6. Matthew 26.38.
7. Psalms 106.15–17.
8. Compare Isaiah 26.19.
9. Compare Hosea 13.14.
10. Compare Psalms 23.8–10.
11. Psalms 29.2–6.
12. Psalms 97.1–2.
13. Compare Psalms 149.9.
14. Compare Habakkuk 3.13.
15. Psalms 47.15.
BEYOND THE BLACK RIVER
1. Translated by Scott G. Bruce from Gregory the Great, Dialogorum libri quattuor 4.37.3–14, ed. Adalbert de Vogüé, in Grégoire le Grand, Dialogues, Tome III (Livre IV), Sources chrétiennes 265 (Paris: Edition du Cerf, 1980), pp. 126, 128, 130, 132, and 134.
BEHOLD, THE FIRE DRAWS NEAR ME
1. Translated by Scott G. Bruce from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People 3.19, eds. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), pp. 272 and 274.
2. Isaiah 43.2.
3. Here Bede is summarizing his source for this story: a short, anonymous Latin account of the life of Fursa composed in the late seventh century.
DRYHTHELM RETURNS FROM THE DEAD
1. Translated by Scott G. Bruce in The Penguin Book of the Undead: Fifteen Hundred Years of Supernatural Encounters (New York: Penguin Classics, 2016), pp. 81–87.
THE ISLAND OF THE FIRE GIANTS
1. Translated by Scott G. Bruce from Navigatio sancti Brendani abbatis 23–25, ed. Carl Selmer, in Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis from Early Latin Manuscripts (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1959), pp. 61–70.
2. A Roman stade was a distance of 125 paces, approximately 606 feet.
WELCOME TO HELL
1. Translated by Scott G. Bruce from Visio Tnugdali 2–3, ed. Albrecht Wagner, in Visio Tnugdali: Lateinisch und Altdeutsch (Erlangen, Germany: Verlag von Andreas Deichert, 1882), pp. 9–12.
2. Compare 2 Samuel 22.4–6 and Psalms 17.2–3.
THE PUNISHMENT FITS THE CRIME
1. Translated by Scott G. Bruce from Visio Tnugdali 4–11, ed. Albrecht Wagner, in Visio Tnugdali: Lateinisch und Altdeutsch (Erlangen, Germany: Verlag von Andreas Deichert, 1882), pp. 12–25 and 27–32.
2. For the length of a cubit, see p. 256, n. 2, above.
3. Job 40.23.
4. Fergusius and Conallus are the Latin names for Fergus mac Roich and Conall Cearnach, two pagan characters of Irish mythology in the Ulster Cycle and members of the cohort of the mythological hero Cú Chulainn.
5. Psalms 125.6 and Luke 6.25.
6. Compare Matthew 7.13.
THE GREAT BELOW
1. Translated by Scott G. Bruce from Visio Tnugdali 12–14, ed. Albrecht Wagner, in Visio Tnugdali: Lateinisch und Altdeutsch (Erlangen, Germany: Verlag von Andreas Deichert, 1882), pp. 32–39.
2. Ec. 9.10.
3. See p. 256, above
4. In medieval Europe, the palm was a unit of measurement equal to one quarter of a Roman foot (approximately three inches).
5. The source of this quotation is the book of Wisdom 6.7. This apocryphal Jewish text was composed in Greek in the first century CE and later translated into Latin as part of the Vulgate Bible.
LESSONS IN HORROR
1. Translated by Scott G. Bruce from Honorius Augustodunensis, Elucidarium 3.13–14, ed. Yves Lefèvre, in L’Elucidarium et Les Lucidaires: Contribution, par l’histoire d’un texte, à l’histoire des croyances religieuses en France au moyen âge (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1954), pp. 447–48.
2. Psalms 141.8.
3. Psalms 85.13.
4. Luke 16.22.
5. Compare Revelation 8.8.
6. Matthew 8.12.
7. Job 10.22.
PREACHING PAIN
1. Translated by Scott G. Bruce from Instructio sacerdotis seu tractatus de praecipuis mysteriis nostrae religionis 14, ed. J. P. Migne, in Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Latina 184 (Paris: Garnier Fratres, 1879), cols. 791–92.
2. The author’s authoritative source seems to have been an early medieval account of the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian (died c. 288 CE), in which the saint provided a catalogue of the horrors of Hell and the pleasures of Heaven in an effort to convert his household to Christianity: Ex gesta S. Sebastiani desumpta 3, in Acta sanctorum quotquot toto orbe coluntur, Junii 4, eds. Jean Bolland et al. (Paris and Rome: Apud Victorem Palme, 1867), vol. 24, p. 469.
