Temple House, Roy

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NOTES ON THE MEDIEVAL CONCEPTION OF PURGATORY. 663NOTES ON THE MEDIEVAL CONCEPTION OFPURGATORY.BY ROY TEMPLE HOUSE.SOME thirty years ago the German scholar R. Schroeder studiedOld French monuments for references to Purgatory, and foundthem so rare as to lead him to the conclusion that the doctrine hadtaken little hold on the medieval mind. A few years later theItalian Schiavo made a further investigation which seemed to con-firm the findings of Schroeder. In 1890 Peter Pfefi:'er published astudy of the Old French Fabliaux, from which he draws the follow-ing inference as to the popular reception of the doctrine: "Sinceour sources contain not the slightest hint of the existence of anintermediate state between Heaven and Hell, of a place of puri-fication such as is commonly termed Purgatory ; but since on thecontrary the righteous go straight to Heaven ; and since Hell is aplace of punishment, it is true, but not of everlasting punishment;since St. Peter has the power to free the souls who are burning inHell,—two inferences seem clear : first, that the doctrine of Purga-tory did not take hold of the popular imagination ; and second, thatbelief in eternal punishment was not general."I have not found literary allusions to Purgatory so rare in theMiddle Ages as these authorities seem to have done ; and in anycase, it is not by any means certain that the infrequency of thetheme in literature argues general non-acceptance of the doctrine.Karl Vossler, in his discussion of the Divine Comedy, maintainsthat the dogma is unfitted for artistic treatment, and finds Dante'shandling of the subject wooden and painfully orthodox, while hisHell and Heaven have verve and freedom. A medieval poet han-dled successfully only the simple and decided ; it remained for themodern to work with half-tints and delicate gradations.The Persians had conceived of a separation of good men frombad, following which all the latter, by means of a period of physicalsufifering, attained in time the requisite purity and were all gatheredtogether into the bliss of Ahura Mazda. As early as the secondcentury, A. D., Clemens and Origen had developed a similar dogmain the Christian Church. They were no doubt influenced by Plato,who had conceived of punishment as education and purification.Only the absolutely and hopelessly depraved, they maintained, are664 THE OPEN COURT.eternally punished, and even the punishment of thes'e is educative,serving as it does for an example to others. No one is free fromsin, hence every one must suffer to some extent this purifying pun-ishment, which begins immediately after death and lasts for aperiod dependent on the sinfulness of the individual. But such adoctrine clashes a little with the efficacy of Christ's expiatory death;so that St. Augustine deemed it wise to step in with the teachingof Predestination, which gave Hell back all its terrors.The existence of Purgatory was, however, emphatically affirmedat Carthage (A.D. 397), Florence (1439), and Trent (1545-63),so that there is no question as to the official attitude of the Churchin the matter, during practically all her history. The Albigenses,the Waldenses, and other heretical sects, devoted a great deal ofenergy to attacking this particular doctrine, evidently regarding itas one of the foundation-stones of the religion from which theydissented. In the course of the twelfth century the English monkHenry of Saltrey put into Latin the story of the Purgatory of St.Patrick, which he claims to have had from a certain Prior Gilbert,who in his turn had it from the knight Owein, whose personal ex-perience it narrates. This story, retold in French by Marie deFrance, is. after Dante's epic, the most famous of all medievalliterary treatments of the subject. Purgatory in this story is nota place apart, but is Hell itself. By going there in his lifetime andfighting the Devils who came to tempt him, the knight was ableto cleanse himself of his sin before death.Marie de France wrote in the latter part of the twelfth century.Early in the thirteenth century, the preacher Jacques de Vitry de-scribes again this spot in Ireland where one may enter Hell,—whichif done after confession and in a contrite and repentant spirit,results only in purification and sobering, but which for the frivolousmeans death, physical and spiritual. This place-identification ofPurgatory and Hell was of course not universal. The commonthought was of an intermediate location between Hell and Heaven,as the state was an intermediate state between the two. The lastprayer of Richard Coeur-de-Lion (see Cornish, Chivalry, p. 134),was that he might be granted a place in Purgatory from his deathtill the Day of Judgment, if that were sufficient to wash away hissins.Philippe de Navarre, writing in the middle of the thirteenthcentury, warns his nephew: 'Tf the young man does little penancein this life, he must do penance great and long in Purgatory." AboutNOTES ON THE MEDIEVAL CONCEPTION OF PURGATORY. 