Another god made demon — Baal-Peor of Moab, whose worship seduces Israel in Numbers 25 — refiled by the demonologists as Belphegor, prince of sloth among Binsfeld's seven. His signature temptation is the most modern in the collection: not idleness itself, but ingenious inventions and brilliant shortcuts — wealth and comfort promised for no work. Sloth, in the tradition's diagnosis, arrives disguised as efficiency.
The attached legend, polished by Machiavelli's novella and repeated by De Plancy, has him sent up from Hell on a research assignment: to determine whether married happiness truly exists on earth, Hell having heard rumors. He returns confirmed in the negative and relieved to be home — the collection's only demon with a completed field study.
De Plancy's engraving — a horned, spindly figure seated on a commode — ensured no one takes him quite as seriously as his classification suggests, which the tradition would call exactly how sloth prefers it.