452 The fullest collection of these visions with which I am acquainted is that made for the Philobiblion Society (vol. ix.), by M.
Delepierre, called _L"Enfer decrit par ceux qui l"ont vu_, of which I have largely availed myself. See, too, Rusca _De Inferno_, Wright"s _Purgatory of St. Patrick_, and an interesting collection of visions given by Mr. Longfellow, in his translation of Dante. The Irish saints were, I am sorry to say, prominent in producing this branch of literature. St. Fursey, whose vision is one of the earliest, and Tondale, or Tundale, whose vision is one of the most detailed, were both Irish. The English historians contain several of these visions. Bede relates two or three-William of Malmesbury that of Charles the Fat; Matthew Paris three visions of purgatory.
453 The narrow bridge over h.e.l.l (in some visions covered with spikes), which is a conspicuous feature in the Mohammedan pictures of the future world, appears very often in Catholic visions. See Greg. Tur.
iv. 33; St. Greg. _Dial._ iv. 36; and the vision of Tundale, in Delepierre.
454 Few Englishmen, I imagine, are aware of the infamous publications written with this object, that are circulated by the Catholic priests among the poor. I have before me a tract "for children and young persons," called _The Sight of h.e.l.l_, by the Rev. J. Furniss, C.S.S.R., published "permissu superiorum," by Duffy (Dublin and London). It is a detailed description of the dungeons of h.e.l.l, and a few sentences may serve as a sample. "See! on the middle of that red-hot floor stands a girl; she looks about sixteen years old. Her feet are bare. She has neither shoes nor stockings.... Listen! she speaks. She says, I have been standing on this red-hot floor for years. Day and night my only standing-place has been this red-hot floor.... Look at my burnt and bleeding feet. Let me go off this burning floor for one moment, only for one single short moment....
The fourth dungeon is the boiling kettle ... in the middle of it there is a boy.... His eyes are burning like two burning coals. Two long flames come out of his ears.... Sometimes he opens his mouth, and blazing fire rolls out. But listen! there is a sound like a kettle boiling.... The blood is boiling in the scalded veins of that boy. The brain is boiling and bubbling in his head. The marrow is boiling in his bones.... The fifth dungeon is the red-hot oven....
The little child is in this red-hot oven. Hear how it screams to come out. See how it turns and twists itself about in the fire. It beats its head against the roof of the oven. It stamps its little feet on the floor.... G.o.d was very good to this child. Very likely G.o.d saw it would get worse and worse, and would never repent, and so it would have to be punished much more in h.e.l.l. So G.o.d in His mercy called it out of the world in its early childhood." If the reader desires to follow this subject further, he may glance over a companion tract by the same reverend gentleman, called _A Terrible Judgment on a Little Child_; and also a book on _h.e.l.l_, translated from the Italian of Pinamonti, and with ill.u.s.trations depicting the various tortures.
455 St. Greg. _Dial._ iv. 38.
456 Ibid. iv. 18.
457 Alger"s _History of the Doctrine of a Future Life_ (New York, 1866), p. 414. The ignis fatuus was sometimes supposed to be the soul of an unbaptised child. There is, I believe, another Catholic legend about the redbreast, of a very different kind-that its breast was stained with blood when it was trying to pull out the thorns from the crown of Christ.
458 Wright"s _Purgatory of St. Patrick_, p. 26. M. Delepierre quotes a curious theory of Father Hardouin (who is chiefly known for his suggestion that the cla.s.sics were composed by the mediaeval monks) that the rotation of the earth is caused by the lost souls trying to escape from the fire that is at the centre of the globe, climbing, in consequence, on the inner crust of the earth, which is the wall of h.e.l.l, and thus making the whole revolve, as the squirrel by climbing turns its cage! (_L"Enfer decrit par ceux qui l"ont vu_, p.
151.)
459 Delepierre, p. 70.
460 Thus, in a book which was attributed (it is said erroneously) to Jeremy Taylor, we find two singularly unrhetorical and unimpa.s.sioned chapters, deliberately enumerating the most atrocious acts of cruelty in human history, and maintaining that they are surpa.s.sed by the tortures inflicted by the Deity. A few instances will suffice.
Certain persons "put rings of iron, stuck full of sharp points of needles, about their arms and feet, in such a manner as the prisoners could not move without wounding themselves; then they compa.s.sed them about with fire, to the end that, standing still, they might be burnt alive, and if they stirred the sharp points pierced their flesh.... What, then, shall be the torment of the d.a.m.ned where they shall burn eternally without dying, and without possibility of removing?... Alexander, the son of Hyrca.n.u.s, caused eight hundred to be crucified, and whilst they were yet alive caused their wives and children to be murdered before their eyes, that so they might not die once, but many deaths. This rigour shall not be wanting in h.e.l.l.... Mezentius tied a living body to a dead until the putrefied exhalations of the dead had killed the living.... What is this in respect of h.e.l.l, when each body of the d.a.m.ned is more loathsome and unsavoury than a million of dead dogs?... Bonaventure says, if one of the d.a.m.ned were brought into this world it were sufficient to infect the whole earth.... We are amazed to think of the inhumanity of Phalaris, who roasted men alive in his brazen bull. That was a joy in respect of that fire of h.e.l.l.... This torment ... comprises as many torments as the body of man has joints, sinews, arteries, &c., being caused by that penetrating and real fire, of which this temporal fire is but a painted fire....
