Purgatory in Historical Perspective

Isabel Moreira

Purgatory is a place, state, or stage in the Christian afterlife where, after death, the soul is purged of minor, unexpiated sin so that it can be fit for heaven. ‘Purgatory’ derives from the Latin purgare (to purge) and hence as the noun purgatorium it is a place of purgation and purification. Purgatory is also (and earliest) referenced in adjectival form as in, for example, ignis purgatoriis, purging fires. In modern scholarship, a distinction can be made between capitalized ‘Purgatory’ that references official Roman Catholic doctrine, and lower-case ‘purgatory’ that references a place or space of purgation in a non-specific doctrinal or denominational context. In Catholic theology, Purgatory is a temporary abode; a soul in Purgatory is considered ‘saved’ and destined for heaven at, or sometimes before, the Last Day, the Day of Judgment. Historically, sources differed on the degree to which the soul’s pain in Purgatory was divine retribution, psychological torment, penance, and education. Traditionally, the soul’s torment in Purgatory is described as physical pain in early sources, but it is the soul that is understood to be cleansed. The duration and intensity of pain reflects the quality and degree of human sin that must be expunged before the soul can enjoy the beatific vision.

Purgatory’s place and function in Christian belief and teaching is complex and has evolved over the centuries. Modern Catholic teaching on Purgatory rests on both scripture and tradition as articulated at the Second Vatican Council (Denzinger-Hünermann 2012: 4212). Thus, in addition to scriptural proof, modern believers give authority to theological and historical interpretation in asserting the existence of Purgatory and its salvific efficacy. However, the idea of postmortem purgation is ancient and is attested widely in many religious systems. Purgatory’s origins and history in Christian thought continues to be debated in modern scholarship. Sources for understanding the theology and practices associated with a belief in Purgatory include: scriptural interpretation, theological argument and speculation, visionary literature and apparitions, cultural traditions, anti-heretical affirmations, and papal and conciliar pronouncements. Belief in Purgatory involves the believer in intercessory practices aimed at establishing a continuing and beneficial relationship with the dead, and encourages a close connection between the believer and the liturgical services and pastoral guidance that the church provides.

Yet even within Catholic theology there is a longstanding note of caution about claiming knowledge of the afterlife. As expressed in the ‘Letter on Certain Questions Concerning Eschatology’ published by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1979, confirmed by Pope John Paul II, ‘[n]either Scripture nor theology provides sufficient light for a proper picture of life after death’ (Denzinger-Hünermann 2012: 4659). For this reason, Purgatory’s existence and mode of operation is open to many interpretations. A long history of developing thought about many aspects of Christian life undergirds such a belief. Scripture and tradition (or history) guides any discussion of Purgatory as a theological belief. Historically, most of the basic elements of Purgatory were forged in the Middle Ages and so much of this article focuses on medieval theology; later approaches are largely refinements or modernizations of medieval views. This article approaches the evolution of the theology of Purgatory from three directions: an explication of Purgatory’s origins and functioning as explained in early theological writings (sections 1–5); how Purgatory achieved doctrinal status and how it influenced religious belief (section 6); and the reception of Purgatory in the modern era (sections 7–8).

Table of contents

• 1 Origins and modern debates

  • 1.1 Ancient ideas of postmortem purgation

  • 1.2 Scriptural evidence

  • 1.3 Patristic discussion

  • 1.4 Sin, original sin, and expiation

  • 1.5 Purification through spiritual education/punishment

  • 1.6 Infernal imagery: fire, water, and torture

• 2 The location and structure of Purgatory

• 3 The time of Purgatory

• 4 The work of the church

  • 4.1 Intercession, suffrages, and the liturgy

  • 4.2 Prayer for the dead

  • 4.3 Eucharistic mass

  • 4.4 Confession, penance, extreme unction, and absolution

  • 4.5 Indulgences and jubilees

• 5 The work of the Christian

  • 5.1 After baptism: orientation to death and afterlife

    • 5.1.1 Almsgiving

    • 5.1.2 Confession, penance, absolution, and satisfaction

  • 5.2 Prayer groups and confraternities

    • 5.2.1 Books of Life

  • 5.3 Reciprocal aid of living and dead

    • 5.3.1 The communion of saints: solidarity of the living and the dead

    • 5.3.2 Ghosts and the supernatural

• 6 Purgatory’s proponents and deniers

• 7 Establishing visual authenticity

• 8 Purgatory in the modern age

1 Origins and modern debates

Purgatory is not directly referenced in Christian scripture. Whether it is referenced indirectly is a matter of personal judgement and thus a wide variation of interpretation exists on this matter. Catholic theology views Purgatory as an essential element of the soul’s journey to God and intended for Christian purification, even if not adequately noted in ancient sources. In modern Catholic theology, the necessity for Purgatory in some form is not in doubt and has been affirmed by modern theologians such as Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI). However, there is also a long history of resistance to the idea. The most significant break was when Reformation Protestants denied Purgatory’s existence altogether, although postmortem purgation on the Last Day continues to have a place in modern Protestant theologies. The Greek and Russian Orthodox churches mostly accepted the idea of postmortem purification, but the idea did not evolve with the complexity that it did in the Latin West.

