Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 30:118 (Apr 1873)
Article: St. Patrick’s Purgatory, And The Inferno Of Dante
Author: Frederic Vinton

BSac 30:118 (April 1873) p. 275

St. Patrick’s Purgatory, And The Inferno Of Dante

Frederic Vinton

The theology of the Middle Ages was full of gloom. It had no cheerful views of the future. Ever since prayer to saints took the place of prayer to Christ, and wherever forgiveness for his sake is not taught and believed, “a fearful looking for of judgment,” shrouds the grave in black. The sermons of the monks strove to fright men from sin by depicting purgatory and hell; and when the preachers turned poets, “Dies irae” was their noblest strain; when they descended to story-telling, their imagination only reproduced the parable of Lazarus. Two thirds of Dante’s dread epic hover above “a sunless sea “; and the more cheerful portion is the insipid part. Long before him, inferior geniuses attempted the like voyage “twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires.” Those who grope farthest in mediaeval night, bring back many fragments resembling the underground world which he described.

In the year 1839, Vassal, of Paris, reprinted in forty-two copies, fac simile, a curious relic of those days, called “Le voyage du sainct patrix auquel lieu on voit les peines de purgatoire et aussi les ioyes de paradis.” No authorship was given, nor does the editor appear to have conjectured the origin of what he was restoring to the world of letters. The text copied was printed, “lyon sur le rosne, mil cinq cens et six.” The type is Gothic, the orthography quaint, some words obsolete, and the engravings excessively rude. The languid, repetitious manner shows that the narrative is far older than the date of its printing. The rarity of the book appears, from its not being noticed in Mr. Abbot’s opulent “Literature of the Doctrine of a Future Life,” containing, as

BSac 30:118 (April 1873) p. 276

that does, in its chapter on purgatory, nearly two hundred and fifty titles. Haym cites in the fourth volume of his Biblioteca italiana, “Viaggio del pozzo di s. Patrizio, nel qua! luogo si vede le pene del purgatorio, ed altresi le gioje del paradiso,” printed at Milan, “Napoli, ed altrove,” about 1530, 8vo. No doubt this is the same legend, in Italian; and in Latin, the “Purgatorium divi Patricii, Memmingen, 1496,” is perhaps the same. The phraseology of the little book reprinted by Vassal, may indicate a Latin original; and in the collection of ancient legends, edited by Messingham, and printed in 1624, is this title: “Super purgatorio s. Patricii, de quodam milite nomine Oweyn, qui deductus fuerat per poenas infernales.” The author to whom he ascribes it is Henricus Salteriensis. Jöcher’s Allgemeines gelehrten lexikon, vol. 2, informs us that Henry of Saltrey was an English monk, who lived in the middle of the twelfth century. From other sources we learn th...