Beresford Hope Cross: Crucifixion and Theotokos
with Saints (front and back of the cross), 800-900 CE,

probably Italy. Gold, cloisonné enamel and silver gilt.

8.5 x 5.5 x 1.8 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

 

 

The doctrine of a purgatory, a place intermediate between Paradise and hell, where souls not too sinful were temporarily punished, and where their condition and stay were in the power of the Church on earth; a doctrine which in the Middle Age became practically the foremost instrument of ecclesiastical influence. It seems to have been first openly avowed as a Church dogma and effectively organised as a working power by Pope Gregory the Great, in the latter part of the 6th century. This idea will be further explored in the section devoted to the medieval doctrine of future life.

Several ideas associated with the future life were generally viewed as heresies by the fathers. One of the earliest of these was the destruction of the intermediate state and the denial of the general judgment by the assertion, which Paul charges so early as in his day upon Hymeneus and Philetus, “that the resurrection has passed already;” that is, that the soul, when it leaves the body, passes immediately to its final destination. This opinion reappeared faintly at intervals, but obtained very little prevalence in the early ages of the Church. Hierax, an author who lived at Leontopolis in Egypt early in the 4th century, denied the resurrection of the body, and excluded from the kingdom of heaven all who were married and all who died prematurely. Another heretical notion which attracted some attention was that the soul dies with the body, and will be restored to life with it in the general resurrection at the end of the world; an opinion held by an Arabian sect of Christians, who were vanquished in debate about it with Origen. Still another doctrine known among the Fathers was the belief that Christ, when he descended into the underworld, saved all the inhabitants regardless of their religious status and life values. This was number seventy-nine in Augustine’s list of the heresies.

The numerous Gnostic sects represented by Valentinus, Cerinthus, Marcion, Basilides, and other less prominent names, held a system of speculation copious, complex, and of an eastern influence. They taught that all souls pre-existed in a world of pure light, but through sin, they fell into abysmal darkness and were therefore bound by their bodies. Through sensual lusts and ignorance, they were doomed to suffer after death in hell for various periods, until rebirth. Jehovah was the enemy of the true God, and was the builder of this world and of hell. In this realm he imprisoned his victims and forced them to worship him. Christ came to reveal the true God, unmask the infernal character and wiles of Jehovah, to rescue those whom he had cruelly confined to hell and to teach men the about salvation. Accordingly, Marcion declared that when Christ descended into the underworld he released and took into his own kingdom Cain, the Sodomites, and all the Gentiles who had refused to obey the demon worshipped by the Jews, but left there, unsaved, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and the other patriarchs, together with all the prophets. The Gnostics agreed in attributing evil and performed fasts and scourges to the flesh in means of redemption. Of course, with one accord they vehemently assailed the dogma of the resurrection of the flesh. Their views, too, were inconsistent with the strict eternity of future hell punishments. The fundamental basis of their system was the same as that of nearly all the eastern philosophies and religions. They subscribed to the notion that the body is evil, and the cause of this evil was ubiquitous even among the orthodox Fathers. However the Fathers didn’t carry this idea to extremes of the Gnostics, indignantly rejecting all the strange explanations which those heretics had devised to describe the subject of evil in a systematic manner. Augustine said, “If we say all sin comes from the flesh, we make the fleshless devil sinless!” Hermogenes, some of whose views were slightly connected to Gnosticism, believed the abyss of hell was formed by the confluence of matter, and that the devil and all his demons would at last be utterly resolved into matter.

The theological system of the Manichaan sect was in some of its cardinal principles almost identical with those of the Gnostics, but it was still more imaginative and elaborate. It started with the Persian doctrine of two antagonist deities, one dwelling with good spirits in a world of light and love, the other with demons in a realm of darkness and horror. The good God built this world of mingled light and darkness to afford these imprisoned souls an opportunity to purge their sins and be restored by him. In arranging the material substances to form the earth, a mass of evil fire, with no particle of good contained within it in was detected and excluded. This formed the Machinean hell which was presided over by demons and therefore cast out of the world and confined within the dark air. If a soul, while in the body, practiced a severe ascetic moral discipline, fixed its thoughts, affections, and prayers on God and its native home, it was allowed to leave the body and return to the celestial light. However if it neglected these duties and became more deeply entangled in the toils of depraved matter, it was cast into the awful fire of hell, where the cleansing flames of torture partially purify it; and then it is born again and put on a new trial. If after ten successive births, twice in each of five different forms, the soul was still beyond reclamation, then it was permanently sentenced to the furnace of hell. At last, when all the celestial souls seized by the princes of darkness had returned to God, this world was burned. Then the children of God could lead a life of everlasting blessedness with him in their native land of light; the prince of evil and his clan of brutes were expelled to the realm of darkness. Then all those souls whose salvation was hopeless became the watchmen and guards of the world of darkness, to protecting its frontiers forever and preventing its inhabitants from invading the kingdom of light.