Christian scriptures affirm that prayer and concern for the dead was ancient, as is the belief that the soul requires purification to be admitted to heaven. Scriptural support rests largely on the belief that prayer for the dead was intended by God to establish a relationship between the living and the dead, and that prayer for the dead was offered in the hope or expectation that some good would come of it. Belief in the piety of prayer for the dead is ancient and well-attested in scriptural sources, and thus the question of Purgatory’s existence, non-existence, or beginnings is fundamentally linked to what precisely prayer for the dead is for. Protestant views generally downplay the notion that prayer for the dead or sacramental offerings bring specific benefits to them, or that the dead are actively engaged in helping the living. Conversely, the efficacy of penance, intercession, the mass, and the communion of all saints are all tied to Catholic interpretations of Purgatory’s function today, as they were in the past, although the emphasis placed on these elements individually has changed over time.

For those who believe in it, Purgatory is an appealing and consoling theology. A consistent theme is the hope that family and friendship ties endure beyond death. In many ways it is this hope of connection that drove and sustained the way people came to think about the afterlife, as much as fear of what lies beyond. Purgatory is a realm of the dead still accessible to the living. It provides the opportunity for continued actions – intercessory acts – to be performed for the beloved dead. From the later Middle Ages onward, Purgatory was understood as a last chance alternative form of penance for those who had not made full reparation in this life. For those still alive, Purgatory offered a last chance to help loved ones. There has always been an element of retributive justice in the notion of postmortem purgation, leading the imagination into darker realms of torment and fear as witnessed especially in moralizing texts, such as visions of the afterlife. Yet Purgatory is also an opportunity for hope, love, and reconciliation. As Dante explained so perceptively, Purgatory is where distortions of love must be corrected. Love can only prevail if there is harmony and social reconciliation (Volf 2000). Ultimately, as a realm that is thought to operate within a human, temporal environment, reflections on Purgatory and what purification means for the human experience appear more accessible to the imagination, more open to humanistic inquiry and the consideration of social questions than heaven does, the divine realm that is beyond human understanding.

Thus, Purgatory is an appealing theology because it is a way to maintain social connections of love and aid. The notion that humans retain their affective ties with family and friends in the interim period between death and resurrection, and that communication and help is reciprocal across the threshold of death, is intensely consoling for those who grieve. The hope of seeing loved ones and the ability to maintain bonds of love beyond death endured in popular notions of the afterlife over centuries. Indeed, modern theologians have looked to ties of love, the integrity of the family, and the interconnection of humans with those around them, to promote a positive view of Purgatory (Ratzinger 1988: 232–233). The centrality of family (however configured) and affective bonds to the Christian afterlife have developed broadly over time among Catholic and Protestant denominations, and even more explicitly for more modern groups such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for whom Purgatory is not a doctrine but the centrality of family is.

The theology of Purgatory is intimately tied to its history as an idea that emerged and evolved over time, with essential aspects of its theology refined in response to historical events and debates. In a landmark study, Jacques Le Goff (1984) situated the ‘birth’ of Purgatory in the twelfth century, based on various factors including: the emergence of ‘Purgatory’ as a noun (purgatorium); the work of international theologians connected with the University of Paris to elucidate its form and function; and the structures of feudal society that supported a tripartite view of the afterlife. This dating formula is challenged by modern scholars. Long before Purgatory was given official recognition by the papacy at the First Council of Lyon (1245) the idea of postmortem purification was an important element in Christian thought. A robust literature identifies earlier texts and debates (Touati 2012; Merkt 2005; Moreira 2010; Brown 2015) while other works examine key texts as an expression of the ‘rescue from hell’ motif (Trumbower 2001; Bernstein 2017).

2 The location and structure of Purgatory

The location of Purgatory was debated over the centuries with competing conceptualizations of Purgatory reflected in the geography of the afterlife. Before the modern era, Purgatory was often understood quite concretely as a physical place, a region in the afterlife that had to be accommodated between a physical heaven and a physical hell. Purgatory was most often imagined as a subdivision of hell and thus located below ground. However, it was also understood as an antechamber to heaven, and that souls in Purgatory are ‘above’ those living on Earth with respect to their state. Consequently, there was a strong notion that Purgatory was a ‘middle place’; an intermediate location between heaven and hell. In the absence of secure scriptural guidance, any view of Purgatory as an interstitial space or physical place was rooted in theological deduction; Purgatory’s location had to be deduced by considering the state of the soul in Purgatory, its habitat, and its boundaries. Visions of the afterlife did much to consolidate these views and offered a general (though not consistent) understanding of Purgatory’s location.

The idea that Purgatory was located on the Earth or close to its surface had a long and venerable history. Early Christian descriptions of the fate of the dead supposed that the souls of the saved were in a state of stasis or sleep, in the grave until the resurrection on the last day. Tertullian described the souls of the dead inhabiting a cubicle, a place of refreshment, until the last day (Tertullian 1972). The soul was then tested by the fire of the last day revealing divine judgment on it. If purgative fire was a feature of the last day, its location aligned with the expectation of a great conflagration of the Earth. Thus, Purgatory was understood to occur on or close to Earth, as an extension of the soul’s life and death on Earth. This proximity to Earth was supported by inhumation practices that placed the body under the Earth. Thus, in death the soul descended either to the depth of Purgatory, or further to the depth of Hell: expressed as a distinction between an upper hell or Hades (temporary and purgatorial) and a lower hell or Gehenna (punitive and eternal; Pope Gregory I 1959).

