Purgatory: Doctrinal, Historical, and Poetical Part 29

Forthwith from every side a shout arose So vehement, that suddenly my guide Drew near, and cried: "Doubt not, while I conduct thee."

"Glory!" all shouted (such the sounds mine ear Gathered from those who near me swelled the sounds), "Glory in the highest be to G.o.d!" We stood Immovably suspended, like to those, The shepherds, who first heard in Bethlehem's field That song: till ceased the trembling, and the song Was ended: then our hallowed path resumed, Eyeing the prostrate shadows, who renewed Their customed mourning. Never in my breast Did ignorance so struggle with desire Of knowledge, if my memory do not err, As in that moment; nor, through haste, dared I To question, nor myself could aught discern.

So on I fared, in thoughtfulness and dread.--_Canto XX._

Now the last flexure of our way we reached; And, to the right hand turning, other care Awaits us. Here the rocky precipice Hurls forth redundant flames; and from the rim A blast up-blown, with forcible rebuff Driveth them back, sequestered from its bound.

Behooved us, one by one, along the side, That bordered on the void, to pa.s.s; and I Feared on one hand the fire, on the other feared Headlong to fall: when thus the instructor warned: "Strict rein must in this place direct the eyes.

A little swerving and the way is lost."

Then from the bosom of the burning ma.s.s, "O G.o.d of mercy!" heard I sung, and felt No less desire to turn. And when I saw Spirits along the flame proceeding, I Between their footsteps and mine own was fain To share by turns my view. At the hymn's close They shouted loud, "I do not know a man;" [1]

Then in low voice again took up the strain.-_Canto XXV_.

[Footnote 1: _I do not know a man._ St. Luke, i. 34.]

Now was the sun [1] so stationed, as when first His early radiance quivers on the heights Where streamed his Maker's blood; while Libra hangs Above Hesperian Ebro; and new fires, Meridian, flash on Ganges' yellow tide.

So day was sinking, when the Angel of G.o.d Appeared before us. Joy was in his mien.

Forth of the flame he stood--upon the brink; And with a voice, whose lively clearness far Surpa.s.sed our human, "Blessed are the pure In heart," he sang; then, near him as we came, "Go ye not further, holy spirits," he cried, "Ere the fire pierce you; enter in, and list Attentive to the song ye hear from thence."

I, when I heard his saying, was as one Laid in the grave. My hands together clasped, And upward stretching, on the fire I looked, And busy fancy conjured up the forms, Erewhile beheld alive, consumed in flames.--_Canto XXVII._

[Footnote 1: At Jerusalem it was dawn, in Spain midnight, and in India noonday, while it was sunset in Purgatory]

HAMLET AND THE GHOST.

SHAKESPEARE.

HAMLET. Where wilt thou lead me? Speak, I'll go no further.

GHOST. Mark me.

HAM. I will.

GHOST. My hour is almost come, When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames Must render up myself.

HAM. Alas! poor ghost!

GHOST. Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing To what I shall unfold.

HAM. Speak, I am bound to hear.

GHOST. So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.

HAM. What?

GHOST. I am thy father's spirit; Doomed for a certain time to walk the night; And, for the day, confined to fast in fires, Till the foul crimes, done in my days of nature, Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid To tell the secrets of my prison-house, I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul; freeze thy young blood; Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres; Thy knotted and combined locks to part, And each particular hair to stand on end, Like quills upon the fretful porcupine; But this eternal blason must not be To ears of flesh and blood.

CALDERON'S "PURGATORY OF ST. PATRICK."

In a work of this nature, it is essential to its purpose that the compiler should take cognizance of the many legends, wild and extravagant as some of them are, which have been current at various times and amongst various peoples, on the subject of Purgatory. For they have, indeed, a deep significance, proving how strong a hold this belief in a middle state of souls has taken on the popular mind. They are, in a certain sense, a part of Catholic tradition, and have to do with what is called Catholic instinct. They prove that this dogma of the Church has found a home in the hearts of the people, and become familiar to them, as the tales of childhood whispered around the winter hearth. If it appear now and then, in some such uncouth disguise, as that which we, are about to present to our readers, we see, nevertheless, through it all the truth, or rather the fragments of truth, such as is often found floating about through Europe on the breath of tradition. The curious legend has been turned by Calderon from dross into precious gold. He presents it to us in his "Purgatory of St. Patrick" with a beauty that divests it of much of its native wildness. He presumably drew his materials for the drama from a work, "The Life and Purgatory of St. Patrick," published in Spain in 1627 by Montalvan, a Spanish dramatist. It was translated into French by a Franciscan priest and doctor of theology, Francois Bouillon; as also into Portuguese by Father Manuel Caldeira. When this work was issued Calderon was wish the army in Flanders. He must have seen it, his brilliant imagination at once taking hold of it as the groundwork for a splendid effort of his genius.

