¹ Cf., among the numerous other boats in the Divina commedia, the nave piccioletta of the swift Phlegyas, guardian of the fifth circle of Hell; Inferno, viii, 13 ff.

² The artistic effectiveness of this kind of imitation with a difference of earlier works which the reader instantly would recognize, Dante knew full well. It is a trick which he employs not only indirectly in his making Vergil the guide, but more specifically in the treatment of many small details throughout the poem. The passages on Cerberus (Inf., vi, 13 ff.) and the Laodiceans (Inf., iii, 34–42) illustrate the method clearly, as I have noted in ‘Did Dante Know the Vision of St Paul?’ Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature, XIX (1937), 241–242Google Scholar and n. 31. Cf. ‘Dante and Vergil the Mystic,’ Harvard Studies and Notes, XIV (1932), 61–62Google Scholar; and Pascoli, Giovanni, La mirabile visione (Messina, 1902), pp. 499 ffGoogle Scholar.

³ The vasello snelletto e leggiero, for example, recalls alike Isaiah xviii 2, vasi papyri, and , Horace, Odes, III, ii, 28–29Google Scholar, fragilemque mecum|Solvat phaselum; and it may something to Catullus, iv, 1–5:

Phasellus ille, quern videtis, hospites,

Ait fuisse navium celerrimus,

Neque ullius natantis impetum trabis

Nequisse praeterire, sive palmulis

Opus foret volare sive linteo.

The figure of the sail composed of wings is reminiscent of , Pliny, Historia naturalis, xxxiv, 4, § 17, Aurae velificantes sua veste. See Celestino Cavedoni, Raffronti tra gli autori biblici e sacri e la divina commediaGoogle Scholar (Collezione di opuscoli danteschi inediti o rari, ed. , Passerini, vol. XXIX, 1896), p. 53Google Scholar; and Fransoni, Domingo, Studi vari sulla divina commedia (Firenze, 1887), pp. 197 ffGoogle Scholar.

⁴ La divina commedia, ed. , Poletto (2nd ed., Roma-Tournay, 1905), II, 35, n. 46–48Google Scholar; and La d. c., col commento Scartazziniano (9th ed. rev. Giuseppe Vandelli, Milan, 1929), p. 311Google Scholar, n. 46–48. The association of the Exodus with the prayers for the dead is quite ancient. It appears on many early Christian sarcophagi and is referred to in one of the orationes pseudocyprianae: ‘Tu omnium dominus dominator, libera me de hoc saeculo et exaudi me orantem, sicut exaudisti filios Israel de terra Aegypti…’ It occurs also in the Ordo commendationis animae (see , Cabrol and , Leclercq, Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, art. Défunts, IV, especially 431, 435–436Google Scholaret passim) and in the Oratio post obitum hominis of the Sacramentarium Gelasianum (see , Muratori, Liturgia romana vetus, I, 748–749).Google Scholar In the modern Roman missal Ps. 113.1 comes in the Missa ad postulandam gratiam bene moriendi during the Easter season.

⁵ Epistole, xiii, § 7, 21. Cf. Convivio, II, i, 6.

⁶ In the following discussion no distinction is specially observed, in the selection of examples, between the souls of the dead and the mere sojourner or visionary who afterwards comes back to the present life. (Hence the references below to Alexander, St Paul and Brendan, who are living travellers seeking knowledge of the supernatural realms.) This is because the apocalyptic traditions themselves which were available to the Middle Ages, though careful always to distinguish between the deceased and the mortal visitant, often do not differentiate the means of their arrival. Thus in Aeneid vi Charon warns Aeneas away as being still alive, but once the golden bough is displayed he ferries the Trojan hero across the infernal river in the same boat by which the dead are usually carried. The entire problem is complicated by instances in which the visitant had actually died but come to life again not long afterwards. Thus in Gregory's Dialogues (IV, xxxvi) a certain Stephen is said to have deceased and recovered and during the interval to have been obliged to walk across the same precarious Bridge by means of which all the souls of the dead must traverse the Otherworld river. In the twelfth-century Visio Tnugdali, Tundale undergoes a similar experience; ed. Wagner, Albrecht (Erlangen, 1882), pp. 15, 72–73, 143–144.Google Scholar Dante himself in Inferno iii, it may be remarked, shows that he is aware of the distinction, but his solution of the problem which it creates leaves us in doubt. Once Charon's opposition to Dante's mortality has been overcome, he states, not that his distinguished earthly visitor may not embark on his vessel, but that it would be more suitable for Dante to sail in the lighter craft, i.e. to cross in the boat reserved for the good souls to Purgatory and Paradise, where he belongs, and not to Hell. Shortly afterwards Dante swoons and, upon awaking, finds himself on the opposite shore of the Acheron without knowing exactly how he has crossed.