In the eighth century there was further refinement. Bede described a geography of the afterlife that featured a high wall: on one side was heaven and paradise, on the other was hell and Purgatory. When purged, souls in Purgatory passed over the wall to paradise, a meadow, where the pains of cleansing had ceased but where the soul continued its preparation for heaven (Bede 1990). For Bede, then, the soul’s preparation for heaven occurred in two distinct areas, divided by a wall: a place where the soul was punished by fire, and a paradisical place of rest and progress but not yet heaven. This meant there were four geographic locations in the afterlife: an upper and lower heaven, and an upper and lower hell. Upper hell and lower heaven formed part of the same function of preparing the soul for heaven. This construction aligned with earlier views of the soul being able to rest before the last day. A quadripartite view of the afterlife continued in later works, such as an account written in the late twelfth century that described the experience of a knight, Owen, in a cave in Lough Derg in Ireland, ‘St. Patrick’s Purgatory’, and that became a pilgrimage site for those who believed that the entrance to Purgatory was to be found there and could serve as a purgatorial penance before death (Zaleski 1985; Easting 1991; Pasulka 2015: 52–58).

It was not until the thirteenth century that some theologians promoted a strictly tripartite afterlife whereby Purgatory was ‘placed’ between heaven and hell, although debate continued regarding whether Purgatory was closer to heaven or to hell, and whether it was under or on the Earth. For others the afterlife continued to have four or even five locations to accommodate different conditions of the dead. By the thirteenth century, the Limbo of unbaptized children had also to be accommodated into afterlife geography on the lip of hell – a region of hell without pain. Around the same time the Limbo of the patriarchs fell away from the Christian afterlife with the argument that these places had ceased to exist after Christ’s descent to hell. Abraham’s Bosom, sometimes equated with Purgatory or paradise, was identified as the Limbo of the patriarchs in the late Middle Ages and this view was retained in Catholic thinking while Protestants largely equated it with heaven or its environs (Marshall 2000). Purgatory’s topography within a tripartite structure was further solidified in public imagination (and eventually in art by Dante’s Purgatorio [Dante 1985]). Dante described Purgatory as having a three-fold internal structure: a region of ante-purgatory where souls have yet to begin their journey, the Mountain of Purgatory with its terraces where sins are remedied and purged, up to the highest region of the earthly paradise at the top of the mountain.

Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Reformers denied Purgatory’s existence and reverted to a bipartite structure of heaven and hell with the work of postmortem purification reverting to a divine process on the last day. Reformers attacked the complex geography of the afterlife that formed Catholic belief and which, since the thirteenth century, had included the additional regions of the two Limbos. At this time Catholic thinkers also debated whether Purgatory was under the Earth (Marshall 2000). Advances in geographic and planetary knowledge led to an increasing diffidence among theologians to situate Purgatory in a geographic space. Increasingly, such speculation was viewed as ‘a vulgar misconception’ and led to a ‘de-spatializing’, ‘abstracting’, and ‘internalizing’ of the afterlife (Marshall 2000). But this was probably a minority view as devotional works continued to assert the notion of Purgatory as a physical space, both as the direction to which prayers of intercession are directed, and from which the suffering souls of those in Purgatory can appeal for help. The crudeness of these attempts to assert the real existence of Purgatory and its tortures is evidenced in the charred artifacts (furniture and clothing) that were kept as souvenirs of visitors from Purgatory in religious, especially monastic, establishments (Aardweg 2009). Examples of these artifacts can be found today in Rome’s Museo de Purgatorio.

3 The time of Purgatory

Purgatory is imagined to exist in the time between an individual’s death and the general resurrection and exists according to a human understanding of time. The soul in Purgatory is often described as ‘waiting’ or being ‘delayed’, with purification coming ‘before’ the Last Judgment. While the concept of purgatorial time was current in the Middle Ages, it was given official status in 1274 at the Second Council of Lyon when postmortem purification was formalized as a sequence of events: ‘their souls are cleansed after death by purgatorial and purifying penalties’ after which ‘they are received immediately into heaven’ (Denzinger-Hünermann 2012: 856). As Purgatory’s existence is temporary rather than eternal, the final judgment would bring an end to all human notions of time.

Although medieval images of Christians in Purgatory showed them as embodied souls, theologically it was the soul (and perhaps the senses) that experienced purification in Purgatory, not the physical body; after purification was complete the purged soul awaited the last day for its body to be resurrected and transfigured. This waiting place was sometimes imagined as a garden, an earthly paradise. In this temporary heavenly realm souls achieved rest and happiness and even without the completed joy of the soul’s reunification with the body, would see God. The Retraction of Pope John XXII in 1334 states this most clearly:

We therefore confess and believe that the purified souls separated from the body are gathered together in heaven, in paradise and the kingdom of heaven, with Christ in the company of angels, and that they, according to the common precept, clearly see God and the divine essence face to face, insofar as the state and the condition of the separated soul allows. (Denzinger-Hünermann 2012: 991)

Purified souls are here understood to have achieved a vision of God and are not in some form of hiatus until the general resurrection. However, their joy cannot be complete until the soul is reunited with the body. This level of clarity on the state of the purified soul is hard to find before this date as some had believed that the soul in Purgatory would have to wait until the Last Day to enjoy the beatific vision. However, two years later in 1336 a new pope, Benedict XII, affirmed his predecessor’s concession that ‘already before they take up their bodies again and before the general judgement, have been, and are, and will be with Christ in heaven’ (Denzinger-Hünermann 2012: 1000). Furthermore, this vision of God is without mediation, for these souls ‘see the divine essence with an intuitive vision and even face to face’ (2012: 1000).

