Melinda Uno
Professor E.V. Thornbury
Medieval Literature: Visions of Heaven and Hell
5 October 2010
Essay #1, Prompt #1
Punishment Corresponding, Condign, and Classical
“...This is the place where the road divides in two.
To the right it runs below the mighty walls of Death,
Our path to Elysium, but to the left-hand road torments
The wicked, leading down to Tartarus, path to doom” (ll.629-633). - Sybil to Aeneas
As seen in the Aeneid by Virgil, the motif of visions of separate realms of punishment and reward in the afterlife litters texts of antiquity. These and other themes have spread with the history of conquest and religious reformation specifically with the dissolution of Greek religion and mythology into Christian ideology and liturgy. Generally concerning the idea of what happens to a soul or body after death, these visions are of mythical lands and divided according to the nature of a soul’s or group of souls’ character while in a live body. A comparison of the homily Poema Morale, St Paul’s Apocalypse, and Bede’s Drythelm’s Vision to the Aeneid exposes the transgression of corresponding sins and condign punishments. Specifically, the sin examined is one of betrayal and hypocrisy in respect to the church and God while the punishment varies in different realms of hell in each vision.
The shared thematic elements are not just what is exposed, but is understood by what cannot be shown or seen. Just as Sybil says to Aeneas: “No, not if I had a hundred tongues and a hundred mouths/ and a voice of iron too -- I could never capture / all the crimes or run through all the torments...” (Virgil ll.724-726) hell is unquantifiable and many of the tortures of Hell are indescribable. This open-ended quality is common in each of the three Middle English texts as a predecessor to a homily, sermon and/or exegesis. The narrator of the Poema Morale confesses: “I have never come into hell, or care to come to that place, /though I might fetch each world’s wealth there” (Poema Morale ll.225-6), but continues describing the torments of hell founded on earlier vision texts. This narrator has not actually had a vision neither of heaven nor of hell and this lack of immediate experience may account for parts unexplainable, although Sybil’s statement supports the argument of this nature as characteristic to aspects of hell. Like the Sybil, this narrator finds the souls in hell to be innumerable: “No heart may think it and no tongue may tell/ How much pain or how many are in hell” (ll.289-90). Although the Poema Morale was written around 500 years after the Aeneid the Middle English text is undoubtedly founded on the preceding Latin work. The homily cites traditional concepts of antiquity perhaps out of respect to the text but also serves as a source of credibility. This innumerability is an element also found in Drythelm’s Vision and St Paul’s Apocalypse1. This provides a sense of finality about the location of hell as a place supremely terrible where certain realms are inescapable2.
Each vision is stylistically unique, most likely due to the difference in the time in when each text was written, yet the popularity of exegesis as a result of the lack of other written works and the long term popularity of these visions allows for the repetition of basic elements. For example, the punishment for people who refuse to repent is often torture between fire and ice.
1: Vision of St Paul: “‘Do you weep now, when you still have not seen the greater torments? Follow me, and you will see seven times worse than these” (Gardiner 42) (Before showing the deepest pit of hell).
Drythelm’s vision: Now since an innumerable multitude of deformed spirits were alternately tormented here and there without any intermission as far as could be seen, I began to think that perhaps this might be hell, whose intolerable flames I had often heard discussed. My guide, who went before me, answered my thought, saying, “Do not believe it for this is not the hell you imagine’ (58)
2 The concept of penitence is also a common theme, particularly regarding the Last Day/Day of Judgment
The Poema Morale emphasizes the lack of rest for these souls:
They go from heat to cold, from cold to heat... Both do they suffer enough; they have no peace. / They do not know which of them does worse with any certainty, / They walk eternally and seek rest. But they are unable to find it/ Because they would not, while they could repent their sins (ll. 236-242)
This punishment is exemplary of the idea that in hell, punishments are condign and therefore appropriate. This hot/cold polarity is an extreme reflection of the sin of uncertainty of the soul regarding the absolute nature of God’s forgiveness. While this area of punishment is generalized and inexact in Poema Morale, in Drythelm’s Vision the narrator meets a valley where the same punishment is distributed:
…when the wretches could no longer endure the excess of heat, they leaped into the middle of the cutting cold; and finding no rest there, they leaped back again into the middle of the unquenchable flames (Gardiner 58).
