, with leonine head and face, derived from the ancient Egyptian symbol of a lion-headed serpent. 'The human, being predominant, appears an anticipation of the personified serpent of the middle ages. The Gothic or medieval representations seem to begin in Italy with the fiend in the Chase of Theodoric, which, till lately destroyed by gradual and wanton mischief, adorned the front of San Zenone in Verona.

In the Laurentian MS. of Rabula (A.D. 587) there is an extraordinary representation of the deemoniacs of Gadara, just delivered from their tormenting spirits, who are fluttering away in the form of little black humanities of mischievous expression