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Purgatory - its beginnings
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Message 1.Ìý
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Monday, 7th February 2011
This may seem more suited to the Religions board but I don't go there and anyway this is a historical question.In the book I am reading (Robert Lacey's What life was like at the turn of the millennium) He mentions the saints not needing to go to Purgatory. With a Presbyterian upbringing this wasn't part of my cultural background.
When (and why perhaps) did the idea of Purgatory arrive? Heaven and Hell seem understandable but Purgatory must have had some beginning.
Cheers, Caro. -
Message 2
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Monday, 7th February 2011
Strictly speaking the doctrine of Purgatory as a "place" in the Catholic religion was established only as late as the 13th century. However this was effectively putting the official seal on a set of beliefs which christianity had embodied since its inception, and especially since its Judaic roots.
The theological anomalies which followed the earlier introduction of "hell" had already caused much debate and friction within the church - the most obvious one being the disparity between belief in an offset decision regarding the soul's "future" after death (per "last judgement") and that of a growing conviction that instant judgement awaited serious transgressors through their soul's dispatch to hell immediately after death. This latter belief was not actually something which early christianity seems even to have countenanced as an option, and may have slowly insinuated itself into the faith as it acquired and absorbed recruits with little or no contact with either the Judaic or the Greek concepts on which christianity was originally founded.
The upshot was that the church had, for many centuries prior to the 1274 Council of Lyon, already found itself encouraging belief in a transitionary status where the majority of souls ended up after death and in which therefore the (originally Judaic, but also fundamentally Catholic) belief of intercessionary prayer on the deceased's behalf made sense theologically. That this should be visualised as a "location" therefore was understandable and it was how this "locality" should be officially described that taxed the minds of this ecunemical council, as it did the later one in Florence in the 15th century. However it is important to remember that these councils had been convened primarily to attempt a measure of unity between the Catholic and Orthodox churches and had as overriding concerns the establishment of a universally accepted political as well as religious hierarchy. The first council had an even more overriding agenda of funding and justifying military conquest of the "Holy Land". In this context there was very little new by way of theological interpolation of doctrine, excepting those bits which in some way might ameliorate one side or the other of the Western and Eastern church schism. Those who bankrolled these councils were the political leaders of the day and were interested primarily in removing a huge complication to realising their ambitions where superficial theological differences were stymieing concerted political actions which stood to Purgatory, therefore, acquired an official explanation but little else.
It was the Council of Trent therefore to which we owe Purgatory as presently believed by Catholics, as well as the "rules" governing tenancy of souls, modes of intercession etc. Trent had been convened as a reaction to Protestantism and the brief this time was not to effect compromise, or even necessarily to explain anything to anyone, be they insiders or outsiders, but to establish concrete criteria by which belief could be measured in terms of adherence. It was the decisions made at Trent which formed the backbone of the "laws" by which heretics were judged and condemned later and it is no surprise therefore that all tenets which hitherto retained some ambiguity in both their evolution and their current status received priority concern. Purgatory fitted that bill exactly and received the full legal treatment (or at least according to what the Catholic church regarded as "law").
If one takes "purgatorium" however in its loosest sense - simply as an expression of a non-temporal transitionary state in which cleansing of a sullied soul is abetted through temporal intercession (whether accompanied by an ultimate reward or not) - then its origin predates christianity, as already said, and can be demonstrated to have precedence from before judaism, as well as from completely disparate belief systems too. -
Message 3
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Monday, 7th February 2011
Apologies - a line missing above:
Those who bankrolled these councils were the political leaders of the day and were interested primarily in removing a huge complication to realising their ambitions where superficial theological differences were stymieing concerted political actions which stood to Purgatory, therefore, acquired an official explanation but little else.
Ìý
should have read ...
Those who bankrolled these councils were the political leaders of the day and were interested primarily in removing a huge complication to realising their ambitions where superficial theological differences were stymieing concerted political actions which stood to realise vast amounts of wealth and real estate, not least for the two churches themselves. Purgatory, therefore, acquired an official explanation but little else. -
Message 4
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Monday, 7th February 2011
Thank you for that, Nordmann. When I wrote that heaven and hell were understandable it did cross my mind to wonder if that was just because they were part of my religious upbringing and not a 'natural' idea at all. I see you talk of the earlier introduction of hell into the church's ideas, so that must have had a beginning too. Other cultures seem often to have a similar idea of the paradisical afterlife, but not so often any idea of a place of dreadful punishment. I think.
Purgatory doesn't seem to me to fit with the concept of an all- knowing, all-powerful god; it seems to me such a god would not need help in making these decisions. But I have a Catholic friend, bright and intelligent, who thinks that her intercession will bring her non-believing husband into heaven. I have two difficulties with this: one that she should believe this, and two that anyone would think heaven would be improved by the addition of her husband.
I am a bit confused by my book though. When i looked up the etymology of 'purgatory' it said the first use in English was in the 13th century, so I wonder why they were talking of purgatory with regard to saints in the 11th C. But perhaps it was used in Latin plenty. It seems to be a very well-researched book. (I was specially interested to see them quoting Dr Christopher De Hamel's book on medieval scribes and illuminators. I went to university at the same time as Chris de Hamel - he was a serious ambitious boy then and obviously it paid off.)
We did some of this church history (Synod of Whitby, etc.) ar university but I don't recall purgatory being talked about. But then I don't remember much in detail at all.
Thanks, Caro. -
Message 5
Posted by bandick (U14360315) on Monday, 7th February 2011
As a very small child the very utterance of the word ‘purgatory’ used to strike fear into my over imaginative mind.
