| 121. The Future State. | ||||
The unseen world of spirits was divided by the mediaeval theology into five distinct regions or abodes, receptacula animarum, as Thomas Aquinas calls them heaven, hell, purgatory, the limbus patrum, or the temporary abode of the Old Testament saints, and the limbus infantum, or the abode of children who die without being baptized. | ||||
Hell, the place of punishment or eternal dolors,1 is the lake of sulphur and fire in which lost men and demons suffer eternal torment. It is a region of jet darkness, a deep prison as compared with heaven, into which the demons are thrust down. The longings and passions of those confined there go on continually burning and are never satisfied. Its fires burn but do not consume. No other heat can compare with its heat. The Schoolmen are agreed that the passages of Scripture, bearing on the fire of hell, are not figurative. The fire is material fire which afflicts both the spirits and bodies of the lost. The degree of torture is according to the desert. | ||||
The limbus patrum corresponds to Abraham's bosom in the parable of Dives and Lazarus, the place where the worthies of the Old Testament dwelt till Christ descended into hades and released them. Before that time they enjoyed exemption from pain. Since then they have enjoyed heavenly bliss. Circumcision released them from original sin. Hell and this locality are probably in the same region or, at any rate, contiguous. The view, that the patriarchs remained in hades till Christ's death, goes back to Hermas and Clement of Alexandria. | ||||
The limbus puerorum or infantum is the abode of children dying in infancy without having been baptized. They are there for original sin which only baptism can wash away. According to Thomas Aquinas, this region is probably a little lower than the limbus patrum. These children are free from pain, but are like the lost in being deprived of the vision of God and physical light. Theirs is the punishment of eternal death, supplicium mortis aeternae, but their damnation is the lightest of all omnium levissima. They have no hope of beatitude. God, in His justice, provides that they never make any advance nor go back, that they neither have joy nor grief. They remain forever unchanged. Such is the hopeless doom to which the great Dominican and the great Franciscan theologians of the Middle Ages consigned all children dying unbaptized. Strange that the Schoolmen, in the interest of a more merciful doctrine, did not use Christ's blessed words, Suffer the little children to come to me for of such is the kingdom of God. But they did not. The doctrine of original sin and the doctrine of the necessity of water baptism for salvation were carried to their extreme logical conclusions without regard for the superabounding grace of God. So also Augustine had taught and so most of the Reformers taught at a later time. | ||||
Christ's descent into hades was carefully discussed by the Schoolmen. It occurred as soon as his soul was separated from the body at his death. He was in the infernal regions during the three days of his burial, but did not assume their pains. The reason for this visit was twofold, says Bonaventura, to release the Old Testament saints and to confound the adversaries of the Gospel, the demons. Thomas Aquinas tried to show that, when Job said, Job 17:16, my hope shall go down to the bars of Sheol, or into the deepest hell, as the Vulgate puts it, he meant that he went no farther than the limbus patrum and not to the abode of the lost. Christ descended into hades, according to Thomas,1 for a threefold purpose, to deliver us from the necessity of going there ourselves; to release the Hebrew saints by breaking the bars of hell vectes inferni, that is, by spoiling principalities and powers, Col. 2:15; and third, to make show of his divinity manifestatio divinitatis to the demons by preaching, 1 Pet. 3:19, and by enlightening those dark spaces with his presence, as it is said, Ps. 24:7, Lift up your doors, O ye princes, and the king of glory shall come in. Here again the Vulgate is responsible for a mistake, the word gates being translated princes. Christ's descent into hades did not help the unbaptized children. After this life it is too late to acquire grace. | ||||
Purgatory is a sort of reformatory school for baptized Catholics who are not good enough at death to go directly to heaven. They are there in that intermediate region for actual transgressions,1 whose guilt the sacrament of penance and extreme unction had not fully removed. The existence of purgatory is based mainly upon 2 Mac. 12:40 and the universal teaching of the Church. Its inhabitants belong to the communion of saints and are within the reach of human intercession. Masses for the dead are instituted to meet their case. For infants in the limbus puerorum, such intercessory works are of no avail. But one who has been baptized in infancy or manhood, no matter how flagitious or criminal his career may have been, for him there is hope, nay there is certainty, that in time he will pass out of purgatory into the company of the blessed. | ||||
Heaven includes three kinds of rewards, said Bonaventura: the substantial reward or the vision of God; the consubstantial or the glorification of the body to which belong the qualities of transpicuity, lightness, agility, and impassibility which are granted in the degree we exercise love here on earth;1 and the accidental reward or the ornament of the aureole given for preaching and leading others to salvation, for virginal purity and martyrdom. | ||||
