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The History
of Hell
5 op

eerie. TURNER

The History
of Hell

A Harvest Book
Harcourt Brace & Company

Gn@ INIBEWe OER LORN DEOUN

SA Niele
 | heology |_ibrary

» HOOL OF THEOLOGY
AT CLAREMONT
California

Copyright © 1993 by Alice Turner

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any
information storage and retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publisher.

Requests for permission to make copies

of any part of the work should be mailed to:
Permissions Department, Harcourt Brace & Company,
6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Turner, Alice K.
The history of Hell/Alice K. Turner.
p. cm.—(A Harvest book)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-15-600137-3
1. Hell—Comparative studies. I. Title.
[BL545.T87 1995]
291.2'3—dc20 95-18513

Designed by Trina Stahl

Printed in the United States of America
First Harvest edition 1995
EE DC
Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION 1

1 The Great Below 5

2 The Egyptian Book of the Dead 12

3 Zoroastrianism 16

4 Classical Hades 20

5 Platonic Hell 30

6 The Roman Empire 34

7 Sheol 40

8 Gnosticism 46

9 Manichaeism 49
10 The Early Christians 52

11 The Descent into Hell 66

12 The Last Judgment 71

13 Apocalyptic Tours of Hell 83

14 The Middle Ages 89

TRASB bE a Onl sClORN Miaka

iM) Mystery Plays 114

16 Purgatory 126

ie Dante’s Inferno = 133

18 The High Middle Ages 145

19 The Reformation 158

20 Baroque Hell 172

aa Paradise cost 17

22 The Mechanical Universe . 190

25 The Enlightenment 199

24 Swedenborg’s Vision 210

25 The Nineteenth Century 213
26 Goethe’s Faust 218

27 The Romantics 221

28 Universalism 233

2? The Age of Freud 239

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 244

BIBLIOGRAPHY 246

PHOTO:CREDITS- 257

INDEX 263

vi
Introduction

He": BEINGS ALL OVER THE world believe in life

after death, in the survival of the conscious personality after the body
has ceased to function. Anthropologists, archaeologists, sociologists, clas-
sicists, analysts of the history of comparative religions agree that this is
true of all cultures, so far as we know. Some part of us, we believe, continues
to exist somewhere. Beyond that simple statement, the particulars of af-
terlife existence vary from culture to culture, from creed to creed, though
not so much as one might think.
The dead can influence the living, we believe, interceding for us with
the gods, perhaps, or appearing to us as ghosts to warn or plead or for
their own obscure ghostly purposes. And we can influence them, burying
or burning their cast-off bodies in approved fashion in order to assure their
correct treatment in the afterlife. Our prayers, offerings, or neglect can
affect them. Some cultures believe that spirits of the dead are reincarnated
into new living bodies, human or animal. Others believe in a perpetual
after-death existence in a land of the dead, a gloomy Ananka or Sheol, a
sunny Tir na n-Og, a heroic Valhalla, or a whole patchwork of geographic
regions as in ancient Egypt. And some believe in eventual physical resur-
rection of the flesh-and-blood molecules of the body.
Most of us, suspending logic, hold a number of these views at once. A
good Christian, even in our secular age, might simultaneously believe that
Wis TUES WORN Oe Ist ie ie lb

From a thirteenth-century French Apocalypse, the Hellmouth

Uncle Arthur rests where he is buried in the cemetery; that his soul resides
somewhere else, possibly above, courtesy of a merciful God; that his ghost
or spirit might be contacted through a medium or spiritualist, or in a
significant, perhaps prophetic dream; and that at a future Judgment Day
his physical self will be reconstructed in the prime of manhood. A gen-
eration or two ago, many Western people believed that a ghost could haunt
either a person or a particular venue, and some still believe it or half-believe
it. In earlier days, if the departed person were not only Uncle but also
King Arthur, he might be thought to be at once buried, in heaven, able to
haunt, someday to be resurrected, and also preserved in a sort of permanent
twilight sleep, waiting to be summoned by necessity or the Last Trump.
If he were, on the other hand, Saint Arthur, the very skin and bones
of his dead body might be held in reverent awe; his body might be torn
literally limb from limb, not by enemies but by faithful Christians, and the
pieces borne away to shrines to be importuned by the sick and needy.
Intercession or miraculous healing could occur, it was widely thought,
through the medium of the dead saint’s finger bone, or even a piece of his
garment.
This book is about Hell, one of the two principal after-death destinations
for the soul or surviving personality affirmed by the Christian religion.

2
 LN SISRSORD
ee Col TeOrN

Other great world religions have Hells of their own, with surprisingly
familiar scenery: Hindus number up to several million of them, while
Buddhists count from eight hells to several thousand. None of these hold
a soul eternally, however, and no other religion ever raised Hell to such
importance as Christianity, under which it became a fantastic underground
kingdom of cruelty, surrounded by dense strata of legend, myth, religious
creed, and what, from a distance, we might call dubious psychology.
This investigation is geographical rather than theological or psycholog-
ical. What is Hell thought to be like? How did it come to be thought of
in that way? And how did its topography change with the centuries? The
pull of the Pit on the creative mind has been extraordinary. Poets and artists
have always taken an immoderate interest in Hell, and have explored it in
some curious ways. Theologically, Hell is out of favor now, but it still
seems more “real” to most people than Fairyland or Atlantis or Valhalla
or other much imagined places. This is because of the sheer mass and weight
and breadth of ancient tradition, inventive fantasy, analytic argument, dic-
tatorial dogma, and both simple and complex faith employed over a very
long time—thousands of years—in the ongoing attempt to map the neth-
erworld. The landscape of Hell is the largest shared construction project
in imaginative history, and its chief architects have been creative giants—
Homer, Virgil, Plato, Augustine, Dante, Bosch, Michelangelo, Milton,
Goethe, Blake, and more.
Heaven is different. The theologians or poets or painters or survivors
of “near-death experiences” who have tried to describe it tend to shy away
from specifics. (Emanuel Swedenborg, the eighteenth-century spiritualist,
was an exception.) The concept of Heaven is instinctively understood as a
metaphor, an inadequate attempt to convey the bliss or ecstasy of the soul
dwelling in God’s grace, rather than a real address with pearly gates, harps,
and halos. Hell, the place of punishment for sinners, has always been taken
much more literally, perhaps because it is easier to understand. If Heaven
is spiritual, Hell is oddly fleshly, with tortures that hurt and an atmosphere
that is, particularly during some of Hell’s history, excessively gross. But
Hell also seems darkly intriguing in a way that Heaven does not. To some
people, during some periods of history, it has seemed romantic.
A possibly radical aspect of Hell is what Hollywood might call its
“entertainment quotient.” Alongside solemn eschatology, there seems al-
ways to have been a subversive comic view of the afterlife. The laughter

2
WGI! VEL SeISOM NO (OAS vet Ie IG AC

may be nervous, but it is undeniable. Graveyard humor stretches as far

back into history as we can reach, to the very first tales of the Land of the
Dead left to us from the ancient Near East, and survives today in our taste
for horror films and the novels of Stephen King. Humor is not always
present—no one would be so misguided as to dub Augustine or Milton a
humorist—but it is never far away. Even the most supposedly pious and
church-ridden periods of Christian history, the Middle Ages and the Puritan
Reformation, offer examples of Merry Hell.
This is not a book about the Devil, except insofar as he is in residence.
The subject of the Devil is complex and large, and touches on such serious
problems as the existence of evil and suffering. Here, instead of diabology,
we have infernology, a simpler subject. Demons and the Devil, either as prince
or as principal sinner, are citizens and caretakers of the infernal regions,
however, and we will encounter them there, though not without taking
note of other underworld rulers, some of them queens rather than princes.
According to a recent Gallup poll, 60 percent of Americans believe in
Hell or say they do, up from 52 percent in 1953. Only 4 percent think
they’re likely to go there. Other than Hitler or the latest serial killer, who
will go? Among Christians, it is no longer politically correct to send political
enemies, dissenters, atheists, or adherents of other religions to Hell, and
“sin” in the post-Freudian age is more debatable than it used to be. I myself
do not believe in Hell—I could hardly attempt this book if I did—but I
have found it, literally, an incredibly interesting place to visit. Hell is viewed
here as a human construct, not one fashioned by God or the Devil. This
is a real history of an imaginary place.
One of the less savory notions of the early Church was that of the
abominable fancy,* the idea that part of the joy of the saved lay in contem-
plating the tortures of the damned. In many illustrations, blessed souls,
ranged in orderly rows, their eyes lowered demurely toward the fiery chaos
beneath, watch Heaven’s eternal late-night TV. To follow the history of Hell
is sometimes to identify, at least in this regard, with the blessed. There seems
to be a kind of staged unreality about the whole business. But one should
keep in mind that the idea of Hell has had, for a very long time, for a very
large number of people, a fearful reality that has literally shaped their lives.

*This pungent phrase was coined by the nineteenth-century preacher F. W. Farrar,

as reported by
D. P. Walker in The Decline of Hell.
The Great Below

ie SolsResel ANC CLOVUPNI TS 10! HP THE Wand of the Deadithat

we know about were written nearly four thousand years ago on baked
clay tablets from the Tigris-Euphrates Valley north of the Persian Gulf in
Iraq. Sumer is the earliest name we have for the region, and, until the
twentieth century, we knew very little about it. Modern Sumerian scholars
have deciphered its non-Indo-European language, and their translations
have brought us a new legacy of ancient poetry and myth.
The Sumerians were conquered by the Semitic Akkadians, and the area
began to be known as Babylonia, after the principal city, Babylon. The
Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, and neighboring Assyrians are fre-
quently grouped as Mesopotamians, and they shared many of the same
beliefs and myths, though their gods sometimes went by different names,
as did the Greek and Roman deities later on.
These very early, surprisingly sophisticated stories of gods and heroes
have been extraordinarily pervasive in later religious thought, myth, lit-
erature, and eschatology. In The Other World, the medievalist Howard
Rollin Patch lists a number of elements that appear in nearly all known
accounts of the underworld or the otherworld (which need not be chthonic),
Eastern as well as Western. These include: a mountain barrier, a river, a
boat and boatman, a bridge, gates and guardians, an important tree. Except
for the bridge (the Chinvat Bridge to the Land of the Dead appears in later

5
AC VSC18 Vel WS a OI Ne Oi) Ist Je IL IL

Persian literature from the region), all are already present in Mesopotamian
mythology.
Four of the existing Mesopotamian stories are set partly in the Kingdom
of the Dead. The best known is Gilgamesh, the epic tale of the hero-king
which appears in the Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite, and Assyrian languages.
The others are worth knowing, however.
Looking back four thousand years, the cosmography seems familiar to
anyone acquainted with classical or northern mythology. The gods, a pan-
theon led by the Sky God, inhabit the Great Above. The most interesting
and lively Sumerian tales focus on Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth,
whom the Akkadians called Ishtar; the Assyrians, Astarte; the Palestinians,
Asthoreth. Queen Ereshkigal (Allatu in Assyrian), her sister, rules the dead
in the Great Below, the Land of No Return. Mortals live on Earth, but
patches of the otherworld adjoin this one. Beyond the Mountains of Mashu
is the Earthly Paradise, with Dilmun as the Isle of the Blest, where one
privileged mortal and his wife live forever. One thinks of Eden, of the
Gardens of the Hesperides, of Atlantis, Avalon, the Land-Under-Wave,
the Kingdom of Prester John, all here on earth—but where?
The Harrowing of Hell is a story that turns up in many guises through-
out history. In it, a living person descends voluntarily to brave the dangers
of the underworld on a quest that may range from the deeply serious
(Orpheus seeks his wife) to the seriously misguided (Theseus and Peiri-
thoos attempt to kidnap Persephone). Technically, it is called the “descent
motif.” The earliest of all descent stories that we know features Sumerian
Inanna.
For obscure reasons, Inanna decides to visit her sister, Ereshkigal:
“From the Great Above, she set her mind to the Great Below.” Prudently,
she informs her vizier, Ninshubur, of her intentions, instructing him as
what to do should she not return. Dressed in her most splendid clothes
and jewels, she is halted by an officious guardian at the first lapis lazuli
gate to the Underworld, and the crown is removed from her head. At each
of six following gates, an article of her apparel is taken, till, naked and
furious, she confronts Ereshkigal, at whom she “flies.” Her sister stops
her in midflight, releasing on her the “‘sixty miseries” (in the Akkadian
version) or hanging her from a stake (the Sumerian text). Three days and
nights pass or, in the Akkadian version, a season in which “the bull springs
not upon the cow, the ass impregnates not the jenny . . . the man lies down

6
 ener Gakeb east (BE Li@r W:

in his own chamber, the maiden lies down on her side.” The Akkadian
version marks this as a fertility myth; the Sumerian version may interest
readers looking for parallels to Christ’s story—or the story of Attis hung
on his tree, or Odin on his.
Alarmed by her absence, the faithful vizier petitions the gods for his
mistress’s rescue. Reluctantly, Ereshkigal permits Inanna to return to the
upper world, provided she can provide a substitute or ransom for herself
(this theme will turn up again in a number of guises, one of them important
to Christianity). A brace of escort goblins is sent topside to make sure she
keeps her word. The ransom she sends is Dumuzi (Tammuz in Akkadian),
Inanna’s shepherd consort, who incurs the wrath of the goddess by having
rather enjoyed her absence. Eventually, a political compromise is reached
by requiring Dumuzi to stay below for only six months of the year if his
sister will stand in for him during the other six months. (The turn-and-
turn-about theme turns up again in the Greek tale of the brothers Castor
and Pollux.)
This story is one of those known as dying-vegetation-god myths, many
versions of which are known: Tammuz and Ishtar (Akkadian), Telepinus
and Kamrusepas (Hittite), Baal and Anath (Ugaritic). Famous later ones
are those of Osiris and Isis (Egypt), Attis (or Endymion) and Cybele
(Middle East), Persephone and Demeter (Greece), Proserpina and Ceres
(Rome), Adonis and Aphrodite or Venus (Greece and Rome). In the New
Testament gospels, when the group of women appear at the sepulcher on
the spring morning of the Resurrection, there’s a clear echo of these old
ritual stories of death and rebirth, winter and spring.
What’s puzzling in the Inanna-Dumuzi story is that, while the typical
fertility-myth goddess rescues and/or mourns her apparently dead consort-
son (daughter), Inanna appears to have packed Dumuzi off to the Land of
the Dead herself, although, in other Sumerian poetry (which can be graph-
ically erotic), she is passionately attached to him. Perhaps a Dumuzi stand-
in was dispatched to the underworld by the high priestess impersonating
Inanna each year, after which she welcomed his handsome successor. Or
perhaps time has confused two different tales, one with Inanna as the
fertility sacrifice going to the Great Below voluntarily (or as a trick; Inanna
was a tricky goddess), and one with Dumuzi as a substitute sacrifice.
“How Ereshkigal Found a Husband” is quite another matter. Though
it’s risky to interpret the intent of a story from a distant age and a strange

7
IN DSI NE Jel I Ae OPN NO Or slat Je IG, IE

culture, it is hard to see how the story of Nergal and Ereshkigal could ever
have been meant to be taken entirely seriously, except perhaps by earnest
doctoral candidates. Its format is classic; it appears to be the very first
underground comedy, the ur ribald tale of a femme fatale and a hapless
male.
It begins with a party. Since the Queen of the Dead cannot leave her
underground kingdom to come to a banquet in the Great Above, she sends
her vizier up to collect a covered dish of delicacies. The vizier is insulted
by the minor god Nergal, and Ereshkigal demands a personal apology. The
other gods give Nergal advice on how to survive his journey below; he
must refuse bread, meat, beer, water for washing—anything proffered to
him underground.
Down he goes, through the seven gates. Ereshkigal, the perfect hostess,
offers him bread, meat, beer, and water, all of which he rejects. But when
she offers her divine body to him, his resolve weakens. For a delirious
week, they lie in bed together. Then, sated, he tries to get away. If she
will let him go back to the Great Above to announce their betrothal to the
gods, he promises, he will return at once. As all the men and most of the
women who have heard versions of this exit line during the past four
thousand years know, he is lying.
Ereshkigal is not about to put up with male fickleness, however. She
sends a warning to the Great Above: unless Nergal returns to meet his fate,

Although this alabaster lady comes from Mesopotamia, she is too recent (c. 300 B.C.) to be
a likely Ereshkigal, who, at the time that she flourished might have been portrayed more
like the red clay figure on the right.
 ripe Guhebecy iy SBah
1 @) Wy,

“T will send up the dead that they might devour the living,/ I will make
the dead more numerous than the living.”” When her vizier arrives to fetch
him back, Nergal disguises himself as bald, palsied, and lame, but the ruse
fails. Down he must go again, giving up possessions at each of the gates,
just as Inanna did. (Clearly, he has lost status: he was spared this on his
first visit.) The tablet that records this journey breaks off here, but we
know the ending: Nergal is listed in mythological dictionaries as Eresh-
kigal’s consort.*
Gilgamesh is a great and complex poem, but on a certain level it is
simply the story of one man’s attempt to escape timor mortis, the fear of
death. When Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk, and his best friend (or lover)
Enkidu offend Inanna, the gods decree that one of the offenders must die.
In a'dream, Enkidu has a dreadful premonition of the dusty, dreary un-
derworld, where mighty kings have been brought low. He falls sick and
dies, and Gilgamesh is not only grief-stricken but terrified. He determines
to avoid this fate and sets out to find the only man who has ever been
granted immortality, the Mesopotamian version of Noah, Utnapishtim (Su-
merian: Ziusudra). After a long journey, he passes in total darkness through
the magical Mountains of Mashu, guarded by the Scorpion People, and
emerges into an enchanted garden of precious stones, through which he
proceeds to the edge of the sea. He meets a divine barmaid, then a boatman,
both of whom tell him his search is futile. But the boatman agrees to ferry
him across the “waters of death” to Dilmun, the enchanted isle. There he
meets the immortal sage, who, after relating the story of the Flood, tells
Gilgamesh that he should practice conquering death by first conquering
sleep. No sooner does Gilgamesh, sleepless since Enkidu died, hear this
than “sleep like a wet haze blew over him.” He sleeps for seven days and
nights, and when he wakes, he knows his quest 1s vain.
Utnapishtim forbids the boatman ever to bring another mortal to Dil-
mun, but, at the prompting of his wife, he leads Gilgamesh to a plant that
will restore youth, if not grant immortality. But before Gilgamesh can get
home, a snake steals the plant; as it flees, it sheds its skin, to appear once
again gleaming and youthful. Snakes in the ancient world, because of their
skin-shedding ability, often symbolized immortality or eternal youth.

“There is another, duller version of this story in which Nergal bullies Ereshkigal out of her kingdom.
ipyetde) Jeti Ga © Aw ye (Ue olpl js JG IE

A Mesopotamian couple who might well be Inanna and Gilgamesh looking aghast at her
huluppu tree.

With his return to Uruk, the story of Gilgamesh ends, or should end,
at the end of the eleventh tablet. There is a twelfth tablet in Gilgamesh,
however, and it is certainly confusing—a free-floating dialogue between
Gilgamesh and Enkidu about the underworld. In fact, it is the end of
another story, and how it got tacked onto the end of Gilgamesh by one
scribe, and then copied by so many others, will remain forever mysterious.
“The Huluppu-Tree”’ is a different version of the Inanna-Gilgamesh-
Enkidu triangle, focusing on death in a very different way. It begins as
a sort of Eden myth: Inanna finds a tree (perhaps the First Tree) and
plants it in her “holy garden,” waiting for it to mature so that she can
fashion a throne and a bed out of its wood. To her horror, demons invade

10
 WIAshis (GIN IN WU SE
IE Oy

the tree—a serpent, the Zu or Anzu bird, and the Lilitu or Lilith, a female
demon who would later become important in Jewish tradition as Adam’s
first wife. Inanna bursts into tears and summons Gilgamesh, here called
her brother, for help. The hero routs the intruders with his bronze ax and
carves a throne and a bed for Inanna. To reward him, she makes a pukku
and a mikku from the roots and crown of the tree. These offend the women
of Uruk, and they fall (are thrown?) down a hole into the Underworld.*
At this point, the twelfth tablet begins, as Enkidu prepares to go and
fetch the pukku and mikku. Gilgamesh gives advice on his conduct: he
must wear old clothing and go unoiled and barefoot; he must leave his
spear and his staff behind, must not speak or kiss anyone. Naturally,
Enkidu, like Nergal, ignores this advice, and Ereshkigal seizes him. Gil-
gamesh appeals to the gods, and one of them persuades Nergal, the consort,
to open a hole so the two friends can communicate. They try to embrace
but cannot, for Enkidu’s shade is too insubstantial.
Gilgamesh asks what it is like below. Enkidu says that it is so dreadful
he cannot talk about it. Vermin are eating his body; it is filled with dirt.
Gilgamesh throws himself on the ground in horror, then asks after the fate
of a number of people; the news is bad.
The dead spirits in these early stories lead a grim, bleak, dry, and
completely egalitarian existence. There is no division yet into privileged or
blessed souls versus sinners or common folk. The thought of death terrifies
Gilgamesh; in Gilgamesh, he accepts it because he has to, but he is reduced
to abject, unkingly fright in ““The Huluppu-Tree.” Shades are literally
shadowy, too insubstantial to touch; later Greeks thought a taste of blood
might lend them momentary strength.
Other ancient stories tell of heroes who go beyond this world to fight
monsters or to speak with their ancestors. The Etruscans had a dark un-
derworld demon named Charun. Illustrations on ancient pottery show him
carrying his characteristic weapon, which looks exactly like a polo mallet.
His name would be confused with that of Charon, the Greek ferryman of
dead souls, and even with Cheiron, a Greek centaur, half man, half horse.

*No one knows what a pukku and a mikku are. Various scholars have proposed a drum and drumstick,
a hockey puck and stick, and other items. I think they represent Gilgamesh’s penis and testicles and can
argue the point, though not here. The reason for bringing it up is that I also believe the entire huluppu-
tree sequence, including the last tablet of Gilgamesh, to be a sort of bawdy ghost story, a Merry Wives
of Windsor to the grandeur of Gilgamesh. Thus Enkidu’s wails from the underworld are exaggerated for
effect. This is not, however, an orthodox interpretation.

11
The Egyptian Book of the Dead

Sle OTHER ANCIENT AREA TO leaveusa written rec-

ord of its concerns about the world beyond the grave is Egypt. Some
Egyptian hieroglyphic writings date from more than four thousand years
ago, and the ritual spells and incantations recorded in the earliest Book of
the Dead papyruses may have been already in use for centuries before they
were written down. Unlike the Middle East, which seems always to have
been torn by wars and clashing religious beliefs, Egypt has had relative
peace and prosperity throughout most of its very long history. As we know
from the splendid tombs of the pharaohs, the carefully prepared mummies,
the abundance of grave paraphernalia, and from the copiously illustrated
Books of the Dead on papyrus rolls, which contain protective survival
spells to ensure a safe trip through the otherworld, the Egyptians were
deeply concerned with the afterlife.
We also know a great deal about their changing eschatological beliefs;
we can trace these from the Old Kingdom (c. 3000-c. 2200 B.c.) when
only the right-living nobility could expect an afterlife, through the Middle
Kingdom (c. 2130-c. 1570 B.c.), when Osiris emerged as god of the dead,
and so on. But the ancient Egyptian afterlife is not ours. The Jews were
prisoners of the Egyptians before the Exodus, but Egyptian religion seems
to have been too foreign, too exotic, and too complicated to affect them

12
 Ue beeen G Yel
eAg Nee OvOLK fOr: THE D E.A D

much. Rich as it was, Egyptian mythology, with the exception of the

influential but late Hellenistic Isis cult, failed to travel well.
Some Egyptian ideas do, however, find echoes in Christianity. The
figure of the heavenly Jesus owes something to Osiris. Not only was Osiris
the judge, king, and god of the dead, he—unlike nearly all other rulers
of the dead—was believed to be wholly benign. Like Jesus, he was him-
self the sacrificed and resurrected god; his divine son Horus ruled the living.
The Egyptian dead had a bodily existence, which is also thought to be true
of Christians after the Last Judgment. The idea of judgment after death
may come from Egypt, if not from Persia. And the Egyptian dead who
survived annihilation were often subject to horrendous sudden perils, if
not exactly punishments.
To reach the Sekhet Hetepet, your ka or vital life-force (which looks
exactly like you) and your ba or soul (portrayed as a human-headed bird)*
would embark in the boat of Ra (the sun) which traverses the river of the
sky (the Milky Way) during the day to arrive at the West at night with its
cargo of the newly dead. Agen and Mahaf, who has his head turned back
to front, are the celestial ferrymen. After disembarking, you must go
through seven gates, each with a Gatekeeper, Watcher, and Herald, whose
names you will invoke upon consulting your Book of the Dead. Next you
must greet the many mysterious portals of the house of Osiris before they
will open to let you pass.
Anubis will then escort you to the Hall of Justice, you being correctly
“pure and clean and clad in white garments and sandals, painted with black
eye-paint and anointed with myrrh.” Anubis is usually characterized as the
‘Sackal-headed”’ god, but anyone who has ever seen a pedigreed pharaoh
hound, an animal whose noble Egyptian bloodlines stretch back for mil-
lennia, will recognize him immediately. A jackal has sinister connotations,
especially when linked with corpses, but Anubis is a faithful dog come to
guide you in his role as psychopomp, or leader of the soul.
Much less agreeable is the horrid little monster Ammit, who squats
below the Scales of Justice, where you will be given the chance to plead
the case for your former and continuing existence. Ibis-headed Thoth, God
of Wisdom, acts as a prosecutor. Osiris, the Judge, sits ona throne attended

*Other aspects of the self were the khu or spiritual intelligence, the sekhem, an aspect of power, the
khaibit or shadow and the ren or name. To blot out the name is to destroy the self for eternity. When
the metaphysical heart is weighed, ka, ba, khu, and ren together make up its weight.

13
Anubis weighs the heart. In this rendition, Ammit is definitely female; in others she is
more beastlike.

by the goddesses Isis and Nephthys. You may be as eloquent and long-
winded as you like, but eventually Anubis will place your heart on the
scale to weigh against a feather from the headdress of Maat, Goddess of
Truth. If your heart sinks low under its burden of sin, Ammit will gobble
it up. And that will be the end of you.
Let us suppose you survive and are admitted into the Sekhet Aaru or
Field of Rushes, clad in your new body or sau. Your troubles are not yet
over. The Book of the Dead has spells to protect you from crocodiles,
snakes, giant beetles, suffocation from lack of air, putrefaction, dying again
(the sahu is not invulnerable), and turning topsy-turvy and being forced
to eat feces. Your aim now is to transform yourself (or perhaps your ba)
into a bird: a golden falcon, a phoenix, a heron, or a swallow. Or perhaps

14
you would like to be a crocodile or a snake (symbol of renewal and reju-
venation, as we saw in Gilgamesh)? Or a lotus.
Or perhaps you would like to be a farmer. The Field of Rushes consists
of fifteen Aats or regions, each with its own ruler, some of them inscrutable.
Ikesy, for example, “a region hidden from the gods” is inhabited only by
“that august god who is in his Egg.” You wouldn’t want to live there;
there is no air and the Egg god is not friendly.
You might find another spot suitable for agricultural activity, however,
which would include plowing, sowing, irrigation, reaping, and so forth,
all to be achieved with the tools and implements placed in your tomb. Your
thoughtful relatives will also have entombed your shabti, a figurine who
will be your golem-slave in the afterlife and do the hard work, while you
lead the comfortable life promised in all paradises—wonderful food and
drink, sexual pleasures, good companions, and all the comforts you should
have had at home. King Tut had 414 shabtis in his tomb, but as a less grand
personage, you might be content with one or two.

1>
Zoroastrianism

See AFTER THE OLD BABYLONIAN peri-

od, the Middle East produced a prophet named Zoroaster (Zarathustra)
who founded a long-lasting religion adopted by virtually the entire region,
stretching up into southern Russia and the eastern Balkans and eastward
as far as India. Zoroastrianism persisted until the Muslim invasions of the
seventh century A.D., which were followed by severe persecutions, and
still survives in India, especially in Bombay (where Zoroastrians are called
Parsis: Persians), and, until recently, in Iran.
The art of writing had been lost to the area by the time of the prophet
and was religiously forbidden for many centuries afterward, so we know
practically nothing about Zoroaster, not even when he lived. Modern schol-
ars speculate that the prophet was raised among the Bronze Age nomads
of the south Russian steppes, perhaps as much as a millennium before
Christ.
Considering that the Avesta, the sacred book of Zoroastrianism, was
not written down until the fifth century A.D.—and then in a special invented
sacred language, never used again—and that the only existing manuscript
dates from the fourteenth century and is not complete, it is safe to say that
what we know of this faith may not be exactly what Zoroaster had in
mind—which is probably true of all religions and their founders, even if
their sacred books are dictated by God or by the Angel Moroni.

16
 Tg @ORRAO PANGS Ra Ae Nialese i

Pazuzu, an Assyrian demon who displays many characteristics of later Christian demons

But Zoroastrianism had an enormous influence, directly and indirectly,

on the history of Christianity and, specifically, of Hell. It was based on
the early Vedic faith, from which Hinduism and Buddhism also developed,
but instead of relying on a pantheon of gods, Zoroaster taught a dualistic
religion: The divine force of Good, Ahura Mazda (‘“‘Wise Lord’’) or Ohr-
mazd, who lives above with his seven anesha spenta (“Immortal Holy
Ones’’), or angels, is pitted against Angra Mainyu or Ahriman (‘Evil

17
TEMES HeIOS MOM Oy Aste
J de

Spirit”), the Lord of Lies, who dwells in the darkness of Hell under the
earth, sending out his daevas or devils to torment the world. Law, order,
and light oppose darkness, filth, and death. Their conflict is the history of
the world, and the object of the conflict is the soul of man.
After death, the soul, which first hovers around the head of its corpse
for three days, is judged by Rashnu, the genie, or angel, of justice, and by
Mithra—who, in Hellenistic times, embarked on a new career as a soldiers’
god. All good deeds are entered in a great ledger as credits, all wicked
actions as debts. At the foot of the underworld Chinvat (“Accountant’s’’)
Bridge, the reckoning is made. If it is positive, the Daena, a beautiful maiden
accompanied by two guardian dogs, escorts the soul across the bridge into
the House of Song. If negative, “even if the difference is only three tiny
acts of wrongdoing,” the soul falls into Hell, ruled by Yima, or Yama, the
first man to die. If the balance is even, it passes into a kind of limbo called
Hammistagan, quite similar to the old Babylonian underworld, where it
will stay until the apocalypse. Neither prayer, sacrifice, nor the grace of
Ahriman can influence the legal outcome of the mathematical trial.
A manuscript from about the ninth century A.D. is thought to be a
transcription of the much older story of Viraz, the world’s best man, who
is sent to the otherworld in order to verify the tenets of the faith and there
sees many souls in torment. The story is nearly identical in form to many
Christian visions of the second through the thirteenth centuries, and it is
hard to know which influenced the other. There are differences both in the
sins and their punishments from Christian versions. The most Eastern touch
is that souls have no contact with one another; in Byzantine art the damned
are shown in isolated “‘boxes,’’ a device not seen in the West, where Hell
is characteristically chaotic and crowded.
Eventually, there will be a final cosmic battle between Good and Evil,
and Evil will be conquered forever. A savior named Soshyans, born of a
virgin impregnated with the seed of Zoroaster, will harrow Hell; penitent
sinners will be forgiven; and there will be a universal resurrection of the
body, which will reunite with the soul. Hell will be destroyed—burned
clean by molten metal—and the kingdom of God on earth will begin.
As any Christian reader should immediately recognize, many of these
ancient Zoroastrian ideas had extraordinary staying power. Orthodox
Christianity’s debt to them is not formally acknowledged, though by bring-
ing the Magi into the Christian nativity story and putting a new star in the

18
 Ze OPRAOPAGS
Ee Re leAGINGD Sei

East, Matthew, by far the most eschatologically minded of the four Gospel
writers, seems to have wanted to make sure his Messiah was firmly linked
to the resurrection and immortality promised by Zoroastrianism; similarly,
he sent the infant Jesus off to Egypt to imply his connection with ancient
wisdom.
Dualistic Christian heresies have cropped up again and again in the last
two thousand years, and though the names of the parties change, it is not
hard to trace the lines that lead from Zoroastrianism in all its variations to
Manichaeism to the Bogomils and Albigensians of the twelfth century. Even
now, while Christianity may have won the battle against dualism on the
high theological plane, the forces of evil wield considerable strength on the
popular level. The same can be said in Islam, where the satanic Iblis or Al-
Shaitan has a folkloric importance not admitted in fiercely monotheistic
orthodox Muslim theology.
Zoroastrianism links Hinduism, from which Buddhism later derived,
to Mithraism, a serious rival of Christianity during the entire period of the
Roman Empire, Islam, a later rival, and Christianity itself. The eschato-
logical scenarios of the great religions of Europe and Asia are eerily alike
in many regards, which may be due less to Swedenborgian visions of a
universal afterlife than to the persistence of trade routes and the relaxed
religious determination of armies bound for glory.

19
Classical Hades

Ee MORE THAN A THOUSAND years before the fifth

century A.D., when the whole world changed, the religion of Greece
and Rome, with its pantheon of Olympians, was the normal, conservative
one for what we still think of as the civilized or “classical” world of the
Mediterranean peoples. This was the religion that decent people believed
in; anything else was considered archaic, anarchic, exotic, barbaric, or
radical. The Greeks fought the Persians, and the thought that the Zoroas-
trian religion of Darius and Cyrus would ultimately have more effect than
their own upon the Mediterranean world would have struck them as ir-
rational. That the peculiar customs of the Jews would carry even more
influence would have seemed preposterous.
The Greek writers whose names and works have come down to us
wrote poetry, or plays, or history, or philosophy, rather than dutifully
recording sacred writ, and they saw no harm in presenting their own opin-
ions. It was a very new kind of writing, allowing for personality, flourishes,
and a certain amount of departure, playful or poetic, from orthodoxy.
Actually, since poets and artists left the records, it is hard to say just what
Greek orthodoxy was. Certainly there was no separation of good and evil
as in Zoroastrianism; each Greek god—and there are hundreds of instances
in literary tradition to prove it—was capable of both righteous and vin-
dictively destructive behavior.

20
 Cale Se Sele GeAG I MEGA DBE ES

By tradition, Homer and Hesiod, whose poems were the first written
down in the new alphabet borrowed and adapted from the Phoenicians, lived
in the eighth century B.C. Hesiod is less read than Homer today, but his
Theogony, which relates Greek creation myths and legendary history and
lists the gods and minor deities, is the essential foundation for an enormous
body of literature. Later mythographers, trying to order and institutionalize
Greek religious literature, abandoned some of his more fanciful images such
as that of the great house of Styx (the river of Hades personified as a goddess)
with its silvery pillars reaching to Heaven, but poets, ancient and modern,
have always loved and often echoed him.
Hesiod tells us that Erebus and Tartarus, the upper and lower realms
of Hades, were born, together with Night and Earth, itself, from the
primeval Chasm. He narrates the bloody battles of the gods. First, Uranus,
the Sky God, fathered the Cyclops on Mother Earth. When they rebelled,
he threw them into Tartarus, a place as far below the earth as the earth is
below the sky; an anvil falling from Heaven would reach it in eighteen
days. A guarded bronze wall runs around Tartarus, surrounded by Night.
Within it is the Abyss, where a man could fall for a year and not touch
bottom. The mansion of Hades and “‘fearful Persephone” is there, guarded
by the Hound of Hell.
Homer’s Odyssey is the earliest well-known story of a visit to the Land
of the Dead. It is so well known that most people forget that it never
happened. Odysseus and his shipmates, who are told by the witch Circe
that they must go to the underworld, never actually get there, though
Odysseus does manage to see many of the famous sights of Hades.
Odysseus, the Ithacan soldier-king, after fighting the Trojan War for
ten years, has run into serious obstacles in his attempt to get back home.
The gods, particularly the implacable Queen Hera, are hostile. The shade
of Tiresias, said to have been the wisest of mortals because he lived at
varying times as both a man and a woman, may be able to help, if Odysseus
is brave enough to consult him.
To do this, Odysseus must sail north to the Grove of Persephone, the
Queen of Hades, where the underworld rivers Phlegethon and Cocytus
flow into the Acheron. At the mouth of the cave there, he must sacrifice
a young ram and a black ewe so that their blood will flow into a trench.
Attracted by the smell, ghosts will flock from the cave mouth, but he must

Ja|
(ets. Jae
WO Roe Oe ste
aG We

hold them off with his sword until Tiresias arrives to taste the blood that
will enable him to speak.
The ghosts arrive with “rustling cries,” among them Elpenor, a young
sailor so newly dead that his shipmates did not yet know he was missing;
a memorial is promised for him so that he can reach Hades proper. Tiresias
comes to taste the blood and to deliver a dour presentiment of the future.
Odysseus sees his mother and asks why she does not acknowledge him.
He learns that she cannot speak until the blood has given her temporary
strength. She sips, they speak, and he tries to embrace her but, like Gil-
gamesh reaching for Enkidu, he cannot.
Other famous women draw near, starting a tradition, followed by other
poets, of “ladies first” in visits below. Odysseus is shocked to encounter
his former commander, Agamemnon, murdered by his own wife after
returning home. Other war companions appear, Achilles, Patroclus, Ajax.
He attempts to comfort grim Achilles: things are not so bad; why, even
here, he is treated like royalty. To which Achilles retorts that he would
rather be a wretched farmer’s serf than lord it over the “exhausted dead.”’
Because the souls come up through the mouth of the cave, Odysseus
doesn’t encounter Cerberus, the famous guard dog, or Charon, the boatman
of the Styx. But apparently simply by wishing to see them, he does catch
a glimpse of some of the celebrities of Hades: Tantalus tortured by hunger
and thirst, Sisyphus rolling his boulder, the Titan Tityus attacked by vul-
tures, the judge Minos, and the happy heroes Orion and Heracles. Fearing
that Persephone might send something really unpleasant next, he shouts
for his men and they row away as fast as they can.
There is a second journey to Hades (or nekyia—hence necropolis, nec-
romancer, and so forth) in {he Odyssey, near the end, after Odysseus has
come home in disguise to find a horde of his wife’s suitors despoiling his
estate and, after a dramatic battle, has dispatched them to the hereafter.
What follows is an interval, a small story within a story. Hermes, the gods’
messenger, comes as psychopomp for the souls of the dead suitors. They
follow him, “‘squeaking like bats” in a dark cave, past gray waters and the
shores of Dream to the end of the world where the dead inhabit the Fields
of Asphodel.
Just lines before this, the suitors seemed close to being thugs, but when
they are dead the poet invests their shades with sad nobility. They meet,
as equals, the. Greek heroes once again (discussing their own deaths, which

22
 GHEPAS
Seon leGeAe ly SHEA DE Ss

ROD:

Led by Hermes in his role as psychopomp, Persephone emerges from the underworld to join
Demeter and Hecate. This group of four chthonic figures may indicate that the vase was
used in the celebration of the mysteries.

seems to be their endless preoccupation The souls arrive before they have
been buried, countering the Elpenor story earlier. It is a strange interlude
that appears to go against what we know of Greek afterlife tradition. As
poetry, however, it is extraordinarily effective;}for the Greeks, orthodoxy
took a second place to poetry,\
The story of the rape and abduction of Kore the Maiden, later called
Persephone (“Bringer of Destruction”), became the basis for the Eleusinian
mysteries, an important religious cult of the Greek and Hellenistic worlds.
In the story, a young girl gathering flowers is seized by Hades, the master
of Tartarus, and taken below, where she refuses to eat or drink. Her mother
Demeter, the corn goddess, wanders the world mourning, neglecting the
crops; when at last Kore is found, she turns out to have eaten seven
pomegranate seeds, and thus must spend part of each year in the under-
world. This is a fertility myth, and long after worship of other Olympians

23
T ECE AR Se ORR YS © 25 Moen Ia

became perfunctory, men and women went through the Eleusinian initi-
ation rites, which are thought to have featured a ritualistic symbolic journey
to the netherworld in imitation of Demeter which ended with the triumph
of spring and rebirth.
Persephone the Queen of Hell is not much like Kore the innocent
maiden; like her Babylonian sister Ereshkigal, she is more fearsome than
her shadowy consort Hades, sometimes called Plouton (“Wealthy One”
—hence plutocrat, and so on) because of his subterranean metallurgical
holdings, the valuable objects often buried with bodies and the wealth of
crops that spring from fertile soil, but also as a euphemism to avoid saying
his other name and thus attracting his attention.
Another important cult centered on Orpheus the harper, who went to
the underworld down a passage at the back of the Taenarus cave to win
back his wife, Eurydice. The Orphic cult lasted for centuries and powerfully
influenced both the Greek and Christian religions. Dionysus, the wine god
with whom Orpheus was often worshiped, was also supposed to have gone
to the underworld to rescue his mother, the demi-goddess Semele; on the
other hand, he is sometimes called Persephone’s son by Zeus, the sky god.
The Dionysian-Orphic mystery cult, like the Eleusinian, certainly had to
do with death and resurrection, though Orpheus, like Gilgamesh, lost his
heart’s desire.
Artists in the Hellenistic period frequently borrowed the attributes of
Orpheus for Jesus Christ. For patrons who wanted to hedge their bets with
the gods, they also borrowed from Egyptian Horus and from Persian
Mithra, but|Orpheus-Christos, the Good Shepherd and Harrower of Hell,
was more popular than either)
Other Greek tales of the underworld are not so serious “Theseus was
the first popular Greek hero to attempt to harrow Hell; he failed humili-
atingly. Peirithoos, his boon companion, persuaded Theseus to help him
kidnap the famous Helen, later of Troy but at this point still a child. They
consulted an oracle who said mockingly, “Why not carry off Persephone
instead?” Peirithoos was foolish (and vain) enough to take this seriously,
and off they went down the Taenarus passage. On arrival, their host es-
corted them to a seat which proved to be the Chair of Forgetfulness—and
they stuck fast to it. For four years, they sat, tormented by serpents, the
Furies, Cerberus’s teeth, and the sardonic remarks of Hades.”
As befitted his stature as the Greeks’ favorite hero, Heracles was bold

24
 GIL IAS SS IE, ASG
IDY Joak)

enough to visit the lower regions twice. The eleventh of his Twelve Labors
involved bringing Cerberus to King Eurystheus. Prudently, he went first
to Eleusis to be initiated in the Mysteries, with Theseus as his sponsor.
Cleansing his considerable burden of sin apparently took four years. Then
he too descended by way of the Taenarus cave and terrified Charon into
ferrying him across the Styx. Even the ghosts fled from him, though snaky-
haired Medusa the Gorgon, apparently forgetting that she was dead and
therefore powerless, tried unsuccessfully to turn him to stone, as she had
turned so many when she lived.
Finding his old friend Theseus in the unlucky chair, Heracles heaved
him up, leaving a significant part of his hinder anatomy behind. Peirithoos
would have been next, but Hades interfered. Undeterred, Heracles seized
the dog. Grabbing him by all three throats (the number of Cerberus’s heads
varied, but tradition settled on three), he wrestled the beast down, rolled

Restrained by Heracles, Cerberus the Hell Hound leaps at cowardly King Eurystheus.
Greek vase painting from the sixth century B.C.
T Hie DRS) ORR WY OeE eresae

him up in his lion’s skin and dragged him off, with Theseus in indecorous
tow. Cerberus was presented to the king, who cowered in a jar until he
was removed.
On another journey, Heracles went to rescue Alcestis. This lady had
been married to a king named Admetus who was promised death would
spare him if he could find someone to substitute for him. His parents,
despite their advanced age, refused to do this, but his faithful wife took
poison and died for him. Heracles, a boisterous, then apologetic visitor to
the household, pursued her and had no trouble winning her freedom, as
Persephone considered it outrageous that a wife should be expected to die
for her husband. Euripides, the fourth-century playwright, wrote a play
called Alcestis, but it has no underworld scenes, being concerned, as well
it might be, with psychological tensions among members of Admetus’s
family.
These stories are divorced from any religious element. The Theseus tale
is a low take-off on the serious story of {Theseus’s descent into the Cretan
labyrinth (a symbolic Hades) to conquer the Minotaur] The underworld
had become, at least sometimes, a place to joke about. So it is not surprising
that, in 405 B.c., a few months after the death of Euripides, the comic
playwright Aristophanes produced The Frogs, a farce about a journey to
Hades starring drunken Dionysus, his clownish servant Xanthias, and an
oafishly musclebound Heracles posturing in a lion’s skin. Instead of fear-
some monsters, singing frogs guard the River Styx. The comic trio bargains
ineffectually with Charon, then blunders into an Eleusinian ritual (this
would have been pointed religious satire at the time), meets a barmaid (as
did Gilgamesh), and finally one of the judges of the underworld, to whom
they put their demand: There are no more decent poets, give us back
Euripides. The dead riot, taking sides between Aeschylus, a senior and
graver poet, and Euripides. A poetry contest is held, which Aeschylus
wins.
Much later, in the second century A.D., the prolific Lucian of Samosata
invented a useful satiric form in the Dialogues of the Dead: famous people,
safely dead, could speak their minds—really the author’s mind—on con-
troversial subjects, including politics and religion. For this he was nick-
named “the blasphemer.” The eighteenth century, admiring the sardonic
Lucian, revived the form, and it persisted in popular periodicals into the
twentieth century.

26
 Gib MX GS UIC Nb JS NOEs

Obviously, Merry Hell was fair game to the later Greeks; Aristophanes
was a popular playwright and in no apparent danger of arrest for blasphemy,
though Pythagoras claimed to have seen a vision of the soul of Hesiod
bound to a bronze column and that of Homer hanging from a tree sur-
rounded by snakes in payment for all the lies they told about the gods.

BEFORE TACKLING Plato, who complicates the Greek position, we

should pause to survey classical Hades and its inhabitants. The few mortals
to enter this shadowy underground kingdom go by way of the Taenarus
cave, near Marmari in the southern Pelaponnese. The dead emerge at least
once by another cave in Persephone’s magic grove, on an island inaccessible
to ordinary sailors. A newly dead psyche or soul is guided by Hermes the
psychopomp to the River Styx (““Hated’’), which has for its tributaries
Acheron (“Woe”), Phlegethon (“Burning”), Cocytus (“Wailing”), Aornis
(“Birdless,” but actually a mistranslation of Avernus, the Italian equivalent
of the Taenarus cave), and Lethe (“Forgetfulness”). The rivers were usually
abbreviated to four, not always the same four. Charon is the boatman who
must be paid to ferry the soul across the Styx, lest it languish forever on
the outer bank. Cerberus is the multi-headed watchdog. Persephone and
Hades (or Plouton) preside over Hades, or, more properly, Erebus.
The Titans are chained in lower Tartarus, except for Tityus, one of a
handful of imaginatively punished celebrities: for the crime of attacking
Leto, mother of Apollo and Artemis, he is pegged out over nine acres of
Hades while vultures eat his liver. Because he tried to flimflam his way out
of Hades, Sisyphus is condemned forever to roll uphill a rock, which always
falls back before it reaches the top. Next to him is Ixion, bound to a fiery
wheel for an attempted rape of Hera, Queen of Olympus. Nearby is Tan-
talus, who served up his own son, stewed, to the gods; now he hangs from
a tree over a lake, tormented by hunger and thirst but unable to reach either
the water in the lake or the fruit on the tree. Early Greek authors sometimes
punished him simply by suspending a stone over his head. Trying vainly
to draw water from that lake in sieves are the Danaides, sometimes fifty,
sometimes three sisters who murdered their husbands with hairpins.
* Monsters and demons live in Hades: dead Medusa; the Alastor, which,
like a @iaston devil, tempts men toward evil or folly and then punishes
them for it; the Erinyes, or Furies, spirits of vengeance who carry whips;

27
On a Roman sarcophagus, Charon ferries souls across the Styx.

the keres, frightening winged death-spirits, one for each living soul; Lamia
and the Empusae, vampirish creatures thought to be daughters of Hecate,
the witch goddess who is the third aspect of the Kore-Persephone-Hecate
trinity— Maiden-Queen-Hag.
Punishment for wrongdoing in the old Greek stories, though it may be
supernaturally administered—the Furies, for example, pursue Orestes after
he kills his mother—was not generally an after-death affair, except in a few
cases of crimes against the gods themselves. The agonies of Oedipus and
the famous inherited curse on the House of Atreus that blighted many
generations were ordained by the gods for the living, not the dead. It has
been suggested that the reason the early Greeks, unlike the Egyptians and
Zoroastrians, had no after-death accounting was simply because classical
Greece never developed a centralized judicial system.
Nevertheless, by the fifth century B.c.,’ Greeks had taken up Persian
or Egyptian ideas: Pindar wrote of an afterlife where bad men endure “toil
which is terrible to behold.’ Plato names the underworld judges in the
Gorgias: Aeacus, who judges Europeans; Rhadamanthus, who judges
Asians; and Minos, who holds the court of appeals. Good souls go to the
Elysian Fields, where, as Pindar says, “some delight in horses and athletic
contests, some in playing draughts, some with lyres and the whole rich-
flowered place blossoms; there are always sacrifices of varied kinds on the

28
 CTIA
Sron iG eAGIL Et (AIDES

altars of the gods mixed with far-shining fire.” Bad ones to Tartarus, and
the rest of us back to the Fields of Asphodel. The Orphics believed that
simple justice requires the souls of the dead to live on in order to receive
reward or punishment. The first-century B.c. historian Diodorus cites
Egypt as the source of both Orphic and Eleusinian belief and afterworld
ritual (Cerberus masks, for instance, which imitated Anubis masks), and
also of Homer’s use of Hermes as psychopomp in the second nekyia.
In the fifth century B.c., we also find for the first time an artist who
substantially influenced the history of Hell. For centuries, tourists and
pilgrims came to visit the great mural picturing the visit of Odysseus to
the realm of the dead that Polygnotus painted for a clubhouse at the Delphic
shrine of Apollo. It perished long ago (probably at the hands of Christians),
but it was carefully described by the Greek travel writer Pausanias in the
second century A.D. His lengthy detail indicates that Polygnotus felt no
literal obligation toward The Odyssey. Instead, he filled in what he reckoned
Homer had forgotten to mention—or what Odysseus might have seen had
he been braver and gone below. This included many eclectic mythological
characters, among them Orpheus. Also, possibly out of his own head (for
Pausanias, so many centuries later, knew nothing of such a myth), Polyg-
notus created a beast-demon which certainly catches the eye of the in-
fernologist.

The guides at Delphi say that Eurynomos is one of the dazmones in

Hades, and that he devours the flesh of the dead, leaving them only
their bones. Now, the poems of Homer, as well as the Minyad and the
Returns do not know of any daimon Eurynomos. Nevertheless, I will
describe Eurynomos and the way he has been represented: his com-
plexion is between blue and black, like that of the flies that gather around
meat; he shows his teeth, and a vulture’s skin is spread for him to
sit on.

Eurynomus could have been one of the keres or a derivative of Etruscan

Charun, who was also dark blue, but Pausanias does not seem to think so.
One would like to know if this inquisitive and well-traveled writer, who
took great interest in local myths and legends, had encountered tales of the
Jews of the Diaspora, which featured Beelzebub, “Lord of the Flies.”’ If
not, his simile is quite a coincidence.

2?
Platonic Hell

LAvt.O (C.-4,2.8
—€ . 3.4°8-B..C.).,. the philosopher aad
Pp teacher whose influence has been steady for two and a half millennia,
provides our best look at what not overly religious Greeks of the fourth
century B.C. actually believed might happen after death. As is usual with
Plato, he has it several ways and is joking in some of them, but the theories
he puts forward are coherent. The dialogues frequently deal with the destiny
of the soul; it is the entire subject of the Phaedo, the great and moving
deathbed drama of the philosopher Socrates.
Phaedo tells the story, for Plato was rather conspicuously absent. Fifteen
of Socrates’s friends are with him in his prison cell to share the last hours
before he must drink the deadly hemlock. His spirits are excellent, far
better than those of his friends, and he jokes that since the soul is the best
part of a philosopher, the fact that his is soon to be set free is hardly a
cause for mourning. Still, Cebes, a Boeotian, is fearful about the fate of
the soul,

that on the very day of death she may perish and come to an end—
immediately on her release from the body, issuing forth disposed like
smoke or air and in her flight vanishing away into nothingness.

Socrates immediately undertakes to reassure him, suggesting that this be

the subject of his last discourse with his friends, reckoning “‘no one who

30
 PIE I OY INGA She Ee

heard me now, not even if he were one of my old enemies the Comic poets,
could accuse me of talking about matters in which I had no concern!”
The discussion that follows illustrates, among other things, \Plato’s ideal
theory of forms, the idea that any reality we experience is only a corporeal
and imperfect image of an ideal. A chair, for instance, is crafted according
to a concept, however dimly held, of an ideal chair. This theory has left a
deep mark on Western religious beliefs. Plato’s writings, reinterpreted by
the Neoplatonists of the Hellenistic period, especially the Egyptian Plotinus
and the Jewish Egyptian Philo, were carefully read by both Gnostic and
orthodox early Christians and profoundly influenced such very un-Greek
ideas as those of Original Sin and subsequent salvation. Christians educated
in Neoplatonism chose to interpret Jesus in his corporeal form as repre-
senting a Platonic ideal of man (those who insisted on his divinity at the
expense of his humanity were treated as serious heretics, the Docetists).
Later, the Virgin Mary came to represent the ideal in woman. The kingdom
of God on earth would be an ideal version of life as early Christians knew
it. Leaning on Plato enabled them to escape Persian dualism: they could
acknowledge a sinful and corrupt material world, ruled by the “prince of
this world,” while denying that prince any lasting power.
In the Phaedo, Socrates, contending that knowledge is recollection of
the already known, proves multiple incarnations of the soul, which, like
the ideal form but unlike the body, is eternal and will with good behavior
at last pass “to the place of the true Hades, which, like her [the soul], is
invisible, and pure, and noble, and on her way to the good and wise God,
whither, if God will, my soul is also soon to go.”
’ But what of the souls of the wicked?
‘Such souls are held fast by the corporeal, says Socrates, and must thus
be newly imprisoned in other bodies, each according to the nature of the
life it has previously led: a drunkard in a donkey’s, a thug in a wolf’s. The
system seems close to Hinduism or Buddhism. Socrates 1s not being entirely
serious here; he playfully consigns the conformist burghers of Athens to
anthills and wasps’ nests. A philosopher, on the other hand, is welcomed
to the company of the gods.
Later he fancifully describes the “true earth” where the gods dwell: it
is a sphere above and encasing our round earth, but from it a vast chasm
pierces through to the earth’s center; there Tartarus is found. He describes
the river Oceanus, which girdles the earth, and the rivers of Tartarus:
4 . . .

31
Teale Jeli SI Qk ye Ose Jet ie ie 16

Acheron, Pyriphlegethon, Cocytus, and the Stygian leading to Lake Styx.

Souls of those “who have lived neither well nor ill” are ferried up the
Acheron to the Acherusian Lake to be purified of their evil deeds before
being rewarded for their good ones and sent back to be reborn as men or
animals. But he also shows us how far Hell had developed, even to the
point of being eternal for some:

But those who appear to be incurable by reason of the greatness of their

crimes—who have committed many and terrible deeds of sacrilege,
murders foul and violent, or the like—such are hurled into Tartarus
which is their suitable destiny, and they never come out. Those again
who have committed crimes, which, although great, are not irre-
mediable—who in a moment of anger, for example, have done some
violence to a father or a mother, and have repented for the remainder
of their lives, or, who have taken the life of another under the like
extenuating circumstances—these are plunged into Tartarus, the pains
of which they are compelled to undergo for a year, but at the end of
the year the wave casts them forth—mere homicides by way of Cocytus,
parricides and matricides by Pyriphlegethon—and they are borne to the
Acherusian Lake, and there they lift up their voices and call upon their
victims that they have slain or wronged, to have pity on them, and to
be kind to them, and let them come out into the lake. And if they
prevail, then they come forth and cease from their troubles; but if not,
they are carried back again into Tartarus and thence into the rivers
unceasingly, until they obtain mercy from those they have wronged:
for that is the sentence inflicted upon them by their judges.