In both the Poema Morale and Drythelm’s Vision, there is no rest for these souls until the Day of Judgment a concept directly corresponding to passages in the Book of Revelations in the New Testament3. These texts advocate penitence in a person’s lifetime, should they refuse to do so (or as in Drythelm’s Vision the guide continues: ‘That valley you saw so dreadful because of the consuming fires and the cutting cold is the place to try and punish the souls who delay to confess and amend their sins (61). This specification implies that the sins of these souls have been confessed and amended at the very end of life, all too late to avoid punishment, but not wrong enough to subject the souls to eternal damnation, without a trial on the Day of Judgment.
3 12-14 Revelation 20: And I saw the Dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books according to their works….
In many of the texts, the topographical areas of hell are sectioned off; reserved for certain punishments for specific vices, while the realm of paradise is often supreme and delineated from a realm of rest (refrigerium). For example, Drythelm’s Vision of the valley makes this area in an earthly realm between the fields of heaven (on top of a wall) and the pit of hell into bottomless darkness. It is in these realms that the narrators of each text encounter punishments dating back to antiquity. A scene of disembowelment in St. Paul’s Apocalypse is directly correspondent to the punishment of Tityus: “his immortal liver and innards ever ripe for torture. / Deep in his chest it [a hideous vulture] nestles, ripping into its feast/ and the fibers, grown afresh, get no relief from pain” (Virgil ll.690-694). Tityus’ fate is an echo of the punishment of Prometheus. Each of these images in Greek mythology distributes this punishment for some sort of violation of trust; Tityus for attempted rape and Prometheus for the theft of fire from the Gods. This similarity exposes a tradition of exegesis: the elaboration of and ‘borrowing’ of themes in religious and historical texts.
In St. Paul’s Apocalypse, a similar extreme punishment is reserved for a priest who contradicts his role in the church by acting contrary to the behavior expected of a chaste and virtuous priest:
… I saw there a man caught by the throat by angels, keepers of hell, who had in their hands an iron with three hooks with which they pierced that old man’s entrails… ‘He was a priest who did not fulfill his ministry well, because when he was eating and drinking and whoring he offered the sacrifice to the Lord at his holy altar.’ (Gardiner 37-38))
The vision continues to depict increasing severity of torture as the status in the Christian order increases, perhaps because these men ought to know better, they are learned in scripture. This punishment is historically condign for this sort of violation of trust; contradiction of holy vows is hypocrisy, an act against the church and God. Conversely, the punishment for similar acts in Poema Morale is not exact4:
There are those heathen men who were lawless/.../ Evil Christian men are their companions,/ Whose Christianity badly endured here,/ And yet they are in a worse place than the bottom of hell,/ And they shall never come out, for a penny or for a pound./ Prayers may not help them there, or alms,/ For nothing shall offer forgiveness there. (ll.295-302).
It is understood that the worse place than the bottom of hell is a place of irrefutable and eternal punishment. The most severe punishments are reserved for members of the church who act immorally, named here simply as “Evil Christian men” while St. Paul’s Apocalypse names a priest, a bishop, a deacon, and a lector. A corresponding scene in Drythelm’s Vision groups the punishment for this sin along with other sins. First Drythelm observes the pit of hell, and then the souls dragged downward while the guide educates him:
Among these people, from what I could see, there was one shorn like a clergyman, a layman, and a woman. The evil spirits who dragged them went down to the midst of the burning pit; and as they went down deeper… “That fiery and stinking pit that you saw is the mouth of hell, and whoever falls into it shall never be delivered for all eternity” (Gardiner 59/61).
In Drythelm’s Vision, like the Poema Morale the more severe and ultimate punishments are distributed to those who have sinned in this manner while the deepest pit of hell in St. Paul’s Apocalypse is reserved for other sinners (Gardiner 42).
4: There is, however a preceding scene of animals tearing bodies: “There are adders and snakes, lizards and frogs/ That tear and fret those evil traitors, the envious and the proud” (ll.277-8).
Death is not the end of all things according to those who envision worlds of heaven and hell (also called Elysium and Tartarus). Written accounts of those who have seen these realms (or have studied earlier accounts) depict scenes of torture in sensually unpleasant locales where certain areas allow for transcendence of this fate upon penitence on the last day. The punishments here are condign, proportional to the nature of the sinful act; however the specific sins that deserve ultimate and eternal punishment vary between texts. This punishment is depicted in a darkness that cannot be seen nor described (except by its terrible smell among other things) and no amount of prayer can save a soul doomed to this fate. Because of the lack of preceding accessible texts, these Medieval visions of heaven and hell share tropes and themes based off the same religious and mythological texts and ideas.