Devil on the wall

 

The Devil on the Wall The reformation in Europe was a time of belief in gods and magic where the Catholic Church ruled in matters of morality and law, until their dogma was challenged by the emergence of the new Protestant church. The Reformers made use of the printing press to distribute their alternative ideas… but the Jesuit Priesthood had a more radical plan. “The Jesuits were very important for the Roman Catholic Church because they were multimedia people,” explains Dr Andreas Scheucher, curator of the AV Stumpfl Museum in Austria. “They founded a special form of spiritual theatre – the Jesuit theatre – and used the Magic Lantern. The first projected images from the Laterna Magica were images of the devil.” This was probably the first use of broadcast or projected images for the purposes of propaganda, but as wealth moved from the hands of the church and aristocracy and into the hands of merchants, so did the use of the Laterna Magica.