Ours was not a religious house, and we ‘sprogs’ of the house were not christened, other branches of our family, the religious ones thought that was wicked, evil and sinful… but my father just said if and when you feel the need… then go and do it yourself. With the ever present threats of ‘you’ll go to purgatory for that’ or if you don’t do this that or the other… you’ll end up in purgatory… was a phrase I was often threatened with… but I had no idea what or where it was. And if truth be to tell… at age 4-5-6-7-… it sounded too terrifying to know.
It was either purgatory or the bogeyman that would get you… or being sold to the gypsies.
I must have been a right little so n’ so, or had been threatened a few more times than usual… but one day I plucked up courage enough to ask my father, as casually as is possible for a child so tender in years, where purgatory is then. The room fell silent as I was just able to make out the sharp intakes of breath from all the occupants as they turned to stare at me… and then back to father awaiting his wise words. I got the impression they didn’t know either, but just enjoyed threatening me with all manner of hells bells and big buckets of s***.
And his words I shall never forget… Purgatory is a huge circular tank that gets topped up every time you pull the chain on the toilet… it’s a place where you go when you die… and if you haven’t been a good boy, you have to stand up to your neck in the stuff… with thousands of other people, but in the middle is a huge blade that’s razor sharp, and it skims the surface going round and round… if you want to live… you have to duck under it, or it will take your head off… so remember to keep your mouth shut. The only way out is if someone speaks up for you. And that’s what purgatory is, pure and simple. -
Message 6
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Monday, 7th February 2011
Bandick! What a relief, I was beginning to think you'd decided that M beat the boards hands down when it came to diverting entertainment. It's so good to have you back, there's a large one on the bar waiting for you.
How appropriate that after your recent experience that you should contribute on the topic of purgatory. -
Message 7
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Monday, 7th February 2011
Yes, very good to see you here again, bandick. Your absence was getting to be a worry.
Purgatory wasn't part of my life at all and I was very shocked when I went to the funeral of my teacher's husband as a young teenager (why was I taken to that, I wonder?) and we all had to pray hard to ensure he didn't get stuck in purgatory. As far as I was aware he had led a blameless life and I was offended on his behalf at this need. And possibly fearful on my own behalf that I might not be considered good enough for automatic entrance into heaven. (I had noticed that people on earth often seemed to misinterpret my actions and motives, and who knows? god might have been similarly blind.)
Cheers, Caro. -
Message 8
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Tuesday, 8th February 2011
The notion of Purgatory as a threat is not in accordance with church doctrine on the matter since it serves as a sort of "default" state for the majority of "souls" and only exceptionally evil or exceptionally good people (according to the criteria used to judge such matters) can be guaranteed to avoid ending up there. Nor is there any doctrinal support for the notion of torment or punishment associated with the premise.
The association of such negative characteristics with the concept appears to have entered lay belief with the church's extension to include as members societies which hitherto had subscribed to what are now classed as "nordic" religions. In these belief systems such an ambivalent destination in the afterlife was considered the worst of the alternatives suggested by the faith. -
Message 9
Posted by Simon de Montfort (U14278627) on Tuesday, 8th February 2011
Nordmann
Isn't this where the Chantry Priests came and made a nice living being paid to say prayers for the souls of the recently departed.
The more the sponsor paid, the more prayers were said on their behalf and possibly the more chance of the dead going to heaven instead of hell.
Pity Chantry Priests were abolished by Henry Vlll ! -
Message 10
Posted by Mike Alexander (U1706714) on Wednesday, 9th February 2011
Caro, you are right to question how 'natural' the ideas of heaven and hell are. This is purely a matter of upbringing. There is precious little mention of hell in the New Testament, and the early Christians didn't believe in souls going up to heaven; most of them seem to have believed that come judgement day they would be physically resurrected, ie their actual bodies would come back to life. It's also disputed whether the afterlife occurs in 'paradise on earth' (as, for example, Jehova's Witnesses maintain) or in heaven, which some regard as strictly the preserve of God and the angels.
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Message 11
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Wednesday, 9th February 2011
Hi Simon deMontfort
Yes - the whole issue of selling indulgences which erupted into only arose due to the church brazenly profiteering from peoples' ignorance of the church's own doctrine and especially a popular notion of what Purgatory entailed, which doubly damned the organisation in the eyes of reformists (and in my eyes too based solely on the question of hypocrisy).
As Mike Alexander points out, belief in Hell, Heaven and Purgatory as locations, as well as the attributes each was popularly held to contain, grew in a manner largely outside of the church's control. The early Hell concept, as exemplified by the use of the term "Gehenna", reveals a rather simplistic and very localised notion equating the ultimate destination of souls judged unworthy with Jerusalem's local rubbish tip. The concept contained an element of threat therefore, but a threat only fully understandable to a very few who were familiar with the analogy.
The early schism between the christian religion and the society and personnel which had produced it probably lay behind why this concept, as well as several others, underwent such a radical overhaul in the minds of subscribers, and why also the early church seems to have struggled consistently with a tendency amongst its members to radically re-invent theology without apparent consideration for common core beliefs centrally controlled. But if one examines early church history one can see that this proved both a curse and a blessing in that it enabled the early organisation to develop a culture which included this tendency as a known variable and which developed sophisticated and effective methods by which this tendency could be contained and even utilised. As time went on this ability to choose to counteract or adopt such innovation depending on which was to the organisation's advantage became a hallmark of its operating style, and such pragmatism was a crucial part of what helped catapult it into a position of great political power. As a church it therefore grew to embody many shades of belief and even more modes of expression of that faith amongst its very diverse members, and while this diversity sometimes led to what had to be branded as heresy, the inconvenience of stultifying these hereies was a small price to pay for the potential to expand which the overall strategy gave them.