Contemporary theologians and philosophers are re-engaging with the connection of Purgatory and time. Allowing that the imperfect soul must be perfected before it can be in company with God, Protestant emphasis on Christ’s sacrifice as sufficient for salvation had traditionally lent itself to the notion that the imperfect human soul would be transformed instantaneously into something pure and holy after death (the ‘zap theory’, Baggett and Pruitt 2017). However, more recently some Protestant theologians have returned to the needful imperative of time after death as a means of allowing for the continuing moral transformation and sanctification of the soul (Walls 2012). Personal, moral transformation takes time (as psychology instructs us) and so a modern, psychological view of spiritual and moral transformation (even if understood as being divinely directed) is predicated on the necessity of postmortem time. An ancient idea is recalibrated for a new age.

4 The work of the church

5 The work of the Christian

6 Purgatory’s proponents and deniers

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries much was still unresolved about Purgatory’s place in the Christian universe. Some of the great thinkers of the age tackled the subject. The literature they generated, often in the context of university education, lent theological weight and authority to Purgatory’s centrality to the Christian life and afterlife. Along the way, many fundamental questions were posed and answered that still have bearing on modern understanding of Purgatory. By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Purgatory’s existence was given increased authority when popes endorsed the idea as doctrine. Yet even early on there were doubters and even deniers; those voices became increasingly louder over time.

It is in medieval theological works that Purgatory’s existence became an issue of technical knowledge, debated among intellectuals who were motivated by: a concern to underscore the biblical and traditional understanding of earlier authorities; a pastoral concern for the journey of the soul after death; the implications of such belief for sin and penance for the living; and to some extent keeping an eye on advances in scholastic knowledge of the universe.

Jacques Le Goff situated the nexus of these debates, and thus the ‘birth’ of Purgatory, in the Paris schools at the end of the twelfth century, especially among scholastic thinkers associated with the cathedral school of Notre-Dame in Paris. The monasteries of Cluny and Cîteaux had meanwhile become centres for knowledge and practices around the commemoration of the dead and the cult of Purgatory. The connection of schools and monasteries was intensified when Paris schoolmen retired to monasteries: ‘It was at the crossroads between these two worlds, that of the monasteries and that of the urban schools, that sometime between 1170 and 1200 – possibly as early as 1170-80 and surely by the last decade of the century – Purgatory first emerged’ (Le Goff 1984: 168). Yet, unexamined by Le Goff, is Bishop Otto of Freising’s (d. 1158) Chronicle, which described a tripartite afterlife with a place of purgation that fully anticipated the developments Le Goff saw as so important in the later twelfth century (Mégier 1985).

Scholastic writings on Purgatory were exploratory, mostly in the context of glossing Peter Lombard’s Sententiae (Sentences) on First Corinthians. Key figures that discussed Purgatory included Odo of Ourscamp (d. 1171/2), Peter Comestor (1100–1178), and Peter Cantor (d. 1197) and bolstered by works incorrectly attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) and Peter Damien (1007–1072; Le Goff 1984). Fundamental questions raised by these works included the nature of the purgatorial fire. Was it physical, spiritual, or metaphorical? Was the suffering endured by the soul punishment or purging, or both, or experienced sequentially? Were souls in Purgatory in a state of penance? Was purgatorial suffering a place or a state, and how did it intersect with the suffering of the soul before death (as in illness, adversity, or deathbed agony)? Le Goff notes that such questions eventually drew the suspicion of ecclesiastical and secular authorities; it took the work of subsequent generations of scholars to continue the work.

In the thirteenth century, Purgatory became increasingly important as a place that the living and the dead had a stake in. The schools of Paris drew luminaries from around Europe and through their efforts in systematizing theological thought, a degree of consensus was achieved. It was agreed that there was indeed such a place as a Purgatory that was temporally and geographically distinct from the region of hell, and furthermore that Catholic theology required it, even if minor details varied. Purgatory had achieved its fundamental medieval form and it was now something different from what it had been in early patristic thought. Thomas Aquinas’ (1225–1274) Summa Theologiae was especially influential, as was the supplement to the Summa compiled by his disciples in which two appendices gave further clarifications on Purgatory. The supplement declared:

it is sufficiently clear that there is a Purgatory after this life. For if the debt of punishment is not paid in full after the stain of sin has been washed away by contrition, nor again are venial sins always removed when mortal sins are remitted, and if justice demands that sin be set in order by due punishment, it follows that one who after contrition for his fault and after being absolved, dies before making due satisfaction, is punished after this life. (Supplement III, app. 2, a.1; Aquinas 1920)

The work of later medieval theologians undergirded the certainty that was finally communicated by the papacy at the First Council of Lyon (1245), Second Council of Lyon (1274), and reiterated at the Councils of Florence (1438) and Trent (1563). In essentials, Purgatory was affirmed, not modified in subsequent papal pronouncements.