Socrates allows some doubt about this account but “something of the
kind” may be true. The Gorgias repeats much of the same material. Socrates
tells the “very pretty tale” of how the gods divided up their territories,
and how the judges of souls were appointed, and how a soul deformed by
“license and luxury and insolence and incontinence” is stamped by Rhad-
amanthus as curable or incurable and dispatched to Tartarus. He adds that
the incurable always seem to be public figures. The point, he says, is not
whether or not the story is true but that “the best way of life is to practice
justice and every virtue in life and death.”
In the Phaedrus Socrates describes the soul as a winged creature. The
perfect soul flies upward while the imperfect one droops and settles to the

By
 Pe 1G Je IE OP INGO, 2BRIS
IL VE

ground and takes on a mortal body. However poetically Plato may have
meant this, it was read painstakingly centuries later by some of the Christian
church fathers, especially Origen (c. 185—c. 254), who was also impressed
by Plato’s account of how reincarnation might work. The image of the
winged soul that could move either upward or downward seemed also to
prove to him that Hell could not be eternal.
Plato closed The Republic with the famous story of Er, a soldier who
had what we would now call a “near-death experience.” He was left for
dead on the battlefield for twelve days before reviving to tell his tale. Er’s
vision was not of classical Hades: some of it seems to anticipate medieval
Christian visions (which it undoubtedly influenced) and some of the im-
agery seems Eastern. Virtuous souls ‘‘ascend by the heavenly way on the
right hand,” while sinners descend to the left and are met by “wild men
of fiery aspect” who drag them off and flay them with scourges and thorns.
On the twelfth day, the souls proceed to “the spindle of Necessity,” op-
erated by the Fates, to choose how they want to be reincarnated. Plato
uses the old mythological heroes to show how—‘“‘sad and laughable and
strange”——such choices are based not on good sense but on previous ex-
perience.
Off they go to drink the waters of Lethe (‘Forgetting’), then they burst
upward, like shooting stars, to be born again. All except Er, that is, who
finds himself lying on his funeral pyre, quite alive.
sIf an eternal soul is assumed, reincarnation—or metempsychosis, or the
transmigration of souls—is logically (if logic applies) a more satisfactory
solution to the judicial questions of sin and punishment, inexplicable human
suffering, and the worldly triumph of the wicked than a fixed system of
eternal after-death reward and punishment. By being morally dynamic and
part of the natural order—like the metamorphosis of a butterfly or the
cycle of the seasons—rather than static and decreed by inexorable super-
natural law, metempsychosis evades some very real difficulties. Many would
prefer to believe that sin can eventually be “cured.’’ Monotheists in a static
system must wrestle with an evil principle that has to be a part of God if
it is not opposed to him. But, though it has always been widely accepted
in Eastern religions, metempsychosis was rejected in the West. The Chris-
tian doctrine of the resurrection of the physical body (inherited from Zo-
roaster and also taken up by Islam) made it impossible.

33
The Roman Empire

pfs TOP Em Nig PERS PRES

IGNsG Vis Re Cael ee Nite SameaN)

mercenaries and Greek armies having pushed the Persians back to the
Middle East, Greek culture became dominant in the Mediterranean from
at least the fifth century B.C.; its only real rival was the old and static
civilization of Egypt. But when Alexander the Great set out to conquer
the world in the fourth century, Greeks quickly formed a network of cities
and Greek civilization reached from India to Spain. Alexander placed his
agents in power—the Ptolemies in Egypt and the Seleucidae in Syria and
Asia Minor. Eventually the Romans, whose culture was heavily influenced
by Greece, stepped in, battling barbarians through Gaul to the northwest
all the way to Britain, bringing the civilization of the Mediterranean with
them.
It has always worked both ways, of course. Soldiers marry native girls
and take them home or leave the army to settle down—either brings cross-
culturalization. The upper classes in a far-off city aspire to the aristocratic
Hellenic ways of their conquerors, while local peasants teach the newly
arrived infantry native traditions. Young people or the dissatisfied, pre-
sented with previously unimagined choices, want something new. Slaves
from Asia, Africa, Scandinavia, and the Slavic countries bring more strange
customs with them. The adjective “Hellenistic” supposedly refers to a
syncretic amalgam of Greek and Oriental cultures, but over the long period

34
 Wst18, IX CG) IML AN IN| Je IME 1B IEIR IB

that includes the Roman Empire the cultural blend was even richer than
that.
Never in the history of the world before, and never again until the
twentieth century, was there such an astonishing cross-fertilization of lan-
guages, cultures, customs, and beliefs. The old religions were assaulted by
a mosaic of novelties; entirely new gods like the Graeco-Egyptian Serapis
were fabricated, while old ones arrived from strange lands: Sabazios, from
Asia; Mithra, from Persia; Isis, from Egypt. The statue of Cybele, the
Great Mother, was imported from Turkey to Rome, and the Roman Senate,
belatedly scandalized by the epicene parades of her castrated priests, forbade
citizens to have anything to do with her.
The long cross-cultural period when Hellenism lapsed into the Roman
Empire conveniently stretches about four centuries in either direction from
the point that we call zero. At one end is Alexander the Great (336-323
B.C.), at the other Constantine (A.D. 306-337), also called the Great. An
important man of ideas, including ideas about Hell, also stands at approx-
imately either end: Plato of Athens and Augustine of Hippo.
Romans, though pious, were not much for myth-making. Their native
religion was a form of animism quite similar to Japanese Shintoism: groves,
streams, even single trees had their own gods, and so did households and
courtyards and each function or aspect of daily life. Each man had his
genius and each woman her juno, a concept that passed into Christianity
as that of the guardian angel. There were literally thousands of numina;
virtually everything that had a name had a numen. For their more important
gods, of the sky, sun, moon, sea, harvest, and hearth, and the concepts of
love, war, marriage, wisdom, and so forth, they adopted Greek myths
wholesale, efficiently filling in their own gods’ names as protagonists of the
stories.
Soldiering in foreign parts, they did exactly the same thing as they
marched up to the local shrines. A statue of a maiden thus marked the
shrine as that of Diana, no matter who the resident Gauls might think she
was, and she would be honored accordingly. The practice worked well:
since the armies displayed respect and piety, they managed to avoid much
religious conflict. Even in the later empire, the Roman attitude was more
or less that of the insouciant Mrs. Patrick Campbell: “Anything you like,
as longas you don’t do it in the road and frighten the horses.” Cybele’s
flagrant priests violated that code, and so did obdurate Christians who

39
AP isle el WS ah Ik ye xvIe Isl Ie IG Ie

would not concede unto Caesar what was by that time his divinity. Their
behavior was, by Roman standards, disrespectful and disorderly.
The widespread Hellenistic mystery cults heavily influenced early Chris-
tianity. For example, the Seven Deadly Sins, which Christians appropriated
both iconographically and geographically in their own views of Hell, were
a Mithraic formulation which looked back to Zoroastrianism, which gave
mystic significance to the number seven. As the dead soul rises through
the gate of Capricorn, the Mithraic story went, it passes through the seven
heavenly spheres, shedding in each the appropriate vice: the Sun—Pride,
the Moon—Envy, Mars—Anger, Mercury—Greed, Jupiter—Ambition,
Venus—Lust, Saturn—Sloth: Mithra also gave us December twenty-fifth
as God’s birthday, the Chi-Rho sign which Christians appropriated, and,
together with other cults, a persisting interest in astrology and numerology.
Latin poets embellished the old Greek stories and contributed a few
additions to the underworld anthology: the spectacular set piece from Vir-
gil’s Aeneid, Virgil’s and Ovid’s Orpheus stories, Psyche’s girlish adventure
in Apuleius’s Golden Ass, Cicero’s Scipio’s Dream, which deals more with
the positive than the negative afterlife, and Plutarch’s Vision of Thespesius,
which looks backward to Plato’s Er and forward to medieval dream visions.
The Romans changed a few names: Plouton or Pluto was sometimes called
Dis Pater, Dis being a contraction of Dives—hence “Father Rich Man.”
Persephone became Proserpine and possibly less formidable than her Greek
counterpart; Hermes became Mercury.
The Aeneid, written between 30 and 19 B.c., was thoroughly researched
by the poet, then living in Rome. Virgil’s model was Homer, though the
underworld scenes show that he also knew his Plato. Virgil’s is undoubtedly
the best-known description of the Land of the Dead, if only because, until
a generation or so ago, Virgil was regularly taught in high schools all over
Europe and America.
The hero of the epic is Aeneas, a Trojan who fought in the great war.
Like Odysseus he is on a journey; he must find a new home since Troy is
devastated. He goes to the underworld to seek advice from his dead father,
Anchises, on how to avert the wrath of his implacable enemy, Juno, the
Roman equivalent of Hera. There is no question of his luring the ghostly
dead into the open; Aeneas is prepared for descent. The Cumaean Sibyl,
or priestess, is his guide, and his magical protection against the horrors of
the Land of the Dead is the sacred golden bough.

36
 DerieE eRe OsMENEN TE MEP ERS

As in The Odyssey, the crew prepares a blood sacrifice before the cave
mouth, this time at Cumae, near modern Naples. This location is spe-
cific—Hell is under Italy, not in some otherworldly location. Virgil sets
the scene with macabre special effects: howling dogs, clammy caves, noxious
fumes, earthquakes, eerie cries. Hollywood owes a lot to Virgil.
Limbo appears for the first time, a place where “pauper souls” must
wait for a hundred years or until they have been properly buried—the
Romans appreciated correct bureaucratic form. To his dismay, Aeneas rec-
ognizes three of them, but the Sibyl promises to use her influence as a
priestess to redeem them later. They go past the caves of Sleep (Virgil was
attentive to Hesiod and Homer: these are the caves the dead suitors passed;
Romantic poets would visit them later), cross the river with curmudgeonly
Charon, throw a sop to Cerberus, pass the hall where Minos judges, en-
counter women, first among them Dido, Aeneas’s tragic, suicidal lover,
who turns her face away from him. Next, the heroes appear, Trojans this
time instead of Greeks, with their own gloomy war stories.
The Sibyl hurries him along the right-hand fork of a divided road, the
one that leads past the house of Dis to the Elysian Fields. But Aeneas stops
to peer to the left, across a fiery river, at a triple-walled citadel secured by
a mighty gate atop which perches one of the Furies. From inside he hears
groans, the thud of the lash, the clanking of chains. Rhadamanthus has
sent them there, the Sibyl tells him, to be avenged by the “savage sister-
hood” and the horrible fifty-headed Hydra before falling into the abyss.
The Sibyl points out the usual celebrities—the Titans, Tityus, Ixion,
Peirithoos, Theseus (when poets need him, Theseus returns to his chair).
But here are ordinary sinners too, those cruel to their relatives, misers,
adulterers, traitors. If the Sibyl had a “throat of iron,”’ she says, she could
not relate all their sins.
Virgil’s is the first thoroughly graphic description of Hell, and one of
the best. Though all the images in it were current and general to the era,
vivid art has a way of fixing general ideas into quite specific shapes. Virgil’s
impact was enormous, not only on later poets and storytellers like Dante,
who would invoke him as guide and mentor (and who himself forever
changed Hell’s map), but on the men who hammered together the early
guidelines for Christian cosmology: Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Ter-
tullian, and especially Augustine, who quoted him frequently.
The rest of the underworld visit is anticlimactic, though not to Virgil,

af
Wats Take WIR Oye isi dg, Ie le

Map of Virgil’s Lower World

whose patriotic point lay in linking royal Roman lineage to the noble house
of Troy. Anchises appears and explains how the afterlife works: it is close
to Er’s description. Then there is the proud parade of Aeneas’s descendants,
showing off the future glory of Rome. Aeneas is so enthralled by the
spectacle of his progeny that he nearly forgets to ask about Juno; he knows
now he will live to father a line. Finally, he and the Sibyl pass out, oddly,
through the false Gate of Ivory as opposed to the honest Gate of Horn.

38
 Wistis IR Oy WL AN IS) JE IMC IP JLIR TE

PLUTARCH (c. 46-c. 120 A.D.) was actually a Greek, but he lived for
some time in Rome. Because of his popularity throughout the Middle Ages,
his Vision of Thespesius is of considerable interest. Its form is like that of
the Er story: a reprobate named Thespesius suffers a severe fall and is left
for dead. Three days later as he is about to be buried, he revives and tells
of his “near-death” vision. His spirit was borne into the realm of a few
bright stars, where he saw the souls of newly dead men and women in fiery
bubbles, some of which rose, others fell in disorder, and some seemed
uncertain. Rising souls shone purely, others had scaly spots on them, some
were entirely covered with these spots. A cleansing punishment was meted
out by Dis the judge, but some cases were incurable, and one of the Erinyes
chased these from place to place, tormenting them with miseries till they
fell into the abyss. Thespesius found his own father in the place of the
damned; he confessed that he poisoned some of his guests for their gold.
Souls writhed in torment, some with their entrails torn out. Three dreadful
lakes were near, one of boiling gold, one of freezing lead, one of iron
shards, and demons tossed souls from one to another. The last things
Thespesius saw were the souls undergoing “correction,” by being ham-
mered and pummeled brutally to get them “in shape” for being sent back
to another life. This book looks forward to the Christian era, while Lucius
Apuleius’s Golden Ass, a much sunnier contemporary work, looks back-
ward: pretty Psyche has to go to Hades to fetch a magic box of beauty
and, like so many others, disobeys the warnings. Luckily, her adventure
ends happily ever after.

39
Sheol

fe sBaw Ss, 00D. Gare D. S-O.E, Byln.va Bay the evidence of the
Old Testament, were either the least morbid or the least imaginative
of the Mediterranean peoples. Unlike their neighbors, they had no rela-
tionship with the dead; they did not worship them, sacrifice to them, visit
them, hope to reunite with them in an afterlife, nor anticipate any kind of
interaction with Yahweh after death—dquite the contrary:

I am as a man that hath no strength: Free among the dead, like the slain
that lie in the grave, whom thou rememberest no more: and they are
cut off from thy hand. (Ps. 88.4-5)

The dead were, in fact, unclean.

The Hebrew word Sheol occurs frequently in the Old Testament; some-
times it is translated as ‘““Hell,’’ sometimes as “the grave,” and sometimes
as “the pit,” but nowhere does it seem to indicate anything other than the
place in which a body is laid to rest, except when used metaphorically to
indicate depression or despair. At times Sheol is likened to a prison. A
second word sometimes translated as Hell is Gehenna, which means simply
the valley of Hinnom, a sort of garbage heap or town dump where, in
addition to refuse, the bodies of criminals and animals were thrown into

40
 SHEL EA@Ove

fires, which burned perpetually for sanitary reasons. Human sacrifices to

the pagan god Moloch were said to have taken place there in earlier days.
The name Gehenna served as a metaphor for an unpleasant place and also
as a curse, for death in such a place would have indicated a life far removed
from the laws of Yahweh. Other terms used occasionally were Abaddon
(“Destruction”) and Bor (“the pit’’).
Israelites may have shared with their Mesopotamian neighbors some
notion of a dry and dusty underground venue for a shadowy afterlife; it
would have been from that place that Samuel’s ghost or shade appeared at
the summons of the Witch of Endor (1 Sam. 28.7). One short diatribe in
which the prophet Isaiah curses the king of Babylon is entirely Babylonian
in its imagery:

Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it
stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it has
raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. All they shall
speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou
become like unto us? Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the
noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover
thee. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!
how art thou cut down to the ground which did weaken the nations!
For thou has said in thy heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt
my throne above the stars of God: I will also sit upon the mount of
the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the
heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be
brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. (Isa. 14.9-15)

This tricky passage has been cited as a biblical voucher for both the
existence of an Israelite Hell and the fall of Lucifer. In context, however,
it is quite specifically directed at the king of Babylon. It alludes to the story
recounted in First Enoch, described on page 45, but only metaphorically.
Its message is exactly the same as the one Enkidu reported to Gilgamesh,
that great kings are brought low in Ereshkigal’s domain. Indeed, in sending
a Babylonian king to a Babylonian Hell, the prophet appears to be making
a grim joke.
A similar curse, or “lamentation,’ is directed by Ezekiel against the
>

king of Tyrus (Ezek. 28. 1-23; see page 61).

4]
THE His TOR Y OoR EEE

A few tantalizingly brief passages do hint at an eschatological under-

current in Jewish thought. The first are also from Isaiah, dated from the
third or fourth century B.C. Speaking of “other lords” than Yahweh “‘who
have had dominion over us,” the prophet says:

They are dead, they shall not live; they are deceased, they shall not rise:
therefore has thou visited and destroyed them, and made all their mem-
ory to perish. (Isa. 26.14)

By contrast, it would seem, Yahweh’s own people will live.

Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise.
Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of
herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead. (Isa. 26.19)

Another is from the Book of Daniel, which has been given the date of
165 B.c. At the time of apocalypse, the archangel Michael will appear, and
a period of great distress will ensue before deliverance:

And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some
to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
(Dane 12 12234

These passages are thought to show a progression of Persian influence. In

Isaiah, the unworthy do not wake at all; in Daniel, they wake to “shame
and everlasting contempt.” Note that both passages accept the resurrection
of the physical body, an idea that may even have predated Zoroaster.
More Jewish evidence for belief in resurrection comes from Second
Maccabees, usually printed in the Apocrypha in the English Bible. Second
Maccabees is one of several historical texts that chronicle a courageous and
successful Jewish uprising against Syrian encroachment in the second cen-
tury B.C. The relevant seventh chapter is a gruesome account of the torture
and execution of seven pious Jewish brothers and their mother. Their crime
was their refusal to eat pork. The dying statements of brothers number
three, four, and seven, and also of their mother, all indicate confidence
that their mutilated bodies will be resurrected whole by Yahweh—who
will also wreak vengeance on their tormentor.

42
 SEE
En @) 1s

Evidence of more change in Jewish eschatological thinking by the first

century A.D. comes from both the New Testament and the Jewish historian
Flavius Josephus. They document friction between the Sadducees, conser-
vative aristocrats who rejected the “foreign” concept of resurrection, and
the Pharisees, populists who embraced it (Mark 12.18; Matt. 22.23; Luke
20.27; Acts 23.8). The word Pharisee is thought to refer to Persia, just as
a Bombay Zoroastrian is a Parsi. St. Paul was a Pharisee before his con-
version, and so was Josephus; by the time he died, some twenty-five years
after the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, virtually all surviving Jews
were Pharisees. Reform Judaism, it should be noted, does not accept
resurrection.
Josephus, writing shortly after the Jewish war against Rome of A.D.
66-70, tells us of a third group, the Essenes. These monastic brothers,
heavily influenced by Neoplatonism, envisioned an afterlife, not a physical
resurrection but a resurrection of the soul separated from the body. The
Jewish War shows how similar ideas were cross-fertilizing the sects of the
Roman Empire.

It is indeed their unshakable conviction that bodies are corruptible

and the material composing them impermanent, whereas souls remain
immortal forever. Coming forth from the most rarefied ether they are
trapped in the prison house of the body as if drawn down by one of
nature’s spells; but once freed from the bonds of the flesh, as if released
after years of slavery, they rejoice and soar aloft. Teaching the same
doctrine as the sons of Greece, they declare that for the good souls there
waits a home beyond the ocean, a place troubled by neither rain nor
snow nor heat, but refreshed by the zephyr that blows ever gentle from
the ocean. Bad souls they consign to a darksome, stormy abyss, full of
punishments that know no end. I think the Greeks had the same notion
when they assigned to their brave men, whom they call heroes or demi-
gods, the Islands of the Blest, and to the souls of the wicked the place
of the impious in Hades, where according to their stories certain people
undergo punishment—Sisyphus and Tantalus, Ixion and Tityus, and
the like. They tell these tales firstly because they believe souls to be
immortal, and secondly in the hope of encouraging virtue and discour-
aging vice, since the good become better in their lifetime through the
hope of a reward after death, and the propensities of the bad are

43
Tt Ey Beales Ora BOE awvil ae ices

restrained by the fear that, even if they are not caught in this life, after
their dissolution they will undergo eternal punishment.

The first and second centuries, for Jews, are thought of not primarily
as Roman or Hellenistic or late antique, and certainly not as Early Christian,
but as the time of the destruction of Jerusalem and the beginning of the
Diaspora. The Book of Enoch and the Book of the Secrets of Enoch (known
as First and Second Enochs, or “Ethiopic” and “Slavonic”’) date from this
period (perhaps earlier), and are thought to have been written in Egypt by
refugees, probably in Greek, as was true of the contemporary New Testa-
ment. Though demoted to non-canonical “pseudepigrapha,” they have been
closely studied by scholars looking for clues to Jewish thought and legend.
In Second Enoch, Yahweh reveals his secrets to Enoch and allows him,
in the 365th year of his life, to measure and record the particulars of the
whole earth, and the ten heavens, the third of which contains both paradise
and Hell. Enoch is speaking:

And those two men [angels] led me up the north slope and showed me
a terrible place. It had all manner of tortures: cruel darkness, dim gloom.
There was no light but that of murky fire. It had a fiery river and the
whole place is everywhere fire, everywhere frost and ice, thirst and
shivering, while the fetters are cruel, and the angels fearful and merciless,
bearing sharp weapons and merciless tortures. I said, “How terrible is
thissplacesa(24Eaio.chr2:)

Those who break any of the Ten Commandments go here forever, as

well as those who practice greed, lack of charity, child abuse, witchcraft,
or magic. Fire and ice are both on hand; ice was not present in the Greek
and Roman underworlds. First Enoch gives an entirely different scenario:

I saw how the winds stretch out the vaults of Heaven and have their
station between heaven and earth. These are Heaven’s pillars. I saw
columns of heavenly fire and among them I saw columns of fire fall,
beyond all measure of height and depth. And beyond that abyss I saw
a place which had no firmament of the heaven above and no firmly
founded place beneath it. There was no water on it and no birds; it was
a horrible wasteland. There I saw seven stars like great burning moun-

44
 SEG EZ@RIr

tains, and when I asked about them the angel told me: “This place is
the end of Heaven and earth. It has become a prison for the stars and
the host of Heaven.” And the stars which roll over the fire have trans-
gressed the Lord’s commandments in the beginning of their rising, for
they did not appear at their appointed times. And God was angry with
them and bound them for ten thousand years until their guilt was ap-
peased. (1 Enoch17)

What seems remarkable about this passage is its echo of Hesiod. The col-
umns of fire that reach from Heaven down to the abyss are like the silvery
pillars of the House of Styx; the situation of the imprisoned angels (whom
both books of Enoch identify with the Grigori, or Watchers of Genesis
VI.1—7) 1s like that of the Titans in Tartarus. The Book of Revelation also
equated fallen angels with falling stars.
The fourth-century Haggadah gives a lively account of Satan’s fall—in
this version because he refused to give homage to Adam even after it was
proved that he lacked Adam’s great talent, that of beast-naming—and of
Adam’s first wife, the feminist demon Lilith. She was sister to that trou-
blesome Babylonian demon, Lilitu; here she rejects Adam because, in sexual
intercourse, he insists on being on top. The Haggadah’s Hell is embroidered
in the Oriental fashion with snakes and scorpions but no one is in it, at
least not on the Second Day when it was created. (Paradise was not made
till the Third Day, which may indicate their order of requirement.)

45
Gnosticism

NOTHER IDEA OF HELL CURRENT during

the over-
ae period of late antiquity was that people are in it even as they
proceed about their daily life. This pessimistic view is usually labeled Gnos-
tic, though it cropped up over and over again in the widespread Christian
heresies of the Middle Ages, and more than a glimpse of it informs orthodox
Christianity. Scholars used to separate Gnostics into “Jewish” and “‘Chris-
tian” heretics or freethinkers of the first three or four centuries after Christ,
but since the recent discoveries of manuscript libraries at Nag Hammadi
and Qumran, they are more cautious. The idea that we live in an inferior
shadow of a better world could just as easily be pinned on pagan Plato,
who said once that our world “is necessarily haunted by evil.”
The most common Gnostic myth goes more or less as follows: An aeon
or angel named Sophia (““Wisdom’’) greatly admired the High Unknown
or Alien God—again, a Platonic formulation that appealed, as it still does,
to people who marvel at the universe but cavil at the concept of a personal
god, or a god who permits evil knowingly. Worshipfully but mistakenly,
Sophia sought to imitate the self-sufficient asexual creativity of the High
God, and this mistake caused her to fall from the clear, light, and pure
upper heavens. In her agony and despair, she brought forth a shapeless
abortion, which became the Demiurge, or Lower God, the creator of our
universe, of the world, of matter, and of human beings. He made all these

46
 CeO
yale Cul SeM

in total ignorance of the High God and Sophia, his mother; he believed
that he was the only god. Hence our world was conceived in ignorance
and folly, and so were we, for the god in whose likeness we were created
is the Demiurge. Whatever spark of the good or spiritual in nature there
is was breathed into us by Sophia, a heavenly exile trying to make amends
for her initial error.
Sophia’s story was coarsened by a continuing mythology which had
her reincarnated in a series of famous women: Eve, Noah’s wife, Helen of
Troy, and Mary Magdalene, to name four. But where the Gnostic myth
caught the imagination was in its interpretation of the incarnation of Jesus
Christ. If the world is Hell, or at least a kind of Hades or Limbo, ruled
over by an ignorant and ignoble Devil, then the descent of Christ from the
heavenly pleroma into a body of gross flesh and blood that must breathe
the impure air of a world made in error was quite literally a descent into
Hell. Its Promethean purpose was to harrow or plunder the unhappy do-
main of the Demiurge in order to save the souls of mankind by bringing
them gnosis, or secret knowledge.
Even when the early Church still possessed some of the flexibility of a
new, revealed faith, most Gnostic thought, certainly the Sophia story, was
unacceptable. The Alien or Unknowable God, while compatible with Neo-
platonism (and with Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover), was too radically dif-
ferent from the Heavenly Father Jesus had invoked in the Gospels, to
merge with the new Christian theology. The Crucifixion and Resurrection
lacked meaning if Jesus’s only purpose on earth was to bring an esoteric
salvation by gnosis. And the whole scheme lacked popular appeal, especially
as gnosis appeared to be limited to the privileged few.
The idea that this world was in the grip of the Devil had many Christian
proponents, however, as did the idea that matter, very much including the
human body, was inherently evil and gross. References to the Devil or
Satan as the god or prince of this world were common, as in the Gospels
when Jesus is tempted in the wilderness with “all the kingdoms of this
world in their glory” if he will only do homage to the Devil.
Possibly as a counter to perceived Roman decadence, a movement to-
ward asceticism, a kind of disgust with wealth, food, and sexuality, was
very much in evidence during late antiquity. This was true for Jews (the
Essene monks, for example) and pagans as well as Christians and Gnostics.
Until recently, godparents at a Christian baby’s baptism promised in its

47
SOTalis It WOU we (OE tat Ie 1 IL

name to renounce “‘the world, the flesh, and the Devil,”’ an echo of a time
when the three concepts were closely linked.
Early Christians and most Gnostics believed the Second Coming and
the Last Judgment were close at hand. Christians hoped for Heaven and
feared for Hell, while Gnostics aspired to achieve the heavenly pleroma by
way of their secret knowledge. Since Hell was here and not hereafter,
Gnostic punishment lay simply in not being saved. Though most of the
human race was doomed, the doom was no more dreadful than the Hell
already on earth. In contrast to the lurid imaginings of Christianity as it
developed, this fate seems both relatively benign and peculiarly modern.

48
Manichaeism

wie AND MANI ARE LINKED with the Gnos-

tics by tradition, though each would surely have denied the con-
nection. Marcion, a Syrian who lived in Rome in the second century,
considered himself a Christian and follower of St. Paul, though he taught
that there were two Gods: the capricious and often violent Yahweh of the
Old Testament he identified with the Demiurge—not evil exactly, but not
good and certainly not omnipotent. Thus he rejected the entire Hebrew
Bible and most of the New Testament, retaining only Luke’s Gospel and
Paul’s epistles, both of which he pruned considerably for his flock. Jesus,
in Marcion’s teaching, was the son of the True God, sent in a spirit of
disinterested benevolence as a ransom to the Demiurge who held mankind
in captivity but would pass away together with his inferior material universe
at the upcoming Last Judgment. Marcion’s following flourished well into
the fourth century, despite bitter opposition from orthodox Church leaders.
Mani, a Persian born around 215 in a Jewish-Christian community in
Assyria, set off on a highly successful mission to preach a new religion
when he was only twenty-four. His following was substantial throughout
Europe and Asia and lasted for at least a thousand years in the West and
much longer in the East, possibly into the twentieth century in China.
Though Mani was executed by orthodox Zoroastrians in about 276, his
dualistic system owed much to their religion. In it, too, opposing spirits

49
Ty Ee
Sel © CRGY. SORES blaring
leele

battle for control of the world. The God of Light is the primal spirit, and
his kingdom encompasses the heavens, the virtues, the angels, the beauties
of nature, and so on. From the kingdom of Darkness, “Matter,” personified
and identified with Satan or Ahriman, was born together with demons,
fire, smoke, unpleasant weather—and women. Adam was created by Ah-
riman in his own image, but imbued with “stolen light.” Eve, also his
creation, was almost completely a creature of the dark; her task was to
seduce Adam, and her weapon was lust (this theory would influence Au-
gustine and with him the history of Christianity). Their descendants have
varying shades of light and dark, but, in keeping with Eastern tradition,
men are always more “enlightened” than women.
Through the suppression of sensuality, right living (including vegetar-
ianism), and adherence to the teachings of Mani, the elect or perfecti can
gather a larger portion of light unto themselves and will ascend directly to
the Kingdom of Light after death. The unredeemed must go through a
process of purification in successive lives before eventually being admitted
to the light. Unrepentant sinners, at Jesus’s Second Coming, will fall into
the flames that will consume the entire world for 1,468 years. In a general
way, this procedure is not so very different from the one outlined by
Socrates in the Phaedo, or from the Buddhist one.
Manichaeism was a deliberate attempt to combine and supersede Bud-
dhism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Marcionism, borrowing from the
Gnostics as well. In the case of the Gnostics and Marcionites, it succeeded,
and most joined the sect. Like them, Manichaeans rejected the Yahweh of
the Hebrew Bible as a being to be worshiped. They accepted Adam, Noah,
and Abraham as patriarchal figures though, of course, not Moses and the
prophets linked specifically with the Jews. They accepted Buddha and
Zoroaster, and they accepted Jesus: Mani claimed to be, like Paul, his
apostle.
Manichaeism had the advantage of being a rather easy-to-understand
system, which explained the struggle of good and evil for control of the
spirit, the conflicts in human nature, and the need for and process of
salvation more clearly than many religions, including early Christianity,
which was in the process of sorting itself out. Manichaeism incorporated
a good deal of already familiar mythology, including the final struggle
between the forces of good and evil at the end of time, and its asceticism

50
 MAS INE eCs EL eA Ral conv

caught the temper of the period. Mani’s teachings gained ground quickly
in the Roman Empire, reached deep into Asia, and had it not been for
severe persecutions following the fourth-century conversion to Christianity
of the emperor Constantine, might have been even more persistent than
they proved to be in the West. Manichaean monasticism, modeled on
Buddhist religious life, strongly influenced Christian practice, as did that
of the Essenes. And Augustine, the most influential man in the history of
the early Church, was for nine years a Manichaen.

51
The Early Christians

Atti OF TAKS US), oT HB SE wisi Pharsee we. con,

See to become the essential Christian missionary to the Roman

world, is our first witness to early Christian thought. Paul, as he renamed
himself, never met Jesus, but his letters in the New Testament predate the
composition of the earliest Gospel, that of Mark (c. A.D. 70), and were
written more than twenty years before Luke wrote the Acts of the Apostles,
about his own travels with Paul. Paul speaks of Jesus as arriving in flames
at the Last Trump and “everlasting destruction from the presence of the
Lord and from the glory of his power” (2 Thes. 1.9) but goes no further
into after-death prediction.
The Christian doctrine of Hell certainly did not originate with Chris-
tianity’s first theologian. Paul in three places lists those who will not be
admitted to the kingdom of God: 1 Cor. 6.9-10; Gal. 5.19-21; Eph. 5.5.
They include unrepentant fornicators, idolators, adulterers, homosexuals,
thieves, drunkards, slanderers, swindlers, sorcerers, the envious, the quar-
relsome, the indecent, and the greedy. Instead of condemning these wrong-
doers to Hell, he taught that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 5.6), and
that is what he meant by “destruction.” The good would live, and sinners
would die. Centuries later, this would be called‘annihilation theory. Death
can be avoided through God’s grace and baptism in union with Jesus Christ,
and for believers Paul’s message was reliably positive: ‘We do all things,

a4
 SE ISLS IB AN IR IG 3 CSP IR ICS ININES

dearly beloved, for your edifying” (2 Cor. 12.19). Other disciples, Peter
(2 Pet. 3) and Jude, did warn of future punishment in their letters, though
not of flames.
Mark, who first strung the remembrances and stories of Jesus’s life
together in a continuous form, probably did not know Jesus but may have
known Peter. According to the fourth-century historian Eusebius, “he had
only one concern: to leave out nothing of what he had heard nor to include
anything false.”’ Mark does speak of “eternal damnation” in store for some-
one who slanders the Holy Ghost (3.29-30), but he mentions Hell only
once. Jesus is speaking to the disciples.

And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter
into life maimed than having two hands to go into Hell, into the fire
that shall never be quenched: Where their worm dieth not and the fire
is not quenched. And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for
thee to enter halt into life than having two feet to be cast into Hell, into
the fire that shall never be quenched: Where their worm dieth not and
the fire is not quenched. (Mark 9.43-48)

And so on for the offending eye. Given current beliefs, this could be taken
as colorfully hyperbolic repetitive rhetoric rather than a direct threat; note
that the individual is urged to correct his own transgressions.
(Paul’s traveling companion Luke, an educated man said to have been a
physician, based his own Gospel on Mark’s (or on a hypothetical common
source sometimes called “Q”’) and left this passage out. His Jesus urges
repentance in order to achieve the kingdom of God rather than to avoid
retribution. He does, however, tell the significant story of Dives and Laz-
arus, related below. \And, whether or not the Gospel according to John
was written by the same John who was Jesus’s disciple, it nowhere mentions
Hell. The Book of Revelation, once erroneously credited to John, is some-
thing else again.
This leaves Matthew. According to Mark, Matthew was the seventh of
Jesus’s original twelve disciples, and the Gospel of Matthew lists “Matthew
the tax collector.” Matthew’s Gospel relies heavily on Mark’s, however,
and there is not much to indicate that it is the work of an eyewitness. It
is thought to have been written sometime after A.D. 80, which makes the
identification unlikely. But it is on the Gospel of Matthew that much of
the Christian proof of Hell’s existence and purpose depends.

os)
TAR ES Sl OURS ys Os ale ge,

Matthew’s great innovation was to attach eschatological warnings to the

parables Mark attributed to Jesus. That this was his own idea is clear when
his gospel is compared to that of Luke, who repeats the same stories without
the warnings. Eschatology was vitally important to Matthew. He cites
Mark’s dismissal of bodily parts twice, first at the end of the Sermon on
the Mount (5.29-30) and then after the “Suffer the little children to come
unto me” sermon (18.89). In neither case do these repetitions sound merely
hyperbolic. His Jesus exhorts followers to open the strait gate of righteous
living rather than the wide gate that leads to perdition (7.13). He tells them
not to fear those who can kill the body but not the soul: “Rather fear him
which is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell” (10.28), adding that
“whomsoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my
Father which is in Heaven” (10.33). Annoyed with an impenitent crowd
and claiming that his miracles would have saved Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom
had they been performed there, Jesus says, “That it will be more tolerable
for the land of Sodom on the day of judgment than for thee” (11.24).
It is at moralizing the parables that Matthew’s Jesus excels. He takes
time and effort to drive home two poinits:|that salvation is possible only
through God represented by his Son, and that not to be saved is desperately
perilous) Explaining the parable of the wheat and the chaff, he says that at
the end of the world, “The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and
they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which
do iniquity: And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing
and gnashing of teeth” (13.4042). And again, good men, like good fish,
will be caught in angelic nets, while the angels will throw the worthless
“into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth”
(13.50).
In the temple, Matthew’s Jesus lays a long and colorful curse on lawyers
and Pharisees for their hypocrisy and greed and willingness to corrupt
others, crying, “Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape
the damnation of Hell?” (23.33). And finally, on the Mount of Olives, he
tells of the Last Days, of the Second Coming, a time of great distress that
will herald the birth of a new age. Then he relates a string of parables—
the wise servant, the wise and foolish virgins, the ten talents, the sheep and
the goats—all of which have a single theme, that the deserving will gain
eternal life, while the others will be cast “into outer darkness: there shall

4
 LSE ESA Ra Ye 1G OR Ss AEALNGS

be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (25.30) or “everlasting fire that is pre-

pared for the Devil and his angels” (25.41) or “everlasting punishment”
(25.46).
Only Matthew stresses these warnings. Mark and Luke do quite well
without them, and Paul, who relied on Luke’s Gospel to the point of
claiming it as his own, would not, we may suspect, have approved.

CURIOUSLY, THE essentially incontrovertible demonstration for ear-

ly Christians that'Hell existed as a place, of after-death punishment of evil-
doers came not from the admonitory Matthew, but from the Gospel of
Luke. Mark had told the story of the rich man who came to Jesus to ask
the secret of eternal life and was dismayed to find it contingent upon giving
away everything he had to the poor; this prompted Jesus to offer the analogy
of the camel and the needle’s eye (Mark 10.17-27). But Luke greatly ex-
panded Jesus’s insistence on the social responsibility of the well-to-do
toward the less fortunate with a number of parables and cautionary examples
on the subject of wealth and property, ending with an address to the
Pharisees, who had the reputation of being overly fond of their worldly
goods.
“There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine
linen, and fared sumptuously every day’”—he would be called Dives
(Greek: “Rich Man’’). At his gate lay Lazarus the beggar, whose sores the
dogs licked as they all waited vainly for table scraps. Lazarus died “and
was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom.” Dives died, too, and
went to Hell. Looking up from the flames, he begged Abraham to send
Lazarus with a drop of water to cool his tongue, but Abraham reminded
him that he had already had “thy good things.” Also there was a “great
gulf fixed,” so that passage was impossible. Dives begged to be allowed to
warn his five brothers, but Abraham refused, saying “If they heed not
Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose
from the dead” (Matt. 16.19-31).
The parables ofJesus in all the Gospels are rich with metaphoric allusion.
Luke’s later audience chose to take this particular parable literally, however,
using it to scope out the latitudes of Hell more clearly than they could
from Matthew’s vaguer references to the place of “weeping and gnashing

o)3)
TH SIA O KRY?
7TS Of Pree!

The story of Dives and Lazarus, from a medieval psalter

of teeth.” Hell (it was “Hades” in the original Greek) is a specific fiery
|place of torment “‘afar off’? and yet in view of Father Abraham, who held
Lazarus “‘in his bosom.’ >

Grammatical confusion in translation led to the “bosom” question. The

Latin Vulgate Bible read in sinu Abrahai; “sinus” in Latin means the fold
of a garment, hence bosom or lap. In medieval art, Abraham is usually
depicted with what looks like a kind of towel spread across his bosom from
which Lazarus and his privileged peers peep out like children. (Sometimes
an unlettered artist would get the story wrong, understandably confusing
Lazarus the beggar with the other biblical Lazarus, brother of Mary and
Martha, and would portray the beggar rising from the dead, in contrast to

56
 Te era Rie y Om R rS TA NES

Lazarus and afriend join the elect in Abraham’s bosom at the very moment that Dives
reaches the hot pot. From a medieval French psalter.

the dire fate of the rich man.) Medieval sages would argue long and earnestly
over how many souls were rocked in the bosom of Abraham. Was it just
Lazarus? What about Enoch, who “walked with God; and he was not, for
God took him”? What about Elijah, who had been swept up in a fiery
chariot? And just where was Abraham’s bosom anyway?
The difficulty lay in where to place Abraham, who, as a Jew, could not
have been admitted to a Heaven that, for the literal-minded, did not exist,
or at least was not populated by any save the heavenly host before Jesus’s
Ascension and was afterward, like a politically incorrect private country
club, restricted to Christians. The usual solution to the problem of deserving
pre-Christians was Limbo.

OF
JeGahis IJSh ICG aI ve OF Act Ie IE I

Limbo (‘“Borderland,” from Latin limbus or border) was a region bor-

rowed from the pagans but put to a new use. Christian tradition came to
include three Limbos. Limbo infantum was for unbaptized babies whom
nobody (yet) was willing to consign to Hell though they could not, without
the sacrament, go to Heaven; down the centuries there would be many
theological attempts to rescue these innocents. Limbo patriarchum was for
pre-Christians, particularly Old Testament patriarchs, and limbo paganum
honored pagans like Plato who were disadvantaged in that they had enjoyed
no opportunity to believe in Christ. Abraham would seem to belong in
limbo patriarchum and his bosom to be a sort of subdivision of it. Yet Jesus’s
parable made clear that Lazarus was in a paradise of sorts.
In addition to its obvious moral, the story of Dives and Lazarus illus-
trated the claim that part of the joy of the saved lies in contemplating the
torments of the damned. The early Church taught that this view proved
God’s justice and hatred of sin, and backed it by at least two other scriptural
citations—Revelation, 14.9-11, in which the wicked are to be tormented
with fire and brimstone in the presence of the Lamb and the angels, and
Isaiah 66.23-24, in which the faithful shall go forth and look upon the
carcassses of transgressors, “for their worm shall not die neither shall their
fire be quenched.”” Modern churches have quietly abandoned the abomi-
nable fancy (so dubbed by the nineteenth-century preacher Dean Farrar),
but centuries of artwork endorse it.

THE BOOK of Revelation barely made it into the New Testament canon
and finally did only because of a mistake in attribution. Its author is now
usually called John of Patmos to distinguish him from the author of the Gos-
pel according to John. It is an apocalyptic work thought to have been written
in the latter part of the first century as a protest against Roman dominion,
and particularly against the imperial cult of emperor worship. Domitian (81-
96), the current emperor, was a cruel and ostentatious man who insisted on
always being addressed as dominus et deus, “master and god.”
The prophetic visions of Revelation probably seem stranger to us now
than they did at the time, since the form looked back to traditional Jewish
apocalyptic literature, such as the books of Daniel and Ezekiel, often written
in response to imposed tyranny. The highly dramatic conflict presented is
between cosmic powers of good and evil, evil being represented by the

58
 Tie Beat
Ke Wee NGwEL ARs S oT IAIN) S

Roman Empire symbolized by a great red seven-headed dragon. The scene

is the end of the world, following scorched earth, the poisoning of both
salt and fresh water, volcanic eruptions, plagues of unearthly locusts and
horses, the slaughter of two-thirds of mankind, and terrible earthquakes.
Seven angels have blown their trumpets and God’s “temple in heaven”
is laid open, amid thunder, another earthquake, and a hailstorm. See
Plate 2:
A pregnant woman “‘clothed by the sun” appears, and the red dragon
tries to devour the son she bears. Instead he is snatched up to God, while
Michael and his angel troops attack “‘that old serpent called the Devil and
Satan, which deceived the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and
his angels were cast out with him.”
The dragon transfers its power to a grotesque “beast” rising from the
sea that is blasphemously worshiped by men. Further calamities overtake
the earth, until the Great Whore of Babylon (Jadi or Jeh, a figure from

Seven heads identify the beast from the sea, here being worshiped, with the red dragon
and the seven hills of Rome. The whore of Babylon, most unusually, has a beast’s head
here.

59
I al1 tel 1S IE Oy Ne Oye acl je 16 It

Zoroastrian creation mythology) who represents Israel’s ancient enemy

Babylon as the seven-headed dragon does Rome, the current enemy, 1s
overthrown, and Heaven opens.

Then I saw an angel coming down from the heaven with the key of the
abyss and a great chain in his hands. He seized the dragon, that serpent
of old, the Devil or Satan, and chained him up for a thousand years;
he threw him into the abyss, shutting and sealing it over him, so that
he might seduce the nations no more till the thousand years was over.
After that he must be let loose for a short while. (20.1-3)

Then Satan will come out to muster the forces of “Gog and Magog,
countless as the sands of the sea.”” Fire from Heaven will consume them,
and the Devil will be flung into the lake of fire and sulphur, together with
a “false prophet” to be tormented forever (20.7-10).
At Judgment Day, the sea gives up its dead, and so do Death and Hades.
_They will be judged on their records. Death and Hades are flung into the
lake of fire which represents “the second death” and so are those judged
unworthy (20.13-15).
Here, safely in the canon—though not altogether safely: Eusebius re-
ports a third-century bishop, Dionysus, expressing doubts about it—was
the approval for the radical Christian fringe, the millenarians, revivalists,
ecstatics, mystics, and visionaries who would make use of it. Christianity
would have had a much easier time without Revelation, though it would
be a less colorful religion.

THE FALL is a key metaphor for the Christian faith. Central to it

is the Genesis story of the fall of Adam and Eve from a condition of primal
innocence and Edenic bliss to a world of pain, loss, suffering, and death.
The Jews shared this myth, of course, and many other cultures cite a lapsed
golden age, but Christians magnified the meaning and consequence of the
original act of disobedience to underscore the significance of redemption
and salvation through their own new doctrines and disciplines. Original
Sin, Christianity taught, was transmitted to all of mankind from its first
parents, creating an atmosphere of corruption so intense that later sins
could not be avoided.

60
 Wishes 1 AIR LW GUSCIR
I Sal WN ANY S

The first fall in the Christian creation myth, however, was not Adam’s,
but Lucifer’s. (Some early Christians argued that Lucifer’s fall postdated
Adam’s, but tradition eventually decreed otherwise.) We have seen this
once-great fallen figure in the Jewish Second Enoch and, much earlier,
referred to in Isaiah’s mockery of the king of Babylon. The second biblical
reference to a fallen prince comes from the prophet Ezekiel who is laying
a long curse upon the king of Tyrus, dictated to him, he says, by Yahweh.
The king was once greatly favored:

Thou sealest up the sum: full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. Thou
hast been in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was
thy covering. . . . Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and
I have set thee so: thou wast on the holy mountain of God; thou hast
walked up and down in the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy
ways from the day thou wast created till iniquity was found in thee.
(Ezek. 28.12-23)

Most of the curse enumerates the evil in store for the king. Ezekiel
compares the wished-for fall to that of a splendid unnamed being, and his
lush description of how, before the fall, he glittered with jewels gave rise
to the belief that Lucifer had been the most glorious as well as the most
favored of the angels. He was even, heretically, called the elder Son of
God.
Lucifer (‘“‘Fire-bearer”) in Hebrew is Helel ben Sahar, “Bright Son of
the Morning.” Later tradition has linked him to the planet Venus and, some-
what ambiguously, to other fiery falling figures: Hephaestus, Prometheus,
Phaethon, Icarus. The pride that made him “sit in the seat of God” led to
his fall; this is the Greek Hubris so often punished by cosmic justice. The
final battle of Revelation was also interpreted as a primal battle, the war in
Heaven between Lucifer’s forces and those of St. Michael at the beginning of
time. After the fall, Lucifer, identified with the red dragon, became as hid-
eous as he had been beautiful—that explained the beast—and changed his
name to Satan.
The Gospel of Luke reports that Jesus told his followers, “I beheld
Satan as lightning fall from heaven” (Luke 10.18). In his second letter to
Corinth, Paul warned against false prophets, saying, “Satan himself mas-
querades as an angel of light” (11.14). By this evidence and that of 2 Enoch,

61
TE EOS
©, Reve Oak weieeaearls

Satan, the adversary, obstructor, or servant of the Old Testament, evidently

became identified with Lucifer, the fallen or fraudulent angel.
In the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, satan means “‘adversary”’ or
“opponent,” and when a figure named “the Satan” appears, it is always as
Yahweh’s angelic servant or agent operating against a man or men, certainly
not against Yahweh himself, in some less than creditable action. Neil For-
syth in The Old Enemy wonderfully calls him ‘a shady but necessary
member of the Politburo.” With Yahweh’s complicity, he murders Egyp-
tian children (Exod. 12.23), harasses Balaam (Num. 22.22-35), incites
treachery against a prince of Israel (Judg. 9.22—23), prompts King Saul to
dishonorable behavior (1 Sam. 16.14-16; 18.10-11; 19.9-10), sends plague
to Israel (2 Sam. 24.13-16 and 1 Chron. 21.1-30), entices Ahab into military

This ts thought to be the earliest known portrayal of the fall of Lucifer, c. 500 A.D. The red
dragon is metamorphosed into a still-handsome fallen angel—the beastly Satan was yet to
come. Up on the left is St. Michael. See also Plate 2.
Bax

62
 WABI VER IG OSU AR TG EIN INS

disaster (2 Chron. 18.1822), and torments Job. Scholars believe the char-
acter of Satan was often added to earlier manuscripts by editors seeking to
save Yahweh’s reputation; compare 2 Samuel 24.1-25 with 1 Chronicle
21.1-30, two accounts of the plague sent to punish King David’s “‘sin” in
attempting a census. Only once (Zech. 3.2-10) is Satan rebuked by Yahweh
for punishing Jerusalem too zealously; only here does he evidence any kind
of independent action whatever.
By the first century, when the Gospels were written, Satan appears to
have achieved autonomy as “prince of this world” in the Temptation in
the wilderness—though here, too, he can arguably be seen as God’s agent
testing Jesus’s mettle. (Unlike the Gnostic Demiurge, the New Testament
Satan is never credited with creating the world he is prince of.) Later he
successfully tempts Judas into betraying Jesus to the authorities, though
this also seems to have been preordained in the Passion drama. The older,
simpler obstructive meaning of the word persists when Jesus says to Peter,
“Get thee behind me, Satan,” as Peter attempts to dissuade him from the
actions that will lead to his arrest and crucifixion.
Jesus’s chief recorded activity, aside from preaching, is exorcism of
minor demons. Many other healers, magicians, and exorcists were in busi-
ness at the time; the difference was that Jesus operated through the power
of the Holy Spirit. The word demon comes from the Greek daimon or
daimonion and it came to be identified with diabolos, a word which, in the
New Testament, refers only to Satan himself. By the first century, there
was some indication among Jews that ordinary, ubiquitous, trouble- and
disease-making demons were subordinated to an arch-demon. Inevitably,
as the myth of Satan grew, pagan gods were added to the roster of his
lieutenants; one man’s god is always another man’s devil.
What Revelation did, despite or because of the confusion and inco-
herence of its text, was to offer plenty of room for synthesis and interpre-
tation of a number of allusions and legends, leading to a new myth. The
fallen angel was identified with the red dragon thrown down from Heaven
with his angels—‘“‘one third of the stars in the sky’”—who could now
themselves be identified with demons. The dragon was linked to a beast
like the fearsome and seemingly supernatural beasts of the Hebrew Bible—
Leviathan (‘‘Out of his mouth go burning torches, and sparks of fire leap
forth. Out of his nostrils a smoke goeth, as of a seething pot and burning
rushes. His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goes forth from his mouth

63
THE HaleSe Ours Yo aOer ie below

Satan sits on the red dragon identified with him in this twelfth-century floor mosaic from
the Cathedral of Otranto.

[Job 40.14-21]); Behemoth (‘“Lo, now, his strength is in his loins, and his
force is in the muscles of his belly. He moveth his tail like a cedar, his
bones are as tubes of brass, his limbs are like bars of iron. He is the chief
of God’s works, made to be a tyrant over his peers” [Job 40.16-19]); and
Rahab the sea-dragon.
Next, the angel-dragon-beast was linked with “that serpent of old”
responsible for the fall of Adam and Eve from Eden. The Gospels had
shown Satan as Jesus’s and Judas’s tempter; Revelation displayed him as
the original seducer and tempter of all mankind, the cause of our subsequent
sorrow and even of death itself.
By showing Satan in power with “the forces of Gog and Magog,” his
position as “prince of this world” was further established, at least until his

64
 gee AR ome eC er eRelesS
ale A INS

eventual defeat. The fact that the First Coming had apparently done nothing
to diminish Satan’s evident power on earth was also vaguely explained.
The Last Judgment following a final cosmic battle between the forces
of good and evil, already familiar from Zoroastrian and Mithraic writings
and from Jewish apocalyptic literature, confirmed the apocalyptic prophecy
in Matthew, and God’s adversary was identified as Satan.
Finally, unbelievers (those who worship the beast), the beast itself, and
its “false prophet” (associated with, though not always identical to, the
Antichrist) are all to be thrown into the lake of fire. After a long term bound
in “the abyss,” the Devil or Satan himself (the dragon) joins them and so do
Death and Hades, personified pagan death figures. After judgment, so do
the sinners among the dead formerly in their keeping. This is a significant
grouping of many heretofore disparate figures. By the Middle Ages, the
beast, the dragon, Death, and Hades would all have merged into Satan.
Early theologians labored over their difficult “factual’’ texts, seeking to
define the role of the Devil and his relation to God and man. On a simpler
story-telling level, the synthesis happened organically. Much of it was in
place by the third century, as we will see in the Gospel of Bartholomew.
Augustine, in the fifth century, put most of the last pieces in place, but
not until the Middle Ages did the attributes of Hell or even the name of
the Devil become conventionalized.*

*Other names: Satanel, Beliar or Belial (“Worthless”); Beelzebub (“Lord of the Flies’’); Beelzeboul
(“Lord of Excrement’’); Mastema (““Enmity”’); Azazel (““Wasteland’’).

65
The Descent into Hell

Ee MOST OF TWO MITDIDEENNG

A, the accounm ofgfe-
sus’s descent into Hell between Good Friday and Easter Sunday has
been integral to the complete Christian story-cycle of Jesus’s life, death,
resurrection, and ascension.| The New Testament source is, vaguely, Mat-
thew 27.52-53y where, at the moment of Jesus’s death, there is an earth-
quake, graves open, “‘and many bodies of the saints which slept arose.”
Peter’s first epistle (3.19-20) is more specific, saying that Christ “was being
put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: By which also he
went and preached unto the spirits in prison’ The passage goes on in a
murky way about Noah, the waters of the Flood, and the waters of baptism,
but on it rested the belief that, just after the Crucifixion, Jesus went to
preach to the souls of the revered Old Testament patriarchs and that these
then entered the Holy City, or Heaven. Or perhaps he preached to all the
dead, pagan and Jewish, even sinners.
Very quickly a more exciting story began to circulate. In it Jesus de-
scended to the underworld as a militant savior on a mission to rescue the
souls of the just. A Jewish version of this adventure, the*Testament of the
Twelve Patriarchs, dating from about 100 B.c., sent the Messiah-to-come
into the kingdom of Beliar (or Baal), here the chief of Hell, to rescue his
capuves.' By the third century, the Teachings of Silvanus and the Gospel of
Bartholomew had transferred the story from the still-awaited Jewish mes-

66
 Wise IDE.
S Cle INI INTe @y Jsiag
Je ge

A Harrowing from a thirteenth-century psalter. Note Eve’s attempt at modesty, and the
upper figure diving desperately toward redemption.

siah to Jesus. There are many references to the descent in early Christian
writing, but the most complete and influential account is the Gospel of
Nicodemus.\The first known written version is from the fifth century, but
it was undoubtedly widely known before that, and it was accepted as
canonical for centuries.
There are two connected sections. The first, known as the Acts of Pilate,
expands the account of Christ’s trial and execution presented by the New
Testament Gospels. The second is the Harrowing of Hell, related by two
sons of Simeon the high priest, who have temporarily risen from the dead
in order to bear witness to the great events following the Crucifixion, which
Satan arranged himself, but which backfired disastrously so that Hell had
to discharge its inhabitants.
Technically, "Jesus harrows not Hell but the Limbo of the patriarchs,
presented as a dark underground prison administered by Hades (from Greek
tradition) with Satan (from Hebrew tradition) as his worldly agent? It

67
 SESE JECI SS Wy OP Re ae ak Jel is It

features no tortures beyond what one might expect in an ordinary prison,

and the patriarchal prisoners, once they sense the outcome, are downright
obstreperous—which is, of course, why Nicodemus was loved. When Jesus
arrives, he defeats Satan and his demons, and, with important symbolism
for Christians, Death itself in the person of Hades.
The Harrowing accounted for a crucial period of time and for proper
disposal of the revered figures from the Old Testament, beginning with
Adam and Eve and including Abraham, who could now be placed above,
wherever he may have been at the time of Dives. It dramatized the Christian
promise of resurrection much better than any book in the New Testament.
leaethermoré. the Harrowing was vitally important to the Christian
image in its portrait of a virile, capable Jesus, not suffering on the cross or
ry, preaching to the poor, but battling demons, rescuing prisoners, righting
wrongs, and issuing orders like a triumphant warrior-prince. For many
people, the story of the great rescue and triumph over death may have been
the most attractive and comforting part of the new religion]
The Harrowing story presented difficulties, however. If Satan was de-
feated and imprisoned by Jesus, how can he still be with us? If his death
ensured the patriarchs’ freedom from Hades or Limbo, and implicitly the
future freedom of all good Christians, to whom was the ransom paid? To
the Devil? Some of the early church fathers thought exactly that, but others
were outraged by the idea—how could the Devil presume to bargain with
God?
Though Nicodemus does not exploit it, the device of separating Satan
and Hades is a clever literary way to subvert “ransom theory” to “sacrifice
theory.” If Jesus died not to appease or pay off an important adversary
(the Devil or Satan) but as.a sacrifice to symbolize, through the resurrection,
triumph over death, the second character of an abstracted Hades or Death
personified, separate from, and ruler over Satan the tempter/devil, is useful.
Nicodemus approaches the problem with a folktale version off “hoodwink
theory,” in which the Devil is tricked into thinking he has eliminated Christ
only to find his own downfall| However, since Hades, or Death personified,
disappeared from the story, not to return until the end of the Middle Ages,
theologians found the argument difficult.
No matter how its meaning was argued, the literal truth of the descent
was not in question. The Apostles’ Creed, the earliest statement of Christian
faith, declares:

68
The demons simply cannot believe what is happening to them. This painting by Andrea da
Firenze 1s faithful to the spirit of Nicodemus.