3. Matthew 8.12.
4. Compare Job 24.19.
5. Wisdom 11.17.
6. Isaiah 66.24.
7. Isaiah 3.24.
8. Psalms 10.7.
9. Proverbs 19.29.
10. Psalms 34.21.
THREE TALES OF TORMENT
1. Translated by Scott G. Bruce from Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus miraculorum 1.32–34, ed. Horst Schneider, in Caesarius von Heisterback, Dialog über die Wunder, 5 vols. (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2009), vol. 1, pp. 290, 292, 294, 296, 298, 300, 302, 304, and 306.
2. Compare Matthew 16.23.
3. The practice in question was necromancy, which derives from the Greek root necro- (“dead”) and manteia (“divination”).
4. Caesarius is referring to a late twelfth-century collection of Cistercian miracle stories known as the Book of the Visions and Miracles of Clairvaux. See Liber visionum et miraculorum Clarevallensium, eds. G. Zichi, G. Fois, and S. Mula (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2017).
5. Deuteronomy 19.15.
6. Ludwig II, Landgrave of Thuringia (1128–72), nicknamed “Ludwig the Iron.”
WARNINGS FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE
1. Translated by Scott G. Bruce from Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus miraculorum 12.2, 12.6, 12.18–19, 12.21, and 12.41, ed. Horst Schneider, in Caesarius von Heisterback, Dialog über die Wunder, 5 vols. (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2009), vol. 5, pp. 2178, 2180, 2196, 2214, 2216, 2218, 2222, 2278, and 2280. Translations of three of these stories have previously appeared in The Penguin Book of the Undead: Fifteen Hundred Years of Supernatural Encounters, ed. Scott G. Bruce (New York: Penguin Books, 2016), pp. 109–10 and 114.
2. See pp. 122–24, above.
3. See pp. 122–24, above.
4. Wisdom 6.7.
THE ABOMINABLE FANCY
1. Translated by Scott G. Bruce from Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, tertia pars, quaestio 94, articuli 1–3, in idem, Opera Omnia, 16 vols. (Rome: Romae Typographia Polyglotta, 1882), vol. 12, pp. 226–27.
2. Aquinas used the term “wayfarer” (viator) to describe human beings on their journey through this world toward the heavenly kingdom.
3. Here and elsewhere, the gloss refers to the Glossa Ordinaria, a collection of patristic and early medieval commentaries on the Bible compiled in the twelfth century.
4. The unnamed philosopher is Aristotle (384–22 BCE), the tutor of Alexander the Great and one of the most influential philosophers of the ancient world. There was a revival of interest in his treatises in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when Christian scholars began to translate them into Latin from Arabic translations and Greek originals.
5. Isaiah 66.24.
6. Gregory, Moralia 12, commenting on Gregory, Moralia in Job 12.26, ed. Aristide Bocognano, in Grégoire le Grand, Morales sur Job: Troisième partie (Livres XI-XVI) (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1974), pp. 186, 188.
7. Aquinas used the term “comprehensor” (comprehensor) to describe an individual who has attained a full knowledge of the Christian truth. The term is generally reserved for the blessed in Heaven and stands in contrast to the “wayfarer” (viator), whose goal in life’s journey is to become a comprehensor.
8. Psalms 57.11.
9. Isaiah 56.24.
10. James 1.2.
THROUGH THE GATES OF HELL
1. Adapted and rendered into idiomatic English by Scott G. Bruce from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, trans. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 3 vols. (Lond
on: George Routledge and Sons, 1867), vol. 1, pp. 14–19 (Inferno, Canto 3, lines 1–136).
THE FILTHY FEN
1. Adapted and rendered into idiomatic English by Scott G. Bruce from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, trans. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 3 vols. (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1867), vol. 1, pp. 43–44 (Inferno, Canto 7, lines 97–130).
2. This tower marks the boundary of the infernal city of Dis, which housed the souls of heretics imprisoned in burning tombs for their denial of immortality.
THE BOILING BLOOD
1. Adapted and rendered into idiomatic English by Scott G. Bruce from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, trans. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 3 vols. (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1867), vol. 1, pp. 68–73 (Inferno, Canto 12, lines 1–139).
2. The “infamy of Crete” is the monstrous Minotaur, the mythological bull-headed man who lived in a labyrinth in the palace of King Minos of Crete.
3. Virgil mocks the monster by evoking the memory of the “king of Athens,” Theseus, who killed the Minotaur with the help of Minos’s daughter Ariadne.