While medieval theologians debated Purgatory, Purgatory-deniers protested even before the papacy undertook to provide any official declaration on Purgatory’s existence. Thus, Purgatory appears late in papal documents and other official Church pronouncements, and largely in the context of groups and sects that may or may not have believed in Purgatory, such as communications with the Armenian Church, or the Byzantine Greeks. Catholic sects that denied Purgatory’s existence were routinely condemned in church councils. Stories of the rescue of tormented souls from Purgatory were considered pious literature, and were supported by the offices of the clergy, yet there remained a reticence to pronounce Purgatory’s existence and importance as an official and essential tenet of Catholic teaching until the later Middle Ages. Yet, at the same time, Purgatory-deniers such as John Wycliffe and the Lollards, were persecuted for their denial of it. Although medieval theologians, including Thomas Aquinas, affirmed arguments in favour of Purgatory, it was not until the Catholic response to the Protestant Reformations that a flurry of pro-Purgatory treatises were written and disseminated widely. The earliest responses and treatises focused on rejecting the writings of Martin Luther, such as those by Tommaso (Thomas) Cajétan (1469–1534), Silvester Mazzolini of Prierio (1456/1457–1527), John Fisher (1469–1535), and Johann Eck (1486–1543). Their works anticipated authoritative pronouncements on Purgatory at the Council of Trent. However, treatises on Purgatory remained a staple of pious Catholic literature from the sixteenth century forward, whether addressed to clerics or to a lay audience. In the seventeenth century, the Catholic position on the doctrine of Purgatory was given decisive expression by Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621) whose influential treatise De Purgatorio (in his De Controversiis, first published 1586. vol. 2, controversy 3; see 2017) was disseminated widely, and instigated a concerted scholarly response from Protestant theologians. Together with his other works, personal saintliness, and authorship of a widely used catechism, Bellarmine was Purgatory’s most vigorous defender in the seventeenth century and his writings were the primary point of reference for two centuries beyond that.

While theologians and councils were the most authoritative voices for solidifying Purgatory’s place in Catholic teaching, the experiences of the afterlife described by saints, sinners, and mystics had a profound influence and often reflected current theological teachings. Mystics of the later Middle Ages were often focused on the souls in Purgatory, and their accounts were written down. From the mystic Catherine of Genoa (d. 1510) who wrote on Purgatory and left accounts of her experiences that imagined the great joy to be had there, to Maria Simma (d. 2004) who recounted how she was often visited by souls from Purgatory, a focus on releasing souls from Purgatory and learning about them became a deep spiritual task (Simma 1997).

Finally, Purgatory entered catechisms and became part of Catholic instruction:

All who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven. The Church gives the name Purgatory to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned. (Roman Catholic Church 2000: para. 1030–1031)

The teachings of the Western church on Purgatory developed largely independently and isolated from Christian views on the afterlife in other parts of the Christian world. This meant that when attempts were made in the later Middle Ages to reconcile the churches of East and West, teachings on Purgatory were a theological sticking point. Byzantine views of the afterlife were deeply influenced by the views of theologians such as Gregory of Nyssa (d. 395), whose views on purification of the soul after death resembled those of Origen in some respect and generally reflected the views of early patristic authors of the Mediterranean world. Byzantine views about postmortem purification were more positive, less graphic, less punitive, and generally of shorter duration than those that developed in the West throughout the Middle Ages. The Byzantine Greeks (and the Russian and Armenian churches following) were more open to the notion that God and suffrages for the dead might, in exceptional circumstances, release even wicked souls from hell. By contrast, the official views of the Western church held fast to an intractable, impermeable, eternal view of hell that was starkly differentiated from the ‘temporary hell’ of Purgatory. This was at least in part a consequence of the firm anti-Origenist stance of the Western church which taught that the wicked would never be released from hell, and indeed that Purgatory’s existence as a place of mercy depended on the finality of damnation in hell.

Differences between the views of the Latin and Greek churches on Purgatory were at issue at the First and Second Councils of Lyon in 1245 and 1274. In the context of a possible rapprochement between the churches, the papacy’s concern centred on reports that the Greeks did not believe in Purgatory and that in their view the dead awaited judgment on the last day. This was essentially the view of the ancient Christian church that looked ahead to the resurrection on the last day rather than to an immediate judgment after death. Even without a strong view of Purgatory as an intermediate place between heaven and hell, the Byzantine Greeks prayed for the dead and made offerings for the souls of their dead, so that a belief in the value of suffrages was a point of connection between the churches. Although much evidence on the Greek side of the dispute has been lost, there were accounts that Greek theological works denied Purgatory’s existence, but this did not mean that they rejected postmortem purgation. The Greeks’ claim that they simply did not employ the word ‘Purgatory’ for postmortem purgation appears to have assuaged the West, and the First Council of Lyon advised the Greeks henceforth to use the term. Thus, it was in this context of defining Latin views on Purgatory that we see the clearest, earliest papal statements on Purgatory’s existence. However, these clarifications continued at II Lyon (1274) and at the Council of Florence in 1439 (Denzinger-Hünermann 2012: 1304–1306; Bathrellos 2014).

Purgatory remained a point of differentiation among Christian groups, with the Pope issuing statements that defined or affirmed Catholic beliefs by contrasting them with the beliefs of other groups. In a letter to the Armenians in 1341, Pope Benedict XII imputed to them the belief that ‘in another world there is no purgation of souls’, but the Armenians rejected this characterization of their beliefs at a council held at Sĭs (Kozan, Turkey) a few years later (Denzinger-Hünermann 2012: 1010). The affirmations of postmortem purgation of the soul at the II Lyon were reprised, essentially verbatim, at the Council of Florence (1439), including a reference to the letter to the Armenians. In the end the rapprochement on Purgatory was not decisive, and while some held to the Catholic view, over the centuries Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox theologians posited various positions on the purification of souls with most resisting the idea of a third place of purgation.

