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your renown, or that of any one of us, to move from those cultivated and inhabited spots of ground, and pass beyond that Caucasus, or swim across yonder Ganges? What inhabitant of the other parts of the east, or of the extreme regions of the setting sun, of those tracts that run toward the south or toward the north, shall ever hear of your name? Now, supposing them cut off, you see at once within what narrow limits your glory would fain expand itself. As to those who speak of you, how long will they speak?

"Let me even suppose that a future race of men shall be desirous of transmitting to their posterity your renown or mine, as they received it from their fathers; yet when we consider the convulsions and conflagrations that must necessarily happen at some definite period, we are unable to attain not only to an eternal, but even to a lasting fame. Now of what consequence is it to you to be talked of by those who are born after you, and not by those who were born before you, who certainly were as numerous and more virtuous, especially as among the very men who are thus to celebrate our renown not a single one can preserve the recollections of a single year? For mankind ordinarily measure their year by the revolution of the sun, that is, of a single heavenly body. But when all the planets shall return to the same position which they once had, and bring back after a long rotation the same aspect of the entire heavens, then the year may be said to be truly completed; in which I do not venture to say how many ages of mankind will be contained. For, as of old, when the spirit of Romulus entered these temples, the sun disappeared to mortals and seemed to be extinguished; so whenever the sun, at the same time with all the stars and constellations brought back to the same starting-point, shall again disappear, then you are to reckon the year to be complete. But be assured that the twentieth part of such a year is not yet elapsed.

"If, therefore, you hope to return to this place, toward which all the aspirations of great and good men are tending, what must be the value of that human

fame that endures for but a little part of a single year? If, then, you would fain direct your regards on high and aspire to this mansion and eternal abode, you neither will devote yourself to the ru mours of the vulgar, nor will you rest your hopes and your interest on human rewards. Virtue herself ought to attract you by her own charms to true glory; what others may talk of you, for talk they will, let themselves consider. But all such talk is confined to the narrow limits of those regions which you see. None respecting any man was everlasting. It is both extinguished by the death of the individual, and perishes altogether in the oblivion of posterity."

Which, when he had said, I replied, "Truly, O Africanus, since the path to heaven lies open to those who have deserved well of their country, though from my childhood I have ever trod in your and my father's footsteps without disgracing your glory, yet now, with so noble a prize set before me, I shall strive with much more diligence.'

"Do so strive," replied he, "and do not consider yourself, but your body, to be mortal. For you are not the being which this corporeal figure evinces; but the mind of every man is the man, and not that form which may be delineated with a finger. Know therefore that you are a divine person. Since it is divinity that has consciousness, sensation, memory, and foresight,-that governs, regulates, and moves that body over which it has been appointed, just as the Supreme Deity rules this world; and in like manner as an eternal God guides this world, which in some respect is perishable, so an eternal spirit animates your frail body.

"For that which is ever moving is eternal; now that which communicates to another object a motion which it received elsewhere, must necessarily cease to live as soon as its motion is at an end. Thus the being which is selfmotive is the only being that is eternal, because it never is abandoned by its own properties, neither is this self-motion ever at an end; nay, this is the fountain, this is the beginning of motion to all things that are thus subjects of motion. Now there can be no commencement of

what is aboriginal, for all things proceed from a beginning; therefore a beginning can rise from no other cause, for if it proceeded from another cause it would not be aboriginal, which, if it have no commencement, certainly never has an end; for the primeval principle, if extinct, can neither be reproduced from any other source, nor produce anything else from itself, because it is necessary that all things should spring from some original source."

HELL, PURGATORY, AND
HEAVEN.

Milman's History of Latin Christianity.

Book XIV. ch. 2.

material torments: spirits which had put off the mortal body, cognizable by the corporeal sense. The medieval Hell had gathered from all ages, all lands, all races, its imagery, its denizens, its site, its access, its commingling horrors; from the old Jewish traditions, perhaps from the regions beyond the sphere of the Old Testament; from the Pagan poets, with their black rivers, their Cerberus, their boatman and his crazy vessel; perhaps from the Teutonic Hela, through some of the earlier visions. Then came the great Poet, and reduced all this wild chaos to a kind of order, moulded it up with the cosmical notions of the times, and made it, as it were, one with the prevalent mundane system. Above all, he brought it to the very borders of our world; he made the life beyond the grave one with our present life; he mingled in close and intimate relation the present and the future. Hell, Purgatory, Heaven, were but an imme

