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Speaker 1: Probably everything that you imagine purgatory is is wrong according

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to the twelfth century, which is what I'm going to

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be talking about now. So if I describe things to

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you from the popular medieval experience of purgatory in the

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twelfth century and.

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Speaker 2: You're like, no, no, that's not right at all, I.

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Speaker 1: Know I'm not coming at anybody. What I'm really interested

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in is the world of the Middle Ages, And in fact,

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I'm going to be sort of defending why this was

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like a reasonable thing for them to believe, even though

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it's not something that I personally believe.

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Speaker 2: It's not something that my church teaches.

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Speaker 3: These realities are a reality that we deal with now.

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I don't believe in the idea that when we talk

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about the afterlife that we're only talking about what happens

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to you after you die. The reality of sin, okay,

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is that it makes you suffer. When that happens, you

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have two choices in dealing with the suffering that sin

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causes in your life, and one is torment and the

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other is purgation. Those are the two possibilities you have.

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That is actually the reason you could say why sin

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causes suffering. The suffering is an opportunity for repentance every time.

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Speaker 2: This is Jonathan Pesel.

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Speaker 4: Welcome to the Symbolic World. So hello everyone.

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Speaker 3: We are back with Richard Rowland for another Universal History

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and Richard has a great surprise, one that I did

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not expect, so I will let him introduce the subject today.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So we're going to try something a little

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tricky today, which is going to be taking you all

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the way from the edge of the world, which is

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of course Ireland, which is kind of where we are

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in Universal History right now now, all the way to

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the Mountain of Purgatory in Dante's Divine Comedy, and the

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unlikely connection between those two things. So what I'm going

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to try to do is to outline some things that

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are kind of and I know by the way that

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in our last episode I said here's what we're going

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to do the next two videos, and then we're not

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doing either of those things today, but we will get

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to them. But what I wanted to do today was

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actually to outline some things that are kind of unique

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and interesting about Irish Christianity, one of which is the

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sort of the genesis of the popular medieval idea of purgatory.

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Speaker 4: Which I did not know.

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Speaker 3: This is like the massive surprise, and it comes right

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at the right time because, as all of you might

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know or might not know, on August twenty seventh, we

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are going to start to ascend the mountain of Purgatory.

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Richard and I continue on the second Dante class, so

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you can please go and sign up. You know, the

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first class was just an absolute blast and everybody really

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enjoyed it, so we're hoping that everybody will continue on

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the track with us.

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Speaker 1: And yes, so we're as as Jonathan said, were starting

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August to twenty seventh. You can get the course now

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at Symbolic World Courses. There are payment plans and everything

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there to make it convenient for you. It's going to

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be incredible. Purgatorio is actually my favorite book of the

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whole comedy to teach. It's the one that most people

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when you're in school you start, you read Inferno when

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that's all you read. If you read Dante at all

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in like high school or college, you probably only read Inferno.

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Purgatory is my favorite one to teach. It's the one

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that is kind of, you could say, in a certain sense,

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the most relevant to where many of us are in

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our Christian life. That is to say, Purgatorio is about

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the purification, right, It's about the process of becoming saints

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and so whereas you know in Fronto is like about

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sort of rejecting sid and then Paradise is about what

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is what even is holiness?

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Speaker 2: And Paradise is the hardest one to teach. We are

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going to be doing it later this year.

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Speaker 1: Paradise is the hardest one to sease though, because it's

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very hard to explain to somebody exactly what it means

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to be holy. But I think all of us can

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understand what it's like to try to become holy. So anyway,

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join us for Purgatorio. It's going to be really awesome,

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and you're going to get a little bit of a

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foretaste of that today, but you're going to get it

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the Ireland. Yeah, all right, So in no particular order,

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I've been I've been really immersing myself the last few

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weeks in a ton of reading about Irish Christianity and

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specifically Irish sixth century monasticism. So this is monasticism in

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Ireland in the five hundreds. Why specifically that a couple

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of a couple of reasons. So first of all the

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thing that you could say about Irish Christianity right off

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the bat and the the it's fair to call the

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Church of of like the Northern like the Church of

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the British Isles, and even sort of the Northern France

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during the sixth and seventh centuries. It would be not

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an exaggeration to call it an Irish church, even in

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like northern France.

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Speaker 2: Or in Gaul as it was called at the time.

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Speaker 1: A lot of the main churches, a lot of the

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main Christian settlements there are being established by Irish missionaries.

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Christianity and Great Christianity in Britain. It's not really England

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at quite at this time, quite yet, but Christianity in

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Britain is also mainly founded and kind of directed by

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these Irish spiritual centers.

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Speaker 2: It's the same same thing and what is now called Wales, and.

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Speaker 3: People have to remember that the relationship between the Gauls

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and the Irish, there is a filiation like that that

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would have been recognized by It's not the same the

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Franks the French as we understand them today, they're not

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the same peoples as.

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Speaker 4: The as the Gauls and the Gallic people. All these

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people that are related.

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Speaker 1: To the Gauls are Celts, as are the Welsh in

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the Irish right, and so yeah, you're absolutely right. There

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is a kind of a similar culture there, and we'll

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talk a little bit about some of the things that

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were preserved in Ireland. This is actually the origin of

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a very compelling thesis that was really popular, I want

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to say, in like maybe the nineteen seventies. Maybe that's

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the wrong decade, but there was this book that came

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out called How the Irish Shape Civilization?

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Speaker 2: And the thesis of.

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Speaker 1: The book is not terrible, it's also very reductive, Like

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almost any convincing thesis is extremely reductive, Like his history

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itself is very complicated. But in the Irish How the

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Irish Shaved Civilization, they basically kind of pose it that

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while the Dark Ages was going on in Western Europe,

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if you want to say that there is a period,

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obviously everybody who knows me knows I hate the term

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the Dark Ages and almost never use it. But you

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could say there is a period when like the Huns

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are invading and stuff is getting burned and stuff is

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getting destroyed and stuf.

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Speaker 2: But Ireland was.

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Speaker 1: Kind of far enough removed from the action that they

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were able to preserve learning and literacy, the Christian faith

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and all these other really important things. Okay, so yeah,

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hence why Charlemagne, yeah, monks to basically help him re

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Christianize the Europe. Yeah, and again because history is a

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little always a little more complicated than that. Charlemagne brings

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people in not just from Ireland, but he brings people

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in from the British Isles generally. So for instance, Charlemagne's

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court main court theologian and basically his minister of education

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was a was a an Anglo Saxon deacon named al Koen,

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who is my bitter enemy. Of course he doesn't know

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this because he's been dead for a long time. But

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Alcoen didn't like icons. Actually there's a whole thing about this.

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But he also didn't like Beowulf, so you know, it's

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just like my favor. No, no, well we don't know

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if he liked Beowolf specifically, but he really hates stories

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like BeO Wolf, Like he hated that these monks were

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like writing down and telling like old Germanic heroes stories.

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And he also really rejected the idea of representational likenography.

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So it was okay, with like you could depict the

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arc in church like the but you couldn't like depict Christ, right,

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and so anyway, this is neither here, here nor there,

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but but yes, charl Lamagne basically went to the British

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Isles looking for looking for help in trying to sort

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of re establish his educational project on the continent. So

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all of this is say, Christianity in Ireland and in

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Northern Goal and in Britain in the sixth and the

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seventh centuries was first and foremost monastic. So the main

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unit in Irish culture, in in in the Celtic culture

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in general is like the tuat, which which means basically

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like the klan or the tribe. So this is the

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sort of main unit. And then you have you have

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somebody called Ri who is the head of the tuat.

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He's the he's the chieftain, he's the warlord, he's the king.

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And this is basically how Irish civilization kind of arranged itself.

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And then you had these we'll talk about this in

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a couple of videos when we look at the uh

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the the colloquy of the Elders of Ireland or as

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our friend Martin, doctor Martinshall calls it old men talking, uh,

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and which you have kind of these these renmants of

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war bands.

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Speaker 2: So you have like the tuat and which are.

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Speaker 1: Like the this is the the the ban, this is

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the the tribe or the clan with a defined social

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social structure and a leader. But then you also had

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these roving bands of basically single young men running across

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the countryside and causing trouble. And and the main job

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of basically all civilization case people out there don't know

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what is civilization for, the main job civilization is how

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to is to figure out how to properly harness your

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single young males. That's the main problem that every civilization

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has ever had to solve. I'm really serious about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

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but that's the main problem every civilization has has had

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to solve. So the way that they would try to

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solve these like roving war bands, which are basically, you know,

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in some other age bandits, right, but they were like

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sort of like bands of heroes you could say in

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their own minds, or I mean is somebody a bandit

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or a hero? This is really a matter of perspective

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in the ancient world. And so they would, you know,

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they you know, very often what you do is you

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try to hire these people. You give them some land,

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and they settle down, and you give them wives, and

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they marry and they become integrated into your toot. They

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become integrated into your tribe or into your plans. So anyway,

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all this to say, when Christianity comes to the British

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Isles under a variety of unnamed missionaries, and ultimately through

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via the salmon of having Saint Patrick, who was not

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himself Irish, he was British, but he came to Ireland

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as a missionary after having escaped Ireland as a slave,

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came back to Ireland as a missionary and sort of

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converts the island. And there's all kinds of stories about this.

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We'll probably read some of them. I mean, part of

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the struggle, as I said last time, and talking about

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Ireland is the sheer breadth of the content. I have

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this wonderful collection just of Irish saints' lives which are

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so mind boggling. I mean, there's some of these saints lives,

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Jonathan that we could do seven or eight videos just

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on the crazy sometimes really messed up symbolism in one

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of these, Like there's some of these that are like

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I don't know if I can even talk about this

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on the internet, Like I don't know if I just

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don't know if I could even like talk about this

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in public. But they're really beautiful but also very strange

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and wonderful and so what.

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Speaker 2: And we'll come back to that in a moment.

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Speaker 1: But the thing I'm trying to say is that basically

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what happened was as Christianity was established in Ireland, that

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the monastery took the place of the tuat and the

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abbot took the place of the rie, and so what

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you had was kind of in Irish Christianity is kind

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of this unique situation that does show up other places

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in Christianity as well, but not to the same degree

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or in the same intensity, where almost every bishop is

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the abbot of a monastery, and bishops are based not

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out of cathedrals and cities, but they're based out of

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monastic communities, and then the rest of Irish life kind

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of orients itself around the monastic community, as opposed to,

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you know, the situation that you have in most of

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the Christian world, where you have a city and a

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bishop of the city, and then there are monastic communities

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that support the Christians in the city, but the bishop

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has it like own cathedral, right, So it's a it's

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a different kind of a situation. It's actually, honestly, it's

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one of the things like being Orthodox in America day.

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It's not totally dissimilar from this in the sense that

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in said, you know, you still got bishops and cathedrals

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and things like this, but being Orthodox is like, it's

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so weird, Like it's so you're so sort of like

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kind of separate from the the rest of the world

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around you in a certain way that that everybody's kind

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of oriented around that community. And it's not unusual at

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all for us to have like our bishops living in monasteries,

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even here in the United States. But but at the time, yeah,

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there you go. At the time, at the time, this

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was pretty kind of exceptional. So one of the other

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things to say about And this is something I would

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love your insight on because it's something I've noticed before,

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and as I've been kind of reading through the literature

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on the subject and like reading some very long dissertations

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and very long books about this, like really you know,

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really deep kind of academic studies, it seems to be

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something everybody notices and nobody has an explanation for. And

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that is that the two kind of defining features. Well,

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you could say that, first of all, the the way

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that the Irish thought about history. This is before the

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Conversion and after the conversion. That the way that the

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Irish thought about history, And this is what makes it

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so interesting for universal history purposes, is of history as

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embodied in persons. So the Irish are basically never interested

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in what we would consider like you know, forensic sort

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of history today. For them, the word history and they

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have a particular word for this, and Gaelic means something

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like I'm trying to remember the formulation here. It's it's

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the oral traditions passed down by the elders, which are

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helped and enhanced but not overwritten by the written laws.

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And then it's like the sort of like the customs

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of your people, like the stories of your the stories

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of the barts, the stories of the Barts. So there's

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those three things, and it's the sense, by the way,

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this is something you find in very ancient cold is

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the idea that something that's oral has precedence over something written,

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where writing is actually less trustworthy than what your grandfather

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told you.

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Speaker 3: This is completely it's already there in the Yeah, it's

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already there in the in the Fedra, in Plato's Fedra, there's.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 1: But but basically, of course, you know, Plato wrote all

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of that down, but you know.

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Speaker 3: There's an irony in all of the situations, right where

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God reveals the lot of Moses, then then he writes

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it down, and so it's it's it's like a kind

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of lower level, you know. And so I think I

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think that the implicit notion that in fact, the written

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word is weaker than the oral tradition is something that

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is there, is there everywhere. It's there even I think

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in the in the Gospel to some extent.

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Speaker 2: Oh for sure.

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Speaker 1: I mean that's that's the whole thing that you have

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kind of going off Christ and like, how's the Sabbath

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supposed to be kept in these different things? Yeah, it's like, dude,

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I'm the one that revealed this to Moses to begin with, right, right, Yeah,

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this is something that you find in every single ancient culture,

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is that oral tradition is more reliable than what is written.

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Speaker 3: But also, I mean I think that the way that

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written culture develops also is a testimony to that. So, right,

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so if you look at early manuscripts or early inscriptions, right,

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they're written without punctuation, they're written without separation between the words,

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and so the only way to read it is to

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say it out loud, because when you look at it

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is do you just see a stream of letters? And

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even the same with the Hebrew. This idea that in

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fact the vowels in ancient Hebrew are not even there,

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not there, and therefore the only way for you to

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know the meaning of the text is to vocalize it.

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But not only to vocalize it, but to vocalize it

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in the way that you heard it before. That's right,

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because there are multiple possible readings of the of the text,

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especially Hebrew. But you've heard it in synagogue, you've heard

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it read at the temple or whatever, and so you

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know what it is when you vocalize it yourself.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's that's a beautiful way to put that.

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So those are the sort of the three sources of

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knowledge or tradition in Ireland. Are the laws passed down

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orally supplemented by what's written down, and then the stories

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of the bards and the stories of the bards, and

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that it's the combination of those three things is what

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medieval Irish people mean by the word history, right, and

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so history in this sense, actually it's much closer to

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how we've been trying to help people understand universal history,

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that it's the sort of the story of who you

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are and how you got to be who you are.

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But the role of laws.

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Speaker 2: Then isn't just to help you learn right from wrong.

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Speaker 1: Even the Tora is this way, by the way, it's

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not just to tell you, like, here's what's right, here's

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what's wrong.

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Speaker 2: It's not like God. It's not like God is.

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Speaker 1: Deeply offended on an onto loge level when you eat shrimp, right.

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Speaker 3: So I'm sure that's as Christians we know that that's not.

330
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Speaker 1: Yeah, well, yeah, for sure, as Christians we know this

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is not the case. But but the the point of

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much of the Torah, right is to sort of make

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a the make a distinction, is how Exodus says it,

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to make a distinction between you and the Egyptians, to

335
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make a distinction between you and the nations you're going

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to live among. So the purpose of a law of

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of laws or of history, you know, in this sense

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is to it's not just the stories that tell you

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how you got to be the people you are today,

340
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but it's the stuff that describes why, like what does

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it look like to be you and not somebody else.

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Speaker 3: Why you're Irish and not why you're part of this

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plan and you're not justly the distinguishing characteristics that get remembered.

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Speaker 1: And so the expression of this in Irish Christianity then

345
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is that each of these monastery communities starts to develop

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its own you could call them canons, which just means

347
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a rule. You could call them a rule of life.