The bliss of heaven, said Thomas Aquinas, consists in the immediate vision of God. It is a state from which there will be no lapse. The beatified know what is occurring on earth, hear the prayers that ascend to them, and by their merits intercede for their brethren here. St. Bernard, in his homilies on the Canticles,1 and Anselm1 give us lofty descriptions of the blessedness of the heavenly estate. And the satisfaction and glory of the soul in heaven has never been quite so well portrayed as in the poem of Bernard of Cluny: - | ||||
O sweet and blessed country, the home of God's elect, | ||||
O sweet and blessed country, that eager hearts expect; | ||||
Jesus in mercy bring us to that sweet land of rest, | ||||
To be with God the Father and Spirit ever blest. | ||||
It remained for Dante to give to the chilling scholastic doctrines of purgatory and the lower regions a terrible reality in poetical form and imagery and also to describe the beatific vision of paradise. | ||||
The remarkable vision which a certain Englishman, Turchill, had of the future world, as related at length by Roger of Wendover1 and others, reveals the crass popular ideas of the future state. St. Julian appeared to this honest laborer, and took him off to the middle of the world, where they entered a church which, as Turchill was told, received the souls of all those who had recently died. Mary, through her intercession, had brought it about that all souls born again should, as soon as they left the body, be taken to this church and so be freed from the attacks of demons. Near one of the church walls was the entrance to hell through which came a most foul stench. Stretching from another wall was the great lake of purgatorial fire in which souls were immersed, some to their knees, some to their necks. And above the lake was a bridge, paved with thorns and stakes, over which all had to pass before they could arrive at the mount of joy. Those who were not assisted by special masses walked over the bridge very slowly and with excruciating pain. On the mount was a great and most wonderful church which seemed to be large enough to contain all the inhabitants of the world. St. Nicolas, St. James, and other saints had charge of the church of Mary and the purgatorial lake and bridge. Turchill also saw St. Peter in the church of Mary and before him the souls were brought to receive sentence. The devil and his angels were there to hurry off to the infernal regions those whose evil deeds tipped the balances. Turchill was also taken by a certain St. Domninus to behold the sports the devils indulge in. Coming to the infernal realm, they found iron seats, heated to a white heat and with nails driven in them, on which an innumerable multitude was sitting. Devils were sitting around against the walls poking fun at the unfortunate beings for the evils they had been guilty of in this life. Men of different occupations and criminal practices, the soldier, tradesman, priest, the adulterer, thief, and usurer, were then brought forth and made to enact over again their wicked deeds, after which their flesh was fiercely torn by the demons and burnt, but again restored. Such are the popular pictures which form the vestibule of Dante's Inferno. | ||||
Of all the gruesome religious tales of the Middle Ages, the tales representing the devil as torturing the naked soul were among the most gruesome. The common belief was that the soul, an entity with form as the Schoolmen defined it, is at death separated from the body. Caesar of Heisterbach tells of an abbot of Morimond with whose soul the demons played ball, rolling it from hill to hill, across the valley between, until God allowed the soul to enter the body again. This was before the abbot became a monk. | ||||
Another of these stories, told by Caesar of Heisterbach,1 concerned a student to whom the devil gave a stone. As long as the student held it in his hand, he had supernatural knowledge. When he died, his body was taken to the church, and while his fellow-students stood around it singing, the devil carried his soul to hell. There the demons played ball with it. Their sharp claws stuck deep into it and gave it unspeakable pain. But, at the intercession of the saints, the Lord rescued the soul and reunited it with the body and the young man suddenly arose from his bier. In telling his experience he related that his soul had been like a round piece of glass through which he could see on every side. Fortunately, the fellow was scared badly enough to go to a convent and do sound penance. Bernard of Thiron bore witness that he saw the devils carry an unfaithful monk's soul out of the window. | ||||
The severity of the purgatorial pains is vouched for in this story by Thomas of Chantimpre,1 for which he quotes Albertus Magnus. A good man, after suffering from a severe sickness for a year, had this alternative offered him by an angel: to go to purgatory and suffer for three days or endure for a year longer his sickness and then go directly to glory. He chose the first. So his soul took its departure, but the purgatorial agony of a day seemed like the pains of ages and the sufferer was glad to have the opportunity of returning to his body, which was still unburied, and endure his sickness for another year. | ||||
Such stories are numerous and reveal the coarse theology which was current in convent and among the people. | ||||