Throughout the Middle Ages the world after death continued to reveal more and more fully its awful secrets. Hell, Purgatory, Heaven became more distinct, if it may be so said, more visible. Their site, their topography, their tor-diate expansion and extension of the ments, their trials, their enjoyments, became more conceivable, almost more palpable to sense: till Dante summed up the whole of this traditional lore, or at least, with a Poet's intuitive sagacity, seized on all which was most imposing, effective, real, and condensed it in his three co-ordinate poems. That Hell had a local existence, that immaterial spirits suffered bodily and material torments, none, or scarcely one hardy speculative mind, presumed to doubt. Hell had admitted, according to legend, more than one visitant from this upper world, who returned to relate his fearful journey to wondering man: St. Farcy, St. Vettin, a layman Bernilo. But all these early descents interest us only as they may be supposed or appear to have been faint types of the great Italian Poet. Dante is the one authorized topographer of the mediæval Hell. His originality is no more called in question by these mere signs and manifestations of the popular belief, than by the existence and reality of those objects or scenes in external nature which he describes with such unrivalled truth. In Dante meet unreconciled (who thought of or cared for their reconciliation ?) those strange contradictions, immaterial souls subject to

present world. And this is among the wonderful causes of Dante's power, the realizing the unreal by the admixture of the real: even as in his imagery the actual, homely, every-day language or similitude mingles with and heightens the fantastic, the vague, the transmundane. What effect had Hell produced, if peopled by ancient, almost immemo rial objects of human detestation, Nimrod or Iscariot, or Julian or Mohammed? It was when Popes all but living, Kings but now on their thrones, Guelfs who had hardly ceased to walk the streets of Florence, Ghibellines almost yet in exile, revealed their awful doom,—this it was which, as it expressed the passions and the fears of mankind of an instant, im. mediate, actual, bodily, comprehensible place of torment; so, wherever it was read, it deepened that notion, and made it more distinct and natural. This was the Hell, conterminous to the earth, but separate, as it were, by a gulf passed by almost instantaneous transition, of which the Priesthood held the keys. These keys the audacious Poet had wrenched from their hands, and dared to turn on many of themselves, speaking even against Popes the sentence of condemnation. Of that which Hell, Purgatory, Heaven,

were in popular opinion during the Middle Ages, Dante was but the full, deep, concentred expression; what he embodied in verse, all men believed, feared, hoped.

The

tion, closed not with the grave. departed soul was still to a certain degree dependent upon the Priest. They had yet a mission, it might be of mercy; they had still some power of saving the soul after it had departed from the body. Their faithful love, their in exhaustible interest, might yet rescue the sinner; for he had not reached those gates-over which alone was written, "There is no hope "-the gates of Hell. That which was a mercy, a consolation, became a trade, an inexhaustible source of wealth. Praying souls out of Purgatory by masses said on their behalf, became an ordinary office, an office which deserved, which could demand, which did demand, the most prodigal remuneration.

Purgatory had now its intermediate place between Heaven and Hell, as unquestioned, as undisturbed by doubt; its existence was as much an article of uncontested popular belief as Heaven or Hell. It were as unjust and unphilosophical to attribute all the legendary lore which realized Purgatory to the sordid invention of the Churchman or the Monk, as it would be unhistorical to deny the use which was made of this superstition to exact tribute from the fears or the fondness of mankind. But the abuse grew out of the belief; the belief was not slowly, subtly, deliberately instilled into the mind for the sake of the abuse. Purgatory, possible with St. Augustine, probable with Gregory the Great, grew up, I am persuaded, (its growth is singularly indistinct and untraceable,) out of the mercy and modesty of the Priesthood. To the eternity of Hell torments there is and ever must be-notwithstanding the peremptory decrees of dogmatic theology and the reverential dread in so many religious minds of tampering with what If there were living men to whom it seems the language of the New Testa- had been vouchsafed to visit and to ment-a tacit repugnance. But when return and to reveal the secrets of remote the doom of every man rested on the lips and terrible Hell, there were those too of the Priest, on his absolution or refusal who were admitted in vision, or in actual of absolution, that Priest might well life to more accessible Purgatory, and tremble with some natural awe-awe brought back intelligence of its real local not confessed to himself-at dismissing existence, and of the state of souls within the soul to an irrevocable, unrepealable, its penitential circles. There is a legend unchangeable destiny. He would not be of St. Paul himself; of the French monk averse to pronounce a more mitigated, a St. Farcy; of Drithelm, related by reversible sentence. The keys of Heaven Bede; of the Emperor Charles the Fat, and of Hell were a fearful trust, a ter- by William of Malmesbury. Matthew rible responsibility; the key of Purga- Paris relates two or three journeys of the tory might be used with far less pre- Monk of Evesham, of Thurkill, an Essex sumption, with less trembling confidence. peasant, very wild and fantastic. The Then came naturally, as it might seem, Purgatory of St. Patrick, the Purgatory the strengthening and exaltation of the of Owen Miles, the vision of Alberic of efficacy of prayer, of the efficacy of the Monte Casino, were among the most religious ceremonials, of the efficacy of popular and wide-spread legends of the the sacrifice of the altar, and the efficacy ages preceding Dante; and as in Hell, of the intercession of the Saints: and so in Purgatory, Dante sums up in his these all within the province, within the noble verses the whole theory, the whole power, of the Sacerdotal Order. Their popular belief as to this intermediate authority, their influence, their interven-sphere.