We cite here an extract from an introduction by Denis Florence MacCarthy to his translation of Calderon's "Purgatory of St. Patrick."

It will be of interest as following the thread of this weird legend:

The curious history of Ludovico Enio, on which the princ.i.p.al interest of this play depends, has been alluded to, and given more or less fully by many ancient authors. The name, though slightly altered by the different persons who have mentioned him, can easily be recognized as the same in all, whether as Owen, Oien, Owain, Eogan, Euenius, or Ennius. Perhaps the earliest allusion to him in any printed English work is that contained in 'Ranulph Hidgen's Polychronicon,' published at Westminster by Wynkin de Worde, in 1495: 'In this Steven's tyme, a knyght that hyght Owen wente into the Purgatory of the second Patrick, abbot, and not byshoppe. He came agayne and dwelled in the abbaye of Ludene of Whyte Monks in Irlonde, and tolde of joycs and of paynes that he had seen.'

The history of Enio had, however, existed in ma.n.u.script for nearly three centuries and a half before the Polychronicon was printed; it had been written by Henry, the Monk of Salterey, in Huntingdons.h.i.+re, from the account which he had received from Gilbert, a Cistercian monk of the Abbey of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Luden, or Louth, above mentioned. [1] Colgan, after collating this ma.n.u.script with two others on the same subject, which he had seen, printed it nearly in full in his "Trias." ... Matthew Paris had, however, before this, in his "History of England," under date 1153, given a full account of the adventures of OEnus in the Purgatory. ... Sir Walter Scott mentions, in his "Border Minstrelsy," that there is a curious Metrical Romance in the Advocates' Library of Edinburgh, called "The Legend of Sir Owain,"

relating his adventures in St. Patrick's Purgatory; he gives some stanzas from it, descriptive of the knight's pa.s.sage of "The Brig o'

Dread;" which, in the legend, is placed between Purgatory and Paradise.

This poem is supposed to have been written early in the fourteenth century.

[Footnote 1: Colgan's "Trias Thanmaturgae," p. 281, Ware's "Annals of Ireland," A.D. 1497.]

A second extract on the subject, taken from the Essay by Mr. Wright on the "Purgatory of St. Patrick," published in London in 1844, gives still further information with regard to it.

"The mode," he says, "in which this legend was made public is thus told in the Latin narrative. Gervase (the founder and first Abbot of Louth, in Lincolns.h.i.+re) sent his monk, Gilbert, to the king, then in Ireland, to obtain a grant to build a monastery there. Gilbert, on his arrival, complained to the king, Henry II., that he did not understand the language of the country. The king said to him,' I will give you an excellent interpreter,' and sent him the knight Owain, who remained with him during the time he was occupied in building the monastery, and repeated to him frequently the story of his adventures in Purgatory.

Gilbert and his companions subsequently returned to England, and there he repeated the story, and some one said he thought it was all a dream, to which Gilbert answered: 'That there were some who believed that those who entered the Purgatory fell into a trance, and saw the vision in the spirit, but that the knight had denied this, and declared that the whole was seen and felt really in the body.' Both Gilbert, from whom Henry of Salterey received the story, and the bishop of the diocese, a.s.sured him that many perished in this Purgatory, and were never heard of afterwards." It is clear from the allusion to it in Caesarius of Heisterbach, that already, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, St. Patrick's Purgatory had become famous throughout Europe. 'If any one doubt of Purgatory,' says this writer, 'let him go to Scotland (i. e., Ireland, to which this name was anciently given), and enter the Purgatory of St. Patrick, and his doubts will be expelled.' This recommendation was frequently acted upon in that, and particularly in the following century, when pilgrims from all parts of Europe, some of them men of rank and wealth, repaired thither. On the patent rolls in the Tower of London, under the year 1358, we have an instance of testimonials given by the king, Edward III., on the same day, to two distinguished foreigners, one a n.o.ble Hungarian, the other a Lombard, Nicholas de Becariis, of their having faithfully performed this pilgrimage. And still later, in 1397, we find King Richard II. granting a safe conduct to visit the same place to Raymond, Viscount of Perilhos, Knight of Rhodes, and Chamberlain of the King of France, with twenty men and thirty horses. Raymond de Perilhos, on his return to his native country, wrote a narrative of what he had seen, in the dialect of the Limousin (_Lemosinalingna_), of which a Latin version was printed by O'Sullivan in his '_Historia Catholica Ibernica.' ... This is a mere compilation from the story of 'Henry of Salterey,' and begins, like that, with an account of the origin of the Purgatory. He represents himself as having been first a minister to Charles V. of France, and subsequently the intimate friend of John I.