Which is where Purgatory came in. Originally a "backdoor" philosophical concept crudely tacked on to a limited set of doctrinal decrees concerning the afterlife and with only a passing resemblance to the judaic concept which preceded it, it soon became by virtue of its understandability and wide appeal a concept deemed central to the faith, even to the degree that by the Council of Trent it could be included amongst those concepts by which "true believers" would be thereafter judged on the basis of their adherence to it. Even better, it proved to be a fantastic source of revenue for many centuries and in less direct or open a manner is still a source of revenue today. -
Message 12
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Wednesday, 9th February 2011
By that last sentence do you mean things like people going to Lourdes for whatever they do there, or the continuing canonisation of saints and their intercessions, or something else?
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Message 13
Posted by Simon de Montfort (U14278627) on Wednesday, 9th February 2011
"Even better, it proved to be a fantastic source of revenue for many centuries and in less direct or open a manner is still a source of revenue today."
Yes Caro, it seems that places like Lourdes & for that matter the whole pilgrim trail to Santiago de Campostella are huge sources of revenue today, as Nordmann says.
Nordmann also agrees that the Roman Catholic Church officially sanctioned Purgatory only from the 13th century. Presumably aided by the fact that pilgrimages were also becoming such huge money spinners.
It was Henry Vlll's jealousy of the wealth of the Roman Catholic Church in England (and of course his matrimonial problems) that put paid to these sources of revenue pouring into the Church's coffers in England. Nevertheless it is still very prevalent in Catholic Europe. -
Message 14
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Wednesday, 9th February 2011
The practise of encouraging belief in the notion that masses for specific individuals will lessen their time in Purgatory is still quite standard amongst Catholics. These masses incur "expenses" on the part of the clergy which the relatives help "cover" and there are even some clergy who "specialise" in such a service and whose masses are regarded as being more efficacious by members of the laity on that basis.
Purgatory reinforces the belief that responsibility for one's relatives' welfare extends beyond their lifetime. Where such concerns are artificially created, just as with the sale of hygiene and cosmetic products, there is inevitably a financial gain to be made by less scrupulous or similarly deluded individuals. The Catholic church is ideally placed to dispel such a radical departure from the core christian principles which, when one examines them, are still the basis of its doctrine. It chooses instead however to be complicit in the deceit.
Belief in intercession by saints is also still quite prevalent amongst Catholics, but of a lesser magnitude in terms of institutional hypocrisy on their church's part since saints, as far as I know, tend not to be so eager to collect payment for their input. -
Message 15
Posted by bandick (U14360315) on Wednesday, 9th February 2011
Is there a place anywhere in the bible that mentions purgatory… or is it another of those mystical realms… the figment of the translators imagination. It does seem odd thou that there are a number of religions that claim there is such a place...
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Message 16
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Thursday, 10th February 2011
No, it is not mentioned in the bible. Catholics claim that Paul was alluding to Purgatory when he mentioned that human ambition and its fruits would be consumed by flame if not rooted in a belief in his favourite god, but that is a far cry from the Roman notion (which predated christianity) of a cleansing of the soul after death. To the average Roman Purgatory was in fact heaven, or at least the nearest thing to a paradise after death that the average person could hope for. Purgatory was the great bath house in the sky, and it is this perception which christianity was forced to adopt very early on as the movement acquired Roman membership. Simply stated, it was an interpretation of heaven, not an alternative to heaven, which the church tolerated since it was a conviction shared by so many of its members.
Purgatory retained this positive connotation until the church began recruiting northern Europeans who brought with them a whole other conviction, namely that the afterlife promised rewards based primarily on attributes deemed worthy of a warrior. Those without courage were doomed to an ambivalent eternity and the christian Purgatory was adopted by these people to describe this state. The church, pragmatic as ever when it came to recruitment and retention of members, and who in any case could theologically differentiate between Purgatory and Heaven, simply allowed this redefinition to become the "official" one. It is around this time also that church theologians began scouring scripture to find justification for this notion and Paul's letter to the Corinthians was employed for that purpose. It is also around this time that Catholicism developed the notion of "purification" in Purgatory as an intermediate stage for souls en route to heaven. -
Message 17
Posted by bandick (U14360315) on Thursday, 10th February 2011
Cheers nordmann… so after all’s said and done, it is an interpretation of an early translation and therefore very much open to doubt. It is as we know very easy for ‘things’ to be lost in translation, and myths legends and tales of fantasy become very much confused into the reality of whoever’s going to gain the most out of it whether it be in monetary, or in kind, or as I think the church enjoyed ‘milking’ it in its most effective form in controlling the populace. The church conducted its business in Latin… a language understood by none other than themselves… condemned the plebs to all manner of torture in the name of religion and an all loving god, taxed the already overtaxed and used the power they had gained from interpreting the bible to suit every need and scam imaginable. Anyone objected and they were excommunicated, made social outcast from the homesteads, villages and family and condemned to eternal damnations… to the ignorant masses what better way to control them. They must have been laughing all the way to the bank.
Where in the bible does it say that catholic priests should be celibate… it doesn’t… that too is a whim of the upper echelons of the church. While those that made the rules were ‘bagging off’ with any young maiden they could get their evil hands on.
Religion gives a lot of people comfort, there’s no doubt about that and I like to respect their views, but it has to be acknowledged that religion has caused more bloodshed throughout history than any other cause, and it is continuing to do so now and will do well into the future.
Half the problem is, they have dug themselves into such a huge web of deceit over millennium, and they don’t know which way to turn to save face.
At the moment I’m sat in purgatory, but I should be out by the weekend, so long as I do as I’m told and keep taking the pills.
Regards bandick. -
Message 18
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Thursday, 10th February 2011
No, it's nothing to do with translation.
