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Purgatory: ‘Birth’ or Evolution?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Graham Robert Edwards
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Review Article
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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , October 1985 , pp. 634 - 646
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

1 Michel, A., ‘Purgatoire’, Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique (hereafter cited as DTC); XIII. i, Paris 1936Google Scholar, cols. 1163–1326; Le Goff, 361.

2 Ibid. 362.

3 Ibid. 227.

4 Ibid. ‘Part Two, The Twelfth Century: The Birth of Purgatory’, 129–234.

5 Ibid. 147. The unfelicitous ‘dead souls’ is the translator's responsibility.

6 Ibid. 224.

7 Ibid. 225.

8 Ibid. 135.

9 Ntedika, Joseph, L'Évolution de la doctrine du purgatoire chez saint Augustin, Publications de l'Université Lovanium de Léopoldville xx, Paris 1966Google Scholar.

10 Le Goff, 4 and passim.

11 Ibid. 2–13 and passim: this is a dominant theme of the author.

12 Ibid. 225.

13 Loc. cit.

14 Le Goff, 225f.

15 Ibid. 4.

16 Ibid. 225f.

17 Ibid. 226.

18 Ibid. 226f.

19 Ibid. 227ff. Cf. the author's chapters ‘Structures spatiales et temporelles (Xe–XIIIe siècle)’ and ‘Mentalités, sensibilités, attitudes (Xe-XIIIe siècle)’ in Goff, Jacques Le, La Civilisation de l'Occident médiéval, Paris 1964, 169Google Scholarff., 397ff.

20 Le Goff, Birth of Purgatory, 231–2.

21 Ibid. 230.

22 Loc cit.

23 Le Goff, 231.

24 Ibid. 230.

25 Ibid. 233.

26 Le Goff, 233.

27 Loc. cit.

28 Loc. cit.

29 LeGoff, 15–127.

30 Ibid. 130–2.

31 Ibid. 96. The ‘riot of imagination’ refers to the post-apocalyptic tradition of visions of the other world which flourished in the early Middle Ages and continued into the fourteenth century. Useful accounts of some of them are to be found in Patch, H. R., The Other World according to Descriptions in Medieval Literature, Cambridge, Mass. 1950, 80–133CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Owen, D. D. R., The Vision of Hell: Infernal journeys in medieval French literature, Edinburgh 1970Google Scholar; Dinzelbacher, Peter, Vision und Visionsliteratur im Mittelalter, Stuttgart 1981Google Scholar. The literary tradition is normally traced back to Gregory the Great's Dialogues (c. 593), but Augustine attests a flourishing oral tradition of such visions in his day, c. 415, De Genesi ad litteram, xii.37–8, cf. 41, 60, PL xxxiv. 468–9, 470, 480. Le Goff's patchy and often inexact treatment of these sources cannot occupy us here.

32 Le Goff, 235–355. We cannot examine these pages here. Dante's Purgatorio is hardly representative ofthe late medieval purgatory whether academically or popularly conceived; Le Goff's chapter on Dante has been reviewed by Portier, Lucienne, ‘Le Vrai Purgatoire de Dante’, Revue des etudes italiennes NS xxviii (1982), 168–80Google Scholar.

33 Le Goff, 69, 73f., 98 (line 14 should read ‘Enchiridion 110’ not ‘City of God 12.32’); 101 (note 5 to this page omits suspension marks and the PL volume number, lxxx); 115f, 124 (‘the class of souls that Augustine called the non valde boni'[sic]), 147f, 149, 192f, 220–4.

34 Augustine, Enchiridion (AD 421), 110, ed. J. Rivière, Bibliothèque Augustinienne (hereafter cit. as Bibl. August.) ix, Paris 1947, 304, reviewer's translation.