of Aragon, after whose death (in 1395) he was seized with the desire of knowing how he was treated in the other world, and determined, like a new aeneas, to go into St. Patrick's Purgatory in search of him. He saw precisely the same sights as the knight, Owain, but (as in Calderon) only twelve men came to him in the hall instead of fifteen, and in the fourth hall of punishments he saw King John of Aragon, and many others of his friends and relations.

We will now select from the drama of "Calderon" a few characteristic pa.s.sages, to show how this subject was treated by the glowing pen and fervid fancy of the greatest of all the poets of Catholic Spain, whose poetry, indeed, is deserving of more widespread appreciation than it has yet received at the hands of the Catholic reading public. We will begin with those lines in which Ludovico Enio, the hero of the tale, makes known his ident.i.ty to King Egerio.

LUDOVICO. Listen, most beautiful divinity, For thus begins the story of my life.

Great Egerio, King of Ireland, I

Am Ludovico Enio--a Christian also-- In this do Patrick and myself agree, And differ, being Christians both, And yet as opposite as good from evil.

But for the faith which I sincerely hold (So greatly do I estimate its worth), I would lay down a hundred thousand lives-- Bear witness, thou all-seeing Lord and G.o.d.

. . . . . . All crimes, Theft, murder, treason, sacrilege, betrayal Of dearest friends, all these I must relate.

For these are all my glory and my pride.

In one of Ireland's many islands I Was born, and much do I suspect that all The planets seven, in wild confusion strange, a.s.sisted at my most unhappy birth.

He proceeds with a catalogue of his crimes, most dark, indeed, and relates how St. Patrick, who was present, had saved him from s.h.i.+pwreck.

The King, however, who is a pagan, takes the Knight into his service, while he bids the Saint begone. Before they part Patrick asks of him a favor:

PATRICK. This one boon I ask-- LUDOVICO. What is it?

PATRICK. That, alive or dead, we meet In this world once again.

LUDOVICO. Dost thou demand So strange and dread a promise from me?

PATRICK. Yes.

LUDOVICO. I give it to thee then.

PATRICK. And I accept it.

What follows is from a conversation between Patrick and the King, wherein are explained many of the truths of faith, including the existence of heaven and of h.e.l.l. Thus the Saint:

PATRICK. There are more places In the other world than those of Everlasting pain and glory: Learn, O King, that there's another, Which is Purgatory; whither Flies the soul that has departed In a state of grace; but bearing Still some stains of sin upon it: For with these no soul can enter G.o.d's pure kingdom--there it dwelleth Till it purifies and burneth All the dross from out its nature; Then it flieth, pure and limpid, Into G.o.d's divinest presence.

KING. So you say, but I have nothing, Save your own words, to convince me; Give me of the soul's existence Some strong proof--some indication-- Something tangible and certain-- Which my hands may feel and grasp at.

And since you appear so powerful With your G.o.d, you can implore him, That to finish my conversion, He may show some real being, Not a mere ideal essence, Which all men can touch; remember, But one single hour remaineth For this task: this day you give us Certain proofs of pain or glory, Or you die: where we are standing Let your G.o.d display his wonders-- And since we, perhaps, may merit Neither punishment nor glory, Let the other place be shown us, Which you say is Purgatory.

PATRICK then prays, concluding with the words:

"I ask, O Lord, may from Thy hand be given, That Purgatory, h.e.l.l, and Heaven May be revealed unto those mortals' sight."

An Angel then descends and speaks as follows:

ANGEL. Patrick, G.o.d has heard thy prayer, He has listened to thy vows; And as thou hast ask'd, allows Earth's great secrets to lie bare.