What comparison will there be between burning for a hundred years"
s.p.a.ce, and to be burning without interruption as long as G.o.d is G.o.d?"-_Contemplations on the State of Man_, book ii. ch. 6-7, in Heber"s Edition of the works of Taylor.
461 Perrone, _Historiae Theologiae c.u.m Philosophia comparata Synopsis_, p.
29. Peter Lombard"s work was published in A.D. 1160.
462 "Postremo quaeritur, An pna reproborum visa decoloret gloriam beatorum? an eorum beat.i.tudini proficiat? De hoc ita Gregorius ait, Apud animum justorum non obfuscat beat.i.tudinem aspecta pna reproborum; quia ubi jam compa.s.sio miseriae non erit, minuere beatorum laet.i.tiam non valebit. Et licet justis sua gaudia sufficiant, ad majorem gloriam vident pnas malorum quas per gratiam evaserunt.... Egredientur ergo electi, non loco, sed intelligentia vel visione manifesta ad videndum impiorum cruciatus; quos videntes non dolore afficientur sed laet.i.tia satiabuntur, agentes gratias de sua liberatione visa impiorum ineffabili calamitate. Unde Esaias impiorum tormenta describens et ex eorum visione laet.i.tiam bonorum exprimens, ait, Egredientur electi scilicet et videbunt cadavera virorum qui praevaricati sunt in me. Vermis eorum non morietur et ignis non extinguetur, et erunt usque ad satietatem visionis omni carni, id est electis. Laetabitur justus c.u.m viderit vindictam."-Peter Lombard, _Senten._ lib. iv. finis. These amiable views have often been expressed both by Catholic and by Puritan divines. See Alger"s _Doctrine of a Future Life_, p. 541.
_ 463 Legenda Aurea._ There is a curious fresco representing this transaction, on the portal of the church of St. Lorenzo, near Rome.
464 Aimoni, _De Gestis Francorum Hist._ iv. 34.
465 Turpin"s _Chronicle_, ch. 32. In the vision of Watlin, however (A.D.
824), Charlemagne was seen tortured in purgatory on account of his excessive love of women. (Delepierre, _L"Enfer decrit par ceux qui l"ont vu_, pp. 27-28.)
466 As the Abbe Mably observes: "On croyoit en quelque sorte dans ces siecles grossiers que l"avarice etoit le premier attribut de Dieu, et que les saints faisoient un commerce de leur credit et de leur protection. De-la les richesses immenses donnees aux eglises par des hommes dont les murs deshonoroient la religion."-_Observations sur l"Hist. de France_, i. 4.
467 Many curious examples of the way in which the Troubadours burlesqued the monkish visions of h.e.l.l are given by Delepierre, p.
144.-Wright"s _Purgatory of St. Patrick_, pp. 47-52.
468 Comte, _Philosophie positive_, tome v. p. 269.
469 "Saint-Bernard, dans son sermon _De obitu Humberti_, affirme que tous les tourments de cette vie sont joies si on les compare a une seconde des peines du purgatoire. "Imaginez-vous donc, delicates dames," dit le pere Valladier (1613) dans son sermon du 3me dimanche de l"Avent, "d"estre au travers de vos chenets, sur vostre pet.i.t feu pour une centaine d"ans: ce n"est rien au respect d"un moment de purgatoire. Mais si vous vistes jamais tirer quelqu"un a quatre chevaux, quelqu"un brusler a pet.i.t feu, enrager de faim ou de soif, une heure de purgatoire est pire que tout cela." "-Meray, _Les Libres Precheurs_ (Paris, 1860), pp. 130-131 (an extremely curious and suggestive book). I now take up the first contemporary book of popular Catholic devotion on this subject which is at hand, and read: "Compared with the pains of purgatory, then, all those wounds and dark prisons, all those wild beasts, hooks of iron, red-hot plates, &c., which the holy martyrs suffered, are nothing." "They (souls in purgatory) are in a real, though miraculous manner, tortured by fire, which is of the same kind (says Bellarmine) as our element fire." "The Angelic Doctor affirms "that the fire which torments the d.a.m.ned is like the fire which purges the elect." "
"What agony will not those holy souls suffer when tied and bound with the most tormenting chains of a living fire like to that of h.e.l.l! and we, while able to make them free and happy, shall we stand like uninterested spectators?" "St. Austin is of opinion that the pains of a soul in purgatory during the time required to open and shut one"s eye is more severe than what St. Lawrence suffered on the gridiron;" and much more to the same effect. (_Purgatory opened to the Piety of the Faithful._ Richardson, London.)