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Message 19
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Friday, 11th February 2011
Dante's Purgatory isn't too bad at all. It's a place of hope and means of "ascent towards Heaven". You get to wash your face in a nice cleansing dew and protecting angels keep all those nasty devils from Hell at bay. True there is suffering, but it is a suffering that leads to healing and which teaches sinners to unbind the chains that they have made for themselves ("solvendo il nodo"). Quite different from the dreadful lurid descriptions in some of the popular devotional works which were published in the the late 1400s and early 1500s. Sensational tales of sex and violence in Purgatory actually sold like hot cakes (George R. Keiser "The Progress of Purgatory: Visions of the Afterlife in Late Medieval English Literature") and well-to-do members of the laity seem to have especially enjoyed reading the visions of St. Bridget of Sweden whose wilder revelations remind me of scenes from a bad Ken Russell film.
And to be fair to the Catholic Church (hard, I know, but someone must try), many medieval and early Tudor preachers and moralists were very wary of the cult of intercession for the dead. Too much like a soft option. Bishop Fisher, for example, taught that the "rigours of mortified living" in *this* world were far more beneficial than just doing what you liked and then relying on a deathbed confession and money up front to ensure a speedy progress through Purgatory. Thomas More, in his "Supplication of Souls", offers similar advice. A God-fearing life now, plus regular almsgiving and other good works is really what is required. Such action would make Purgatory superfluous.
And good old Henry VIII - he never did learn that he couldn't have his cake and eat it. He abolished Purgatory, but just to be on the safe side his Will left 1,000 marks to be paid in alms for the poor with injunctions for them to "pray for his soul". In addition, the chantry chapel was to be endowed with lands worth £600 annually to pay for two priests to say Masses at the altar attached to his tomb. -
Message 20
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Friday, 11th February 2011
This has been most interesting, because I always thought that Purgatory was a sort of 'holding pen' where souls spent appropriate time to expiate their sins, aided by the intercession of the saints and the prayers of those on earth.
Most of the most cruel and downright wicked beliefs and practices seem to have come in just before and during the early middle ages, e.g. the demonisation of women.
The older I get, the more I subscribe to Philip Pullman's view that organised religion is A Bad Thing, largely through the efforts of those organising it! (In one of the books in the 'Dark Materials' trilogy, a character smiles sweetly at someone being tortured, and says, "After all, we've had more than a thousand years of practice") -
Message 21
Posted by arty macclench (U14332487) on Friday, 11th February 2011
So, what was it that the Church promised those who took the Cross and went to war on the 'enemies of God'- whether or not they died in the process? Did that change between 1097 and 1396 (say) as the ideas being discussed here evolved?
What, in this context, was Robert Bruce of Scotland hoping to gain for himself by having his embalmed heart taken on military pilgrimage after his death? That he felt sins of blood weighing on his soul is clear. Would it have been an immediate transport to Hell that he was hoping to avert? How was the health of the soul calculated? -
Message 22
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Saturday, 12th February 2011
The older I get, the more I suscribe to Philip Pullman's view that organised religion is A Bad Thing, largely through the efforts of those organising it! Ìý
And I rather think that that good Catholic, Erasmus, would agree with you, raundsgirl. His Folly comments:
"What shall I say of such as advertise and practise the fraud of pardons and indulgences? Those that will compute the time of each soul's residence in Purgatory, and assign them a longer or shorter stay there, according as they purchase more or fewer of these paltry pardons and saleable exemptions ... these are so foolish that I am half ashamed of them myself and yet they are approved; and that not only by the common people, but even by the professors of religion..." -
Message 23
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Saturday, 12th February 2011
Those people were comparatively normal, Temperance, they were only dishonest (bit like some of our MPs, really). The ones that bother me were those who were downright weird, but so influential that their ideas, which no sane person should have entertained for a moment, were made part of the doctrine. What is it about Christianity (and also Islam) that attracts men who were (and are) so afraid of women that they feel compelled to oppress and marginalise them? Original sin? Balderdash!!
The aforementioned HDM trilogy has another character called Father Gomez, a fanatic who has performed "pre-emptive penance" for years. He is sent out as an assassin because the penance he has already performed means he is in a state of grace and can kill without imperilling his immortal soul! I would say 'what rubbish', were it not for the fact that Church history is full of daft ideas like that and they were taken seriously. -
Message 24
Posted by Minette Minor (U14272111) on Saturday, 12th February 2011
It's 2011. 100 years ago in 1911, the people who generally wrote about such things as life, knew little about death, destruction, suffering and how to make sense out of life that was not in any way kind or deserved or rational. God moved in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform. Within three years, the people who were most removed from all of this, enjoying a cushioned existance, would witness the horrors of life and death and suffering in a fundamental form.
Ordinary people who had been miners, factory workers, farmers ... knew that life was tenuous and often short were suddenly thrown into close relationships with their "betters" due to the Great War. Their "betters" who had hitherto written poetry and prose about "Love" or "Beauty" were suddenly made to witness bloodshed and suffering on a scale never seen before.
"Shock" became a widely used word with reason. Few families were not affected by the Great War. Class divisions which had been in place for nearly a thousand years were closed in the trenches. At home even the class divisions between women began to dissolve with grief or the expectation of grief.
God was in his Heaven and all was right with the world. Not any longer. The misery and bereavment hit all. The War Poets, the latter day "Romantics" wrote for the first time about the Human Condition for all. The wealthy Siegfred Sasson encouraged the "lowly" Wilfred Owen to write when both were on leave for shell shock. God and his order came under attack and question. Where was God? Not in the setting of a sun anymore but in a field station where the dieing died with no dignity. At last people began to question the accepted order of things.