The deepest challenge to Catholic theology of Purgatory came from within – the Protestant thinkers who, in the sixteenth century and beyond, challenged the existence of Purgatory and the historicity of the Church’s teachings on Purgatory. As we have seen (in section 4.5), the immediate spur to this rejection was Luther’s attack on papal indulgences, which led, in time, to an outright rejection of Purgatory by Protestant groups. Luther’s position in 1517 had not been to deny the existence of Purgatory, but rather to criticize the unrefined ways in which it was being interpreted, and to decry papal and clerical claims to control the process of post-mortem purification. Others voiced similar concerns. Wessel Gansfort (1410–1489) was an early critic of the church’s role in the intercession for the dead, while advocating the notion of a ‘spiritual purgatory’ (Koslofsky 2000: 27–31). In a widely disseminated sermon published in 1523, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt (c.1480–1541), while not denying Purgatory’s existence, also rejected the church’s role in interceding for souls in Purgatory (Koslofsky 2000: 20–21, 31–34).

The attempt to disentangle the church’s intercessory prayers for the dead from the workings of Purgatory arose from a desire to return to the teachings of the early church. Essential to this process was a re-examination of the way key biblical passages had been interpreted in the Middle Ages to support the existence of Purgatory. The tenuous nature of the scriptural evidence for Purgatory became obvious, and this process of re-evaluation was facilitated by translations of the scriptures into the vernacular. Augustine’s extreme caution about the value of prayers for the dead made him, essentially, an honorary Protestant: in his Institutes of the Christian Religion (III.5; see 1936) John Calvin (d. 1509) wrote of Augustine that his book ‘Care for the Dead contains so many hesitations that it ought by its coolness extinguish the heat of imprudent zeal’, yet ‘the moderns expect their reveries concerning purgatory to be admitted as unquestionable articles of faith’ (Institutes III.5; 1936: 742–743).

Luther’s lead was followed with greater vehemence by other Protestant groups. A newly intense focus on the primacy of scripture, and Purgatory’s absence in any explicit form therein, suggested to many that Purgatory had been an invention of clerics and the papacy. Additionally, for Protestants Purgatory seemed a theological affront to the efficacy of Christ’s priesthood, and to his sacrifice for humanity; if Christ died for our sins, was his death not satisfaction enough? This is stated clearly when Calvin asserted that ‘the blood of Christ is the only satisfaction’ (III.5.6; Calvin 1936), leading him to term Purgatory the ‘deadly device of Satan’ (III.5; Calvin 1936). Calvin’s teachings on predestination placed God in total control of salvation and damnation, having chosen his elect before the creation of the world, thus rendering all other considerations around postmortem fate and the afterlife entirely invalid. This bleak view that rejected human free will rested, nevertheless, on a positive view that ‘[God’s] very nature is goodness and justice’, according to Bruce Gordon (2016: 47). Protestants were not the first to question or reject teachings on Purgatory, but earlier groups such as the Albigensians, Waldensians, and Hussites had not succeeded in fomenting a lasting revolution from within. The Waldensians denied the mechanisms that supported a belief in the existence of Purgatory (prayer for the dead, suffrages) and they were deemed heretical, being condemned in 1184, 1215, and 1318. John Wycliffe (d.1354) and the Lollards in England, and the Hussites, followers of Jan Hus (1369–1415) in Bohemia (modern Czechoslovakia), were likewise condemned for rejecting Purgatory and its mechanisms. At this historical moment in Protestant thought, different and distinct issues (the abuse of indulgences and intercession for the dead) were coupled together to justify the repudiation of Purgatory. For English reformers, the rejection of indulgences and Purgatory were also joined with the rejection of images and relics in article 22 of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion in 1572 (Graham 2017).

7 Establishing visual authenticity

For many generations, the idea of what awaited the soul in Purgatory was influenced by texts, paintings, and other visual arts that represented Purgatory as a place in which souls were punished but maintained the hope of salvation.

Visions of the afterlife were an early and popular source for images of heaven, hell, and Purgatory. Whereas early Christian images of purgation centred on fire that might be traversed with little or no pain for martyrs and the ‘just’, the medieval West moved towards imagining the pains of purgatory as analogous to those of hell and situated within sight of hell; Purgatory became ‘infernalized’ (Le Goff 1984). Drawing on images from the extremely influential Vision of Paul (early fifth century but with many later variations), purgatorial pains expanded in the imagination to encompass images of horrible torture as for example in the Vision of Thurkill of 1206 in which souls traversed a purgatorial fire, sat immersed in an icy lake, and crossed a bridge full of stakes and thorns that ripped their ‘flesh’ as they passed over to safety (Silverstein and Hilhorst 1997; Gardiner 1989: 223). Texts of this kind were immensely popular among medieval pastors and the laity. However, theologians typically eschewed such images and insisted that fire alone cleansed the soul.