470 See Delepierre, Wright, and Alger.
471 This appears from the vision of Thurcill. (Wright"s _Purgatory of St. Patrick_, p. 42.) Brompton (_Chronicon_) tells of an English landlord who had refused to pay t.i.thes. St. Augustine, having vainly reasoned with him, at last convinced him by a miracle. Before celebrating ma.s.s he ordered all excommunicated persons to leave the church, whereupon a corpse got out of a grave and walked away. The corpse, on being questioned, said it was the body of an ancient Briton who refused to pay t.i.thes, and had in consequence been excommunicated and d.a.m.ned.
472 Greg. _Dial._ iv. 40.
473 As Sismondi says: "Pendant quatre-vingts ans, tout au moins, il n"y eut pas un Franc qui songeat a transmettre a la posterite la memoire des evenements contemporains, et pendant le meme es.p.a.ce de temps il n"y eut pas un personnage puissant qui ne bat.i.t des temples pour la posterite la plus reculee."-_Hist. des Francais_, tome ii. p. 46.
474 Gibbon says of the period during which the Merovingian dynasty reigned, that "it would be difficult to find anywhere more vice or less virtue." Hallam reproduces this observation, and adds: "The facts of these times are of little other importance than as they impress on the mind a thorough notion of the extreme wickedness of almost every person concerned in them, and consequently of the state to which society was reduced."-_Hist. of the Middle Ages_, ch. i.
Dean Milman is equally unfavourable and emphatic in his judgment.
"It is difficult to conceive a more dark and odious state of society than that of France under her Merovingian kings, the descendants of Clovis, as described by Gregory of Tours. In the conflict of barbarism with Roman Christianity, barbarism has introduced into Christianity all its ferocity with none of its generosity and magnanimity; its energy shows itself in atrocity of cruelty, and even of sensuality. Christianity has given to barbarism hardly more than its superst.i.tion and its hatred of heretics and unbelievers.
Throughout, a.s.sa.s.sinations, parricides, and fratricides intermingle with adulteries and rapes."-_History of Latin Christianity_, vol. i.
p. 365.
475 Greg. Tur. iv. 12. Gregory mentions (v. 41) another bishop who used to become so intoxicated as to be unable to stand; and St. Boniface, after describing the extreme sensuality of the clergy of his time, adds that there are some bishops "qui licet dicant se fornicarios vel adulteros non esse, sed sunt ebriosi et injuriosi," &c.-_Ep._ xlix.
476 Greg. Tur. iv. 12.
477 Ibid. viii. 29. She gave them knives with hollow grooves, filled with poison, in the blades.
478 Ibid. vii. 20.
479 Ibid. viii. 31-41.
480 Ibid. v. 19.
481 See his very curious correspondence with her.-_Ep._ vi. 5, 50, 59; ix. 11, 117; xi. 62-63.
482 Avitus, _Ep._ v. He adds: "Minuebat regni felicitas numerum regalium personarum."
483 See the emphatic testimony of St. Boniface in the eighth century.
"Modo autem maxima ex parte per civitates episcopales sedes traditae sunt laicis cupidis ad possidendum, vel adulteratis clericis, scortatoribus et publicanis saeculariter ad perfruendum."-_Epist._ xlix. "ad Zachariam." The whole epistle contains an appalling picture of the clerical vices of the times.
484 More than one Council made decrees about this. See the _Vie de St.
Leger_, by Dom Pitra, pp. 172-177.
485 Greg. Tur. iv. 43. St. Boniface, at a much later period (A.D. 742), talks of bishops "Qui pugnant in exercitu armati et effundunt propria manu sanguinem hominum."-_Ep._ xlix.
486 Greg. Tur. iv. 26.
487 Ibid. iv. 20.
488 Ibid. iii. 26.
489 Ibid. ix. 34.
490 Ibid. viii. 19. Gregory says this story should warn clergymen not to meddle with the wives of other people, but "content themselves with those that they may possess without crime." The abbot had previously tried to seduce the husband within the precincts of the monastery, that he might murder him.
491 Ibid. v. 3.
492 Ibid. viii. 39. She was guilty of many other crimes, which the historian says "it is better to pa.s.s in silence." The bishop himself had been guilty of outrageous and violent tyranny. The marriage of ecclesiastics appears at this time to have been common in Gaul, though the best men commonly deserted their wives when they were ordained. Another bishop"s wife (iv. 36) was notorious for her tyranny.