348
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Very often they're called penitentials. Penitentials as in, here's like

349
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a list of sins that somebody might come and confess,

350
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and here's how here's the kind of penis that should

351
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be assigned to them based on that. But basically these

352
00:19:19,200 --> 00:19:21,559
different monastic centers kind of just come up with their

353
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own and again it's not unique to Ireland, but it

354
00:19:24,119 --> 00:19:26,640
seems like it happened in Ireland in a more extreme way,

355
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that each of these monastic centers basically starts to develop

356
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its own, its own law, its own history. In terms

357
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of helping you understand this is what it looks like

358
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to be a part of this community, as the monastic

359
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community at the heart of the Christian community in a

360
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particular like Irish place replaces the idea of being a

361
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part of a clan or a tribe. Right, So this

362
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is kind of one prong of this. But remember that

363
00:19:57,519 --> 00:20:01,359
the other prong of history is the stories the bards,

364
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and so one of the other things that's going on

365
00:20:04,319 --> 00:20:09,440
in Irish culture seems to be a how do I

366
00:20:09,440 --> 00:20:17,599
say this, a very a very free use of the imagination.

367
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And that's not even the right, Like everything I just

368
00:20:19,599 --> 00:20:22,119
said is wrong because it's so hard to talk about

369
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this for the for the for the medieval Irish.

370
00:20:24,839 --> 00:20:29,319
Speaker 4: Like you could say that like a lyrical approach to memory,

371
00:20:29,480 --> 00:20:32,640
like it says like in the sense that there's a kind.

372
00:20:32,400 --> 00:20:36,759
Speaker 3: Of yeah, there's a sense that it's not so much

373
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about the it's not so much about the precision rather

374
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than the story itself.

375
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Speaker 2: Let's say so in.

376
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Speaker 1: This sense, to me, Irish Christianity is really close to

377
00:20:46,319 --> 00:20:49,319
Syrian mm hmm, in that way where like let's say,

378
00:20:49,359 --> 00:20:51,440
like you're reading the Syrian Fathers and you come across

379
00:20:51,480 --> 00:20:57,119
like certain formulations and you might be like, oh, well, okay,

380
00:20:57,160 --> 00:20:59,440
I wouldn't say this like in a homily, or I

381
00:20:59,480 --> 00:21:03,039
wouldn't say this like you know, we've had an ecumenical

382
00:21:03,079 --> 00:21:05,400
council since then that has kind of put boundaries around

383
00:21:05,400 --> 00:21:07,920
our language, so I wouldn't express this in exactly this way.

384
00:21:07,960 --> 00:21:10,880
Speaker 2: Saint Ephraim, right, but sting Ephraim is not an Aryan.

385
00:21:11,000 --> 00:21:12,759
You know he's writing hymns against those guys. He's not

386
00:21:12,759 --> 00:21:13,480
an Aryan at all.

387
00:21:13,519 --> 00:21:16,400
Speaker 1: But he's expressing things in this very creat a very

388
00:21:16,559 --> 00:21:20,079
imaginative kind of a way, like his son was Kentuckia

389
00:21:20,119 --> 00:21:21,720
for the Nativity and things like this is what I'm

390
00:21:21,759 --> 00:21:22,559
thinking about right now.

391
00:21:22,599 --> 00:21:23,960
Speaker 2: But the the.

392
00:21:25,720 --> 00:21:30,000
Speaker 1: But Syrian Christianity had this beautiful and in it's it's

393
00:21:30,119 --> 00:21:34,759
very much a Semitic expression just to talk about someday, guys,

394
00:21:34,759 --> 00:21:39,519
we're gonna get to Syria, just but just to talk

395
00:21:39,559 --> 00:21:41,920
about Syrian Christianity for a moment. People are like sant

396
00:21:41,960 --> 00:21:43,799
It from the Syrian and Jacob of Saruj, who I

397
00:21:43,799 --> 00:21:47,359
really love. I literally have a book of him, his

398
00:21:47,440 --> 00:21:50,119
hymns on the Mother of God that I talked about

399
00:21:50,160 --> 00:21:52,440
at the summit back in February, but that's just in

400
00:21:52,519 --> 00:21:55,640
my jacket pocket, like I carry it everywhere because it's

401
00:21:55,680 --> 00:22:00,359
so beautiful. And in these in these but and these

402
00:22:00,440 --> 00:22:03,440
Syrian fathers, what you find is the same sort of

403
00:22:03,480 --> 00:22:05,480
things that people are dealing with in the Greek world

404
00:22:05,559 --> 00:22:07,640
at the time. And in the Greek world they're dealing

405
00:22:07,640 --> 00:22:11,119
with them and these kind of very specific, precise formulations,

406
00:22:12,039 --> 00:22:14,000
and then in the Syrian world they're just like writing

407
00:22:14,039 --> 00:22:17,599
crazy poetry and they're really saying the same stuff. But

408
00:22:19,079 --> 00:22:24,759
Irish Christianity really doesn't have dogmatic formulations. It's mostly just

409
00:22:24,839 --> 00:22:28,200
crazy poetry. And what they do is they take the inheritance,

410
00:22:28,240 --> 00:22:31,279
the Semitic inheritance of like second double Judaism. We've talked

411
00:22:31,279 --> 00:22:34,680
about this before, and they know they do a bunch

412
00:22:34,720 --> 00:22:36,759
of things, but they're really big into the Psalter. This

413
00:22:36,799 --> 00:22:38,960
is what I was trying to get at, that the

414
00:22:39,000 --> 00:22:42,279
Irish Christianity has much more in common with the Psalter

415
00:22:42,559 --> 00:22:45,519
and with the sort of Psalmic tradition that's come out

416
00:22:45,559 --> 00:22:48,759
of that, where everything in the Psalter is deeply personalized,

417
00:22:49,119 --> 00:22:52,200
everything in the Psalter is deeply poetic. You're not reading

418
00:22:52,200 --> 00:22:54,119
the Psalms, or at least you shouldn't be reading the

419
00:22:54,119 --> 00:22:57,759
Psalms trying to derive dogmatic formulas, but what you're actually

420
00:22:57,759 --> 00:23:01,519
doing is entering into a conversation really between the father

421
00:23:01,599 --> 00:23:05,359
and the son, right, and that's very much what Irish

422
00:23:05,400 --> 00:23:07,720
Christianity is kind of like. So it's much more like

423
00:23:07,720 --> 00:23:09,359
you said, lyrical, it's.

424
00:23:09,240 --> 00:23:10,759
Speaker 2: Much more poetic.

425
00:23:11,759 --> 00:23:16,000
Speaker 1: There's no distinction in Irish Christianity between the natural and supernatural.

426
00:23:16,079 --> 00:23:18,480
It doesn't exist at all. Now you could really say,

427
00:23:18,519 --> 00:23:20,920
I think to an extent, to a very large extent,

428
00:23:20,920 --> 00:23:23,559
that that's true about most of the ancient world. But

429
00:23:23,799 --> 00:23:27,480
basically Ireland is one of these places, maybe because as

430
00:23:27,480 --> 00:23:30,319
an island. Islands tend to have like the most extreme

431
00:23:30,400 --> 00:23:33,240
versions of everything, like the most extreme language changes, the

432
00:23:33,240 --> 00:23:37,799
most extreme culture, you know, everything. Nowadays, if we want

433
00:23:37,839 --> 00:23:41,039
to actually say that something is being if something is

434
00:23:41,039 --> 00:23:42,960
like kind of extreme, or we want to say something

435
00:23:43,039 --> 00:23:46,160
is is not taking into account the culture around it,

436
00:23:46,160 --> 00:23:50,359
we say it's insular, right, which means it's on an island.

437
00:23:51,279 --> 00:23:54,559
So you have all these things in ancient cultures in general,

438
00:23:54,559 --> 00:23:58,400
but Ireland they seem to be really emphasized, and it's

439
00:23:58,559 --> 00:24:01,680
I think it's something like the sense of the other

440
00:24:01,759 --> 00:24:05,759
world always being very close to you in Irish paganism

441
00:24:06,200 --> 00:24:09,319
just kind of carries forward into Christianity, and so in

442
00:24:09,799 --> 00:24:12,880
the lives of Irish saints there's a great deal of

443
00:24:12,920 --> 00:24:16,759
what today we would probably call magical realism. And in

444
00:24:16,759 --> 00:24:22,240
the future I'll give examples of this where miraculous things happen,

445
00:24:22,319 --> 00:24:24,480
but we don't make a big deal about the miraculous

446
00:24:24,480 --> 00:24:28,640
things that are happening, because we expect miraculous things to happen,

447
00:24:29,000 --> 00:24:30,920
and in fact, it's not even accurate to call them

448
00:24:31,279 --> 00:24:34,119
miraculous the things that are.

449
00:24:34,400 --> 00:24:36,599
Speaker 2: You know, if the.

450
00:24:38,200 --> 00:24:43,079
Speaker 1: Nearby warlord butcher's your twenty cattle and you're really sad

451
00:24:43,119 --> 00:24:46,640
about this and everything, and you go to the hermit

452
00:24:46,680 --> 00:24:49,440
who lives nearby, of course that hermit is going to

453
00:24:50,160 --> 00:24:52,599
you know, raise those cattle up out of the cauldrons

454
00:24:52,640 --> 00:24:55,119
and they're going to run around alive. By the way,

455
00:24:55,119 --> 00:24:58,960
this sort of thing happens a lot in Irish hagiography. Yeah,

456
00:24:59,000 --> 00:25:04,319
with catalyts, animal resurrecting, resurrecting a cooked animal in specific

457
00:25:05,039 --> 00:25:07,039
like this is a this is a specific kind of

458
00:25:07,039 --> 00:25:10,359
miracle that shows up a lot of Irish and Celtic hagiography.

459
00:25:11,000 --> 00:25:12,960
Speaker 4: To admit that that's a new miracle for me, And.

460
00:25:13,000 --> 00:25:15,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's well there's some crazy ones in there. There's

461
00:25:15,200 --> 00:25:16,799
some in there. Again, I'm like, I'm not sure we

462
00:25:16,839 --> 00:25:18,880
can talk about this on you, but there's some.

463
00:25:19,200 --> 00:25:22,960
Speaker 3: There's some sat Nicholas who resurrects, like the pickled boys,

464
00:25:23,000 --> 00:25:25,200
like children, the cooked.

465
00:25:24,920 --> 00:25:30,359
Speaker 1: Animals, Yeah, cooked cooked animals. And it's always sometimes it's

466
00:25:30,440 --> 00:25:32,599
like the saint's own cattle, Like somebody gives the saint

467
00:25:32,680 --> 00:25:35,240
cattle to live off of while he's like, you know.

468
00:25:35,160 --> 00:25:36,799
Speaker 2: For milk and stuff because he's a hermit.

469
00:25:37,160 --> 00:25:39,160
Speaker 1: And then some warlord comes by and cooks them all

470
00:25:39,640 --> 00:25:41,599
and then he raises them sort of out of the pot,

471
00:25:41,640 --> 00:25:43,960
and then the warlord converts. This sort of thing happens.

472
00:25:44,359 --> 00:25:45,039
Speaker 2: It sounds a.

473
00:25:45,039 --> 00:25:49,160
Speaker 3: Little bit like that well idea of Thor's goats, right,

474
00:25:49,200 --> 00:25:51,799
that Thor has his own goats that he can eat,

475
00:25:51,799 --> 00:25:53,319
and then it just come back and it just like

476
00:25:53,440 --> 00:25:55,000
keeps eating them over and over.

477
00:25:56,119 --> 00:25:57,759
Speaker 2: I feel like at some point you get tired of goat.

478
00:25:57,799 --> 00:26:00,960
Speaker 1: But anyway, all right, yeah, I mean there there are

479
00:26:02,160 --> 00:26:06,160
there accounts like this are very common another very very

480
00:26:06,319 --> 00:26:10,440
kind of common miracle, and you know, at least that

481
00:26:10,519 --> 00:26:12,799
looms large in terms of the number of times that

482
00:26:12,839 --> 00:26:17,400
shows up in various hagiographies is the you know, the

483
00:26:17,480 --> 00:26:20,319
idea of someone it's always a young woman, like a virgin,

484
00:26:20,359 --> 00:26:23,400
being beheaded and then sort of like putting her head

485
00:26:23,440 --> 00:26:27,759
back on her shoulders and resurrecting her. Yeah, that's that's

486
00:26:27,799 --> 00:26:30,119
pretty common. But there's there's a lot of there's a

487
00:26:30,119 --> 00:26:32,839
lot of crazy miracles, and and one of the things

488
00:26:32,839 --> 00:26:35,160
that I like about Irish miracles is that they do

489
00:26:35,279 --> 00:26:38,160
very often sort of involve food, you know, food and drink,

490
00:26:38,759 --> 00:26:40,720
which seems really biblical in a certain sense.

491
00:26:40,759 --> 00:26:42,440
Speaker 2: There's a lot of miracles.

492
00:26:42,000 --> 00:26:43,720
Speaker 1: In the Bible that actually have to do with food,

493
00:26:44,319 --> 00:26:45,680
which is not an accident.

494
00:26:46,880 --> 00:26:48,000
Speaker 2: But I think that.

495
00:26:49,480 --> 00:26:53,599
Speaker 1: Because we live in modern times and we're so separated

496
00:26:53,720 --> 00:26:58,920
from the process of getting food, making food, you know,

497
00:26:59,519 --> 00:27:02,880
in the world, if you decided I would like a

498
00:27:02,920 --> 00:27:05,240
steak tonight. So for people don't know, we're recording this

499
00:27:06,200 --> 00:27:09,240
on the feast of the Door Mission, So for Orthodox

500
00:27:09,279 --> 00:27:11,119
Christians this means that we've just wrapped up like a

501
00:27:11,119 --> 00:27:13,079
two week long feast and I'm thinking, what are my

502
00:27:13,119 --> 00:27:15,759
plans for tonight. I want to rib buy tonight, That's

503
00:27:15,759 --> 00:27:18,279
what I want. I want to rib buy steak. Now

504
00:27:18,319 --> 00:27:19,839
I can just go down the store and buy ribb

505
00:27:19,839 --> 00:27:21,839
By steak. But in the ancient world, if you decided

506
00:27:22,720 --> 00:27:25,599
you want a rib by steak, then you have to

507
00:27:25,680 --> 00:27:29,039
kill an animal that you've been raising for this purpose.

508
00:27:29,480 --> 00:27:31,640
And once you kill that animal, you can't ever get

509
00:27:31,640 --> 00:27:34,480
anything out of that animal again. Right, So there's like

510
00:27:34,519 --> 00:27:38,759
a real lost economic opportunity that comes with the decision

511
00:27:38,759 --> 00:27:44,720
to kill something and eat it. And so it is

512
00:27:44,799 --> 00:27:47,720
very interesting to me that that so many biblical miracles

513
00:27:47,720 --> 00:27:49,960
in both Old and New Testament right have to do

514
00:27:50,039 --> 00:27:56,839
with food and the wondrous multiplication of food. In Ireland,

515
00:27:56,920 --> 00:27:58,839
they just took that personally and they were like, yeah,

516
00:27:58,920 --> 00:28:01,160
obviously this would be like your main kind of miracle

517
00:28:01,279 --> 00:28:03,079
is we have milk for a year, or we have

518
00:28:03,839 --> 00:28:06,240
you know, the cows come back to life after we've

519
00:28:06,240 --> 00:28:09,400
eaten them, and like all these other things, and so anyway,

520
00:28:09,480 --> 00:28:14,759
it's it's it's very interesting. We will probably do at

521
00:28:14,880 --> 00:28:18,279
least one dedicated video just just on the the life

522
00:28:18,319 --> 00:28:22,519
of Saint Brenda the Navigator, who's whose various versions of

523
00:28:22,519 --> 00:28:24,279
his tales are deeply wonderful, and.