35 Ibid. 69, Bibl. August. 226, reviewer's translation.

36 Cf. De cura gerenda pro mortuis (AD 421), i.2: ‘…quodam vitae genere acquiritur, dum in hoc corpore vivitur, ut aliquid adjuvent ista [suffrages] defunctos ac per hoc secundum ea quae per corpus gesserunt …’, ed. G. Combès, Bibl. August, ii, Paris 1948, 464.

37 De anima et eius origine (AD 419–20), I.x.12, cf. the actema damnatione of I.xi.14, PL xliv.481, 482.

38 I Cor. iii. 11–15: the Vulgate gives detrimentum, Augustine damnum, in Enchiridion, 68, Bibl. August, ix. 224, and City of God xxi. 26, Loeb Classics edition, vii. 142. Cf. De fide et operibus, xvi.27 (damnum and detrimentum), ed. J.Pegon, Bibl. August, viii,’ Paris 1951, 412ff.; Enarrationes in Psalmos, vi. 3 (detrimentum), xxix. 9 (damnum), lxxx. 21 (damnum, perdis, perdas), PL xxxvi. 92, 222; xxxvii. 1045.

39 Cf. Le Goff, 73 (‘almost entirely good…almost entirely bad’), 115 (‘the not-entirely-bad and the not-entirely-good’).

40 Ten lines up from the bottom on p.74, the quotation reads chaotically: ‘…on behalf of the very bad they are propitiations, though they are no sort of consolation to the living. And in cases where they are of advantage, the advantage is either that they obtain complete remission, or at least that damnation itself becomes less intolerable. ‘The same faults recur on p. 147: cf. translation above n.34. On p.73 lines 36–7, Le Goff's original words, ‘Les bons n'ont pas besoin de suffrages. ls ne peuvent être utiles aux mauvais’, La Naissance du Purgatoire, 105, are rendered as: ‘The good have no need of suffrages, though these may be of use to the wicked’; the final r of tolerabilior is omitted in both editions. On p. 148 line 1, a useful clarifying clause of Le Goffs, Naissance, 201 lines 2–3, is ignored by the translator.

41 Le Goff, 73f, and cf. 69. This theme and Augustine's place in it have yet to be treated satisfactorily, but see: A. Michel,’ Mitigation des peines de la vie future’, DTC, X. ii, Paris 1935, 1997ff.; J. Rivière, in Bibl. August, ix. 420–2; Ntedika, Joseph, L'Évocation de l'au-delà dans la prièire pour les morts, étude de patristique et de liturgie latines (4e-8e siècles), Louvain 1971, 93–6Google Scholar.

42 Enchiridion, 112, Bibl. August, ix. 306ff.

43 Translated in M. R. James, The Apocryphal New Testament, Oxford 1924, 548f.

44 Enchiridion, 112, Bibl. August, ix. 308.

45 City of Cod xxi. 24, Loeb Classics ed. vii. 112ff.

46 Ibid. 122.

47 Ibid. 112–18.

48 Ibid. 116, reviewer's translation.

49 Sentences, IV. xlv. 2, text in S. Bonaventurae Opera omnia iv, Quaracchi 1889, 936f.

50 Le Goff, 149.

51 Ibid. 222.

52 Ibid. 149 n.24, 222 n.27.

53 Sentences, loc. cit.

54 Decretum, xx. 70, PL cxl. 1043f.

55 Isidore of Seville (d. 636), Deeccl. officiis, I. xviii. 13: PL Ixxxiii. 757; Julian of Toledo (d. 690), Prognosticon, i. 21: PL xcvi. 476; Haymo of Halberstadt (d. 853), De vatietate librorum, iii. 9: PL cxviii. 937.

56 A. Michel, ‘Purgatoire’, DTC XIII. i. 1214. The epistola in question is no. lv in W. Hartel's edition of the Opera, CSEL iii, Vienna 1868, 624ff.; Le Goff gives no ref.

57 Cyprian, ep. lv. 13.

58 Ibid. 6, 17.

59 Ibid. 13.

60 Le Goff, 57f.

61 Cyprian, ep. lv.20.

62 Le Goff, 58. Pierre Jay, ‘Saint Cyprien et la doctrine du purgatoire’, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale xxvii (1960), 133–6: Jay, p.133, mistakes Hartel's numbering for Migne's.