4. The earthquake that occurred during the crucifixion of Christ was also felt in Hell. See Matthew 27.51.
5. All three of these centaurs (half-men, half-horses) were well known in ancient literature: Nessus was killed by Heracles for abducting his wife Deianeira, and his poisoned blood later killed Heracles in turn; Chiron was known for his wisdom and became a tutor of the hero Achilles; and Pholus also featured in stories about Heracles.
6. Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE) and Dionysius I of Syracuse (c. 432–367 BCE) were both remembered as conquerors and despots.
7. Azzolin was Ezzelino III da Romano, tyrant of Padua (1194–1259). Obizzo II d’Este (c. 1247–93) was Marquis of Ferrara, who was smothered by his son.
8. This is the shade of Guy de Montfort (1244–91), who in 1271 murdered his cousin Prince Henry of Almain at the altar in the church of San Silvestro in Viterbo. Henry’s heart was later kept on a bridge in London.
9. A litany of violent generals, conquerors, and villains: Attila the Hun (c. 406–53), whose armies ravaged the borders of the Roman Empire; the Greek general Pyrrhus (c. 319–272 BCE), who won victories but at the cost of heavy losses (“Pyrrhic victories”); Sextus (67–35 BCE) was the son of Pompey the Great, who fought tenaciously against Marc Antony at the end of the Roman Republic; Rinier da Corneto and Rinier Pazzo were famous brigands in early fourteenth-century Italy.
THE FOREST OF THE SUICIDES
1. Adapted and rendered into idiomatic English by Scott G. Bruce from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, trans. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 3 vols. (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1867), vol. 1, pp. 74–80 (Inferno, Canto 13, lines 1–151).
2. As recounted in Book 3 of Virgil’s Aeneid.
3. This is the soul of Pietro della Vigna (c. 1190–1249), who was the chancellor and secretary of Emperor Frederick II in Palermo. Dante’s depiction of suicides as bleeding, talking trees takes its inspiration from Virgil’s portrayal of Polydorus, son of Priam, in Book 3 of the Aeneid.
4. The “harlot” is a metaphor for jealousy, which led to accusations of court intrigue, which unraveled the king’s confidence in his trusted adviser, who committed suicide as a result.
5. Arcolano of Siena and his companion Jacomo da Sant’Andrea were notorious squanderers of money. Both of them lived in the early thirteenth century.
6. This anonymous suicide hailed from Florence, a city originally dedicated to Mars and thus destined to suffer the violence of warfare.
TRAPPED UNDER ICE
1. Adapted and rendered into idiomatic English by Scott G. Bruce from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, trans. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 3 vols. (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1867), vol. 1, pp. 211–16 (Inferno, Canto 34, lines 1–99 and 133–39).
2. Judas Iscariot was the disciple of Christ who betrayed him with a kiss and later hanged himself in remorse (Matthew 27.3–10).
3. Cassius and Brutus were two of the conspirators who murdered Julius Caesar on the Ides of March (March 15) in 44 BCE.
THE SHARP PANGS OF A WOUNDED CONSCIENCE
1. William Dawes, “Sermon IV on Matthew 25.41,” in Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions Before King William and Queen Anne (London: H. Hills, 1709), pp. 53–61.
2. Luke 16.19–31.
3. Luke 16.19–31.
4. Isaiah 66.24; and Mark 9.46–47.
5. Revelation 14.11 and 20.10.
INTO THAT ETERNAL FURNACE
1. Giovanni Pietro Pinamonti, Hell Opened to Christians to Caution Them from Entering into It (London: Thomas Richardson and Son, 1845), pp. 15–21, 23–31, and 88–101.
2. Jeremiah 2.20.
3. Psalms 11.6.
4. Job 24.21.
5. Pinamonti is paraphrasing an anonymous late medieval devotion text (De Similitudinibus), which he has mistakenly attributed to Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033–1109).
6. Matthew 22.13.
7. Psalms 29.7.
8. Thomas Aquinas commented on the quality of hellfire in Summa Theologica, tertia pars, quaestio 97, articulus 5. On the miracle of the Babylonian furnace, see Daniel 3.19–25.
9. 2 Peter 2.17.
10. Psalms 49.19.
11. Exodus 10.22.
12. Many authors have repeated the attribution of this sentiment to the Franciscan Saint Bonaventure (1221–74), but it cannot be verified.