524
00:28:25,680 --> 00:28:26,920
Speaker 2: I mean, you think about.

525
00:28:26,880 --> 00:28:31,359
Speaker 1: H just just just an episode like celebrating Pasca on

526
00:28:31,480 --> 00:28:33,880
the back of of of Leviathan.

527
00:28:34,119 --> 00:28:34,319
Speaker 2: Right.

528
00:28:34,359 --> 00:28:37,319
Speaker 1: So Leviathan, which you could say is a whale or whatever,

529
00:28:37,400 --> 00:28:38,920
but it's for them, it's not a whale. It's a

530
00:28:39,039 --> 00:28:42,680
it's Leviathan, right, It's a sea monster and it's amazing.

531
00:28:42,799 --> 00:28:46,160
Speaker 3: But because it has cognates like every culture like you have,

532
00:28:46,200 --> 00:28:49,000
there's version of that in sort of Alexander or like

533
00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:52,200
like Islamic stories about Simbad and everybody, like the idea

534
00:28:52,240 --> 00:28:54,400
that that that you're on the back of something and

535
00:28:54,400 --> 00:28:55,200
that it thends.

536
00:28:54,960 --> 00:28:56,400
Speaker 2: To be a monster.

537
00:28:56,640 --> 00:28:59,000
Speaker 1: But the fact that you can like celebrate pasca there

538
00:28:59,119 --> 00:29:03,000
like on the back of Leviathan, like that's that's pretty cool.

539
00:29:03,200 --> 00:29:05,799
That's an incredible moment. So there's all kinds of crazy

540
00:29:05,839 --> 00:29:09,000
things that I think are really kind of beautiful.

541
00:29:08,559 --> 00:29:10,519
Speaker 2: And unique and kind of weird and wonderful.

542
00:29:10,519 --> 00:29:12,960
Speaker 1: And this is the stuff that when you talk about

543
00:29:12,960 --> 00:29:16,200
Celtic Christianity, people are really into all this stuff because

544
00:29:16,200 --> 00:29:20,359
what they have is this impression that Celtic Christianity is

545
00:29:20,359 --> 00:29:24,480
going to be like kind of you see and kind

546
00:29:24,519 --> 00:29:27,480
of kind of like yeah, hippie Christianity and everything. And

547
00:29:28,119 --> 00:29:30,440
at this point, this is the turn in the video

548
00:29:31,039 --> 00:29:34,000
where we have to say nothing could be further from

549
00:29:34,000 --> 00:29:34,759
the truth.

550
00:29:38,599 --> 00:29:40,039
Speaker 2: Irish Christianity, which.

551
00:29:39,880 --> 00:29:43,279
Speaker 1: Has all these beautiful sort you could say, imaginative expressions

552
00:29:43,319 --> 00:29:47,440
that really go back to this experience of history as personal.

553
00:29:47,440 --> 00:29:50,440
It's always for them, history is always embodied in a person.

554
00:29:50,519 --> 00:29:53,000
So there's not a history of the period, there's just

555
00:29:53,039 --> 00:29:54,079
the life of Saint Brendan.

556
00:29:54,400 --> 00:29:54,599
Speaker 2: Right.

557
00:29:57,680 --> 00:30:03,839
Speaker 1: It is also one of the most rigorous, strict ascetic

558
00:30:05,079 --> 00:30:08,440
whatever you know, adjective you will to apply here forms

559
00:30:08,440 --> 00:30:12,039
of Christianity that existed in the early days of our faith.

560
00:30:13,359 --> 00:30:15,759
And this seems to actually also be the case for

561
00:30:15,839 --> 00:30:19,039
Syrian Christianity, by the way, very strict ascetic, even for

562
00:30:19,119 --> 00:30:22,440
late people, very very A lot of Syrians live very

563
00:30:22,680 --> 00:30:25,400
in fact, so strict and so ascetic that they actually

564
00:30:25,440 --> 00:30:27,599
add some councils how to say no, no, you guys need

565
00:30:27,640 --> 00:30:29,680
to actually get married, because we're gonna run out of

566
00:30:29,680 --> 00:30:32,799
people soon if you don't knock this, knock this right off, right,

567
00:30:34,119 --> 00:30:39,400
Because people were people were like upon their baptisms, taking

568
00:30:39,480 --> 00:30:42,200
vows of virginity, dressing in a white robe because they're reading,

569
00:30:42,240 --> 00:30:44,279
you know, Revelation and they're like, oh, Jesus is coming

570
00:30:44,319 --> 00:30:46,680
back soon, and so we're gonna we're gonna be here

571
00:30:46,720 --> 00:30:48,000
in our white robes and we're gonna be waiting, and

572
00:30:48,000 --> 00:30:50,039
eventually the church said to say, no, you guys have

573
00:30:50,119 --> 00:30:52,640
to get married because we're we got to have more

574
00:30:52,720 --> 00:30:57,039
Christians like like you know, and so, uh, this is

575
00:30:57,119 --> 00:30:59,519
this is kind of an interesting feature to me that

576
00:30:59,839 --> 00:31:02,920
you could say the most imaginative forms of Christianity. And

577
00:31:02,960 --> 00:31:04,519
I know there's somebody out there who's really upset with

578
00:31:04,519 --> 00:31:06,400
the way I'm using the word imagination right now, but

579
00:31:06,599 --> 00:31:08,119
I don't know how I was to say, you can

580
00:31:08,160 --> 00:31:12,240
say the most poetic whatever also tend to be the

581
00:31:12,359 --> 00:31:18,640
most rigorous. And there's certainly this idea as well that

582
00:31:19,319 --> 00:31:26,039
extreme places produce extreme kinds of Christianity. This is actually

583
00:31:26,079 --> 00:31:28,960
one of Chesterton's theses in I think it's in one

584
00:31:29,000 --> 00:31:32,599
of his father Brown mysteries, where he talks about like,

585
00:31:32,680 --> 00:31:36,559
you know, the Scottish, the dizzying heights of the Scottish

586
00:31:36,599 --> 00:31:39,839
Highlands producing the worst kind of Calvinism and things like this.

587
00:31:40,200 --> 00:31:47,480
Chesterton doesn't like Calvinism, but anyway, so all that to say,

588
00:31:47,519 --> 00:31:50,519
there is something to be said for the most extreme

589
00:31:50,599 --> 00:31:52,880
or most asthetic forms of Christianity tend to come out

590
00:31:52,920 --> 00:31:58,000
of where the Egyptian desert, right, the you know, like Siberia,

591
00:31:59,519 --> 00:32:02,640
the the far reaches of you know, the European continent

592
00:32:02,680 --> 00:32:05,599
like Ireland and so on and so forth. Like not,

593
00:32:05,839 --> 00:32:09,519
it's not to say that. And by the way, France

594
00:32:09,559 --> 00:32:11,160
has been in the news a lot lately, you guys

595
00:32:11,200 --> 00:32:14,240
can't say I didn't warn you. But it's not to

596
00:32:14,279 --> 00:32:17,359
say it's not to say that France or Gaul doesn't

597
00:32:17,519 --> 00:32:20,279
have its own share of wonderful, amazing saints like Saint

598
00:32:20,279 --> 00:32:23,079
Genevieve of Paris, who was who was such a great saint,

599
00:32:23,079 --> 00:32:23,720
by the way.

600
00:32:24,119 --> 00:32:26,000
Speaker 4: That we don't have a lot of extreme Christianity in

601
00:32:26,079 --> 00:32:26,759
southern France.

602
00:32:27,200 --> 00:32:29,079
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, that's that's what I'm trying to say. That's

603
00:32:29,079 --> 00:32:32,400
what I'm trying to say, like, like you know, with

604
00:32:32,400 --> 00:32:34,640
with notable exceptions like Saint Genevieve of Paris, who was

605
00:32:34,680 --> 00:32:36,640
such a famous saint in her day, by the way

606
00:32:36,640 --> 00:32:38,160
that Saint Simeon and the stylight like.

607
00:32:38,200 --> 00:32:40,720
Speaker 2: Preached about her. Oh wow. Yeah.

608
00:32:40,759 --> 00:32:43,480
Speaker 1: And in fact, if you go to Saint Genevieve's chapel

609
00:32:43,519 --> 00:32:45,519
there in Paris. Now, of course most of her relics

610
00:32:45,519 --> 00:32:49,839
were destroyed by the French Revolution, but they have. There's

611
00:32:49,839 --> 00:32:53,559
actually an icon of Saint Simeon at her at her

612
00:32:53,759 --> 00:32:57,200
grave there in Paris, Sat Simeon the stylight. So that's

613
00:32:57,200 --> 00:32:59,039
a good one if you're thinking about I need to

614
00:32:59,039 --> 00:33:01,200
work in a good friend Saint into God's Dog.

615
00:33:01,279 --> 00:33:03,880
Speaker 2: By the way, she was a contemporary of Saint Simians.

616
00:33:03,880 --> 00:33:08,519
Speaker 1: So anyway, but yeah, that that's what I'm really trying

617
00:33:08,519 --> 00:33:10,279
to say is like there's not a lot of famous

618
00:33:10,279 --> 00:33:12,640
asthetics in you know, like southern France.

619
00:33:12,680 --> 00:33:14,240
Speaker 2: And in fact, when you do have like.

620
00:33:14,240 --> 00:33:18,480
Speaker 1: A famous asthetics somewhere in for instance, Italy, they make

621
00:33:18,519 --> 00:33:19,400
a big deal about it.

622
00:33:19,400 --> 00:33:20,400
Speaker 2: That's the whole reason.

623
00:33:20,160 --> 00:33:23,200
Speaker 1: Sat Gregory the gaologist, you know, Saint Gregory, the Great

624
00:33:23,200 --> 00:33:25,920
public Rome. It's the whole reason he wrote the Dialogues

625
00:33:26,160 --> 00:33:29,559
is because you're like, no, no, Italians have had famous saints

626
00:33:29,599 --> 00:33:32,400
as well. It's the whole reason anybody remembers Saint Benedict,

627
00:33:33,559 --> 00:33:34,440
Saint Gregor.

628
00:33:34,160 --> 00:33:36,119
Speaker 2: Who was like, no, no, no, we actually.

629
00:33:35,759 --> 00:33:38,519
Speaker 1: Have a really great Italian assetic. Look, we can do

630
00:33:38,559 --> 00:33:41,680
it too, because because you know, Italy is just like

631
00:33:41,759 --> 00:33:44,920
a pleasant place, like it's pleasant places tend to just

632
00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:48,599
sort of produce pleasant people. I don't know how it's

633
00:33:48,640 --> 00:33:52,400
to say it, but but these extreme places, these extreme

634
00:33:52,440 --> 00:33:55,000
places do tend to produce kind of more extreme variants

635
00:33:55,000 --> 00:33:58,759
of Christianity. And I don't know if you have an

636
00:33:58,759 --> 00:34:01,880
answer for like what is connection why the connection between

637
00:34:02,400 --> 00:34:05,200
like the more imaginative poetic there a certain sense, you

638
00:34:05,200 --> 00:34:08,920
could even say, literal forms of Christianity and then the

639
00:34:09,039 --> 00:34:11,000
very like strict aesthetic rigor. I don't know if you

640
00:34:11,039 --> 00:34:13,280
have anything for that, but it's something that's bothered me

641
00:34:13,559 --> 00:34:15,519
and it seems to bother everybody else who studies this.

642
00:34:16,320 --> 00:34:22,320
Speaker 3: Well, there's definitely probably a relationship between the strictness of

643
00:34:22,360 --> 00:34:26,480
the Christianity and the miraculous that I think is something

644
00:34:26,519 --> 00:34:31,559
that's not that surprising, you know, because because deprivation caught

645
00:34:31,679 --> 00:34:33,039
brings about miracles.

646
00:34:33,199 --> 00:34:34,519
Speaker 4: You know, this is one of the.

647
00:34:34,440 --> 00:34:37,800
Speaker 3: Things that we've difficult for a secular person to understand.

648
00:34:37,840 --> 00:34:41,440
But anybody who's experienced it will know that in the

649
00:34:41,519 --> 00:34:45,320
moments when you have nothing, there is a far better

650
00:34:46,559 --> 00:34:49,320
possibility that you will experience a miracle because you basically

651
00:34:49,400 --> 00:34:52,599
are completely dependent on the grace of God. Like you

652
00:34:53,280 --> 00:34:56,320
you've you know that the secondary causes that you usually

653
00:34:56,360 --> 00:34:59,519
trust are not available to you. You know, and so

654
00:35:00,079 --> 00:35:04,280
there might be some of that that that's happening. And

655
00:35:04,320 --> 00:35:06,719
then but as for the so in some ways you

656
00:35:06,719 --> 00:35:09,480
would say that we maybe we see it imaginative, but

657
00:35:09,920 --> 00:35:13,119
maybe that's not the way that they see it. You know,

658
00:35:13,559 --> 00:35:17,440
it's more like for them, the rigor is equal to

659
00:35:17,480 --> 00:35:19,159
the miraculous, because.

660
00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:22,639
Speaker 2: You know, because how else would have happened exactly.

661
00:35:22,800 --> 00:35:27,599
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, you could say also like maybe just like

662
00:35:28,800 --> 00:35:32,760
extreme people are going to have extreme experiences something like this,

663
00:35:32,920 --> 00:35:34,920
It's like, yeah, might.

664
00:35:34,840 --> 00:35:37,400
Speaker 3: There might also be something about also the saints, if

665
00:35:37,440 --> 00:35:39,920
they live a very esthetic and rigorous life, that they

666
00:35:40,559 --> 00:35:44,760
also had more revelations and more kind of mystical experiences

667
00:35:44,800 --> 00:35:47,679
that would be difficult to translate, and maybe it would

668
00:35:47,679 --> 00:35:51,559
also translate themselves into stories that seem pretty wild to

669
00:35:51,679 --> 00:35:53,840
us at the outset. Just like when you read the

670
00:35:53,880 --> 00:35:57,039
Book of Revelation, you know, the way that it's described

671
00:35:57,119 --> 00:36:01,599
is really it's you know, it's it's very exploded to

672
00:36:01,639 --> 00:36:03,960
the to the to the mind of a of just

673
00:36:04,000 --> 00:36:06,480
someone reading it at the first level. And so that

674
00:36:06,559 --> 00:36:09,199
might also be be something that that was happening to

675
00:36:09,239 --> 00:36:09,760
the saying.

676
00:36:09,840 --> 00:36:12,119
Speaker 1: Can you imagine not growing up with the Bible and

677
00:36:12,119 --> 00:36:14,519
then you read something like the Epistle of James or

678
00:36:14,559 --> 00:36:17,400
something like, oh, this seems pretty reasonable, and then you

679
00:36:17,440 --> 00:36:22,159
flip the page and it's revelation. You're like, what is happening, right,

680
00:36:23,440 --> 00:36:27,199
Like coming into that like totally unarmed, totally unequipped. Oh

681
00:36:27,239 --> 00:36:29,679
my god, yeah, yeah, yeah, that'd be crazy.

682
00:36:29,920 --> 00:36:31,360
Speaker 4: So there might be some of that in the stories,

683
00:36:31,400 --> 00:36:32,800
like the fact that why the stories are so.

684
00:36:34,599 --> 00:36:36,119
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that even like.