665the same period, the romantic wandering minstrel Riisteboeuf, in hisComplainte d'Ontre-Mer, speaks of the blood of Christ,"By which the fires are smotheredBoth of Hell and of Purgatory;"which lines it is interesting to compare with the teachings of St.Augustine. The anonymous author of Curt de Paradis describesthe sufferings of all the souls"Which were in Purgatory,All crying: 'Father of Glory,Wilt thou not yet have pity on us?'"'The unknown author of another poem called Passion de NostreScignour explains that a shade higher than Hell is"another stage. . . .There is the fire of Purgatory;Those who attain the glory of GodDo thus penance in this place."In the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach (about 1200), thehero begs prayers for the soul of his deceased father; and by theend of the century we have the elaborate treatment of the dogmaby Dante. It is unnecessary to multiply citations. I have a longlist of them from the Old French, but the curious thing about themis that practically none of them come before the thirteenth century.The conclusion seems clear that the doctrine crept into literaturelate and very gradually. That it was much the same in the reallife of the period is shown by the interesting fact that clericalpurgatorial societies,—a sort of spiritual insurance organization,whose deceased members' souls were the beneficiaries of massessaid for them by the survivors,—are found from an early date,but that similar laymen's societies do not appear till about thethirteenth century, although they became very popular when theyhad once taken root. The Purgatory idea was a plant of slowgrowth.Moreover, it must be admitted that there are plenty of instancesof what appears a different theology,—of souls going straight toHeaven at death, with neither a tedious wait for a distant JudgmentDay, nor a painful wait in a place of salutary suffering. PopeUrban said in his speech at Clermont: "If any lose your lives onthe journey by land or sea or in fighting against the heathen, theirsouls shall be remitted in that hour. This I grant through thepower of God vested in me." Matthew Paris, in his English His-666 THE OPEN COURT.tory, notes under date of the year 1249, "there departed to theLord several illustrious French crusaders. . . .and flew like martyrsto the celestial kingdoms." And to turn again to literature, theearly thirteenth-century French poem L'Ordene de Chevalerie saysof the knight:"If he has done the duty of his OrderHe cannot be preventedFrom going straight to Paradise."But there is no difficulty in all of this. The author of L'Ordeiw deChevalerie was a churchman, and no doubt believed in Purgatoryas implicitly as all other clerks did. But his meaning,—the veryemphasis of his assertion shows it,—is to exempt the knight froma necessity laid upon ordinary mortals without exception, just asPope Urban exempted the crusader from the common lot. Knightsand crusaders were the defenders of the Church, and this exemp-tion was their reward. But we have no reason to believe that eithertheologians or poets were inclined to eliminate Purgatory from theexperience of mankind in general.SAVAGE LIFE AND CUSTOM.BY EDWARD L.XWRENCE.IV. EDUCATION AND INITIATION.THE period of life from the age of seven until maturity is per-haps the most important in the life of our savage. It is duringthis period that the foundation of his future is laid, and in whichhe receives that teaching which will have a significant influenceupon his inner life and his behavior to the tribe of which he will soonbecome a recognized member.Civilized people usually consider "education" to be almost anexclusive feature of civilization and as of comparatively late devel-opment in its history. How many, for instance, have heard ofnaked savages attending school ; of being taught therein, spinningand weaving, singing and ethics, and the manufacture of weapons ?How many know that little savage boys and girls are taught a codeof morality which will compare with anything that Christian civili-zation has to oiTer ; that little cannibal children are taught to shuntheft, to fear adultery, to honor their fathers and their mothers, andto obey those set in authority over them ?Nevertheless, all savage tribes, however low they may be, in

Notes on the Medieval Conception of Purgatory.

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Notes on the Medieval Conception of Purgatory.

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