He descended into hell;

The third day he rose again from the dead;
He ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God the
Father Almighty;
From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

Later church creeds (except the Athanasian of the sixth century) excluded
the descent passage, which may indicate eventual uneasiness with the Har-
rowing story at higher intellectual levels. In the sixth century, Gregory of
Tours, who began his History of the Franks with the creation of the world
according to Genesis and included Jesus’s life, omitted any account of what
happened between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. On the other
hand, an Easter poem he composed for Pope Gregory the Great has the
lines:

Jesus has harrowed Hell: He has led captivity captive:

Darkness and chaos and death flee from the face of the light.

69
THE EUS TOR ee Owe Hy Esra

Pope Gregory and, even more importantly, Augustine were completely

matter-of-fact about the Harrowing, never questioning its historical oc-
currence and essential value to the Passion sequence. Through medieval
times, for nearly everyone, including the great majority of the clergy, the
story of the Harrowing was as securely fixed in mind as those of Adam
and Eve and the miracle of Bethlehem.

Wishes AN Wo CIstIk
Se

Like Matthew, Paul warned of false prophets, one in particular, who

would come to be known as the Antichrist, Satan’s evil counterpart to
Christ himself—we have seen him in the fiery lake in Revelation. The
millennium could not come until the Antichrist arrived, so there was much
speculation about his identity. The Roman Empire held no shortage of
emperors qualified for the role—Domitian, Caligula, Nero—but it was
more likely that he would be a spiritual leader and miracle worker. Simon
Magus of Samaria, the Gnostic magician who had a run-in with the apostles
Peter and Paul, was an early nominee. There were many others, until
Reformation Protestants decided the term must refer to the entire papacy,
and that they had been living through a millennium of false religion.
The millennium is a confusing term. Strictly speaking, it means the
thousand-year period of God’s kingdom on earth—the New Jerusalem or
the City of God—predicted in Revelation, or else to a negative counterpart,
which, in the murk of Revelation, seems equally predicted. This would
precede the Last Judgment and the end of history. But the term’s meaning
has changed, and now it nearly always refers to the Last Day itself. All the
earliest Christians were millenarians, and, later, Revelation was invoked to
explain why the apocalypse had not yet come though they continued to
await it. Millenarianism has been constant in Christian history and remains
surprisingly widespread today, despite the lesson of two thousand years of
failed hopes.
Artists portrayed the Antichrist in Hell as Satan’s son, often sitting on
his knee, or, later, leading the forces of Gog and Magog—pagans, unbe-
lievers, heretics, deliberate sinners—in the final battle of Armageddon
(named for a real Hebrew battlefield). He is not much of a factor any more
except in movies like Rosemary’s Baby.

70
The Last Judgment

ae LAST AND MOST COMPLEX of the essential Chris-

tian narratives regarding Hell concerns the Last Judgment, Dies Irae,
the Day of Wrath. The Hebrew Bible is full of references to the “Day of
Yahweh,” or “Day of the Lord,” when justice will finally be done; the
apocalyptic books, Enoch, Esdras, and Daniel, and the Jewish Apocrypha
look forward to this event, but with an important distinction from the New
Testament texts: the judgment is to be of the living, not the dead.
Matthew’s twenty-fourth book provides the gospel text for the Christian
apocalypse and Last Judgment. On the Mount of Olives, Jesus warns the
disciples of the terrible time to come, a time of wars, apostasy, “false Christs
and false prophets,”’ and “signs and wonders.” The universe itself will fall
apart. “This generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled,” he
says, then more evasively (Matthew was reporting this nearly fifty years
after Jesus’s death), “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not
the angels in heaven, but my Father only” (36).
Urging his listeners to repent in due time, he tells warning parables
ending with the sheep and the goats, which explains how judgment will
come about.

Before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one
from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he
shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. . . . Then

71
Ee SerOuUR TY) s@eH a ae
SEE

(AR
‘Qin
ro
J
 et AS Sei eee DAG avin ING I

shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed,
into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. . . . And
these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into
life eternal. (Matt. 25.32-33, 41, 46)

Matthew does not indicate that this is to be a judgment of the dead as well
as the quick, although Paul had added that essential difference in his widely
circulated letters (1 Cor. 15; 2 Thess. 9-12) and the Harrowing story later
confirmed it.
In the very early Christian era, when the end was expected any day,
there was nothing very complicated about belief in the Last Judgment
which, after all, rested on ideas that had been around for centuries. As time
went by, questions arose. If judgment was delayed until the Day of the
Lord, what happened in the interval between the death of the body and
that day? How could the body be resurrected after so much time? Would
damned souls be resurrected, or only the blessed?
These questions gave rise to the idea of Particular Judgment, by which
the destination of the individual soul was determined at death, as in the
Egyptian and Persian systems. The parable of Dives and Lazarus seems to
support an immediate resolution, and so does Jesus’s promise to the good
thief on Golgotha. Still, apocalyptic millenarianism argued against it.

The twelfth- and thirteenth-century mosaic from the Cathedral of Torcello in Venice
provides an overview of the complete Last Judgment. On the top level is the Harrowing or
“anastasis,” where Christ releases the souls ofAdam, Eve, David, and Solomon as foretold
by John the Baptist, at right. On the next level is the Second Coming, with Christ in a
“mandorla” held by the Virgin and John the Baptist, the intercessors, and flanked by the
saints and martyrs who have already achieved Heaven. In the center of the next level is
the “etimasia,” a throne with the Bible and instruments of the Passion. Angels blow the
Last Trump and to either side the creatures of the earth and sea give up dead bodies to be
resurrected. One level down, just over the door, an angel holds a scale while demons try to
weigh it down and Mary, below, pleads for mercy. To the left are the ranks of the blessed,
and to the right angels chivy the wicked toward Satan holding Antichrist on his knee. (For
a close-up of the wicked, see Plate 9.) On the lowest left are Abraham with a soul in his
bosom, the Virgin, John the Baptist, a “covering cherub” guarding the gate of Heaven,
Peter, and an angel as psychopomp.

73
TEES
a Oake Ye GOs a rig rales

Early church fathers tried to reconcile the ideas. In the second century,
Justin said that the souls of the good and the wicked would await the Last
Judgment in separate (and decidedly unequal) quarters. Tatian, writing at
about the same time, thought souls would sleep until the end of time; many
heretical and Protestant sects have agreed, but it is not Roman doctrine.
In the third century, Tertullian consigned all souls—except those of
martyrs, who would go straight to Heaven—to wait in separate and unequal
underworld limbos. By the fourth century, Hilary of Poitiers warned sin-
ners of immediate after-death punishment, even though eternal determi-
nation of the soul would wait until the Last Day. Augustine, in the fifth
century, declared two judgments, one immediately after death and one to
follow the resurrection. This became the rather loosely defined position of
the Western Church until it was refined by the doctrine of Purgatory
centuries later.
Because the Last or General Judgment is often mentioned in the scrip-
tures, and Particular Judgment never explicitly (we may take the accounts
of Dives and Lazarus and the good thief to be implicit), the church fathers
had to determine the difference between them. Ingeniously, in The City
of God, Augustine tied this difference to the doctrine of the resurrection
of the body.

Souls are judged when they depart from the body, before they come to
that judgment which must be passed on them when reunited to the body
and are tormented or glorified in that same flesh which they there
inhabited.

This could be taken as an enlargement of the separate and unequal Limbo

theory: the waiting souls of sinners would at once suffer the dire penalty
of loss of God’s grace (poena damni), but not until they were reunited
with their fleshly bodies would the tortures of the flames of Hell begin
(poena sensus). The waiting souls of the just would dwell in a delightful
and refreshing place (refrigerium) until admitted to the final bliss of Heaven
in their own glorified bodies.
The trouble with this interpretation was that it might give hardened
sinners some hope of a recess before the tangible punishments they de-
served. Also, it did not conform with the Harrowing story, which admitted
the patriarchs to the vision of God immediately at the time ofJesus’s death.

74
 etic ASS lees OFGRM
TE IN) oT

ED) ia niclix
ain micht: cba
5 tres wicca bo,
Powe wie wlozes 1W08thtse& | —
gecreula niferiys muenecntme. |e
i Malerhiclatronessy ef
cfpolose |
ANTEC EISCf MONTES DIT HINTOCAAML,|
Soomne thee amen
Wea mnfertcots Doms C&T Y
16; EE/CS
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are
A more economical Last Judgment from a French manuscript c. 1510. Old corpses
transformed into radiant new bodies and rise on the left for judgment while St. Michael
summarily ejects the unworthy on the right.

75
NaI Vel WSU
IR ve Opie Jet Je 0, it

And it was simply too complicated for ordinary people. Most Christians
have always believed that the soul is admitted at once to its reward, even
as they also await a Last Judgment, and they do not bother to reconcile
differences of time or degree.
Judgment Day was also to settle the fate of the fallen angels, as attested
to in letters from Peter—‘‘For God spared not the angels that sinned, but
cast them down to Hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness to be
reserved unto judgment” (2 Pet. 2.4)—and Jude: “And the angels which
kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved
in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day”
(6). During the first century, -fallen angels were like Titans, still prisoners,
not yet demons, prison keepers, torturers, or tempters.
As expectations of an immediate apocalypse receded, the bishops of the
early Church were faced with many important questions of doctrine, not
the least of which was an official stance on cosmic judgment and punish-
ment. It was difficult to know what line to take. Though some theological
ventures—Gnostic speculations, for instance—were clearly suspect, several
centuries would pass before the Church would decide which Christian
writings were to be considered canonical and which were what we now
call apocryphal or pseudepigrapha.
Since Christianity was an apocalyptic religion, the whole point of which
rested on death and salvation through resurrection, the negative as well as
the positive side of the hereafter was of considerable interest. Who would
be saved and who damned became subjects of obsessive speculation. Some
of this gave way to simple revenge fantasy. Tertullian (c. 160-230), an
African millenarian, could scarcely wait for the great moment:

What a panorama of spectacle on that day! Which sight shall I turn to

first to laugh and applaud? Mighty kings whose ascent to heaven used
to be announced publicly groaning now in the depths with Jupiter
himself who used to witness that ascent? Governors who persecuted the
name of the Lord melting in flames fiercer than those they kindled for
brave Christians? Wise philosophers, blushing before their students as
they burn together, the followers to whom they taught that the world
is no concern of God’s, whom they assured that either they had no
souls at all or that what souls they had would never return to their
former bodies? Poets, trembling not before the judgment seat of Rhad-

76
 ieee AS Sele se) DAG avi EEN T

amanthus or of Minos, but of Christ—a surprise? Tragic actors bellow-

ing in their own melodramas should be worth hearing! Comedians
skipping in the fire will be worth praise! The famous charioteer will
toast on his fiery wheel; the athletes will cartwheel not in the gymnasium
but in flames. . . . These are things of greater delight, I believe, than a
circus, both kinds of theater, and any stadium.

The most radical speculation came from Origen (c. 185-c. 254), a student
of Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-c. 220). Clement, a well-educated man,
applied Plato’s theory of the ideal to the problem of evil and explained it
as the absence of good—which is to say nonbeing, since God is perfect
goodness. (This would lead to difficulties: that matter was evil was a com-
mon Gnostic and Neoplatonist position, but it was awkward to claim that
matter was nonbeing, as Augustine would point out.) Also, in Clement’s
view, the rebellion and fall of the Devil and his angels proved the theory
of free will. Predestination would imply that God knowingly created crea-
tures of evil, which was unacceptable.
Origen, following Clement on both free will and the descent of bad
angel and sinful soul away from God and into grosser matter, found the
idea of an everlasting Hell with an unchanging Devil to be unconvincing.

Since, as we have often pointed out, the soul is eternal and immortal,
it is possible that, in vast and immeasurable spaces, throughout long
and various ages, it can descend from the highest good to the lowest
evil, or it can be restored from ultimate evil to the greatest good.

If we are free to choose how we live our lives it would follow that we
should continue to be free to choose after death as well. Reincarnation, as
Plato had suggested, was a way of moving upward or downward on the
ladder of being, and Origen inclined toward it, though he did not commit
himself to it.
Eventually, Origen proposed, everyone would choose to repent, even
the Devil. If Christ died for all, that would include the angels: the Devil
was once an angel. If God is infinite, everything will naturally return at
the end of time to be part of him—the Devil’s negative aspects would be
destroyed in the refining fire to leave only his essential angelic self. This
theory of universal redemption is called apocastastasis.

77
THE Shales ORs 4 SOsr S igkaieal

On a Byzantine ivory, cherubs with six wings guard the gate of Hell while avenging
angels hurry the damned toward Satan and the Last Trump blows below. It is typical of
Byzantine art to divide the damned into separate boxes. Note the worms in the lower box.

Following Origen’s logic, Hell could not persist after the end of time;
for it to do so would signal a victory for sin and the Devil. Origen also
expressed reasonable doubt about the tangible punishments of Hell, though,
like so many after him, he felt that ordinary folk should believe in them
as a deterrent to sin and crime.
How closely Origen’s image of the immortal-but-apt-to-fall soul fol-
lowed Plato’s can easily be seen in this account of his views by Jerome
(c. 340-420), a hostile witness who explained this rising and falling action
as a great cycle.

Origen’s teaching states that all rational, invisible, noncorporeal crea-

tures (here, angels], if they are careless, little by little slide toward the
depths. From the matter toward which they descend, they take on airy,
ethereal bodies with human flesh. Meanwhile, if the demons, who by
their own decision under the Devil’s leadership fell away from the Lord’s
service, had just barely come to their senses, they would also be dressed

78
 Wo lek IG J Seal yf (USO) Cee ICES INE ib

in human flesh [as opposed to the grosser, more material flesh which
Origen, following Clement, supposed demons to inhabit], so that, each
one having done his penance, they would begin to rise in the same
circular movement by which they first entered the flesh and would be
returned to nearness to God, whereupon they would shed their airy
ethereal bodies. And then all things would kneel to the God of the
heavens, the earth and the underworld, and God, with us, would be
everything.

This is close to Platonic metempsychosis, with a nod to Buddhism. Though

Jerome did not subscribe to it, other early church fathers did, among them
Ambrose, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazanzus. Eschatology was
still a developing field.
Controversy over apocastastasis occupied Christian thinkers from the
third century into the fifth, until Augustine (354-430), the great bishop of
Hippo (the modern Algerian town of Annaba), put an end to it by effec-
tively “proving” the existence of an eternal and essentially static Hell.
Augustine, a Manichaean for nine years, was anxious to refute the
Gnostics (who were, by this time, Manichaeans themselves) with their
pernicious view of this earth as a kind of Hell and matter as evil. He stressed
the beauty and goodness of created nature, quoting Genesis, ““And God
looked upon it and saw that it was good.” Against this, he placed the
doctrine of Original Sin, which he has been accused of inventing, though
his biographer Peter Brown points out that the idea that an ancient
transgression was responsible for the current misery of mankind was com-
mon to both pagans and Christians at the time. Augustine’s contribution
was to link Original Sin inextricably with sex.
Augustine did not begin as a predestinarian, but his stubborn promotion
of Original Sin pushed him into that position as he grew older. It is virtually
impossible to defend free will while insisting that a genetic sin linked to
the mammalian act by which we reproduce ourselves has disastrously and
irrevocably tainted humankind to the point where most of us must suffer
eternal punishment. If Augustine found it difficult to reconcile his own
views, it is no wonder that conflict over predestination and free will has
chronically troubled Christianity.
Though Augustine stressed the goodness and beauty of the created
world—he maintained that mortality, not matter, was the consequence of

19
Hieis elles, Ie) I a TO ee ist js JE Ie

sin—he also affirmed that this world was now ruled by the Devil, just as
the Dark Lord ruled the Manichaean world. The Christian Devil was not
equal to God, however, and he would be punished. In The City of God,
Augustine cited scripture to prove that:

Hell, which is also called a lake of fire and brimstone, will be material
fire, and will torment the bodies of the damned, whether men or
devils—the solid bodies of the one, and the aerial bodies of the others.
Or, if only men have bodies as well as souls, still the evil spirits, even
without bodies, will be so connected to the fires as to receive pain
without bestowing life. One fire certainly shall be the lot of both.

No one is exempt from punishment “unless delivered by mercy and un-

deserved grace.” To some degree, his argument was based on the theory
that “It is not enough to succeed; others must fail.”” How would we ap-
preciate grace without the perspective of its opposite—and so much of the
opposite? “And many more are left under punishment than are delivered
from it, in order that it may thus be shown what was due to all.”
Against those who thought that punishment could not be eternal, he
cited Matthew, Revelation, and Peter. Against those who prayed to the
saints or the angels to intercede for themselves or others, he argued that if
Christians cannot pray for the wicked angels, which would be blasphemous,
they cannot pray for wicked men either. He quoted Plato and Virgil in
proposing a temporary purgatorial place for some few of the not-so-very-
wicked after “the first death,” but after the second, at Judgment Day, he
insisted that reward and punishment would be eternal. He also conjectured
that the wickedest of the damned might suffer even more than the others.
Baptism alone would not save evildoers, but it was necessary for sal-
vation. Heretics were doomed. So, alas, were unbaptized babies, to the
indignation of Julian of Eclanum, the fiery young gadfly of Augustine’s
crusty old age, who wrote:

[God] it is, you say, who judges in this way; he is the persecutor of
newborn children; he it is who sends tiny babies to eternal flames. . . .
It would be right and proper to treat you as beneath argument: you
have come so far from religious feeling, from civilized feeling, so far
indeed from mere common sense, in that you think that your Lord God

80
 WielJs Jb AN Sa PO Oye: wos IN; IE

aN we

Just what the artist meant by the lines emanating from St. Augustine’s heart 1s inscrutable,
but if he wanted to indicate that Augustine influenced (clockwise from bottom) peasants,
shepherds, forestry, technology, transportation, farming, and Hell itself, he would not have
been far wrong.

is capable of committing a crime against justice such as is hardly con-

ceivable even among the barbarians.

Julian was not alone in his feelings, but his was not the opinion that
prevailed. Augustine based his case on the terrible potency of Original
Sin—which Julian, heretically, did not accept—and the inscrutability of
God: God is just, but God’s justice is not human justice. Human moral

81
TEE GES SESIES
I AOGRS ie 3O SE eeelas,

standards do not apply. Either baptism is a solemn and holy sacrament

washing away Original Sin, or it is not; you cannot have it both ways.
Babies continued to be something of an issue, however, while Augus-
tine’s proposal of a temporary Purgatory between the “‘first”’ and “second”
deaths would not be accepted as doctrine until seven hundred years had
passed. Still, with regard to Origen and his sympathy for the Devil, Au-
gustine’s triumph was complete. When the Christian bishops congregated
at the Synod of Constantinople in 543, they decreed that:

If anyone shall say or think that there is a time limit to the torment of
demons and ungodly persens, or that there will ever be an end to it, or
that they will ever be pardoned or made whole again, then let him be
excommunicated.

And, good as their word, they excommunicated the three-century-dead

Origen with fifteen separate charges of anathema. To make sure that he
was properly serving his time, subsequent synods in 553, 680, 787, and
869 damned him to eternal flames over and over again.
Nevertheless, Origen’s ideas persisted. At the end of the twentieth
century, what we now call “universalism” is stronger than ever.

82
Apocalyptic Tours of Hell

pa eee tes Ee terekesaieO Rol Ol |yi Hak eneateRese

few Christian centuries presented previews of Judgment Day and the
afterlife to follow. They featured or were purportedly written by apostles,
saints, and revered Old Testament figures, and claimed to be authentic.
Thus a preface to the Apocalypse of Paul claims to have found the manuscript
in a box with the shoes of the apostle as bona fides. The forger slipped up,
however, by putting the date of his “discovery” as 388, which greatly
confused medieval scholars who had discovered references to Paul in works
of Origen written more than 150 years earlier.
The Apocalypse of Peter, the earliest, dates from the mid—second century.
The Apocalypse of Paul, better written and with more detail, was the best
known; there are manuscript copies in every European language, as well
as Syrian, Coptic, and Ethiopic. The Apocalypse of the Virgin, also early,
would become important to the cult of the Virgin in the Middle Ages.
Other apocalypses, some now in fragments, featured Thomas, Zephaniah,
Baruch, Gorgorios, Ezra, Isaac, Pachomios, and Elijah.
Peter differs from most tours of Hell in having no guide or psychopomp
except Christ himself. Though it is crudely drawn, with an unpleasantly
vengeful and morbid tone, Dante enthusiasts may be surprised at how far
the outline of after-death punishments had already developed 1,200 years
before the Inferno. The distribution of sinners, however, is quite different.

83
TATE Ese iO ey Se ORE mL igi micn |:

Peter was obviously written at a time when Christianity had serious

competition from other religions. The first candidates offered for judgment
and punishment are the “spirits” dwelling in pagan idols and images, which
the writer took seriously as demons, though statues of Egyptian beast-gods
consigned to a furnace seem relatively lifeless. Satan does not appear. At
this early point, Hell was administered by God’s just but stern angels, Uriel
and Ezrael.
Family values were critical. The vengeance exacted for betrayal is fierce:
aborted children blind their mothers with fire; abused children watch their
parents mangled by wild beasts; disrespectful children and disobedient
slaves are tortured; lapsed virgins are torn to pieces; fornicators are cruelly
punished, as are homosexuals. Only the last two categories of sinners appear
at all in the Inferno, and Dante shows considerable sympathy for both.
In the Middle Ages, Hell was frequently organized around the Seven
Deadly Sins, which spread human weaknesses around pretty evenly, but
early apocalypses focused on the genital area. The concentration documents

Romanesque cathedrals of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries used tortures as decorative
elements. This is a column capital from St. Julien in Tours, France.

84
 ELA OTE PNG ay ae Mele Ce Me ORUMRAS ORS HIE
Mi I,

like Peter brought to sexual behavior, as opposed to, say, crimes of violence,
became an early and unique characteristic of Christian Hell. The lurid
descriptions of punishments drew an audience; it is not going too far to
say that the Hell scenes of early apocalypses are a form of self-righteous
pornography.
The author of Peter had a voyeuristic, sadistic, and scatological bent
that set the tone for later visions. On the other hand, he lived in strange
times. Before the second century, the laws of the Roman Empire forbade
torture for citizens. Only slaves could be tortured and then technically only
when accused of a crime—though practically, since they were considered
property, their masters had absolute rights over them. But the civil rights
of Roman citizens had recently been eroded in a way that would not have
been tolerated a century earlier—as we know from the instructive account
of Paul’s arrest in Jerusalem in the second half of the first century (Acts
22, 23). Taken into custody for sedition, Paul was to be flogged “for
examination” before trial, at which point he invoked his Roman citizenship.
The reaction to this claim was grave and immediate and ended with Paul’s
being sent with no fewer than 270 armed troops (to guard him against the
Jews he had enraged with his preaching) to the provincial governor at
Caesaria for a proper Roman trial.
In the second century, however, the Roman senate had withdrawn civil
rights from many citizens, leaving them liable to interrogation and torture.
When “treason” was involved, which could be interpreted as any action
opposed to the ruling emperor and his party, anyone could be tortured.
Because Judaism was legal in the Roman Empire, Christianity was safe
as long as it was considered merely a breakaway Jewish sect. By A.D. 64,
however, Christians were separated out from the Jews by the famously
cruel emperor Nero. To practice their religion was now illegal as well as
impious and subversive, and they were fair game. The list of early saints
and martyrs gives graphic evidence of the consequences. Eusebius writes
of a mob attack in 177 with horrible tortures following for six days on end,
especially of one poor slave girl named Blandina. The public spectacles are
what most people remember. Tertullian said, “If the Tiber floods or the
Nile fails to flood, if the sky fails to move or the earth does, if there is
famine or sickness the cry is the same—throw the Christians to the lions!”
The Romans, particularly at the time of the late empire, loved nothing more
than a public bloodbath.

85
HWostas FSCS
WO iw so ie Jol je Je Ie

A capital from St. Lazare, Autun

Thus, though we may recoil from Peter and regret its wide influence,
it may be useful to know that at the time it was written the threat of torture
was a new anxiety for Christian citizens. The rack, which distended the
joints and muscles of the body, the whip, the rod, and red-hot metal
instruments were, from the second to the fifth centuries, increasingly com-
mon in interrogation. Capital punishment using these techniques was for-
bidden, though most of the tortured died anyway. Roman methods of
capital punishment included beheading, stoning, clubbing, hurling from a
precipice, and live burial. Strangling and poisoning, which the Greeks had
used, were prohibited; crucifixion was reserved for slaves and degraded
criminals. Death by lion was too expensive to be commonplace.
The Hell of the Apocalypse of Paul has rivers of fire in addition to pits
of fire, snow, and blood, and even more worms, beasts, and avenging
angels with instruments of torture than Peter. Tartaruchus is the angel of
torments, who will preside until the Day of Judgment. Each soul, before
judgment, has its own angel which kept a written account of its deeds in
the Persian style; when one offers to recount a soul’s deeds from the age
of fifteen, God replies that he is interested only in the previous five years.*

*God very rarely makes a speaking appearance in either appearance in either apocalyptic of vision
literature. Considering how widely Paul was read, it’s interesting that the five-year term for sins never
caught on.

86
 BO IP OC) Nk, YIP A NE AE OIG IRS Ole Ishi sie

On the north side of Hell is a narrow, stinking, fiery pit reserved for
unbelievers, and in it is “the worm that does not sleep,” several of them
in fact, each with two heads. Teeth gnash and chatter because of the extreme
cold of the pit despite the fires.
What is innovative about Paul is the idea of refreshment or refrigerium.
After viewing their torments, Paul weeps for the fate of the sinners, though
he is chided for doing so (this rebuke is another theme Dante would pick
up), but as a consequence Michael the archangel descends with his heavenly
host. (Michael, in addition to having routed the rebel angels, is frequently
charged with separating sheep from goats on Judgment Day and seeing to
their proper distribution.) The voice of Jesus decrees that, because of Paul’s
pity, on Easter day henceforth torment will be suspended for “a day and
a night.”’ This popular folk theme persisted through the Middle Ages when
the intercessor was most frequently the Virgin Mary.
An unusual and rather entertaining apocalypse is the third-century Gos-
pel of Bartholomew. This features a conversation with Beliar (““Worthless’’)
the beast, whose name used to be Satan. He has been brought up from the
abyss by Jesus as a curiosity to show a band of monkish visitors and is

A scene from the west tympanum of St. Foy, Conques

 Re 2 Stes i

Last Judgment from the west tympanum ofSt. Foy, Conques. The hanging figure is Judas.

1,600 yards long and 40 yards broad with 8-yard wings, bound by fiery
chains and held by 660 angels. The apostle Bartholomew interviews him
while treading on his neck, a familiar image in art. Beliar tells the whole
story: how he was the first angel to be created, how he refused to worship
Adam and fell with his followers (only 600 of them here), how he wandered
to and fro in the world, how he seduced Eve (his method was unusual; she
drank his sweat mixed with water), how he punishes the souls of men and
is punished himself, how he sends his minion demons out into the world
to tempt.
Bartholomew also contains an early account of the Harrowing of Hell,
told (unusually) from Jesus’s point of view, and, even more remarkably at
this early date, a first glimpse of the Virgin Mary as Queen of Hell. Beliar/
Satan is still separate from the Devil—here, Beelzebub—and from Hades,
the keeper of the underworld of dead souls. Avenging angels administer
the punishments to Beliar himself, but Beliar’s troops tempt and chastise
men.

88
The Middle Ages

ae RICHEST PERIOD IN THE history ofHell is the

millennium that followed the fall of Rome, the middle period between
the classical world and the one that began with the Renaissance or rebirth
of the classical approach to learning. All the foundations of Hell were
already in place when Rome fell, but what we might call the general land-
scaping of the project was vastly elaborated during the Middle Ages.
Medieval theologians continued to refine doctrine made by the church
fathers, but except for one crucial event—the formal promulgation of the
doctrine of Purgatory in 1253—there were no real advances in intellectual
thought on Hell. Only one major figure, Johannes Scotus Erigena (c. 815-
c. 877), doubted a literal Hell, and he was accused of heresy —in fact, he is
said to have been stabbed to death by his own students with their pens. Peter
Lombard (c. 1100-c. 1160) and Thomas Aquinas (c. 1226-1274) followed
Augustine in insisting on a real fiery Hell with physical torments added to
those of the mind and spirit. Aquinas particularly emphasized the pleasures
of the abominable fancy.
What seems astonishing now is the literal bent theologians brought to
matters that do not lend themselves to the literal. Intelligent, educated men,
who, if they had been born centuries later, might have explained the inef-
fable or metaphorical in terms of quarks and black holes in space, instead
turned their attention to such considerations as whether food consumed
during a lifetime would be part of the body at the resurrection. (Yes, was

89
TH Ee Holst
OR Ye OLE HebeiaL

the answer, but then interesting questions of cannibalism arose.) “How

many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” is the question theologians
are supposed to have pondered, but they counted devils too and tried to
calculate the size of Hell and where it was—under the earth or somewhere
in the ether.
In the new universities that Charlemagne had encouraged, the teachers
and thinkers known as Scholastics continued to debate the central problems
of Christian salvation, trying to integrate them not with Platonism but with
the rediscovered and much admired writings of Aristotle, using Greek
rationalist logic to reconcile theological points—a difficult business. But
during the Middle Ages higher theology had far less effect on the concept
of Hell than what can only be called popular enthusiasm.
The vernacular sermon was developed fairly early as a way of com-
municating with parishioners increasingly baffled by the mysteries of the
Latin mass. In a village or small town, that weekly sermon might be the
chief, even the only entertainment for the populace. ‘Hellfire’? sermons
drew crowds for complex reasons and have continued to do so almost until
the present. The splendid example in James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist
as a Young Man is supposedly based almost verbatim on a sermon Joyce
heard during his student days in Dublin, which would have been about the
turn of the twentieth century. Medieval preachers were given aids to help
them prepare sermons and take confessions; these included homilies, an-
ecdotal exempla, pulpit manuals, and books of penances. The dire conse-
quence of sin was a favorite subject in all of them, as it was in the inventive
sculptures, reliefs, mosaics, frescoes, and paintings made for churches and
cathedrals.
Since we have no records of reaction to these sermons and paraphernalia,
we must infer their fame from their survival. There is no question, however,
about the popularity of Hell in the medieval theater. Mystery plays, like
sermons and artworks, were first seen as a way to teach the Bible to pa-
rishioners, but they soon escaped their beginnings. The Hell scenes of these
plays, with their devilish pratfalls, firecrackers, and crude toilet doggerel,
became beloved popular theater—the only popular theater—and when,
after many centuries, they were eventually banned, they mutated into forms
that persist today.
Medieval plays were not “literary,” but an astonishing percentage of
the high literary tradition also focused on Hell—in the late Middle Ages,

90
1. An angel fastens the Jaws of Hell. From the twelfth-century Winchester Psalter.
2. Beatus of Liebana, an eighth-century Spanish monk, wrote a text on the Apocalypse of
Revelation that influenced manuscript copiers for five hundred years. This thirteenth-century
French copy of a ninth-century original is typical. The woman clothed by the sun at the
upper left is pursued by the red dragon being attacked by angels as his tail sweeps down
one-third of the stars in heaven, a metaphor for angels. We see them falling as angels, then
splashing, naked and childlike, into the lake of fire where Satan, already bestial, lies. Van-
dalism of Satan’s head is, unfortunately, common. This fine Beatus is from the Pierpont
Morgan Library.
3-4. These gorgeous and unusual miniatures were painted by the three Limbourg brothers c.1416
for the Trés Riches Heures, a Book of Hours made for the Duke of Berry. Note Lucifer’s beauty as
he falls. Above, the Hell is quite specifically Tundal’s Hell, though the Devil has the conventional num-
ber of arms and legs. Compare with Simon Marmion’s version of Tundal on the next three pages.
 5. His guardian angel takes young Tundal on a tour of Hell. First they see the burning Valley
of the Homicides.

6. The Beast Acheron swallows up the miserly and avaricious.

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7. Tundal must lead his cow across the nail-studded bridge from which thieves and robbers
tumble. Compare with the cow in Bosch’s Hay- Wain, Plate 26.

8. They arrive at the House of Phristinus for gluttons and fornicators. Tundal gets a taste of
punishment here.

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 meducduallervapee

9. The horrible creature that eats and excretes unchaste priests and nuns. Compare with the
bird in Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, Plate 27.

10. The last alarming sight in Hell is Lucifer, with as many arms and legs as a centipede and his
attendant demons around him. Compare with the Limbourg version of the same scene, Plate 4.

_ CWIiinte
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 Sie VI DP DPE aA CCREES

all kinds of Hell, some of it thrillingly attractive. Writers blocked by the

frightful picture presented by the Church from the ancient theme of the
underworld quest inventively managed to displace Hell with eclectic un-
derworld regions taken from classical and Norse mythology, folklore, feu-
dal fantasy, and poetry, where Hell could strangely merge with Fairyland
and allegorical knights would go adventuring.
Perhaps most intriguing of all is the thousand-year accumulation of
“vision literature”—very different in style from the old apocaly pses—
which evolved into a genuine mass-market genre. In hundreds of manuscript
copiesof more than sixty surviving visions, someone is taken by a super-
natural guide to the infernal regions, then (sometimes) to Purgatory, and
then to Heaven. Though visions were written down by the literate clergy,
they were often experienced by quite ordinary people, who certainly be-
lieved in them. Their modern equivalents might be reports of UFO ab-
duction. It should be remembered that this was an age of obsessive piety,
self-imposed fasting and flagellation, no antibiotics for fevers, and that
people were educated to believe in visions. They wanted visions. Some
accounts, on the other hand, especially late ones, were undoubtedly con-
cocted by born storytellers for the astonishment of the pious and credulous.

AUGUSTINE, WHO _ had so much to do with the blossoming of

Christianity into an imperial religion after the failure of the short-lived
pagan revival under the emperor Julian in the 360s, lived to see the Roman
Empire fall. The Visigoths sacked the city in 410, barbarians swarmed over
Roman territories, and the Vandals broke into Augustine’s Africa in 429.
The old man died the following year with Hippo under siege and the world
he had always known in shards around him.
To say that the fall of the Roman Empire signaled the end of the world
is not to exaggerate by much. Civilization as it had been known for many
centuries around the Mediterranean and up into Europe collapsed as the
tribes from the North and West, the Goths, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Franks,
Saxons, Alemanni, Suevi, and the Huns from the east swarmed over the
old territories until the final capitulation in 476 (though Rome was not
actually physically destroyed till the next century—and then by Byzantines,
not barbarians). Byzantium preserved itself, its currency, military defense,
and trading systems, for the next thousand years, and the West went into

a1
Wye Jeb Sw Owe Gwe lal is je ie

a Dark Age which can be said to have lasted at least until the reign of
Charlemagne (742-814).
The collapse of unified civil power together with the loss of the state-
supported system of schools and universities gave the Church, the only
large collective body that remained, an opportunity to take charge. And
largely because of the vision, administrative capability, and practical com-
mon sense of a remarkable pope, Gregory the Great (c. 540-604), it moved
quickly into a leadership position.
Gregory, son of a wealthy Roman lawyer, was elected pope in 590. As
the first monk to hold the office, he was in a unique position to appreciate
the enormous administrative potential in his elite corps of Benedictine
monks, whose discipline was equal to that of any military troop and whose
education and intellect were considerably sharper. He trained his Benedic-
tines in law and business administration, encouraged their interest in art
and literature, and sent them off as missionaries to the barbarians, many
of whom were already somewhat Christianized.
In addition to founding monasteries as cultural and theological centers,
the Benedictines helped illiterate local leaders develop written laws based
on the Roman legal system, keep accounts, collect taxes, administer legacies,
and formulate their own history—in short, they made themselves indis-
pensable. The monks became great farmers and vintners, setting an example
for the barbarians in the efficient management of estates, which became
increasingly enormous as land was deeded to monasteries to escape civil
taxation.
Gregory inherited the pragmatic tolerance that had made Roman soldiers
such effective foreign campaigners. He warned his “soldiers of Christ” that
they would run into many curious and distasteful forms of heathen super-
stition in Germanic and Frankish Europe and would have to accommodate
themselves to these. Conversion would come but could not be forced.
Gregory was later heavily criticized for this approach, but a more stringent
attitude would never have worked with a tough group like the Mero-
vingians.
Gregory encouraged his missionaries to pay attention to local customs
partly because they intrigued him. Before being elected pope, he had hoped
to go to Britain himself; he is remembered for exclaiming, on seeing some
blond, blue-eyed boy slaves, “They are not Angles but angels!” He ap-
preciated folklore and a good story as much as he did music—the beautiful

92
 Tee Vii ORD Eee ANGEESS

Gregorian liturgical chants are named for him—and it is appropriate that

the first Christian visions in the Western style were recorded by his pen.
There are several of them, set down without embellishment as curiosities
in the Dialogues written about 590. The first was hearsay, told to Gregory
by a fellow monk of a third monk, Peter of Spain, who “died” of an illness,
saw “innumerable” places in Hell with notables of this world hanging in
flames, and then was restored to life by an angel who warned him to mend
his ways. A nobleman, Reparatus, in what seems to have been a dream,
saw a huge bonfire being prepared for a sinful priest named Tiburtius; upon
awakening, he sent a messenger to warn him, but Tiburtius died before the
message reached him. Another priest named Severus, unable to reach a
dying man’s bedside in time to absolve him, lamented, and the man came
back to life. “Disgusting people” emitting flames from their mouths and
noses had been dragging him off to a dark place when a “handsome youth”’
intervened: heeding Severus’s prayer, God was temporarily releasing the
dead sinner. He died again, absolved, a week later.
Another vision was related directly to Gregory by Stephen, a merchant
who fell ill in Constantinople, died, saw things in Hell that he had heard
of but never believed in, and escaped because of an error of mistaken
identity: another Stephen, a blacksmith, was meant to have died instead.
Stephen the narrator was then immediately restored to life. He died of
plague three years later at the same time that a local soldier also “died”
and experienced a vision of Hell—in which he saw the merchant Stephen!
The soldier’s story is the first to report some of the topographical
features that would become so familiar in Western visions. He saw a bridge
over a black, smoky river that had a “‘filthy and intolerable smell.”’ Across
the river were pleasant meadows and shining mansions, one of gold, but
only the sinless, like a priest the soldier saw, could cross over. On this side
of the bridge, a sadistic church steward (whom Gregory had actually
known) was bound with iron chains in “‘a most filthy place,” and here also
was poor Stephen, laboring to cross the bridge. He slipped, and “terrible
creatures rose from the river to pull him down by the legs.” At the same
time, beautiful white beings pulled him up by the arms. At this point, the
soldier returned to life, and no one ever knew whether Stephen eventually
made his way to the golden mansion.
Gregory’s somewhat banal comment on these odd stories was that vi-
sions of the afterlife must occur sometimes for the benefit of those who

93
Wises PCM GUO iw % OIF Isl je Ib Ie

experience them and sometimes as a “witness for others” who, hearing

about them, will try harder to avoid sinning. He thought that the mansions
with their unfortunate riverside location might be those of basically decent
people who had sinned in the flesh.
Contemporary with Pope Gregory was Gregory of Tours (539-594), a
fine example of the provincial bishop who was also an able educator, ad-
ministrator, and diplomat. He was one of the first writers to record miracle
stories of the saints, but he is best known for his valuable History of the
Franks. Two visions are transcribed in it, those of Salvius and of Sunniulf.
Salvius was lucky enough to see a glimpse of Heaven before he returned
to consciousness, but Sunniulf, the abbot of Randau, was led to a fiery
river at which people “gathered like bees at a beehive.” Over the river was
a bridge so narrow that there was scarcely room to put one foot on it, and
on the other side of the river was a white house. Clerics who had been
careless of their flocks fell into the river where they were submerged, some
to the waist, some to the armpits, some to the chin; conscientious clerics
passed over. Gregory the Great would have called this a cautionary vision.
The Venerable Bede (673-735) was an English monk whose Ecclesiastical
History of England (731) is a classic source for later historians. In it, he
recorded two visions of Hell at greater length than his predecessors. Bede
was a talented writer with an eye for detail, and he had certainly read the
works of both Gregorys as well as some of the apocalyptic literature, so
he knew what kind of material he was dealing with and how to make the
most of it. Moreover, the stories were not told to him directly—he had
read that of Furseus in a previous book, now lost—so he felt free to em-
broider them.
Furseus’s vision is dated to 633 by Bede. Like William Blake, Furseus
had a tendency toward visions. He was an Irish preacher who had estab-
lished a mission in East Anglia as a consequence of his first vision and had
heard angelic choirs in another. His third vision was much more frightening.
In it, he was born aloft by angels over a dark valley, then saw four fires
in the air. The angels told him that these punished respectively liars, the
covetous, creators of strife and discord, and the pitiless and fraudulent.
Then the four flames joined together in one big flame, in which he saw
devils flying. One demon threw a tortured sinner at him, a man from whom
Furseus had inherited some money. When Furseus was restored to his body,
he carried a burn mark from this experience on his jaw and shoulder for

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A wonderful view of the bridge common to so many medieval visions. Sadly, the Hell
scene of this anonymous fifteenth-century fresco in Sta. Maria in Piano, Italy, has been
completely vandalized; it would have been interesting to see a Hell from a painter so
influenced by vision literature.

the rest of his life. And Bede tells us that a very old monk of his acquaintance
had known a man who had actually met Furseus and had heard this story
told in the dead of winter—yet Furseus was sitting in a thin garment and
sweating as though it were a midsummer day.
The second of Bede’s stories, which he dates 696, is that of a North-
umbrian householder named Drythelm. Drythelm died at nightfall and
suddenly came to life again at dawn, terrifying his family. That very day
he divided his goods into three parts, one for his wife, one for his chil-
dren, and one for charity, and soon thereafter took orders at the Melrose
monastery.
What had happened to him was this: An angel appeared who silently led
him northeast to “a valley of great breadth and depth, but of infinite
length.” Flames spewed from one side of it, and on the other violent hail
and snow flew in all directions. In both, deformed spirits were tormented,

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Ay Ie

but the guide said to Drythelm, ““No, this is not what you think, it is not
Hell.” At the far end of the valley, it grew dark, and suddenly he saw great
globes of black flames rising out of a stinking pit and falling back into it
again. Each of these was full of human souls. Behind him he heard piteous
lamentation coupled with loud, coarse laughter. A gang of evil spirits was
dragging souls toward the darkness—among them Drythelm spotted a cler-
gyman, a layman, and a woman. Seeing him, some of the spirits rushed at
him with their burning tongs, but before they could reach him, his guide,
bright as a star in the murk, reappeared and frightened them away.
The angel showed him a sort of Elysian Field which “‘is not the kingdom
of Heaven, as you think,” then Heaven itself. He explained that the valley
was a purgatorial place “‘to try and punish the souls of those who put off
«

confession and repentance till their deathbeds,”’ but at the Day of Judgment
they would be saved, though the prayers of the living could hasten the
process. Those in the pit, of course, were doomed. And again, Bede invokes
an eyewitness, the monk Hemgils, who affirmed that in later years Brother

This imaginative thirteenth-century fresco from the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul in
Surrey shows many visionary elements: Jacob’s ladder to Heaven, from which demons
pluck sinners; the fiery caldron; the bridge of nails; the instruments of torture. Note the
serpent twined in the Eden tree.

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 Wintye IWC 3 IO) JOY iL.98 INGE jes

Drythelm used to stand up to his neck in icy water, saying to those who
marveled at such austerity, “I have seen greater cold.”
These three widely read and revered writers established and developed
the legitimacy of the western vision. All of their visions sound “authentic,”
like genuine dreams or fever dreams in which half-remembered stories take
on vivid colors. Bede’s more developed accounts engender suspicion that
a manuscript of Thespesius, with its burning globes that rise and fall, had
reached Britain. His authentication of Furseus’s burn and both his subjects’
tolerance of extreme cold follow the convention of miracle stories.
Bede also repeated a vision of a dying soldier who had seen good and
bad spirits bring account books of his earthly deeds; Gregory the Great
had related the same story, but with less detail. Bede started a grand tra-
dition: though examples of vision literature survive from all over Europe,
those that came from Britain and Ireland are by far the richest and most
imaginative.
The most popular was The Vision of Tundal, written in 1149 by an Irish
monk. Nearly 250 hand-lettered manuscripts in at least fifteen languages
survive, and one is fully illustrated by Simon Marmion, including eleven
scenes of Hell (see Plates 5-8). Nothing else like it exists for vision liter-
ature, though there is another miniature of Tundal’s Hell in the most famous
of all medieval breviaries, Les Trés Riches Heures commissioned by Jean,
Duke of Berry, from the Limbourg brothers in about 1413 (Plate 4).
Why was Tundal’s adventure so popular? Critically speaking, it was a
superior technical example of its genre, and there is no question that by
the twelfth century this was a genuine literary or subliterary genre among
both clerics and laypeople. After the Bible, the first book translated into
Old Norse was Tundal. The sameness of vision stories—which can seem
numbing to a modern reader—did not trouble medieval readers and lis-
teners, who came to them one at a time. Stull, Tundal had more scenery,
more monsters, and more charm than most of its fellows. Its hero, a hand-
some Irish knight, was a likable scoundrel: instead of giving money to the
Church, he spent it on good times with “clowns, jesters and minstrels.”
Unlike many duller visitors to the infernal regions, he actually had to go
through sensational punishments.
The story begins at the dinner table, where, under the pressure of trying
to suppress his anger at a friend, he suffers what appears to be a stroke.
For two days he lies in a rigid coma with only the slightest sign of life.

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What happens to the soul that leaves his body during that period is
terrifying. First a crowd of dreadful fiends screech an appalling parody of
his favorite songs, gnash him with their teeth, tear their own cheeks with
their talons and scream, “Where are the good times now? Where are the
pretty girls? Where’s your pride?” Tundal’s soul is rigid with terror, until
suddenly an angel appears. This turns out to be his guardian angel to whom
he has never paid the least attention, but who now proposes to show him
what lies in store for him if he does not repent. Meanwhile, he will be
protected from the demons, who, thwarted, fall to fighting raucously
among themselves.
Tundal is shown murderers sizzling over an iron grate laid across a
whole valleyful of stinking coals, then a mountain with fire on one side,
ice and snow on the other, and hailstorms in between, where fiends with
iron hooks and forks chivy unbelievers and heretics (spies and traitors in
another version) from one torture to another.
Next is a deep noxious valley spanned by a plank a thousand feet long
and only one foot wide from which the proud and ungenerous tumble.
With the angel’s help, Tundal’s fearful soul is able to cross it, and then to
climb the path leading to the enormous beast Acheron with flaming eyes
and two great devils in his mouth like pillars. Inside the beast’s belly are
the greedy—and inside it too, for a moment, is Tundal! His angelic pro-
tector disappears and waiting fiends fling him in to be bitten by frenzied
lions, mad dogs, and serpents, burned by fire, bitten by cold, suffocated
by stench, and clubbed by devils until the angel reappears. Tundal is un-
derstandably too weak to continue till the angel proffers a healing touch.
The next ordeal is a two-mile bridge across a lake filled with ravening
beasts, only as wide as the palm of a hand, and studded with sharp nails.
Thieves and robbers must cross it, and so must Tundal himself, leading a
wild cow. ““Remember,” says the angel, “‘you stole a cow from one of your
friends?” “But I gave it back,” Tundal cries. “Only because you couldn’t
keep it,” is the answer, “but because you did, you won’t suffer too much.”
Tundal has a bad moment on the bridge when he meets a soul going
the other way, but he survives, has his torn feet cured by the angel, and
sets off for the round oven-shaped house of the cruel Phristinus who pun-
ishes gluttons and fornicators (including clergymen); because of Tundal’s
former ways, the angel lets him have a taste of this too.

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Next comes a great bird with an iron beak that eats unchaste nuns and
priests and defecates them into a frozen lake where both men and women
proceed to give birth to serpents.* Tundal has to go through this too,
though, thankfully, we don’t hear about it in much detail.
After a difficult climb comes the Valley of Fires, where fiends seize
Tundal with burning forceps, throw him into a furnace until he is red-hot,
then hammer him on an anvil with twenty or thirty other sinful souls into
one mass, tossing this in the air till the angel rescues him. The two proceed
downward toward Hell proper.
Excitable demons “like bees” sing “the song of death” around a huge
cistern. In the depths is Lucifer himself, once “‘the first, the most beautiful,
the most powerful creature God made.” Now he is:

blacker than a crow and shaped like a man except that it had a beak and
a spiky tail and thousands of hands, each of which had twenty fingers
with fingernails longer than knights’ lances, with feet and toenails much
the same, and all of them squeezing unhappy souls. He lay bound with
chains on an iron gridiron above a bed of fiery coals. Around him were
a great throng of demons. And whenever he exhaled he ejected the
squeezed unhappy souls upward into Hell’s torments. And when he
inhaled, he sucked them back in to chew them up again.

Among these unhappy souls are several of Tundal’s friends and relations.
Simon Marmion tried to convey this unusual Satan in his final Hell
illustration, with mixed success. The Limbourg brothers showed the scene
faithfully but jibed at all the arms and legs. Theirs is a conventional devil
with horns and claws, who appears to be basking in what is surely the most
spa-like of all pictorial Hells.
Tundal moves on to a meadowlike purgatorial area where the bad-but-
not-very-bad suffer from hunger and thirst and the elements, and the good-
but-not-very-good are dryer and happier. Heaven waits for these people
behind a silver wall, which Tundal and the angel visit, though comparatively
briefly. After this, Tundal “felt himself clothed in his body.”

“This bird, wearing a cooking pot on its head, is in the Hell of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights
triptych; Tundal’s cow crossing the bridge is in at least two of Bosch’s hells, and fiery forges, some
oven-shaped, are a general feature. See Plates 24-27.

2?
Peg, Tat SW ORY Ole dsl ie Ie Ib

And with that, he opens his eyes, asks for Communion, gives all he
has to the poor, orders the sign of the Cross sewn on his clothes, and
begins to preach the word of God.
Some visions had a political slant. Charles the Fat, a ninth-century king
of Swabia, found the religious advisors of his father and uncles dunked in
boiling pitch (for giving bad advice), then his father undergoing purgation
in order to join his uncle and cousin in paradise. Two deep casks bubbled
away for Charles himself, should they be needed. He assured his people
that they would not.
Hincmar of Rheims (c. 806-882) told the story of Bernold, who saw,
in addition to a good many suffering bishops, King Charles the Bald in a
pitiful condition simply because he had not heeded the excellent advice
of Archbishop Hincmar. Hincmar was apparently blessed in his infor-
mants, for another of them, Eucherius, saw Charles Martel, Charlemagne’s
grandfather, being tortured; he too should have heeded better advice—like
Hincmar’s.* Charlemagne himself appears in Hell in the Vision of Wetti
(824)—but he is in paradise in the contemporary Vision of Rotcharius.
Other visions hinted at literary influence. In the Vision of Thurkill
(1206), an Englishman saw spirits with black-and-white spots (Thespesius,
again), the usual fires, swamps, spiky bridge, ovenlike furnaces, the pit,
and a weighted scale. But he also saw an arena with tiered seats, where a
“multitude” sat bound with white-hot iron hoops and nails. In other seats,
devils sat as if at the theater, beaming with pleasure as one torture after
another was administered for their entertainment. Standing on a wall on a
nearby mountain, the saints were also watching the spectacle. Thurkill was
supposed to have been a peasant, but his vision seems suspiciously canny
and colorful. At the very least, someone must have been reading (or preach-
ing) Tertullian to him.
The Vision of Alberic is one that Dante is thought to have read. Alberic
of Settefrati was a monk at the famous monastery of Monte Cassino. After
an illness that left him in a coma for nine days, he dictated his vision to a
fellow monk, Guidone, some time around 1115. Ten or fifteen years later,
he rewrote it with the help of another monk, Pietro Diacono. For his trip,
Alberic had no fewer than three guides—Saint Peter and the angels Em-
manuel and Eligius, not to mention a dove that flew off with his soul. He

*Dante put Charles Martel in his Third Heaven, that of Venus. He will turn up again in Hell.

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saw the standard sights with some emphasis on the fate of children being
purged in flaming gas; also a frozen valley, a thorny wood, serpents, a red-
hot ladder, a cauldron of pitch, a sulfurous oven, a lake of blood, a basin
of boiling metal, a lake of fire, a river of fire, the narrow bridge. Novelties
are an enormous chained dragon near the pit that holds Judas, Ananias,
Caiaphas, Herod, and others of the worst sinners, and also a great bird
that first drops an old monk into the pit, then plucks him out.
During the later Middle Ages, some vision literature was turned into
(sometimes satiric) literary allegory. In Le Songe d’Enfer (“Dream of
Hell”), written around 1215 by Raoul de Houdenc, the dreaming pilgrim
travels through an allegorized landscape, passing spots like the river of
Gloutonie to Mount Désespérance (‘‘Despair”). Here he sits with Pilate
and Beelzebub to dine on roast heretic and wrestlers with garlic sauce, after
which he reads aloud to the king of Hell from a book about wicked
minstrels.

Dining on roast heretic in the mouth of Hell. From The Hours of Catherine of Cleves,
c. 1440.

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Tk @ORRNe Oe resale
te ear

The Flemish poet Jehan de le Mote’s more serious La Voie d’Enfer et

de Paradis (“The Way to Hell and Paradise’’) dates from 1340, and the
English Weye to Paradys from about 150 years later. William Langland’s
Piers Plowman, probably the best-known allegorical dream-poem, retells
the Harrowing.
One doesn’t have to be a psychoanalyst or a literary critic to recognize
that the proliferation and popularity of vision literature from the fourth to
the fourteenth century was a result of the same appetite that today demands
horror movies. But the visions illuminate other points, too. Although de-
bate about Particular Judgment and General Judgment may have occupied
intellectuals, they demonstrate that ordinary people—including bishops and
kings—believed whatever was going to happen to you after death happened
right away: these were not visions of the future, and there wasn’t a hint of
the idea of going to sleep until resurrection at the Last Trump.
Similarly, although Purgatory was not recognized by the Church until
the middle of the thirteenth century, visions from as early as Bede’s seventh-
century Drythelm indicate that the concept of a temporary purifying after-
death punishment was common not only to visionaries but to their more
educated amanuenses. Charles the Fat’s father was definitely on his way
upward, just as soon as he had worked off his penance. By Tundal’s and
Alberic’s time, purgatorial areas even had spacious separate quarters.
Considering that Purgatory was not accredited till the thirteenth cen-
tury, it is significant that one twelfth-century story concentrated solely on
it. Technically, Saint Patrick’s Purgatory is not a vision, since the Irish
knight Owen supposedly made his journey in the flesh, like Aeneas or
Orpheus or Theseus. Sins were on his conscience, particularly the theft of
Church property, and he volunteered to go to Saint Patrick’s Purgatory at
the monastery founded in the fifth century on Station Island in Lough
Derg, in County Donegal. A cave on the island (still visited by tourists) is
supposed to be an entrance to Purgatory.* Owen spent the night there,
encountered demons and horrors, including an infernal wheel that spun
almost too quickly to see the flames. He held off the demons by invoking
the name of Jesus. On emerging, he embarked on a life of good works and
made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Ramon de Perelhos traveled to Lough

“Ireland and Sicily are the two places most often cited as holding gateways to the underworld. In
Sicily,
Mount Etna was specifically the entrance; “sailing to Sicily” was a euphemism for going
to Hell.