63 Jay, ‘St Cyprien et la doctrine du purgatoire’, 135.

64 This is shown by Le Goff, 55f., 59–61. Le Goff is wrong however, p.59, to include Lactantius (d. c. 320), who is rather dualist: the translation, loc. cit. lines 2ff, should not read ‘…enveloped by fire and purified…’ but ‘…enveloped by fire and burned [amburentur, i.e. damned] …'; by ‘righteous’ here Lactantius means Christians in general; the reference given is incorrect and should read ‘PL 6.802’.

65 Jay, ‘St. Cyprien et la doctrine du purgatoire’, 136. Cf. Cyprian, De bono patientiae, 10, Epistola ad Fortunatum, 12f.: PL iv.628f., 673–6.

66 Tertullian, De Anima, xxxv.3, lviii.8, ed. J. H. Waszink, Amsterdam 1947, 51, 79f., and cf. 591ff.

67 Cyprian, ep. lv, 5, 13, 17.

68 Le Goff, 98, referring to Julian of Toledo.

69 Ibid. 62.

70 Ibid. 83f.

71 See references and discussion in A. E.Bernstein, ‘Esoteric theology: William of Auvergne on the fires of hell and purgatory’, Speculum lvii (1982), 517–21; and cf. Augustine, Retractiones, II. xxiv. 2, ed. G. Bardy, Bibl. August, xii, Paris 1950, 494.

72 ‘Feu du Purgatoire’, DTC V.ii, Paris 1913, 2258f.

73 See above, not e 66. Cf. Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, iii.24, De monogamia, 10: PL ii.356, 942.

74 Le Goff, 84, 73.

75 Ibid. 69.

76 Ibid. 62, 67ff. Ntedika, see above, notes 9, 41.

77 Augustine, De Genesi contra Manichaeos, II. xx. 30 : PL xxxiv. 211f. Le Goff, 67f. Augustine also uses post hanc vitam in speaking of Dives and Lazarus, Luke xvi, where clearly referring to the intermediate state, Quaestionum Evangeliorum, ii. 38: PL xxxv. 1350.

78 City of God, xx, 25, cf. 30, Loeb Class, ed., vi. 414–18, 450; xxi, 13, 26, same ed., vii. 76–80, 138–50. Against Le Goffs express wishes and his ow n assurances, the translator renderspurgalorius as ‘purificatory’, Le Goff, 75. cf. 63, 384 n.38. Ibid., 73 line 19, the adjective is rendered as ‘purgatory’, a frequent gallicism in this translation.

79 Quaest. Evang., ii. 38: PL xxxv. 1350–2. Le Goff, 68: the translation is poor here, cf. La Naissance du Purgatoire, 98f.; neither edition gives source reference.

80 Enarr. in Ps., Ixxx. 21: PL xxxvii. 1044–6: the obscura quaestio is the exposition of I Cor.iii. 11–15. Le Goff, 68, no source reference is given.

81 Enarr. in Ps., xxxvii.3: PL xxxvi.397. Le Goff, 68, no source reference is given.

82 Eg. Le Goff, p.93 n.49 adds incorrectly about Gregory's tale of the monk Justus, ‘There is no mention of fire in this story'; on the contrary,’ Diu… igne cruciatur,’ Gregory the Great, Dialogues, IV. lvii. 14, ed. A. de Vogüé, Sources chretiennes, cclxv, Paris 1980, 192. Of Bede's quasi-purgatorial valley, Historia Ecclesiastica, v. 12, he observes, p. 115, ‘a place that is not named does not quite exist in the full sense of the word’, and misaligns Bede's scheme with ‘Augustine's views concerning the non valde mali and the non valde boni'; on p.134, Bede's ‘valley’ has become a ‘mountain’.