Belief in Purgatory, popularized in the Middle Ages by Dante’s Divine Comedy, was closely tied to penance and confession, a sacrament linked to practices in the early Irish monastic communities. According to Jacques Le Goff, “Until the end of the twelfth century the noun purgatorium did not exist: the Purgatory had not yet been born.” Although defining Purgatory involved applications theorized by early church fathers and pagan notions such as Hades, the existence of Purgatory played a prominent role in developing Christian thought until the Reformation, when Protestant leaders like Luther and Calvin condemned such beliefs.
The Utility of Purgatory in a Cosmological Order
Commenting on Peter Lombard’s defining of the seven sacraments, Brian Tierney and Sidney Painter note that after the eleventh century, the practice of “confession” became universalized and directly linked to penance. Penance impacted the growing belief, and perhaps necessity, of Purgatory. Confession might avoid hell, “But a stain remained on the soul that had to be erased by a sojourn in purgatory. This could be shortened or even avoided altogether by doing some act or acts pleasing to God,” hence, penance.
During the eleventh century, beginning in Southern France, a penitent could be absolved by a priest before the imposition of penance following a cash donation which ultimately became equated with indulgences. This growing practice led to tremendous gains in church revenues as the sale of indulgences directly impacted how long a person might be required to stay in Purgatory; only martyrs and saints bypassed Purgatory and went straight to heaven.
The spiritual hierarchical order of the medieval cosmology defined an ordered universe. This order was tied to man’s on-going relationship to God. Just as everyday life imposed immutable societal structures, so also was the divine order a pantheon of sacred and profane stages, dramatically described in the many levels of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Kingdoms had both kings and queens just as Jesus was depicted as King with Mary, his mother, often depicted wearing a crown as the “Queen of Heaven.” Even today, Catholic institutions and congregations use the term “Mary Queen of Angels” (Regina Angelorum).
The Defense of Purgatory
The most significant late Middle Ages attack on Purgatory came from Protestant reformers who, like Luther and Calvin, subjected all Catholic beliefs, including the sacraments, to scriptural scrutiny. The Catholic Church cited II Maccabees 12:43-46 as a primary text that addresses praying for the dead, with the assumption that the departed souls could not possibly be in heaven if they needed further prayers.
The 1545 Council of Trent reaffirmed belief in Purgatory, stating in one of the decrees that “…there is a purgatory, and that the souls therein are helped by the suffrages of the faithful…” Jacques Le Goff, however, charts the “birth of Purgatory” as part of the intricacies of early medieval thinking while avoiding the theological debates.
Church historian Williston Walker, on the other hand, references the late sixth century Pope, Gregory the Great, as a believer in Purgatory and suggests that Gregory’s views came from Augustine. Walker believes that notions of Purgatory may have predated Gregory and refers to Hermas of Rome as a proponent of the belief.
The idea of a “middle place” or “intermediate world,” a sheol of sorts, comprises many belief systems. Even the Eastern Orthodox Church developed a less stringent version of the Catholic Purgatory. For the Middle Ages, however, Purgatory was as much a reality as everyday living, and the opportunities to mitigate the purifying flames were abundant and available.
Sources:
Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory (The University of Chicago Press, 1981).
Brian Tierney and Sidney Painter, Western Europe in the Middle Ages 300-1475 5th Ed. (McGraw-Hill, Inc. 1992).
Williston Walker, A History of the Christian Church 3rd Ed. (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970).
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