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Derg all the way from Catalonia in about 1398 to have similar adventures,
or at least he said he did.
Saint Brendan’s Voyage sends a saint on what the Irish call an imram,
a Christianized series of Sinbad-the-Sailor-like adventures.* The real Bren-
dan lived during the fifth and sixth centuries but the romance (which sur-
vives in at least 116 manuscripts in many languages) dates from the tenth
century. In it a boatload of Irish monks go adventuring in the Atlantic.
On an island, they encounter a demon disguised as a little black boy who
possesses a monk; on another, a flock of birds representing souls are work-
ing off apenance related to Lucifer’s fall; on a third volcanic island, demonic
blacksmiths fling fiery coals at the monks; another group of demons carry
off a monk to Hell; and finally they find Judas Iscariot sitting atop a bare
rock in mid-ocean, enjoying his Sunday respite. Six days of the week he
spends in Hell, but he has certain Sundays off—and Saint Brendan wins
him an extra holiday, to the great annoyance of the demons. In the French
romance Huon de Bordeaux, Judas is also encountered in mid-ocean, this
time in a canvas boat near the Gulf of Hell. Another French poem, Bauduin
de Sebourc, sends Saracen voyagers to the location of Brendan’s islands.
Most visions, even the zmrams and romances, seem oddly distanced.
The tortures don’t really hurt and aren’t nearly as nasty as in the old
apocalypses; they’re just part of the story. Occasionally one of the more
ecstatic saints moved in closer, like Saint Brigit of Sweden (c. 1303-1373):

The fire of the furnace boiled upward under the feet of the soul like
water rising through a pipe to the point where it bursts in an overhead
geyser, so that its veins seems to flow with the blaze. The ears were
like a smith’s bellows blasting through the brain. The eyes seemed
reversed, looking to the back of the head. The mouth hung open and
the tongue was drawn through the nostrils and hung down to the lips.
The teeth had been driven like nails into the palate. The arms were
stretched down to the feet, and both hands held flaming pitch. The skin
seemed like a hide covering the body and like a linen garment spattered
with semen; it was icy cold and exuded a discharge like that which oozes
from an infected ulcer, with a stench worse than anything in this world.

*“Many readers have encountered an wmram: C. S. Lewis, a famous medievalist, turned The Voyage of
the Dawn Treader, the third book in his Narnia series for children, into a fine one.

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OLD ENGLISH was the earliest European language to have a literature

of its own, and it should surprise no reader to find that a large percentage
of its earliest surviving works are about the subject at hand. Genesis A and
Genesis B, together with Christ and Satan, present Lucifer/Satan’s biog-
raphy, and there is a very early verse translation of Nicodemus. These poems
are said to be of the “school of Caedmon,” since Caedmon, a seventh-
century peasant lay brother who acquired his poetic gifts by way of an
angelic vision, is the earliest poet’s name known to us. Beowulf has been
co-opted into Christian mythology by some critics, but it was hardly known
in its own day; its elevation to the canon is entirely modern.
Genesis B is inserted into the more conventional Genesis A to fill out
the story of the fall of Lucifer and the rebel angels. The account is the
familiar one, but with more detail and a distinctly feudal approach. The
rebellious and vainglorious vassal raises his own throne in the north of
Heaven; God, angry, prepares Hell and flings him down with his retainers.
All become demons. Satan, still very much the leader, delivers a speech to
his followers: not only is God entirely unjust in his condemnation, he is
planning something even more unfair, the creation of a usurping pair of
contemptible earth creatures in a brand-new world. Satan himself is bound
in Hell, but a subordinate is conscripted to subvert God’s plan. Which he
does—but not quite in the usual way; like any proper knight, he approaches
Adam, the head of the household, first. Rebuffed, he pays court to Eve
with the most flattering of lies. The strategy works, and he goes on his
way rejoicing demonically.*
Christ and Satan continues Satan’s story in three chapters, ‘““The Lament
of the Fallen Angels,” “The Harrowing of Hell,” and “The Temptation in
the Desert.”” The first backtracks to sum up the events of Genesis, then
segues into original material. Satan, dejected, laments the fate that put them
all in this horrid place. The demons complain vociferously. What about
this son of Satan who was supposed to rule mankind? It looks as though
God’s son is grabbing all the glory. (Christ, rather than Michael, leads the
war in Heaven here.) And indeed the section ends with a view of Christ
in glory.

*Milton is believed to have read the unpublished Genesis manuscripts.

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ID IDE ee Nee as

lhe Harrowing” follows Nicodemus. In “The Temptation,” Satan,

whose escape from Hell is not remarked upon, lifts Christ up on his shoul-
ders to show and offer him the whole world and its riches—he even offers
him Heaven, not that he has any right to it—in exchange for fealty. Christ
mocks him and orders him back to Hell to measure its length and breadth
with his own hands; it turns out to be 100,000 miles in each direction.
These poems may date from the early ninth century, and the other
Nicodemus, translated as a canonical New Testament gospel, might be even
earlier. In the tenth century, Aelfric the abbot of Eynsham (c. 950-c. 1020),
told the whole Satan story again, and for good measure threw in the An-
tichrist and the end of the world. In the fourteenth century, William Lang-
land retold the Harrowing, with allegorical variations, in Piers Plowman.
Langland differentiated between Satan and Lucifer, blaming the latter for
the Eden temptation (“In lyknesse of lizard with a lady’s visage”) and
identifying Satan as the Devil. A new version of the war in Heaven called
Christ’s Victorie and Triumph in Heaven and Earth, by Giles Fletcher,
appeared in 1610.
Milton’s notebooks tell us that when he was casting about for a subject
for his masterwork he considered a “British Trag,” and, in the end, it
appears that his subject matter could not have been more British.

THE MANY tribes of northwestern Europe fell into three general group-
ings: the Celts or Gauls, the Germans or Teutons, and the Scandinavians
or Vikings or Norsemen. These are Roman classifications, which meant
nothing to the tribes of nomadic warriors, farmers, and seamen so cate-
gorized, but we have retained the names for convenience and to differentiate
language groups. Generally speaking, the Celts were west of the Rhine; Ger-
mania was the area between the Rhine and the Danube, reaching east to the
Polish Vistula and up to include Denmark and southern Norway and Swe-
den; the Vikings were farther north. Because the Vikings were the last group
to be converted to Christianity (in about A.D. 1000), we know much more
about their religious beliefs than the others, but those of the Germans and
Celts seem to have been rather similar, with some local variation.
By Gregory the Great’s mandate, the Christian missionary monks sent
north and west often managed to subsume rather than combat the beliefs
they encountered. Thus Hel was originally the name of the Scandinavian

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death goddess, and the word came to refer also to her realm, just as Hades
meant both the god and the place in Greece. Hellia was Hel’s name in
Germania. In the north, the word replaced the Latin Infernus (still used
in variations in all romance-language countries), which had in its turn
replaced the Greek Hades.
The Viking Hell was also called Niflheim. It was thought to be the
northernmost land beneath the roots of Yggdrasil, the World Tree. To
the east was Jotunheim, the land of the giants, and to the south, across the
great void Ginnungagap, was Muspell, a fiery region ruled by the giant
Surt. Midgard, or Middle Earth, was our own world. According to the
Icelandic poet Snorri Sturluson of the twelfth century Prose Edda, Niflheim
was the lowest part of Hel, as Tartarus was of Erebus or Hades, and,
exactly like Tartarus, it was a place of utter darkness, stagnation, and
sterility. Both Hel and Niflheim were considered to be cold, dark, and
dreary lands of shadows, not places of punishment. Nastrond, on the other
hand, a hall on the Strand of Corpses whose doors faced north and whose
roof was formed of venomous snakes, seems to have been a place of after-
death torment, very probably reserved for enemies rather than sinners.
Dragons, especially the Nidhogg (‘“Corpse-eater’’), are also associated with
Hel and with the buried treasure of the dead.
Contrasted with these unpleasant places were Valhalla, Odin’s banquet
hall, where Valkyrie maidens escorted the souls of brave warriors so that
they could feast on pork and mead and continue to battle one another
ferociously forever (a concept of Heaven that illustrates why Vikings were
so feared), and Glasisvellir, like the Celtic Tir na n-Og (“Land of the
Young’’) or the Welsh Annwn, a paradise but also an uncanny and some-
what menacing fairyland. Valhalla was not the only paradise that provided
escort services for its male clientele: the Celts had a Land of Women,
medieval Germans had the ambiguous Venusberg, and of course the dark-
eyed houris of the medieval Muslim paradise are famous.*
The best known visit to Hel was that of the messenger Hermod, who
galloped Odin’s eight-legged horse Sleipnir from Asgard, home of the gods,
through dark valleys and high mountains and across deep rivers for nine
days tll he reached the river Gjall, which he crossed on the Gyjallarbru

*Valhalla may have housed some women. Wives, mistresses, and slave girls were strangled or voluntarily
hanged themselves to join their men on the funeral pyre and presumably in the afterlife. There is
a
discussion of this depressing practice in Gods and Myths of Northern Europe, by H. R. Ellis Davidson.

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A Viking picture-stone from Larbro, Sweden, portrays a dead warrior on the back of
Sleipnir, Odin’s eight-legged horse.

(“Echoing Bridge’) which was guarded by the skeletal maiden Modgud.

He continued north and downward through the Iron Wood, where the
trees are black with leaves of sharp metal, a vivid image which found its
way into vision literature and into Dante.
Sleipnir leaped over the gate Valgrind of the high-walled city of Hel,
guarded by the hound Garm of the bloody breast. Inside, the great cauldron
Hvengelmir boils the wicked (or, more likely, enemies) before they are fed
to the Nidhogg serpent. From a well guarded by the giant Mimir flow
strange rivers: the icy Slith is filled with knives and swords (an image Bosch
used). Other tales use other images and other names. Even the Balder story
varies; in one account it is Odin himself, posing as Vegtam the Wanderer,
who goes to Hel to find him; in another, it is his actual killer, Hoder, who
goes to find a magic murder weapon.
The goddess Hel, half black (or rotting) and half flesh-colored, is the
daughter of Loki, an elusive figure who has been compared to both Satan
and Prometheus. Like Prometheus, Loki is not exactly a god but is rep-
resented as a giant. He is not entirely wicked, either; Christians are thought

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to have blackened his reputation. Originally, he was a trickster, comedian,

thief, and sex-change artist: in his female form he was “‘mother”’ not only
to Hel, but to Fenrir the wolf, the horse Sleipnir, and the great Midgard
serpent coiled around the world.
Loki was responsible for the death of Balder, the Norse equivalent of
Attis or Dumuzi (he whom Hermod sought in Niflheim, unsuccessfully).
Like Satan and Prometheus, Loki was bound after his crime.* Like Satan,
he will break free in the Last Days when he will unleash the fury of
Ragnarok, the final battle of gods and giants.
Ragnarok has obvious parallels to the Christian Final Battle, and the
Muspilli, a ninth-century fragment of Christian apocalyptic poetry in Old
High German, combines the two. Here Fenrir the wolf allies himself with
the Antichrist and Satan on the battlefield. Elias (Elijah) leads the forces
of good, but falls. Surt and the sons of Muspell overwhelm the earth just
as they did in pre-Christian days, though they are not overtly personified.
A thirteenth-century Norse poem, the Draumkvaede, is typical of vision
literature (which was frequently turned into verse) except that its imagery
is Northern. The usual bridge over the stinking mire is explicitly the Gjal-
larbru, “decked with red and gold pinnacles,” fitted with sharp hooks and
guarded by a serpent (or dragon), a dog, and a bull. Otherwise, the nar-
rator’s experience is routine.
Celtic eschatological mythology is far from clear, but it seems to have
been unusually positive and to have included reincarnation. Romans com-
mented that the reason Celts were so reckless in battle was that they were
not afraid to die. One underworld god was called Donn, but not much
information about him survives, nor about a triad of enigmatic Germanic
underworld goddesses called “the Mothers,” whom Goethe would use
centuries later in his kaleidoscope of Hell.
The otherworlds of most cultures are far away or inaccessible, but the
Celts and Germans believed in a parallel world of earth spirits more or less
superimposed on our own; many tales survive of encounters with giants,
ogres, trolls, elves, dwarves, goblins, brownies, fairies, pixies, nixies, the
Irish sidh, leprechauns, werewolves or werebears, and vampires in either
their version of the world or our own. These creatures more or less survived

* Like Satan, but unlike Prometheus, he is both bound and not bound; he turns up to make trouble
despite his chains.

108
 (eis eVieleDeDel, kh. AvG BS

Christianity. To a degree, they became Christian demons, which led, in

some cases, to .a reduction in demonic status to that of “imp,” a creature
not much more malevolent than a pixie.”

WHEN WE. think of the Roman Empire, we think of cities, trade routes,
shipping, coinage, an international economy propped up by slavery, a
centralized army. The Christian Byzantine Empire preserved this pattern,
but the growth of the West was different. Feudalism, a form of decentralized
government administered by the local lords of large areas of farmland and
forest, was characteristic of the Middle Ages. Taxes, legal problems, reli-
gious appointments, charitable dispositions, and all the minutiae of daily
life were governed by these lords under what anthropologists call an arti-
ficial kinship structure. At its center was the lord, the leader of the tribe,
“father” to all who swore faithfulness to him. The great noble families
lived in huge fortified castles in the middle of their vast acreage and stocked
them with armies of armed knights on horseback—their vassals. These in
turn were supported by even larger numbers of serfs or villeins who per-
formed agricultural and other manual labor in return for the right to earn
a living on the land.
The monasteries employed an almost exact clerical counterpart to the
secular feudal system: The abbot played the part of the lord, friars being
the vassals and lay brothers the serfs. Just as the abbot owed a greater fealty
to the pope, the lord might owe formal homage to a king.
Thus it is not surprising that the heavenly hierarchy was often portrayed
in the feudal manner with its own Lord, its young prince with his retinue
of apostles, its lady of the manor in the Virgin Mary, its senior household
in the saints, and its first knight in the archangel Michael, who typically
wears armor, wields a sword, and often appears with his angelic troops
ranked behind him. When Lucifer fell, he took with him his own knights.
Dante’s rebel angels lounging about the battlements of the City of Dis,
really a walled medieval citadel, are perfect examples of bullyboy knights
or gunsels.
Lucifer’s sin, the betrayal of faith or fealty to the Lord by a highly

“The Renaissance similarly “demonized” classical fauns and satyrs. Look at feet. Early pictures of demons
usually have bird claws, unless they are Byzantine and have human feet. The Renaissance preferred Pan’s
cloven hoofs.

109
Michael in armor as warrior angel

placed vassal, meant a great deal to the Middle Ages. Betrayal was the great
sin of feudalism. Keeping faith not only to the lord but to the tenets of
religion was imperative to an extremely conservative system rigorously
preserved by the collusion of the international Church and the local state.
The lowest circle in Dante’s Inferno is reserved for the faithless, and, apart
from Satan himself, the lowest of the faithless low is Judas, who betrayed
his honor and his own Lord with a terrible parody of the kiss of fealty.
The popular term for Muslims or Saracens was “‘infidels,”’ the unfaithful.
They were considered to be far worse than Jews or simple heathens who
knew no better, for they too were “people of the book,” the Bible, who
«

had fallen away from the true faith centered on the New Testament. In the
Song of Roland, a very popular French chivalric epic, they are treated as
barely human. Christians considered them “servants of Satan,” and they
returned the compliment.*
In Faustian bargain stories, which began long before Christopher Mar-
lowe, it is fealty that the devil demands. Pledge yourself to me, he says,
and I will give you honor, powers, fortune, wealth, all the things that the

*According to the Koran, Hell, which is mentioned often and in dire terms, is reserved for unbe-
lievers—non-Muslims, i.e., Christians and Jews, as well as the irreligious.

110
 (erie Viele Des ke) AGES

primitive Christian asks from God or the saints. The kiss of homage was
thought to be administered to the buttocks of the Dark Lord.

HOW DID_ ordinary people react to the constant threat of Hell held over
them by the medieval Church? Since the clergy held a near-monopoly on
writing, we have to deduce secular attitudes from very few clues. Many,
even most, people throughout the Middle Ages may have felt the way
Francois Villon portrayed his mother as feeling in the prayer to the Virgin
he wrote for her in the fifteenth century:

I am a woman, old and poor,

Who knows nothing, not a single letter.
In the parish church where I worship
Paradise is painted, with harps and lutes,
And a Hell where the damned are boiled:
One fills me with fear, the other joy and delight.
Give me that joy, great goddess...

On the other hand, did Villon believe in Hell? If he did, it certainly

didn’t stop him from sinning—though there was always the possibility of
deathbed absolution. Villon was a professional thief (of Church property
among many other things), a womanizer, and a killer, if only in brawls.
Possibly he was indifferent to religion. Raymond de |’Aire, one of the
peasants quoted in Montaillou, Emmanuel LeRoy Ladurie’s remarkable
reconstruction of a French heretic village at the turn of the fifteenth century,
was not only hostile to the clergy, as were his neighbors, he emphatically
denied the existence of an afterlife, together with anything miraculous hay-
ing to do with Jesus. He was unusual, but he could not have been unique.
He probably believed that devils caused misfortunes, but that would have
been only logical, and he seems to have been a resolutely logical man. His
neighbors were conventionally but not excessively shocked by his attitude.
They held an interesting variety of views on the afterlife themselves.
The fifteenth century is late, of course. But Gregory of Tours mentions
at least one man who did not believe in an afterlife, and then we have the
twelfth-century French romance Aucassin et Nicolette whose young hero
is threatened with the torments of Hell if he makes love to his sweetheart.
This is his reply:

bit
Titi Teh Gury ae Pi IG Ib
sive

In Paradise, what would I do? I don’t want to go there but to have

Nicolette, my so sweet friend whom I love so much. In Paradise are
only people like this: old priests, old cripples, old maimed, who hunch
in front of altars and old crypts day and night, and those in ragged old
cloaks and old rags, who are naked and shoeless and dying of hunger
and thirst, cold and misery. They go to Paradise, and I want nothing
to do with them. I want to go to Hell, for to Hell go the handsome
clerks and knights who die in jousts and fine wars, and the good officers
and noblemen: I want to go with them. And there go the beautiful and
gracious ladies who have two or three friends besides their husbands,
and there go the gold and silver and furs, and there go the harpers and
tumblers and kings. With them I will go, so long as I have Nicolette,
my so sweet friend, with me.

The sentiment is perfectly familiar, but here it comes from the twelfth
century, at the very height of Church dominance.
From these few clues and from the ceaseless admonitions against in-
corrigible sinning rests the case that even in the Middle Ages a fair number
of individuals remained skeptical or indifferent or defiant toward the or-
thodox view of rewards and punishments in the afterlife. Most of the written
evidence points the other way. The clergy, after all, provided it.
Hell was their great weapon, for only they were authorized to administer
the rites of baptism and absolution that could save a soul. Higher Church
authorities could threaten excommunication and anathema: they could send
a soul to Hell. From the pulpit they thundered reminders of darkness and
fire and stench and demons and serpents and “‘syghynge and sorownge,
wepynge and weylynge, hideous cryynge, grugeynnge and murnynge, hun-
ger and thyrst irremediable, wyth gnagyng off tethe wyth-owte ende.”
From the confession box they ordained penances: one Irish penitential
handbook gives the formula for saving a sinful soul, 365 paternosters, 365
genuflections, 365 blows ‘“‘with a scourge on every day to the end of a
year.”” More commonly, penances for each sin are listed. Favorite homilies
like The Pricke of Conscience and The Agenbite of Inwit (which mean the
same thing) listed “the 14 peynes” and deafening “dyn” of hell.
Exempla were collections of moralizing anecdotes meant to enliven
sermons. One French one told of an orphaned girl in danger of enjoying
her inheritance too much who was shown first her mother in Hell—burned

112
 ietieime Viel Dil be PANG eBeS

500 times a day by flames, then doused in icy water while reptiles gnawed
on her—then her father in bliss; henceforth she led a good life.
In the Elucidarium, a widely used pulpit manual written at the beginning
of the twelfth century, Honorius of Autun drew the picture of two Hells,
the upper one continuing such sufferings as people already go through on
earth and the lower giving a succinct summary of the nine kinds of torture
for evil souls: unquenchable fire, unbearable cold, worms and snakes, dis-
gusting stench, demons with whips, horror-filled darkness, agonizing
shame, hideous sights and sounds, fiery fetters. They will also be turned
upside-down, back to back, and stretched out forever, “they” being the
proud, the envious, the cunning, the faithless, gluttons, drunkards, sen-
sualists, murderers, the cruel, thieves, robbers, highwaymen, the impure,
the greedy, fornicators, lechers, liars, perjurers, blasphemers, scoundrels,
the abusive, the quarrelsome. Members of their own families, looking down
from Heaven, will find their agonized suffering “a pleasant sight, like that
of a fish jumping in a reservoir.”
The greatest preacher of the fourteenth century was said to have been
Berthold of Regensburg who predicted that only one in 100,000 would be
saved. As for the 99,999, Berthold asked them to imagine themselves
“writhing white-hot within a white-hot universe” till Judgment Day, at
which time things would get much worse. They could imagine their pains
continuing for as many years as “all the hairs grown on all the beasts that
have lived since the beginning of the world.”
In the allegorical late Middle Ages, sermons frequently invoked the
figure of the Castle of Sin: its head knight was Anger, its treasurer Greed,
its chef Gluttony, its chamberlain Sloth, its master and mistress Pride and
Lust. G. R. Owst, author of Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England,
discovered in a fourteenth-century manuscript the original sermon from
which John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress was taken. In it the Slough of
Despond is actually the Slough of Hell, into which the pilgrim, with his
sack of sin, may fall. Owst also suggests that orators who emphasized the
Dives and Lazarus story, dwelling upon the fate of the rich at Judgment
Day, may have contributed to the widespread peasant unrest at the end of
the medieval period. Judgment Day may have seemed too distant a reck-
oning for some. In any event, sermons provided plenty of drama, and
open-air preaching by friars led to the next step, which was drama itself.

113
Mystery Plays

ale EARLY CHURCH DENOUNCED AND killed off

Rome’s lively theatrical tradition and then reinvented primitive sacred
drama in the sung responses of the Latin liturgy. True drama, with actors,
dialogue, and a story line, was part of local churches’ efforts, during the
period when heresies were beginning to look attractive, to reach out and
teach illiterate congregations something about the Bible. Sculpture, paint-
ing, stained glass, and all the other pictorial decorations of the churches
served the same purpose.
The word mystery, used for plays developed for the festivals of the
Christian year, derives from the Latin muinisterium or “service”; very early
on instructive playlets were performed in church as part of the service.
They soon took on a life of their own; the religiously inspired dramatic
tradition grew in inventiveness and scope from about the tenth to the
sixteenth centuries, vying at holiday times with musicians, dancers, jugglers,
and other performers to capture public attention.
Several plays survive from as early as the twelfth century, but many
more are lost. They were performed all over Europe, from Czechoslovakia
to Britain, and in many places they were elaborated into cycles that pre-
sented the “history of the world” from Creation to Last Judgment. England
has four of these cycles preserved fairly completely, from York, Chester,
Wakefield, and one known as either the Hegge cycle (from an owner of

114
 Moves
Toe Ray) PLA YS

the manuscripts) or the N-Town or the Ludus Coventriae. Italy has lost
its medieval plays, but many survive in France, Spain, Germany, Austria,
the Netherlands, Switzerland, and other places.
The Oberammergau festival has produced a Passion cycle once in every
decade since 1634. This remarkable series persisted through the Reforma-
tion, which stopped religious plays everywhere else in Europe, and was
only temporarily halted by the Nazis. There are 124 speaking parts, and
hundreds more costumed figures in the crowd scenes—in effect, the entire
town takes part—and the sequence takes about eight hours to perform.
Strictly speaking, Oberammergau is not a medieval cycle, as the text has
been substantially revised many times through the centuries, but the pre-
sentation gives a good idea of what a big medieval cycle might have been
like
Mystery plays were not always so elaborate nor so secular. We are told
of a simple and probably quite moving liturgical performance of the Har-
rowing of Hell in an English convent where the nuns, representing the
souls of the patriarchs, were confined behind the doors of a chapel. After
the priest uttered exhortations and flung the door wide, the nuns, carrying
palm branches, filed out singing Latin hymns of praise.
By the later Middle Ages, clerics had ceased acting in plays. In the big
urban dramas, a union of tradesmen’s guilds shared responsibility for in-
creasingly elaborate productions. Each guild produced a separate playlet
in its own venue. The Harrowing of Hell was often assigned to the cooks
and bakers for the practical reason that guild members were used to working
with fire and could supply huge cauldrons and other devices to be used for
“tortures,” plus pots and pans to bang together for sound effects.
Boisterous Hell scenes inevitably became comic relief to the more sol-
emn goings-on. As time passed, the comedy got lower, with much attention
to breaking wind. Critics have often assigned the knockabout capers of the
demons in Christopher- Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus to some less worthy
playwright, but centuries of tradition supported vulgar stage devilry, and
Marlowe was probably playing to his audience.
Hell was everyone’s favorite part of the mystery presentations. A scaf-
folding achieved by something as simple as a ladder might stand in for
Heaven in an early production, but even the very earliest plays we know
about give careful stage directions for infernal scenes—the twelfth-cen-
tury Mystére d’Adam specifies chains, clouds of smoke, and the clatter of

115
Teh Ie Sl Ga MIR Ye Opt Jet Je IE Ie

a
bghegeiliSa ° don6 "Tag0989 7

| .

oa Tad thhowe

Director’s sketch of amystery cycle set in a German town square. Hellmouth is at lower
left, and Heaven, with a ladder, at top.

caldrons and kettledrums, while the Anglo-Norman Seinte Resureccion

of the same period calls for a jail to be built on one side of the stage to rep-
resent Limbo, from which Jesus would rescue the patriarchs. Later pro-
ductions added fireworks, gunpowder, flaming sulfur, cannons, mechanical
serpents, and toads.

116
A Harrowing from the kind ofjail that might be built on stage. From the cathedral at
Elne, near Perpignan, France.

The most expensive prop in the entire production was the Hellmouth.
Artists had already taken to portraying “‘the jaws of Hell’’ quite literally,
and theatrical designers took this a step further. Carpenters would make a
beast’s head out of wood, papier-maché, fabric, glitter, and whatever else
they needed, and set it over a trapdoor. The wide jaws were often hinged
and operated with winches and cables so that they could open and close.
Smoke, flames, bad smells, and plenty of noise would emerge from within,
to the delight of the audience. In one instance, the actual jawbone of a
beached whale was employed in the framework.
There would often be fixed locations for the various sets of a dramatic
cycle around a cathedral or town square, and in that case the Hellmouth
might be so large that actual scenes could be played inside it; one directive
specifies that it be nine and a half feet wide. In less lavish productions, the
action took place beside the trapdoor Hellmouth, or ona lower scaffolding,
curtained off until needed. Sometimes the entire series of playlets was
movable. Here is a description of a pageant wagon made for a parade in
fifteenth-century Bourges. It was preceded by a group of capering devils
darting in and out of the crowd.

After this diablerie came a Hell, 14 feet long and eight wide, in the
form of a rock on which was constructed a tower, continually blazing
and shooting out flames in which Lucifer appeared, head and body only.

117
TH Rot @
1-S-T2RY? "Ove EEE er

“Feeyndes” in a Hellmouth. The pillarlike device was probably used to raise and lower the
jaws. From a fifteenth-century German manuscript.

He wore a bearskin with a sequin hanging from each hair and a pelt
with two masks adorned with various colored materials; he ceaselessly
vomited flames and held in his hands various serpents or vipers which
moved and spat fire. At the four corners of the rock were four small
towers in which could be seen souls undergoing torments. And from
the front of the rock there came a great serpent whistling and spitting
fire from throat, nostrils and eyes. And on every part of the rock there
clambered and climbed all kinds of serpents and great toads. It was
moved and guided by a certain number of people inside it, who worked
the torments in place as they had been instructed.

Most were not so magnificent as this, but old bills and documents make it
clear that towns competed fiercely on the elaboration of the Hell front. A
late German example included “‘many ghastly and brightly colored devils.
And it cost a great deal of money and work.”

118
 AGGES Slit) JRO <4 GPs
gA0 ay S

Though it was important to the action mainly at the beginning and the
end of the history of the world, the Hellmouth, too large to be easily
moved, might be present throughout. It was used almost immediately. The
Creation was understandably hard to stage and generally took the form of
a speech from the eminence of Heaven, after which God went offstage to
rest on the seventh day. The Fall of Lucifer thus began the dramatic action.
Lucifer, glitteringly clad, dares to sit on God’s throne and brag, a gesture
greeted with gasps of horror or of glee from the other angels, according to
their political stance. But then comes the fall. From York:

Owe! dewes! All goes down!

My might and my main 1s all marrande
Help! felawes, in faythe I am fallande.

Another Hellmouth clearly based on stage design.

SNe NI LSS

5
Waar TaN » Lucifer. PW SS
a \ CA SES

= IN Les
————|

“4%
“
ri
7

Vo
)Ds .
2 :
i
WG a
Zg uy ,

She
D- Ny Weal)pa
=4
AS

FES OY, 4 LSS.

FAW OSS
N\ DY Wunys.
ge yyy ip “((
eal Ze GEG E (ss AS \

119
T Hoe SE Se OR ia ©) Eerste

And down he goes into the Hellmouth, followed by the “felawes.”” The
Ludus Coventriae indicates the staging:

Now to Helle the way I take

in endeles peyn there to by pyht
For fear of fire a fart I crake.

The role of Lucifer was risky, as the actor might be required to breathe
fire and hold a firecracker in each hand as well as the one indicated in his
backside. Devil’s masks and costumes were backed with mud for protection.
If unscathed, Lucifer would emerge from the Hellmouth in short order
(sometimes after a parliament of “feeyndes,”’ just as in Milton) to attend
to the Temptation in Eden. He needed a variation in costume here and
would either carry or half-wear an imaginatively snaky form with a mask.
The successful rout of Adam and Eve might be cause for more gleeful
devilry, with the devils now in proper attire with grotesque masks and
shaggy suits of hair or feathers instead of their angel costumes. They might
appear in scenes from time to time—Cain and Abel, Job, and so forth—
while the cycle of plays worked its way through the Old Testament and
the beginnings of the New. Satan, now in his third costume of suitably
demonic appearance, would be needed for the Temptation of Christ.
Satan was played as a comic failure in the Temptation; in the Ludus
Coventriae he flounces toward Hellmouth with a “crakke,” and in the
Chester play he wills a “testament” to the audience:

To all that in this place be lent,

I bequeath thee shitte.

The Hellmouth’s finest hour came after the Crucifixion, when Jesus
descended to rescue the prophets. Nicodemus offered a perfect dramatic
scenario. After the solemnities of the Passion, it engaged the audience with
clamor, battling, and more low comedy. In one version, Satan pulled on
his “gere” or armor for one-on-one combat with Jesus. The scene ended
in triumph for the forces of good, with the devils locked away in their own
prison or even in a lower trapdoor Hell.
Sometimes the Harrowing had a little addendum, the story of the ale-
wife, sent to Hell for watering the beer, who stays behind to marry one

120
 MEG
SeIE IE IR YC IPA
UN VOS

The alewife and her lover

of the devils. Here she is again, that remarkable barmaid who turns up in
every millennium—from Gilgamesh to The Frogs to a medieval Harrowing!
The Antichrist story was difficult to fit into the dramatic sequence of
the life of Jesus. So, though it was a popular dramatic subject—more
battling between angels and demons, plus stage trickery and sleight of hand
as the Antichrist performs his false miracles—it was usually performed
independently, or as the provocative beginning of an independent Last
Judgment play. One of the oldest surviving mystery plays is a twelfth-
century Antichrist from the Tergernsee Abbey in Germany.
At the Last Judgment, the newly resurrected dead appear ‘“‘naked” in
body stockings to be judged by Jesus, while the Virgin Mary acts as in-
tercessor. The saved are greeted by angels and ascend to Heaven, while the
damned, bewailing their lot, head for the Hellmouth. Since the damned
always featured great folk like kings, queens, bishops, and rich merchants,

121
Tee VEINS SORRY SOF Es Shia
bheeale

this was a crowd-pleaser. The Towneley play adds a digression: the devils
rejoice at the great number of souls heading their way, so many that the
porter at Hell Gate gets no rest. It is this scene that Shakespeare’s porter
in Macbeth imitates in Act II, Scene 3, just after Duncan’s murder.
The devils were allowed their moment of jubilation over their captives,
but the plays closed on a more decorous note, with music, pageantry, and
a joyous ascension to Heaven.
Biblical parables like the stories of Dives and Lazarus or the wise and
foolish virgins were not commonly staged, partly because they were not
“history,” and partly because of an intrinsic dramatic pitfall illustrated by
the story of Frederick the Undaunted, margrave of Thuringia. In 1321, he
attended a performance of a wise and foolish virgins play put on by a boys’
school in Eisnadi and was so distressed by the verdict handed out to the
fresh-faced lads who played the foolish virgins that he turned his back on
the stage. ‘“What is the Christian faith if the sinner is not to receive mercy
upon the intercession of the Virgin and the saints?” he exclaimed in re-
vulsion.
Frederick’s story is instructive on several counts. It illustrates the power
of dramatic presentation in an illiterate society.* It also demonstrates why
other Hell scenes inevitably regressed toward farce. To show a group of
pretty ‘girls’? damned for carelessness was discomfiting. Even given an
audience’s resentment of the rich, Dives’s pleas to Abraham for rescue or
for warning his living brothers might have had the same effect. To watch
a gang of comical imps pretend to torture a hapless dummy fit in far better
with the festival mood. It was not the conventional staging of the later
mystery cycles, coarse as they had become by the sixteenth century, but
the far more controversial ‘“‘serious” poetry of Doctor Faustus that finally
ousted religious drama from the British stage.
The later medieval theater offered two other kinds of plays, miracles
and moralities. Miracles dramatized the stories that had been told for cen-
turies about the lives and deaths of saints and martyrs. Though these were
meant to be inspirational, their popularity, too, was directly related to the
action they offered. Jean Bodel’s St. Nicholas play (c. 1200) presented
battles in the Crusades and scenes in both brothels and taverns, but other

*The society need not be illiterate. I have seen an audience become visibly disturbed at a high-school
performance of Godspell, a modern musical that borrows many techniques from the mystery plays, at
the moment when the actor playing Jesus separates the sheep from the goats.

122
 11-12. RIGHT: The Hell detail
of the twelfth-century mosaic
at Torcello on page 72. Note
that a Byzantine Satan is as
human as the Antichrist on
his lap. Another Byzantine
characteristic is the division of
the damned into tidy com-
partments; Western Hells are
more chaotic. The angels prod
those whose headdresses be-
tray their wealth and pride,
while the Hellmouth is part of
Satan’s throne. Worms that
never sleep are at bottom left.
BELOW: The unveiling of the
grand mosaic on the cupola of
the baptistry in Florence in
1300 must have been quite an
event. Dante borrowed some
of its imagery for his own
Inferno. Note the jaws on the
ears and throne.

aN
HW
13. After his banishment in 1302, Dante very likely visited Giotto in Padua, where he was
working on his famous frescoes. Giotto’s hideous Satan, who is actually excreting a sinner,
moves close to Dante’s concept, and the different punishments for the sinners look forward
to his inventions. Here the four rivers of fire stream from Christ’s throne.
14. Another bestial Satan, by Francesco Traini, at the Camposanto in Pisa achieves a kind of
grotesque beauty.
15. An exuberant anonymous fourteenth-century Last Judgment in the Pinacoteca in
Bologna includes Dante’s bolge and bridges.
16-17. Orcagna, or Nardo di
Cione, followed Dante exactly in
Santa Maria Novella in Florence.
The fresco is too faded to repro-
duce well, but you can see
Charon, the philosopher’s castle
in Limbo, the lustful swirling in
air, Minos in the top detail, and
the misers and spendthrifts rolling
stones, burning coffins, and some
harpies in the lower one.
18. Luca Signorelli (1441-1523) painted detailed and somewhat pornographic Hells. This is a

good example of Baroque overcrowding.

19. Detail from Michel angelo s Last Judgment.
2
20. Baciccio’s Baroque ceiling of the Gesu, the Jesuit church in Rome. In three places, the
frame of the painting is broken by the damned as they fall to destruction.
 NIGRY SSiglepE sony ofSPA LAR Y aS

plays relied on stage wizardry to produce miracles, dragons, wild beasts,

and realistic martyrdoms.
The Hellmouth got plenty of use here too. In the Miracle de Théophile,
a precursor of Faust is saved from the jaws of Hell by the Virgin. St.
Michael saves the false “Pope Joan” in a German play. In a Dutch play,
the pope is the savior. Demons were needed to tempt the saints and to drag
off their persecutors to Hell.
Moralities, or dramatized allegories, came along toward the end of the
Middle Ages. On the literary level, allegorizing could become convoluted,
as modern students of medieval literature can glumly attest. But on the
level of the popular theater, allegory simply added the figure of Death to
that of Satan and personified the Seven Deadly Sins who dwelt in Hell-
mouth. A Spanish play gives costume directions: Pride wears a scepter and
crown; Envy is well dressed with spectacles; Gluttony, well dressed with
things to eat; Anger is in armor; Lust, a woman with a mirror; Avarice
has a scholar’s robe and carries a purse; and Sloth wears droopy breeches
and carries a pillow.
Moralities dealt with the end of man, not the end of the world. The
journey toward Death and the fate of the soul was their theme; Mercy
argued with Justice, and the Vices and Virtues fought for ascendancy.
Where they got into trouble is when they forgot to play to the audience.
In the longest and oldest of the English moralities, The Castle of Perse-
verance, five settings held the World, the Flesh, the Devil, Covetousness,
and God’s Throne. The play is tedious beyond modern endurance. A short
morality called Mankind, written down about 1475, shows far more stage
savvy: at a critical point an actor steps forward to say that the chief devil,
Titivullus, will appear only after the hat has been passed and filled. Every-
man, the best known English morality (c. 1500), brought back the popular
Titivullus.
By the fifteenth century, the figure of Death personified as an animate
corpse or skeleton was ubiquitous in European art. The first precursor of
what seems to have been a kind of grisly fad appears toward the beginning
of the fourteenth century with the Legend of the Three Living and Three
Dead, which was illustrated so often that it was frequently abbreviated as
simply the Legend. In it, three foppishly dressed youths, or sometimes
kings, encounter three desiccated corpses. “As you are, so once were we,”
they intone. “As we are, so you will be.”
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DOSES, MSCS Oe OMe Vest Je, we Ie,

Another more purely visual theme was that of the Dance of Death,
which many people remember best from Holbein’s sixteenth-century inter-
pretation, based on earlier, more properly medieval models. The Dance is
a much more sophisticated and ironic concept than the Legend and required
a number of illustrations rather than the Legend’s one, for it indicated that
each death is personal, with its own psychopomp. The Dance tended toward
sardonic humor, which was certainly the case in Holbein’s woodcuts. By
his time, Death was more usually a skeleton than a dry corpse, and the
word sardonic was actually coined to describe its bony grin.
This move toward the personification of Death in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries is echoed in hundreds of pictures and carvings of mor-
bidly graphic Crucifixions, Pietas, saints’ martyrdoms, deathbed images,
and even little printed handbooks of cartoons called Ars Moriendi, or “Art

Death with an arrow, rising from a tomb, by Jean Colombe, from France, late 1470s

An elaborate Italian rendering of the Three Living and Three Dead

124
 WE NES UGE IR SE Ie I NERS

a
pe

A W ZN

Dance of Death, from a fifteenth-century woodblock

of Dying”’; it turns up in poetry as well as in the moralities. Whether or

not fascination with the macabre was a response to the plague and other
calamities, or whether the times naturally inclined toward pessimism, is
moot. What is significant is that the art and poetry indicate that soon after
the point at which the Church adopted the doctrine of Purgatory, Hell
began to lose its grip on the imagination.
This is not to say that people did not believe in Hell. Most of them
undoubtedly did, and the Church never ceased its efforts in that direction.
But Purgatory lightened the load, and, from the evidence, fear of death
seems to have displaced fear of Hell. By the Baroque period, tombs adorned
with horribly realistic sculptures of naked corpses crawling with worms
were not at all uncommon.
An unusual mid-fifteenth-century Flemish painting by Jan van Eyck
makes the perfect graphic bridge between the two concepts, showing the
old Hell topped by the new skeletal and grinning Death. See Plate 21.

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Purgatory

HE £TER NITY OF EDEL CON TUN U 2B to plague

fies Hells in older religions, though frightful, were neither
static nor eternal; Hindu, Buddhist, and Zoroastrian hells depend on cycles
of incarnation that can lead to an improvement of circumstance. Origen’s
argument that all being in time returns to God was emphatically rejected
by Augustine and the orthodox Church, but it never quite disappeared.
One biblical passage seemed to indicate that prayers and offerings for
the dead could actually redeem them. In Second Maccabees 12.4346, Judas
Maccabeus orders an offering of 200,000 drachmas for the souls of Jewish
soldiers slain in battle:

For if he had not hoped that they that were slain should have risen
again, it had been superfluous and vain to pray for the dead. And also
in that he perceived that there was great favor laid up for those who
died godly, it was an holy and good thought. Whereupon he made a
reconciliation for the dead, that they might be delivered from sin.

Then there was the bosom of Abraham, thought to have rocked Elijah
and Enoch (at least) as well as the beggar Lazarus. It was sometimes iden-
tified with refrigerium, the place of refreshment. The Limbos of the pa-
triarchs and the unbaptized babies were cited. Furthermore, Paul had

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 PaO RRA PAT 1@ GRY:

seemed to indicate (1 Cor. 3.15) some kind of salvation by fire, though the
passage is not very clear. And visions, time and again for centuries, had
offered glimpses of purgatorial punishments separate from those of Hell.
The history of the Church’s adoption of a third major after-death venue
has been written by the French historian Jacques LeGoff in The Birth of
Purgatory, a fine example of scholarly detective work. The chief criticism
made of it, by another major medievalist, the Russian Aron Gurevich, is
that LeGoff did not give enough credit to visions, which suggest that the
idea of Purgatory was well established long before the Church was ready
to embrace it officially.* In any event, the “new” doctrine dates back to a
papal letter of 1253, though it was not finally confirmed till the Council
of Trent.
The Catechism of the Council of Trent, which was drawn up later, says
“there is a purgatorial fire in which the souls of the pious are purified by
a temporary punishment so that an entrance may be opened for them into
the eternal country in which nothing stained can enter.” Souls detained
there are “helped by the suffrages of the faithful, but especially by the
acceptable sacrifice of the altar.”” While bishops are instructed to teach the
doctrine, they are specifically enjoined from imparting “the more difficult
and subtle questions relating to the subject which do not tend to edifica-
tion,” particularly those “tending to superstition, savoring of filthy lucre
or likely to create scandals and offences.”’ One can hear the horns of Prot-
estantism faintly blowing in that last statement.
In part, Purgatory was adopted as a reaction to heresy, which was not
quite early Protestantism, though later Protestants like John Foxe in his
Book of Martyrs (1563) sometimes claimed that it was. The lively eleventh
and twelfth centuries nurtured more free thinking than the orthodox
Church could tolerate. Heretical Bogomils (named after a Bulgarian priest)
from the East moved westward, and Waldensians (followers of Peter Waldo
of Lyons) and Cathars or Albigensians (after the town of Albi) moved
north and east from Catalonia and the Pyrenees until they more or less
met around Verona. The movement of large groups of people on pilgrim-
ages, and especially on the Crusades, helped to spread heresy.
No more than a superficial look at the long and bloody history of

“In the 1984 American edition, LeGoff acknowledges the criticism and adds a new appendix on visions,
but does not retreat from his thesis, that there was no real concept of Purgatory until the twelfth century.

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TES SEeInS
wig ORRTY SOUr serine ale ae

medieval heresies and the Inquisition is possible here. Suffice it to say that
most of the heretics condemned by the Church did not consider themselves
heretics at all, but good Christians, far more devout on the whole than
those ministered to by what was, in the heretics’ opinion, the increasingly
greedy and corrupt Church bureaucracy. The mendicant order of Saint
Francis (1182-1226) was founded on just such feelings, but the Church
managed to co-opt and embrace the Franciscan movement before it finally
drew the line at other departures.
Aside from anticlericalism, the strongest motivation for most heresies,
what they had in common, and what the Church seized upon, was dualism,
which it called Manichaeism, though it is questionable whether the heretic
leaders had ever heard of Mani. What is far more likely is that almost all
ordinary nonintellectual medieval people, including minor clerics and the
nobility, inclined toward casual dualism. The Church undertook to rout
it out by use of the carrot and the stick. The stick was the so-called Al-
bigensian Crusade against heresy and the ferocious Inquisition that fol-
lowed. The carrot was Purgatory.
Purgatory was a powerful propaganda tool because it offered a new
chance to the masses excluded from Heaven by Berthold of Regensburg
and other hellfire preachers. Theologically, it handily subsumed the ques-
tion of Abraham’s bosom and the two Limbos—though Dante put his
pagan Limbo in the First Circle of Hell. Even the dead babies, after perhaps
a very little purgatorial refinement, could now find happiness.
Purgatory also explained how ghosts, which most people believed in,
could walk. It solved the complication of what happened between Particular
Judgment at death and the eventual Last Judgment. Almost everyone, it
was soon widely assumed, would go to Purgatory, the exceptions being
saints, martyrs, and the incorrigibly wicked. And the prayers of the living,
the Church said explicitly, could help the dead and shorten their time in
Purgatory.
But to whom should these prayers be addressed? It seems unlikely that
the Church foresaw the extraordinary role the Virgin Mary would take on
as Queen of Purgatory. In the Apocalypse of Mary, back as far as the fourth
or fifth century, she had obtained temporary respite (refrigerium) for the
sinners in Hell. But so had Paul, and his story was better known in mon-
asteries, though evidently not in storytelling. A miracle story of 1070 fea-
tures a woman sent to Hell for youthful lesbianism (!) until the Mother of

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God intervenes on her behalf and apparently restores her to life. In another
story from about the same time, she delivers a noble sinner who had re-
deeming qualities—generosity to the poor and the Church—from a horde
of demons, though she orders that his chains be retained for another sinner,
still living. Since no one could leave Hell, they must have been rescued
from Purgatory, though it had not yet been defined as such. In about 1220,
not long before it was so defined, Caesarius of Heisterbach wrote of a
young monk named Christian who had a vision of the Virgin saving him
from demons; upon awakening he led a life of such reverent humility that
when he died he went straight to paradise despite having in his youth
fathered two bastards (both of whom became monks). The most famous
of Mary’s rescues was Theophilus, whose story will be related when we
arriveat the Faust legend.
“Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.” Jesus is the
Judge, but Mary is the Intercessor, and that is how they are portrayed in
hundreds of judgment scenes. Purgatory, together with Mary’s increasing
power to intervene there, led directly to the medieval cult of the Virgin,
Mariolatry, as later Protestants would disdainfully call it. Perhaps following
the will of the people, the Church granted Mary more and more super-
natural attributes. She was the stainless product of an Immaculate Con-
ception, by divine interception kept from sin from the moment of concep-
tion. Unlike her son, she never died but only fell asleep (the Dormition) and
was translated to Heaven in her own glorified body (the Assumption, which
did not become an article of faith until 1950). In this body, she can appear
any where on earth, and apparently continues to do so frequently. Her images
smile, weep real tears, and grant prayers. (Relics were all but abandoned in
the late Middle Ages in favor of images of the Virgin.) She is “the woman
clothed with the sun” of Revelation. In Nativity scenes she is the mother of
new life, but as the Mater Dolorosa she is the pitying death goddess. “Lady
of Heaven, earthly queen, /Empress of the swamps of Hell,” is how Frangois
Villon had his mother address her in the prayer-poem he wrote for her.
All the saints, alive or dead (most were dead), performed miracles, but
Mary’s supernatural living status and purview in Purgatory made her fore-
most in prayers for the dead. John the Baptist had earlier shared her duties
as intercessor, but by the end of the thirteenth century—soon after the
birth of Purgatory—she was more frequently portrayed alone, sheltering
sinners from the wrath of her Son. No wonder she was more popular than

129
TED ES ess
ie @OFR Na @ er eeiiet
aeale

A rather salacious Purgatory from a fifteenth-century French Book of Hours

he during the late Middle Ages when plague, war, and famine wracked
Europe, and death seemed everywhere imminent. The Council of Trent
tried to limit her powers but was not markedly successful judging from her
status even today among Catholics.
Purgatory, which seemed so just and humane in theory, also led to
other difficulties. Protestant reformers, who rejected the concept com-
pletely, together with “idolatrous” worship of Mary (or other intercessors,
such as the saints), publicized these so incessantly that it is necessary only
to mention them without comment. In sum, the Church went into the
business of selling pardons or “indulgences” for the remission of punish-
ment after death. While this might seem harmless enough when it is simply
a matter of lighting a candle in prayer while contributing to the poor box,
it could be, and often was, carried to outrageous extents, as when rich men,
with far more on their consciences than Dives would appear to have had,

130
 PaORReGrAw
dl OURS ¥.

Bosch’s fifteenth-century Purgatory, very unusual for its time, looks uncannily like
modern descriptions of ‘near-death experiences.”

131
THs HOS
a2 ORY ORE wei ie rewlesle

hired the poor to fast, to pray, to make pilgrimages for them, to fight in
the Crusades, even to wear hair shirts and flagellate themselves. All these,
Church officials accepted complacently as surrogate penances for sin, to-
gether with adequate offerings of money or treasure.
Purgatory gave the Church, so powerful in every aspect of medieval
life, new powers that extended beyond the grave. At the same time, it
opened a serious chink in the armor of the all-powerful Roman Catholic
Church.
Purgatory was thought to be a temporary Hell, as on Dante’s mountain,
where sins are punished in the same kind but not with the same severity
as in the Inferno. More often, Purgatory was associated with fire that would
burn away the evil of original and accumulated sin, “‘refiner’s fire.” Artists
usually portrayed it that way, with angels swooping down to carry naked
purged souls to paradise. By the nineteenth century, nearly every Catholic
altarpiece featured a depiction of souls in Purgatory.

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Dante’s Inferno

idhae WOW MOIS lr CO IME IMDS INP IP IA IR Ye NIRA

A 12. IN

about Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) would fill his own Inferno, and
the part of those volumes that has to do with that Inferno’s engineering
and geography would form a substantial subdivision. The architectural
ingenuity Dante put into his landscape of Hell has always fascinated readers:
modern editions of the Divine Comedy carry maps and diagrams, while
illustrators have presented not only the characters and monsters of the story
but also the wonderful underground embankments, moats, castles, paved
trenches, and the City of Dis with walls of red-hot iron. Galileo himself
did a technical report on the structure of the Inferno in 1587 as a playful
student thesis. Virgil’s Hades is a spectacular stage set without much depth,
but Dante’s Inferno is limned in three dimensions, right down to the cracks,
fissures, and ruins created in the infrastructure at the time of the great
earthquake that followed the Harrowing of the First Circle.
Writing his great poem in exile, Dante was concerned with history,
with Florentine politics, with the corruption of the clergy, with the moral
position of his contemporaries, and most of all with the state of his own
psyche. At a distance of seven centuries, we can no longer easily appreciate
any of these things except the last—Dante is generous with his emotions.
But anyone reading the /nferno “just for the story” can still marvel at not
only the stories the Pilgrim is told but also at the sights and sounds—and
smells!

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TH Ee Eis TOR Y SOs eee a

Dante took every theme traced in this book—philosophic, mythic,

Orphic, demonic, repulsive, fantastic, allegorical, grotesque, comic, psy-
chological—and put them together with meticulous care for all time. His
religious views were orthodox, but his imagination was not. Even if his
artistic contribution had been limited to the radical step of marrying the
classical attributes of Hades to those of the Christian Hell of the vision
tours, it would be a milestone. But his influence went far beyond that.
On earth, Dante led a complicated life. Orphaned early, he was brought
up by well-to-do relatives in the city-state of Florence, where he received
an excellent education in both the classics and the poetry of his time. He
was interested in vocabulary and at one point wanted to construct an “all-
Italian” language merging the many dialects of the peninsula; this project
was completely undermined by his decision to write the Comedy in his
own Florentine dialect, which, together with the later contributions of
Petrarch and Boccaccio, made Tuscan once and for all time Italy’s literary
language. At various times he worked as a businessman, a soldier, a poli-
tician, and a professor of philosophy. Because he ran afoul of the tangled
politics of the period, he was forced to spend the last twenty years of his
life in unhappy, though not uncomfortable, exile.
The most famous event of Dante’s childhood was his encounter with
Beatrice Portinari when he was nine and she a year younger. Theirs was a
model of courtly romance, for they seldom met, each married someone
else, and he continued to write poetry to her all his life. She died in 1290,
a date remembered because Dante set the Comedy in 1300, just ten years
later. In the poem, she appears as Divine Love or Grace, which inspires
and guides the Pilgrim after Human Reason, represented by the poet Virgil,
can go no farther. Dante had other reasons for choosing 1300: he was
thirty-five at the time, “midway along life’s journey”’; it was a centennial
year, and numbers are essential to the scheme of the poem. It was also the
year his political troubles began.
To picture Dante’s physical and ethical universe, think of the round
ball of the earth pierced in the northern hemisphere to its center by a hole
in the shape of an irregular cone or funnel. The center of that hole is
Jerusalem, and its diameter, the width of the circle around Jerusalem, is
equal in size to the radius of the earth, about 3,950 miles, though Galileo’s
calculations showed it a few hundred miles less. This hole was formed by
the weight and force of Lucifer and his angels striking the earth as they fell

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R NO

from Heaven. The matter displaced by the impact, forced upward and
backward along the tunnel Virgil and Dante use to escape, formed the
mountain of Purgatory that rises in an inverted cone on an isolated island
in the southern hemisphere. On top of Purgatory is the Earthly Paradise.
The opening to Hell is covered by a vault of earth that Galileo calculated
to be 405!%2 miles in depth, though obviously there are irregular shallower
fissures such as the one by which the poets enter.* In the Dark Wood of
the Inferno’s first canto, where the Pilgrim flees from the leopard, the lion,
and the she-wolf, is a hill that must be climbed to reach the entrance to
the lower depths where the famous words are inscribed: Abandon hope,
all you who enter here.
To complete the picture, remember that for Dante, though notoriously
not for Galileo, the earth was at the center of a Ptolemaic universe around
which circled nine crystalline heavenly spheres—the moon, Mercury, Ve-
nus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the fixed stars, and the primum mobile
or “‘first mover,” which keeps the universe in order. (The three outer planets
had not yet, of course, been discovered.) Beyond the spheres was the vast
Empyrean, home of God, the angels, and saints, but Dante’s heavens are
lodged in the spheres. The nine circles of Hell are a direct inversion of the
scheme; the vestibule makes a tenth area, as does the Empyrean, as does
the earthly paradise atop the nine levels of Purgatory.
Dante’s love of precise structure and symbolic numerology extends to
the poetry itself. It is written in terza rima, in which the first and third
lines of each three-line stanza rhyme while the second rhymes with the
first and third line of the next stanza. Each of the three sections, the /nferno,
Purgatorio, and Paradiso, is further divided in thirds, of thirty-three cantos
each, with an introductory canto to make one hundred in all. To have
carried off this structure so readably is amazing.
When the two poets enter the Gate of Hell in Canto III, they find
themselves in the vestibule, an area where Dante places the “indecisive,”
those who have never committed to anything, including life—thus though
they have not earned Hell they get no real death either. This vestibule slopes
down to the river Acheron, the first of three circular rivers, each of which
debouches into the next, finally to flow into Cocytus, the frozen lake at

*According to The Weekly World News of August 28, 1990, Hell is nine miles beneath the surface of a
point in western Siberia where Soviet engineers drilling for oil broke through. They capped their hole
after smelling the smoke and hearing the cries of the damned.