The Christian after Christ’s own pattern, trusting that when the soul left the body it would find a home in some other realm of God’s universe, sought to carry out the will and beliefs of the Fathers. The apostolic Christian, conceiving that Christ would soon return to raise the dead and reward his own, eagerly looked forward to the arrival of this day, and strove that he might be among the saints who were once delivered or exempt from the Hadean imprisonment, should reign with the triumphant Messiah on earth and accompany him back to heaven. The patristic Christian, eagerly awaited the divided underworld where all the dead wrestled and prayed to be summoned by Christ and accepted in heaven. The Manichean Christian, believing the soul to be imprisoned in matter by demons who fought against God in a previous life, struggled, by fasting, thought, prayer, and penance, to rescue the spirit from its fleshly entanglements, from all worldly snares and illusions, that it might be freed from the necessity of any further abode in a material body, and, on the dissolution of its present tabernacle, might soar to its native light in the blissful presence of the eternal being.

 

 

Medieval Doctrine of Future Life

 

The period of time covered by the present chapter reaches from the close of the 10th century to the middle of the 16th, from the first full establishment of the Roman Catholic theology and the last general expectation of the immediate end of the world to the commencing decline of medieval faith and the successful inauguration of the Protestant Reformation. The principal mental characteristic of that age, especially in regard to the subject of the future life, was fear. “Never,” says Michelet, “can we know in what terrors the Middle Age lived.” There was all abroad a living fear of men, fear of the State, fear of the Church, fear of God, fear of the devil, fear of hell, fear of death. Preaching consisted very much in the invitation, “Submit to the guidance of the Church while you live,” enforced by the threat, “or you shall go to hell when you die.” Christianity was practically reduced to some cruel metaphysical dogmas, a mechanical device for rescuing the devil’s captives from him, and a system of ritual magic in the hands of a priesthood who wielded an authority of supernatural terrors over a credulous and shuddering laity. It is true that the genuine spirit and contents of Christianity were never wholly suppressed. The love of God, the blessed mediation of the benignant Jesus, the lowly delights of the Beatitudes, the redeeming assurance of pardon, the consoling, triumphant expectation of heaven, were never utterly banished even from the believers of the Dark Age. Undoubtedly many a guilty but repentant soul found forgiveness and rest, many a meek and spotless breast was filled with pious rapture, many a dying disciple was comforted and inspired, by the good tidings proclaimed from priestly lips even then. No doubt the sacred awe and guarded peace surrounding their precincts, the divine lessons inculcated within their walls, the pathetic prayers breathed before their altars, the traditions of saintly men and women who had drawn angelic visitants down to their cells and had risen long ago to be angels themselves, the strains of unearthly melody bearing the hearts of the kneeling crowd into eternity, no doubt these often made cathedral and convent seem “islands of sanctity amidst the wild, roaring, godless sea of the world.” Still, the chief general feeling of the time in relation to the future life was unquestionably fear springing from belief, the wedlock of superstitious faith and horror.

During the six centuries now under review, the Roman Catholic Church and its theology were the only Christianity publicly recognised. The heretics were few and powerless, and the papal system had full sway. Since the early part of the period specified, the working theology of the Roman Church has undergone but few, and, as pertaining to our subject, unimportant, changes or developments. Previous to that time her doctrinal scheme was inchoate, gradually assimilating foreign elements and developing itself step by step, making some notable changes. The supposititious details of the underworld have been definitely arranged in greater subdivision; heaven has been opened for the regular admission of certain souls; the loose notions about purgatory have been completed and consolidated; and the whole combined scheme has been organised as a working instrument of ecclesiastical power and profit.

These changes seem to have been shaped, first, by continual assimilations of Christianity to paganism, both in doctrine and ceremony, to win over the heathen; and, secondly, by modifications and growths to meet the exigencies of doctrinal consistency and practical efficiency, exigencies repeatedly arising from philosophical discussion and political opposition.