⁷ For Paul see Visio sancti Pauli apostoli, § 22, ed. James, M. R., Apocrypha anecdote, I (Texts and Studies, vol. II, no. 3, Cambridge, Eng., 1893), p. 23, 11. 28–32.Google ScholarCf. my Visio sancti Pauli (Studies and Documents, no. IV, London, 1935), p. 138Google Scholar, 11. 3–5. The lake appears also in the other Long versions of Paul — Greek, Coptic, Old Russian, Syriac —, references to all of which need not be given here. In the Syriac the lake is erroneously designated by a name which Ricciotti, Giuseppe, L' apocalisse di Paolo siriaca (Brescia, 1932), I, 58Google Scholar, renders as ‘Sapienza dell' eucarista.’ For the Apocalypse of Moses, see James, M. R., The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford, 1924), p. 518.Google Scholar A similar purification is described in the Ethiopic text of the Apocalypse of Peter, but there the Acherusia is a field: ‘Then will I give unto mine elect and righteous the washing (baptism) and the salvation for which they have besought me in the field of Akrosja which is called Anēslaslejā [i.e. Elysium].’ (, James, Apocr. N. T., p. 518.)Google Scholar

⁸ Transl. , James, Apocr. N. T., p. 514.Google Scholar

⁹ II, 252–255; ed. Joh. Geffcken (Leipzig, 1902), p. 40. Transl. , James, Apocr. N. T., p. 523:Google Scholar ‘And then shall all men pass through a blazing river and unquenchable flame, and the righteous shall be saved whole, all of them, but the ungodly shall perish therein unto all ages…’

¹⁰ II, 313–316; ed. Geffcken, p. 43. Transl. James, p. 524: ‘But the residue which have cared for justice and good deeds, yea, and godliness and righteous thoughts, shall angels bear up and carry through the flaming river unto light, and life without care, where is the immortal path of the great God…’

¹¹ IV, xxxvi (Migne, P. L., LXXVII, 384–385).

¹² Historia Francorum, IV, xxxiii (Migne, P. L., LXXI, 296).

¹³ Mon. germ, hist., Epistolae selectae (ed. , Tangl, 1916), I, 11–12.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Brandes, H., Visio s. Pauli (Halle, 1885), p. 76Google Scholar, 11. 5–10; Meyer, P., ‘La descente de Saint-Paul en enfer,’ Romania, XXIV (1895), 366–367Google Scholar; and , Silverstein, Visio sancti Pauli, p. 198Google Scholar, 11. 4 ff. The detail is given very wide currency in the various vernacular translations and paraphrases of these Latin texts. See, for example, the French version in Meyer, Romania, XXIV, loc. cit., and the Italian in Villari, Pasquale, Antiche leggende e tradizioni che illustrano la divina commedia (Pisa, 1865), p. 78.Google Scholar

¹⁵ See, for example, Colgan, John, Trias thaumaturga (Louvain, 1647), p. 277Google Scholar, § XV; Migne, P.L., CLXXX, 995, viii, § 53; van der Zanden, C. M., Purgatoire de saint Patrice (Amsterdam, 1928), p. 170Google Scholar, and pp. 117–119, vv. 1073 ff.; and , Villari, Antiche leggende e tradizioni, p. 65.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Ed. Cancellieri, Francesco, Osservazioni … sopra l'originalità della divina commedia di Dante (Roma, 1814), pp. 168–170, § 17.Google Scholar

¹⁷ The purgatorial nature of the stream comes out especially clearly in the vision seen at Wenlock Abbey and the Vision of Alberic. Wenlock, ed. Tangl, I, 11–12: ‘Nec non et igneum piceumque flumen bulliens et ardens mirae formidinis et teterrimę visionis cernebat. Super quod lignum pontis vice positum erat. Ad quod sanctae gloriosęque animę ab illo secedentes conventu properabant desiderio alterius ripę, transire cupientes. Et quaedam non titubantes constanter transiebant, quaedam vero labefactę de ligno cadebant in Tartareum flumen, et aliae tinguebantur pene quasi toto corpore mersae; aliae autem ex parte quadam, veluti quedam usque ad genua, quaedam usque ad medium, quaedam vero usque ad ascellas. Et tamen unaquaeque cadentium multo clarior speciosiorque de flumine in alteram ascendebat ripam, quam prius in piceum bulliens cecidisset flumen. Et unus ex beatis angelis de illis cadentibus animabus dixit: “Hae sunt animae, quae post exitum mortalis vitę quibusdam levibus vitiis non omnino ad purum abolitis aliqua pia miserentis Dei castigatione indigebant, ut Deo digne offerantur.”’