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Wine Jel i SI IR ve Ou Int Ie IE Ie

Dante’s Inferno

Map of Dante’s Inferno

the center of the earth. The fourth traditional river of Hell, Lethe, Dante
locates in Purgatory for dramatic reasons. All of these waters, Virgil tells
the Pilgrim in an image worthy of Hesiod, flow from the tears of a great
metal statue at the core of Mount Ida in Crete (the statue comes from
Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 2.31-34, but the tears are Dante’s).
The entire underground cone is terraced in descending ledges or circles
of narrowing size down to the nethermost well or pit at the center of the
earth, which holds Cocytus. Between the Acheron, across which
Charon

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ol bae Sum N MERE
aR aN ©

the boatman ferries the poets, and the Styx are Hell’s first four circles, the
highest of which is technically Limbo, the residence of virtuous unbaptized
souls, mostly pagan. No one is punished in the First Circle, which resembles
the Elysian Fields of asphodel in the Aeneid and has its own Castle of
Philosophy and its own fresh little stream, which seems to have nothing
to do with bitter tears. Virgil himself inhabits this circle together with
Homer (Dante is thought to have known Homer’s work only by reputation)
and other famous pagans. The Hebrews had, of course, been rescued in
the Harrowing. Dante avoids the question of unbaptized babies.
The next four circles punish the Incontinent, those who, in life, gave
in to their passions. Dante followed Aristotle’s ethical system in his clas-
sification of sins rather than the more common Seven Deadly Sins listing.
Thus.the Second Circle, guarded by Minos, holds the lustful, whirled
forever in winds of desire. The Third, guarded by Cerberus, traps gluttons
in a cold, smelly garbage heap. The Fourth, guarded by Plutus (‘Father
Rich Man” in yet another guise), pits misers and spendthrifts, many of
them priests, against one another. The Styx itself, a filthy marsh, forms
the Fifth Circle and also a moat for the City of Dis, as well as the boundary
between Upper and Lower Hell. In the swamp, the angry tear at one an-
other, while under the mud the slothful and sullen gurgle incoherently.
The poets are ferried by Phlegyas across the Styx from the great tower
on the upper bank to the City of Dis (or Satan), the capital of Hell and
home to the fallen rebel angels—who will not permit the poets to enter
until an angelic messenger forces the gate. All of Lower Hell lies within
the walls of this city—really a citadel—guarded by the Furies and Medusa.
Immediately beyond the gate is the Sixth Circle of heretics, who burn in
fiery graves; in Dante’s Inferno, despite its name, the traditional punishment
of fire is used only inside the walls of the citadel.
Down asteep slope guarded by the Minotaur, the poets scramble toward
the Seventh Circle and the Phlegethon, the river of boiling blood guarded
by the Centaurs, one of whom, Nessus, takes them across it. The Seventh
Circle, which punishes the sins of Violence, is divided into three rounds,
the first being the Phlegethon itself. Immersed in its horrid flow are the
murderous: warmongers, tyrants, predators, gang members, psychopaths.
The next round, guarded by Harpies, is the Wood of Suicides (perhaps
Dante’s eeriest conception), while at the wood’s edge are the wastrels. Then
comes the Burning Plain of usurers, blasphemers, and homosexuals, which

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GUMS IME Vel ASS sy OPN ME OTE at Ti IL

the poets can cross only by following the bank of the paved conduit along
which the end branch of the Phlegethon flows to a great waterfall at the
edge of a cliff.
The monster Geryon flies them down the cliff’s edge to the most elab-
orate circle of them all, and the beginning of a new and final set of sins,
those of Fraudulence and Malice. Malebolge is shaped like a great stone
amphitheater with a spokelike series of stone bridges leading down to a
central well over ten concentric ditches or bolge. Each bolgia holds a group
of sinners: in the first, horned demons chivy pimps in one direction and
seducers in another. In the second, flatterers wallow in excrement; in the
third, corrupt ecclesiastics, including at least one pope, are plunged upside
down into something resembling a baptismal font while their feet are ““bap-
tized” with flames. False prophets and soothsayers trudge through the
fourth with their heads twisted entirely around so that their tears flow
down to their buttocks; Tiresias, sadly demoted from his position in the
Odyssey, is here.

The Wood of the Suicides, by Gustave Doré

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William Blake put fossils of human bones into the stone of the bridges over the bolge.

At the fifth bolgia, Dante introduces us to the Malebranche (“‘Evil-

Claws”), a band of antic devils like those of the mystery plays who
athletically and almost playfully toss “barrators’—grafters and public
swindlers—into boiling pitch. The mood turns to grotesque comedy, and
Canto XXI ends with a traditional fart.
Dante chose to inject comic relief at this particular point because this
is his own bolgia: back on earth, he had been exiled from Florence on the
grounds of barratry, or political corruption, as well as on vaguer charges
of intrigue and hostility to the pope. Grim burlesque is his response to the
charges, and it is no accident that the next bolgia holds the hypocrites with
whom he must actually consort.
The poets find that the bridge over the sixth bolgia has been broken by
the earthquake that followed the Harrowing. In order to escape the angry
Malebranche, they must slide down the rubble into the realm of the hyp-
ocrites, who shuffle in single file, weeping from the weary weight of their

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THE Mis TORY ©F ere

The poets escape from demons down a broken bridge, by Gustave Dore.

lead-lined cloaks. Arduously, the two climb up the ruins on the other bank
to regain the bridge, from which they look down to see the amazing shape-
shifting in the seventh bolgia, where thieves and reptiles merge and remerge.
Deceivers burn in flames in the eighth bolgia: among them is Ulysses
—Dante was firmly on Virgil’s Trojan (and Italian) side when it came to
the great war, and Ulysses was known for his trickery. In the ninth bolgia
are the sowers of discord, horribly mutilated by a demon with a sword.
Among them is Mohamet the “infidel,” a heretic from Dante’s point of
view. This bolgia is twenty-two miles around; the cone is narrowing se-
verely. The tenth and last bolgia, where the falsifiers (impersonators, per-
jurers, counterfeiters, alchemists) lie stricken with horrible diseases, is only
eleven miles around and half a mile wide.

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 [Oe AN eee Seen IN hap RaNE@

In the well at the bottom of the Malebolge construction stand the Giants,
each about fifty feet high, Dante’s Titans of Tartarus. Here they guard the
Pit, their heads and torsos protruding above it. Antaeus lowers the poets
in his huge palm to a point about midway down the Ninth Circle.
Three rings around the center of Cocytus, the icebound lake that is the
realm of Treason, hold traitors. Caina (named for Cain) holds those who
betrayed their families; Antenora, traitors to their countries (Antenor, who
supposedly betrayed Troy, was a hero to Homer, but Dante sided with
Virgil and the Trojans). Ptolomea is for traitors to guests: Ptolomy was a
captain of Jericho who arranged a banquet for his father-in-law, Simon the
high priest, and his two sons, then murdered them. In the absolute cen-
ter—of the Inferno and of the earth—is Judecca (from Judas, of course),
for traitors to their lords, and in its center is the greatest traitor to the
greatest Lord: Dis (Satan) himself, frozen fast and mindlessly weeping as
he devours the shades of Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius. It is up his
hairy thigh that the poets must climb to find their exit to clean air and
starlight.
Dante’s portrait of Dis or Satan is both conventional and original. Vision
literature tended to avoid Satan or offer only a quick thrilling glimpse, and
even if Dante had read Tundal, a centipede-like creature would never have
suited him. The figure is grotesque enough. It has three faces, red (Judas)
in the middle, black on the left (Brutus), yellow on the right (Cassius), and
below each is a pair of wings, which fan the freezing wind of Cocytus.
The three heads were inspired by artists’ conceptions. Dante, like most
of Florence, must have gone to see the spectacular new Last Judgment
mosaic on the cupola of the baptistry of the cathedral of San Giovanni,
which was completed in 1300, two years before he was banished. Vasari
tells us in Lives of the Artists (1550) that Dante was a “dear friend” of
Giotto, who was also a Florentine. After banishment, he evidently visited
the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, where Giotto completed his famous frescoes
around 1307. This chapel was built for Enrico Scrovegni as a penance for
the depredations of his father Reginaldo, a blatantly avaricious moneylender
who was said to have died screaming for the keys to his strongbox “so that
no one can get my money!” Thus, in Heaven (where Giotto also placed
himself), the painter shows Enrico respectfully presenting a model of the
chapel to the saints. Dante, teasing his friend, retaliated by putting Papa
Reginaldo in the Seventh Circle of Hell with the usurers; he is the last

141
Enrico Scrovegni offers his model to the saints. Giotto himself is fifth from the left in the
bottom row. Note the dead rising at bottom.

person to whom the poets speak before mounting Geryon to fly to Lower
Hell.
Both of these Last Judgments feature bestial Satans with a pair of sinner-
swallowing snakes emerging from where their ears should be. In descrip-
tion, the snakes may have seemed more peculiar than poetic, and Dante
rearranged the image to parallel the Trinity. Byzantine Last Judgments with
their humanoid devils had soul-eating serpents emerging from Satan’s
throne, a clever way of bringing the Hellmouth into the composition. Both
the Florentine cupola and Giotto used that device too; the subsequent
excretion of chewed sinners is implied by the seated position. Satan’s hairy
body developed from the devil suits in mystery plays, which were covered
with hair or feathers, which is easy to see in Botticelli’s drawings of Dante’s
Dis. Illustrators quickly gave up on the complicated sets of wings, which
go back to biblical descriptions of seraphs, and most show only one pair.
What was new in Dante’s literary portrait, though theologically correct
and implied by Giotto’s beast figure and, arguably, by some vision liter-
ature, was Satan as utterly defeated, a blob of mindlessly chewing, weeping,
semi-frozen protoplasm, oblivious to the escape of the poets along his own
body. Dante’s view of Satan is brief, which was traditional in visions, but
also artistically wise. When it comes to monsters, the distance from the
impressive to the ridiculous is perilously short.

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 De AGN cae en ienT INGE RaNE ©

The Inferno was a sensation as soon as it was circulated and made

available to copyists. This was about 1314, while Dante was still working
on the later sections of the Comedy. Illustrated copies began to appear
almost immediately, and the Inferno’s enormous influence also extended
to public art. The fourteenth century was a great time for cathedral building
in Italy, and Last Judgments commissioned for them quickly began to
reflect Dante’s invention. His purgatorial mountain solved the problem of
how to portray Purgatory, but it was his Hell that fascinated artists.
With Dante, the history of Hell entered a new stage. He killed off vision
literature altogether, and ina sense he helped to kill off Hell itself by making
it possible to think about it in fictional or allegorical terms. He abandoned
the old pretense of “truth” in vision literature and invited readers to join
him and Virgil in a story, an artistic creation by an individual writer looking
back with an appreciative and critical eye at the work of other writers.
Even a simple soul looking at Nardo di Cione’s mural in Florence would
understand that it illustrated not a literal Hell but Dante’s Hell. Though
this was certainly not his intention, Dante made it easier for intellectuals
of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment to reject its reality.

Of the three misers watching as the poets prepare to mount Geryon, Reginaldo Scrovegni,
usually identified by the pregnant sow on his coat of arms, is in the middle.
Wiss, dsl IOS WiOIk Ye OF dab le ik, Je

From this time forward, the journey portrayed by the Comedy also
served as a durable interior metaphor. In our post-Freudian age of indus-
trious myth mapping, it is all too easy to see that literary journey to the
Land of the Dead, or Hell, or its surrogates are allegories of the individual
experiencing “the dark night of the soul” before a spiritual reemergence
into starlight. In psychoanalysis, “the modern religion,” a patient must
>

explore with his “‘guide” the deep sources of his unhappiness and inability
to follow the true path. Then he must endure the painful Purgatory of
examining and challenging his behavior before achieving the relative par-
adise of mental health. A twelve-step program confronting drug abuse or
alcoholism would interpret the downward spiral as the slide into addiction
and destructive behavior until an individual has ‘‘bottomed out,” and can
turn on Satan’s hairy leg to struggle toward the light; Purgatory is, then,
the behavior modification necessary to reach the precarious paradise of
sobriety. In the “hero journey” which Joseph Campbell, leaning on Jung,
found basic to religious myth and quest adventure, the hero must venture
into “‘the belly of the beast” before undergoing “‘the road of trials” toward
apotheosis.
But this entirely comfortable and pervasive method of modern meta-
phorical thinking might not exist if Dante had never written the Comedy.
It gave us a new vocabulary and a wonderfully useful way of looking directly
at our spiritual lives.

144
The High Middle Ages

+ | ea VIS OUNtSs OF) THe Rm is “i ©: Pep “BL Daeshort

with Dante, and fiction, which needed this outlet—for it would
be many centuries before realistic fiction was wanted or written—faced
with the horrific and eternal Hell outlined and “owned” by the Church,
had to turn elsewhere. Dante showed a way to use classical Hades for the
purpose, and, accordingly, Virgil’s Aeneid, which was just at this time
being translated into every European language, was eagerly mined by poets
in any number of ways.
In Italian epic and chivalric poetry from the fourteenth century into the
seventeenth, it became almost de rigueur to feature a trip to Hell in the
course of action. Most of these poems, unlike Dante’s, were purely secular,
and the Hell they explored owed more to Virgil and Ovid than to Christian
tradition. There were literally dozens of them. The most successful were
Lodovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (1532) which turned the story of
Roland in Charlemagne’s war against the Saracens into sheer fantasy and
featured the tale of Lydia in Hell, and Torquato Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered
(1575), about the First Crusade, which deals again with a militaristic war
in Heaven, with Satan here called Pluto.
Underworld adventure was not confined to Italy. In France, old legends
sent Charles Martel, Charlemagne’s grandfather, to Hell, and these were
embroidered into romances. In the History of Charles Martel and His

145
 Nats, YSIS AOI Ne (Gye lel 18 Ie 1

Successors, which may date back to the twelfth century, Charles sends a
scapegrace bastard son along with a magician guide to demand tribute from
Lucifer—which is granted! Charles himself then visits Hell to receive hom-
age. The later French Huon of Auvergne, the earliest known imitation of
Dante, blends his material with Celtic-romance themes. This time Charles
sends Huon to Hell so that he can try to seduce Huon’s wife. Huon, in
the company of Aeneas and William of Orange, engages in an energetic
tour of sights and punishments, in the course of which he discovers the
truth about Charles Martel’s motives. Lucifer agrees to become Charles
Martel’s vassal and sends tribute: a thousand golden birds, a crown, a ring,
a sumptuous litter. The magic litter, of course, carries Charles Martel
straight to Hell.
Fairyland was clearly beginning to take over Hell’s traditional role. In
an English poem called Sir Orfeo, written at the end of the thirteenth century
but based on the earlier lost Lai d’Orphee by Marie de France, Hell simply
became “the lond of Faerie,” with no explanation offered. It is in this
2)

curious hybrid place that the chivalric harper-prince Sir Orfeo (son of King
Pluto and “King Iuno”) must seek his Dame Heurodis (Eurydice), who
has been stolen away by the fairies.
These are courtly medieval fairies who spend their time hunting with
hounds, hawking with falcons, and “dauncing in queynt atire.” But the
poet has not quite forgotten his (or her, with a bow to Marie) sources in
Ovid and Virgil, for when Sir Orfeo, posing as a wandering minstrel, gains
entrance to the castle courtyard, he sees a fearful collection of “sleepers.”

Sum strode withouten head,

And sum no arms had,
And sum through the bodi hadde wounde,
And sum lay mad, ybounde,
And sum armed on horse set,
And sum strangled as they ate,
And sum were in water adreynt,
And sum with fire all forschreynt [shriveled] d

Wives ther lay on childbedde,

Sum dead and sum awedde [mad];
And wonder many lay there besides,
Right as they slept at their noontides.

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 TAeee ieliCer se Vile DoDrUeB AG IES

And there among them is Heurodis, lying under a tree. Sir Orfeo plays his
harp to the fairy king, wins his lady, and leads her back to his own castle
for a happy ending.
Clearly, Sir Orfeo could not have gone to the Christian Hell, a frightful
place. Fairyland was a necessary alternative.* Signs that Hell and Fairyland
were beginning to merge also appear in the prettified pictures in Books of
Hours commissioned by the aristocracy and in the zmrams. In the romance
of Thomas of Erceldoune, the knight travels with a mysterious lady three
days in darkness and then is shown four roads leading to Heaven, Pur-
gatory, Hell—and Fairyland. In the first French “translation” of the Aeneid
(as the Roman d’Eneas) toward the end of the twelfth century, the Sibyl
appears as a witch; Aeneas as a feudal knight; and Cerberus as a demon
with clawed feet, long arms, and three doglike heads.
The Faerie Queene was the ne plus ultra of high medieval allegorical
“tragical-comical-historical-pastoral” romance-epics. Like Dante, Edmund
Spenser (c. 1552-1599) looked back to a kind of literature that had already
had its day and both summed up and killed off the genre. Dante was avant-
garde in using the vernacular, but Spenser’s diction was deliberately archaic.
He meant to write an English epic in the Italian style, a further mythology
of Britain to add to the Arthurian tales. His intended “XII bookes fash-
ioning XII morall vertues” were also to be romantic entertainment for an
upper-class audience, which included his fellow poet-knights in the court
of Queen Elizabeth, Sir Philip Sidney, and Sir Walter Raleigh. From the
point of view of the history of Hell, the most innovative thought in his
untidy poem is a new definition of the war between good and evil: Spenser
was a Puritan, loyally (and fashionably) anti-Catholic.
Spenser’s long allegory takes place in Fairyland, an alternate England
ruled by Gloriana, an alternate Queen Elizabeth I, from Cleopolis, an
alternate London. Spenser’s knights are not quite feudal; they have moved
on with the times to become Renaissance courtiers. The Red Cross Knight
is a “type” of Christ, thus all the monsters he kills are consciously “types”
of Satan. Spenser is almost deliriously lavish with hellish types, which in
the England of the time very much included the pope and “‘papishness.”
In Canto I, for example, in the Cave of Error is a wonderful monster, half

house” which
“A fifteenth-century English poem, Henryson’s Tale of Orpheus, does use “hiddouss hellis
Orpheus locates by way of its “stynk rycht odiuss.”” No escape is possible.

147
TH BO SE SeOeRe ve Os Eire ear

Lithograph for Virgil. Note how cleverly the artist has incorporated Christian imagery:
the entire lower right is a huge Hellmouth holding the Eumenides; the Hydra is the Red
Dragon; the Sibyl (top left) wears a witch’s hat.

woman and half dragon, who when dying “‘spewd out of her filthy maw”
a flood of poison full of old books and papers (Catholic teachings), then
her own horrible offspring who lap their mother’s poisoned blood until
they burst and die. Not exactly subtle allegory.

148
 Wisi Isl WG ist IM Wy
ID jee Nets S

Next Archmiago, who looks like a pious hermit, turns out to be an evil
sorcerer, a type of Antichrist complete with attendant demons.

He bad awake blacke Pluto’s griesly Dame,

And cursed Heaven and spake reprochfull shame
Of highest God, the Lord of life and light,
A bold, bad man, that dared to call by name
Great Gorgon, Prince of darknesse and dead night,
At which Cocytus quakes, and Styx is put to flight.

The Bower of Bliss is ruled by the enchantress Acrasia (read: Circe);

Spenser the poet—as opposed to the moralist—likes this hotbed of wicked
lasciviousness and keeps bringing it back. In the House of Pride, Queen
Lucifera rides by in a golden chariot drawn by six beasts on which are
mounted her Deadly Sin attendants. The witch Duessa, accompanied by
Night, descends through the “‘yawning gulfe of deepe Avernus hole” to
Hades, complete with “‘smoake and sulphure,”’ dreadful Furies, the ‘“‘bitter
waves of Acheron,” the fiery flood of Phlegethon, the “house of endlesse
paine” with Cerberus on the doorstep. Ixion turns on his wheel, Sisyphus
rolls his stone, Tantalus hangs from his tree, Tityus feeds his vulture, the
Danaides draw their water, and Aesculapius, the god of medicine (sent to
Hell by Boccaccio, not by a classical writer), lies in chains.
The Cave of Despair encourages suicide and leads to another fight with
another fiery dragon symbolizing Satan, and most memorably to the Cave
of Mammon (“Rich Man’’) with the underground House of Riches near
the gate of Hell attended by allegorical Sins and leading to the Garden of
Proserpina where the river Cocytus flows beside a silver chair and a tree
laden with golden apples. We know what would happen to anyone who
sits in that chair or crunches those apples, and so it seems does the knight
Guyon, for he declines hospitality. He peers over the riverbank to see
“many damned wights /In those sad waves, which direfully deadly
stanke,” also Tantalus (again), and Pontius Pilate, endlessly washing his
hands.

Wielie JEON IML IEIDAIDY

IU es AE 1838

High-minded allegorical plays and romances are characteristic of the

late Middle Ages. So is the lowest kind of folk humor. Most of this was

149
Td Hee) BH eS I ORRS YO ROPrae iia iene

not written down, of course, but it is evident in the Hell scenes of the
miracle plays, in the paintings of Pieter Brueghel the Elder, and some of
his Flemish followers, and most emphatically in the writings of Rabelais.
Historians estimate that, added together, various festivals took up as
much as three months of the late medieval year. Some of them were festa
fatuorum or “feasts of fools,” which were celebrated by both scholastics
and lower clerics on certain holidays: St. Stephen’s Day (December 26)
through New Year’s Day, as well as before Lent, at Halloween, and on
certain saints’ days that varied from town to town. The entire point of
these holidays with their noisy charivari parades was loss of dignity, drunk-
enness, crude abuse of the sacred, a grotesque reversal of the class orders,
which were far more stratified in medieval times than in ours. Thus it was
permitted, even obligatory, to mock all that was ordinarily feared or
revered—Hell and its denizens are still indispensable to this kind of cele-
bration, even if we recognize them only subconsciously.
By the beginning of the seventeenth century, festival Hell parades had
become so obstreperous and profane that they frequently led to violence,
and religious plays were forbidden everywhere in Europe—except in Cath-
olic countries when presented by the Jesuits, an order founded in 1540, or
by other monks. But the role that this kind of festive excitement played in
relieving social stress was too essential to abandon. Instead of disappearing,
Merry Hell went secular. First came the Dance of Death, a curious man-
ifestation of morbidity meeting allegory and revelry at the end of the Middle
Ages: Death and his costumed followers pulled members of the audience
into their antic parade. Then came the harlequins.
Herlequin was first a pagan Germanic demon. In France, he became
the leader of an army of demons that supposedly rode through the night
on the “wild hunt”—England knew him as Herne the Hunter and Germany
as the Erlk6nig (“the Elf-King”). He appeared on stage at least as early as
the thirteenth century as Herlekin Croquesot in Le Jeu de la Feuillée (“The
Leaf Game’’) by Adam de la Halle, the oldest French secular drama. As
Arlecchino in Italy, he became part of the group of zanni or zany im-
provisational street performers with comical names and rude manners who
took over when “religious” devils were banned. Another was Pulcinella
«

(Polichinelle, Petroushka, Punch). After a career in the eighteenth-century

puppet theater, Harlequin joined the commedia dell’arte, acquired effete

150
 WP ls lS IG aby Mi IDOGs. IKE aas

manners and a distinctive costume, and eventually spun off into the street
mime who makes a pest of himself today in malls and public parks.
There were written parodies featuring a comic Hell, too. Saint Pierre
et le Jongleur comes from thirteenth-century France. A jongleur was the
kind of street entertainer who would have played a comic devil. After death,
this one goes to Hell. While Lucifer and the demons are out gathering
souls, he gets into a gambling match with Saint Peter, who wins all the
souls in Hell. Lucifer is furious when he returns, throws the juggler out
of Hell, and swears never to admit another one. A Salut d’Enfer (‘Salute
to Hell”) from about the same period describes all the dishes served at the
hall of the demon Tervegan—more roast heretic.
Like Harlequin and Punch, Gargantua and Pantagruel were originally
stage demons, and Gargantua and Pantagruel, the book that chronicles
their adventures is written entirely in the spirit of foolery, a celebration of
obscenity, scatology, drunkenness, and the more enjoyable of the Seven
Deadly Sins. Because their humor, like most comedy, is highly topical,
they are heavy going today. They are just as excessive as The Faerie Queene,
but one is all courtly artifice, the other all deliberate vulgarity. The fact
that Francois Rabelais (c. 1495-1553), first a Franciscan monk, then a
Benedictine, then a medical doctor, got away with them is a sign that times
were changing. He is said to have had friends in high places, which is
probably why he escaped punishment stronger than censure.
Considering the comic possibilities, Rabelais’s Hell is disappointing,
even dull. His Roman model was not Virgil or Ovid but Lucian, which
turned his Hell into a one-joke academic satire. In the Menippus, Lucian
showed the philosophers exalted in the afterlife, while kings like Xerxes
and Alexander were debased. Rabelais extended the image to a long list of
public figures, starting with Alexander (cobbling shoes) and Xerxes (selling
mustard) and running through classical history and mythology, the Arthur
tales and other romances, the succession of popes, and so forth. The only
new torment Rabelais devised for them was syphilis. And there is a great
deal of pissing in his Hell.

PEOPLE BEGAN tocollect sayings and folklore at the end of the Middle
Ages. Brueghel’s paintings of proverbs and children’s games reflect this

151
THe Seles) hOek yeu @ re ehiek see

interest, as do his illustrations of the Seven Deadly Sins and of Hell. Given
the huge amount of infernal material lying about, it should come as no
surprise that someone tried to categorize it. The first infernologist’s name
was Reginald le Queux, and his book, Baratre Infernel, dates from 1480.
In it, he attempted to do just what is being done here, to bring pagan
and Christian sources together with liberal quotes from each, to describe
the inmates of Hell and the sights to be seen there, and to draw conclusions
from this material. First he names sixty-two ancient sources, “moral, sa-
tyric, elegaic, genealogic, theologic, historic, philosophic and mythologic.”’
The names of fifty Christian writers and ten biblical or apocryphal books
follow. His exempla include Tundal and the visions of Charles the Fat
among many others, and his table of contents is enormous.

ib IS IM WG isl TRIN INP WR Ss IN ANTI) CIN) TAN eI IN

Jan van Eyck (c. 1390-c. 1441) was the first master of the Flemish
school of art which flourished in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and
it is his Last Judgment that so brilliantly illustrates the point at which
conventional images of Hell began to yield to those of Death—or to new
and unconventional images. Roger van der Weyden, Dieric Bouts, and
Hans Memling painted memorable, even beautiful scenes of Hell for al-
tarpieces. But it is Bosch who moved far beyond convention.
Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1460-1516) is one of the handful of truly original
creators of Hell. A Last Judgment altarpiece painted on three wooden
panels, as was the custom in the late fifteenth century, would have a Hell
on its right-hand panel to balance Heaven or Eden on the left, but in Bosch’s
triptychs, Hell tended insidiously to take over the entire composition.
Bosch lived in the provincial Flemish town of ’s-Hertogenbosch, from
which he took his name (the family name was van Aken). It is in the present
Netherlands near the Belgian border and the Rhine and was one of the
thriving middle-class towns that had begun to make the Middle Ages ob-
solete. At this point, it was still very much under the control of the medieval
Church, and Bosch and most of his family were members of the Broth-
erhood of Our Lady, one of many religious groups devoted to the Virgin.
His grandfather, his father, and at least three of his four uncles were paint-
ers, and so was his brother Goosen, though their paintings have been lost
except for a town fresco perhaps by his grandfather. He married a woman

152
 Jes SIG at EW IO ey Ge IN ess

with money of her own sometime between 1479 and 1481. That is all that
is known about his life aside from the dates of some of his commissions.
The paintings, which have so intrigued and puzzled art historians, may
seem more comprehensible to those who have persevered through the his-
tory of Hell. Whether or not Bosch could read, he was a man of his times,
and in those times Hell included a rich tradition of visions, allegorical
fantasies, chivalric parodies, myth and folklore, anticlericalism, grotes-
querie, scatology, and tomfoolery. This mix is what Bosch painted, trying
variants over and over again. Hell clearly interested him more than any
other subject: even in his Edens, rebel angels fall from the skies while tiny
murders—a mouse, a frog, a deer—occur. In one center panel, his hay-
wain lurches toward Hell with a demon atop it; in his Vienna Last Judgment
the center panel seems to be of Purgatory; the Garden of Earthly Delights
resembles Venusberg or the mythical Land of Cockaigne more than a con-
ventional terrestrial paradise.
But again and again we see familiar landmarks. Demons roast their
victims on spits and fry them in pans on the shores of the river Slith while
victims skate along it. Tundal’s cow crosses the bridge of the Hay-wain
Hell, and Tundal’s bird devours and excretes sinners in the Garden Hell.
Pots and pans and kitchenware remind us of the connection with cooks
and bakers; together with musical instruments they suggest its “dyn.” We
can make out the Seven Deadly Sins with their punishments. The archi-
tecture is familiar: round ovens, furnaces, doors suggestive of Hellmouth.
The demons and tortures are more varied and imaginative than anything
we have seen yet, but they are not radically different. Like Dante, Bosch
took o!d material and made it his own. (There is no indication that he knew
Dante’s work; his sources are all Northern.)
Like Dante’s, Bosch’s innovations were successful. The printing press
had been invented but the photograph had not, and those who knew his
work were only those who happened to come across it; luckily for posterity,
these included some powerful patrons. Queen Isabella of Spain owned three
of his paintings at her death in 1504; at that time the Netherlands was ruled
by Spain. Cardinal Grimani of Venice owned Bosch paintings, probably
the Paradise and Hell now in the Doges Palace. Bosch’s most avid collector,
however, was Philip II of Spain (1527-1598), who set about acquiring works
already owned by other people. Philip was an unpleasant man, a fanatic
Catholic, infamous not only as the husband of “Bloody Mary” of England

153
HWistye Tek Ils WONIN Ye MOVIE Isl ie al, Ib

The Harrowing of Hell, by Pieter Brueghel the Elder

but for having presided over the most abhorrent excesses of the Inquisition.
His enthusiasm for Bosch’s work is responsible for the generous collections
at Lisbon, the Escorial, and the Prado.
This attention did not go unnoticed in Flanders. So the gentry wanted
devilry? Then that’s what they would get, agreed the painters who centered
around Antwerp and Brussels. And so they went to work, among them
Jan Mandyn, Pieter Huys, Pieter Brueghel (c. 1525-1569) and his sons Jan
and Pieter. (The latter was nicknamed “‘Hell’’ for the sheer profusion of
Hellscapes he turned out.)
The best of them was Brueghel the Elder, who brought humor to the
Seven Deadly Sins and bustling energy to the Fall of the Rebel Angels
(1562). His most eerie painting is not of Hell but of Doomsday in The
Triumph of Death, with ranks of marching skeletons representing the forces
of Gog and Magog, while Death on a pale horse pulls a wagonload of skulls.
But Dulle Griet (c. 1534) is even more original. Brueghel’s best-known
works often depict folk sayings and proverbs, and this painting illustrates
a humorously misogynistic aphorism about a wife so fierce that she could
plunder the mouth of Hell and return unmarked. Dulle Griet (‘‘Furious

154
21. This unusual Last Judgment, painted
c.1440 by Jan van Eyck, marks a period
when many painters were beginning to
replace Satan with Death, represented by
a skeleton. The bestial demons look for-
ward to Bosch.
 My i
nf Ai

ith
|
22-23. AT LEFT: Hans Memling (c.1430-
1494) and (opposite page) Dieric Bouts
(c.1410-1475) both painted memorable
altar panels of Hell. Note that there are
demons but no Satans in Flemish painting.
24-27. Hieronymus Bosch’s Hells began relatively “normally” but progressed into strangeness. In the
Hay-Wain Hell (opposite, left), note Tundal’s cow and the icy river. In the Garden of Earthly De-
lights Hell (opposite, right), the knives mark the river as the Slith. Tundal’s bird takes Satan’s place.
28-29. Two examples of Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s vigorous approach to diablerie. ABOVE: The
rebel angels change to beasts and goblins in midair. Even here there is no Satan, unless he is attached to
the tentacles on Michael’s right. BELOW: Dulle Griet frightens even the demons at the gates of Hell.
30-31. ABOVE: Herri met de Bles, or I Civetta, was a sixteenth-century follower of Bosch,
and perhaps the round shape echoes his Purgatory. BELOW: Jan Brueghel (1568-1625), son
of Pieter the Elder, painted this all-purpose Orpheus, which combines elements of Hells past.
32. Even Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), foremost of the later Flemish painters, essayed The
Damned ina very different treatment.
 Wolstis Jat Ge tak IMU WO IDE IG 1s INE: ies

Gretel”) wears armor, brandishes a giant cooking spoon, carries a market

basket and a bag of loot, and seems utterly unmoved by the demonic activity
around her.
The Brueghel sons were less original and more opportunistic. Jan
Brueghel’s Orpheus throws elements from every school of painting to-
gether: Renaissance nudity, Boschian grotesquerie, his father’s humor. It
is an all-purpose Hellscape.
Unlike Bosch who spent his life at it, or the Brueghels who looked to
the market, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) painted Hell only once.
His Last Judgment, on the wall of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, is one
of the most famous paintings in the world, however, and his Hell, though
far from the dominant element, is unforgettable.
Michelangelo was the brightest jewel of the most glittering era of the
Italian Renaissance. During his long life he always considered himself a
sculptor rather than a painter, but not only did he excel at both, he also
designed the dome of St. Peter’s in Rome. Though the many triumphs of
his long life must go unrecorded here, it may be useful to know that
although Michelangelo was certainly a Christian and is thought to have
become more interested in spiritual things as he grew older, he was also
devoted to the ideas of Plato, which he had studied as a youth in the gardens
of Lorenzo de’ Medici. Certainly the spirit of classical Greece informs all
of his work, including the Sistine Last Judgment.

The Last Judgment, by Pieter Brueghel the Elder

WISI WEIS OK Ne KOE Teh e IL IL,

Michelangelo had completed the ceiling and vault of the Sistine Chapel
during the years from 1508 to 1512, a grueling marathon that compelled
him to lie on a scaffold, face upwards, for long, uncomfortable sessions of
work. He was not pleased when, in 1534, Pope Clement VII summoned
him back. The great end wall above the Sistine altar was at that time covered
with frescoes by Perugino, but the pope wanted a Last Judgment, and he
insisted that Michelangelo paint it. There was no way to refuse, although
he was nearly sixty. Clement soon died, but his successor Paul III was
equally adamant. The great fresco took seven years to complete. Instead
of placing his own portrait among the saved, as Giotto had done in the
Scrovegni Chapel, Michelangelo, with mordant irony, painted himself, ex-

The detail from Michelangelo’s Last Judgment that shows a sinner realizing for the first
tume that he really is, finally and irrevocably, going to Hell is one of the most famous
images in Western art.

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hausted and limp, in the flayed skin of St. Bartholomew who holds it,
according to medieval custom, as an attribute of his martyrdom.
Even when the painting was finished, his trials were not over, for the
pope listened to the carping of one of his assistants, Biagio da Cesena, and
ordered Michelangelo to cover the genitals of his great male nudes. He
refused to do it. Instead, he angrily painted Biagio’s not very attractive face
on Minos in Hell. When Biagio protested, Paul III replied, ‘“Had the painter
sent you to Purgatory, I would use my best efforts to get you released;
but I exercise no influence in Hell; there you are beyond redemption.”
Later, his successor, Pope Paul IV, had the necessary work done by another
painter, Daniele da Volterra. Even in the massive cleaning effort of the
1990s these superimposed G-strings and diapers were not removed: the
Vatican claimed that after so much time it was impossible.
Michelangelo dispensed with the usual supernatural accoutrements of
halos and wings—the only wing in the painting seems rather mysteriously
attached to Charon’s boat, or perhaps to a creature under it. Demons and
angels are humanoid and fully sexed (they were, one should say), though
the demons have asses’ ears or small horns, and Minos has a serpentine
tail. One conventional beast-demon attacks perhaps the most famous figure
in the painting—other than that of the virile and implacable Jesus—that
of the man who has realized for the first time that he is really going to
Hell.
Swirling through the picture are the four rivers of paradise, here rivers
of air which, on the left (our right), flow seamlessly into the Styx, with
the burning Phlegethon beyond. Hell proper is not in the picture; this is
the borderland. The ovenlike structure in which sinners burn at the middle
bottom represents Purgatory, from which some few are beginning to be
rescued.

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KkS COUNT)
ESN Te Well Ho TRE Cee CS Wee

les the twelfth century, despite repression. The perceived cor-

ruption, ignorance, hypocrisy, and complacency of much of the clergy
distressed people with genuine religious convictions; the blatant sale of
indulgences rankled. The great wealth of the monasteries, their huge hold-
ings of untaxed land (between a third and a half of Europe), and their
insistence on tribute, their right to interfere politically and to have their
own courts of canon law exasperated the secular princes. The growth of
middle-class mercantile towns made the feudal system with its autocratic
hierarchical structure increasingly obsolete. In the fourteenth century, there
were two popes, sometimes three simultaneously, which encouraged con-
tempt for the office. The savagery of the Inquisition outraged people of
sensibility even in an age when a public burning was entertainment for the
masses, and heretics, Jews, lepers, and—soon—witches were considered
fair game.
The invention of the printing press in the middle of the fifteenth century
aided protest immeasurably. The Church had long held it heretical for a
layman to read the Bible even in Latin, let alone in translation. Copies of
translations had, however, been quietly circulating since the thirteenth cen-
tury, and, though the Church tried to burn them (and the translators, too,
when it could catch them), presses made the task hopeless. Moreover, new
books with fresh ideas soon began to circulate to a larger reading public.

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The first best-selling author of the new age was Desiderius Erasmus of
Rotterdam (c. 1466-1536), whose books sold by the hundreds of thousands.
A graceful writer and a profound humanist, he foresaw the breakup of the
medieval Church—which he satirized in The Praise of Folly (1511)—but
not the bloodbath that would accompany it. Erasmus argued for Plato and
against Aristotelian Scholastic metaphysics and theological formulas—
“They calculate time to be spent in Purgatory down to the year, month,
day and hour as if it were a jar that could be measured accurately with a
mathematical formula . . . they draw exact pictures of every part of Hell
as if they had spent years in the place!”—and against such commercial
ventures of the Church as paid indulgences, pilgrimages, masses for the
dead, and other financial means to salvation. He advocated close attention
to the Bible itself and peaceful moral reform based on reason and intellectual
liberation. It seems entirely fitting that just before he died he was preparing
a new edition of Origen, whose work, suppressed for centuries, was be-
ginning to be read again. His critics, looking back at the appalling sixteenth-
century slaughter in the name of religion, assailed him for his moderation,
which they took to be lack of conviction. If only Erasmus had taken the
lead, they believed, the wicked old Church might have been reformed
harmoniously and kept its unity, and a century of pogrom, persecution,
and massacre might have been avoided.
Instead, the leader of the age turned out to be the monk Martin Luther
(1483-1546), a man of passionate intensity. The colorful, eloquent tin-
muiner’s son, who gambled his life against his principles when he nailed his
ninety-five theses against indulgences to the door of the Wittenberg church
in 1517, was a very different kind of champion. His goals were not dissimilar
to those of Erasmus: down with Scholasticism, back to the Bible, away
with indulgences and other corruptions. But he did not consider accom-
modation possible. He was a man of enormous energy and will who believed
himself to have been called to the monastery and then to his reformist
mission directly by God. To appeal directly to the people and the German
princes against the Church, as he did, was extremely dangerous. But he
had faith in his destiny.
In the monastery, Luther studied Augustine and became convinced that
the scholars of the Middle Ages, particularly the Scholastics in their ad-
miration for Aristotle, had strayed from the path. The idea that struck him
most forcefully from his reading was that of predestination. Only God

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could elect men to salvation or damnation, Luther understood Augustine

to say. Therefore the entire structure of Church interference in the afterlife
was false and had been concocted by bad men for no other end than greed.
He quickly came to “regard the see of Rome as possessed by Satan and as
the throne of Antichrist.”
Luther threw out Purgatory and all that went with it, including the
Virgin as intercessor and deity. His Hell was Augustine’s, dire and eternal,
constructed by an omnipotent God to punish the wicked. No one would
be saved but by God’s grace, and there was no way to influence the out-
come—good works were only an indication of grace and had no effect in
themselves; prayers for the dead were useless. The Devil was God’s servant,
created by him and destined by him to fall. Like one of the old desert
fathers, Luther believed himself to be plagued by demons and, like a proper
medieval man, he associated them with his bowels—he evidently had severe
problems with both flatulence and constipation. Luther also believed in
witches and their pact with the Devil, which explains why the Protestant
record on the sorry subject of witch-hunts is worse, if possible, than the
Catholic.
John Calvin (1509-1564), the second leader of the Reformation, was
born in France but is associated with Geneva, his main base. He came into
contact with Luther’s ideas when he was still a student and became a convert
in his early twenties. He agreed with Luther’s principles but went much
further with regard to predestination. From the beginning of time, Calvin
thought, God’s preordained plan has been in effect. “Some men and an-
gels,” as the Cambridge Calvinists would write in the mid-seventeenth
ped

century, ‘‘are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained

to everlasting death.”’ Thus, Christ did not die for all men but only for the
elect. Satan acts at God’s command to punish the wicked. Prayers, good
works, deathbed repentances, and absolutions cannot change inexorable
fate. Even Calvin admitted that “double predestination” was harsh. Never-
theless, it was a logically consistent position, given God’s all-knowing
omnipotence.
Luther and Calvin together with the Swiss Huldreich Zwingli (1484-
1531), the third leader of the Reformation, rejected Purgatory, but conceded
to a Limbo for unbaptized babies and an interim state between death and
the Final Judgment. During this time the elect would go to Abraham’s
bosom, Calvin thought, and

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The lot of the reprobate is doubtless the same as that which Jude assigns
to the devils: to be held in chains until they are dragged to the punish-
ment appointed for them.

About resurrection, the Devil, and eternal Hell, they had no doubts.
A reform group called the Anabaptists who had been thinking along the
lines of Origen about universal pardon were condemned by both Luther
and the Catholics, and doubly persecuted. On the other hand, Jacobus
Arminius (1560-1609) proposed “conditional predestination,” by which
those who freely chose to believe in Jesus were thought to have been
predestined to salvation. Arminianism was doctrinally suspect, but it crept
into and eventually dominated Protestant thinking; nearly all Protestantism
today is more or less Arminian.
By the middle of the seventeenth century, the religious wars were finally
over. Hardly a European country had been untouched, including Swit-
zerland, which put the matter of religion to the vote of the citizens. Italy,
perhaps because its cultural renaissance happened early, because it was
closely connected with the classical antiquity which had revived such in-
terest, or because the old papal hierarchy had close family links to the
Italian aristocracy, remained Catholic, though there were reformist rum-
blings in Venice and Florence and some emigration to Protestant Swit-
zerland. The Inquisition kept Spain in line, and Portugal and Ireland
remained Catholic, as did Austria, Eastern Europe, and, uneasily, France.
All the Scandinavian countries adopted Lutheranism as a state religion,
and by the mid-sixteenth century it was legalized in Germany, which re-
mains about half Protestant, divided between Lutherans and Calvinists.
Switzerland followed Calvin, as did Scotland, led by John Knox (1505-
1572) who adopted the French Huguenot “presbyterianism.” Philip II’s
attempt to impose the Inquisition on the Netherlands led to a bitter struggle
that split them apart, leaving Holland Protestant and Belgium Catholic.
In England, Henry VIII (1491-1547) initiated the break with Rome for
reasons of politics, not faith, and his Church of England was intended to
be “the papacy without the pope.” He burned heretics who subscribed to
newfangled Protestant ideas and beheaded bishops who indicated uneasiness
about the unity of church and state. He dissolved the monasteries and
seized their land and goods. He encouraged an authorized English Bible
and a vernacular Book of Common Prayer purged of Catholic “idolatry,”

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but sturdily upholding the old values. His son, Edward VI, continued
Henry’s policies, and though “Bloody Mary” made notorious efforts to
return the country to Catholicism, she was too late.
England’s great fortune was Elizabeth I’s long reign (1558-1603). The
queen seemed to understand the twin arts of negotiation and compromise
with an inherent skill alien to most of her fellow rulers. The Church of
England continued as the state religion with Elizabeth herself as “Supreme
Governor” in spiritual matters. (The term was chosen to avoid offense to
those who could not countenance a woman as “Head.’’) Catholics were
fined but not persecuted, nor were John Knox’s Scottish Presbyterians,
who rejected the mass and papal authority in 1560, a year after the English
parliament had done so. In ordinary parlance, the Elizabethan Age is syn-
onymous with the English Renaissance, and fortune seems to have doubly
smiled upon England in giving it so reasonable a ruler at so critical a time.
The glory of the Elizabethan period is its dramatic literature, especially
the plays of William Shakespeare (1564-1616). It may seem mildly sur-
prising that Shakespeare never attempted the subject of Heaven and Hell,
but in fact he was forbidden to do so. The old miracle drama had fallen
victim to its own rowdiness and was forbidden nearly everywhere by mid-
century. The last miracle play performed in England was at Coventry in
1584, and apparently the very last straw for the English parliament was the
presentation of Marlowe’s Tragicall Historie of Doctor Faustus about 1589.
There is evidence for twenty-three performances of the play between 1594
and 1597, but by decree there were to be no more plays of this sort.
Religious plays, until only a few years earlier the sole form of popular
theater, were banned in Britain at exactly the moment Shakespeare started
his career (1589), and it remained up to him and his fellow Elizabethans
to construct a new form of popular secular entertainment. Secular drama
up to this time had been pedantic and artificial and played to an exclusive
upper-class audience.
Doctor Faustus could thus be called a pivot of the age. It was a contro-
versial play, and its author, Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), was a con-
troversial young man. His enemies accused him of atheism, blasphemy,
espionage, and immorality (homosexuality), and very likely all the counts
were true. He was the son of a shoemaker, a trade-guild member who
could afford to send his son, with scholarship aid, to Cambridge. Though
misdemeanors nearly cost him his degree, the Crown itself intervened in

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his defense—Master Marlowe, it seemed, had neglected his studies ‘‘in

matters touching the benefit of his country”—and the degree was granted
in 1584. He went on to get an M.A. three years later. It is thought that he
had been sent to Rheims for a few months to spy on the Jesuits, and
university authorities may have feared his conversion to Catholicism; En-
glish Catholics of this period could attend universities but could not take
degrees.
As a playwright, Marlowe was immediately successful. With Tambur-
laine (c. 1587), produced when he was twenty-three, he created a strong
hero and the sonorous rolling language of ‘“Marlovian” blank verse. But
his most famous play is Doctor Faustus.
It is based on a 1587 German book, the Historia von Dr. Johan Fausten,
translated into English by “P.F., Gent.” in 1592, but Marlowe’s play is
thought to date back to 1589. P. F.’s title, The Historie of the Damnable
Life and Deserved death of Doctor John Faustus, Newly imprinted and in
convenient places amended . . . , implies that there was an earlier edition,
now lost. It is usually referred to as the Faustbook.
The story of the philosopher who sells his soul to the Devil is an old
one, and in Christian legend goes back to Simon Magus of Samaria, the
first-century Gnostic sorcerer who was baptized by the apostle Philip (Acts
8.5) and is often pictured magically flying in the Roman Forum before
Peter caused him to fall, break his head, and die, according to the second-
century apocryphal Acts of Peter. Helen was the name of the ex-prostitute
who traveled with him, and Simon claimed that she was Helen of Troy
reincarnated (as well as Sophia, Eve, Mrs. Noah, and Mary Magdalene);
this is how Helen first got into the story, where she has nearly always
remained. Simony, the sale or barter of sacred things, was named for Simon
Magus, and since to Protestants the Roman Catholic sale of indulgences
and benefices was sheer simony, his name was much invoked during the
religious wars. Simon was the epitome of the “‘false prophet” and considered
to be the father of all Christian heresy. Dante placed him far down in the
Eighth Circle, and he was regarded as a “type” of the Antichrist—at this
time the common Protestant epithet for the pope.
A story beloved in the Middle Ages and frequently illustrated was the
history of Theophilis, supposedly the church deacon of a Turkish town
called Ardana. After a new bishop dismissed him, Theophilis went to a
Jewish sorcerer to contact the Devil, with whom he signed a pact in his

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SHAS 2Ol WEEE Er

Theophilis, from a thirteenth-century French manuscript. The demon is obviously an actor

in a devil suit and mask.

own blood: his soul in exchange for success and wealth. These he achieved,
but his conscience plagued him. He tried and failed to rebargain with the
Devil. While praying to the Virgin, he fell asleep and dreamed that she
appeared carrying the deed of his pact. She told him that she had descended
to Hell and seized it herself from the Devil, and that Theophilis was par-
doned. He woke to find the deed beside him, made a confession, and died
in peace. This was the most famous of dozens of rescue tales pitting the
Virgin against the Devil.
A real Doctor Faustus received a B.A. from Heidelberg in 1509. One
story about him is supposedly historically confirmed: when in prison he

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lr@Onn

offered to show the chaplain how to remove hair from his face and tonsure
without a razor in return for free wine. The wine arrived, and Faustus gave
the chaplain a salve of arsenic, which removed not only his hair but his
skin. Apparently, this sadistic humorist set up shop as an astrologer, alche-
mist, magician, and “philosopher,” a job description that fits all the figures
we now think of as early Renaissance scientists: Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-
1543), John Dee (1527-1608), Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), Giordano Bruno
(c. 1548-1600), Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Galileo Galilei (1564-1642),
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630). Well into the seventeenth century, Newton
studied alchemy, and, a century later, so did Goethe.
Secular inquiry was a bugbear to the Catholics as Scholastic learning
was to the Protestants. It was easy to believe that all learned men were
somehow in partnership with the Devil in pursuit of “forbidden” knowl-
edge—we in the nuclear age should not be quick to scoff, and we should
keep in mind, too, that the first great wave of witch-hunts swept across
Europe from about 1590 to 1620. The notion of pacts with the Devil, or
with demonic figures, as in Macbeth, was very much in the air when Mar-
lowe was writing Doctor Faustus.

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The Faust book gathered the many legends that had accrued to the
infamous German doctor into a jumble; the reason Marlowe’s play is so
untidy in the middle is that he followed it closely. He started a tradition
here too; all the major works in the long Faust tradition are untidy. (Even
smaller ones like The Picture of Dorian Gray have muddled middles—one
prime attribute of Hell, after all, is chaos.)
Mephostophilis is Marlowe’s spelling for the Faust book’s new char-
acter, ‘‘a servant to great Lucifer,” exactly as Satan was the worldly agent
to the Yahweh of the Old Testament. It’s a made-up word that may mean
“Not-light-lover,” from the Greek; the more common Mephisto leans
toward the Latin mephitus, “stinking.” Marlowe’s Devil is grave, ironic,
even melancholy, though at times he is attended by traditional capering
imps. He may owe something to Rabelais’s Panurge (““Make-all,”’ a play
on the Gnostic Demiurge), an elegant, sophisticated magician. He is neither
a tempter nor a liar but instead is starkly blunt about both his own fate
and that of Faustus, who, in his skeptical “‘scientific’? way, believes in
neither the soul nor Hell. If there is an afterlife, Faustus cheerfully opts
for the classical one:

This word “damnation” terrifies not me,

For I confound Hell in Elysium.
My ghost be with the old philosophers.

Nevertheless, he is curious. He catechizes Mephostophilis:

FAUSTUS: And what are you that live with Lucifer?

MEPHOSTOPHILIS: Unhappy spirits that fell with Lucifer,

Conspired against our God with Lucifer,
And are forever damned with Lucifer.

FAUSTUS: Where are you damned?

MEPHOSTOPHILIS: In Hell.

FAUSTUS: How comes it then that thou art out of Hell?

MEPHOSTOPHILIS: Why, this is Hell, nor am I out of it.

Think’st thou that I that saw the face of God
And tasted the eternal joys of Heaven,

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 Ttive RE. H OR MIACT [TON

Am not tormented with ten thousand Hells

In being deprived of everlasting bliss?

And again:

FAUSTUS: Tell me, where is the place that men call Hell?

MEPHOSTOPHILIS: Under the heavens.

FAUSTUS: Ay, so are all things; but whereabouts?

MEPHOSTOPHILIS: Within the bowels of these elements,

Where we are tortured and remain forever.
Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscrib’d
In one self place, but where we are is Hell.
And where Hell is there must we ever be.
And to be short, when all the world dissolves,
And every creature shall be purified,
All places shall be Hell that is not Heaven. . . .

And:

FAUSTUS: Think’st thou that Faustus is so fond to imagine

That after this life there is any pain?
No, these are trifles and mere old wives’ tales.

MEPHOSTOPHILIS: But Faustus, I am an instance to prove the contrary,

For I tell thee I am damned, and now in Hell.

FAUSTUS: How? Now in Hell?

Nay, and this be Hell, I’ll willingly be damned here.
What! Sleeping, eating, walking and disputing?

Mephostophilis is not trying to make the Gnostic point that this earth is
Hell, though that is how Faustus chooses to take it. Instead, he employs
the old differentiation between poena sensus and poena damni, cleverly
twisting it to explain how a devil condemned to Hell can continue to operate
on earth: he suffers the searing pain of deprivation rather than physical
torment. Marlowe, who had a better education than the author of the Faust-
book, knew that as a Protestant he was permitted the distinction; Catholics,

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1B IL

having gained Purgatory, were not. In the end, of course, Faustus is doomed
to an actual physical Hell to suffer a melodramatic poena sensus. The au-
dience expected no less.
Lucifer, Beelzebub, and Mephostophilis arrive in thunder to watch
Faustus’s last struggle. The good and bad angels that commonly quarrel
for the soul in medieval deathbed miniature paintings arrive, but the good
angel relinquishes its claim. A curtain is whisked away to uncover the
dreadful Hellmouth.
Faustus’s last desperate soliloquy, the one that begins ““O Faustus/ Now
hast thou one bare hour to live,” is famous as a challenge to actors, and
Edward Alleyn, for whom it was written, probably tore up the stage with
it. But, aside from its powerful verse, it contains some subtle thinking.
Faust’s story is different from that of Theophilis—for him there can be no
rescue, not because of the degree of his sin but because Protestantism does
not permit intercession. Because his damnation is preordained (though
seemingly freely chosen), there is no escape from “the heavy wrath of God.”
He calls to Christ with some of the most beautiful lines ever written:

O, I'll leap up to my God! Who pulls me down?

See, see where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament!
One drop of blood will save me, O my Christ—
Rend not my heart for naming of my Christ!
Yet will I call on him—O spare me, Lucifer—

But Lucifer has already warned Faustus that a deathbed repentance is useless
in a Protestant system where mercy cannot temper justice:

Christ cannot save thy soul, for he is just,

There’s none but I have interest in the same.

Neither his heartbroken pleading nor the Pythagorean philosophy he in-

vokes can mitigate eternity or save Faustus from being torn limb from limb
by shrieking devils inside the Hellmouth. The drop of blood refers elegantly
to the drop of water for which Dives begged Abraham. *

*This long speech, though right on target theologically, was directly responsible, I am convinced, for
the final banning of religious drama in Britain. It was simply too incendiary for the times. Not until
1616 did a devil (not counting—possibly—Hamlet’s father) appear again upon the English stage, and
then only in a light comedy of Ben Jonson’s (The Devil Is an Ass) with nothing religious about it.

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IOrN

Marlowe was stabbed to death in a brawl before he was thirty. Mercutio,

the eloquent jester of Romeo and Juliet to whom Shakespeare gave his
extravagant Queen Mab speech, is said to be a portrait of him; if that is
not true, it ought to be.
Shakespeare, partly thanks to his rival, was forced to step aside from
literary tradition, which certainly did him no harm. His plays provide
fascinating glimpses of current superstitions and beliefs, all the more reliable
for his care in avoiding religious themes. Hamlet (c. 1602) is a marvelous
mess of eschatological contradictions and—unlike the theologically sound
Doctor Faustus—a mirror of casual popular belief.
To begin with, there is a ghost. Most people believed in ghosts, and
Catholics associated them with Purgatory, as does Shakespeare here—
though not in Macbeth. Shakespeare was not a Catholic, however, and
Article XXII of the Book of Common Prayer had specifically rejected
Purgatory as a “fond thing” and “‘repugnant to the Word of God.” Either
Purgatory lingered in ordinary Elizabethan belief, or the ghost’s mention
of a false doctrine offers proof that it is indeed a devil in a pleasing shape:

I am thy father’s spirit,

Doom’d for a certain time to walk the night,
And for the day confin’d to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purg’d away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison house,
T 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 porpentine.

Hamlet, though convinced of his uncle’s guilt by his “mousetrap” ruse,

will not kill Claudius at prayer for fear that his soul would then go straight
to Heaven; he will wait for a moment when the king is engaged in the
pleasures of the flesh:
Then trip him that his heels may kick at Heaven,
And that his soul may be as damn’d and black
As Hell, whereto it goes.

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a OURS Yea @ Sie tle beseae

That is conventional thinking—the only conventional religious thinking

in the play unless Horatio’s “Flights of angels sing thee to thy rest”
counts—but it may also be merely an excuse, due to Hamlet’s lingering
hesitation about the ghost’s reliability. Elsewhere the afterlife is uncertain:

Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death—
The undiscover’d country from whose bourne
No traveler returns—puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?

The prince’s musing does not follow church-bred thinking of the time,
Protestant or Catholic, but something altogether more modern.
At the graveyard, Hamlet toys with skulls, jokes that Alexander’s and
Caesar’s dust might serve as stoppers for beer barrels, and refers to the
Dance of Death (““Now get you to my lady’s chamber and tell her, let her
paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come’’). This is a fifteenth-
century memento mori, with the emphasis on death, not the afterlife. So,
too, is the “dusty death” of Macbeth (1606), a play that leans heavily on
the magical and the demonic but almost too carefully avoids the afterlife:
the Macbeths, three decades earlier, would have been headed straight for
Hellmouth.
In Measure for Measure (1604), Claudio echoes Hamlet’s great speech:
even the old imagery of Hell—fire, ice, souls in the wind, like those of
Paolo and Francesca, or howling under torture—does not make it seem
entirely medieval:

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where,

To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice,
To be imprison’d in the viewless winds
And blown with restless violence round about

170
 er eRe beaks OORT IMPAy Ts 18@OrN

The pendent world; or to be worse than worst

Of those that lawless and incertain thought
Imagines howling! ’Tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of death.