It was later that the Indulgence, originally the remission of so much penance, of so many days, weeks, months, years, or of that which was the commutation for penance, so much almsgiving or munificence to churches or Churchmen, in sound at least extended (and mankind, the high and low vulgar of mankind, are governed by sound) its significance: it was literally understood as the remission of so many years, sometimes centuries, of Purgatory.

If Hell and Purgatory thus dimly it should seem, is below the ascending divulged their gloomy mysteries, if they circles of the Celestial Hierarchies, that had been visited by those who returned immediate vestibule or fore-court of the to actual life, Heaven was unapproached, Holy of Holies, the Heaven of Heavens, unapproachable. To be wrapt to the into which the most perfect of the Saints higher Heaven remained the privilege of are admitted. They are commingled the Apostle; the popular conception was with, yet unabsorbed by, the Redeemer, content to rest in modest ignorance. in mystic union; yet the mysticism still Though the Saints might descend on reverently endeavours to maintain some beneficent missions to the world of man; distinction in regard to this Light, which, of the site of their beatitude, of the state as it has descended upon earth, is drawn of the Blessed, of the joys of the supernal up again to the highest Heavens, and world, they brought but vague and inde- has a kind of communion with the yet finite tidings. In truth, the notion of Incommunicable Deity. That in all the Heaven was inextricably mingled up with Paradise of Dante there should be a the astronomical and cosmogonical as dazzling sameness, a mystic indistinctwell as with the theological notions of ness, an inseparable blending of the real the age. Dante's Paradise blends the and the unreal, is not wonderful, if we Ptolemaic system with the nine angelic consider the nature of the subject, and circles of the Pseudo Dionysius; the the still more incoherent and incongruous material heavens in their nine circles; popular conceptions which he had to above and beyond them, in the invisible represent and to harmonise. It is more heavens, the nine Hierarchies; and yet wonderful that, with these few elements, higher than the highest heavens the Light, Music, and Mysticism, he should, dwelling of the Ineffable Trinity. The by his singular talent of embodying the Beatific Vision, whether immediate or purely abstract and metaphysical thought to await the Last Day, had been cluded in the liveliest imagery, represent such ather than determined, till the rash and things with the most objective truth, yet presumptuous theology of Pope John without disturbing their fine spiritualism. XXII. compelled a declaration from the The subtilist scholasticism is not more Church. But yet this ascent to the Heaven subtile than Dante. It is perhaps a bold of Heavens would seem from Dante, the assertion, but what is there on these best interpreter of the dominant concep- transcendent subjects in the vast theology tions, to have been an especial privilege, of Aquinas, of which the essence and if it may be so said, of the most Blessed sum is not in the Paradise of Dante? of the Blessed, the Saint of Saints. Dante, perhaps, though expressing to a There is a manifest gradation in Beati-great extent the popular conception of tude and Sanctity. According to the universal cosmical theory, the Earth, the round and level Earth, was the centre of the whole system. It was usually supposed to be encircled by the vast, circumambient, endless ocean; but beyond that ocean (with a dim reminiscence, it should seem, of the Elysian Fields of the poets) was placed a Paradise, where the souls of men hereafter to be blest awaited the final resurrection. Dante takes the other theory: he peoples the nine material heavensthat is, the cycle of the Moon, Venus, Mercury, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the fixed stars, and the firmament above, or the Primum Mobile-with those who are admitted to a progressively advancing state of glory and blessedness. All this,

Heaven, is as much by his innate sublimity above it, as St. Thomas himself.