Of course almost 70 years before Marx had published "Das Kapital", a wacky German who knew nothing of life. But he did. The people who scorned him had until 1914 known little of life red in tooth and claw and cared little. It has to happen to YOU before you can understand it all. With the Great War people did. People from all classes of life could know suffering, due to the dictats of stupid rulers. But here's the crux. Why do people suffer in such a way? Is it due to market forces? Wicked men who force people to kill for their profit? Leaders who fear for their own deaths and so force men to kill to preserve their lives? Or because "Man" forces "Man" to fight for supremacy in a primeval way? Or, eventually all of the above, by a God who doesn't care?
For the first time since the Reformation God, or his Church? Had to account for itself. We can only ever speak of God due to our personal lives. So said Luther, Erasmus and all the Reformtion preponants. But by 1914 it was acceptable to speak about ther being no benevolent God. Read Wilfred Owen's "Ode for Doomed Youth". Athesists had their day in the Sun. There is no God. Personally I feel encouraged that they have gained momentum. It makes people think. I am encouraged that they have gained celebrity status, like Philipp Pullman. It's a good thing and I can understand why so many belive that without religious beliefs there would be less suffering in the world.
But this is a man made consrtuct, like finding someone to blame for a fight. "He" started it! No "He" didn't, YOU did! God gave us Free Will. Yet we can never accept the blame for our own actions. We should always have debate and discussion. I was told that by my clergyman father and was then hit on the head at a young age when he died as did two of my siblings and my mother. More followed but I still believe in God, Christ, and a benevolent one at that. Historically Mother Church is dodgey. 12 Disciples and only 4 Gospels in the Bible? We all know that St paul adopted female Bishops!
If we believe in God, then surley Purgatory must be when we die and are presented with all the Sins we have performed? We all know what we have done. A conscience escapes few of us, memories even less. Imagine being Hitler. He did not simply die, his soul lived on. When he shuffled off this mortal coil he was met by all the sins he had comitted, one by one. He must meet the individuals he affected, one by one and account to them all. This is why Purgatory is a long or short stay facility! Hitler will be in Purgatory for some time to come! Is this a waiting room for Heaven OR Hell itself?
I simply find it hard to believe that death is the end. I've experienced too much myself to think so when I least expected it. I would never castigate anyone who did not believe as I do. That is a really big sin! We have been given free will and we must use it. I just thought I'd add to the discussion. Purgatory is the realisation, after death, of how your actions have affected the individuals you have encountered in life. Sorry Caro if I've butted in.
Cheers Minette. -
Message 25
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Sunday, 13th February 2011
Your notion of Purgatory as a place in which sinners are forced to "meet up with" the victims of their crimes is not one supported in the historical tradition of any religion, Minette.
In fact Purgatory has presented a theological problem ever since the notion of a "day of judgement" was introduced as a temporal event in the consciousness of individuals who already had diverse notions of what happened after death. The most basic dilemma has been one of logistics (those who die nearer to this judgement day receive by definition a shorter "stay" regardless of their comparative badness or goodness to those who preceded them). It also presents a huge complication for those prosecuting the notion of a christian heaven as a reward, or indeed hell as a punishment, in that it appears to dilute the instruction that one use one's actual life on this planet in order to secure the desired judgement.
The solution to this dilemma from the organised religion point of view has been to obfuscate the issue. The Catholic church, for example, just does not refer at all in its doctrine to the anomaly presented by the diminishing time period between the present and the forthcoming "final day" in which it also exorts its followers to believe. Judaism jettisons time itself and allows the notion of purification as a potential event, the mystery of which can be contemplated by its followers but for which no doctrine will ever be formulated to prosecute it as a tenet of faith. Early christian churches seemed also, like Judaism, to be heavily influenced by the Stoic notion of apocatastasis, in which the idea that some level of restoration might be denied the individual would be considered a serious theological contradiction of any other claim by a faith that its deity was benevolent and fair.
The point, in a purely historical sense, is that Purgatory therefore as never had what one might regard as a universal definition, nor indeed an evolution of philosophical refinement. It has fluctuated over the millennia in terms of popularity, importance and definition, the process depending initially on the accommodation of new converts often bringing with them preconceptions which the notion apparently addressed, and then as various other developments transpired which affected the christian attempt at establishing, maintaining and retaining a theological hegemony.
I prefer to regard such anomalous appendices as evidence of a philosophy socially applied before the philosophy itself has been fully thought out, something which occurs in almost every historical instance of a particular philosophy being employed as a tool of social control, and therefore one with which christian history is amply littered. From an historical point of view they therefore serve as markers for the evolution of that control and the actual historical events which influenced and steered its evolution. Purgatory is just one of several such instances, and the ambiguity of its definition which allows a person to construct a fantasy of Hitler being detained while he "meets" each casualty of his policies merely underlines its value as such an historical marker. That the geography and methodology of its construction can be claimed and invented by the individual, even today, is a powerful indication of just how its previous manifestations also gestated and acquired degrees of popularity, and this in turn serves as a larger indication to how theological belief itself has developed historically. -
Message 26
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Sunday, 13th February 2011
" the ambiguity of its definition which allows a person to construct a fantasy of Hitler being detained while he "meets" each casualty of his policies merely underlines its value as such an historical marker. "
With the millions Hitler has to get through before Judgement Day, it must be rather like the M4 after a truck has spilled it's load during rush hour in there, traffic backed up for miles. Wonder if he is through them all yet? -
Message 27
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Sunday, 13th February 2011
Hi Minette,
Where was God? Ìý
Yet Siegfried Sassoon was received into the Roman Catholic church in 1957. Around Easter of that year he wrote "Deliverance":
"No comfort came until I looked for light
Beyond the darkened thickets of my brain.