That is as far as Shakespeare cared to go on the subject. Even uncensored,

playwrights were probably weary of medieval clichés. Shakespeare’s great
villains are thoroughly human, though both Iago and Macbeth compare
themselves (with satisfaction) to devils. Queen Anne roundly accuses Rich-
ard III of being one, as, in Lear, her husband does Goneril. New images
of fear became increasingly bloody and exploitative, especially in the “‘re-
venge” plays of John Webster and Cyril Tourneur, though also in Shake-
speare’s Titus Andronicus. But no passage in all of Shakespeare’s plays is
so evocative of the macabre as this one from Webster’s The Duchess of
Malfi (c. 1613):

I am puzzled in a question about Hell;

He says, in Hell there’s one material, fire,
And yet it shall not burn all men altke.
Lay him by. How tedious is a guilty conscience!
When I look into the fishponds in my garden,
Methinks I see a thing arm’d with a rake,
That seems to strike at me.

No French decadent ever topped that imagery or world-weariness.

Wa
Baroque Hell

BES DG) Molen:

@ AONE ANS? GRR AaN eas aa See

a ries an embarrassment to the Church before the Reformation, and

though the religious wars granted them a reprieve, they had lost ground.
The Benedictines were simply too rich to be left alone by impoverished
princes. So it fell to the new and energetic Society of Jesus, founded in
1540 by Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556), the youngest son of an old Basque
noble family, to lead the way to the Counter-Reformation. A war wound
forced Ignatius out of active life, and reading courtly romances, like those
of King Arthur, and the lives of the saints during his prolonged conva-
lescence had set him to thinking about the feudal ideal of holy chivalry.
When healed, he decided to get an education—as a young knight, his had
been rudimentary—and entered the university at Barcelona at the age of
thirty-three. Harassment by the Inquisition drove him to Paris, where he
finally achieved his M.A. at forty-five and gathered the friends who helped
him to found his new order, which quickly developed an effective leadership
network of Catholic reform and resistance to Protestant encroachment.
The Jesuit ideal is not only to save one’s own soul but one’s neighbor’s
as well; it is thus a teaching and missionary order. Jesuits carried the faith
to Asia, the Indies, and the Americas. They brought sincerity, vitality, and
fresh ideas to the old Catholic establishment and also to the new Baroque
arts. Within prescribed limits, they were up to date in the sciences, too.

2
 BANA
OO Wes TaIL IL

By the early seventeenth century, Jesuit missionaries to China were cor-

rectly predicting eclipses; they later sidestepped the Galileo debacle by
declaring that the soul revolved around the immobile God as the earth
moves around the sun. (Not until 1992 did the Vatican formally admit to
possibly having made a mistake with Galileo.)
In the early modern age of printed books and changing educational
standards, the teaching Jesuits were shrewdly positioned to influence and
change society since most of their pupils were children of the rich and
powerful. Jacob Burkhardt writes in The Civilization of the Renaissance
in Italy that “the feeling of the upper and middle classes in Italy with regard
to the Church at the time when the Renaissance culminated was com-
pounded of deep and contemptuous aversion, of acquiescence in the out-
ward ecclesiastical customs which entered into daily life, and of a sense of
dependence on sacraments and ceremonies.” The Jesuits set about to change
that feeling.
One effective approach was to change Hell. Horrid as the old Hell was,
it had variety, activity, scenery, and a certain entertainment value—too
much, in fact, for the Jesuits. It might serve to frighten the uneducated
into good behavior, but it was not taken seriously by people who counted.
So the Jesuits dispensed with the frills. They eliminated all tortures except
fire, and all monsters except possibly “the worm that never sleepeth,”’
though there remained some doubt as to how these two could co-exist
(perhaps the worm was a metaphor for a bad conscience). What they added
was unnervingly apt for the times—they added urban squalor.
The Jesuit Hell was unbearably, suffocatingly, repulsively crowded
(possibly because of its millions of new Protestant immigrants). In a dank,
claustrophobic amalgam of dungeon and cesspool, dainty aristocrats and
prosperous merchants jostled, cheek to jowl, buttock to belly, mouth to
mouth, with coarse, foul-smelling, verminous peasants, lepers, and slum-
dwellers. Just as the bodies of the saved were to be glorified at the Res-
urrection, those of the damned would be deformed, bloated, flabby,
diseased, repugnant, “‘pressed together like grapes in a wine-press’’ (a
favorite image). There were no latrines. The infernal stench was human
stench, and it was disgusting and everlasting and composed of filth and
feces and pestilence and running sores and bad breath and everything else
creative Jesuits came up with to make their wealthy clients resolve to mend
their ways. Whether such a scenario would have frightened the urban riffraff

173
(PsN Wel SOIR SM OME jel je. Ib Ie

who already lived in unspeakable poverty toiling at foul-smelling jobs is

unknown, but it had its effect on the upper and middle classes.
Those who regretted the passing of the old tortures were reassured by
the properties of the fire of this alchemical age, for according to Romolo
Marchelli in 1682, the fire would “distill and encapsulate” the pangs of
starvation, of death by stabbing, strangulation, incineration, and dismem-
berment by wild animals as well as being eaten alive by worms or serpents,
slashed by razors or arrows, having one’s breasts sliced, bones shattered,
joints disjointed, limbs dismembered, and so forth. Every spark of infernal
fire carries all of that pain within it. The fearful sermon that so disturbs
Stephen Dedalus in James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
presents the Jesuit Hell in grim detail, perfectly preserved for three hundred
years.
The Jesuits ousted demons too, or nearly so. They weren’t needed in
a Hell of “other people” who turned on one another in their pain and
terror. At any rate, demons now had a new task, which was tempting and
corrupting people here on earth, especially destitute old women. What the
Dominicans were to heretics, the Jesuits were to witches during the witch
crazes, which began with the Renaissance and lasted intermittently until
almost the nineteenth century—and not only, it should be emphasized, in
Catholic countries. Satan, or a demonic lieutenant, was supposed to be the
master of the witches, but his association with them, which included night
flights and diabolical orgies and evil spells and the rest of the rancid nonsense
to which thousands of people confessed after torture, was very much of
this world, not the next. Serious discussions of Hell after the Reformation,
whether Protestant or Catholic, almost never include Satan.
Demons always had time for heretics, atheists, and philosophers like
Faustus, according to the Jesuits, and so Bruno was burned at the stake,
Galileo escaped a similar fate only by lying, and John Dee faced dangerous
accusations of sorcery. As late as the mid-seventeenth century, Descartes
found it advisable to move to Protestant Holland, and later even than that,
Voltaire and Rousseau sought sanctuary in Switzerland.
The Jesuits themselves could summon demons when needed. Now that
religious plays performed by laymen were forbidden, the Jesuits took over
the religious theater. In 1597, the church of St. Michael was consecrated
in Munich with an astounding festival pageant involving hundreds of play-
ers, brass bands, dragons, sinners, heretics: the final curtain featured a

174
 BRAGReOr@
0) Eee Eivke it

A sixteenth-century mannerist Pan ogles a nymph. Images of Pan and the Devil drew close
in the Renaissance.
 (tehle Il Sy GIR we OVS let Je Ie, IU,

tumultuous spectacle in which three hundred masked devils were hurled

into what must have been the largest Hellmouth ever designed.
Painters, who were by this time looking for new subjects in religious
art, preferably those displaying the rosy flesh of their beloved putt:, were
understandably not attracted to the Jesuit Hell. Nevertheless, the splendid
ceiling of the Gesu, the first Jesuit church in Rome, manages to convey
with great skill and ingenuity the idea without the ugliness, echoing the
spirit of the Munich festival. It was painted by II Baciccio (1639-1709), a
follower of Bernini, between 1670 and 1683, with every one of the latest
Baroque tricks and techniques of perspective. The vault of Heaven itself
seems to open and the blessed to ascend as cherubs and angels gaze upward
in ecstasy into the Empyrean. At the edges and corners of the ceiling,
breaking it into sculptured shapes, great writhing clumps of the damned
and doomed tumble downward into Hell—or, depending on your point of
view, into the congregation. See Plate 20.
The Baroque period is always associated with opera, and the Jesuit
orders were deeply involved in opera and ballet, connected as they were
with the noble courts of Catholic Europe. The first three Florentine operas
produced between 1600 and 1607 were based on the Orpheus and Eurydice
story, which offered the opportunity for underworld extravaganzas com-
plete with special effects, and allegorical ballets without troubling religious
undertones. The third, Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi (1607), was the first
big operatic hit.
The pagan Orpheus story has been rivaled in operatic frequency only
by Protestant Faust and Don Juan, the Catholic libertine, who, like Faust,
is usually (not always) dragged off to Hell for his sins. By the late eighteenth
century, after Mozart had finished Don Giovanni and Goethe had added
the story of Faust’s seduction of Gretchen to his first published fragment
of Faust, Faust and Don Juan converged. Though in 1829 they appeared
together as rivals in love in a German play by Christian Dietrich Grabbe,
it is Goethe’s amalgam of the two in the first part of Faust that inspire
d
Berlioz, Boito, and Gounod.*

*A chronological survey compiled by E. M. Butler in The Fortunes of Faust

(1952) lists more than 30
Don Juan dramas, some musical, some not, and more than 40 featuring
Faust (composers became
interested only after Goethe added the Gretchen story). These do not
include innumerable semi-
improvised anonymous puppet plays of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. Butler says, without
listing them, that there are more than fifty post-Goethe German Fausts.

176
Paradise Lost

OF INGVOiL TON (19600 8 = 1:67 4.) wiacs' Vv ER Y different

from Marlowe, who had attended Cambridge a generation earlier. He
was the younger son of a Protestant convert who was a stenographer and
sometime moneylender. At Cambridge, Milton was nicknamed “‘the Lady,”
more for a certain high-minded prudishness than for his unquestioned good
looks. His family considered him suited for the ministry, but he thought
otherwise. Poems written during his seven years at the university (for a
B.A. and M.A.), which include “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,”
as well as “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso,”’ had brought him local fame and
the confidence to envision a literary career.
It was his father’s generosity that permitted him to travel to Italy—
where he visited Galileo—to continue his studies and spend twenty years
writing tracts in favor of religious liberty: the Stuart kings had brought
religious dissension and civil war back to England. In addition, he worked
as a translator, editor, and sometime politician in Oliver Cromwell’s gov-
ernment. He married three times, had three daughters by his first wife,
and lost his eyesight gradually, becoming completely blind by 1652, before
a word of the great epic he had always hoped to write was set down. It 1s
possible that his blindness saved him from hanging when Charles II was
restored to the throne: Andrew Marvell is said to have pleaded for him.

177
(ipeys, Jel WS OyIk Ne OIE Isl Jd IG Ib

Milton is sometimes called “the Puritan poet,” but, at least in his greatest
work, nothing could be farther from the truth. He was raised an Anglican
at a time when Calvinism permeated the Church of England, but the entire
concern of Paradise Lost is to confute predestination and demonstrate the
freedom of will. Satan chooses to rebel in Heaven and chooses further
wickedness; we share every twist of his thinking. Eve, beguiled and foolish,
might be excused from choice, but Adam certainly understands the issues,
if not the consequences, when his love for Eve overwhelms his love for
God. Actually, Milton seems to have become quite independent in his
religious views by the time he began to dictate Paradise Lost (published in
1667). In this he was in step with other intellectuals of the day, though
most were wise enough to conceal their opinions. Milton obfuscated his
in poetry, and generations following him have co-opted Paradise Lost for
their own, often opposed, religious (or irreligious) sides.
The poem’s source material was vast. The great Spanish Renaissance
playwrights, Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), Lope de Vega (1562-1635)
and Calderén de la Barca (1600-1681) had all taken the fate of the Devil
as a theme. In Holland, Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) had written a Latin
play, Adamus Exul, which Milton knew, while Joost van den Vondel’s
(1587-1679) Lucifer was famous. A Huguenot poem about the creation and
fall by Guillaume du Bartas (1544-1590), translated in 1605 by Josuah
Sylvester as The Divine Weeks and Works, was widely read in England and
certainly known to Milton: he borrowed from it the line “Immutable,
Immortal, Infinite” for the angels’ hymn in Book III.
The character of Milton’s magnificently outsized Satan has been dis-
cussed, often passionately, for centuries, but we will avoid the debate in
order to concentrate on cosmography. We learn that, following a more
hard pressed than usual war in Heaven, during which the Son had to be
sent in to back up Michael and the angelic troops, Satan and his host are:

Hurl’d headlong flaming from th’ Ethereal Sky

With hideous ruin and combustion down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In Adamantine chains and penal Fire.

For nine days they fall through Chaos till:

178
 JP BIS AX IDA SS Te JE (OVSTk

Hell at last
Yawning receiv’d them whole, and on them clos’d,
Hell their fit habitation fraught with fire
Unquenchable, the house of woe and pain.

They splash down into a burning lake, and, looking around, find themselves
much changed from their bright angelic forms, while their surroundings
are:

- A Dungeon horrible, on all sides round

As one great Furnace flam’d, yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible
Serv’d only to discover sights of woe,
~ Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all; but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery Deluge, fed
With ever-burning Sulphur unconsum’d:
Such place Eternal Justice had prepar’d
For those rebellious, here their Prison ordain’d
In utter darkness and their portion set
As far remov’d from God and light of Heav’n
As from the center thrice to th’ utmost Pole.

Note that the prison is “‘ordain’d,” but not necessarily its inhabitants. Hell
is ready, but they were not foredoomed to occupy it. How they escape
from the adamantine chains is never explained (none of Milton’s predeces-
sors managed to explain this either), but they make their way to land:

yon dreary Plain, forlorn and wild,

The seat of desolation, void of light,
Save what the glimmering of these livid flames
Casts pale and dreadful.

Nevertheless, Satan is determined to make the best of circumstance; in a

curious reversal of Mephostophilis’s lament, he proclaims his defiance:

179
SE ISL13 Tk SGI, Oi yo (ONE dal is Ie Ie

Farewell happy Fields

Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrors, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor; One who brings
A mind not to be chang’d by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at last
We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n!

With truly Puritan zeal, the demons set to work on the side of a volcano
to build a splendiferous palace, supposed to conjure up in the mind of the
reader the worst excesses of Baroque Rome and Byzantine Constantinople,
not to mention sinful Babylon. The architect is Mulciber, another name
for Hephaestus or Vulcan, the craftsman of pagan Olympus, and the builder
is Mammon, our old plutocratic friend, ‘“‘the least erected Spirit that fell/
From Heav’n, for ev’n in Heav’n his looks and thoughts/ Were always
downward bent, admiring more/ the riches of Heav’n’s pavement, trodd’n
Gold,/ Than aught divine or holy.” Their combined effort results in some-
thing astonishing. Pandemonium (“All-Demons”) is the most palatial struc-
ture in Hell’s history, grander than anything in Spenser, more majestic than
Dante’s City of Dis, more glittering than Hesiod’s House of Styx. In the
opulent meeting hall, Satan calls a council. The infernal council is traditional
in literature and drama but Milton’s treatment is something else entirely.
The new monarch sits in sumptuousness rivaled only by Shakespeare’s
Cleopatra on her gilded barge:

High on a Throne of Royal State, which far

Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Show’rs on her Kings Barbaric Pearl and Gold,

180
 IP PYAR AN IDEASIE JEON SI

Satan exalted sat, by merit rais’d

To that. bad eminence.

The demons swarm to the council in the thousands “as bees in spring-
time.”’ Each senior devil gives a speech. Moloch counsels war—he is Anger.
Belial, who is sensibly, but ignobly, against any warlike activity, is Sloth.
Mammon, who is willing to put up with fiery inconveniences for Hell’s
“Gems and Gold,” is Avarice. Beelzebub, second in rank, is Envy; he tells
of “another World, the happy seat/ Of some new Race call’d Man,” and
suggests that they subvert it ‘‘and drive as we were driven,/ The puny
habitants; or, if not drive,/ Seduce them to our Party.’ His plan delights
the council and they vote to adopt it. But who shall make his way through
the “dark unbottom’d infinite Abyss” to visit this world? Who but Satan
himself in his Pride.
The Stygian council dissolved, the demons disperse, some to engage in
heroic games, others to play the harp, to philosophize, and, most impor-
tantly, to explore their new world.

Another part adventure to discover wide

That dismal World, if any Clime perhaps
Might yield them easier habitation, bend
Four ways their flying March, along the banks
Offour infernal Rivers that disgorge
Into the burning Lake their baleful streams;
Abhorred Styx the flood of deadly hate,
Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep;
Cocytus, nam’d of lamentation loud
Heard on the ruful stream; fierce Phlegethon
Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage.
Far off from these, a slow, a silent stream,
Lethe the River of Oblivion roules
Her wat’ry Labyrinth, whereof who drinks,
Forthwith his former state and being forgets,
Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.
Beyond this flood a frozen Continent
Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms
Of Whirlwind and dire Hail, which on firm land

181
st ist is, Welw
S ow OR ve Ore Isl je Ie Ie

Map of Milton’s cosmos

Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems

Of ancient pile; all else deep snow and ice.

The terrain and fauna are not hospitable:

Thus roving on
In confus’d march forlorn, th’ adventurous Band,
With shudd’ring horror pale, and eyes aghast
View'd first their lamentable lot, and found

182
 LAA SAS) VISA ORS TI.

No rest: through many a dark and dreary Vale

They pass’d, and many a Region dolorous,
Over many a Frozen, many a Fiery Alp,
Rocks, Caves, Lakes, Fens, Bogs, Dens, and shades of death,
A Universe of death, which God by curse
Created evil, for evil only good,
Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds,
Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things,
Abominable, inutterable, and worse,
. Than fables yet have feign’d, or fear conceiv’d,
Gorgons and Hydras and Chimeras dire.

Meanwhile Satan “puts on swift wings” and soars toward the “thrice
threefold” gates of Hell, three of brass, three of iron, three of adamantine
rock, guarded by two formidable shapes who turn out to be Sin and Death
personified. Sin

seem’d Woman to the waist, and fair,

But ended foul in many a scaly fold
Voluminous and vast, a Serpent arm’d
With mortal sting: about her middle round
A cry of Hell Hounds never ceasing bark’d
With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous peal: yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturb’d their noise, into her womb,
And kennel there, yet still there bark’d and howl’d
Within unseen.

Illustrators, whose favorite Miltonic subject was “Satan, Sin, and

Death” always had trouble with Sin, understandably. With Death, they
usually paid no attention to Milton’s own description of a crowned shapeless
shadow shaking a spear, but simply used the traditional fifteenth-century
skeleton or desiccated corpse.
Once it is established that Sin is Satan’s daughter, sprung full-grown
from his forehead like Athena from the head of Zeus, and Death his in-
cestuous son by her, Sin unlocks the gates, and for a moment they all
contemplate Chaos.

183
TE, eS
le ORRaY = OFF ries ieac

At this point, one might well begin to wonder just where Milton’s Hell
is. _It certainly is not in the center of our own earth, the traditional site.
Earth had not yet been created when Milton’s rebel angels fell. It is not a
claustrophobic Jesuit prison but a vast world, unpopulated (yet) except for
the rebels, Sin, Death, and a few prodigious monsters. It seems to be located
on, or rather inside another planet altogether. When Sin unlocks the gates,
it is as though Satan were about to step out into space, though here it is
Chaos. And Chaos is outside the universe, as the universe was generally
understood.
In Chaos the elements noisily battle one another while Satan is buffeted
back and forth until he reaches his first stop, the pavilion of Chaos per-
sonified and his consort Night. Here we learn that Hell is “beneath,” this
situation and that the new “World” hangs “‘over’’ Chaos, “link’d ina golden
Chain/ To that side Heav’n from whence your Legions fell.” Actually,
this dangling object is not a world at all but the old Ptolemaic universe
with its nine spheres circling the earth. Despite his acquaintance with Gal-
ileo, Milton found it too poetically useful to abandon.
Satan looks back to see Sin and Death forging a bridge behind him,
then ahead to the opal towers and sapphire battlements of Heaven, together
with, hanging from it on a golden chain, the “pendent world,” looking as
small with regard to Heaven as a star does next to the moon.
Satan alights on the outermost sphere of this “world,” which seems to
house a Limbo called the Paradise of Fools, reserved for unreconstructed
Roman Catholics. He finds a stairway to Heaven, but heads away from it
through the sphere of the fixed stars, past Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars to the
sphere of the sun, ruled by the archangel Uriel. Disguised as a winsome
cherub, he asks directions, and Uriel points him toward Paradise, Adam’s
abode. And off Satan speeds to Mount Niphates to intone his great solil-
oquy, which runs in part:

Me miserable! Which way shall I fly?

Infinite wrath and infinite despair?
Which way Ifly is Hell; myself am Hell;
And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep
Still threat’ning to devour me opens wide,
To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav’n.

184
 IP XIX AID ICS ie jt, (OFSFE

JOHN MILTONS DESCRIPTION OF HELL

PAVILION OF CHAOS

EARTH

Map drawn by Eugene Cox in 1928

185
Wisige Jeti S we OAR se yi Isl le 1 IC

O then at last relent: is there no place

Left for Repentance, none for Pardon left?
None left but by submission; and that word
Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame
Among the Spirits beneath, whom I seduc’d
With other promises and other vaunts
Then to submit, boasting I could subdue
Th? Omnipotent.

This fragment is interesting for at least three reasons. First, there is the
echo of Marlowe and the poena damni of deprivation; second, it underlines
the poem’s argument for free will; third, it hints at Origen’s theory of
universal salvation, which was beginning to be seriously discussed in the
seventeenth century. Even Satan could repent, but to do so now would be
to betray his troops as well as his pride.
Satan’s travelogue is confusing. Milton removed Heaven and Hell from
the Ptolemaic universe entirely while, instead of the Empyrean, Chaos rings
the Primum Mobile, with Heaven and Hell on opposite sides of it in two
separate spheres or universes—or perhaps Heaven is a kind of ceiling or
platform. To map Milton’s cosmos logically is impossible, which hasn’t
stopped mapmakers from trying. Milton himself says in the Christian Doc-
trine that ‘Hell appears to be situated beyond the limits of this universe,”
and cites Luke 21.8 to justify Chaos. He might have welcomed the vocab-
ulary of the particle physicist or science-fiction writer to speak of a “parallel
universe.”’ One early wag complained, quite correctly, that when Milton
wrote of Chaos, his writing turned singularly chaotic. And T. S. Eliot
acerbically remarked that “‘Milton’s celestial and infernal regions are large
but insufficiently furnished apartments filled by heavy conversation.”
One of Milton’s many illustrators made notably good sense out of Hell,
however. This was John Martin (1789-1834). Martin was much admired
in his own time, but his reputation has not lasted, partly because his paint-
ings now seem florid and overwrought, but also because he simply could
not draw a credible human figure. Apocalypse and epic were his specialties,
but architecture and engineering (especially of sewers) on a heroic scale also

Illustrations by John Martin for Paradise Lost

186
33. In the late Middle Ages, Hell could get downright winsome. From the French fifteenth-
century Hours of Catherine of Cleves.
34-35. Hell has often been somewhat
prurient. From the French fifteenth-century
Le Trésor de Sapience.
36. More late-fifteenth-century French diablerie.
37-38. Blake illustrated both Dante and Milton.
Above, right, “The Simoniac Pope” from the
Inferno; below, “Satan Rousing the Rebel Angels”
from Paradise Lost.
 a Last Judgment.
39. Blake may have been the last major artist to paint
40. Satan, Sin and Death, by William Hogarth, c.1735—40.
41. The Fallen Angels Entering Pandemonium, by John Martin, c.1840.
42. The Gates of Hell, by Auguste Rodin, early twentieth century.
FSi,

gave
Crh
emai,
BE alas ISOS WOR Ye Wid Ist ls il Ie

interested him. He had grown up in a mining town, and one of his brothers
was a famously insane arsonist. Perhaps this combination of interests and
circumstances explains how, in the series of engravings, mezzotints, and
paintings he made for Paradise Lost, he managed to convey the sense of
vast underground gloom lit by dim fires but all somehow enclosed. He was
the only illustrator who understood that Milton’s Hell, for all its geograph-
ical features, was actually a cavernous interior underworld, if not exactly

a sewer. He did an admirable job with the Bridge over Chaos too. Pan-
demonium intrigued him so much that he returned to it several times, and
collectors of movie trivia will be pleased to know that the sets of Babylon
(254 acres of them) in D. W. Griffith’s /ntolerance owe their grandeur
directly to Martin’s visions of demonic palaces. See Plate 41.
He was not the first artist to portray these visions as spectacular, how-
ever, for we have a wonderful description of a theatrical panorama of “‘Satan
Arraying his Troops on the Banks of the Fiery Lake, with the Palace of
Pandemonium: from Milton.” This was a kind of magic lantern show, a
precursor of the movies, created by Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg in
London in 1782 and called the Eidophusikon:

Here in the foreground of a vista, stretching an immeasureable length

between mountains ignited from the bases to their lofty summits with
many-colored flame, a chaotic mass arose in dark majesty which grad-
ually assumed form until it stood, the interior of a vast temple of
gorgeous architecture, bright as molten brass, seemingly compiled of
unquenchable fire. In this tremendous scene, the effect of colored glasses
before the lamps was fully displayed, which being hidden from the
audience threw their whole influence on the scene as it rapidly changed,
now to a sulphurous blue, then to a lurid red, and then again to a pale
vivid light and ultimately to a mysterious combination of the glasses,
such as a bright furnace exhibits in fusing various metals. The sounds
which accompanied the wondrous picture struck the astonished ear of
the spectator as no less than preternatural, for to add a more awful
character to peals of thunder and the accompaniments of all the hollow
machinery that hurled balls and stones with indescribable rumbling and
noise, an expert assistant swept his thumb over the surface of the tam-
bourine which produced a variety of groans that struck the imagination
as issuing from infernal spirits.

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 IPSN Ie 4N IBY IES 1 VE MONS1h

The Eidophusikon was unfortunately destroyed by fire at the beginning of

the nineteenth century.
In Paradise Regained, Milton took Satan’s story through the Temptation
of Christ, but not through the Harrowing. By the late seventeenth century,
the Harrowing was falling from favor. Breakaway Protestant sects always
included ‘‘He descended into Hell” in their creeds, but this seems to have
been more from tradition than conviction; in the twentieth century, later
divisions, especially Methodist councils, quietly dropped the phrase, prob-
ably because the difference between Hell and Limbo is no longer commonly
understood. Also, the Harrowing very prominently features Satan, and,
after Milton, Satan and other devils became increasingly dissociated from
Hell.

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The Mechanical Universe

ke" CATHOLICS, THE EBXISTENC® OF Hell nud

eternal punishment were emphatically affirmed by the Catechism of
1564 ordered by the Council of Trent, and the Inquisition’s treatment of
Bruno and Galileo made them wary of challenging church dogma. But it
was hard to dam the progress of secular knowledge. In the early, heady
days of the Copernican revolution, new discoveries in science and me-
chanics came from every part of Europe,* Protestant and Catholic, but by
the seventeenth century Protestant countries had a distinct scientific ad-
vantage. René Descartes (1596-1650), who was, with Newton, the most
influential thinker of the century, had studied with the Jesuits but found
it prudent to move from France to Protestant Holland after his own studies
confirmed Galileo’s astronomical findings. Virtually all the intellectuals of
the eighteenth-century French Enlightenment found sanctuary at one point
or another in Holland, England, or Switzerland.
Meanwhile, fascination with mathematics and astronomy, coupled with
great advances in optics and in the manufacture of clocks and watches—
the pendulum clock was introduced in mid-century, as was the balance
spring for watches—led to a widespread view of a “mechanical” or “clock-

*Copernicus was Polish; Tycho, Danish; Bruno and Galileo, Italian; Kepler, German; Dee and Bacon,
English.

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 USEC Ee Vinca Cohen NmieGrAa «UN IV BeR IS 2

work” or “watchmaker’s” universe, in which all phenomena were the result

of matter set in motion according to natural laws set down by God. It is
sometimes difficult to remember that for centuries supernatural history and
law, as well as religion, had prevailed. Calvinist predestination seemed to
encourage inexorable natural law, at least at first.
The idea of the mechanical universe dated back to the fourteenth cen-
tury, but it was underlined by Galileo’s discoveries and articulated philo-
sophically by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), remembered for his near-Gnostic
characterization of human life as “nasty, brutish and short.” His own life
was long, intellectually rich, and quite comfortable despite the virulent an-
tagonism stirred up by his books: the common and serious charge against
him was that he was an atheist. In later life, he was protected by Charles II
of England, once Hobbes’s pupil in mathematics and always fond of him.
Geometry was Hobbes’s first love, followed by mechanics and physics;
he sought out Galileo in Italy to discuss astronomy and the nature of the
universe. He was not an atheist in the modern sense, but he was an original
thinker, more concerned with the logical purity of his mathematical ap-
proach than with subverting science to scripture. He was a materialist and
the first of the “English deists,” as the scientifically minded members of
the Royal Society came to be called—though the Society shunned him. His
sardonic humor and contempt for superstition (see the fourth part of Le-
viathan, “Of the Kingdom of Darkness”) would have fit perfectly into the
climate of the eighteenth century, but he was precariously ahead of his
time. On the subject of Hell, he pointed out that it could not possibly be
both a bottomless pit and contained in the globe of the earth, that a reading
of Isaiah 14.9 might suppose it to be underwater, and that Matthew’s hellfire
might be taken simply as a metaphor for dying—a radical interpretation.
Hobbes eventually advocated annihilation theory, the idea that only the
saved will be resurrected and the damned are doomed to everlasting death.
This is one of the two principal modern Christian theories opposed to
Augustinian damnation, the other being universal salvation more or less
along the Origenian line.
Descartes’s discussion of reason deliberately moved the traditional soul-
body dichotomy to a less touchy one, opposing the mind and the senses.
He professed Christianity but insisted that the material universe was com-
pletely separate from the spiritual universe, with no further interference
from. God after the Creation itself. Following Hobbes and Galileo, he

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Ray Ol ahiee a

presented the universe as a mechanism operating in accordance with God-

given laws; if it was not perfect that was because only God can be per-
fect—this was a tricky step away from blaming the woes of the world on
Original Sin. Descartes’s position on materialism went beyond Hobbes in
denying the possibility of supernatural events, including the miracles of the
Bible—an extreme that triggered anguished debate. He backtracked to make
the subtle (and politic) argument that revelation from God could hardly be
denied, even though it could not be demonstrated, but he threw open the
doors to later skepticism.
The boldest of the skeptics was Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) of Holland.
As a Jew, he had a certain distance from squabbles over predestination and
free will as well as New Testament miracles, but because he denied that
biblical evidence supported an immortal soul or the existence of angels, he
was excommunicated from the synagogue before he was twenty-five. Spi-
noza undertook to correct the three flaws he found in Descartes’s me-
chanical universe: a transcendent God, mind-body duality, and insistence
on free will. For God, he substituted the “being of the universe,” which
contains everything and may be worthy of worship though it is not con-
cerned with worship. Though it may be conscious, it has no “will” as we
understand it and is very far from being interested in or capable of anything
like a Last Judgment or eternal punishment. Mind and body are two parts
of an intrinsic unit, the mind being that part which is aware. But bodily
instinct, appetite, and desire override any freedom of will, and joy and
grief transform feeling; a person is “‘free” only insofar as he strives for one
rather than the other. What is “good” is what is useful to an individual or
a species and means nothing to God. Miracles are mistaken impressions of
natural events.
Spinoza did grant that some part of the mind is eternal, which seems
to go against the rest of his system. He was, of course, decried as an atheist
in the seventeenth century and embraced as an atheist in the eighteenth.
For a more conventional mind, the task of explaining why, in a me-
chanical universe, so many souls were created only to be damned was
difficult. Gottfried Leibnitz (1646-1716) of Germany tried to integrate
Cartesian rationalism, which included an individual’s free will to choose
good or evil, with Calvinist double predestination, and ended up with a
somewhat Arminian “optimism,” retreating toward the position that if God
could have created a better universe he would have; the faults are intrinsic

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to creation: he is the Dr. Pangloss (“Explain-it-all,”’ or ‘Polish-it-all,” a

nice pun) ridiculed by Voltaire in Candide for proclaiming this to be “‘the
best of all possible worlds.”
But Voltaire belonged to the anti-Christian Enlightenment, while the
earlier scientific era struggled to integrate what it had been taught with
what it was learning. Seventeenth-century scientists and philosophers (no
real difference separated them as yet) operated under constraints other than
those of scripture. First, they had no idea of the real age of the universe
and of the earth; both were thought to be only a few thousand years old,
usually dating back to 4004 B.c., the agreed-upon biblical date* and to
have been created in fixed mechanical working order with flora and fauna
intact, roughly as described in Genesis. Because they had no concept of
evolution, the remarkable balance of nature was seen as proof of God’s
divine handicraft and creative omnipotence and, for Protestants, of pre-
destination. This is called “argument from design.”
Moreover, the watchmaker’s universe was small. Despite Roman Cath-
olic opposition, scientifically inclined men all accepted the sun-centered
Copernican universe, but they did not yet see beyond the solar system.
Only six planets were known, Copernicus having added the earth as the
sixth. It was not long before the adventurous began to speculate that stars
might be other suns, but telescopes were not nearly advanced enough to
discern galactic nebulae. The notion of incalculable millions of other “uni-
verses,” each containing billions of suns around which trillions of planets
might whirl, was far in the future.
Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was the most prominent member of the Royal
Society, which gathered together most of the like-minded Englishmen of
the day, with the pointed exception of Hobbes. They took their model of
the universe from Descartes, built on it with Newton, and labored to
reconcile it with scripture. Steadily but cautiously, they began to move
away from Calvinistic Anglicanism toward a simpler deism, or “natural
religion.” Newton, the greatest of them all, was cited admiringly as a man
of science who had kept his faith. Not until the twentieth century, when
his private papers were published, was it discovered that Newton, sincere-
ly devout but a sincere and dedicated mathematician too, had gradually

*Johannes Hevelius (1611-1687), a German astronomer, dated the moment of creation to six P.M.,
October 24, 3963 B.C.

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LE WSeiO BO Baier ear

abandoned faith in miracles, including that of the Resurrection, and in so

doing he had had to reject the Trinity, a position identical to that of
Locke. Miracles and Newtonian mathematics could not co-exist, though
he could believe in God and even in a Last Judgment. But he had also
begun to doubt the eternity of Hell.
What, after all, was the pont of Hell after the Last Judgment? Punish-
ment can be deterrent, corrective, curative, or vindictive. Hell was certainly
a deterrent: even those who doubted privately felt it was a useful concept
for others, particularly the lower classes. The Catholic Purgatory was cor-
rective and curative. But infinite pain at the end of time for those whose
sins were, after all, finite? This would be neither curative nor deterrent.
How could it be other than ‘vindictive? Add double predestination, and
you have the truly fearful concept of a God who creates an overwhelming
majority of the damned (‘many are called, but few are chosen”’) and teases
them with the doctrine of salvation only to punish them forever for a
situation he has himself created, and for no purpose other than to entertain
the elect. Seventeenth-century rationalism could not tolerate such a view
of God, let alone such detritus clogging the cosmic machine.
Of course, most people did not really believe in double predestination;
they probably believed in a muddled form of free will that justifies pun-
ishment—for others. But many of those who tried to think things through
were quietly beginning to abandon eternal punishment. Hobbes, John
Locke, and numerous others came to the conclusion that after a period of
torment appropriate to their sins—perhaps a thousand years or so—the
wicked would be simply and tidily annihilated.
Some thought that annihilation might happen immediately after death.
The Socinians were said to believe this.* Jews were thinking along these
lines. A century earlier, Anabaptists had held similar views. All of these
groups were considered suspect, but by the eighteenth century David Hume
had advanced to rejecting any form of afterlife, serenely embracing his own
deathbed annihilation, much to Boswell’s pious distress.
Even in the Royal Society, scientific method could mimic medieval
literalism. In 1714, Tobias Swinden published An Enquiry into the Nature
and Place of Hell in which, following all the latest theories, he proved that

*There is considerable ambiguity about just what Socinians did believe about the afterlife or lack of it;
their names were invoked rather as ““Manichaeans” were during the Albigensian Crusade. See D. P.
Walker, The Decline of Hell, 1964, Chapter V.

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 IVE Vig. Caries NGleG@oA Ion sul INL Vo BRIS B

Orbita Saturn;

~ OrbitaJovis
© orvita Marti, ~~~.
~ orbita Telluyj,
7 onbita Venerj.
“ _ogita Mercy O.

Tobias Swinden’s universe

the sun was logically and scientifically the site of Hell. By his calculations,
the accumulation of souls would have long since overrun any subterranean
space, and not enough oxygen could penetrate to keep the fires stoked.
Only the sun was big enough, fiery enough, and eternal enough to hold
the enormous number of damned souls, past and future. Furthermore, as
the center of the Copernican universe, it had the place farthest away from
the Empyrean that the earth had mistakenly been thought to have held.
Surely the conclusion was obvious.
Apparently not. Three years later, William Whiston, who had succeeded
Isaac Newton as professor of mathematics at Cambridge but had been
expelled for unorthodox beliefs, published Astronomical Principles of Re-
ligion, Natural and Reveal’d, dedicated to Newton, whose second law of
motion had helped to establish the idea of comets as orbiting bodies with
elliptical but traceable orbits within the mechanical universe. In 1705, Ed-
mund Halley had published the calculated orbits of twenty-four periodic

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comets and, using Newton’s revolutionary mathematics, correctly predicted

the return in 1758 of the one that bears his name. Whiston studied this
book and the evidence for Hell, particularly with regard to extremes of
heat and cold, and decided that the path of a comet, which took it so near
the sun and so far into “the cold regions near Saturn” was the logical
“Surface or Atmosphere” for the place of torment.
Whiston received some incredulity from fellow members of the Royal
Society and retreated to his own form of annihilation theory. In 1740, in
The Eternity of Hell Torments Considered, he placed all dead souls in a
nonpunitive (but certainly uncomfortable, considering the crowd) Hades
inside the earth, where they would have a chance to mend their ways. At
the Last Judgment (Whiston was a millenarian) the blessed would rise in
spiritual bodies and the incorrigible in the diseased or damaged bodies they
had at death. That explained the worms, while the fire would follow at
world’s end “‘till they expired in the utmost agonies.”’

JOHN DONNE (1573-1631), the dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in Lon-

don, wrote a satire on the Jesuits called Jgnatius, His Conclave which takes
place in Hell, not the Jesuit version but the satirical Hell that Lucian
invented to air his political views. Donne pretends to visit this region,
passing through its “‘suburbs,”’ Limbo and Purgatory, to find Lucifer hob-
nobbing with Ignatius Loyola in order to judge the scientists and thinkers
of the new world order: Copernicus; Paracelsus, a medical alchemist whose
work interested Donne; and Machiavelli, who so intrigues the Devil that
he nearly deserts Ignatius. With the aid of Galileo’s telescope, they decide
to form a new colony of Hell on the moon over which Ignatius will rule:
this is to hold all the heretics condemned by the Vatican.
The essay is slight and intended to amuse but is noteworthy for its
interest in contemporary discoveries, not only in the sciences but in travel,
for it brings in the reports of voyages to the Americas and the Indies and
the Orient that made the age so exciting. Donne had been raised a Roman
Catholic and was taught by the Jesuits before attending both Oxford and
Cambridge, where, because of his religion, he could not take a degree. He
was always interested in science; just as Hobbes and Milton went to visit
Galileo, Donne sought out Kepler in a remote town in Austria.
Donne is remembered for his ardent and exalted poetry both religious

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and sensual, but after his rather late conversion to the Anglican faith, he
also became a celebrated preacher. He was not a hellfire preacher—although
he had morbid tendencies in later life, this would have been entirely foreign
to his temperament—but he did preach one famous sermon that illustrates
perfectly the poena damni that moderate, educated, middle-class Protestants
who kept up with science but held to the faith could believe in:

That that God who, when he could not get into me by standing and
knocking, by his ordinary means of entering, by his word, his mercies,
hath applied his judgments and hath shaked the house, this body, with
agues and palsies, and set this house on fire with fevers and calentures
and frightened the master of the house, my soul, with horrors and heavy
apprehensions and so made an entrance into me; that that God should
loose and frustrate all his own purposes and practices upon me, and
leave me, and cast me away, as though I had cost him nothing, that this
God at last should let this soul go away, as a smoke, as a vapor, as a
bubble, and then that this soul cannot be a smoke, nor a vapor, nor
a bubble, but must live in darkness; . . . what torment is not a marriage
bed to this damnation, to be secluded eternally, eternally, eternally from
the sight of God?

The use of the first person in this sermon is wonderfully effective. Though
Donne was a contemporary of Marlowe and Shakespeare, he lived longer
than they did and both his poetry and his prose seem to look forward to
the age of science and self-revelation of a sort not practiced since the days
of Augustine and Marcus Aurelius.
A parallel confessional passage from the Religio Medici of Thomas
Browne (1605-1682) probes an Anglican position similar to but a little to
the left of Donne. Browne, in tune with other intellectuals, was moving
toward the deist position. He reflects that he has never feared Hell and
thinks that God must use it only as a last resort “upon provocation.’
>

I can hardly think there was ever any scared into Heaven; they go the
fairest way to Heaven that would serve God without a Hell; other
mercenaries that crouch to him in fear of Hell, though they term them-
selves the servants, are indeed the slaves of the Almighty.

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T Hee) Eis: PeOuRwy Orr rise aia

On the other hand, hundreds of Puritan preachers were terrorizing their

audiences with threats like this one by Christopher Love (1618-1651):

Should you pray till you can speak no more; and should you sigh to
the breaking of your loins; should every word be a sigh, and every sigh
a tear, and every tear a drop of blood, you would never be able to
recover that grace which you lost in Adam; you obliterated the beautiful
image of God; you lost that knowledge by the commission of one sin,
which you cannot regain by ten thousand sermons, or doing ten thou-
sand Duties.

The antithetically named Love, an extremist, defended his position by

saying that “sermons of terror have done more good upon unconverted
souls than sermons of comfort have ever done”; for “stout and knotty”
souls, “nothing but flashes of hellfire will make their conscience startle.”
In The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), the moderate clergyman Robert
Burton (1577-1640) described sufferers who had been cast into conditions
of morbid despair by “those thundering ministers” and undertook to pro-
vide a list of scriptural reassurances.
By far the best known of all seventeenth-century preachers, however,
was John Bunyan (1628-1688), a Baptist whose allegory of a Christian’s
journey toward salvation, the massively popular Pilgrim’s Progress, from
This World to That Which Is to Come (1678), had gone through 160 editions
by 1792 and remained, after the Bible, the best-selling book in the English
language right through the nineteenth century. Hell enters only periph-
erally, but Bunyan’s second most famous book was A Few Sighs from Hell,
with thirty editions between first publication in 1658 and 1797. Bunyan’s
outlook and technique in both books is entirely medieval: their huge pop-
ularity serves to prove how distant the outlook of the elite can be from
that of the masses. A Few Sighs, developed from an actual sermon, is no
more than a vision journey updated with Puritan terrorist eloquence: bellies
crammed with burning pitch or molten lead, red-hot pincers shredding
flesh to bits, limbs torn apart, souls abandoned to “fry, scorch and broil,
and burn forever.” Copies of Bunyan’s books were frequently presented
to Puritan children.

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The Enlightenment

lk THE EVGHTEENTH CENTURY, THe “Center of in-

tellectual activity veered from England to France and it has become
conventional to call the group at the center of the Enlightenment philo-
sophes, whether they were French or not. The word does not quite mean
philosophers, though some of them were. They were primarily thinkers,
writers, polemicists, critics, men of letters who shared a belief in rationality,
science, and freedom from oppression, which very much included freedom
from the heavy hand of organized religion. “Ecrasez l’infame!” was Vol-
taire’s cry, and by l’infame he meant quite specifically what Hume called
“Stupidity, Christianity & Ignorance,” with an emphasis on the fear of
>

Hell as a coercive device.

For convenience, let us call Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) the first of the
philosophes. Although he lived only a few years into the century, he had
its ironic tone, and he engaged in one of its characteristic occupations, the
industrious compilation of fact and opinion to prove a point. John Ray
(c. 1627-1705) had just parsed the definition of species, a useful way to
classify and group things; and intellectuals of the eighteenth century,
whether philosophes or their opponents, were indefatigable makers of dic-
tionaries, encyclopedias, catalogs, libraries, compendia, collections, and
systems of all kinds.
Other well-known French philosophes included Voltaire; Montesquieu;
Diderot; scientists Jean d’Alembert and the Comte de Buffon, who wrote

oe
Mss ASE NOS IN OGR AG KOLIF jalde,
IG Ib

a forty-four volume Natural History; and Rousseau, who eventually quar-

reled and broke with the other philosophes. Best known in Britain were
the philosopher David Hume, the economist Adam Smith, and the
historian Edward Gibbon. In America, Ethan Allen, the frontier hero,
and Thomas Paine, the political theorist, may be counted, while Benjamin
Franklin and Thomas Jefferson collaborated to make their new nation’s
Declaration of Independence the most triumphant political document of the
Enlightenment.
The difference between the investigators of the seventeenth century and
those of the Enlightenment is that the latter were no longer interested in
attuning their findings to scripture—except to decry it—which, for the
first time, opened the way to a true empiricism. Thus Buffon looked to a
past of eons, not merely of thousands of years, and a creation not con-
strained to six days or even six “‘epochs.”’ The reports and merchandise
and sometimes people coming from the New World and the Far East with
increasing frequency made Europe less parochial. The steady accumulation
of works in translation added to respect for the past and for other cultures.

A proper Enlightenment demon wearing spectacles

 ip Eis ee PaIN eal Garber aNeVicES IN) Ti

The industrial age was beginning, and philosophy, science, and religion
had begun to sort themselves into different categories.
To see how the philosophes used the “scientific” approach to confute
orthodoxy on the subject of Hell, it is useful to look into their compilations,
beginning with Bayle’s encyclopedic Dictionnaire Historique et Critique,
published in 1697. In his dictionary, which is really a collection of essays,
Bayle was fighting not only a general war against doctrine but a specific
one against the Calvinist Huguenot leader Pierre Jurieu. Jurieu stated that
God permitted sin in order to demonstrate his hatred of it. Bayle retorted
that such hatred would be better demonstrated by preventing it. Jurieu
argued that Hell was necessary “‘by reason, custom and all the laws of the
world.” Bayle disagreed.
The Dictionnaire does not have a section on “enfer”; that would not
have been prudent. Bayle attacked from the sidelines, through camouflage
provided by his articles on heresy, paganism, atheism, revelation, and phi-
losophers such as Spinoza. His weapons were wit and great erudition, his
points that ethics and virtuous living had little to do with the fear of
offending God (or the gods) and that one man’s pious mystery is another’s
murky superstition. Jurieu, attacking Catholicism, pointed out heretical
inconsistencies in the early Church. Bayle used his own arguments against
him to prove that Calvinism could not logically exclude from salvation any
of the new heresies against which orthodoxy inveighed. One of Bayle’s
best ironic positions was that atheists, lacking the fear of Hell, are naturally
virtuous, while the truly vicious are kept in bounds only by their belief in
eternal punishment.
Fifty years later, Diderot’s enormous Encyclopédie began to appear.
This time the attack on Hell was direct. In an article on ‘““Damnation,”’ the
illogic of the orthodox position is exposed, step by step: the disproportion
between mortal sin, however severe, and eternal punishment; the point-
lessness of post-judgment punishment; the difficulties of reconciling eternal
pain with a merciful God or with the sacrifice of Jesus. Must virtuous
pagans, noble savages, and all Protestants and other heretics be damned?
Swinden and Whiston are trotted out solemnly, only to be held up as
preposterous. There is only one argument for damnation: evidence for it
is “clearly revealed in Scripture.” Diderot’s skepticism regarding scripture
slashes through the bland statement.
The final volume of the Encyclopédie appeared in 1772, but Voltaire did

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not wait for it to bring out his own Dictionnaire Philosophique, which 1s
no more a dictionary than Bayle’s was, though much shorter. His motive
in writing it was entirely subversive; the Encyclopédie was too large and
ponderous to make a revolution, he said, but his cheap portable book,
published anonymously in 1764 to immediate official excoriation, might do
the trick.
Voltaire did not present arguments but stated facts, usually accurately,
then drew logical but devastating conclusions from them. Dozens of barbs
in deadpan homilies and “Chinese catechisms” relate to all aspects of death,
resurrection, eschatology, apocalypse, miracles, biblical “facts,” and philo-
sophical theories. “Enfer,” his Hell entry, is not as amusing as some others,
but it is accurate. He says that the Persians, Chaldeans (Mesopotamians),
Egyptians, and Greeks invented Hell, not the Jews who believed in pun-
ishment only “to the fourth generation,” and that it takes prodigious in-
genuity to find obscure support for the idea in the Old Testament. He
acknowledges belief in Hell among the Pharisees and Essenes, who got it
from the Romans via the Greeks, and remarks that several church fathers
rejected it because “‘it appeared ridiculous that a poor fellow should burn
forever because he had stolen a goat.”’ And lastly he quotes a priest who
pooh-poohs the idea of eternal Hell but says that it is “well for your maid,
your tailor, and especially your lawyer to believe it.”
It is interesting to compare this approach with the Dictionary of Samuel
Johnson (1709-1784). Johnson was a sincere Anglican and tended to look
down his nose at the philosophes, despite the uncanny similarity of his
satirical novel Rasselas to Voltaire’s Candide, published in the same year.
He gives six definitions of Hell, each backed with appropriate literary and
biblical quotes, and a seventh comment:

HELL n.f. [helle, Saxon] 1. The place of the devil and wicked
souls. 2. The place of separate souls, whether good or bad. 3. Tem-
poral death. 4. The place at a running play to which those who are
caught are carried. 5. The place into which a tailor throws his
threads. 6. The infernal powers. 7. It is used in composition by the
old writers more than by the modern.

Nothing could be more correct or decorous. There is an odd little story

that Boswell tells about Johnson, however, that throws some light on the

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variances among educated men of eighteenth century, men who, in this

case, belonged to the same social set, or “club,” as Boswell would put it.
On Saturday, June 12, 1784, the great man was dining with the reverend
Dr. Adams, the “‘learned and pious” Mr. Henderson, and Boswell. At one
point Johnson suddenly declared:

“As I cannot be sure that I have fulfilled the conditions on which

salvation is granted, I am afraid I may be one of those who shall be
damned.” (looking dismally) DR. ADAMS. “What do you mean
by damned?” JOHNSON (passionately and loudly) “Sent to Hell, Sir,
and punished everlastingly.”” DR. ADAMS. “I don’t believe that doc-
trine.” . . . [Johnson] was in gloomy agitation, and said, “I’ll have no
more on’t.”

To be sure, Johnson was seventy-five at the time. But Dr. Adams, the
demurring clergyman, was three years his senior.
Compare this with Boswell’s visit to David Hume, the Scottish phi-
losopher, on Sunday, July 7, 1776, seven weeks before Hume’s death.
Rather untactfully, considering, Boswell introduced the subject of immor-
tality and was astonished to find that Hume did not believe in it, nor in
any kind of religion. Was not a future state possible? Boswell asked.

He answered, It was possible that a piece of coal put on the fire would
not burn; and he added that it was a most unreasonable fancy that he
should exist forever. I asked him if the thought of Annihilation never
gave him any uneasiness. He said not the least, no more than the thought
that he had not been.

The thoroughly orthodox Boswell was dismayed, but persisted.

“But,” said I, “would it not be agreeable to have hopes of seeing our

friends again,” and I named three Men lately deceased, for whom I
knew he had a high value. He owned it would be agreeable, but added
that none of them entertained such a notion. I believe he said such a
foolish, or such an absurd notion, for he was indecently and impolitely
positive in incredulity.

Boswell took his leave, ‘‘with impressions that disturbed me for some time.’
Bb]

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 Ey elie li Sel @eKens

te Siewee<

An eighteenth-century Tantalus by Honoré Daumier

O04
 ie eaNe aiiG eet Panes Bs Net

THE EIGHTEENTH century left its mark on Hell in other ways as well.
The form Lucian had invented, the “dialogue of the dead,” was revived in
magazines and pamphlets and became a favorite form of satire, religious
and political commentary, and sometimes scandal. Equivalent illustrations
were the sometimes macabre caricatures of William Hogarth (1697-1764),
Francisco José de Goya (1746-1828), and many lesser artists. The partic-
ipants of the dialogues were often classical or recently deceased celebrities,
with Dr. Johnson a particular favorite. Others might be Minos, Pluto,
Julius Caesar, Socrates, Montaigne, monarchs, bishops, society ladies, jour-
nalists like Addison and Steele. George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman,
featuring Don Juan in Hell, takes these as a model. Dialogues of the dead
still turned up in early twentieth-century magazines.
Don Juan’s career had been flourishing, together with that of his sor-
cerous equivalent, Faust. The Don, his beautiful paramours, and the Statue
that flings him to Hell first came to the stage in El Burlador de Sevilla, a
play written in about 1630 by a Spanish monk using the name of Tirso de
Molina. In one version or another, notably in Mozart’s Don Giovanni
(1787), they have stayed there ever since. Here is an irresistibly silly song-
and-dance Hell number written for the banquet scene of The Libertine
(1676), a Don Juan play by a Restoration playwright named Thomas
Shadwell:

BURST DEY Le: Prepare, prepare, new Guests draw near,

And on the brink of Hell appear.

SECOND DEVIL: Kindle fresh Flames of Sulphur there.

Assemble all ye Fiends,
Wait for the dreadful ends
Of impious men, who far excel
All th’ Inhabitants of Hell.

CHORUS OF DEVILS: Let em come, Let ’em come,

To an eternal dreadful Doom
Let ’em come, Let ’em come.

THIRD DEVIL: In mischiefs they have all the damn’d outdone;

Here they shall weep, and shall unpiti’d groan,
Here they shall howl, and make eternal moan.

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THE mre les 1sOmRw ©) Eee is bales

FIRST DEVIL: By Blood and Lust they have deserved so well

That they shall feel the hottest flames of Hell.

SECOND DEVIL: In vain they shall here their past mischiefs bewail,
In exquisite torments that shall never fail.

THIRD DEVIL: Eternal Darkness they shall find,

And them eternal Chains shall bind,
To infinite pain of sense and mind.

CHORUS OF DEVILS: Let ’em come, Let ’em come,

To an eternal dreadful Doom

Let ’em come, Let ’em come.

At almost exactly the same time, William Mountfort produced and acted
in The Life and Death of Doctor Faustus Made Into a Farce, which brought
Harlequin and Scaramouche into the action. In 1724 a fancy-dress panto-
mime called Harlequin Doctor Faustus was produced at Drury Lane. Of a
similar production by Colley Cibber, Pope comments in The Dunciad:

All sudden, Gorgons hiss and Dragons glare,

And tenhorn’d fiends and Giants rush to war.
Hell rises, Heaven descends, and dance on Earth:
Gods, imps and monsters, music, rage and mirth,
A fire, a jig, a battle and a ball,
Till one wide conflagration swallows all.

All over Europe in public squares and markets, puppet theaters thrived.
Puppet plays were portable, cheap to produce with only a few actors (only
one, in a real pinch), and could easily evade the state censorship of full-
dress plays. Though children crowded into the audiences, the plays were
not for their ears, but relied on the broadest possible folk humor. Origi-
nality was not the point of these shows, which counted, exactly like a
present-day television sitcom, on repetitive stories featuring familiar char-
acters. Punch and Judy is the last puppet tradition to survive, but the earlier
exploits of Don Juan and Faust, the first featuring his successive seductions
and the second his miracles and pranks, could be spun out as long as an
audience’s attention held. The Don and the Doctor were not even the real
heroes of the plays; the audience cheered on their clownish servants, Hans

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Pickelharing, Hans Wurst, or Herlekin, whose adventures imitated and

parodied their masters’ until, at the end, when demons dragged the gentry
toward Hellmouth, the bumpkins outwitted them and escaped, to laughter
and applause. The Faust puppet plays, not Marlowe’s drama—though trav-
eling companies of actors playing Marlowe in translation had first inspired
the puppeteers—were Goethe’s source for Faust.

MOST PEOPLE intheeighteenth century were not engaged in the pursuit

of reason, nor had they abandoned religion or even Hell itself. In 1732,
Alphonso de’ Liguori founded the order of Redemptorists specifically to
send hellfire preachers to Catholic pulpits. Here is a sample from his parish
handbook, The Eternal Truths:

The unhappy wretch will be surrounded by fire like wood in a furnace.

He will find an abyss of fire below, an abyss above, and an abyss on
every side. If he touches, if he sees, if he breathes, he touches, sees,
breathes only fire. He will be in fire like a fish in water. This fire will
not only surround the damned, but it will enter into his bowels to
torment him. His body will become all fire, so that the bowels within
him will burn, his heart will burn in his bosom, his brains in his head,
his blood in his veins, even the marrow in his bones; each reprobate
will in himself become a furnace of fire.