685
00:36:36,079 --> 00:36:37,800
Speaker 3: The way that they're remembered, you know, I mean we

686
00:36:37,880 --> 00:36:40,599
have the same issue. I mean not issue, but like

687
00:36:40,639 --> 00:36:44,039
we have we have saint stories like our most Like

688
00:36:44,039 --> 00:36:45,800
if you take the story of Saint Mayor of Egypt

689
00:36:45,800 --> 00:36:49,519
for example, right, it's like that story the way that

690
00:36:49,519 --> 00:36:53,800
it's remembered, Right, it's remembered by the asthetics for quite

691
00:36:53,800 --> 00:36:57,599
a while before it's it's it's ever written down. So

692
00:36:57,599 --> 00:37:00,519
there's something about the manner in which the aesthetic remember

693
00:37:00,559 --> 00:37:03,360
it and how she becomes in Sant Sosi mouths become

694
00:37:04,000 --> 00:37:07,519
the shining kind of bright lights in the story itself.

695
00:37:07,559 --> 00:37:10,000
And so the fact that that, like I said, Ireland

696
00:37:10,039 --> 00:37:11,679
is so isolated in the fact that they have these

697
00:37:11,760 --> 00:37:15,440
kind of oral traditions, there's probably a refining process which

698
00:37:15,440 --> 00:37:17,039
also makes these stories more.

699
00:37:17,079 --> 00:37:19,679
Speaker 1: And even the fact that we read Saint Mary of

700
00:37:19,679 --> 00:37:24,519
Egypt's life liturgically like in a service during Lent, you know, twice,

701
00:37:25,119 --> 00:37:27,159
you know, once or twice a year, depending on your

702
00:37:27,199 --> 00:37:30,199
parish practice, but that the way that most of us

703
00:37:30,320 --> 00:37:31,559
encounter that story is orally.

704
00:37:32,119 --> 00:37:34,320
Speaker 4: Yeah right, yeah yeah.

705
00:37:34,559 --> 00:37:36,679
Speaker 1: So this kind of leads us to part two of

706
00:37:36,679 --> 00:37:39,239
this video, which is to talk about one of the

707
00:37:39,280 --> 00:37:43,519
more extreme things which came out of Ireland, and this

708
00:37:43,719 --> 00:37:49,599
is the popular medieval belief in purgatory. Now I've chosen

709
00:37:49,639 --> 00:37:54,760
my words carefully theology nerds I have. I didn't say

710
00:37:55,400 --> 00:37:58,599
the dogma of purgatory or the doctrine of purgatory. So

711
00:37:58,760 --> 00:38:03,760
the popular medieval belie about purgatory. So we'll talk about

712
00:38:03,760 --> 00:38:06,880
this some more when we get into our purgatorial class

713
00:38:07,280 --> 00:38:09,360
on Dante's Purgatory for those of you signed up for it.

714
00:38:10,320 --> 00:38:13,559
Literally as soon as I announced that, I had people

715
00:38:13,559 --> 00:38:16,079
coming at me on the Internet like, oh, your Orthodox,

716
00:38:16,119 --> 00:38:18,840
you shouldn't even be talking about purgatory, blah blah blah.

717
00:38:18,880 --> 00:38:20,639
So I want to sort of say a couple of

718
00:38:20,639 --> 00:38:22,760
little preparatory notes here. The first is that for those

719
00:38:22,800 --> 00:38:27,960
of us who come from strongly Protestant backgrounds, as you

720
00:38:27,960 --> 00:38:30,920
and I do. There's probably no teaching of the Roman

721
00:38:30,920 --> 00:38:33,320
Catholic Church except for maybe the veneration of the Mother

722
00:38:33,360 --> 00:38:35,800
of God, which is more you could say triggering in

723
00:38:35,840 --> 00:38:39,639
a sense, in the doctrine of purgatory. Right, we have

724
00:38:39,719 --> 00:38:44,480
this mythological moment, you know, the disputation between Johann Tetzel

725
00:38:44,599 --> 00:38:48,679
and Martin Luther, and it's one of the this is

726
00:38:48,760 --> 00:38:51,159
you know, according to our mythology, this is one of

727
00:38:51,159 --> 00:38:55,360
the major flash points of the Reformation. And there are

728
00:38:55,440 --> 00:39:00,000
also certain medieval expressions of this doctrine which were rejected

729
00:39:00,199 --> 00:39:03,239
by the Orthodox Church, notably by Saint Mark of Ephesus,

730
00:39:03,679 --> 00:39:06,199
who for the Orthodox Church is considered to be like

731
00:39:06,239 --> 00:39:11,559
one of the pillars of the faith. So what I

732
00:39:11,559 --> 00:39:14,440
want to say first of all is that if you're

733
00:39:14,559 --> 00:39:16,320
somebody who is like a really strong reaction to the

734
00:39:16,360 --> 00:39:22,760
word purgatory, especially as a modern person, especially if you're

735
00:39:22,960 --> 00:39:26,159
either a modern Roman Catholic or a modern procesct probably

736
00:39:26,159 --> 00:39:30,599
everything that you imagine purgatory is is wrong according to

737
00:39:30,679 --> 00:39:33,239
the twelfth century, which is what I'm going to be

738
00:39:33,280 --> 00:39:36,000
talking about now. So if I describe things to you

739
00:39:36,079 --> 00:39:39,840
from the popular medieval experience of purgatory in the twelfth century,

740
00:39:39,960 --> 00:39:41,760
and you're like, no, no, that's not right at all. That's

741
00:39:41,800 --> 00:39:44,360
not what the that's not what the Baltimore Catechism.

742
00:39:43,960 --> 00:39:44,880
Speaker 2: Says, or something like that.

743
00:39:45,800 --> 00:39:50,159
Speaker 1: I know, I know, I'm not coming at anybody, okay,

744
00:39:50,199 --> 00:39:53,079
but this is the this is what I'm really interested in,

745
00:39:53,960 --> 00:39:58,679
is the world of the Middle Ages and the idea

746
00:39:58,960 --> 00:40:01,159
of and in fact, I'm going to be sort of

747
00:40:01,199 --> 00:40:03,360
defending why this was like a reasonable thing for them

748
00:40:03,400 --> 00:40:07,360
to believe, even though it's not something that I personally believe,

749
00:40:07,360 --> 00:40:09,639
it's not something that my church teaches. But what I

750
00:40:09,679 --> 00:40:13,360
want to do is proceed from the assumption that our

751
00:40:13,400 --> 00:40:18,079
ancestors are not completely fools, that there are reasonable you know,

752
00:40:18,119 --> 00:40:20,519
that there are reasons right that it was reasonable for

753
00:40:20,559 --> 00:40:22,840
them to believe this in light of kind of what

754
00:40:22,880 --> 00:40:25,760
they'd received and what they experienced. So one of the

755
00:40:25,800 --> 00:40:29,280
things that kind of comes out of this period of

756
00:40:29,320 --> 00:40:33,400
the Irish penitentials, which which assign and these start sort

757
00:40:33,440 --> 00:40:36,039
of being written in the sixth century, and they basically

758
00:40:36,079 --> 00:40:40,599
assigned very strict discipline, very strict penances for different kinds

759
00:40:40,639 --> 00:40:44,880
of sins. And I could go into the specifics of this.

760
00:40:45,000 --> 00:40:47,800
It wouldn't maybe even be helpful to do so because

761
00:40:47,800 --> 00:40:49,559
it would probably scandalize some people.

762
00:40:49,800 --> 00:40:52,400
Speaker 4: But I'll give you an example, though, at least one example.

763
00:40:52,599 --> 00:40:54,079
Speaker 1: Well, I'll give you an example of something it's not

764
00:40:54,079 --> 00:40:56,559
even a penance, yeah, okay, And this is that in

765
00:40:57,079 --> 00:41:01,159
many Irish monasteries in the sixth century, the common practice

766
00:41:01,199 --> 00:41:06,039
was this is not lay people, this is monks. When

767
00:41:06,199 --> 00:41:11,960
somebody is tauntured as a monk, they're not even given

768
00:41:12,079 --> 00:41:14,639
communion the first Easter after their taunture.

769
00:41:14,920 --> 00:41:15,280
Speaker 2: Wow.

770
00:41:15,920 --> 00:41:20,280
Speaker 1: They receive communion only in the body the second taught

771
00:41:20,320 --> 00:41:23,440
Easter after their taunture, and they don't even receive communion

772
00:41:23,559 --> 00:41:27,119
in the blood until the third Easter after the taunture.

773
00:41:27,840 --> 00:41:30,199
So if this is the level of rigor and strictness

774
00:41:30,199 --> 00:41:34,039
that is being applied to monastics, you can well imagine

775
00:41:34,320 --> 00:41:36,320
what it was like to be a lay person in

776
00:41:36,320 --> 00:41:40,079
this context. I mean, to be totally honest, most of

777
00:41:40,159 --> 00:41:45,159
us would probably wither and die. This is very strict,

778
00:41:45,519 --> 00:41:49,320
a very very strict form of Christianity. It's not at

779
00:41:49,360 --> 00:41:53,199
all Lucy gucy. It is definitely not hippie Christianity. This

780
00:41:53,320 --> 00:41:55,559
is why I get a little annoyed, as somebody once

781
00:41:55,599 --> 00:41:59,280
told me that Celtic Christianity is like something of a

782
00:41:59,280 --> 00:42:01,480
wax nose. That is, people just shape it to be

783
00:42:01,519 --> 00:42:02,400
whatever they want it to do.

784
00:42:03,280 --> 00:42:05,760
Speaker 2: But I get really.

785
00:42:05,559 --> 00:42:08,559
Speaker 1: Annoyed with sort of like these new age like age

786
00:42:08,679 --> 00:42:11,239
come out and so on, and it's like, listen, you

787
00:42:11,280 --> 00:42:14,360
think anything you're doing, they would have the remotest patients

788
00:42:14,360 --> 00:42:17,079
for like these were These were serious people. And I

789
00:42:17,119 --> 00:42:20,159
don't say that to like judge them or say I

790
00:42:20,239 --> 00:42:22,760
know better than they do, because I know for a

791
00:42:22,880 --> 00:42:27,039
fact that I couldn't hack being a Christian in sixth

792
00:42:27,079 --> 00:42:29,639
century Ireland, right, I just don't have it in me.

793
00:42:30,000 --> 00:42:35,159
I'm I'm too comfortable, I'm too easy going, you know.

794
00:42:35,519 --> 00:42:37,800
Speaker 2: And and uh but there these are.

795
00:42:37,679 --> 00:42:40,559
Speaker 1: People who really loved rigor and who saw a rigor

796
00:42:40,599 --> 00:42:46,599
as as like a proof of sanctity, and so uh.

797
00:42:49,440 --> 00:42:54,039
All this to say, the the penitential tradition eventually results

798
00:42:54,599 --> 00:42:58,760
in kind of the popularizing of the idea of purgatory. Now,

799
00:42:58,840 --> 00:43:05,199
what I want to say is that, first of all,

800
00:43:05,719 --> 00:43:07,719
there's a long history in judy and I'm going to

801
00:43:07,760 --> 00:43:10,400
just throw this out here as a preparatory comment. You

802
00:43:10,440 --> 00:43:11,920
can come at me in the comments, but I'm not

803
00:43:11,960 --> 00:43:15,519
gonna argue with anybody, Okay. So there's a long history

804
00:43:15,519 --> 00:43:19,400
in Judaism and in Christianity of two ideas. The first

805
00:43:19,440 --> 00:43:22,480
is that when people die, they may undergo a period

806
00:43:22,519 --> 00:43:25,400
of purification. That is to say that this like not

807
00:43:25,559 --> 00:43:28,199
instant from this life to heaven or hell, but that

808
00:43:28,320 --> 00:43:32,159
sometimes there is an intermediary period. Now, maybe this period

809
00:43:32,239 --> 00:43:34,719
is forty days, maybe it's however long, but this is

810
00:43:35,920 --> 00:43:40,840
commonly believed in Judaism at the time that the New

811
00:43:40,880 --> 00:43:44,880
Testament is written, Okay, and there are hints of this,

812
00:43:45,000 --> 00:43:50,679
even things like Lazarus Lazarus's in a Resurrection. The second

813
00:43:50,800 --> 00:43:53,400
is the idea that the prayers of the living are

814
00:43:53,440 --> 00:43:57,280
in some way efficacious to the souls of the dead. Now,

815
00:43:58,000 --> 00:44:01,159
this was something that was practiced in ancient Judaism, is

816
00:44:01,159 --> 00:44:03,519
something that was practiced in Christianity all the way up

817
00:44:03,559 --> 00:44:04,639
to the Protestant Reformation.

818
00:44:06,559 --> 00:44:07,719
Speaker 2: You can argue about whether or not.

819
00:44:07,719 --> 00:44:09,360
Speaker 1: It's biblical, whether or not you want to do it,

820
00:44:09,360 --> 00:44:11,039
whether or not it makes you feel weird, whether or not

821
00:44:11,039 --> 00:44:14,800
it's necromancer or whatever. But the thing that I'm trying

822
00:44:14,800 --> 00:44:17,400
to say is that these are two sort of universal

823
00:44:17,440 --> 00:44:21,039
assumptions in the ancient world, right, and there's sort of

824
00:44:21,079 --> 00:44:24,400
things that from an Orthodox perspective, there's no question about this, right,

825
00:44:24,480 --> 00:44:27,679
this is something that all ancient Christian traditions agree about.

826
00:44:28,199 --> 00:44:29,719
Speaker 3: But the thing is the thing I mean, but it

827
00:44:29,840 --> 00:44:33,360
is a thing in orthodox tradition, which in my impression

828
00:44:33,360 --> 00:44:37,360
of it is that it's definitely not fixed. Like, you know,

829
00:44:38,480 --> 00:44:41,239
people fublish these big books about what happens after death

830
00:44:41,760 --> 00:44:44,320
and then everybody is like, yeah.

831
00:44:44,199 --> 00:44:48,360
Speaker 1: Maybe, you know, I mean, the big question is always

832
00:44:48,400 --> 00:44:50,880
like what do you actually do? Right if somebody dies,

833
00:44:51,000 --> 00:44:52,679
how do you how do you treat that person when

834
00:44:52,679 --> 00:44:53,159
they die?

835
00:44:53,599 --> 00:44:54,880
Speaker 2: Well, if somebody dies.

836
00:44:54,679 --> 00:44:59,480
Speaker 1: And you you you know, like prayers for the passage

837
00:44:59,480 --> 00:45:01,599
of the soul and then third Day prayers and four

838
00:45:01,719 --> 00:45:04,719
and you know, forty day prayers and annual remembrances and

839
00:45:04,760 --> 00:45:05,360
things like this.

840
00:45:05,760 --> 00:45:07,679
Speaker 2: Then then you know, what are you saying.

