Title: 10 Common Things People Believed Were Invented By The Devil - Listverse
Headings: 10 Common Things People Believed Were Invented By The Devil
10 Common Things People Believed Were Invented By The Devil
10 Forks
9 Musical Instruments
8 Socialism
7 Smoking
6 The Telephone
5 Dice
4 The Smurfs
3 The Cross
2 Soccer
1 Theater

Content: Eight representatives of the clergy approached the throne of Menelik and appealed to the Emperor that the telephone in the palace was in fact the work of SeyTan —the Devil and that it should be removed from the palace and destroyed in public. Menelik then informed the delegates that their concern was “legitimate” and he will get back to them the next day. Subsequently, he called up his nobility and the Patriarch and bitterly complained that the clergy is interfering in his vision of growth for his country by claiming that the telephone technology is the work of the Devil. He went [on] to say that the priests are bent on sabotaging his work and are—in the process—forcing him to even consider abandoning the Orthodox faith just to distance himself from the backward clergy. Upon hearing such a shocking declaration from the Emperor, the nobility and the Patriarch rushed to assure the Emperor that they will calm down the priests and begged him to stay with the Orthodox faith. 5 Dice
It is perhaps not particularly surprising that gambling was decried as a great sin in the Middle Ages. It was seen as encouraging blasphemy and idolatry, and some gamblers were said to substitute the name of Decius, the god of dice, in place of God in prayers. According to writer Bernadette Paton, the Sienese friars believed that dicing was a form of satanic worship and that gamblers would “obey the will of the dice above that of God.” John Mirk, a 14th-century English prior, concurred, saying, “What shall we say of the priest who, while flinging the dice upon the gambling table, at the same time flings his soul to the Devil! He makes of the gaming table an altar for himself, upon which he offers up the goods of the Church to the Devil and the goods of others too.