13. Isaiah 34.3.
14. Sulpicius Severus, Life of Saint Martin 24, trans. Thomas Head and Thomas F. X. Noble, in Soldiers of Christ: Saints and Saints’ Lives from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), p. 26.
15. Luke 16.22.
16. Luke 16.24.
17. Compare Jude 1.7.
18. Revelation 21.8.
19. Mark 9.49.
20. Virgil, The Aeneid, 4.560.
21. Isaiah 5.14.
22. The source of this anecdote, which is attributed to the Cistercian author Caesarius of Heisterbach (c. 1180–1240), is unknown.
23. Psalms 83.14.
24. This statement is attributed to the renowned preacher John Chrysostom (c. 349–407 CE). He preached often in the city of Antioch before becoming the archbishop of Constantinople in 397. Hundreds of his sermons are extant.
25. Job 6.12.
26. Psalms 20.10.
27. Isaiah 33.14.
28. Revelation 20.9.
29. Deuteronomy 32.41.
30. Compare Psalms 90.11.
31. Luke 6.25.
32. Jerome, “Homily 19 on Psalm 89 (90),” trans. Sister Marie Liguori Ewald, in The Homilies of Saint Jerome, Volume 1 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1964), p. 148.
33. Proverbs 19.28.
34. 1 Kings 20.3.
35. Pinamonti falsely attributes this quotation to St. Bernard’s letter to the monks of La Grande Chartreuse. Compare Bernard of Clairvaux, Letter 12, in St. Bernard of Clairvaux Seen Through His Selected Letters, trans. Bruno Scott James (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1953), pp. 46–56.
36. Numbers 11.6.
37. Seneca, Thyestes, line 572.
38. 1 Corinthians 2.14.
39. Augustine, On the City of God Against the Pagans 2.13.
40. Job 10.22.
41. Jonah 1.6.
A LIVING DEATH SHALL FEED UPON THEM
1. John Bunyan, The Resurrection of the Dead and Eternall Judgement, or, The Truth of the Resurrection of the Bodies Both of Good and Bad at the Last Day (London: Francis Smith, 1665), pp. 94–102.
HELL FOR CHILDREN
1. J. Furniss, The Sight of Hell, Books for Children and Young Persons 10 (Dublin: James Duffy & Co., 1874), pp. 3–10, 12–21, and 23–25.
2. Com
pare Psalms 63.9.
3. The source of this quotation, which Furniss attributes to Augustine, is unknown.
4. Saint Frances or Francesca of Rome (1384–1440). Her feast day is March 9.
5. Isaiah 5.14.
6. See Mark 5.2–5.
7. Isaiah 34.10.
8. Wisdom 17.13.
9. Psalms 11.6.
10. Compare Job 20.23.
11. Psalms 11.6.
12. Wisdom 16.19.
13. The widely read account of the life of Saint Teresa of Ávila (1515–82) recounted a vision of Hell experienced by the saint, from which this reference is taken.
14. Isaiah 21.6.
15. Psalms 49.19.
16. Revelation 14.11.
17. Exodus 11.6.
18. Compare Isaiah 22.12–13.
19. Joel 2.20.
20. See John 11.38–44.
21. See p. 264, n. 12, above.
22. Isaiah 66.24.
23. Revelation 20.2–3.
24. Isaiah 8.8.
25. Revelation 13.11.
26. Job 41.19.
27. Teresa of Ávila. See, n. 13, above.
28. Isaiah 34.14.
29. Ecclesiasticus 39.34–36.
30. Proverbs 19.29.
31. Job 2.7–13.
32. Lamentations 1.2.
33. Habakkuk 2.6.
34. Compare Isaiah 66.24.
35. Wisdom 17.3.
36. Wisdom 17.19.
37. Job 37.17.
38. Compare Ezekiel 22.20–22.
39. Wisdom 11.17.
40. See Luke 16.22–24.
41. Amos 4.2.
42. Psalms 21.9.
43. This is another book authored by Furniss, titled The Terrible Judgment, and the Bad Child (1864).
44. Compare Matthew 25.41.
45. Isaiah 9.12.
A PLACE AT ODDS WITH MERCY
1. Austin Holyoake, Heaven & Hell: Where Situated? A Search After the Objects of Man’s Fervent Hope & Abiding Terror (London: Austin & Co., 1873), pp. 1, 4–8.
2. Michelangelo (1475–1564), the celebrated Renaissance artist from Florence, Italy.
3. Radbod was the last king of Frisia (c. 680–719 CE). This anecdote about his refusal to be baptized appeared in Harduin’s Life of Wulframm of Sens, composed around 800 CE.
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