In the sixth century, Pope Gregory the Great answered questions about the fate of the souls of ordinary Christians posed to him by a young disciple named Peter. His answers appeared in the final book of his four-volume Dialogues, which Gregory completed in 594. In response to Peter’s question about souls that seem to have been taken out of their bodies in error, Gregory told three anecdotes he had heard from reliable witnesses about individuals on the brink of death who had been given a glimpse of Hell before returning to their bodies. In some cases, these individuals learned from their experience and embraced a life of repentance in fear of what they had seen in the world to come. In other cases, however, the vision of Hell inspired no correction and served only as a dire foreshadowing of the torments awaiting the sinner.
For a certain monk from Illyria, who once lived in Rome in the monastery with me, used to tell me that when he still lived in the wilderness, he knew a Spanish monk named Peter, who abided with him in a place of empty solitude called Evasa. He had learned from Peter that, before he had sought the wilderness, he had died due to a sickness of the body, but he was immediately restored to life and claimed that he had seen the punishments of Hell and an endless landscape of flames. He also said that he had seen powerful men of this world suspended in those flames.
As he was being carried to be plunged into Hell, Peter confessed that an angel in shining raiment suddenly appeared, who prevented him from being thrown into the fire. Indeed, it said to him, “Go back, and pay careful attention to how you live your life from now on.” After this warning, his limbs warmed little by little as he awoke from the sleep of eternal death. He reported all of the things that had happened around him and devoted himself thereafter to so many vigils and fasts that his new way of life spoke of the torments of Hell that he had seen and feared, even though his tongue remained silent. Thus, the wonderous mercy of almighty God brought about his temporary demise so that he did not have to die forever.
But because the human heart is especially hard, a vision of the torments of Hell is not as useful to everyone. For a distinguished man named Steven, whom you know well, had told me himself that when he tarried in the city of Constantinople for some reason, he was overcome by a bodily illness and died. Since a doctor and an embalmer had been sought to open him up and embalm him, but had not been found on that day, his body lay unburied on the following night.
Led to the domains of Hell, Steven saw many things that he did not believe in when he had heard about them while he was alive. But when he was brought before the judge who presided there, he was turned away. As the judge said, “I did not order this Steven to be brought, but rather Steven the blacksmith.” Our Steven was immediately sent back to his own body, and Steven the blacksmith, who lived near him, died that very same hour. Thus, it was shown that the words he had heard were true, as the blacksmith’s death proved.
Our Steven died three years later during that epidemic that depopulated this city with such vehement destruction, during which, as you know, people saw with their own eyes arrows falling from heaven to strike particular individuals. At this time, a soldier was struck down in our city and brought near to death. As he lay at death’s door, his soul was led from his body, but it quickly returned and he recounted everything that had happened to it.
For he said—as many reported at the time—that he saw a bridge. Under it flowed a black river veiled in mist that poured forth a cloud of intolerable stench. Across the bridge there were green and pleasant meadows adorned with scented flowers. In the meadows could be seen companies of people all clad in white. There was such an aroma of sweetness in that place that the fragrance pleased everyone who walked about and dwelt there.
There were dwellings of different sizes, full of light, including a magnificent house, which seemed to have been built of gold bricks, but whose house it was, he could not tell. Upon the banks of the river there were a few smaller dwellings. Some the vapors of drifting stench defiled; others the reek rising from the river barely touched at all.
Crossing the bridge was a trial. If the unjust tried to cross, they would slip into the black and fetid river, while those who were just and unburdened by sin could traverse it safely and easily to the pleasant meadows beyond.
The soldier confessed that he also saw Peter there, an overseer of the church, who had died four years before. He was thrust down in a filthy place, mired and bound with a great weight of iron. When the soldier asked why he suffered in this way, he said that he was told things that those of us who knew him in the church recalled, knowing what he had done. For Peter said, “I am suffering this torment because when I was ordered to punish someone, I obeyed and inflicted the blows more out of cruelty than out of obedience.” No one who knew him had any doubts that this was true.
The soldier said that he saw a foreign presbyter approach the bridge and cross it with great confidence because he had lived with such integrity. On the same bridge, he swore that he recognized our Steven, whom I spoke about before. While he was crossing, his foot slipped and he fell with half of his body dangling from the bridge. Reeking creatures rose up from the river to pull him down by the hips, while the most handsome figures in white pulled him upward by the arms. While this struggle was taking place, as the good spirits tugged him upward and the evil ones dragged him down, the man who witnessed this returned to his body and did not learn any more about Steven’s fate.
In this story, we learn something about the life of Steven because in this man the evils of the flesh wrestled with the work of almsgiving. Indeed, as he was dragged down by the hips and pulled up by the arms, it is very clear that he had loved to give alms and yet had not completely forsaken the sins of the flesh that pulled him down. But which side won out in that trial of the hidden judge, neither we nor the one who saw him can say.
It is clear, however, that this Steven returned to his body after he saw the domains of Hell (as I described earlier) and did not completely correct his life. Several years later, he departed from his body, his soul the prize in a contest between life and death. Concerning this, we learn that when people experience visions of Hell, to some it is a help, but to others it serves as a testimony that those who witness evils that they can prevent will be punished all the more because they could not avoid the torments of Hell that they had already seen and known to be true.