841
00:45:07,719 --> 00:45:10,159
Speaker 1: You're saying that we think this is doing something because

842
00:45:10,199 --> 00:45:13,679
we know that God loves us, yeah, and it doesn't

843
00:45:13,679 --> 00:45:15,639
want anybody to perish. And beyond that, you know, like

844
00:45:15,719 --> 00:45:17,920
who can really say like where this person is right now,

845
00:45:18,559 --> 00:45:20,239
By the time that we say somebody is a saint,

846
00:45:20,280 --> 00:45:22,960
it sort of means that we're like, we we're pretty

847
00:45:22,960 --> 00:45:24,599
sure we should stop praying for them and they should

848
00:45:24,599 --> 00:45:26,760
start praying for us, now, right, That's really That's really

849
00:45:26,800 --> 00:45:29,239
all we're kind of saying. And I think there's there's

850
00:45:29,280 --> 00:45:31,480
been a shift. I mean, again, I'm not a Roman Catholic,

851
00:45:31,519 --> 00:45:38,440
and I'm really chary of mis representing people, you know,

852
00:45:38,480 --> 00:45:40,760
and so I don't want to mis represent like modern

853
00:45:40,880 --> 00:45:43,639
Roman Catholic teaching about this and I but I the

854
00:45:43,639 --> 00:45:45,920
impresson I've gotten from talking to Roman Catholics is is

855
00:45:46,000 --> 00:45:48,119
like things have sort of moved in a direction that's

856
00:45:48,119 --> 00:45:50,440
more similar to that. But anyway, I don't know so

857
00:45:50,519 --> 00:45:52,559
much about that. I'm going to talk right now about

858
00:45:52,719 --> 00:45:55,480
twelfth century Catholicism, which is something I know a lot about.

859
00:45:56,039 --> 00:45:59,119
So by the twelfth century, this idea of like a

860
00:45:59,719 --> 00:46:04,599
perative interlude, or this idea of like purification after death right,

861
00:46:04,719 --> 00:46:07,760
which is basically just the idea that whatever state your

862
00:46:07,800 --> 00:46:10,039
soul is in when you die, what doesn't change immediately

863
00:46:10,559 --> 00:46:13,800
when you die, like there might still be some purification necessary. Well,

864
00:46:13,880 --> 00:46:17,679
this is developed into the concept of a third state

865
00:46:18,519 --> 00:46:25,119
and in many cases a physical location, which is one

866
00:46:25,119 --> 00:46:29,440
of the things Saint uh, Saint Mark of ephesis specifically

867
00:46:29,519 --> 00:46:31,960
rejected by the way, and modern realman Catholics will say,

868
00:46:31,960 --> 00:46:33,960
we don't teach it's a physical all right.

869
00:46:33,800 --> 00:46:34,280
Speaker 2: That's great.

870
00:46:34,679 --> 00:46:36,400
Speaker 1: I'm just talking about the twelfth century right now.

871
00:46:36,480 --> 00:46:41,559
Speaker 3: So wait, let me just asked this question though, So

872
00:46:41,639 --> 00:46:43,559
in the twelfth century, did they also believe in the

873
00:46:43,599 --> 00:46:45,360
physical location for.

874
00:46:45,599 --> 00:46:49,559
Speaker 1: Hell in popular imagination?

875
00:46:49,760 --> 00:46:50,320
Speaker 2: Definitely?

876
00:46:50,960 --> 00:46:53,519
Speaker 4: Well, that's fine parquay imagination, you know, is.

877
00:46:54,119 --> 00:46:56,920
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean sort of like nailing down nailing down.

878
00:46:56,840 --> 00:46:58,239
Speaker 2: Like what are what's is there?

879
00:46:58,960 --> 00:47:01,199
Speaker 1: Okay, So here's the thing. The twelfth century, there's not

880
00:47:01,280 --> 00:47:04,519
really such a thing as like unofficial teaching, right, I mean,

881
00:47:04,559 --> 00:47:06,559
you do have bishops, you'd have the pope who like

882
00:47:06,679 --> 00:47:11,400
does like say things, you know, but like the situation

883
00:47:11,519 --> 00:47:13,000
now where you can be like, oh no, I can

884
00:47:13,000 --> 00:47:14,880
go to a website and look up the official teaching

885
00:47:14,920 --> 00:47:17,760
of the of the subject, that situation does not exist

886
00:47:17,760 --> 00:47:20,800
in the twelfth century. In the twelfth century, the official

887
00:47:20,800 --> 00:47:23,039
position of the Catholic Church is whatever your parish priest

888
00:47:23,079 --> 00:47:27,639
says it is right, because how else would you know right?

889
00:47:28,320 --> 00:47:35,199
And this is really important because basically what happens is

890
00:47:35,239 --> 00:47:37,880
by the twelfth century, the concept of purgatory is developed

891
00:47:37,920 --> 00:47:41,039
across the medieval West to be this idea of a

892
00:47:41,079 --> 00:47:44,840
third state, to be the idea of a physical location,

893
00:47:45,000 --> 00:47:50,360
usually with physical fire and other torments, right, And this

894
00:47:50,480 --> 00:47:53,679
is definitely the way that it was thought of in

895
00:47:53,719 --> 00:47:59,960
the popular imagination, and these various torments there's sometimes generalize

896
00:48:00,039 --> 00:48:02,719
as fire, but actually they're much more specific than that,

897
00:48:03,079 --> 00:48:06,320
and they're much more graphic than that in sort of

898
00:48:06,400 --> 00:48:10,679
popular and even visionary literature of the time, and the

899
00:48:10,719 --> 00:48:15,000
official position at the time was that these torments are purgative,

900
00:48:15,119 --> 00:48:18,840
purgative rather than punitive. That is, the point of the

901
00:48:18,880 --> 00:48:22,159
torments is to purify you rather than punish you. But

902
00:48:22,280 --> 00:48:26,559
that does not really make them any less grim. So

903
00:48:27,280 --> 00:48:31,000
late medieval and and to sort of understand how this

904
00:48:31,119 --> 00:48:35,119
sort of developed, you would say that late medieval preachers

905
00:48:35,119 --> 00:48:37,840
and moralists really fear. I mean, it's it's the problem

906
00:48:37,840 --> 00:48:41,840
you always face anytime you have a a anominally Christian society.

907
00:48:41,880 --> 00:48:43,880
Actually the Puritans dealt with this in New England as well.

908
00:48:43,880 --> 00:48:47,400
It's not specific to Catholicism. It's a problem anytime you

909
00:48:47,480 --> 00:48:51,159
have a society where you know it's it's stopped being

910
00:48:51,199 --> 00:48:54,079
like the Church versus the world, and it's actually just

911
00:48:54,119 --> 00:48:57,199
become like everything is everybody's at least nominally in the church. Now,

912
00:48:57,719 --> 00:48:59,880
then like how do you keep people from coasting?

913
00:49:00,320 --> 00:49:00,760
Speaker 4: Yeah?

914
00:49:00,880 --> 00:49:03,760
Speaker 1: Right, because eighty percent of people, no matter what your

915
00:49:03,760 --> 00:49:06,760
religion is, will always coast. So it's like how do

916
00:49:06,840 --> 00:49:11,000
we how do we how do we keep people from coasting?

917
00:49:11,039 --> 00:49:14,000
And so there were people who were would sometimes like

918
00:49:14,119 --> 00:49:18,440
live a very indifferent spirit life spiritually speaking, but then

919
00:49:18,480 --> 00:49:22,199
they would leave these huge legacies, right basically in their will,

920
00:49:22,239 --> 00:49:23,920
they'd give a bunch of money to a church or

921
00:49:23,920 --> 00:49:25,960
to build a new church, or to say so many masses,

922
00:49:26,079 --> 00:49:28,239
or to put up a new root screen or something

923
00:49:28,280 --> 00:49:30,960
like this. So basically it would sort of like the ideas, well,

924
00:49:30,960 --> 00:49:32,880
maybe that will kind of like even things out a

925
00:49:32,920 --> 00:49:35,639
little bit. And Protestants will say this is a problem

926
00:49:35,679 --> 00:49:40,039
with Catholicism. Catholics said, this is a problem, right, this

927
00:49:40,119 --> 00:49:41,679
is this is not how it's supposed to be. You're

928
00:49:41,719 --> 00:49:43,719
supposed to live a life of faithfulness, you know, from

929
00:49:43,760 --> 00:49:48,599
your baptism until your death. And so a lot of

930
00:49:48,599 --> 00:49:51,519
people sort of maybe thought at this time of purgatory

931
00:49:51,519 --> 00:49:54,480
as being kind of like the soft option over and

932
00:49:54,519 --> 00:49:56,360
against hell. It's like, well, I wasn't good enough to

933
00:49:56,360 --> 00:49:58,679
be a saint, but at least I'm not going to Hell.

934
00:49:58,760 --> 00:49:59,840
Speaker 2: I'm going to the third place.

935
00:50:00,000 --> 00:50:02,480
Speaker 1: And then eventually, once they spend enough time there whatever

936
00:50:02,519 --> 00:50:05,480
it's like a little you know, quarantine or whatever, then.

937
00:50:05,400 --> 00:50:08,960
Speaker 2: I get to go to heaven. And so a lot

938
00:50:09,000 --> 00:50:10,000
of medieval.

939
00:50:09,639 --> 00:50:12,639
Speaker 1: Preachers really saw this kind of this idea of incomplete

940
00:50:12,679 --> 00:50:16,840
repentance as being actually not genuine at all, and so

941
00:50:16,880 --> 00:50:22,000
the focus of most medieval purgatorial literature is on trying

942
00:50:22,039 --> 00:50:24,360
to make people avoid it as much as you want

943
00:50:24,400 --> 00:50:27,639
to avoid hell. And the way that they do this

944
00:50:28,280 --> 00:50:33,960
is by describing the miseries of purgatory not to just

945
00:50:34,039 --> 00:50:36,159
curdle the blood and impress the spirit, but to stir

946
00:50:36,280 --> 00:50:39,920
the living to action, and so to get you to

947
00:50:40,079 --> 00:50:42,639
live a life of mortification, to get you to live

948
00:50:42,639 --> 00:50:46,239
a life of penance, alms giving, good works, and to

949
00:50:46,280 --> 00:50:49,360
do these things in a time of prosperity, rather than

950
00:50:49,440 --> 00:50:52,840
as you could say, to use a nice Baptist phrase,

951
00:50:53,280 --> 00:50:54,679
rather than as fire insurance.

952
00:50:55,440 --> 00:50:56,639
Speaker 2: Right, So.

953
00:50:59,639 --> 00:51:02,920
Speaker 1: This results in medieval descriptions of purgatory being pretty extreme.

954
00:51:03,320 --> 00:51:04,159
Speaker 2: I'll read you one.

955
00:51:04,599 --> 00:51:06,440
Speaker 1: It's not from Ireland, but it is from the North.

956
00:51:07,159 --> 00:51:10,679
This is from Bridget of Sweden, who's a medieval Catholic

957
00:51:11,639 --> 00:51:16,039
visionary saint, has a lot of the more kind of

958
00:51:16,280 --> 00:51:19,079
extreme like I had a vision and the Virgin Mary

959
00:51:19,119 --> 00:51:20,960
told me, if you pray these three prayers, then.

960
00:51:20,840 --> 00:51:22,239
Speaker 2: You'll be delivered from X, Y, and Z.

961
00:51:22,679 --> 00:51:25,400
Speaker 1: You know, those kind of like very formulate visions. And

962
00:51:25,440 --> 00:51:27,360
again I'm not trying to rag on anybody here, but

963
00:51:28,000 --> 00:51:34,639
some of this, some of Bridget's revelations and things like

964
00:51:34,639 --> 00:51:37,880
this are like really out there. So this is her

965
00:51:37,920 --> 00:51:41,000
description of and this is actually only a part of

966
00:51:41,119 --> 00:51:43,639
I picked the part that I thought would be not

967
00:51:43,719 --> 00:51:47,719
get your video demonetized. So then the thought that there

968
00:51:47,800 --> 00:51:50,360
was a band bound around his head so tight and

969
00:51:50,400 --> 00:51:53,079
painfully that the forehead on the top of the ears

970
00:51:53,760 --> 00:51:56,800
had met together. The eyes were hanging out on the cheeks,

971
00:51:56,800 --> 00:51:59,679
the ears as though they had been burnt off with fire.

972
00:52:00,119 --> 00:52:02,239
The brain burst out at the nostrils and ears. The

973
00:52:02,280 --> 00:52:04,880
tongue hung out, and the teeth were broken together. The

974
00:52:04,920 --> 00:52:07,599
bones and the arms were broken and woven as a rope.

975
00:52:07,880 --> 00:52:08,599
Speaker 2: The skin was.

976
00:52:08,519 --> 00:52:10,400
Speaker 1: Pulled off the head and bound around the neck. The

977
00:52:10,440 --> 00:52:13,719
breasts and the womb were thrown together in Middle English.

978
00:52:13,800 --> 00:52:16,239
This is they were told slung in together, which is

979
00:52:16,239 --> 00:52:19,320
my favorite way to say things. It's Middle English. And

980
00:52:19,320 --> 00:52:21,280
the ribs were broken that one might see the heart

981
00:52:21,320 --> 00:52:23,679
and bowels. The shoulders were broken and hung down to

982
00:52:23,719 --> 00:52:26,239
the sides, and the bones were drawn out as though

983
00:52:26,239 --> 00:52:28,039
they were a thread of cloth. This is like the

984
00:52:28,119 --> 00:52:34,239
least graphic part of her description of purgatory. Of purgatory,

985
00:52:34,840 --> 00:52:38,360
this is a place where saved people go, and it

986
00:52:38,440 --> 00:52:42,119
is a thing to remember. Everybody in purgatory is already saved.

987
00:52:42,400 --> 00:52:44,840
This is being sort of prepared for heaven. But this

988
00:52:44,920 --> 00:52:48,159
is how she's describing it, like it's really it's really

989
00:52:48,199 --> 00:52:52,800
graphic stuff. To put it bluntly, you could say that

990
00:52:52,800 --> 00:52:55,039
accounts of purgatory in the Middle Ages are actually more

991
00:52:55,159 --> 00:53:00,480
often they're more graphic graphic than we would depict Hewll today. Again,

992
00:53:00,840 --> 00:53:03,159
we just don't have the stomach to hang with these people.

993
00:53:03,639 --> 00:53:05,440
Right again, if I say all these things, I'm not

994
00:53:05,440 --> 00:53:08,920
saying it to mock. I'm not saying it to you know,

995
00:53:09,000 --> 00:53:10,920
even point out being like, oh no, I'm the Christian

996
00:53:10,920 --> 00:53:12,880
that has it figured out, not all these medieval people.

997
00:53:13,119 --> 00:53:14,199
Speaker 2: I'm not that guy at all.

998
00:53:14,679 --> 00:53:18,760
Speaker 1: Like I readily recognize that I could not keep up

999
00:53:19,360 --> 00:53:20,159
with these people.

1000
00:53:20,599 --> 00:53:24,239
Speaker 4: Right, that's in pretty intense stuff.

1001
00:53:24,440 --> 00:53:25,639
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's intense stuff.

1002
00:53:25,679 --> 00:53:29,039
Speaker 1: And historian Eman Duffy, who's written a lot of great

1003
00:53:29,039 --> 00:53:32,199
stuff about like sort of Paris life in the Middle Ages,

1004
00:53:32,480 --> 00:53:35,599
he says that these depictions are, to quote him more often,

1005
00:53:35,920 --> 00:53:39,079
in fact, circumstantial treatises on the nature of avoidance of

1006
00:53:39,119 --> 00:53:41,239
the deadly sins which were their cause. So the thing

1007
00:53:41,239 --> 00:53:43,360
you're really supposed to see with these depictions of purgatory,

1008
00:53:43,599 --> 00:53:45,639
So the person that I just described, this is from

1009
00:53:46,039 --> 00:53:49,159
Bridget's vision. And this not Bridget, say, Bridge of Kildare.