With nothingness I strove. And inward sight
No omen but oblivion could obtain.
He spoke. He held my spirit in His hand.
Through prayer my password from the gloom was given.
This Eastertide, absolved, in strength I stand,
Feet firm upon the ground. My heart in heaven."
Forty years before, Sassoon had stood in a trench in France, "staring across at the enemy I'd never seen. Somewhere out of sight beyong the splintered tree-tops of Hidden Wood a bird had begun to sing. Without knowing why I remembered it was Easter Sunday. Standing in that dismal ditch, I could find no consolation that Christ was risen."
Sassoon later wrote of his "puzzlement" - why had he taken so long to understand that conversion was not about intellectual argument but "just unconditional surrender"?
But back to Purgatory. Are we really meant to take it all literally? Surely not. Dante's great poem of course was an allegory about *this* world, not the afterlife, and I think it echoed Clement's (and Origen's?) ideas that our earthly existence is simply a journey (usually an extremely difficult one) towards a knowledge of ourselves and of God. Those "fiery purgings" that Clement spoke of were surely not real fires in a real place, but rather (borrowing a concept from Stoicism) the "fires of wisdom". Mind you, say anything like this to those of a fundamentalist bent and all hell is let loose: metaphor and allegory are seen as marks of the beast. Best not to go there.
SST.
PS Raundsgirl - I think you would like the bit in Kit Marlowe's Doctor Faustus where that very unorthodox Doctor of Divinity tells Mephistopheles:
"The holy shape becomes a devil best."
The stage directions always make me laugh. Exit Devil. Eight lines later - Re-enter Mephistopheles dressed as a Franciscan Friar
" -
Message 28
Posted by arty macclench (U14332487) on Sunday, 13th February 2011
"Why this is Hell nor are we out of it."
Mephistopheles ('Doctor Faustus') -
Message 29
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Monday, 14th February 2011
When (and why perhaps) did the idea of Purgatory arrive? Ìý
I've found this is my Freke and Gandy "Jesus Mysteries" book, Caro. I have no idea whether what they say is correct (my cleverer friends look pityingly at me when I mention their work), but I think W. K.C. Guthrie, whom they quote, is an undisputed expert:
"The Mysteries of Orpheus were renowned in the ancient world for their vivid descriptions of the torments awaiting evil-doers in the afterlife. As one modern authority* tells us, 'Orphics created the Christian idea of purgatory.' Indeed the scholar Franz Cumont has shown that the vivid descriptions of the happiness of the blessed and sufferings of sinners found in Orphic books were taken over by the Jewish Books of Esdras, which were written in the first century CE and included amongst the apocryphal scriptures in some versions of the New Testament; these Pagan conceptions of the afterlife were then developed by St. Ambrose and so became the standard imagery of Catholicism."
C. S. Lewis believed in Purgatory. His image of the dentist chair is very odd:
* From Guthrie's book "Orpheus and Greek Religion." -
Message 30
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Monday, 14th February 2011
Freke and Gandy are being a little sly here if this is how they present the apparent "quotation" from Guthrie.
The actual citation from "Orpheus and Greek Religion" reads "It looks also as if one of the most strikeing features of Christian eschatology, the idea of Purgatory, had its origin in the Orphic notion."
The notion being referred to is the peculiarly Orphic idea that Elysium is not the be-all and end-all when it comes to paradise, but merely that aspect of paradise which is most readily grasped by the average human. It represents therefore only an introduction to bigger wonders and greater bliss beyond and is therefore a staging post en route to greater things. It was this notion that also appealed to pre-christian Romans who refined the concept from one of undefined paradise to a functional place in which the earthly soul will be purged of impurity before entering true paradise (a bit like the Japanese custom of taking a shower before having a bath). Some even believe that the Romans confused the practises associated with initiation into the Eleusian Mysteries with progress to Elysium itself, although the two things were wholly unrelated, and that this was how the purification aspect to their version took root. If anything it was this hybrid notion, and one which might have been based on a complete misunderstanding of the adoptive beliefs they had imported from Greece, that finds closest parallel to the christian version - and hardly surprisingly since the christian version most probably owes its existence or at least its original form to its Roman intake of members.
For Freke and Gandy to claim therefore that Orphics "invented" the "Christian idea of" purgatory is therefore stretching the case beyond reason. To then falsely put this claim in the mouth of such an eminent scholar of philosophy (and one who well understood the processes of mythification into which they claim insight) is simply outright dishonest of them.
I have often wondered if perhaps Messrs F&G are not really messers F&G.
PS: Lewis believed in a lot of strange things. -
Message 31
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Monday, 14th February 2011
Thank you, Nordmann. I don't think I have been unfair to F& G : I have quoted exactly from their Chapter Four of "The Jesus Mysteries". The sentence "As one modern authority tells us, 'Orphics created the Christian idea of purgatory' " is followed by a reference to Note 69 which states:
"Guthrie W. K. C. (1952), 269, traces most Christian doctrines on the afterlife to the Orphics with one exception: the Orphics would have found the doctrine of the resurrection of the body 'repulsive' ".
Their bibliography mentions two works by Guthrie:
Orpheus and Greek Religion (Princetown University Press) 1952
History of Greek Philosophy (Cambridge University Press) 1962.