A legible iconography of Purgatory was slow to develop, perhaps because of the early view that the fire of hell and the fire of Purgatory was the same fire. It is therefore challenging to distinguish early images of Purgatory from those of hell. It is also unclear whether some representations of Christ leading souls from the jaws of hell represent the resurrection of the dead only, the harrowing of hell, or whether they also, and perhaps contemporaneously, show souls rescued from Purgatory. Eventually, the common theme was introduced that showed Christians in Purgatory with their naked bodies intact, eyes uplifted, and hands in an attitude of prayer. These were clearly souls in Purgatory as they maintained hope, whereas souls in hell were depicted as bodies being destroyed or consumed and tortured by various means, with horrified expressions and with no signs of prayerful activity. In paintings of Purgatory, souls are rescued by Christ, the Virgin Mary, by angels and saints.

In the later Middle Ages, another means of depiction of souls in Purgatory developed: a bishop (often Pope Gregory I) prays before the altar and beside and below him, perceived through an opening in the floor, are the souls in Purgatory being rescued or offered consolation by the bishop’s prayers at the altar during the mass.

However, Purgatory received its most poignant and imaginative expositor in the early fourteenth century in Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) whose Purgatorio, the second book of his Divine Comedy trilogy, drew deeply on contemporary scholastic debates but imagined how this new learning would translate to human experience after death. Bringing together classical and Christian figures, themes, and imagery, Dante envisioned Purgatory as a great island mountain that the soul (and Dante, as the Pilgrim) must climb to reach heaven, at first arduously, then more effortlessly as the soul is purged of the encumbrance of its sins. Dante’s Purgatory is the condition of disordered and distorted love. Drawing on the medical analogy of penitential literature, the seven deadly sins were ‘remedied’ by their counteracting virtue, so that, for example, the sin of Gluttony is countered by starvation: ‘All of us here who sing while we lament / for having stuffed our mouths too lovingly, / make ourselves pure, thirsting and hungering’ (Dante 1985: Canto 23, ll. 64–66). Dante’s Purgatorio synthesized much of the medieval tradition in poetic form, especially the visions of the afterlife, and illustrations of his work (most famously those of Gustav Doré in the nineteenth century) contributed to a growing corpus of images for Purgatory.

Other representations showed souls in Purgatory reaching out to the Virgin Mary whose intercession was viewed as particularly efficacious. Roses, the sign of Mary, protect the Virgin’s feet from the lower regions and provide a symbol of the hope that her intercession embodies. Souls in Purgatory supplicating the Virgin Mary is common in Catholic folk art.

Purgatory also made its mark on ecclesiastical infrastructure and architecture. Funds for prayers for the dead resulted in a multiplication of altars in churches and monasteries and supported priests in chantry chapels dedicated to the purpose of providing masses and other services for the dead. Cathedrals accommodated these new practices by adapting side chapels for this use, such as can be seen at Notre Dame, Paris (Doquang 2011). In England, chantries were targeted alongside monasteries during the Dissolution in 1545 and 1547. In Catholic regions, chantries and chapels continued to flourish. Concerns for souls in Purgatory dominated private wills, and a veritable cult of death developed in Spain in the sixteenth century at King Philip II’s court at the royal palace, El Escorial, built outside Madrid (Eire 1995). In Catholic countries, chapels within cemeteries sometimes have alms boxes positioned inside or outside chapels to aid holy giving for the dead (on almsgiving, see 5.1.1 above).

Holy objects have also been associated with a belief in Purgatory. From the sixteenth century, the Carmelite order, founded by the hermit Simon Stock (d. 1265) in the thirteenth century, began to give out brown cloth tokens (the brown scapular) to the faithful with the promise that this would save them from hell, and that they would be released from Purgatory on the first Saturday after their death. An apparition of the Virgin Mary (supposedly to Simon Stock, although this is contested) with this offer of protection increased Marian devotion. The scapular is formed of two squares of brown cloth that reference the brown habit of the order. It is blessed, often embroidered, and worn underneath clothing: the fabric squares, one worn in front and the other behind the body, are attached by strings over the shoulders (scapular bones) and remains a cherished token among lay devotees.

8 Purgatory in the modern age

The nineteenth century saw a resurgence of interest in Purgatory. Lay Catholic devotion often centred on concern for the suffering dead, and marvellous accounts of visitations from Purgatory entered widely disseminated periodical literature actively promoted by local clergy. These accounts were intended to promote the traditional, pain-centred view of Purgatory. Images of suffering spurred urgent intercession. However, there was also a movement towards spiritualizing Purgatory. In the Anglophone world, converts to Catholicism from Anglicanism, John Newman and Frederick William Faber, members of the ‘Oxford Movement’, wrote tracts that drew away from the traditional, material view of Purgatory as a place of torment in favour of a more spiritual interpretation based on God’s love (Pasulka 2015). The view that souls suffered the psychological pain of distance from God was in line with late medieval mysticism and this tradition of spiritual and immaterial Purgatory fit better with modern, scientific knowledge of the Earth and universe. The old tales of Purgatory situated on or under the Earth now raised insurmountable problems except for those who could suspend rationality or adhere to a new view of the miraculous promoted by a belief in Divine Providence (Pasulka 2015). On a popular level, Purgatory’s ghosts (5.3.2) were fed by a resurgence of sentimental and gothic interest in death, dying, and the dead that has continued to inform modern cinematic culture (Cuchet 2005; Pasulka 2015).