¹⁸ For a convenient treatment of this motif, with brief but suggestive references to its various appearances in ancient as well as mediaeval tradition, see Patch, H. R., ‘Some Elements in Mediaeval Descriptions of the Otherworld,’ PMLA, XXXIII (1918), 627 ff.Google Scholar and, especially, n. 93.

¹⁹ Wahlund, Carl, Brendans Meerfahrt (Skrifter utgifna af K. Humanistiska Vetenskaps-Samfundet i Upsala, IV, 3, Upsala, 1900)Google Scholar, ‘Kompromiss-Text,’ p. 4, 11. 15–27. Cf. p. 104, 11. 17–27, and, for the French texts, p. 5, 11. 17–27, and p. 105, 11. 16–28. Among the other versions, see especially the Old Venetian, ed. Novati, Francesco (Biblioteca storica della letteratura italiana, no. I, Bergamo, 1896), pp. 2–3Google Scholar; and the Italian text in , Villari, Antiche leggende e tradizioni, p. 83.Google Scholar For the nebule see , Patch, ‘Some Elements,’ p. 627Google Scholar and n. 91. Cf. n. 31 below.

²⁰ Ed. Wahlund, p. 96, 11. 4–23. Cf. pp. 97, 196 and 197.

²¹ , Villari, Antiche leggende e tradizioni, p. 104.Google Scholar First set of italics mine. Cf. the Old Venetian, ed. , Novati, p. 77:Google Scholar ‘e tanta iera la alegreza e lo conforto che rezeueua lo abado e li frari con luy e lo soaue odor de bone erbe et oliose, che quasio ch' elo l' insiua l' anima del chorpo … ed eli loda con gran reuerenzia dio, digando questo salmo: te deum laudamus, te dominum confitemur.’

²² Villari, p. 82, n. 1. That the manuscript is a scribal copy appears from the nature of the errors.

²³ Chaim, Echtra Condla, ed. , Windisch, Kurzgefasste irische Grammatik (Leipzig, 1879), p. 120Google Scholar; transl. , Jubainville, Cours de littérature celtique (Paris, 1892), V, 389.Google ScholarCf. Meyer, Kuno and Nutt, Alfred, Voyage of Bran (Grimm Library, no. 4, London, 1895), I, 146Google Scholar; Brown, A. C. L., ‘Iwain,’ Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature, VIII (1903), 29Google Scholar; and Seymour, St John, Irish Visions of the Other-World (London, 1930), p. 67.Google Scholar

²⁴ Serglige Conculaind, ed. , Windisch, Irische Texte, I (Leipzig, 1880), 210Google Scholar, 1. 11; transl. , Jubainville, Cours de littérature celtique, V, 183.Google ScholarCf. , Brown, ‘Iwain,’ p. 35.Google Scholar For other instances of the mysterious boat, in the Acallamh na Senorach and the story of Becuma, see Brown, pp. 96–97.

²⁵ See, for example, , Seymour, Irish Visions, pp. 71 ffGoogle Scholar.

²⁶ Hull, Eleanor, Text Book of Irish Literature (Dublin, 1906), I, 130.Google Scholar

²⁷ , Maelduin, Revue celtique, IX (1888), 452–495Google Scholar, and X (1889), 50–95; Ui Corra R. C., XIV (1893), 22–63; Snedgus and Mac Riagla, R. C., IX, 14–25; and Columba's Clerics, R. C., XXVI (1905), 130–167. All these texts are edited by Whitley Stokes.