Oh well. My closest friend (who can read Greek and who has a First in Philosophy) has often warned me that Freke and Gandy's "research" is not to be trusted. She will now be smugger than ever. I shall remove the publication from my bookshelf at once and hide it upstairs along with my secret stash of Jean Plaidy novels. -
Message 32
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Monday, 14th February 2011
Hi Temperenace
Their reference to Guthrie in their Note 69 is equally disingenuous - while Guthrie does indeed contemplate incidences of residual Orphism in more modern mythical and religious beliefs (not just christianity), he by no means determines that christian doctrine concerning the afterlife can be traced backwards solely to that particular ism. His purpose is to demonstrate that Orpheus and the beliefs which sprang up around him are not to be dismissed as a "cult", a "minority faith" or something which died out without effect. While he may be rather liberal in selecting his examples of their continuity he does so honestly, often qualifying his observations with the proviso that parallel beliefs can also exist without interdependence and that a lack of philological data means that many of his examples must be judged also on that basis. He hopes however by identifying so many that a probability then is established that at least some of them are indeed founded in Orphism.
His other flaw, in my view, is that he plays down or ignores the equal possibility of Orphic belief having a pedigree predating Orphism. But that is a mere quibble on my part since the identification of evidences for or against this supposition is almost impossible given the antiquity of events.
Please don't blend Freke, Gandy and Plaidy in the same cardboard box under the bed. I'm sure Ms Plaidy / Burford / Hibbert / Ford / Kellow / Tate / Percival / Holt never pretended she wrote anything other than historical fiction! She deserves better than sharing a stash with charlatans. Don't you have a shredder? -
Message 33
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Monday, 14th February 2011
I have inadvertently renamed you - apologies.
Temperenace sounds like some by-product of pigment manufacture. -
Message 34
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Monday, 14th February 2011
A form of penance for angry people maybe? Or perhaps for non-drinkers!
-
Message 35
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Tuesday, 15th February 2011
This has beena mot fascinating discussion, thank you all. (It may continue to be so, of course, but I won't be around much for the next two weeks.) Best of all, it hasn't descended into an anti and pro Christianity thread which I hoped, perhaps somewhat optimistically, to avoid.
Thanks, Caro. -
Message 36
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Tuesday, 15th February 2011
A form of penance for angry people maybe? Or perhaps for non-drinkers. Ìý
I have no problem being cross, sober or colourful, but I shall object to being battered and deep-fried (here, or in the life to come). -
Message 37
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Tuesday, 15th February 2011
It does seem odd thou that there are a number of religions that claim there is such a place... Ìý
I think bandick's point is very interesting. The Buddhists believe that some unfortunate souls will be reborn in Purgatory and there are several words for this place or state - one is "the difficult road" which has Dante-esque overtones.
Did the Prophet Muhammad say anything about Purgatory?
And I wonder if other religions have any history of buying your way out of Purgatory - or concerned relatives praying and/or paying for your early release?
SST . -
Message 38
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Tuesday, 15th February 2011
"And I wonder if other religions have any history of buying your way out of Purgatory -"
Weren't sacrifices and offerings made to a god or gods a form of buying off or bargaining for something also? Seems to me that buying one's way out of purgatory is not so different from what man had always done with deities.
The concept of heaven and hell, good and bad is extremely simplistic, black and white. Human nature is more often somewhere in between and never so straightforward. I find it understandable that something was eventually invented to cover all those grey areas in life. -
Message 39
Posted by arty macclench (U14332487) on Tuesday, 15th February 2011
In partial answer to my earlier question, these are selected phrases from various versions of Pope Urban's speech at Clermont in 1095 concerning the benefits for one 'taking the cross' and marching to Jerusalem (all written circa 1100-1125):
'Gesta francorum et aliorum Hierosolymytanorum':
"to save his soul"
"divine mercy"
"Great is your reward in Heaven"
"..redeemed from the hand of hell"
Fulk/Fulcher of Chartres- 'Historia Iherosolymitana':
"All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins."
"the eternal reward"
Balderic, Bishop of Dol:
"...empurpled with your own blood, you will have gained everlasting glory"
.."the crown that fadeth not away"
Robert the Monk:
"Every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for my name's sake shall receive an hundredfold and shall inherit everlasting life"
All a little vague for my liking. Still, if you had time on your hands...
But there really was a character in history called Baldric! -
Message 40
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Tuesday, 15th February 2011
Presumably death in battle whilst on crusade equated to martyrdom and would therefore be a free pass upstairs, cleansed of sin. I imagine that Robert would have been very conscious of the risk dispatch downstairs when he was becoming seriously ill, bumping off your rival before the altar not being likely to go down well at the last judgement, and so sending his heart may have seemed a possible insurance against spending too long in purgatory, even if not a complete get out of jail free card.
What I have difficulty with is, how did the concept of a variable and negotiable length of stay in purgatory square with the doctrine of bodily resurrection and a final day of judgement at the second coming?
But then, I have difficulty with all of it. -
Message 41
Posted by arty macclench (U14332487) on Tuesday, 15th February 2011
I am intrigued that Robert as he was dying, having only just been rehabilitated in the eyes of the Vatican (in the case of Comyn's murder in the Greyfriars Kirk) but still conscious of all the other dead Christians in the red column of his account, then asked James Douglas to defy Papal decree in supervising the mutilation of his corpse to extract his heart.
Consequently, it would appear that Douglas boarded ship for the Mediterranean with Bruce's heart having been excommunicated (again?). Perhaps both Robert and Douglas calculated that the spiritual credit of the pilgrimage "in travail against God's foes" would improve Douglas' credit sufficiently in the celestial register for him not to be too bothered with the censure of a distant prelate.