Vatican II, Dei verbum 2. 9 (see 2012a) clarified how religious beliefs could be authoritative within the Catholic community even when the scriptural underpinning of the idea was weak. ‘Sacred tradition’ was important alongside sacred scripture, to be ‘accepted and venerated with the same sense of loyalty and reverence’ (Denzinger-Hünermann: 4212). Yet the ebullience of medieval and later pietistic conceptions of Purgatory invited caution. In 1979, Pope John Paul II cautioned that

when dealing with man’s situation after death one must especially beware of arbitrary imaginative representations: excess of this kind is a major cause of the difficulties that Christian faith often encounters. Respect must however be given to the images employed in the scriptures. […] the realities designated by the images. (Pope John Paul II 2012)

This advice acknowledged that traditional views of Purgatory often repelled modern Catholics, and yet the tradition could not be discounted entirely. Vatican II challenged traditional views of Purgatory and the practices that had fed the connection of modern Catholics with their dead. Although the communion of saints, that had been such an important element in sustaining this relationship, was affirmed in Vatican II, priests were now instructed to ‘teach the faithful that the authentic cult of saints consists not so much in the multiplying of external acts, but rather in the greater intensity of our love’, seeking from the saints ‘example in their way of life, fellowship in their communion, and aid by their intercession’. However, ‘abuses and excesses’ were to be removed (Vatican II, Lumen gentium, 21 November 1964, #51; 2012b: 4171). It seemed to many that Purgatory was removed from Catholic teaching and that priests discouraged the laity from earlier practices tied to suffering souls in Purgatory by encouraging more of a focus on prayer to God. Since Vatican II, aided by the internet, pro-Purgatory fellowships have grown up to re-educate Catholics on Purgatory and resuscitate the relationship with the dead that seemed to many to have been lost in official teaching (Pasulka 2015).

Yet Purgatory continues as a fundamental doctrine of modern Catholicism. Catholic theologians have affirmed the spiritual reality of Purgatory, striving to articulate the ideas that underpin the necessity of Purgatory. Ratzinger argued that Purgatory is central to Christianity, Christology, and eschatology, because it encapsulates fundamental truths about the human relationship with God. Transformation of the soul comes about by encounter with God (for Ratzinger, the fire of 1 Corinthians) and this is requisite for communion with the saints and with God. This transformational encounter is what enables the soul to become ‘a vessel of eternal joy’ and to ‘make it fit for the living organism of his [God’s] body’ (Ratzinger 1988: 229). Modern theologians continue to engage with Purgatory in contemporary Catholic belief (Cuchet 2012), moving further away from naïve medieval concepts so as to engage new concepts of the relationship of the human to God and the saints, requiring salvation through the Christian’s ‘full assent of faith’ (Ratzinger 1988: 231). Prayer for the dead remains meaningful, sustaining continuing bonds of ‘self-substituting love’ so that the living and dead can help each other as the ‘possibility of helping and giving’ transcends death (Ratzinger 1988: 233). It is inconceivable that Purgatory will be abolished by papal decree, as was the recent case with Limbo in 2007.

In what may be deemed an ironic reversal, some Protestant theologians who once rejected Purgatory outright have chosen to re-examine the case for ‘purgatory’. In recent years a select number of Protestant faith-based scholars have reconnected with the idea of purgatory as a spiritual and meaningful way to understand what happens to the soul after death (Walls 2002; 2012). This new openness is centred on the juxtaposition of two beliefs: that only the pure will enter heaven, and that most will be unable to attain that rarified status before death. The idea that the soul will be sanctified and justified after death by an external divine act of cleansing, an idea long cherished in the Protestant faith community, has yielded in some quarters to the greater focus on the importance of a continuing spiritual transformation after death – a belief that aligns with a belief in purgatory. This approach makes purgatory a space for love and reconciliation that takes into account not only the purification of the sinner but also need for reconciliation with the victim of that sin in a ‘final social reconciliation’ (Volf 2000). The convergence of Protestant and Catholic theology on the afterlife would be an important and meaningful step in the direction of ecumenism. However, deeply centred on its historical roots, mainstream Protestantism continues to reject Purgatory as understood in Catholic doctrine. At the same time the centrality of Purgatory in the life and practice of most modern Catholics has been greatly reduced (Anderson 2013), just as a more robust Purgatory is being reclaimed in some instances by members of the Catholic laity.

Beyond Catholic and Protestant theology, modern scholars are interested in the idea of Purgatory as a religious and philosophical belief evidenced across a wide array of cultures and religious systems (Vanhoutte and McCraw 2017). The idea of Purgatory intersects with humanistic concerns such as the imperfection and perfectibility of human nature, and the role of divine authority, and even repressive authoritarian systems in ordinary lives (Fenn 1995). The idea and theology of Purgatory lends itself to reflections on the nature and definition of sin but also on transgression and culpability, and the need for other responses to sin, such as atonement, restitution, and contrition (Graham 2017). At the same time, scholars who analyse near-death experiences have brought scientific and psychological questions to historical accounts of visions of the afterlife, while others interrogate the value of paranormal experiences (ghosts and apparitions) as evidence for Purgatory’s existence (Zaleski 1989; Dumsday 2017). Some have even viewed medieval Purgatory as being instrumental in creating a new culture of time and thus discover in Purgatory the roots of ‘modernity’ (Fenn 1995).

Attributions

Copyright Isabel Moreira (CC BY-NC)

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  • Watkins, Carl S. 2007. History and the Supernatural in in Medieval England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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  Moreira, Isabel. 2023. 'Purgatory in Historical Perspective', St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology. Edited by Brendan N. Wolfe et al. https://www.saet.ac.uk/Christianity/PurgatoryinHistoricalPerspective

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