THE VISION OF FRATE AL-
BERICO.

Wright, St. Patrick's Purgatory, p. 118.

Alberic, when he wrote his vision, was a monk of Monte Cassino. His father was a baron, lord of the castle de Sette Fratelli, in the Campagna of Rome. In his tenth year, the child Alberic was seized with a languor, and lay nine days and nine nights in a trance, to all appearance dead. As soon as he had fallen into this condition, a white bird, like a dove, came and put its bill into his mouth, and seemed to lift him

up, and then he saw St. Peter and two angels, who carried him to the lower regions. St. Peter told him that he would see the least torments first, and afterwards, successively, the more terrible punishments of the other world. They came first to a place filled with red-hot burning cinders and boiling vapour, in which little children were purged; those of one year old being subjected to this torment during seven days; those of two years, fourteen days; and so on, in proportion to their age. Then they entered a terrible valley, in which Alberic saw a great number of persons plunged to different depths, according to their different degrees of criminality, in frost, and cold, and ice, which consumed them like fire; these were adulterers, and people who had led impure lives. Then they approached a still more fearful valley, filled with trees, the branches of which were long spikes, on which hung women transfixed through their breasts, while venomous serpents were sucking them; these were women who had refused pity to orphans. Other women, who had been faithless to the marriage bed, were suspended by the hair over raging fires. Next he saw an iron ladder, three hundred and sixty, cubits long, red hot, and under it a great boiler of melted oil, pitch, and resin; married persons who had not been continent on sabbaths and holy days were compelled to mount this ladder, and ever as they were obliged to quit their hold by the heat, they dropped into the boiler below. Then they beheld vast fires in which were burnt the souls of tyrannical and cruel lords, and of women who had destroyed their offspring. Next was a great space full of fire like blood, in which homicides were thrown; and after this there stood an immense vessel filled with boiling brass, tin, lead, sulphur, and resin, in which were immersed during three years those who had encouraged wicked priests. They next came to the mouth of the infernal pit, (os infernalis baratri,) a vast gulf, dark, and emitting an intolerable stench, and full of screaming and howiing. By the pit was a serpent of infinite magnitude, bound by a great chain, the one end of which seemed to be fastened in the pit; before the mouth of this ser

pent stood a multitude of souls, which he sucked in like flies at each breath, and then, with the return of respiration, blew them out scorched to sparks; and this process continued till the souls were purged of their sins. The pit was so dark that Alberic could not see what was going on in hell. After quitting this spot, Alberic was conducted first to a valley in which persons who had committed sacrilege were burnt in a sea of flames; then to a pit of fire in which simonists were punished; next to a place filled with flames, and with serpents and dragons, in which were tormented those who, having embraced the monastic profession, had quitted it and returned to a secular life; and afterwards to a great black lake of sulphureous water, full of serpents and scorpions, in which the souls of detractors and false witnesses were immersed to the chin, and their faces continually flogged with serpents by demons who hovered over them. On the borders of hell, Alberic saw two "malignant spirits" in the form of a dog and a lion, which he was told blew out from their fiery mouths all the torments that were outside of hell, and ar every breath the souls before them were wafted each into the peculiar punishment appropriated to him. The visitor was here left for a moment by his conductors; and the demons seized upon him, and would have thrown him into the fire, had not St. Peter suddenly arrived to rescue him. He was carried thence to a fair plain, where he saw thieves carrying heavy collars of iron, red hot, about their necks, hands, and feet. He saw here a great burning pitchy river, issuing from hell, and an iron bridge over it, which appeared very broad and easy for the virtuous to pass; but when sinners attempted it, it became narrow as a thread, and they fell over into the river, and afterwards attempted it again, but were not allowed to pass until they had been sufficiently boiled to purge them of their sins. After this the Apostle showed Alberic an extensive plain, three days' and three nights' journey in breadth, covered with thorns and brambles, in which souls were hunted and tormented by a demon mounted on a great and swift dragon,

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