"For he said he tuk that vaiage
To pas intill pilgramage
On Goddis fayis, that his travaill
Mycht till his saule hele availl" (Barbour, 'Brus' XXI)
Given the Christian deaths against his soul as well, what did Douglas have to lose? It does seem though that death on pilgrimage was the only sure way of ensuring salvation. Coming back alive, having smitten the infidel, may not have been enough. That might explain the apparent carelessness that led to his death
I agree, though, it does all seem rather actuarial. And what, indeed, of the Last Trump? -
Message 42
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Wednesday, 16th February 2011
What I have difficulty with is, how did the concept of a variable and negotiable length of stay in purgatory square with the doctrine of bodily resurrection and a final day of judgement at the second coming?Ìý
It has never squared with it, which is why the church has always been rather obfuscatory on the whole issue.
It was a logistical as well as a theological dilemma from the moment that a religion which was founded on the promise that there would be one big day of reckoning for everyone suddenly acquired a huge number of people who therefore demanded to know what was going to happen to all their dead relatives on the Plain of Asphodel, and in particular those languishing in Tartarus awaiting their parole.
The church, apparently not able to divest its adherents of this particular delusion in favour of the one they were pushing (the Graeco-Roman one was actually much better thought out), attempted to answer the question therefore by assuring those concerned that Tartarus had a christian version.
Oh what a tangled web we weave etc. -
Message 43
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Wednesday, 16th February 2011
"Presumably death in battle whilst on crusade equated to martyrdom and would therefore be a free pass upstairs, cleansed of sin."
The hierachy of the RC church is and has ever been a political entity, wrapped in religious justification. The original idea of a crusade didn't go down too well with those supposed to do the fighting, so the church came up with the idea of the get out of jail free card. It really was quite a brilliant way of enticing (in this case) the aristocracy to do it's bidding, to leave estates virtually unprotected for years and at vast personal expense. Aside from absolution of sins the other enticement was plunder, thus sanctioning the two great wrongs of murder and theft. The hypocracy from all concerned is astounding. -
Message 44
Posted by arty macclench (U14332487) on Wednesday, 16th February 2011
"Aside from absolution of sins the other enticement was plunder"
The Venerable Balderic, bishop of Dol also reported Pope Urban as saying:
"That you may not be troubled about the concerns of tomorrow, know that those who fear God want nothing,
The possessions of the enemy, too, will be yours, since you will make spoil of their treasures and return victorious to your own." -
Message 45
Posted by bandick (U14360315) on Wednesday, 16th February 2011
Arty… that’s not plunder… that comes under the heading…
the lord helps those that help themselves. Amen. -
Message 46
Posted by eristheapplethrower (U9524346) on Wednesday, 16th February 2011
Alas. No mention of Drythelm whose vision anticipated the purgatory doctrine of the high middle ages. Drythelm's universe would have been crowded with imaginary devils, angels, demons and some good guys like spirtual guides.
According to Bede, Drythelm a monk at the pre Cistercian monastery at Melrose was influenced by a vision in which he saw the life of the beyond. Drythelm's late 7th century visions suggest divisions of hell, purgatory and paradise. One night Drythelm 'died' and recounted seeing three areas (with a spiritual guide in tow): one with naked souls spending years in torment with 'consuming flames and cutting cold' ; second, a grey area - an area where 'dead souls' who aren't quite ready for heaven await judgement; and a third realm with many happy people in a walled meadow - very much an antechamber to heaven. -
Message 47
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Wednesday, 16th February 2011
Drythelm was Nordic, then.
-
Message 48
Posted by arty macclench (U14332487) on Wednesday, 16th February 2011
Drythelm- A man with a Northumbrian or at least English name but who might well have been of local British stock in the region before the Angles migrating northward established their kingdom of Bernicia.
Or are you suggesting his vision was an embodiment of Nordic myth? -
Message 49
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Thursday, 17th February 2011
I'm suggesting his alleged "vision" is a rather typical Purgatory from Northern Europe.
His genes have nothing to do with things. The culture of which he was a part has everything.
The transition from Nordic to christian beliefs (a process still in operation in some places) does not mean a simplistic re-labelling of Nordic mythical elements with christian names but interpretation of christian mythical claims through Nordic sensibilities, a facet of transition which is as varied and diverse as the number of subjectively applied imaginations which engage in it. That was also true in Drythelm's time. -
Message 50
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Thursday, 17th February 2011
Or are you suggesting his vision was an embodiment of Nordic myth?Ìý
I'm confused too.
The idea that after death there must be alternative states of "being" - Heaven, Hell and Purgatory - seems to express a *universal* human need to believe there is something other than complete annihilation: for the religiously/spiritually inclined, nothingness as a possibility is not to be contemplated (unless you are a Buddhist, of course - nothingness is their very sensible idea of Heaven and extremely difficult to attain ).
But *Purgatory* is always seen as a difficult, testing place whether you are a Muslim (yes, they do have a hot and cold Purgatory), a Hindu, a Christian or a Buddhist - so surely it's not just an idea that has come to us from the Nordic races - adopted by the ever flexible and resourceful Catholic Church? Purgatory simply as a "default" place for non-warrior wimps? Surely not.
I'm trying at the moment to find out what Virgil said about Purgatory. I know it's mentioned in the Aeneid, but I can't remember whether it's a different place from the Underworld generally. I think it is. It's interesting that Dante has Virgil as his guide as he makes his pilgrimage through Purgatory and Hell. The Roman poet as a character in the Divine Comedy knows all the ins and outs of these otherwordly realms. I suppose Dante's Virgil represents the voice of human reason - you still have to be alert, cautious and savvy even in Hell (sigh). But Virgil, clever clogs as he is, is also wise and humble enough to recognise the limits of the power of the human intellect - it's all very well having a grasp on human folly and sin, but the point of Purgatory is to get a grasp on grace,
But I'm rambling. Time for more tea and more googling.
PS I was much amused to discover that in the Prose Edda a chap called Hel rules over an underground location of the same name. This is a murky, foggy region, and all women get sent there automatically.
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