²⁸ In the Arthurian romances there are several instances of the occurrence of both dangerous River and Bridge, and the origin especially of the Bridge has been a matter of considerable scholarly controversy. , Patch, ‘Some Mediaeval Elements,’ pp. 630–640Google Scholar, points out the essential inconsistency of the motif with the belief about the sea or lake, and comes to the conclusion, rightly as I think, that they represent a contamination of either Norse or ultimately oriental provenience. Palacios, Miguel Asín, La escatologia musulmana en la divina comedia (Real Academia Española, Madrid, 1919), especially p. 237Google Scholar, has tried, particularly in connection with the popular visions, to show that the transmission from the East was primarily through the Islamic hadiths and their later elaborations, all of which were themselves influenced by Persian lore and which probably penetrated into the West in the later Middle Ages by way of both Sicily and Spain. But it should be remembered that the visions and the romances arose in a Christian world which had long known the dangerous narrow foot-path to the bounteous city in IV Ezra vii 7–9, and the slippery bridge traversed by the nameless soldier in the fourth book of Gregory's Dialogues (Cap. xxxvi, Migne, P. L., LXXVII, 385). For the direct influence of these two sources on the mediaeval visions, see , Silverstein, Visio sancti Pauli, pp. 77–79Google Scholar, and pp. 123–124, especially nn. 85, 88 and 89.

²⁹ This is common to many of the Alexander texts, and we need only give a few convenient references here: Historia de preliis, J², § 98, in Magoun, F. P., The Gests of King Alexander of Macedon (Cambridge, Mass., 1929), p. 176CrossRefGoogle Scholar (cf. the Middle-English Alexander B, Magoun, loc. cit.; the French prose romance, ed. Hilka, Alfons, Der Altfranzösische Prosa-Alexanderroman, Halle, 1920, p. 186Google Scholar; and I nobili fatti di Alessandro magno, ed. Grion, Giusto, Collezione di opere inediti o rare dei primi tre secoli della lingua, Bologna, 1872, p. 134)Google Scholar; Commonitorium Palladii, ed. Pfister, Fr., Kleine Texte zum Alexanderroman … nach der Bamberger Handschrift (Heidelberg, 1910), p. 1Google Scholar; and Alexandri Magni iter ad paradisum, ed. Zacher, Julius (Regimonti Pr., 1859), p. 20Google Scholar.

³⁰ ‘A Christian Legend Concerning Alexander,’ transl. from the Syriac by Budge, E. A. Wallis, The History of Alexander the Great (Cambridge, Eng., 1889), pp. 145 and 152.Google Scholar

³¹ Ibid. It may be observed, in passing, that Paradise is here (p. 152) described as being surrounded by clouds and darkness, reminiscent of the nebule of the Celtic legends. See p. 59 and n. 19 above.

³² Cf. especially Redaction Four of the Pauli, Visio; Brandes, p. 76Google Scholar, and , Meyer, Romania, XXIV, 366–367Google Scholar.

³³ The important J² version, for example, of Archpresbyter Leo's Historia de preliis, tells us that Alexander himself could not cross the stream but that ‘uocari fecit ipsos Bragmanos quos uiderat ultra flumen. Et statim unus ex ipsis cum parua nauicula uenit ad ipsum’; , Magoun, The Gests of King Alexander, pp. 176–177Google Scholar.

³⁴ In the thirteenth-century Latin text of the Iter ad Paradisum, where Alexander succeeds in traversing the waters to the wonderful land, the journey requires several months of difficult navigation; ed. Zacher, pp. 19–21.

³⁵ Cf. the ‘St Gall Text,’ , Silverstein, Visio sancti Pauli, p. 137 f.:Google ScholarAcherusius lacus.

³⁶ James, M. R., Apocrypha anecdota, I, 23–24.Google Scholar Cf. the ‘St Gall Text,’ Silverstein, pp. 137–138. This passage remarkably anticipates the Serglige Conculaind, not only in its vessel of gold, corresponding to the bronze ship (see n. 24 above), but also in its placing the City of Christ beyond a white and purifying lake, similar to that of the Irish work: ‘Labraid is over a pure lake’ (, Brown, ‘Iwain,’ p. 35).Google ScholarCf. , Patch, ‘Some Elements,’ p. 628Google Scholar, n. 93. Whether or not the resemblance is accidental, it is a point of some importance, never observed, so far as I am aware, by those who have dealt with the question of the origins of the Celtic Otherworid lore.

³⁷ See Wahlund, pp. 96–97 and 196–197; and n. 19 above.

³⁸ Harvard Studies and Notes, XIX, 231–247, and especially pp. 244–246.

³⁹ Inferno, xi, 3–13, and iii, 24–42. See Harvard Studies and Notes, loc. cit., and ‘Dante and the Visio Pauli,’ Modern Language Notes, XLVII (1932), 397–399Google Scholar.