1010
00:53:49,159 --> 00:53:52,159
This is Bridge of Sweden. This is the vision of

1011
00:53:52,199 --> 00:53:55,039
a soul that's guilty of lies and pride, by the way,

1012
00:53:55,079 --> 00:53:57,840
So just little things, you know, just little things like

1013
00:53:57,880 --> 00:54:01,159
lies and pride. But the point is you're supposed to

1014
00:54:01,280 --> 00:54:04,039
it's really supposed to sort of help you see what

1015
00:54:04,119 --> 00:54:09,320
the sin is, because most medieval Christians didn't think of

1016
00:54:09,360 --> 00:54:12,280
themselves as going to hell. Right, Hell is for you know,

1017
00:54:12,360 --> 00:54:15,519
the infiddle, the reprobate, you know, like for it's for like,

1018
00:54:15,679 --> 00:54:18,480
you know, people who like totally reject God. That doesn't

1019
00:54:18,480 --> 00:54:21,199
actually describe most people in the Middle ages.

1020
00:54:21,440 --> 00:54:23,440
Speaker 2: And uh and and so.

1021
00:54:25,480 --> 00:54:27,960
Speaker 1: This description of purgatory, right, it's meant to sort of

1022
00:54:28,000 --> 00:54:31,079
motivate those people to not coast, to not kind of

1023
00:54:31,119 --> 00:54:34,199
like sit on their hands and you know, have a

1024
00:54:34,199 --> 00:54:36,960
great death bed conversion experience and whatever else, but actually

1025
00:54:37,159 --> 00:54:39,159
to get up now and do the work of being

1026
00:54:39,199 --> 00:54:43,400
a Christian. So, as I mentioned though, there's an Irish

1027
00:54:43,400 --> 00:54:47,119
connection in all of this. So the idea of purgatory,

1028
00:54:47,639 --> 00:54:49,960
like there's the idea of of a of a of

1029
00:54:50,000 --> 00:54:52,440
a time of purification after death again has been there

1030
00:54:52,480 --> 00:54:54,880
since the beginning of Christianity, because it's also there in

1031
00:54:55,000 --> 00:54:57,400
jude In you know, predates us in Judaism.

1032
00:54:57,480 --> 00:54:58,599
Speaker 4: Yeah, maybe not.

1033
00:54:58,800 --> 00:55:01,400
Speaker 3: I want to say something about this, yeah, because you know,

1034
00:55:01,599 --> 00:55:03,639
it's really important, like you said, to be able to

1035
00:55:03,920 --> 00:55:09,719
understand the stakes of the notion of this time of purgation.

1036
00:55:10,119 --> 00:55:13,199
And it has to do with the fact that this

1037
00:55:13,360 --> 00:55:17,960
ontological reality of being saved, that is that the notion

1038
00:55:18,159 --> 00:55:21,920
for traditional Christians and for orthodox today you are what

1039
00:55:22,079 --> 00:55:25,599
you are. So it's like you it's not the idea

1040
00:55:25,599 --> 00:55:27,519
that Okay, so I'm I'm going to die and then

1041
00:55:27,519 --> 00:55:29,679
all of a sudden, I'm going to become something else

1042
00:55:29,960 --> 00:55:32,119
and I'm gonna totally now, all of a sudden, I'm

1043
00:55:32,119 --> 00:55:35,119
going to be in the glorious presence of God. You know,

1044
00:55:35,159 --> 00:55:37,599
It's like, no if I even if I die, whatever

1045
00:55:37,880 --> 00:55:41,400
state I'm in and whatever reality that I am, my

1046
00:55:41,559 --> 00:55:43,920
being is in. That is who I am, and therefore

1047
00:55:45,000 --> 00:55:48,599
that is what will continue on after life. And so people,

1048
00:55:48,679 --> 00:55:53,199
I think reasonably could see that, well, how could I,

1049
00:55:53,360 --> 00:55:56,360
let's say, as someone who knows that I'm still dealing

1050
00:55:56,360 --> 00:55:59,079
with sin, still dealing with all these things. How could

1051
00:55:59,159 --> 00:56:02,480
this person who I'm told is not going to go

1052
00:56:02,519 --> 00:56:04,840
to hell because I do believe, you know, I you know,

1053
00:56:04,880 --> 00:56:06,719
I do love God. I love my neighbor to some

1054
00:56:06,760 --> 00:56:10,280
extent like I I I trust in that in that

1055
00:56:10,400 --> 00:56:13,800
in that connection, how what what happens to me? Because

1056
00:56:13,800 --> 00:56:17,280
I know that I won't be like Saint, like Saint Paul,

1057
00:56:17,880 --> 00:56:20,639
like I won't be like the great the great Mystics,

1058
00:56:20,679 --> 00:56:22,920
And so how do I account for that? And what

1059
00:56:22,920 --> 00:56:26,039
does that mean for the for my for my the

1060
00:56:26,079 --> 00:56:28,280
continuation of my being. So it's not like I said,

1061
00:56:28,320 --> 00:56:31,559
it's not There's something really reasonable and it really kind

1062
00:56:31,559 --> 00:56:36,280
of down to earth in trying to figure out what

1063
00:56:36,320 --> 00:56:39,239
are these what what does this intermediary state look like,

1064
00:56:39,360 --> 00:56:41,760
because the other solution to it is that, oh so

1065
00:56:41,800 --> 00:56:44,920
it's a mediocre intermediate means that I'm just going to

1066
00:56:44,960 --> 00:56:48,800
basically be me in this state of kind of semi

1067
00:56:49,239 --> 00:56:51,639
whatever sainthood for eternity.

1068
00:56:52,199 --> 00:56:55,079
Speaker 4: Like that's it. That's that might be the other possibility.

1069
00:56:55,360 --> 00:56:57,760
Speaker 1: And what I want to say is nobody should want

1070
00:56:57,840 --> 00:57:00,480
that exactly, Like you should not get it. If you

1071
00:57:00,559 --> 00:57:01,880
get up in the morning and you look in the

1072
00:57:01,880 --> 00:57:04,039
mirror and you're like, this is the person I want

1073
00:57:04,079 --> 00:57:09,199
to be for all eternity, something is very wrong because

1074
00:57:09,199 --> 00:57:12,400
even very holy people don't think that way. That's right, Yeah, exactly,

1075
00:57:12,840 --> 00:57:14,840
all right, So yeah, all this to say like this,

1076
00:57:15,360 --> 00:57:18,800
so that is there from the beginning of the Christian

1077
00:57:19,360 --> 00:57:23,760
faith and experience what sort of develops in the Middle

1078
00:57:23,800 --> 00:57:27,800
Ages and it is really popularized, really comes out of Ireland,

1079
00:57:27,840 --> 00:57:30,440
comes out of this penal tradition. Is this idea of

1080
00:57:30,519 --> 00:57:37,000
purgatory as a specific location with specific torments for specific sins. Okay, So,

1081
00:57:37,159 --> 00:57:41,519
and this is related to the visionary tradition of Christianity

1082
00:57:41,559 --> 00:57:44,239
and ancient Judaism, where of depicting Hell in this way

1083
00:57:44,239 --> 00:57:46,280
that you get in the Book of Enoch even in

1084
00:57:46,280 --> 00:57:48,559
the Book of Revelation to some extent, and also in

1085
00:57:48,880 --> 00:57:51,639
like Third Zras and so on. But this, this idea

1086
00:57:51,639 --> 00:57:53,679
of sort of purgatory is like a third location that's

1087
00:57:53,679 --> 00:57:56,400
maybe like adjacent to Hell but not quite you know, Hell,

1088
00:57:56,960 --> 00:57:59,159
but it still has kind of this different kinds of

1089
00:57:59,159 --> 00:58:02,000
sins or within different kinds of places or different kinds

1090
00:58:02,000 --> 00:58:05,800
of ways. This this is tied to this, you know,

1091
00:58:05,920 --> 00:58:08,159
very much tied to this Irish penal tradition, and it's

1092
00:58:08,280 --> 00:58:14,239
very much tied to a very important location called the

1093
00:58:14,280 --> 00:58:19,440
Purgatory of Saint Patrick. So, uh, this is on an island.

1094
00:58:19,880 --> 00:58:20,679
Speaker 2: It's located on.

1095
00:58:20,639 --> 00:58:25,400
Speaker 1: Station Island in Loch There and it's a so there's

1096
00:58:25,679 --> 00:58:27,559
basically an island on a lake in the middle of

1097
00:58:27,559 --> 00:58:34,519
Ireland in what's currently Northern Ireland, and there's a there's

1098
00:58:34,519 --> 00:58:39,679
actually there's a church there. And there's several versions of this,

1099
00:58:39,920 --> 00:58:42,079
of the several accounts of the story, and basically the

1100
00:58:42,119 --> 00:58:44,679
story goes something like Saint Patrick the Salmon of Heaven.

1101
00:58:45,320 --> 00:58:48,360
Case I didn't mention that it's my favorite epithet for him,

1102
00:58:48,360 --> 00:58:50,039
so I just like to say it every time Patrick

1103
00:58:50,199 --> 00:58:52,239
the Salmon of Heaven. That's how he's always introduced in

1104
00:58:52,280 --> 00:58:57,639
like Irish stories when when Saint Patrick was dealing with

1105
00:58:58,079 --> 00:59:00,559
you could say, like some doubt about his is his

1106
00:59:00,760 --> 00:59:03,320
role or the you know, whether or not even in

1107
00:59:03,480 --> 00:59:05,079
any of this is kind of working. And so he's

1108
00:59:05,119 --> 00:59:07,400
shown he's taken to this island in the middle of

1109
00:59:07,400 --> 00:59:10,920
the lake, and he's shown an entrance into purgatory so

1110
00:59:10,960 --> 00:59:14,239
that he can see kind of like you know, basically,

1111
00:59:14,920 --> 00:59:18,239
it's a visionary experience, Like most visionary experiences in the

1112
00:59:18,320 --> 00:59:22,239
Christian tradition, it's something that's intended to strengthen the prophet's faith,

1113
00:59:22,599 --> 00:59:24,760
right that he's going through a period of doubt, and

1114
00:59:24,840 --> 00:59:27,800
so he's shown a foretaste of the next life, the

1115
00:59:28,000 --> 00:59:30,679
torment of sinners, the state of purgatory, and the and

1116
00:59:30,679 --> 00:59:33,639
then the bliss of the righteous. And then this develops

1117
00:59:33,639 --> 00:59:35,440
into a bunch of other stories, the most famous of

1118
00:59:35,480 --> 00:59:38,760
which is the Tale of the Night Owen, which is

1119
00:59:38,800 --> 00:59:41,679
sometimes which which in the or the Vision of Sir Owen,

1120
00:59:41,880 --> 00:59:46,239
which in the twelfth century circulated as the Tractatis de

1121
00:59:46,360 --> 00:59:52,840
Purgatorio Sancte Patrici Patricki, which is which was translated into

1122
00:59:52,920 --> 00:59:55,440
almost every medieval language. There's a Middle English version that

1123
00:59:55,440 --> 00:59:58,719
there's also like a Hungarian version of it, right, translated

1124
00:59:58,719 --> 01:00:02,079
into basically every medieval laning, which which means that this

1125
01:00:02,159 --> 01:00:03,280
is popular reading.

1126
01:00:03,440 --> 01:00:05,000
Speaker 2: This is what lay people are reading.

1127
01:00:05,039 --> 01:00:07,559
Speaker 1: This is like a work of devotions, not just for

1128
01:00:07,639 --> 01:00:11,079
clerics or and it is fundamentally, I have to say,

1129
01:00:11,519 --> 01:00:17,079
not a theological but there's not a dogmatic text. It's

1130
01:00:17,079 --> 01:00:18,440
not a theological text, right.

1131
01:00:18,480 --> 01:00:19,440
Speaker 2: What it is.

1132
01:00:19,679 --> 01:00:23,400
Speaker 1: An imaginative text. And it tells the story of Sir Owen,

1133
01:00:25,599 --> 01:00:30,599
who is a sinful knight who decides to be purged

1134
01:00:30,599 --> 01:00:33,719
of his sins by entering into Saint Patrick's purgatory, which

1135
01:00:33,760 --> 01:00:37,920
is this terrestrial entrance into purgatory. And by the way,

1136
01:00:38,000 --> 01:00:41,119
his bishop explicitly tells him, don't do this. You won't

1137
01:00:41,159 --> 01:00:43,280
be able to hack it, you won't be able to survive,

1138
01:00:43,519 --> 01:00:45,119
and he decides to do it anyway.

1139
01:00:45,599 --> 01:00:47,000
Speaker 2: And it's very.

1140
01:00:46,880 --> 01:00:49,480
Speaker 1: Notable that in all of these kind of medieval depictions,

1141
01:00:49,760 --> 01:00:53,000
popular medieval depictions of purgatory, you get to purgatory by

1142
01:00:53,000 --> 01:00:57,840
going down right. Purgatory is part of the underworld. This

1143
01:00:57,840 --> 01:01:01,559
will be important when we come to Dante in a minute.

1144
01:01:02,480 --> 01:01:05,519
Purgatory is I think, as Eamon Duffy describes it, it's

1145
01:01:05,519 --> 01:01:09,960
an outpatient department of hell. Basically, it's full of demons

1146
01:01:09,960 --> 01:01:12,719
who are there to tempt and torment you. And in fact,

1147
01:01:12,719 --> 01:01:15,599
according to some medieval writers, the only difference between Helen

1148
01:01:15,639 --> 01:01:22,920
Purgatory is the duration of the torments. Torment in hell

1149
01:01:23,079 --> 01:01:27,320
lasts forever torment and purgatory just lasts into you're purified.

1150
01:01:27,480 --> 01:01:29,559
But that's the only difference. Everything else is the same.

1151
01:01:30,320 --> 01:01:33,119
That's according to like a lot of medieval writers. So

1152
01:01:33,320 --> 01:01:36,079
after being given some instructions by monks who maybe also

1153
01:01:36,159 --> 01:01:39,559
might be angels, it's a little unclear. In the story,

1154
01:01:39,599 --> 01:01:41,840
Sir Owen descends into purgatory, which turns out to be

1155
01:01:41,960 --> 01:01:44,840
the sort of desolate wasteland in which there is no

1156
01:01:45,119 --> 01:01:48,800
kind of comfort but hunger and thirst and cold. No

1157
01:01:48,960 --> 01:01:51,679
trees grow here, only cold wind blows here.

1158
01:01:52,079 --> 01:01:52,719
Speaker 2: And then there are.

1159
01:01:52,599 --> 01:01:56,079
Speaker 1: These fields, and each one of the fields punishes a

1160
01:01:56,079 --> 01:01:59,360
different kind of sin, or purifies people from a different

1161
01:01:59,440 --> 01:02:01,079
kind of sin, if you to think about it this way.

1162
01:02:01,320 --> 01:02:03,800
So the field of the slowful is strewn with the

1163
01:02:03,840 --> 01:02:06,440
bodies of men and women who are dismembered and mutilated,

1164
01:02:06,519 --> 01:02:10,159
lying face down, begging for mercy. It's really graphic. This

1165
01:02:10,239 --> 01:02:11,920
is the very first sort of image you get in

1166
01:02:11,960 --> 01:02:15,639
the poem. These are the slowful, who basically, in their

1167
01:02:15,639 --> 01:02:19,119
wounded state, they're unable to help themselves. There's the field

1168
01:02:19,159 --> 01:02:21,800
of the gluttonous, which is men and women lying face up,

1169
01:02:22,440 --> 01:02:25,719
pinned with glowing hot nails through their feet and hands

1170
01:02:25,719 --> 01:02:30,559
and head. They're being sat upon by huge dragons.

1171
01:02:29,920 --> 01:02:31,239
Speaker 2: And toads and snakes.