The Jesuits were great sermonizers and during the time that the En-
cyclopedists were preparing their subversive messages the famous Abbé
Bridaine and others were thundering imprecations on all Paris. But the
glory of the Puritans was in their sermons and this was never more true
than in America, where Protestant dissenters and extremists often chose to
live.
Anglicans settled in the Virginia colonies. The Mayflower Puritans of
Massachusetts were Congregationalists in revolt against the Anglican hi-
erarchy. The Baptists broke away at about the same time, soon establishing
themselves in Rhode Island. Persecuted in England, the Quakers settled
Pennsylvania and Scottish Presbyterians joined them there and in New
Jersey. John Wesley founded Methodism in the eighteenth century, and it
took root in New York state, though the main church splintered into many
branches.

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Se Owen Gms Ob be lig tale

Beginning in the 1730s, a wave of evangelical revivalism swept across

the colonies. The so-called Great Awakening started in New Jersey with
the Presbyterian evangelist Gilbert Tennent (1703-1764), but was quickly
taken up in New England by the famous Congregationalist theologian
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), followed by George Whitefield (1714-
1770), a Calvinist Methodist whose sensational pulpit manner, as he said
himself, combined ‘Flame, Clearness and Power.” Their avowed purpose
was “to drive the nail of terror into slumbering souls.”” Audiences responded
with tears, shouts, convulsions, fainting fits, and mass conversions.
Edwards, the son and grandson of New England clergymen, had studied
Newton and Locke at Yale, where he received his M.A. in 1723, and he
endeavored, with considerable success, to draw natural science into the fold
of Puritanism. He was a strict predestinarian, considering evil and its pun-
ishment to be part of the grand design, but something of an ecstatic too
and skillful in the “preaching of terror.” His first great revival meeting was
in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1734-35, and one of his most celebrated
sermons, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” was preached in 1741
when the Great Awakening was in full cry. ‘“Their foot shall slide in due
time,”’ was his text and, “There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any
one moment out of Hell but the mere pleasure of God,” his interpretation,
and his lurid imagery that of spiders dangling over flames from frail threads
attached to God’s fingers.
The polite Sunday behavior of those who shared the “innate, sinful
depravity of the heart” evidently annoyed him. He ended another ser-
mon entitled “The Future Punishment of the Wicked: Unavoidable and
Intolerable’:

It will not be long before you will be wonderfully changed. You who
now hear of Hell and the wrath of the great God, and sit here in these
seats so easy and quiet and go away so careless, by and by will shake
and tremble and cry out and shriek and gnash your teeth, and will be
thoroughly convinced of the vast weight and importance of these great
things which you now despise. You will not then need to hear sermons
in order to make you sensible; you will be at a sufficient distance from
slighting that wrath and power of God, of which you now hear with
so much quietness and indifference.

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 Wiehe IN IG Teh ar ae INP GYR Ip ay

Edwards is said to have thought that Whitefield’s intensely emotional open-

air evangelism went much too far. Unfortunately, none of it has survived
in writing to contrast with his own moderation.
The first Great Awakening (others followed throughout the nineteenth
century) had two distinct effects on American history. The emotions un-
leashed by it surely contributed to the revolutionary fever that soon caught
the colonists, and that was seen by many as the start of the millennium.
The second effect was more subtle, and not one that revivalist leaders
anticipated. The mass controversy and religious ferment caused by the
revivalists were not lost upon the Founding Fathers. Distaste for religious
zeal pushed men like Franklin and Jefferson, both of whom lived for a
time in the France of the Enlightenment, away from the moderate Chris-
tianity to which they might otherwise have subscribed. Franklin became
an out-and-out deist, Jefferson a tacit one. Both had the wit to see that
America’s religious pluralism must be supported in order to preserve her
independence from factionalism and fanaticism. And so it happened that
America’s Declaration of Independence, written by Jefferson with the help
of Franklin, refers only to “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God,” a
formulation Hume himself might have approved. In the Constitution, the
name of God is nowhere mentioned, and church is firmly separated from
state.

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Swedenborg’s Vision

Gu LAST TOWERING FIGURE OF the eighteenth cen-

tury was Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) of Stockholm, though
his influence pervaded the nineteenth century rather than his own. Like so
many of his contemporaries, Swedenborg, a bishop’s son, was intensely
interested in the sciences. In fact, he seems to have been something of a
scientific genius, with interests ranging from astronomy to algebra to met-
allurgy to remarkably advanced physics to anatomical studies. Emerson
admired him as “a colossal soul,” and also, less admiringly, “one of the
missouriums and mastodons of literature.”
Swedenborg’s accomplishments in science and philosophy have been
obscured by the fame he achieved from the visionary spiritual revelations
he began to record in his fifties. The accounts of these in his most famous
book, Heaven and Hell (1758), are fascinatingly similar, yet dissimilar, to
medieval vision literature. The approach is entirely different, the language
cool, clear, and unemotional—the eyewitness records of a geographer—
but the form is quite similar, though at immensely greater length. Unlike
medieval visionaries, he was far more interested in angels and heavens than
in hells. (These are plural in his cosmology, though they are subdivisions
of a whole, as in many medieval visions.) Nevertheless, he dutifully records
his visits to the lower world, to which he descended in a sort of brass
elevator.

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Sa eEe Dat eNe Db ORG ets Vales Onn

The spiritual world, he explained, has its own landscape, with plains,
mountains, and streams, just like the natural world. The heavens are in the
highest section, the world of spirits under that, and beneath both are the
hells. Spirits cannot see the heavens except when their “inner sight” is
opened, nor can the damned see above them. There is, however, an equi-
librium between Heaven and Hell, for “from Hell there continually exhales
and descends the effort of doing evil, and from Heaven there continually
exhales and descends the effort of doing good.” The echo of Origen is
provocative, and so is the echo of Tundal’s Lucifer, inhaling and exhaling
sinners. Swedenborg allowed for no conversion after a choice was made,
however, which irritated Emerson, the passionate universalist, as well as
William Blake, another visionary who, at first fascinated, later recoiled
from every whiff of predestination, and hence from Swedenborg.
Swedenborg’s intermediate world of spirits is the one that most intrigued
nineteerith-century “‘spiritists,” and twentieth-century chroniclers of the
“near-death experience.” Its equivalent is the Catholic Purgatory without
the punishments, or the place between Heaven and Hell that some Prot-
estants were trying hard to define, and that occultists and mediums believed
retained some commerce with our own world. In this gray Limbo-like area,
spirits walk slowly, as Swedenborg saw them doing, toward Heaven or
Hell, according to their natures.
Every heavenly division has a correspondent infernal one. The worst
hells are those in the west, especially the northwest; in them are Roman
Catholics “who wished to be worshiped as gods and who consequently
burned with hatred and revenge against all who refused to acknowledge
their power over the souls of men and over Heaven.” In others are atheists,
the worldly, the rancorous, the hostile, thieves, robbers, misers, and the
greedy and unmerciful. Behind the northwestern hells are “dark forests in
which malignant spirits prowl about like wild beasts,” and behind the
southwestern are deserts, where dwell those who “‘were most cunning in
plotting artifices and deceits.” The hells are classified in rigorous order
according to the infinite varieties of evil.

There are hells everywhere, both under the mountains, hills and rocks,
and under the plains and valleys. These apertures or gates leading to the
hells . . . appear to the sight like the holes and fissures of rocks, some
wide-stretching, some confined and narrow, and most of them rugged.

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TEE Ho Sel OsRe ye (Os Se rebel:

All, when looked into, appear dark and dusky; but the infernal spirits
who are within them wind themselves in a sort of light resembling that
emitted from ignited charcoal. Their eyes are adapted to receive that
light in consequence of their having been, while they lived in the world,
in darkness with respect to divine truth. . . . All [the apertures] are
covered over except when evil spirits from the world of spirits are cast
in. When they are open, an exhalation proceeds from them, either like
smoke or like fire or like soot or like a thick mist. I have heard that the
infernal spirits do not see or feel these fires, smokes or mists because,
when immersed in them, they are as if in their own atmosphere and
thus in the delight of their life.

Swedenborg examined the hells and found the upper parts dark because
their inhabitants were “immersed in the falsity of evil,’ while the lower
parts were fiery, for there the sinners were immersed in evil itself.

In the milder hells are seen what appear like rude cottages, sometimes
arranged contiguously as in a city with lanes and streets; and within
these houses are infernal spirits who are engaged in continuous alter-
cations, displays of enmity, beatings and efforts to tear one another to
pieces; while in the streets and lanes are committed robberies and dep-
redations. In some hells are brothels disgusting to behold, being full of
all sorts of filth and excrement.

Despite the bucolic scenery, they smack of inner-city squalor and depravity.
Emerson, who did not believe in them but was willing to salute visionary
thinking, called both the heavens and hells ultimately dull: Swedenborg,
he thought, lacked poetry. This opinion would have surprised Swedenborg
himself; he appeared to believe he was still a scientist recording sober fact.
Emerson predicted that Swedenborg would not be read much longer,
and this came to pass. But he cast a long shadow over the nineteenth century.
As science continued to march forward, there began to be a revulsion against
everything the Age of Reason stood for, a shift toward romanticism, spir-
itualism, intuition, ambiguity, and new forms of fantasy, much of it dark
fantasy that toyed with the old views of Hell and the otherworld,

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The Nineteenth Century

(a) ieCeheraies ot 8-15 NAPOLEON is forces fell at

Waterloo, ending a quarter century of political upheaval. In October,
he was sent to Saint Helena, there to end his life almost inevitably my-
thologized as a powerful symbol, a Satan in exile, a fallen hero who had
appeared like an angel from nowhere—or like the Antichrist—to take
charge of demoralized, bankrupt, blood-washed France and then to lead
her on a terrifying crusade of world conquest.*
The French Revolution had far more impact on Europe than did the
other in faraway America. The tyranny, corruption, and injustice that had
rallied the French people offended liberals and reformists in the surrounding
countries too. Primed by the Enlightenment, people thrilled in sympathy
to the Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789). Poetry at the century’s
turn was full of hope and excitement, millennial in the most positive sense:
France was to lead the way to the promised kingdom of God on earth.
Disillusionment, when it came, was profound. It was no longer bliss to be
alive.
The Spirit of the Age was much talked about; a series of thoughtful
articles by John Stuart Mill that began to be published in the 1830s took

*Emerson tells us that Napoleon, who enjoyed debate, argued against the existence of Hell—expedient,
since so many were convinced it was his natural home.

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TE ES ES TOUR SO sr aaeri ees lels

that title. On one level, the century moved straight ahead, accelerating ever
faster. Industry prospered, science, exploration, conquest, trade, and rail-
roads advanced, and great fortunes were made by men whom American
historians have straightforwardly called “robber barons.”
But underneath its progressive surface, the Spirit was uneasy. The earlier
philosophes used wit, reason, and erudition to attack what they considered
to be the tottering superstructure of superstition and imperial heritage. But
the new age swept tradition aside, bringing uncertainty, a sense that reason
had failed. Hence the Spirit was to a marked degree anti-intellectual, with
a strong interest in the metaphysical. The historian Peter Gay notes: “Before
the eighteenth century was over, the philosophes were under severe pressure
from a Germanic ideology, a strange mixture of Roman Catholic, primitive
Greek, and folkish Germanic notions—a kind of Teutonic paganism.” By
the end of the next century, the strange mixture had produced Gothic and
Romantic literature and music, a strong interest in fantasy and folklore,
and dozens of different occult and mystical sects including “diabolism.”
There was also the secular approach to soul-searching that would become
psychoanalysis, as well as a morbid late-century fascination with death and
dying such as had not been seen since the fifteenth century.
The “sublime” was much talked of. It is the word we associate with
the drastic Alpine landscapes and fevered emotions of the Romantic period;
it reaches beyond the order and harmony of mere beauty to the chaos of
the infinite. In a 1756 essay, Edmund Burke said that “infinity has a ten-
dency to fill the mind with that sort of delightful horror which is the most
genuine effect and truest test of the sublime.” The definition flirts with a
revisionary nineteenth-century view of Hell.
The prose novel was developed in the eighteenth century with the re-
liable traditions of Don Juan and Faust as useful models. Don Juan was
disguised as Lovelace in Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa (1748) and as Valmont
in Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782). Virtue is
rewarded in both books (in Heaven, for both heroines die), but what drives
their plots and keeps the reader turning pages is, emphatically, vice. The
machinations of their aristocrat hero-villains bent on sin do not, however,
lead them to their just rewards below. Something new was in the air.
Raw vice was the muse of the most notorious demonic aristocrat of the
age, the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814). He spent much of his life either in
prison or an insane asylum, which gave him plenty of time to fantasize,

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 THE NUN EME BENTH: CENTURY

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TIE: SAS. OER OT es wre bale

and he claimed that his pornographic inventions of bizarre rapes, tortures,

and murders in the name of pure sexual pleasure (Justine, 1791; Histoire
de Juliette, 1796) were legitimate extensions of Enlightenment ideas. If there
is no God, there is no accountability, no social contract, and everything 1s
permissible, including the wanton destruction of others. If people are ob-
jects (sex objects in the most literal sense of an often misused term), their
wills count for nothing in a world where morality is subjective.
De Sade’s influence was considerable. He stretched sensationalism and
prurience beyond all previous limits of taste, and his violent secular sce-
narios went beyond apocalyptic visions of Hell, gruesome accounts of
martyrdoms, or the most lurid revenge melodramas. No moral was attached
to de Sade’s writing; quite the opposite. The heavens themselves, enraged
by the heroine’s obstinate attachment to virtue throughout her multifarious
degradations, strike her dead in Justine. The Marquis himself became, in
later imagination, a kind of underground hero, a prototype of “‘mad, bad
Lord Byron,” the personification of the romantic doomed aristocrat.
The Gothic novel—so-called because of its “medieval” setting—started
at about the same time and kept pace with the development of the “‘realistic”’
novel; Clarissa is, in fact, very close to a classic Gothic. Horace Walpole
put his stamp on the genre in The Castle of Otranto (1764), investing the
Don Juan theme with gothic paraphernalia: gloomy castles, clanking chains,
stormy weather, brooding heroes, persecuted heroines, and the creaking
Inquisitorial machinery we associate with this genre and with a great deal
of Romantic poetry.
Despite the trappings, there was less about Hell in the Gothic novel
than one might think. What very quickly happened—it seems almost in-
evitable after de Sade—was that Gothic authors began to re-create Hell on
earth. They employed horror and terror—carefully differentiated, the first
being natural, the second supernatural—for titillation, not for moralizing.
Punishment was almost always the lot of the innocent; the guilty did the
punishing.
In Matthew Gregory Lewis’s The Monk (1789), the sadistic Gothic hit
its stride. Written before he was twenty-one, the book won him lasting
fame as “Monk” Lewis. De Sade thought it a masterpiece, and Byron
agreed; more conventional opinion held that it was “poison for youth and
a provocative for the debauchée.” Lewis connected Roman Catholicism,
via the depraved Abbot Ambrosio, with rape, orgies, and hair-raising vi-

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 TW Ist18 IN| IOIND 16 WU 18 Te INE APS (JE INE IT el 1 Ne

olence. Lucifer himself steps in at the end to tear the sinful monk to pieces,
but there is no actual Hell scene. Claustrophobia, imprisonment, torture,
and underground gloom provide a satisfyingly hellish atmosphere, and
those of Lewis’s human beings who are not victims behave entirely demon-
ically—the temptress Matilda zs a demon.
The trend toward Hell on earth is even more apparent in Charles Robert
Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), an episodic Faust story set in a
murky world of increasing decadence, despair, and corruption but with no
final Hell scene either. In all of Poe, there is no literal Hell scene. In Victor
Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris (1831), a dark underground kingdom of
grotesquely deformed beggars stands in as a kind of earthly Hell, but the
hunchback Quasimodo becomes a kind of reverse angel. Old supernatural
formulas were useless to an age that increasingly embraced the psycholog-
ically uncanny. Ina grand gesture that sums up the genre, Byron’s Manfred
categorically and contemptuously rejects them.

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Goethe’s Faust

\ \ THERE DOES ONE PLACE THE great German poet

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) historically? His life
was so long and so productive that his work spans entire creative periods,
from eighteenth-century classicism through Germany’s Sturm und Drang
era, which he virtually created and later rejected, through the French Rev-
olution and the Napoleonic Wars—he met and rather approved of Na-
poleon—right past Gothic Romanticism into Victorianism and on to the
phantasmagoric experimentalism of the modern age. Faust, the masterwork
that concerns us here, was written and revised over a period of sixty years.
Nineteenth-century Romantic opera found its inspiration in the first part
of the drama,* while an entire lineage of twentieth-century literature owes
an immeasurable debt to the second part, published, by his request, after
Goethe’s death.
Goethe was born in Frankfurt, the son of a lawyer, and studied law
himself, first at Leipzig till he fell ill, then at Strasbourg where he took a
degree in 1771. He was interested in art and architecture, in medicine and

*Berlioz, Boito, Gounod, Schumann, Liszt, and Mahler all tackled Faust, the latter two in symphonies.
Wagner, too, was influenced by it though he did not approach it directly. Goethe himself did not care
for the Romantic approach and regretted that Mozart could not have set it to music. He greatly admired
Don Giovanni and actually began a sequel to The Magic Flute, which is thought to have influenced the
“Helena” section of Part II of Faust.

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 ClORE
SUM GE SEE AMES Ti

science (he anticipated Darwin’s work on evolution), in philosophy where

he particularly admired Spinoza, in occult mysticism, Swedenborgian and
otherwise, and—very much—in women. From his early teens until his
death, Goethe was nearly always paying passionate court to one woman
after another, though he was married only once—for expedience—to a
servant who had some years earlier borne him a son.
Sturm und Drang (“Storm and Stress”) was a deliberate reaction against
the classical cadences of Corneille and Racine, the French playwrights who
dominated the eighteenth-century stage. Its first sensational success was
Goethe’s novel of unrequited love, The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774),
which is said to have triggered a continent-wide wave of suicides among
rejected lovers. It also put Germany, which had been considered a backward
nation culturally, on the literary map and caught the eye of Charles Au-
gustus, the young duke of Saxe-Weimar, who invited the author first to
visit him and then to become his minister of state. Goethe lived in the
duchy for the rest of his life, occupying himself with agriculture, mining,
the sciences, and, for more than twenty years, directing a theater for the
duke.
All this time he continued to write, mainly for the theater, though he
completed two more popular novels, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1796)
and Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809). But his masterpiece, which occupied
him on and off for most of his life, was Faust.
In his early twenties, before he went to Weimar, he began to work on
the basic plot of Part I in which Faust, encouraged by Mephistopheles,
seduces and abandons an innocent virgin, Gretchen. He had not read Mar-
lowe’s play, but he was familiar with the marketplace puppet plays of Dr.
Faustus and Don Juan, whose plots he appropriated and combined. In 1790,
he published Faust: A Fragment, to great admiration. In 1808, Part I was
published in the completed form that became the basis of subsequent operas
and plays. Twenty years later, he published “Helena,” the self-contained
fragment of Part II which includes his tribute to Byron. He finished and
sealed up Part II shortly before he died.
Strictly speaking, there is no underworld scene in Faust. One was
planned for Part II: Faust was to descend to Proserpine’s court to ask for
Helena’s hand. Obviously, this would not have worked with the Christian
ending he decided on, so instead he let the female demons of Hades loose
on earth in “Classical Walpurgis Night,’ sending the bewildered but

Z19
AASRNS, GROW Sat ik VE OPI ate
Ie It

captivated Gothic demon Mephistopheles to dance among them in a fine

satiric scene that parallels the witches’ conclave of Part I.
Goethe’s ending was something of a shock to intellectual circles.
Gretchen had been a Catholic in early versions of Part I, but it was clear
that she was only a simple girl and Faust himself was, if anything, an
occultist like Goethe. The Prologue’s wager between God and the Devil,
echoing Job, indicated that God (or Goethe) planned to save Faust. But
after the intellectual ironies and fantasies of Part II, written in a succession
of literary styles, including the classical and the Miltonic, the final scene
pulls some surprises. At the moment of reckoning, traditional demons
tumble from Hellmouth on one side of the stage to fetch him away—but
a battalion of putt: and amoretti, heavenly choruses, and the Virgin herself
descend from Heaven on the other in a scenario worthy of a Victorian
candy box. It seems to be a neo-Baroque parody of a miracle play.
Gretchen, the “eternal feminine,” intercedes for Faust though he hardly
>

deserves it. Mephisto loses the day only because he is distracted and aroused
sexually by bare cherubic bottoms. No wonder Goethe preferred to seal
up his manuscript rather than argue, as he surely would have had to do,
over an outcome bound to startle everybody but the most willfully un-
imaginative Catholic apologists—who probably took it as a sign that the
old man had undergone a deathbed conversion.

220
The Romantics

ad a RepeN
GA IES'S ACNUG*E) ROE WELE°D IN “le? >S) rediscov-

ery of classical myth, Milton extended the Christian myth, the deists
made a myth of science, and the Enlightenment tried to explode any kind
of mythmaking. Romantic writers, rebelling against the past, made new or
syncretic myths which sought to overturn and discredit the old ones. As
the century progressed, these new myths became more perverse, more
occult or fantastical (though arguably less original), more dependent on
induced visions or drugs, more self-consciously decadent. A point of
view began to emerge all over Europe that could legitimately be called a
“counterculture.”
This radical perspective can be seen at the very beginning of the century
in the writings and illustrations of William Blake (1757-1827), which in
some ways stand as an epitome of what was to come. Blake, the son of a
London hosier or stocking maker, was apprenticed to an engraver as a boy.
At twenty-one, he set up shop for himself and worked all his life at his
trade, assisted by his wife Catherine.* He had no higher education, though
he was a great reader. His theology was self-invented, but he can fairly be

*It was a happy marriage. A splendid anecdote tells of a neighbor who came calling only to find Mr.
and Mrs. Blake sitting in their garden summerhouse reciting passages from Paradise Lost, both of them
stark naked. “Come in!” cried Blake. “It’s only Adam and Eve, you know!”

221
WSs Veh
Oy IR Ne Oe Jah is) I, Ie

called a profoundly religious and visionary man. In a series of complex

epic poems, he replaced classical, Christian, Miltonic, Swedenborgian, and
even Dantean mythological systems with one of his own.
These systemic poems were scarcely known in Blake’s lifetime, and even
today his reputation depends on his beautiful short lyrics and on his
hundreds of stylized paintings and illustrations that seem to take on more
depth and meaning with time. Still, Blake is like a litmus paper for his
times, sensitive to everything that now seems to define them. He responded
to the American and French revolutions with apocalyptic poems, radiant
or despairing according to the course of history, to Paradise Lost—the
essential poem for half a century of poets—with his own Milton, and to
Swedenborg with The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. He echoes the occult
or mystical stirrings of the era. It is in his poetry that we first see the
negative side of the industrial revolution; in “London” and “Jerusalem”
the city slums are represented as a Hell for the neglected poor. Later poets
would take up these images to the point of cliché, but Blake has not lost
his power. Like an Old Testament prophet, he excoriated the hypocrisy
and cruelty of the age. In his epics, too, we first see the Satan figure
presented as a heroic rebel against an oppressive tyrant; no other theme is
so central to high Romantic poetry.
Blake’s allegorical system is difficult to decipher even with a guide be-
cause his symbols and identifications shift. It helps to know that “‘demonic”’
figures are presented positively because Blake identified them with the
genius or daemon of poetry, what Nietzsche would call the Dionysian force
of the chaotic sublime as opposed to the orderly Apollonian force of classical
beauty; this is what Blake meant by saying (of Milton) that “‘a true poet is
of the Devil’s party.”
No later poet attempted so complex a mythology as Blake’s, though
Prometheus Unbound, by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), also presents
a tyrannical Jupiter, a Gnostic “‘all-miscreative’ Demiurge who must be
overthrown to achieve a millennial new Heaven and new earth. Opposed
to him is Prometheus, the suffering Titan chained to his precipice. Shelley’s
preface to the poem holds up Prometheus directly, and favorably, to Mil-
ton’s Satan as “‘susceptible of being described as exempt from the taints of
ambition, envy, revenge and a desire for personal aggrandisement.” Pro-
metheus’s immovable position on the Caucasian peak complicates the de-
scent motif, which Shelley solves by sending Asia, a spiritual avatar of his

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 Was 38 1) AME AN IN, IP GS

hero, down to the Deep, the otherworld “underneath the grave,’ where
among “Terrible, strange, sublime and beauteous shapes” she will find the
gods and powers of nameless worlds, phantoms, heroes, beasts, and
“Demogorgon, a tremendous Gloom.”
The Deep is not Hell or even Hades, which Shelley associates with
Jupiter and his Furies (read: perverted Christianity, or the established au-
thority of a combined church and state). Demogorgon is a great, dark,
formless being whom Shelley identified with the force of the inchoate and
inarticulate masses. Overthrown, Jupiter falls to what seems like a Christian
Hell (though it could be Platonic), echoing both Greek tragedy and the
old mystery plays:

Let Hell unlock

Its mounded Oceans of tempestuous fire,
And whelm on them into the bottomless void

Ai! Ai!
The elements obey me not. I sink
Dizzily down—ever, for ever, down.
And, like a cloud, mine enemy above
Darkens my fall with victory! Ai, Ai!

Earth, the Moon, and the spirit rejoice in a great celebration of Love, joined
by a newly articulate Demogorgon celebrating freedom from “Heaven’s
Despotism.”’
John Keats (1795-1821) chose Hyperion, the sun god deposed by
Apollo, as his Titan. His first attempt at the myth, Hyperion, ran into
Shelley’s technical problem: in underworld Tartarus, the fallen Titans are
paralyzed—almost literally turned to stone—by grief and gloom, making
any kind of action difficult. Keats solved the problem of mobility in his
second attempt, The Fall of Hyperion, by sending himself, in a dream-
vision, into the underworld (he had been reading Dante). He finds himself
before what appear to be the steps of Purgatory, which he is ordered to
climb by the Titaness Moneta. Fearfully, he obeys, shrieking from pain at
the icy cold. Moneta tells him that he has now learned what it is to die.
He next sees Tartarus itself. His poet-self must suffer, die, and conquer
Hell in order to be reborn as Hyperion’s successor, Apollo, who is not
only the sun god but the god of poetry.

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T ASE, Sela Sele ORR NWemORr Irisesae

The incomplete poem remains a fascinating early look at the descent

motif as a metaphor for creative ambition and the artist’s struggle with the
titanic figures of his predecessors or father-figures. Sometimes, the whole
nineteenth century seems to be lying in wait for Freud.
In his own day, George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) was widely
agreed to be the central figure of Romantic poetry, as much for the Ro-
mantic hero-villain he himself represented as for what he wrote. Byron had
taken dissipation a long way: rumor of incest with his half-sister had black-
ened his reputation, his marriage had foundered amid reports of domestic
sadism, and various sexual scandals had forced him out of England. His
sardonic response to exile was to publish Manfred, a Faust-drama about
an unregenerate “Satanic,” or indeed “Byronic” nobleman recognizably
>

steeped in incestuous sin. Manfred refuses allegiance to either God or the

Devil (here called Arimanes) and at the end, with ultimate machismo, he
refuses to go to Hell, treating the traditional demons sent to drag him off
like presumptuous lackeys:

Back to thy Hell!

Thou hast no power upon me, that, I feel;
Thou never shall possess me, that I know:
What I have done is done; I bear within
A torture which could nothing gain from thine:
The mind which is immortal makes itself
Requital for its good or evil thoughts—
Is its own origin of ill and end—
And its own place and time... .

Thou didst not tempt me, and thou couldst not tempt me
I have not been thy dupe, nor am thy prey—
But was my own destroyer, and will be
My own hereafter—Back, ye baffled fiends!
The hand of death is on me—but not yours!

Byron flung his contempt straight in the faces of the “baffled fiends”
of the British bourgeois establishment and could not have been more suc-
cessful. He represented himself, not without irony, as the solitary Pro-
methean rebel against tyranny, the exiled artist, the doomed Don Juan that

224
 tee Re Oe VieAe Ne alaGes

women longed for, the disdainful Gothic anti-hero, exploiting his dark
reputation to the hilt. The public bought his act—and his books. Goethe
celebrated him as Euphorion, the Spirit of Poetry, interrupting Faust with
an elegy after Byron’s “poetic” death at Missolonghi; surely another kind
of tribute was also intended in Goethe’s giving Mephistopheles a single
deformed hoof—a reference to Byron’s famous clubbed foot.
Byron went back to the demonic theme in Cain, in which, predictably,
Lucifer himself is the Byronic hero. The Hell here is interesting because it
shows another side of the age and of the poet himself. Byron had been
reading the French geologist and paleontologist Baron Georges Cuvier
(1769-1832), an intermediate figure between the Comte de Buffon and
Darwin. The baron had come to the conclusion, still current, that a catas-
trophe, or a series of them, had killed off the creatures whose huge bones
were being collected increasingly by nineteenth-century fossil hunters. By-
ron used the biblical account of “giants in the earth in those days” to
propose the “poetical fiction” that these included bones of ‘rational beings
much more intelligent than man and proportionately powerful to the mam-
moth, etc., etc.” With the spirits of these lost beings, he populated a sort
of science-fictional Hades somewhere in space. Lucifer transports Cain
thither in much the same way that Superman carries Lois Lane over Me-
tropolis. Cain, fascinated but fearful, asks:

Oh ye interminable gloomy realms

Of swimming shadows and enormous shapes.
Some fully shown, some indistinct, and all
Mighty and melancholy—what are ye?
Live ye, or have ye lived?

“Somewhat of both,” replies Lucifer, piloting him past “beautiful and

mighty” shapes that once were:

Intelligent, good, great, and glorious things,

As much superior unto all thy sire,
Adam, could e’re have been in Eden, as
The sixty-thousandth generation shall be,
In its dull damp degeneracy, to
Thee and thy son;—and how weak they are, judge
By thy own flesh.

225
Washes, Nel ieS WO IIe Oe delle
IE Ie

Great beasts lie beyond the “phantasm of an ocean”:

And yon immense

Serpent, which rears his dripping mane and vasty
Head ten times higher than the haughtiest cedar
Forth from the abyss, looking as he could coil
Himself round the orbs we lately look’d on—
Is he not of the kind which bask’d beneath
The tree in Edens

The brontosaurus as the Eden serpent!

The theme of incest (yet again) and the celebration of rational dis-
obedience to mindless orthodoxy (Cain’s defiance of Yahweh) branded the
poem as blasphemous, which Byron obviously intended it to be. His mes-
sage was also obvious. Knowledge and love are worth having, Lucifer states
categorically, and any God (or government) that prevents them may fairly
be called evil.

BYRON AND Shelley may have experimented with drugs in Italy, but
other nineteenth-century poets went beyond experimentation into a region
that they very naturally equated with Hell. Though there was as yet no
medical concept of addiction, when Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
and Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) began taking their ‘“‘anodynes”’ of
laudanum, or tincture of opium, early in the century, they understood the
Faustian bargain: charmed magic casements, yes, but at a price.
Visions have always had their price, which some men and women have
always been willing to pay. In the Middle Ages that price included marathon
hypnotic prayers, fasting, flagellation, fever, induced sleeplessness, and,
some think, the ingestion of such naturally occurring hallucinogens as ergot,
a fungus that attacks wheat. For some people, like Blake or Bosch, visions
seem to have come naturally. But drugs, more readily available in the
industrial age, made visions easy to achieve. A brave new world of discovery
lay in the antipodes of the mind, brilliantly colored and poisonously se-
ductive, a dangerously “‘poetical” allegorical Hell.
Drug-related experiences so frequently take the form of journeys into
the otherworld that psychedelic experimenters of the late twentieth century

226
Gustave Doré’s illustration for the Ancient Mariner

routinely referred to them as “‘trips.”’ Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient

Mariner is a prototype. The Mariner’s vessel bursts into a strange sea where,
under an unnatural tropic sun, it is at once becalmed and surrounded by
uncannily bright waters filled with “a thousand, thousand slimy things”
and hostile spirits. A spectral ship manned by Death and “the Night-mare
Life-in-Death” appears, and one after another the sailors drop down dead
till the Mariner is left alone, parched for water. For seven days and nights
of private penance (for having killed an albatross) he yearns for death with
no avail till, by moonlight, he looks down at the “‘slimy things” he has

227
GC Jel Ish SAIN YO TO ar Isle
IG Ie

despised and sees their “rich attire” in the phosphorescent light. When love
for the watersnakes gushes from his heart—another example of a Romantic
reversal—the spell is broken and rain comes, followed by a wind that blows
the ship, now manned by angels inhabiting the dead men’s bodies, back to
the real world.
It has been argued that the Ancient Mariner, even with Coleridge’s own
(quite beautiful) margin glosses, does not make a great deal of sense. But
sense, in the outer reaches, is not the whole point and, in any event, is not
completely under control, which is not to say that the sensibility of drug-
induced visions is completely random. The Ancient Mariner and Coleridge’s
other brilliant supernatural fragments, Christabel and Kubla Khan (which
he admitted was drug-induced), have never lost their appeal.
Like the English, the French Romantics sparred with Milton’s Satan,
but Napoleon had lived among them, and their attempts at rebellion were
not so successful. Chateaubriand transported Hell to North America (Les
Natchez, 1826), while Victor Hugo wrote an unfinished trilogy on Satan,
whom he intended to redeem. Meanwhile, younger French poets took their
own road, washing down hashish and opium with absinthe, an addictive
drink based on wormwood, which causes hallucinations and, eventually,
brain damage. The syphilis contracted by Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)
brought him close to madness before he was forty. Baudelaire, a disciple
of Swedenborg and an admirer of Byron and Poe, called his first collection
Les Fleurs du Mal, “The Flowers of Evil” (1857). In it, nearly every poem
refers in some way to Satan, Hell’s inhabitants, corpses, vampires, or at
least vice of some ominous sort. The poet does not exactly identify with
them, but he feels their attraction, their glamor. He has freely, if somewhat
ironically, chosen to wander in Hell, with drugs as his guide and his down-
fall; at its worst it is a change from the drab world, and, at its best, it defies
the Jehovah that he, too, rejected. The interpenetration of good and evil
in this poetry, the celebration of “cold and sinister beauty” is complete.
The book was taken to court for obscenity, and six of its poems were
condemned but it was too much a product of its time not to remain in
vogue.
Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) was Baudelaire’s disciple, a poéte maudit
even to the point of similarly contracting syphilis. His poetic career lasted
only from his sixteenth to his nineteenth year, and he is said to have made

228
 A Ea RO sNIeAG
ING Tk G'S

a virtual religion of drugs. Une Saison en Enfer (“A Season in Hell”) is

less about drugs than about his affair with Paul Verlaine, a third poet
dedicated to narcotics, but Rimbaud also wrote perhaps the most famous
“trip” poem of all. “Le Bateau Ivre” (“The Drunken Boat”’) depicts a wild
ride down a hallucinatory New World river. The poet has lost control of
his vomit-stained body, his boat, to the drug or drink which carries him
higher and faster down the river which becomes every river, soaring
up and out into the Milky Way. Bosch-like landscapes—‘“fantastic Flori-
das”—flash by, mixing strangeness with memory, so that the experience
becomes one of exhilarating terror, the infinite sublime, a Hell that he both
loathes and loves.
Vision-journeys into the soul need not be drug-induced, of course, but
it often helps to sound as though they were. Herman Melville’s early sea
stories were straightforward, even jolly, in tone but for the long, allegorical
vision-voyage of Moby-Dick (1851) he found a hallucinatory style that
seems intrinsic to the material. One also might recall the turbulent, gleaming
twentieth-century vision-voyages of Hart Crane, and the elegant parodies
of the entire vision-voyage genre by that least druggy of poets Wallace
Stevens, for instance in ““The Comedian as the Letter C.”*
Drugs were frequently associated with late Victorian occultism, espe-
cially with diabolist groups like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn,
whose members included William Butler Yeats, Algernon Swinburne (in
whose poetry erotic sadomasochism of the Hell-on-earth kind was ex-
treme), and Oscar Wilde. (Yeats, a lifelong believer in the occult, took as
his “spiritual”? name Demon Est Deus Inversus, “The Devil Is God Re-
versed’’). Diablerie was chic in the “‘heavy purple smoke” of the fin de
siecle, though it was often infused with irony, as in Aubrey Beardsley’s
illustrations.
The oddest Victorian drug poem must certainly be Christina Rossetti’s
Goblin Market (1862). Though she was linked to London artistic circles
by her brother, the poet and artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, it seems unlikely
that she had much firsthand experience of drugs. But what is one to make
of Laura’s sojourn among the “cat-faced”’ and “‘rat-faced”’ demonic goblins

* The Beatles have stoutly denied that their 1967 song “‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” was drug
related; it is nevertheless a perfect miniature vision-voyage, perhaps the nursery version.

Dao.
Je 18013) E Ye
S WOR
JEJ OP Jal is,1G Je

who tempt her with strange fruit? Poor Laura 1s an instant addict, though
the goblins torment her by disappearing from her ken. Virtuous Lizzie,
who cannot bear her sister’s misery, visits the goblins herself, who show
her their true nature:

Their tones waxed loud,

Their looks were evil.
Lashing their tails
They trod and hustled her,
Elbowed and jostled her,
Clawed with their nails,
Barking, mewing, hissing, mocking,
Tore her gown and soiled her stocking,
Twitched her hair out by the roots,
Stamped upon her tender feet,
Held her hands and squeezed their fruits
Against their mouth to make her eat.

It is a scene warped from a medieval mystery play by way of Sir Orfeo.

But stranger still is to come. Brave Lizzie will not taste, but, drenched
with goblin juices, she runs home to Laura and cries:

“Did you miss me?

Come and kiss me.
Never mind my bruises,
Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices
Squeezed from goblin fruits for you,
Goblin pulp and goblin dew.
Eat me, drink me, love me;
Laura, make much of me.”

And Laura falls on her. “Shaking with aguish fear and pain,/ She kissed
her and kissed her with a hungry mouth.” The juice is bitter this time, but
Laura cannot stop. Luckily, Lizzie’s virtue turns the juice on her body
into an antidote, and Laura is delivered from the “poison in the blood”—
which, together with its cozy moral about sisterly love and a willful Vic-
torian blindness to nuance, is all that saved this eyebrow-raising poem for
family reading.

230
 ede ER RIO UMEAIN
ST GS

AS THE Victorians, fascinated with spiritualism or mesmerism or theo-

sophy and following the example of their queen, made a fetish out of
mourning and the cult of the dead, especially if the corpse was a young
person; they also loved ghost stories, horror stories, and fantasies, few of

Illustration by Laurence Houseman for Goblin Market

Zon
IM ISEIG. IBMICS WON we Ole Ist le,Je. Ie

which were notably Christian, though some had saccharine morals troweled
on at the end.* Like American horror stories, which were more or less
invented by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), they avoided Hell in favor of
bogeys and apparitions, revenants from the occult and mysterious spirit
world “beyond the grave.” Soon science fiction would send in replacements
from beyond the galaxy.
Out of all the rich available material, three Gothic novels provided the
essential popular fantasies for the twentieth century. They have been copied
and adapted over and over again with no end in sight. These are, of course,
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), where science brings to life and then
abandons a monster; Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), in which the scientist creates life not from spare
parts but from the Id made manifest; and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), the
ultimate Gothic demon-lover serial-killer story.
Hell has no place in any of these novels. Dracula and his minions are
demons, but they are not Christian demons, despite the hocus-pocus with
crucifixes. They are night creatures from the black forests of folklore, and
no one thinks for a moment that when the dust crumbles away the vampire
spirits or their victims are destined for Hell. Hyde is a demon, too, but
despite some conventional Victorian hand wringing on the narrator’s part,
he is an important modern metaphor, not a supernaturally damned soul;
his counterpart is Dorian Gray (1891), who hides the soul of Hyde behind
the face of Jekyll. (Oscar Wilde seemed to feel that the shame of having
his true hideousness discovered by the servants would be punishment
enough for Dorian—no doubt he was right.) Mary Shelley was a progres-
sive, well ahead of her time, while Stoker and Stevenson were very much
of theirs, but none of them found any need for a punitive Hell for their
benighted creatures.
Thus, by the end of the nineteenth century, Hell had virtually disap-
peared from the popular culture. Even if a literal Hell had still been part
of the middle-class mind-set, where would it be situated? Certainly not
underground, not after 1865, when Lewis Carroll published Alice’s Ad-
ventures in Wonderland. It would have to be somewhere out in space with
William Whiston, or with Byron.

“It is strange, and not very comfortable, to find Lutheran moralism tipped into the Nordic
fables of
Hans Christian Andersen; one can hardly blame the twentieth century for censoring him so heavily.
I
find his Hell fable, “The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf,” repellent, though unforgettable.

232
Universalism

4 LATE NONE TEEN YH CENTURY wes $° also%seck-

ing to dispense with Hell inside the Christian fold, though not without
a fierce struggle. Ever since Origen had first speculated about eventual
forgiveness for all, the concept of universal salvation had lurked in the
background of Christianity, sternly repudiated by both Protestant and
Catholic hierarchies but never entirely vanquished. At the time of the
Enlightenment, deviant theories were openly discussed for the first time in
1,500 years. The Romantic view of God as Love, familiar to us now but
something of a novelty one hundred and fifty years ago, demanded a new
look at damnation.
One of the first men to proclaim the doctrine of universal salvation, in
about 1750, was the Englishman James Relly (c. 1720-1778), at first a
Baptist follower of the notorious George Whitefield, whose fire-breathing
revivalism gave pause even to Jonathan Edwards. Relly was apparently still
more dismayed by it.-He abandoned Whitefield for John Wesley’s more
moderate Methodism, but soon moved further to the left, eventually re-
pudiating orthodox Calvinism—which would, at this point, include most
English denominations except, perhaps, the Quakers—to become an itin-
erant preacher whose message was, “If Christ died for all, then all will be
saved.”
One of Relly’s converts was the Calvinist John Murray (1741-1815),
who arrived in Good Luck, New Jersey, in 1770, and began immediately

233
(UNSEIS SEI Sik OR Ne OP Ish is ee IG

to preach universal salvation all over the northeast colonies. His Baptist
colleague, Elhanan Winchester (1751-1797), founded the Universal Baptist
Church in 1781. By 1790, conversion had proceeded to the point where a
Universalist Convocation was held in Philadelphia, and by the 1820s the
church was securely established in America.
Early Universalists held to the orthodox views of whichever Protestant
denomination they professed on all subjects except eternal torment. Like
the early English deists, they believed in Hell, but regarded a sojourn there
as temporary and corrective. Murray argued that God’s goodness forbade
anything more punitive, and also—following Origen, whether or not he
knew it—that men would retain free will in Hell and could there repent,
which they surely would, considering the horrors therein. But the influ-
ential leader Hosea Ballou (1771-1852), though no more educated than his
predecessors, had a thoughtful and intellectual bent; he had read the deists
and believed in reason, and he admired Thomas Jefferson and Ethan Allen.
He began to face squarely the theological difficulties of the universalist
position: If God’s nature guarantees salvation, and man’s nature is such
that he will eventually choose good, what is the meaning of Christ’s sac-
rifice? Why would one need to believe in his deity or his resurrection? Why
is a Trinity needed? What meaning can be given to the Fall of Man or
Original Sin? Most of all, if there is no everlasting Hell, what is there to
be “saved” from?
Ballou concluded, radically, that none of the orthodox theological bag-
gage was necessary: the Crucifixion guaranteed salvation from a doom that,
since its time, no longer existed. He went from disbelief in eternal torment
to disbelief in Hell altogether, which caused consternation leading to schism
in his own church. Universalists shifted back and forth along this ground,
moving toward transitory punishment in the late nineteenth century—it
was known as “restoration” —then away from it toward Ballou’s extreme
position in the twentieth, by which time many Universalists had stopped
believing in any afterlife.
Universalism prospered, however, establishing its own schools—the
American public school system owes much to Universalist Horace Mann
—and universities. It handled the Darwin crisis of the 1860s much better
than rival Christian denominations and generally established itself as pro-
science. And pro-business, too: P. T. Barnum, the impresario and circus

234
 CRIN VE ROSS Aw ale Se

master, was a prominent Universalist, which did not prevent him from
proclaiming that a sucker was born every minute. In the twentieth century,
deciding that true religion is “universal” in all senses of the word, the
Universalists reached out to the other great world religions. In 1960, the
Universalist Church of America was consolidated with the American
Unitarian Association.
But in the nineteenth century, when tempers ran hot among the ortho-
dox, the doctrine of universal salvation, especially when even a temporary
Hell was doubted, was attacked from all sides on precisely the grounds
Ballou had identified. To put God in the position of having to save all men,
even the worst sinners, seemed immoral and blasphemous, and, as Arminian
free-will proponents pointed out, just as deterministic as Calvinism. To
deny the reality of Hell, and thus the vital importance of the Crucifixion,
was to abandon Christianity altogether. This was mere “humanism,” anath-
ema to many people by no means as restricted in their views as America’s
late-twentieth-century fundamentalists.
Most American theological seminaries were either founded or already
operating in the nineteenth century, and a look through the dusty shelves
of their old library collections is an education in the fervor of the argument.
Some Victorian titles from Emory in Atlanta, founded by Methodists in
1836, include A History of Opinion on the Scriptural Doctrine of Retribution
(1878), Everlasting Punishment and Eternal Life (1879), Everlasting Pun-
ishment (1880), What is of Faith as to Everlasting Punishment (1880), What
is the Truth as to Everlasting Punishment? (1881), The Endless Future: The
Probable Connection between Human Probation and the Endless Universe
that Is to Be (“The author prefers to publish this book anonymously. Truth,
not notoriety, is his aim and inspiration.” 1885), Doom Eternal (1887),
Future Retribution: Viewed in the Light of Reason and Revelation (1887),
God’s Mercy in Punishment (1890), Future Retribution (1892), and so on,
on both sides of the debate. As many of these tracts were written by the
British as by Americans, and many of the authors were not clergymen but
simply outspoken Victorians with strong convictions.
The right wing was determined, however. Pope Leo XIII issued a bull
in 1879 affirming an eternal Hell and the existence of the Devil, and Catholic
intellectuals were expected to toe the line. Conventional Victorian parents
presented their children with Bunyan’s books or with The Sight of Hell, a

239
TAH Ed EL SP TOLR ie Oe Ee robe la

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Illustrations from Hell Opened to Christians to caution them from Entering into it,
Dublin, 1841

236
 WISIN GIN Ve Ee RS Ay ILS) M

This figure represents the persen convinced of sin,

and rs endeavourtng to flee the wrath te cone.

paceman,
From The Spiritual Mirror or Looking-Glass Exhibiting the Human Heart as Either the
Temple of God or the Habitation of Devils, 1830

best-seller by the Reverend Joseph Furniss, in which damned souls shrieked

in dungeons:

The little child is in the red-hot oven. Hear how it screams to come
out; see how it turns and twists itself about in the fire. It beats its head
against the roof of the oven. It stamps its little feet on the floor. . . .
God was very good to this little child. Very likely God saw it would
get worse and worse and never repent, and so it would have been
punished more severely in Hell. So God in his mercy called it out of
the world in early childhood.

237
Wiehe IC Sat OI Se OpIP Inf je JE. Ie

Convention won the battle but not the war. Most Christian denomi-
nations still affirm belief in an eternal Hell, but only Catholic traditionalists
and Protestant fundamentalists put much emphasis on it. Hell has become
something of an embarrassment, and a bishop who resorts to threats of
damnation is quickly roasted in the popular press. Privately, most people
who believe in an afterlife seem to take a loose Universalist position, either
the modern one or the older corrective one.
Publicly, no other Christian denomination has yet taken the step of the
Unitarian-Universalists who ringingly proclaim, in near-Emersonian prose:

The doctrine of an eternal hell we unqualifiedly reject, as the foulest

imputation upon the character of God possible to be conceived, and as
something which would render happiness in heaven itself impossible,
since no beings whose hearts were not stone, would be happy anywhere
knowing that half the human family, including many of their own loved
ones, were in torments. Instead of such a dark and God-dishonoring
doctrine, we believe that the future existence will be one ruled by Eternal
Justice and Love, that he whom in this world we call “‘our Father”’ will
be no less a Father to all his human children in the world to come, and
that the world will be so planned as not only to bring eternal good to
all who have done well here, but also to offer eternal hope to such as
have done ill here.

238
The Age of Freud

|Sina FUGURIES ARE FREQUENTLY CITED as the

prophets of the modern world. The intellectual shock of the mid-
nineteenth century was the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859,
in which Charles Darwin (1809-1882) put forward a theory of biological
determinism that profoundly altered the most advanced philosophical ideas.
The mechanical universe, already creaking as it expanded outward, fell to
pieces at once as the organic struggle was seen to extend down eons of
geological time. The harmonic design that had been thought to demonstrate
God’s power and goodness now appeared to be the result of a series of
individual sexual successes. It was a nasty thought, implying atheism and
immorality, and many took (or take) great offense at it, as well as at the
prospect of being ourselves descended from apes or near-apes instead of
created whole in God’s image. Others hailed the new gospel as a sure sign
of progress, a demonstration that nature and the nation can and do move
onward and upward.
Even earlier, in 1848, Karl Marx (1818-1883) had published the Com-
munist Manifesto, though the more influential Das Kapital, edited by Fried-
rich Engels, would not appear till the end of the century. Marx simply
swept religion aside as a distraction, “‘the opium of the people”’ historically
used to promote and protect exploitation and tyranny. Progress demanded
its elimination, together with that of private property, class differences,

27
AD deble Sahil WOR se Oy le Jol Jeeie

and unfair division of labor and wages. Before these ideas were tested in
the great national caldrons of the twentieth century, they presented a for-
midable intellectual and humanitarian argument.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) did not believe in progress, especially
by enforced egalitarianism. Human beings were far too conformist and
mediocre as it was, he thought, and Christianity was used, despicably, to
keep them in line with bizarre supernatural threats. The Ubermensch, or
“superman,” a word that has become permanently perverted by the Nazis,
was, for Nietzsche, the individual who has the will and the power to resist
conformity (especially to anything resembling fascism, including organized
religion) and to set his own high personal ethical standard. Goethe was
Nietzsche’s example of a proper “‘superman.” Like the poets of his time,
he celebrated sublime or “Dionysian” joyousness as something beyond the
order of ““Apollonian” beauty.
But for the modern view of Hell, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is central.
Metaphorical or “poetical” thinking advanced in the nineteenth century,
but Freud’s ventures into mental topography threw new light into dark
areas and permanently and importantly changed the modern vocabulary.
Questions of predestination versus free will are peripheral to an age preoc-
cupied with the struggle of the primitive Id with the Ego and Superego.

Demons themselves can’t break into the safe. Nineteenth-century ad.

 ints SAGs. ©Oris Je 1 2 We

We speak of anxiety, inhibition, repression, and Oedipal guilt now, not

Original Sin, though Freud (unlike many of his followers) was as deter-
mined as Augustine to link all of these to the sexual act.
Freud was opposed to religion, which he considered to be institution-
alized neurosis. His younger colleague Carl Jung (1875-1961), who had a
somewhat mystical turn of mind, differed with him here, as elsewhere, and
added the notion of a collective unconscious, drawing upon archetypal
figures with significance to the race as well as the individual. The Shadow
was what he called the despair resulting from repression of the unconscious.
Jung’s influence on artists and writers may be even greater than Freud’s;
they certainly understand the Shadow.
Far from disappearing in the twentieth century, Hell became one of its
most important and pervasive metaphors. Even John Bunyan had known
what he was doing on some level when he changed the Slough of Hell in
the old sermon to the Slough of Despond for The Pilgrim’s Progress. But
it was an entirely different level from that used by an intellectual writer
like Thomas Mann, deeply influenced by Freud and Nietzsche, who set
Doktor Faustus (1948) in Hitler’s Germany, where his obsessed and de-
spairing musician-hero goes mad. Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881), in a
series of powerful novels exploring good and evil, sanity and madness, had
already brought demonic imagery to realistic writing; no one has ever made
a stronger case for what Nietzsche called the death of God than Ivan in
The Brothers Karamazov.
Modern writers have used the Hell metaphor with great imagination in
a number of ways. Ironic phantasmagoria is pervasive. Goethe’s Faust: Part
II led to the ‘“Night-town,” or underworld brothel section of James Joyce’s
Ulysses (1922), and hence to Mann’s Doktor Faustus, William Gaddis’s The
Recognitions (1955), and Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses (1988),
though the last is more about devils than Hell.
A straightforward journey into dangerous territory, frequently a jungle
or a war zone, can also parallel an inner journey; Joseph Conrad’s novel
Heart of Darkness (1902) is a well-known example. But when Francis Ford
Coppola updated it to the period and setting of the Vietnam War for his
1979 film, Apocalypse Now, he chose a phantasmagoric technique, which
seems more natural to the post-World War II era. Joseph Heller used the
same technique in Catch-22, as did Gunter Grass in The Tin Drum, Jerzy
Kosinski in The Painted Bird, and J. M. Coetzee in The Life and Times

241
eRe SESH
IO RNG BOGE risk sae

of Michael K. Similarly, Picasso’s anguished Guernica (1937) is a war paint-

ing but recognizably a Hell painting too, squarely in the tradition.
There is a kind of intellectual’s Hell, too. In Don Juan in Hell, George
Bernard Shaw had the Comandatore, the traditional figure of virtue in Don
Juan plays, descend to Hell because he found Heaven too symmetrical and
stiff. In Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit, on the other hand, people bore each
other for all eternity.
Another modern view of Hell is that of the wasteland, which first
appeared in the “starved ignoble nature” of Robert Browning’s “Childe
Roland to the dark tower came.’ Browning claimed not to know where
the blighted nightmare imagery of the poem came from or what it meant,
but T. S. Eliot was more sanguine when he appropriated it for The Waste
Land (1922). Eliot is one of the great chthonic poets, borrowing from and
adding to the entire tradition. His is a Hell of exhaustion and anomie, an
arid void where emptiness of heart and meaning add up to “rat’s alley,/
Where dead men lose their bones.”’ He returned to this landscape in other
poems, notably “The Hollow Men” (1925), which takes its epigraph from
Heart of Darkness, and in “Little Gidding” (1942), the last of the Four
Quartets, where his guide to the underworld is a “familiar compound
ghost,” mainly of Dante and the recently deceased Yeats.
This existential waste or a neighboring half-acre is also, I suggest, where
the protagonists of nearly all the novels and plays of Samuel Beckett crawl
or loiter or, like the denizens of one of Dante’s bolge, are buried up to
their necks. It is not so far from Kafka’s territory either. Even in J. R. R.
Tolkien’s fantasy trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, the evidence of the Dark
Lord’s power is a blighted terrain populated with grotesque figures, almost
like a post-nuclear holocaust desert.
Hell is effectively allied to madness, either depression or schizophrenia,
in other books, not all of them fiction. Hannah Greenberg used luminous
Miltonic imagery in J Never Promised You a Rose Garden, the famous
novel of schizophrenia. Mark Vonnegut described his own bout with drugs
and schizophrenia in The Eden Express. In about the middle of the century,
an English psychoanalyst, R. D. Laing, suggested that a descent or lapse
into willful madness, with or without the aid of drugs, could be profitable
to the soul; the procedure turns up in several novels by Doris Lessing,
notably Briefing for a Descent into Hell.
Treatment of Hell in the movies or on television is mostly gothic and

242
Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) worked on his Gate of Hell
for many years. He did not follow
any one tradition, but this is a relief of Ugolino, from Dante.

trivial, a chance for set designers and special-effects people to strut their
stuff. Metaphor can play well on film—as in two wonderful Orpheus
movies, Jean Cocteau’s Orphee (1949) and Marcel Camus’s Black Orpheus
(1959)—but commercial studios usually avoid it. One commercial movie
that handled an old theme strikingly was Aliens (1986), a science-fiction
adventure in which actress Sigourney Weaver, a space-age Inanna, descends
to a fearful Hell to rescue a child from a monstrous Ereshkigal. A comic
Hell with amusing imps often turns up in cartoons, both still and animated.
A dark comic novel, The Living End (1979) by Stanley Elkin is set entirely
in a Hell of the most traditional medieval dreadfulness—a neat trick.
Hell will probably continue to fade from religious teaching, especially
as research into the “near-death experience” continues. But as a flexible
metaphor it is far too valuable to lose, though it will surely continue to
change, as it has so frequently and remarkably since Mesopotamian days.

