Purgatory: Doctrinal, Historical, and PoeticalSadlier, J., Mrs.
Religion
Purgatory: Doctrinal, Historical, and Poetical
Sadlier, J., Mrs.
Purgatory
The history of Enio had, however, existed in manuscript for nearly
three centuries and a half before the Polychronicon was printed; it had
been written by Henry, the Monk of Salterey, in Huntingdonshire, from
the account which he had received from Gilbert, a Cistercian monk of
the Abbey of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Luden, or Louth, above
mentioned. [1] Colgan, after collating this manuscript with two others
on the same subject, which he had seen, printed it nearly in full in
his "Trias." ... Matthew Paris had, however, before this, in his
"History of England," under date 1153, given a full account of the
adventures of OEnus in the Purgatory. ... Sir Walter Scott mentions, in
his "Border Minstrelsy," that there is a curious Metrical Romance in
the Advocates' Library of Edinburgh, called "The Legend of Sir Owain,"
relating his adventures in St. Patrick's Purgatory; he gives some
stanzas from it, descriptive of the knight's passage of "The Brig o'
Dread;" which, in the legend, is placed between Purgatory and Paradise.
This poem is supposed to have been written early in the fourteenth
century.
[Footnote 1: Colgan's "Trias Thanmaturgæ," p. 281, Ware's "Annals of
Ireland," A.D. 1497.]
A second extract on the subject, taken from the Essay by Mr. Wright on
the "Purgatory of St. Patrick," published in London in 1844, gives
still further information with regard to it.
"The mode," he says, "in which this legend was made public is thus told
in the Latin narrative. Gervase (the founder and first Abbot of Louth,
in Lincolnshire) sent his monk, Gilbert, to the king, then in Ireland,
to obtain a grant to build a monastery there. Gilbert, on his arrival,
complained to the king, Henry II., that he did not understand the
language of the country. The king said to him,' I will give you an
excellent interpreter,' and sent him the knight Owain, who remained
with him during the time he was occupied in building the monastery, and
repeated to him frequently the story of his adventures in Purgatory.
Gilbert and his companions subsequently returned to England, and there
he repeated the story, and some one said he thought it was all a dream,
to which Gilbert answered: 'That there were some who believed that
those who entered the Purgatory fell into a trance, and saw the vision
in the spirit, but that the knight had denied this, and declared that
the whole was seen and felt really in the body.' Both Gilbert, from
whom Henry of Salterey received the story, and the bishop of the
diocese, assured him that many perished in this Purgatory, and were
never heard of afterwards." It is clear from the allusion to it in
Cæsarius of Heisterbach, that already, at the beginning of the
thirteenth century, St. Patrick's Purgatory had become famous
throughout Europe. 'If any one doubt of Purgatory,' says this writer,
'let him go to Scotland (i. e., Ireland, to which this name was
anciently given), and enter the Purgatory of St. Patrick, and his
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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