1172
01:02:32,079 --> 01:02:34,559
Speaker 1: There's the field of the lustful, which are basically people

1173
01:02:34,599 --> 01:02:36,480
being torn out by demons wielding hooks. By the way,

1174
01:02:36,480 --> 01:02:38,159
this is where they try to get Owen. The demons

1175
01:02:38,199 --> 01:02:39,920
try to get them, because this is one of the

1176
01:02:39,960 --> 01:02:40,800
things he struggled with.

1177
01:02:41,800 --> 01:02:43,079
Speaker 2: There's the field of the thieves.

1178
01:02:43,639 --> 01:02:45,079
Speaker 4: Was that a night you know?

1179
01:02:45,360 --> 01:02:46,039
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's a knight.

1180
01:02:46,159 --> 01:02:49,320
Speaker 1: I mean it's I mean, that's That's the other subtext

1181
01:02:49,360 --> 01:02:51,679
for this is that it's very much it's very clear,

1182
01:02:52,119 --> 01:02:55,760
at least in the Middle English rendering of the story

1183
01:02:56,119 --> 01:02:58,800
that Sir Owen is a he's like a knight in

1184
01:02:58,840 --> 01:03:01,440
the courtly tradition, like it was sort of an Arthurian knight, right,

1185
01:03:01,480 --> 01:03:04,360
And that's you know, very clear that he so he

1186
01:03:04,440 --> 01:03:07,880
struggles with nightly sins. He doesn't struggle with sloth and gluttony,

1187
01:03:08,159 --> 01:03:11,719
because those aren't cool sins. But he struggles with he

1188
01:03:11,760 --> 01:03:17,320
struggles with lust, and he also struggles with I think covetous, yes,

1189
01:03:17,760 --> 01:03:20,119
you know, which is which is itself like an expression

1190
01:03:20,159 --> 01:03:23,119
of blust. There's the field of the lustful people who

1191
01:03:23,119 --> 01:03:25,320
are torn up by demons wielding hooks. The field of

1192
01:03:25,360 --> 01:03:28,519
the thieves, where these people are hanging by burning iron

1193
01:03:28,519 --> 01:03:30,760
hooks from their feet, neck and belly, they're lying on

1194
01:03:30,840 --> 01:03:32,679
burning gridirons.

1195
01:03:31,960 --> 01:03:32,440
Speaker 2: Et cetera.

1196
01:03:33,039 --> 01:03:36,400
Speaker 1: There's the field of backbiters, gossipers, and liars. These are

1197
01:03:36,400 --> 01:03:39,199
people who and also, by the way, people who falsely

1198
01:03:39,239 --> 01:03:41,960
swear on relics, which is a very particular kind of

1199
01:03:42,000 --> 01:03:45,039
Middle Aged sin. Actually I say that, but nowadays we

1200
01:03:45,079 --> 01:03:48,440
still like made people swear on a Bible in court.

1201
01:03:48,519 --> 01:03:51,440
Where do you guys think that comes from? In the

1202
01:03:51,440 --> 01:03:53,679
Middle Ages, people used to swear on relics or on

1203
01:03:53,719 --> 01:03:56,079
the Gospel book, right, and we still make people swear

1204
01:03:56,079 --> 01:03:58,760
in a Bible because and there is this sort of like,

1205
01:03:59,199 --> 01:04:01,599
you know, sense that oh, well, now I have to

1206
01:04:01,639 --> 01:04:03,840
really be honest. Actually you should be honest all the time.

1207
01:04:04,960 --> 01:04:09,440
But the idea that you're bringing is something holy, right now,

1208
01:04:09,480 --> 01:04:11,440
makes the oath like more binding a certain way. So

1209
01:04:11,440 --> 01:04:12,840
people who falsely squear and relics.

1210
01:04:13,360 --> 01:04:13,519
Speaker 2: Uh.

1211
01:04:13,559 --> 01:04:15,519
Speaker 1: There, and these people are, you know, the people who

1212
01:04:15,840 --> 01:04:18,159
have sinned with or deceived with their tongue. They're hanging

1213
01:04:19,119 --> 01:04:21,920
by their tongues by like burning hooks, like through their tongues,

1214
01:04:21,960 --> 01:04:25,239
just hanging by their tongues, you know. And there's the

1215
01:04:25,280 --> 01:04:27,920
field of the covetists. These are people who are bound

1216
01:04:27,920 --> 01:04:31,119
to hooks to a great wheel and basically hooks, a

1217
01:04:31,159 --> 01:04:33,000
lot of hooks, a lot of There are a lot

1218
01:04:33,000 --> 01:04:35,400
of hooks in this Uh. There are a lot of

1219
01:04:35,400 --> 01:04:40,639
hooks in this poem. You could even call them plot hooks.

1220
01:04:43,039 --> 01:04:45,960
There's there's the in the field of the Covetanists. They're

1221
01:04:45,960 --> 01:04:48,159
bound by hooks to these great wheels, and the wheels

1222
01:04:48,159 --> 01:04:51,280
are are spinning, so they're like constantly being crushed by

1223
01:04:51,320 --> 01:04:51,760
the wheels.

1224
01:04:51,760 --> 01:04:52,800
Speaker 2: That's over again.

1225
01:04:53,079 --> 01:04:55,440
Speaker 1: But then the wheels are also being struck by lightning,

1226
01:04:55,719 --> 01:05:00,119
which constantly like burns up the souls to powder, I

1227
01:05:00,199 --> 01:05:02,960
don't know. And the demons trying to get owen again

1228
01:05:03,000 --> 01:05:05,440
here and then finally he comes to like this blood

1229
01:05:05,480 --> 01:05:07,880
red mountain on which there are men and women standing

1230
01:05:07,920 --> 01:05:10,800
and there's this stinking river flowing under it, and Owen

1231
01:05:10,880 --> 01:05:12,639
is thrown into the river and he's taken to the

1232
01:05:12,679 --> 01:05:15,320
next location of torment, which is this hall where usurers

1233
01:05:15,719 --> 01:05:17,679
and other kinds of people who send with money are

1234
01:05:17,679 --> 01:05:22,480
basically tormented by being immersed in pits of molten precious metals.

1235
01:05:23,400 --> 01:05:28,639
And as you do, and then after this, you know,

1236
01:05:28,679 --> 01:05:31,000
the demons make one last attempt to drag him down

1237
01:05:31,039 --> 01:05:34,199
into the pit of Hell. And the idea is that,

1238
01:05:34,239 --> 01:05:36,519
you know, beneath the stinking river there's an entrance to Hell,

1239
01:05:36,599 --> 01:05:39,159
so like Hell in purgatory are adjacent places.

1240
01:05:39,079 --> 01:05:41,880
Speaker 4: Yeah, and trying to pull him into Hell.

1241
01:05:42,000 --> 01:05:44,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, So there's like this danger that he's in purgatory,

1242
01:05:44,280 --> 01:05:45,760
but he could be pulled down to Hell if he

1243
01:05:45,800 --> 01:05:51,519
doesn't fight, And and so throughout the poem, Sir Owen

1244
01:05:51,679 --> 01:05:56,079
survives the various torments of the demons by by calling

1245
01:05:56,119 --> 01:05:57,920
upon the name of Jesus Christ and by calling on

1246
01:05:58,000 --> 01:06:01,000
the version Mary. And eventually he calls upon Christ, who

1247
01:06:01,000 --> 01:06:04,199
winens the bridge across the river far enough enough for

1248
01:06:04,280 --> 01:06:08,559
him to cross, and then he enters leaving purgatory, enters

1249
01:06:08,559 --> 01:06:11,000
the earthly paradise again. This will be important as we

1250
01:06:11,079 --> 01:06:14,840
read Dante. Yeah, he enters the earthly Paradise, which is

1251
01:06:14,880 --> 01:06:17,039
where he both recovers from the pains of purgatory, but

1252
01:06:17,039 --> 01:06:21,199
he's also granted a vision of heaven, of the heavenly Paradise,

1253
01:06:21,760 --> 01:06:24,280
and the earthly paradise is at once both the Garden

1254
01:06:24,360 --> 01:06:27,320
of Eden but also kind of like the Celtic residence

1255
01:06:27,400 --> 01:06:29,559
of the Blessed. It's kind of both of those things

1256
01:06:29,599 --> 01:06:32,960
at the same time. And Owen is given this like

1257
01:06:33,079 --> 01:06:35,519
mann alike food of Paradise, and then he's returned to

1258
01:06:35,559 --> 01:06:38,239
the world. This time he actually has to return through purgatory,

1259
01:06:38,280 --> 01:06:39,880
but this time he comes back to the demons just

1260
01:06:39,920 --> 01:06:43,280
run away from him, and there he lived out the

1261
01:06:43,280 --> 01:06:44,599
rest of his life. And at the end of the

1262
01:06:44,599 --> 01:06:47,079
poem there's an explanation from these two archbishops that he

1263
01:06:47,079 --> 01:06:51,599
meets there in the Earthly Paradise of basically how purgatory

1264
01:06:51,639 --> 01:06:54,440
works and the way, including the ways that those living

1265
01:06:54,440 --> 01:06:56,719
on earth can lessen the pains of the relative suffering

1266
01:06:56,760 --> 01:07:00,719
there by praying and doing good work on their behalf.

1267
01:07:01,280 --> 01:07:04,079
Speaker 2: And so along with another.

1268
01:07:03,880 --> 01:07:06,199
Speaker 1: Very similar Irish tale that also involves a night kind

1269
01:07:06,199 --> 01:07:08,800
of going through a vision of the underworld. This the

1270
01:07:08,880 --> 01:07:14,559
tractatus was widely circulated and medieval Western Europe. Dante would

1271
01:07:14,639 --> 01:07:20,920
certainly have read it. And what the really interesting thing

1272
01:07:21,199 --> 01:07:26,760
about Dante's depiction of purgatory is how radically different it

1273
01:07:26,880 --> 01:07:31,840
is from every medieval depiction that came before him. For Dante,

1274
01:07:31,880 --> 01:07:35,559
purgatory is not an anti chamber of Hell. It's not

1275
01:07:35,599 --> 01:07:38,679
an outpatient, you know, like sen you know, clinic for Hell,

1276
01:07:38,719 --> 01:07:42,079
but it's the anti chamber of heaven. And for Dante,

1277
01:07:42,159 --> 01:07:46,320
purgatory is an assent, not a descent. It's for Dante,

1278
01:07:46,360 --> 01:07:49,559
it's about purification, it's not about torment. And so Dante

1279
01:07:49,599 --> 01:07:52,559
does all these things that actually really rehabilitates purgatory in

1280
01:07:52,599 --> 01:07:55,639
the popular consciousness. Of course, a bunch of things come

1281
01:07:55,679 --> 01:07:58,760
along later, the Reformation, Tetsel, all that stuff. Not going

1282
01:07:58,840 --> 01:08:00,679
to really get into that so much. In the class,

1283
01:08:01,159 --> 01:08:03,400
I would just say that, you know, even Roman Catholics

1284
01:08:03,400 --> 01:08:06,400
at the time really rejected a lot of what Tetsil

1285
01:08:06,480 --> 01:08:06,800
was saying.

1286
01:08:06,840 --> 01:08:09,719
Speaker 2: But you know, anyway, the rest is history.

1287
01:08:10,119 --> 01:08:13,199
Speaker 1: So the thing that I really wanted to accomplish was

1288
01:08:13,239 --> 01:08:15,760
to was to talk about this one specific vision of

1289
01:08:15,840 --> 01:08:20,319
Celtic Christianity, and as an example of the ways that

1290
01:08:21,319 --> 01:08:25,039
like the asceticism, the the you know, the kind of

1291
01:08:25,039 --> 01:08:28,039
the penal tradition that came out of Ireland had a

1292
01:08:28,119 --> 01:08:35,479
very strong effect in medieval Western culture and and was was.

1293
01:08:36,880 --> 01:08:38,199
Speaker 2: Really not what a lot of.

1294
01:08:38,199 --> 01:08:42,039
Speaker 1: People typically associate with like Ireland or Celtic Christianity today,

1295
01:08:42,079 --> 01:08:46,439
but it was very imaginative, miraculous, wondrous, et cetera. But

1296
01:08:46,479 --> 01:08:52,399
it's also extremely ascetic, extremely asthetic, extremely focused on you know,

1297
01:08:52,479 --> 01:08:55,039
your job really as a Christian in this tradition is

1298
01:08:55,079 --> 01:08:58,079
to focus on your sin and to ask God to

1299
01:08:58,119 --> 01:09:01,760
help deliver you from it, because even purgatory is not

1300
01:09:01,840 --> 01:09:03,359
a place where you want to stay.

1301
01:09:03,680 --> 01:09:06,199
Speaker 3: So all right, so we so I want to I

1302
01:09:06,239 --> 01:09:08,760
want to really I want to really push this. I

1303
01:09:08,800 --> 01:09:13,000
want to really try to give the best defense I

1304
01:09:13,159 --> 01:09:14,520
have for purgatory.

1305
01:09:14,640 --> 01:09:17,239
Speaker 1: Let's go, you know, And the reason I joked earlier

1306
01:09:17,279 --> 01:09:19,760
by the way that this video would make nobody happy,

1307
01:09:20,079 --> 01:09:22,039
because like it's going to take off the Protestants, all

1308
01:09:22,039 --> 01:09:24,239
the Catholics are but you guys are getting purgatory wrong.

1309
01:09:24,399 --> 01:09:26,359
And then also like Ortho Brows are going to be

1310
01:09:26,359 --> 01:09:28,720
angry that we here trying to defend it as a

1311
01:09:28,720 --> 01:09:29,840
reasonable proposition.

1312
01:09:29,880 --> 01:09:31,960
Speaker 2: But going with you.

1313
01:09:32,039 --> 01:09:34,439
Speaker 3: So the reason why I want to do this is

1314
01:09:34,479 --> 01:09:38,680
mostly because you know, I I really but I do.

1315
01:09:38,760 --> 01:09:40,560
Speaker 4: I do believe. I believe that.

1316
01:09:42,840 --> 01:09:45,640
Speaker 3: These realities are realities that we deal with now. I

1317
01:09:45,640 --> 01:09:48,640
don't believe in the idea that when we talk about

1318
01:09:49,000 --> 01:09:51,960
the afterlife, that we're only talking about what happens to you

1319
01:09:52,039 --> 01:09:52,800
after you die.

1320
01:09:53,079 --> 01:09:53,600
Speaker 2: That's right.

1321
01:09:53,640 --> 01:09:56,960
Speaker 3: The afterlife is revealing to us is in some ways

1322
01:09:57,359 --> 01:09:59,920
the truest pattern of reality because in some ways it

1323
01:10:00,000 --> 01:10:03,000
it's an unlimited version of things that we deal with now,

1324
01:10:03,039 --> 01:10:05,439
which is why that the descriptions.

1325
01:10:05,000 --> 01:10:07,840
Speaker 1: It's like looking at the final state of everything, right, exactly,

1326
01:10:07,640 --> 01:10:11,079
the end of the why that's why it's last things right.