243
Acknowledgments

HOUGH THIS IS NOT A scholarly work, some distin-

ae scholars have been kind enough to read parts of it. Many
thanks to Harold Bloom of Yale and New York University; Norman Can-
tor and James P. Carse, both of New York University; Emily Vermeule
of Harvard. Any errors in the text are my own responsibility, certainly
not theirs. The relatively new Liberal Studies department of New York
University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences provided an ideal cross-
disciplinary springboard for the first chapters, and I am particularly grateful
to Cynthia Ward for extending library privileges. Thanks to Carol Hill for
being my school buddy, to Margaret Atwood for Gothic inspiration, to
Ted Klein for some good suggestions, to Tom Disch for John Martin, to
Jeffrey Schaire for publishing a handsome preview in Art & Antiques,
to Ken Feisel, who did the maps, and to Anne Freedgood, for both her
enthusiasm and her hard-line editing. Two special thank-yous: To Eric
Ashworth, my agent and friend. And to Anne Stainton Dane, my dear
Roo, for endless moral support, useful books, and infinite wisdom.
In a bibliography all books are equal, but in reality some are more equal
than others. Though no one knows better than he how different infernology
is from diabology, the pioneer scholarly work of Jeffrey Burton Russell in
five very readable books on the Devil was a constant touchstone. Other
dog-eared books are Robert Hughes’s Heaven and Hell in Western Art,

244
 DOC INGO OIW SS EG aVieE UNS

D. P. Walker’s The Decline of Hell, Jacques Le Goff’s The Birth of Pur-

gatory, Paul Johnson’s A History of Christianity, and Howard Rollin
Patch’s The Other World. A. R. L. Bell’s unpublished thesis on the Har-
rowing of Hell was useful, and I am grateful to Alan Bernstein for sending
reprints of several articles; Mr. Bernstein’s forthcoming scholarly work on
Hell in the Middle Ages is greatly anticipated in infernal circles.
Helpful corrections and additions to this paperback edition were made
by Henry M. Claman, M.D., the Rev. Dr. Kendall S. Harmon, Luther J.
Link, Patrick M. O’ Neil, and John Updike.
I have been asked a number of times what put the idea for this book
in my head. The truth is that it was my belated discovery of Gilgamesh,
Enkidu, Inanna, and Ereshkigal. I was so surprised and delighted by Mes-
opotamian myth that I thought I might explore the rest of the Great Below.
It has been a journey that has taken me in directions I never anticipated.
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252
 Br BeLeOsGrRFASPAE

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259
BeBe ll (OCG Re Ag att 4

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254
 13} e153 JE, MN COG A IN IP st ye

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19672

255
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2 Thirteenth-century Apocalypse, Ms. 422, Bibliothéque Municipal, Cambrai, Giraudon/Art

Resource, New York

8 Mesopotamian statuette, Louvre, Paris, Giraudon/Art Resource, New York

8 Female figurine, Vorderasiatische Sammlungen, Berlin, Marburg/Art Resource, New York

10 Statuette from Nippur, Iraq Museum, Baghdad, Scala/Art Resource, New York

14-15 Funerary Papyrus of Princess Entiu-ny, from the tomb of Queen Meryet-Amun in
Thebes. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum Excavations, 1928-29 and
Rogers Fund 1930.

17 Assyrian bronze Pazuzu, Louvre, Paris, Giraudon/Art Resource, New York

23 Athenian krater attributed to the “Persephone painter.’’ Courtesy of the Metropolitan

Museum of Art, Fletcher Fund 1928.

25 Black-figure hydria, sixth century B.c., Inv. E 701, Louvre, Paris, Photograph © by
Erich Lessing/Art Resource, New York
28 Charon, sarcophagus, third century, Museo Vaticano, Photograph © by Erich Lessing/Art
Resource, New York

56 Englischer Psalter M.835, Miinchen, Marburg/Art Resource, New York

57 Psalter of St. Louis and Blanche of Castille, French, 1223-1230, Ms. Lat.1186.f.171, Bib-
liothéque Nationale, Paris

257
sl
Oy IE Oy) (Ik
Je ID) Ie S

59 N. Bataille, “The Beast of the Earth and the Beast from the Sea,” Chateau Angers,
Giraudon/Art Resource, New York

62 Trier Apocalypse, Carolingian copy of early Christian manuscript, Ms.31.f.37R, Trier

Stadtbibliothek, Germany

64 Pantaleone, mosaic floor, twelfth century, Otranto, Photograph © by Erich Lessing/Art

Resource, New York

67 Staatsbibl Psalter, Miinchen, 1.V.13, f.27, Marburg/Art Resource, New York

69 Andrea da Firenze, detail from Harrowing of Hell, Sta. Maria Novella, Florence, Alinari/
Art Resource, New York

72 Twelfth-century Byzantine mosaic, Duomo, Torcello, Venice, Alinari/Art Resource, New

York -

75 French manuscript c. 1510, M.646.f.69, The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York,
© 1993

78 “The Last Judgment,” Byzantine ivory, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

81 French manuscript c. 1400-1405, “St. Augustine and the City of God,” Bibliothéque
Municipale, Boulogne, Giraudon/Art Resource, New York

84 Capital from St. Julien, Tours, Garanger-Giraudon/Art Resource, New York

86 Capital from St. Lazare, Autun, Lauros-Giraudon/Art Resource, New York

87 Tympanum from west facade of St. Foy, Conques, Marburg/Art Resource, New York

88 Tympanum from west facade of St. Foy, Conques, Marburg/Art Resource, New York

95 Anon. sec. XV, Loreto Aprutino, PE Sta. Maria in Piano, Scala/Art Resource, New York

96 West wall painted fresco, Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, Chaldon, Surrey. Royal
Commission of the Historical Monuments of England, London.

101 The Hours of Catherine of Cleves, M.917 £.105v., The Pierpont Morgan Library, New
York, © 1993

107 Viking stone, Statens Historiska Museet, Stockholm, Werner Forman Archive/Art Re-
source, New York

110 Last Judgment, Hans Memling, Marburg/Art Resource, New York

117 Elne Cathedral, near Perpignan, France, Marburg/Art Resource, New York

124 Jean Colombe, Death with an Arrow, Bourges, France, M.677 f.245, The Pierpont
Morgan Library, New York © 1993

124 Three Living and the Three Dead, M.14, f.130v-131, The Pierpont Morgan Library,
New York, © 1993

130 Purgatory, M.677 f.329, The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, © 1993

258
 IP Tol OPI OY EIR
TE IO) IE In SS

131 Hieronymus Bosch, Vision of Purgatory, Palazzo Ducale, Venice, Scala/Art Resource,
New York

139 William Blake, illustration to Divine Comedy, Tate/Art Resource, New York

142 Giotto, detail of Last Judgment, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua, Alinari/Art Resource, New
York

154 The Harrowing ofHell, c. 1550, Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Albertina, Vienna, Marburg/
Art Resource, New York

155 The Last Judgment, 1558, Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Albertina, Vienna, Marburg/Art
Resource, New York

156 Michelangelo, detail of The Last Judgment, Vatican, Sistine Chapel, Scala/Art Resource,
New York

164 Theophilis, Psalter of Ingeborg of Denmark, Musée Condé, Chantilly, Ms. G/1695
£.35v., Giraudon/Art Resource, New York

175 Giulio Romano, Nymph and Satryr, Palazzo del Te, Mantua, Photograph © by Erich
Lessing/Art Resource, New York

185 After Cox, Ken Feisel

195 After Swinden, Ken Feisel

200 Joseph Thaddaeus Stammel, carved wood, Abbey Library, Admont, Austria, Photo-
graph © by Erich Lessing/Art Resource, New York
243 Auguste Rodin, Ugolino from Gate of Hell, Kunstgewerbemuseum, Zurich, Photograph
© by Erich Lessing/Art Resource, New York

CuOe Oe CeRe ED: totes

PLATE 1: The Jaws of Hell Fastened by an Angel, Psalter of Henry of Blois, Bishop of
Winchester, Bridgeman/Art Resource, New York

PLATE 2: French Beatus Apocalypse, M.644 f.152v.,f.153, Pierpont Morgan Library, New
York, © 1993

PLATE 3: Limbourgs, Fall of the Rebel Angels, Les Trés Riches Heures du Duc de Berry,
Chantilly, Musée Condé, Ms.65 f.64v., Giraudon/Art Resource, New York

PLATE 4: Limbourgs, Hell, Les Trés Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, Chantilly, Musée
Condé, Ms.65 f.108, Giraudon/Art Resource, New York

PLATES 5 & 6: Collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, California, Simon
36.3 x 26.2
Marmion (attrib.), Les Viszones du Chevalier Tundal, 1474, tempera on vellum,
cm. 87.MN.141 (Ms 30) f.13 v. (top), f.17 (bottom)
Simon
PLATES 7 & 8: Collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, California,
on vellum, 36.3 X 26.2
Marmion (attrib.), Les Visiones du Chevalier Tundal, 1474, tempera
cm., 87.MN.141 (Ms 30) f.20 (top), f.24 v. (bottom)

259
1D lel OY AbMOY Gk
We ID} US

PLATES 9 & 10: Collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, California, Simon
Marmion (attrib.), Les Visiones du Chevalier Tundal, 1474, tempera on vellum, 36.3 x 26.2
cm., 87.MN.141 (Ms 30) f.24 v. (top), £.30 v. (bottom)

PLATE 11: Detail of Torcello mosaic, Venice, Scala/Art Resource, New York

PLATE 12: Detail of Florence baptistry, Scala/Art Resource, New York

PLATE 13: Giotto, detail of Last Judgment, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua, Scala/Art Resource,
New York

PLATE 14: Francesco Traini, detail of Inferno, Camposanto, Pisa Scala/Art Resource, New
York

PLATE 15: Anonymous Last Judgment, Pinacoteca, Bologna, Scala/Art Resource, New
York

PLATES 16 & 17: Orcagna, two details of Inferno, Santa Maria Novella, Florence, Scala/
Art Resource, New York

PLATE 18: Luca Signorelli, detail of The Damned in Hell, Duomo, Orvieto, Scala/Art
Resource, New York

PLATE 19: Michelangelo, detail of Last Judgment, Sistine Chapel, Vatican, Scala/Art Re-
source, New York

PLATE 20: Baciccio, Triumph in the Name of Jesus, Gest. Church, Rome, Scala/Art
Resource, New York

PLATE 21: Jan van Eyck, Last Judgment, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fletcher
Fund, 1933 (33.92b)
PLATE 22: Dieric Bouts, Descent into Hell, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille, France, Pho-
tograph © by Erich Lessing/Art Resource, New York

PLATE 23: Hans Memling, right panel, Last Judgment, Pomorskie Museum, Gdansk,
Denmark, Scala/Art Resource, New York

PLATE 24: Hieronymus Bosch, Inferno, Ducal Palace, Venice, Scala/Art Resource, New
York

PLATE 25: Hieronymus Bosch, right panel, Last Judgement, Inv. 4 D, Akademie der
Bildenden Kuenste, Vienna, Photograph © by Erich Lessing/Art Resource, New York

PLATE 26: Hieronymus Bosch, right panel, The Hay-wain, Prado, Madrid, Scala/Art
Resource, New York

PLATE 27: Hieronymus Bosch, right panel, The Garden of Earthly Delights, Prado, Ma-
drid, Scala/Art Resource, New York

PLATE 28: Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Fall of the Rebel Angels, Soe Museum of Fine
Arts, Brussels, Scala/Art Resource, New York

260
 Psi
©) Oy) KC INE
IB) des

PLATE 29: Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Dulle Griet, Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp,
Belgium, Photograph © by Erich Lessing/Art Resource, New York

PLATE 30: Herri metde Bles, L’Inferno, Palazzo Ducale, Venice, Scala/Art Resource, New
York

PLATE 31: Jan Brueghel, Orpheus in Hell, Palatina, Florence, Art Resource, New York

PLATE 32: Peter Paul Rubens, The Damned, Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Giraudon/Art
Resource, New York

PLATE 33: Book of Hours of Catherine of Cleves, M.945, £.169, Pierpont Morgan Library,
© 1993

PLATES 34 & 35: “Drunkards and Lustful in Hell” and ‘‘Thieves in Hell,” Le Trésor de
Sapience, Chantilly, Musée Condé, Ms.146, Giraudon/Art Resource, New York

PLATE 36: Hours of the Virgin written at Rouen for Claude I Mole, M.356 f.64, Pierpont
Morgan Library, © 1993

PLATE 37: William Blake, The Simoniac Pope, c. 1825, Tate/Art Resource, New York

PLATE 38: William Blake, Satan Rousing the Rebel Angels, Victoria and Albert Museum/
Art Resource, New York

PLATE 39: William Blake, The Last Judgment, The National Trust, Petworth House,
Bridgeman Art Library/Art Resource, New York

PLATE 40: William Hogarth, Satan, Sin and Death, Tate Gallery/Art Resource, New York

PLATE 41: John Martin, The Fallen Angels Entering Pandemonium, Tate Gallery/Art
Resource, New York

PLATE 42: Auguste Rodin, The Gates of Hell, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, Giraudon/Art Re-
source, New York

261
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INDEX

Pages in italics refer to illustrations.

Abraham, bosom of, 55—57, 126, 128, 160 American fundamentalism (19th century),
Acheron (river), 21, 27, 135-36 235
Adam and Eve, Fall of, 60-61, 64, 234 American Unitarian Association, 235
Adam de la Halle: Le Jeu de la Feuillée, 150 Anabaptists, 161, 194
Adamus Exul (Grotius), 178 Ananka, 1
Addison, Joseph, 205 Anatomy of Melancholy, The (Burton), 198
Aelfric (abbot of Eynsham), 105 Andersen, Hans Christian: “The Girl Who
Aeneas, 146 Trod ona Loaf,” 232n
Aeneid (Virgil), 36-38, 137, 145-148 Annihilation theory, 52, 191, 194
Aeschylus, 26 Annwn, 106
Agenbite of Inwit, The, 112 Antichrist, 105, 149, 163; in mystery plays,
Akkadian beliefs: life after death, 5-6 121; Napoleon viewed as, 213; Paul on, 70
Albigensian Crusade, 128, 194n Antichrist (mystery play), 121
Albigensian heresy, 19, 127 Anti-intellectualism (19th century), 214
Alcestis (Euripides), 26 Anubis, 13, 14-15, 29
Alembert, Jean d’, 199 Apocalypse Now (Coppola), 241
Alewife: in mystery plays, 120-21 Apocalypse of Mary, 128
Alexander the Great, 34, 151 Apocalypse of Paul, 83, 86
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll), Apocalypse ofPeter, 83-86
232 Apocalypse of the Virgin, 83
Aliens, 243 Apocalyptic literature, 83-88, 91;
“Allegro, L” (Milton), 177 concentrates on sexual behavior, 84-85
Allen, Ethan, 200, 234 Apocastastasis, 77, 79
Alleyn, Edward, 165, 168 Apostles’ Creed, 68-69
Ambrose (saint), 79 Apuleius: Golden Ass, 36, 39
America: Great Awakening in, 208-9; Ariosto, Lodovico: Orlando Furioso, 145
Protestant radicals emigrate to, 207 Aristophanes: The Frogs, 26-27, 121

263
INDEX

Aristotle, 47, 137, 159 Benedictine order, 172; missionary work, 92,
Arminianism, 161, 191, 235 105
Arminius, Jacobus: influences Protestant Beowulf, 104
doctrine, 161 Bernini, Giovanni, 176
Ars Moriendi, 124-25 Berthold of Regensburg, 113, 128
Ascetic movement, 47—48 Biagio de Cesena, 157
Assumption of the Virgin Mary: adopted as Bible: translated from Latin, 158
doctrine (1950), 129 Birth ofPurgatory, The (LeGoff), 127
Assyrian beliefs: life after death, 5-6 Black Orpheus (Camus), 243
Astarte, 6 Blake, William, 3, 94; background, 221-22;
Asthoreth, 6 “Jerusalem,” 222; “London,” 222; The
Astronomical Principles ofReligion, Natural Marriage ofHeaven and Hell, 222; Milton,
and Reveal’d (Whiston), 195-96 222
Athanasian Creed, 69 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 134
Aucassin et Nicolette, 111-12 Bodel, Jean: St. Nicholas play, 122-23
Augustine (saint), 3-4, 35, 37, 51, 65, 70, 77, Bogomil heresy, 19, 127
81, 89, 91, 126, 197; The City of God, 74, Book of Common Prayer, 161, 169
80; Luther studies, 159-60; view of Hell Book of Martyrs (Foxe), 127
and the Last Judgment, 74, 79-80, 160, Books of Hours, 147
191 Books of the Dead, 12
Avesta, 16 Bosch, Hieronymus, 3, 152-55; background,
152-53; Garden of Earthly Delights, 99n,
153; Hay-wain, 153; Hell, 153; Last
Babylonian beliefs: life after death, 5, 41 Judgment, 153; Paradise, 153
Baciccio, Il, 176 Boswell, James, 194; on Johnson, 202-3
Bacon, Francis, 165 Botticelli, Sandro, 142
Balder, 107-8 Bouts, Dieric, 152
Ballou, Hosea, 234-35 Brahe, Tycho, 165
Baptists: in Rhode Island, 207 Briefing for a Descent into Hell (Lessing), 242
Baratre Infernel (Reginald le Queux), 152 Brigit of Sweden (saint), 103
Barca, Calderén de la, 178 Brothers Karamazov, The (Dostoevsky), 241
Barmaid: in Hell, 9, 26, 120-21 Brown, Peter, 79
Barnum, P. T., 234-35 Browne, Thomas: Religio Medici, 197
Bartas, Guillaume du: The Divine Weeks and Browning, Robert: “Childe Roland to the
Works, 178 dark tower came,” 242
Bartholomew, Gospel of, 65, 66—67, 87 Brueghel, Jan, 154; Orpheus, 155
Bartholomew (saint), 157 Brueghel, Pieter (the Elder), 150-52; Dulle
“Bateau Ivre, Le” (Rimbaud), 229 Gniet, 154-55; Fall of the Rebel Angels, 154;
Baudelaire, Charles: Les Fleurs du Mal, 228 The Harrowing of Hell, 154; The Last
Bauduin de Sebourc, 103 Judgment, 155; The Triumph ofDeath, 154
Bayle, Pierre, 199; Dictionnaire H. istorique et Brueghel, Pieter (the Younger), 154
Critique, 201 Bruno, Giordano, 165; death of, 174, 190
Beatles, The: “Lucy in the Sky with Buddhism, 50-51, 79; beliefs about Hell, 3,
Diamonds,” 229n 126
Beckett, Samuel, 242 Buffon, Comte de, 225; Natural History,
Bede: Ecclesiastical History of England, 199-200
94-97, 102 Bunyan, John, 235; A Few Sighs from Hell,
Behemoth, 64 198; Pilgrim’s Progress, 113, 198, 241

264
 ENIDIEX:

Burke, Edmund, 214 Christ and Satan, 104

Burkhardt, Jacob: The Civilization of the Christian beliefs: life after death, 1-2
Renaissance in Italy, 173 Christian Doctrine (Milton), 186
Burlador de Sevilla, El (Tirso de Molina), 205 Christianity: dualist heresies, 19, 31, 49-51,
Burton, Robert: The Anatomy of Melancholy, 128; Hellenistic mystery cults influence,
198 35-36; Mithraic influence, 19; Neoplatonist
Butler, E. M.: The Fortunes ofFaust, 176n influence, 31-32, 47; Nero suppresses, 85;
Byron, Lord, 216-17, 219, 226, 228, 232; Orphic influence, 24; Roman influence,
Cain, 225-27; Manfred, 224 35-36; Zoroastrian influence, 17-19, 33, 36
Byzantine ascendancy, 91 Christ’s Victorie and Triumph in Heaven and
Earth (Fletcher), 105
Church of England: Henry VIII establishes,
Caesarius of Heisterbach, 129 161-62; in Virginia, 207
Cain (Byron), 225-27 Cibber, Colley, 206
Calvin, John: rejects Purgatory, 160; rise of, Cicero: Scipio’s Dream, 36
160-61 Cione, Nardo di, 143
Calvinism, 161, 191, 193, 201, 233, 235 City of God, The (Augustine), 74, 80
Campbell, Joseph, 144 Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, The
Campbell, (Mrs.) Patrick, 35 (Burkhardt), 173
Camus, Marcel: Black Orpheus, 243 Clarissa (Richardson), 214, 216
Candide (Voltaire), 193, 202 “Classical Walpurgis Night” (Goethe), 219-20
Carroll, Lewis: Alice’s Adventures in Clement of Alexandria, 37, 77
Wonderland, 232 Clement VII (pope), 156
Castle of Otranto, The (Walpole), 216 Cocteau, Jean: Orphee, 243
Castle of Perseverance, The, 123 Cocytus (river), 21, 27, 135-36
Castle of Sin motif, 113 Coetzee, J. M.: The Life and Times of Michael
Catch-22 (Heller), 241 K.,241-42
Catechism of 1564, 190 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 226; Christabel,
Cathar heresy, 127 228; Kubla Khan, 228; The Rime of the
Celtic spirit world, 108-9 Ancient Mariner, 227-28
Cerberus, 24-25, 27, 29, 37, 137, 147, 149 “Comedian as the Letter C, The” (Stevens),
Cervantes, Miguel de, 178 229
Charlemagne, 90, 92, 100, 145 Communist Manifesto (Marx), 239
Charles Augustus (duke of Saxe-Weimar), Congregationalists: in Massachusetts, 207
219 Conrad, Joseph: Heart ofDarkness, 241-42
Charles II (king of England), 177, 191 Constantine the Great, 35, 51
Charles Martel, 100, 145-46 Constantinople, Synod of (543), 82
Charles the Bald (king of France), 100 Copernican revolution, 190, 193, 195
Charles the Fat (king of Swabia): visions of, Copernicus, Nicolaus, 165
100, 102, 152 Coppola, Francis Ford: Apocalypse Now, 241
Charon, 11, 22, 25-28, 37, 136-37, 157 Corneille, Pierre, 219
Charun, 11, 29 Council of Trent (1545-63),
127, 130, 190
Chateaubriand: Les Natchez, 228 Counter-Reformation:
Jesuit order leads,
“Childe Roland to the dark tower came” 172-73
(Browning), 242 Crane, Hart, 229
Chinvat Bridge, 5, 18 Cromwell, Oliver, 177
Christ, Temptation of: in mystery plays, 120 Cuvier, Georges, 225
Christabel (Coleridge), 228 Cybele cult, 35

265
INDEX

Dance of Death, 170; in morality plays, Don Juan in Hell (Shaw), 242
124-25; as secular celebration, 150 Don Juan story, 176, 205, 214, 216, 219
Daniele da Volterra, 157 Donne, John: Ignatius, His Conclave, 196;
Dante Alighieri, 3, 100, 107, 109-10, 153, 223; sermons, 197
adopts Ptolemaic universe, 135; The Divine Doré, Gustave, 227
Comedy, 133-34, 143-44; The Inferno, Dostoevsky, Fyodor: The Brothers
83-84, 87, 128, 132, 133-44, 138-40, 142-43, Karamazov, 241
145-46, 163, 180, 242; and Italian language, Dracula (Stoker), 232
134; motivations and background, 133-34; Draumkvaede, 108
Paradiso, 135; Purgatorio, 135; Virgil’s Drythelm: vision of, 95-97, 102
influence, 37 Dualistic theology, 17-19, 31, 49-51, 128
Darwin, Charles, 225, 234; The Origin of Duchess of Malfi, The (Webster), 171
Species, 239 Dulle Griet (Brueghel), 154-55
Daumier, Honoré, 204 Dunciad, The (Pope), 206
Day of Wrath. See Last Judgment Dying-vegetation-god myths, 7
Death: in morality plays, 123-25
Death, fear of: replaces Hell, 125, 152
Declaration of Independence, 201, 209 Ecclesiastical History of England (Bede),
Declaration of the Rights of Man, 213 94-97, 102
Dee, John, 165, 174 Eden Express, The (Vonnegut), 242
Deism, 191, 197, 234 Edwards, Jonathan, 233; background, 208;
Delphi: mural of Hades at, 29 “The Future Punishment of the Wicked:
Demeter, 7, 23, 23-24 Unavoidable and Intolerable,” 208;
Demuurge, 46-47, 49, 166, 222 “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,”
De Quincey, Thomas, 226 208
Descartes, René, 174, 190-93 Edward VI (king of England), 162
Devil: Christian theological concept, 4 Egyptian beliefs: life after death, 13-15, 28
Devil Is an Ass, The (Jonson), 168n Eidophusikon, 188-89
Dialogues (Gregory the Great), 93 Eleusinian mysteries, 23-26, 29
Dialogues of the Dead (Lucian), 26, 205 Elijah, 126
Dictionary (Johnson), 202 Eliot, T. S., 186; Four Quartets, 242; “The
Dictionnaire Historique et Critique (Bayle), Hollow Men,” 242; “Little Gidding,” 242;
201 The Wasteland, 242
Dictionnaire Philosophique (Voltaire), 201-2 Elizabeth I (queen of England), 147; and
Diderot, Denis, 199; Encyclopédie, 201-2 English Renaissance, 162
Dues Irae. See Last Judgment Elkin, Stanley: The Living End, 243
Diodorus, 29 Elucidarium (Honortus of Autun), 113
Dionysian mysteries, 24 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 210, 212, 213n
Dionysus (bishop), 60 Encyclopédie (Diderot), 201-2
Dis. See Satan Engels, Friedrich, 239
Dives story, 53, 55-58, 56, 68, 73, 113, 168: in English Civil War, 177
mystery plays, 122 Enkidu, 9-11, 22, 41
Divine Comedy, The (Dante), 133-34, 143-44 Enlightenment, The, 213, 216, 233; intellectual
Divine Weeks and Works, The (Bartas), 178 revolution, 199-201, 209; science during,
Docetism, 31 190-93
Doktor Faustus (Mann), 241 Enoch, 126; on Hell, 44-45
Dominican order, 172, 174 Enquiry into the Nature and Place ofHell, An
Don Giovanni (Mozart), 176, 205, 218n (Swinden), 194-95

266
 INDEX

Erasmus, Desiderius: The Praise of Folly, 159 Freud, Sigmund: influences modern view of
Erebus, 21 Hell, 240-41
Ereshkigal, 6-8, 24, 41, 243 Frogs, The (Aristophanes), 26-27, 121
Er (The Republic
33, ),
38-39 Furniss, Joseph: The Sight ofHell, 235-37
Erystheus, 25-26 Furseus: vision of, 94-95, 97
Eschatology: Matthew and, 19, 54-55 “Future Punishment of the Wicked:
Essenes, 43, 47, 51, 202 Unavoidable and Intolerable, The”
Eternal Truths, The (Liguori), 207 (Edwards), 208
Eternity of Hell Torments Considered, The
(Whiston), 196
Etruscan beliefs: life after death, 11 Gaddis, William: The Recognitions, 241
Euripides: Alcestis, 26 Galileo Galilei, 165, 177, 184, 191, 196; on The
Eurydice, 24, 146, 176 Inferno, 133-35; persecuted by the Church,
Eusebius, 53, 60; on torture, 85 173-74, 190
Everyman, 123 Garden of Earthly Delights (Bosch), 99n, 153
Exempla (moral anecdotes), 112-13 Gargantua and Pantagruel (Rabelais), 151
Eyck, Jan van, 125; Last Judgment, 152 Gate of Hell (Rodin), 243
Ezekiel’s curse, 41, 61 Gay, Peter, 214
Gehenna, 40-41
Genesis A & B, 104
Faerie Queene, The (Spenser), 147—49, 151, German spirit world, 108-9
180 Gesu church (Rome), 176
Fairyland: Hell as, 146-47 Gibbon, Edward, 200
Fall of Hyperion, The (Keats), 223 Gilgamesh, 6, 9-11, 15, 121
Fall of Lucifer: in mystery plays, 61-62, Gilgamesh,
10-11, 22,24,26,41
119-20 Guotto: Last Judgment mosaic (1300), 141;
Fall of the Rebel Angels (Brueghel), 154 Scrovegni Chapel frescoes (1307), 141-43,
Farrar, Dean, 58 156
Faust: A Fragment (Goethe), 219 “Girl Who Trod ona Loaf, The” (Andersen),
“Faust book,” 163-66 232n
Faust (Goethe), 176, 207, 218-20, 225 Glasisvellir, 106
Faust legend, 129, 174, 176, 214, 217, 219 Gnosticism, 31, 49-50, 63, 76, 79, 191, 222:
Fertility myth: descent into Hell as, 7, 23-24 view of Hell, 46—48, 166-67
Feudalism: decline of, 158; and monasteries, Goblin Market (Rosetti), 229-31
109-10, 158 Godspell, 122
Few Sighs from Hell, A (Bunyan), 198 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 3, 108, 165,
Flavius Josephus: The Jewish War, 43 240; background, 218-19; “Classical
Fletcher, Giles: Christ’s Victorie and Triumph Walpurgis Night,” 219-20; Faust, 176, 207,
in Heaven and Earth, 105 218-20, 225; Faust: A Fragment, 219;
Fleurs du Mal, Les (Baudelaire), 228 “Helena,” 219; The Sorrows of Young
Forsyth, Neil: The Old Enemy, 62 Werther, 219; Die Wahlverwandtschaften,
Four Quartets (Eliot), 242 219; Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, 219
Foxe, John: Book of Martyrs, 127 Golden Ass (Apuleius), 36, 39
Franciscan order, 128, 172 Gordon, George. See Byron, Lord
Frankenstein (Shelley), 232 Gorgias (Plato), 28, 32
Franklin, Benjamin, 201, 209 Gothic novels, 216, 232
Frederick theUndaunted (margrave of Goya, Francisco José de, 205
Thuringia), 122 Grabbe, Christian Dietrich, 176

267
INDEX

Grass, Ginter: The Tin Drum, 241 Hell (continued)

Great Awakening: in America, 208-9 134-35; descent motif, 6-11, 66, 106-7;
Greek and Roman beliefs: life after death, Enlightenment doubts about, 194, 201-2; as
20-29, 30-33 Fairyland, 146-47; Freud influences
Greek civilization: preeminent over Eastern modern view of, 240-41; geography in
culture, 34 Paradise Lost, 185 geography in The
Greek religious orthodoxy, 20 Inferno, 133-38, 136; Gnostic beliefs,
Greenberg, Hannah: / Never Promised You a 46-48, 166-67; harrowing of, 6, 18, 24,
Rose Garden, 242 67-70, 72-74, 88, 102, 104-5, 115-16; Hindu
Gregory of Nazanzus, 79 beliefs, 3, 126; humor about, 3—4, 24-27,
Gregory of Nyssa, 79 149-51; Jesuit view, 173-76, 196; Luke on,
Gregory of Tours: History of the Franks, 69, 55; as modern literary metaphor, 241-43;
94,111 Origen on, 77-78; Protestant view, 147-48;
Gregory the Great (pope), 69-70, 92-93, 105; replaced by fear of death, 125, 152;
Dialogues, 93; and vision literature, 93-94, Scandinavian conception, 106-8, 107;
oF Swedenborg’s view of, 211-12; Zoroastrian
Griffith, D. W.: Intolerance, 188 beliefs, 17-19, 126
Grimani, Cardinal, 153 Hell (Bosch), 153
Grotius, Hugo: Adamus Exul, 178 Hellenism: nature of, 34-35
Guernica (Picasso), 242 Hellenistic mystery cults: influence on
Gurevich, Aron, 127 Christianity, 35-36
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22, 241
“Hellfire” sermons, 90
Hades, 21-29, 106, 133-34, 149; first Hellmouth, 2, 142, 148, 168, 220; in Jesuit
artistic rendering, 20; Odysseus visits, religious theater, 176; in miracle plays, 123;
21-22, 29 in mystery plays, 117-20, 118-19; in
Haggaddah: depiction of Hell, 45 puppet theater, 207
Halley, Edmund, 195 Hell Opened to Christians to caution them
Hallucinogenic visions, 226-29 from Entering into it, 236
Hamlet (Shakespeare), 169-70 Hell parades, medieval, 150
Harlequin, 206; origin, 150-51 Henry VIII (king of England): establishes
Harlequin Doctor Faustus, 206 Church of England, 161-62
Harrowing of Hell, 6, 18, 24, 67-70, 72-74, Heracles, 22, 24-26, 25
88, 102, 104-5, 189. See also Gospel of Heresy: causes, 127~28; Purgatory as reaction
Nicodemus; in The Inferno, 133, 137, 139; to, 127
in mystery plays, 115-17 Hermes: as psychopomp, 23, 27, 29
Harrowing ofHell, The (Brueghel), 154 Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 229
Hay-wain (Bosch), 153 Hermod: descent into Hell, 106-7
Heart ofDarkness (Conrad), 241-42 Hesiod, 27, 37, 45, 136, 180; Theogony, 21
Heaven: Christian theological concept, 3 Heurodis, 146-47
Heaven and Hell (Swedenborg), 210-12 Hevelius, Johannes, 193n
“Helena” (Goethe), 219 Hilary of Poitiers, 74
Hell. See also Cultural synonyms: barmaid in, Hincmar of Rheims, 100
9, 26, 120-21; Buddhist beliefs, 3, 126; Hindu beliefs: about Hell, 3, 126
Christian theological concept, 2-4; Histoire de Juliette (Sade), 216
contemporary American belief in, 4; Historia von Dr. Johan Fausten, 162
cosmography in Paradise Lost, 178-80, History of Charles Martel and His Successors,
182, 184-88; cosmography in The Inferno, 145-46

268
 INDEX

Fisstory of the Franks (Gregory of Tours), 69, Islam, 33

94,111 Italian language: Dante and, 134
Hittite beliefs: life after death, 6
Hobbes, Thomas, 192-93, 196; The
Leviathan, 191 Jean (duke of Berry), 97
Hogarth, William, 205 Jefferson, Thomas, 200, 209, 234
Holbein, Hans, 124 Jehan de la Mote: Le Vore d’Enfer et de
Holidays, medieval, 150 Paradis, 102
“Hollow Men, The” (Eliot), 242 Jerome (saint): on Origen, 78-79
Homer, 3, 27, 29, 137; The Odyssey, 21-23, “Jerusalem” (Blake), 222
36-37, 138 Jerusalem Delivered (Tasso), 145
Honorius of Autun: Elucidarium, 113 Jesuit order, 150, 207; involvement in opera
Horror fiction, 232 and ballet, 176; leads Counter-
“How Ereshkigal Found a Husband,” 7-9 Reformation, 172-73; missionary work,
Hugo, Victor, 228; Notre Dame de Paris, 172-73; reinstitutes religious theater,
PML 17-76; view of Hell, 173-76, 196
“Huluppu-Tree, The,” 10-11 Jesus: defeats Satan, 67—68; descent into Hell,
Hume, David, 201, 209; death of, 194, 66; and Osiris, 13
203 Jeu de la Feuillée, Le (Adam de la Halle), 150
Humor: about Hell, 3-4, 24-27, 149-51 Jewish beliefs: life after death, 20, 29, 40-45
Huon de Bordeaux, 103 Jewish theology, 40-45
Huon ofAuvergne, 146 Jewish War, The (Flavius Josephus), 43
Huys, Pieter, 154 Johannes Scotus Erigena, 89
Hyperion (Keats), 223 John, Gospel of, 53, 58
Johnson, Samuel, 205; Dictionary, 202;
Rasselas, 202; religious beliefs, 202-3
Ignatius, His Conclave (Donne), 196 John the Baptist, 129
Ignatius Loyola (saint): background, 172 Jonson, Ben: The Devil Is an Ass, 168n
Inanna, 9-10, 243; descent into Hell, 6-7 Joyce, James: A Portrait of the Artist as a
Indulgences, sale of, 130-32, 159, 163 Young Man, 90, 174; Ulysses, 241
Industrial Age, 201 Judas Maccabeus, 126
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden Jude, 76
(Greenberg), 242 Judgment, Last. See Last Judgment
Inferno, The (Dante), 83-84, 87, 128, 132, Judgment after death, 13, 14-15, 18, 28
133-44, 138-40, 142-43, 145-46, 163, Julian of Eclanum, 80-81
180, 242; City of Dis, 133, 137, 180; Jung, Carl Gustav, 144, 241
cosmography of Hell, 134-35; Galileo on, Jurieu, Pierre, 201
133-35; geography of Hell, 133-38, 136; Justin: on the Last Judgment, 74
Harrowing of Hell in, 133, 137, 139; Justine (Sade), 216
literary success, 143; Purgatory in, 134-36,
143; Satan in, 141-42, 144; Virgil as
character in, 134, 143 Kafka, Franz, 242
Inquisition, 128, 154, 158, 161, 172, 190 Kapital, Das (Marx), 239
Intolerance (Griffith), 188 Keats, John: The Fall of Hyperion, 223;
Isabella (queen of Spain), 153 Hyperion, 223
Isaiah’s curse, 41 Kepler, Johannes, 165, 196
Ishtar, 6 . King, Stephen, 4
Isis cult, 35 King Lear (Shakespeare), 171

269
1(AnS|
1D)12)3

Knox, John: establishes Presbyterianism, Life after Death (continued)

161-62 on, 52-53; Plato on, 31-33, 77-78; Socrates
Koran: depiction of Hell, 110n on, 31-33, 50; soul and, 2-3; Sumerian
Kore the Maiden, 23-24, 28 beliefs, 5—6; universality of belief, 1-2
Kosinski, Jerzy: The Painted Bird, 241 Life and Death of Doctor Faustus Made into a
Kubla Khan (Coleridge), 228 Farce, The (Mountfort), 206
Life and Times of Michael K., The (Coetzee),
241-42
Laclos, Pierre Choderlos de: Les Liaisons Liguori, Alphonso de’: The Eternal Truths,
Dangereuses, 214-15 207
Ladurie, Emmanuel LeRoy: Montaillou, 111 Limbo, 37, 57-58, 67—68, 74, 126, 128, 160,
Lai d’Orphee (Marie de France), 146 184, 189, 211; in mystery plays, 116
Laing, R. D., 242 “Little Gidding” (Eliot), 242
Land (Kingdom) of the Dead: common Lives of the Artists (Vasari), 141
features, 5—6, 21, 36—38 Living End, The (Elkin), 243
Langland, William: Pers Plowman, 102, 105 Locke, John, 194, 208
Last Judgment, 60, 65, 70, 71-82, 72, 75, 78, Loki, 107-8
83, 88, 128, 192, 194, 196; Augustine on, 74, “London” (Blake), 222
79-80; General Judgment, 74, 102; Justin Lord of the Rings, The (Tolkien), 242
on, 74; in mystery plays, 121-22; Particular Lorenzo de’ Medici, 155
Judgment, 73-74, 102, 128; Paul on, 73, 128; Loutherbourg, Philippe Jacques de, 188
Tatian on, 74 Love, Christopher, 198
Last Judgment, The (Brueghel), 155 Lucian of Samosata: Dialogues of the Dead,
Last Judgment (Bosch), 153 26, 205; Menippus, 151, 196
Last Judgment (Eyck), 152 Lucifer: in Doctor Faustus, 166, 168
Last Judgment (Michelangelo), 155-57, 156 Lucifer, Fall of, 61-62; in mystery plays,
Lazarus story, 53, 55-58, 56-57, 73, 113; in 61-62, 119-20
mystery plays, 122 Lucifer (Vondel), 178
Legend of the Three Living and Three Dead, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” (Beatles),
123-24 229n
LeGoff, Jacques: The Birth of Purgatory, 127 Luke, Gospel of, 54-55, 61
Leibnitz, Gottfried, 192 Luke (saint): on Hell, 55
Leo XIII (ope), 235 Luther, Martin: rejects Purgatory, 160; rise of,
Lessing, Doris: Briefing for a Descent into 159-60; studies St. Augustine, 159-60
Hell, 242 Lutheranism: established in northern Europe,
Lethe (river), 27, 33, 136 161
Leviathan, 63
Leviathan, The (Hobbes), 191
Lewis, C. S.: The Voyage of the Dawn Macbeth (Shakespeare), 122, 165, 169
Treader, 103n Magic Flute, The (Mozart), 218n
Lewis, Matthew Gregory: The Monk, 216-17 Man and Superman (Shaw), 205
Liaisons Dangereuses, Les (Laclos), 214-15 Mandyn, Jan, 154
Life after Death: Akkadian beliefs, 5-6; Manfred (Byron), 224
Assyrian beliefs, 5—6; Babylonian beliefs, 5, Mani, 49-51
41; Christian beliefs, 1-2; Egyptian beliefs, Manichaeism, 19, 49-51, 79-80, 128
13-15, 28; Etruscan beliefs, 11; Greek and Mankind, 123
Roman beliefs, 20-29, 30-33; Hittite Mann, Horace, 234
beliefs, 6;Jewish beliefs, 20, 29, 40-45; Paul Mann, Thomas: Doktor Faustus, 241

270
 INDEX

Marchelli, Romolo, 174 Monasteries: and feudalism, 109-10, 158

Marcion, 49-50 Monk, The (Lewis), 216-17
Marcus Aurelius, 197 Montaigne, Michel de, 205
Marie de France: Lai d’Orphee, 146 Montaillou (Ladurie), 111
Mark, Gospel of, 52-54 Montesquieu, 199
Marlowe, Christopher, 110, 197; background >) Monteverdi, Claudio: Orfeo, 176
162-63, 177; death, 169; Tamburlaine, 163; Morality plays, 122-23; Dance of Death in,
Tragicall Historie of Doctor Faustus, 115, 124-25; Death in, 123-25
122, 162-69, 165, 207, 219 Mountfort, William: The Life and Death of
Marnage of Heaven and Hell, The (Blake), Doctor Faustus Made into a Farce, 206
222 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus: Don Giovanni,
Martin, John, 186 176, 205, 218n; The Magic Flute, 218n
Marvell, Andrew, 177 Murray, John: preaches universal salvation,
Marx, Karl: Communist Manifesto, 239; Das 233-34
Kapital, 239 Muslims: as infidels, 110
Mary I(queen of England), 153, 162 Muspilli, 108
Matthew, Gospel of, 53-55, 66, 71-73, 80 Mystére d’Adam, 115-16
Matthew (saint): eschatological teachings, 19, Mystery plays, 90-91, 114-25, 116, 139, 223;
54-55; on Hell, 54-55 alewife in, 120-27; Antichrist in, 121; Dives
Maturin, Charles Robert: Melmoth the story in, 122; fall of Lucifer in, 61-62,
Wanderer, 217 119-20; Harrowing of Hell in, 115-17;
Measure for Measure (Shakespeare), 170 Hellmouth in, 117-20, 118-19, 123; Last
Mechanical view of the universe, 190-91 Judgment in, 121-22; Lazarus story in, 122;
Melmoth the Wanderer (Maturin), 217 Limbo in, 116; origin and purpose, 114-15;
Melville, Herman: Moby Dick, 229 Seven Deadly Sins in, 123; Temptation of
Memling, Hans, 152 Christ in, 120
Menippus (Lucian), 151, 196
Mephostophilis, 166-68, 179
Methodism, 207, 233 Napoleon, 218; viewed as Antichrist, 213
Michael (archangel), 87 Natchez, Les (Chateaubriand), 228
Michelangelo Buonarroti, 5; Last Judgment, Natural History (Buffon), 199-200
155-57, 156 Nazism, 115, 240-41
Mill, John Stuart: Spirit of the Age essays, Near-death experiences, 33, 39
213-14 Neoplatonism, 31, 43, 77; influence on
Millennium: interpretation, 70, 196 Christianity, 31-32, 47
Milton, John, 3-4, 105, 120, 196, 221-22; Nero: suppresses Christians, 85
“Allegro,” 177; background, 177-78; Newton, Isaac, 165, 195-96, 208; religious
Christian Doctrine, 186; “On the Morning beliefs, 193-94
of Christ’s Nativity,” 177; Paradise Lost, Nicodemus, Gospel of, 67—68, 104-5, 120;
178-89, 187, 222; Paradise Regained, 189; Acts of Pilate, 67
“Tl Penseroso,” 177 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 222, 240—41
Milton (Blake), 222 Niflheim, 106
Minos, King, 22, 137, 157 No Exit (Sartre), 242
Miracle de Théophile, 123 Notre Dame de Paris (Hugo), 217
Miracle plays, 122-23; forbidden in England,
162; Hellmouth in, 123
Mithraismn, 19, 24, 35-36 Oberammergau Passion play cycle, 115
Moby Dick (Melville), 229 Odyssey, The (Homer), 21-23, 36-37, 138

o71
INDEX

Old Enemy, The (Forsyth), 62 Peter Lombard, 89

“On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity” Peter (saint), 53, 70, 163
(Milton), 177 Peter Waldo of Lyons, 127
Orfeo (Monteverdi), 176 Petrarch, 134
Origen, 33, 37, 83, 159, 161, 186, 211, 233-34; Phaedo (Plato), 30-31, 50
excommunicated, 82; on Hell, 77-78, 126, Phaedrus (Plato), 32-33
191; Jerome on, 78-79 Pharisees, 43, 54-55, 202
Original Sin, 31, 60, 79, 81-82, 192, 234, 241 Philip I (king of Spain), 153-54, 161
Origin of Species, The (Darwin), 239 Philo, 31
Orlando Furioso (Ariosto), 145 Philosophes, 199, 201
Orphee (Cocteau), 243 Phlegethon (river), 21, 27, 32, 137-38
Orpheus and Eurydice story, 176 Phoenician beliefs: influence the Greeks, 21
Orpheus (Brueghel), 155 Picasso, Pablo: Guernica, 242
Orphic mysteries, 24, 29, 36 Picture of Dorian Gray, The (Wilde), 166, 232
Osiris: Jesus and, 13 Piers Plowman (Langland), 102, 105
Other World, The (Patch), 5 Pilgrim’s Progress (Bunyan), 113, 198, 241
Ovid, 36, 145-46, 151 Pindar, 28-29
Owst, G. R.: Literature and Pulpit in Plato, 3, 35, 46, 80, 155, 159; Gorgias, 28, 32;
Medieval England, 113 on life after death, 31-33, 77-78; Phaedo,
30-31, 50; Phaedrus, 32-33; The Republic, 33
Platonic idealism, 31, 77
Paine, Thomas, 201 Plotinus, 31
Painted Bird, The (Kosinski), 241 Plutarch: Vision of Thespesius, 36, 39, 97, 100
Pan, 175 Poe, Edgar Allan, 217, 228, 232
Panurge, 166 Polygnotus, 29
Parables, Christian, 54-55 Pontius Pilate, 149
Paradise (Bosch), 153 Pope, Alexander: The Dunciad, 206
Paradise Lost (Milton), 178-89, 187, 222; Portinari, Beatrice, 134
Chaos in, 183-84, 188; cosmography of Portrait of the Artist asa Young Man, A
Hell, 178-80, 182, 184-88, 185; geography (Joyce), 90, 174
of Hell, 185; illustrators of, 183, 186-88; Praise of Folly, The (Erasmus), 159
Satan in, 178-79, 183-86, 189 Predestination, 77, 79, 159-60, 191-92, 194
Paradise Regained (Milton), 189 Presbyterianism: Knox establishes, 161-62
Paradiso (Dante), 135 Presbyterians: in Pennsylvania and New
Patch, Howard Rollin: The Other World, 5 Jersey, 207
Paul III (pope), 156-57 Pricke of Conscience, The, 112
Paul IV (pope), 157 Printing press: and growth of the
Paul (saint), 49-50, 55, 127; on the Antichrist. ? Reformation, 158-59
70; arrest of, 85; on the Last Judgment, 73, Prometheus Unbound (Shelley), 222-23
128; on life after death, 52-53; position in Prose Edda (Snorri Sturluson), 106
the early Church, 52 Protestantism: view of Hell, 147-48
Pausanias, 29 Protestant radicals: emigrate to America, 207
Pazuzu, 17 Punch: origin, 150-51
“Penseroso, Il” (Milton), 177 Punch and Judy tradition, 206
Persephone, 6-7, 21, 23, 23-28 Puppet theater, 206-7, 219
Perugino, 156 Purgatorio (Dante), 135
Peter, Acts of, 163 Purgatory, 82, 91, 102, 125, 126-32, 130-31,
Peter, Epistles of, 66, 76, 80 157, 159, 168-69, 194, 211; adopted as

272
 INDEX

Purgatory (continued) Romanticism, 218, 221-22, 224, 233

doctrine (1253), 89, 127; Council of Trent Rome: cultural conquest of Europe, 34; fall of,
confirms doctrine of; 127; in The 1.nferno, 91
134-36, 143; Luther and Calvin reject, 160; Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare), 169
origin and purpose, 126-29; as reaction to Rosemary’s Baby, 70
heresy, 127; virgin Mary’s power to Rosetti, Christina: Goblin Market, 229-31
intervene in, 128-29 Rosetti, Dante Gabriel, 229
Pythagoras, 27, 168 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 174, 200
Royal Society, 191, 193-94, 196
Rushdie, Salman: The Satanic Verses, 241
Quakers: in Pennsylvania, 207

Sabazios cult, 35
Rabelais, Francois, 150, 166; Gargantua and Sadducees, 43
Pantagruel, 151 Sade, Marquis de, 214-16; Histozre de Juliette,
Racine, Jean Baptiste, 219 216; Justine, 216
Ragnarok, 108 Saint Brendan’s Voyage, 103
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 147 St. Nicholas play, 122-23
Ramon de Perelhos, 102-3 St. Patrick’s Purgatory, 102
Raoul de Houdenc: Le Songe d’Enfer, 101 Saint Pierre et le Jongleur, 151
Rasselas (Johnson), 202 Saison en Enfer, Une (Rimbaud), 229
Ray, John, 199 Salut d’Enfer, 151
Raymond del’Aire, 111 Salvius (saint), 94
Recognitions, The (Gaddis), 241 Sartre, Jean Paul: No Exit, 242
Redemptorists, 207 Satan: defeated by Jesus, 67-68; in The
Reformation: causes, 158; printing press Inferno, 141-42, 144; in Paradise Lost,
contributes to, 158-59 178-79, 183-86, 189
Reginald le Queux: Baratre Infernel, 152 Satanic Verses, The (Rushdie), 241
Reincarnation, 31-33, 50, 77, 126 Scaramouche, 206
Religio Medici (Browne), 197 Scholasticism, 90, 159, 165
Relly, James: preaches universal salvation, Science: during the Enlightenment, 190-93
233 Science fiction, 232
Renaissance, English: Elizabeth II and, 162 Scipio’s Dream (Cicero), 36
Republic, The (Plato), 33 Scrovegni, Enrico, 141
Resurrection, 7; Christian view of, 66, 68; Scrovegni, Reginaldo, 141, 143
Jewish view of, 41-43; Protestant view of, Scrovegni Chapel (Padua), 141
161 Seinte Resureccion, 116
Revelations, Book of, 53, 58-59, 63, 70, 80; Serapis cult, 35
red dragon theme, 59-65, 61, 64 Seven Deadly Sins, 36, 84, 137, 151-53; in
Richardson, Samuel: Clarissa, 214, 216 mystery plays, 123
Rimbaud, Arthur, 228-29; “Le Bateau Ivre,” Shadwell, Thomas: The Libertine, 205-6
229; Une Saison en Enfer, 229 Shakespeare, William, 162, 180, 197; Hamlet,
Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The 169-70; King Lear, 171; Macbeth, 122, 165,
(Coleridge), 227-28 169; Measure for Measure, 170; Romeo and
Rodin, Auguste: Gate of Hell, 243 Juliet, 169; Titus Andronicus, 171
Roland, 145 Shaw, George Bernard: Don Juan in Hell,
Roman theology: influence on Christianity, 242; Man and Superman, 205
35-36; role in military conquest, 35-36 Shelley, Mary: Frankenstein, 232

273
IND EEX

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 226; Prometheus Swinden, Tobias, 201; An Enquiry into the
Unbound, 222-23 Nature and Place ofHell, 194-95
Sheol, 1, 40 Sydney, Sir Philip, 147
Shintoism, 35 Sylvester, Joshua, 178
Sibyl, 37-38 Synod of Constantinople (543), 82
Sight of Hell, The (Furniss), 235-37
Simon Magus of Samaria, 70, 163
Simon Marmion, 97, 99 Tale of Orpheus, 147n
Simony, 163 Tamburlaine (Marlowe), 163
“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” Tantalus, 149, 204
(Edwards), 208 Tartarus, 21, 23, 27, 29, 31-32, 45, 106, 223
Sir Orfeo, 146-47, 230 Tasso, Torquato: Jerusalem Delivered, 145
Sistine Chapel, 155-57, 156 Tatian: on the Last Judgment, 74
Sisyphus, 22, 27, 149 Teachings of Silvanus, 66-67
Skepticism in medieval Europe, 111-12 Temptation of Christ: in mystery plays, 120
Smith, Adam, 200 Tennent, Gilbert, 208
Snorri Sturluson: Prose Edda, 106 Tertullian, 37, 74, 76; on torture, 85
Socinians, 194 Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, 66
Socrates, 205; death of, 30; on life after death, Theogony (Hesiod), 21
31-33, 50 Theophilus story, 129, 163-64, 168
Songe d’Enfer, Le (Raoul de Houdenc), 101 Theseus, 24-26
Song of Roland, 110 Thomas Aquinas, 89
Sophia myth, 46-47 Thomas of Erceldoune, 147
Sorrows of Young Werther, The (Goethe), Tin Drum, The (Grass), 241
219 Tiresias, 21-22, 138
Soul: and life after death, 2-3 Tir na n—Og, 1, 106
Spenser, Edmund: The Faerie Queene, Tirso de Molina: E/ Burlador de Sevilla, 205
147-49, 151, 180 Titans, 22, 27, 37, 45, 76, 141, 223
Spinoza, Baruch, 192, 219 Titus Andronicus (Shakespeare), 171
Spiritual Mirror or Looking-Glass Exhibiting Tolkien,J.R. R.: The Lord of the Rings, 242
the Human Heart as Either the Temple of Torture, 84-86
God or the Habitation of Devils, 237 Tragicall Historie of Doctor Faustus
Steele, Richard, 205 (Marlowe), 115, 122, 162-69, 165, 207, 219;
Stevens, Wallace: “The Comedian as the Lucifer in, 168
Letter @,7 229 Trent, Council of (1545-63), 127, 130, 190
Stevenson, Robert Louis: The Strange Case of Trés Riches Heures, Les, 97
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 232 Triumph of Death, The (Brueghel), 154
Stoker, Bram: Dracula, 232
Strange Case ofDr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The
(Stevenson), 232 Ulysses (Joyce), 241
Sturm und Drang, 218-19 Universal Baptist Church, 234
Styx (river), 21-22, 26-27, 32, 45, 137, 141, 180 Universalist Church of America, 235
Sumerian beliefs: life after death, 5-6 Universal salvation, 233-35, 238
Sunniulf (saint), 94 USS. Constitution, 209
Swedenborg, Emanuel, 3, 19, 219, 222, 228;
background, 210; Heaven and Hell,
210-12 Valhalla, 1, 3, 106
Swinburne, Algernon, 229 Vega, Lope de, 178

274
 SIND sex:

Victorianism, 218, 231 Walpole, Horace: The Castle of Otranto, 216

Victorian occultism, 229, 231-32 Wasteland, The (Eliot), 242
Vietnam War, 241 Weaver, Sigourney, 243
Villon, Francois, 111, 129 Webster, John: The Duchess of Malfi, 171
Virgil, 3, 80, 133, 140, 151; Aenezd, 36-38, 137, Wesley, John, 207, 233
145-148; as character in The Inferno, 134, Weyden, Roger van der, 152
143; influence on Dante, 37 Weye to Paradys, 102
Virgin Mary: as Queen of Purgatory, 128-29; Whiston, William, 201, 232; Astronomical
worship cult, 129-30, 152 Principles of Religion, Natural and
Vision literature, 91, 93-97, 95, 107-8, 127, Reveal’d, 195-96; The Eternity ofHell
141-42; Pope Gregory the Great and, Torments Considered, 196
93-94, 97 Whitefield, George, 208-9, 233
Vision ofAlberic, 100-101 Whore of Babylon, 59-60
Vision of Rotcharius, 100 Wilde, Oscar, 229; The Picture of Dorian
Vision of Thespesius (Plutarch), 36, 39, 97, 100 Gray, 166, 232
Vision ofThurkill, 100 Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Goethe), 219
Vision of Tundal, The, 97-99, 141, 152-53, 211 William of Orange, 146
Vision of Wetti, 100 Winchester, Elhanan, 234
Voie d’Enfer et de Paradis, Le (Jehan de la Witch-hunts and burnings, 158, 160, 165,
Mote), 102 174
Voltaire, 174, 199; Candide, 193, 202;
Dictionnaire Philosophique, 201-2
Vondel, Joost van den: Lucifer, 178 Yeats, William Butler, 229
Vonnegut, Mark: The Eden Express, 242 Yellow Book, The, 215
Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The (Lewis),
103n
Zoroastrianism, 16-19, 20, 28, 49-50, 60;
beliefs about Hell, 17-19, 126; influence on
Wahlverwandtschaften, Die (Goethe), 219 Christianity, 33, 36
Waldensian heresy, 127 Zwingli, Huldreich, 160

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