1327
01:10:11,199 --> 01:10:11,439
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1328
01:10:11,479 --> 01:10:12,880
Speaker 3: So that's the way that I that's the way that

1329
01:10:12,880 --> 01:10:17,640
I understand, and that's why I try to help. I

1330
01:10:18,119 --> 01:10:20,039
hope that it can help us actually understand the things

1331
01:10:20,039 --> 01:10:25,159
that we're going through now. And So the reality of sin, okay,

1332
01:10:25,960 --> 01:10:29,720
is that it makes you suffer. Okay, That's the reality

1333
01:10:29,760 --> 01:10:31,760
of sin because what it does, if you think of

1334
01:10:31,920 --> 01:10:35,359
the easiest ones are, for example, like let's say, carnal desires,

1335
01:10:35,479 --> 01:10:39,119
whichever ones you imagine, like those carnal desires, they make

1336
01:10:39,159 --> 01:10:42,479
you suffer because they make you desire something and in

1337
01:10:42,600 --> 01:10:45,640
the in the the the grasping for it, right and

1338
01:10:45,680 --> 01:10:48,359
the kind of pulling it towards you. You know what

1339
01:10:48,439 --> 01:10:50,840
it does is it throws you back into a cycle

1340
01:10:50,880 --> 01:10:53,760
of suffering because it then opens up the space of

1341
01:10:53,800 --> 01:10:56,000
that desire again, and then you're kind of in this

1342
01:10:56,039 --> 01:11:01,119
weird loop where you desire it. When you have it,

1343
01:11:00,079 --> 01:11:04,680
it's it lasts a fleeting second, and then it throws

1344
01:11:04,720 --> 01:11:08,319
you back into that kind of cycle of despondency and desire.

1345
01:11:08,439 --> 01:11:08,640
Speaker 4: Right.

1346
01:11:08,880 --> 01:11:11,600
Speaker 3: So, obviously an addict is the easiest way to understand

1347
01:11:11,600 --> 01:11:13,920
it because it's so, it's so, it's such an extreme

1348
01:11:14,000 --> 01:11:19,239
version of it. Now, when that happens, you have two

1349
01:11:19,399 --> 01:11:23,600
choices in dealing with the suffering that sin causes in

1350
01:11:23,640 --> 01:11:28,520
your life, and one is torment and the other is purgation.

1351
01:11:29,000 --> 01:11:31,960
Those are the two possibilities you have. Which is that

1352
01:11:32,119 --> 01:11:37,439
is actually the reason you could say why sin causes suffering,

1353
01:11:38,319 --> 01:11:45,279
because the suffering is an opportunity for repentance every time,

1354
01:11:45,800 --> 01:11:49,680
So like every time you lie, and then the lie

1355
01:11:50,079 --> 01:11:54,039
causes pain and suffering and chaos in your life, whether

1356
01:11:54,119 --> 01:11:58,279
it breaks your relationships, whether it destroys your credibility, whether

1357
01:11:58,359 --> 01:12:02,520
it does all these things that lie does. Now you

1358
01:12:02,560 --> 01:12:05,319
have you have two choices in front of you. One

1359
01:12:05,560 --> 01:12:10,199
is you're basically going to just suffer and be tormented

1360
01:12:10,239 --> 01:12:14,079
by the results of your sin, or that if that

1361
01:12:14,520 --> 01:12:19,399
suffering will be an opportunity for repentance and transformation of

1362
01:12:19,439 --> 01:12:22,520
the person. So it's really important to understand this because

1363
01:12:22,520 --> 01:12:24,840
a lot of people they're like, well, what is this

1364
01:12:24,880 --> 01:12:30,520
horrible idea that people are being tortured in purgatory and

1365
01:12:30,560 --> 01:12:34,720
why does it causes purgation? Well, you can experience that

1366
01:12:34,960 --> 01:12:39,680
every day of your life, every time you sin, because,

1367
01:12:39,720 --> 01:12:41,560
like I said, those two choices are there in.

1368
01:12:41,479 --> 01:12:41,920
Speaker 2: Front of you.

1369
01:12:42,279 --> 01:12:47,159
Speaker 3: So to me, it's not a surprise that based on

1370
01:12:47,600 --> 01:12:51,800
our experience of sin and an experience of how it

1371
01:12:51,960 --> 01:12:55,920
brings death to us, right, how it causes things to

1372
01:12:55,960 --> 01:12:59,640
break down, it causes you know, chaos and conflicts and

1373
01:12:59,680 --> 01:13:02,720
all these things in our life that people would would

1374
01:13:03,359 --> 01:13:08,239
notice that when that happens, there are two possibilities, right,

1375
01:13:08,680 --> 01:13:12,159
One is to use it as a springboard towards transformation.

1376
01:13:12,319 --> 01:13:14,640
So that's why that's like I'm not saying I'm not

1377
01:13:14,680 --> 01:13:17,560
trying to defend the doctrine of the but I'm trying

1378
01:13:17,560 --> 01:13:20,960
to help people understand why people would come to that conclusion.

1379
01:13:20,960 --> 01:13:23,159
It's not just like they're a bunch of Sado massacres

1380
01:13:23,319 --> 01:13:25,880
or they just like they have this idea that you

1381
01:13:25,880 --> 01:13:28,680
have to punish yourself because you're because you've sinned all

1382
01:13:28,720 --> 01:13:29,600
that kind of stuff.

1383
01:13:29,720 --> 01:13:30,640
Speaker 4: That's not what it's about.

1384
01:13:31,079 --> 01:13:32,880
Speaker 1: And by the way, most of that kind of thing

1385
01:13:32,920 --> 01:13:34,840
happened not in the Middle Ages, that happened in the

1386
01:13:34,840 --> 01:13:37,039
Renaissance and like the counter Reformation.

1387
01:13:37,159 --> 01:13:39,840
Speaker 2: But anyway, anyway, what what what kind of thing?

1388
01:13:40,079 --> 01:13:45,000
Speaker 1: Oh just like like like uh, really extreme forms of

1389
01:13:45,000 --> 01:13:46,960
of like self fulation, self lulation.

1390
01:13:47,199 --> 01:13:48,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, not really an the deevil thing.

1391
01:13:50,319 --> 01:13:52,039
Speaker 1: I mean, people can if you want to know, like

1392
01:13:52,039 --> 01:13:54,680
the Orthodox kind of response to all this, you can

1393
01:13:54,720 --> 01:13:56,840
read Saint marco ephesis. The thing that he mainly seems

1394
01:13:56,880 --> 01:13:59,720
to have rejected is the idea of like a definite

1395
01:14:00,720 --> 01:14:03,840
location with literal fire, right, That's sort of the things

1396
01:14:05,199 --> 01:14:05,960
And I also.

1397
01:14:05,800 --> 01:14:07,920
Speaker 3: Like, I don't even know what that means, Like I

1398
01:14:07,960 --> 01:14:11,640
don't know, well what like what that what? Because you

1399
01:14:11,640 --> 01:14:13,920
would even like even if the if the Catholics had

1400
01:14:13,920 --> 01:14:17,399
this idea of like a location where you're physically suffering

1401
01:14:17,399 --> 01:14:19,840
I don't even know what that means. Who's what's suffering

1402
01:14:19,920 --> 01:14:22,800
your body is in the tomb. So I don't know

1403
01:14:22,840 --> 01:14:24,560
what a literal I don't know what that means.

1404
01:14:25,119 --> 01:14:28,279
Speaker 1: But I think that I think that, Yeah, like I said,

1405
01:14:28,319 --> 01:14:30,640
I it's not something I'm hugely interested in arguing with

1406
01:14:30,680 --> 01:14:33,119
like Catholics about, because I think we mostly agree, honestly

1407
01:14:33,199 --> 01:14:36,880
about the the the the idea that yeah, some kind

1408
01:14:36,880 --> 01:14:39,600
of you know, I sure hope, you know, if I

1409
01:14:39,640 --> 01:14:42,840
were to die today, you know, I sure hope that

1410
01:14:42,880 --> 01:14:43,479
there would be.

1411
01:14:45,199 --> 01:14:45,880
Speaker 2: Purification.

1412
01:14:45,960 --> 01:14:49,239
Speaker 1: I hope I you know, I there's there's a person

1413
01:14:49,279 --> 01:14:50,840
I need to be, and there's a person I am

1414
01:14:50,920 --> 01:14:53,680
right now, and and I hope that I'll be able

1415
01:14:53,720 --> 01:14:55,960
to continue to kind of grow into that. And you know,

1416
01:14:56,359 --> 01:14:58,760
like I would, I hope for all those things. Yeah,

1417
01:14:58,760 --> 01:15:00,920
but the things that I would. The thing that I

1418
01:15:00,960 --> 01:15:03,520
would want to say, though, is to what you just said,

1419
01:15:04,199 --> 01:15:06,600
if you think back from them about what I said

1420
01:15:06,720 --> 01:15:12,000
about the ancient imagination, but the Irish imagination in particular, which.

1421
01:15:11,880 --> 01:15:12,880
Speaker 2: Is very.

1422
01:15:15,840 --> 01:15:18,560
Speaker 1: This is not quite right, okay, but just go with me,

1423
01:15:18,720 --> 01:15:21,920
like hyper literal, yeah, right, in the way that it's

1424
01:15:22,159 --> 01:15:26,720
very literally focused on kind of this literal experience of

1425
01:15:26,880 --> 01:15:29,640
the things that we would call supernatural. Right, you can

1426
01:15:29,720 --> 01:15:33,560
see how they'd get to a point where it's saying, oh,

1427
01:15:33,960 --> 01:15:36,520
when I experienced sin like this in my life right now,

1428
01:15:37,199 --> 01:15:40,600
that's you know, there's this toad sitting on me. Right,

1429
01:15:40,640 --> 01:15:45,439
there's this there's this you know, demon like everything.

1430
01:15:45,399 --> 01:15:49,079
Speaker 3: Between even for them, like they experience and that we

1431
01:15:49,119 --> 01:15:52,880
would consider would call like anxiety or you know, all

1432
01:15:52,920 --> 01:15:55,359
these things that they're that they're so real that they

1433
01:15:55,520 --> 01:15:59,000
that they become and they become embodied like the.

1434
01:15:59,680 --> 01:16:00,319
Speaker 4: The the.

1435
01:16:02,279 --> 01:16:05,720
Speaker 3: Width between indiannalogy is so thin, Like for us, it's

1436
01:16:05,760 --> 01:16:08,239
really thick, but for them, it's so thin that there's

1437
01:16:08,239 --> 01:16:09,239
no other way to say it.

1438
01:16:09,359 --> 01:16:11,439
Speaker 1: And part of the reason it's so thick for us

1439
01:16:11,520 --> 01:16:15,119
is because we've done so much to take various anxieties

1440
01:16:15,119 --> 01:16:18,119
and psychoses and everything else and sort of say, oh,

1441
01:16:18,159 --> 01:16:21,239
this is just a biological problem, or it's a chemistry problem,

1442
01:16:21,319 --> 01:16:22,720
or it's like this o, you know, this that and

1443
01:16:22,760 --> 01:16:24,640
the other thing, and it may be some combination of

1444
01:16:24,680 --> 01:16:27,920
all of those things, but it's but there is a

1445
01:16:27,960 --> 01:16:30,399
spiritual component to these things, and we've sort of like

1446
01:16:30,520 --> 01:16:34,720
relegated that to the background, right, And so it makes

1447
01:16:34,760 --> 01:16:38,359
us difficult to think about this until something happens in

1448
01:16:38,399 --> 01:16:41,079
your life and you have like a genuine encounter with

1449
01:16:41,119 --> 01:16:44,079
the demonic, right, which which is which is the thing

1450
01:16:44,119 --> 01:16:46,560
that people have, And I think usually when that happened,

1451
01:16:46,600 --> 01:16:49,119
there's there's some kind of clarity that goes in. But

1452
01:16:49,159 --> 01:16:52,359
that that person who has that kind of encounter is

1453
01:16:52,399 --> 01:16:54,720
also the person who tends to be like going to

1454
01:16:54,720 --> 01:16:59,079
be like the most hyper rigorous Christian that you know, right,

1455
01:16:59,199 --> 01:17:00,720
And to kind of go back to what we're saying,

1456
01:17:00,760 --> 01:17:03,279
like part of that is just the fact that everything

1457
01:17:03,319 --> 01:17:07,239
is so deeply real to them, right that there's no

1458
01:17:08,439 --> 01:17:12,159
you know, there's no space for kind of like ambiguits

1459
01:17:12,560 --> 01:17:16,840
and ambiguity. Sorry. So yeah, So anyway, all this to say,

1460
01:17:18,119 --> 01:17:19,960
all this to say, Dante's going to do something really

1461
01:17:20,039 --> 01:17:24,239
unique with purgatory, which is to actually reveal it to

1462
01:17:24,319 --> 01:17:26,680
be exactly what Jonathan just said it was, which is

1463
01:17:28,079 --> 01:17:31,600
not just this, here's the thing that you better avoid

1464
01:17:31,640 --> 01:17:36,079
when you die, but rather to show it as this

1465
01:17:36,159 --> 01:17:39,439
is the experience of the Christian life lived now, which

1466
01:17:39,479 --> 01:17:45,439
is a life as sanctification, life as purgation from your sins.

1467
01:17:46,479 --> 01:17:49,079
Because we're moving to parent like this life is all

1468
01:17:49,119 --> 01:17:51,520
we've been given with any certainty, like we don't know,

1469
01:17:52,640 --> 01:17:55,199
like you know, especially from an Orthodox standpoint, we certainly

1470
01:17:55,199 --> 01:17:58,279
don't know, like with absolute certainty, you know what the

1471
01:17:58,319 --> 01:18:01,760
timeline is after you die. We just don't know. But

1472
01:18:01,840 --> 01:18:04,680
this life is what's been given to us with absolute centnerday.

1473
01:18:04,760 --> 01:18:07,720
This is what's been given to us for repentance. And

1474
01:18:07,760 --> 01:18:09,439
so what we need to do is to begin to

1475
01:18:10,880 --> 01:18:14,159
is to begin to actually do it sir Owen did actually,

1476
01:18:14,199 --> 01:18:17,399
which is to enter purgatory voluntarily, like to begin the

1477
01:18:17,479 --> 01:18:24,039
process of purification now. And Dante kind of lays out

1478
01:18:24,079 --> 01:18:26,800
a beautiful roadmap for that in Purgatory. That's why it's

1479
01:18:26,840 --> 01:18:29,640
my favorite book of the comedy to teach, and it's

1480
01:18:29,640 --> 01:18:31,800
why I think it's in many ways, like all the

1481
01:18:31,880 --> 01:18:34,800
juicy stuff is in Inferno, you know, because like it's

1482
01:18:34,840 --> 01:18:36,800
really fun to look at these sinners getting there, you

1483
01:18:36,800 --> 01:18:41,479
know what's coming to them or whatever. But Purgatorio is

1484
01:18:41,560 --> 01:18:44,399
in many ways it's the most practical because it's it

1485
01:18:44,520 --> 01:18:47,880
really hits us right where at right now. So August

1486
01:18:48,000 --> 01:18:51,199
twenty seven, of the folks, please please please come and

1487
01:18:51,279 --> 01:18:52,239
join us for the class.

1488
01:18:52,319 --> 01:18:53,159
Speaker 2: You won't regret it.

1489
01:18:53,159 --> 01:18:57,159
Speaker 1: It'll be five amazing weeks of really getting deep into

1490
01:18:57,239 --> 01:18:59,359
the question of what does it mean to be purified?

1491
01:18:59,439 --> 01:19:01,760
Speaker 2: And I think you'll enjoy.

1492
01:19:01,520 --> 01:19:04,119
Speaker 4: It, So all right, we'll see there everybody.

1493
01:19:05,199 --> 01:19:08,079
Speaker 3: If you enjoy these videos and podcasts, please go to

1494
01:19:08,119 --> 01:19:10,800
the Symbolic world dot com website and see how you

1495
01:19:10,840 --> 01:19:12,039
can support what we're doing.

1496
01:19:12,319 --> 01:19:14,600
Speaker 4: There are multiple subscriber tiers with perks.

1497
01:19:14,840 --> 01:19:17,279
Speaker 3: There are apparel and books to purchase, So go to

1498
01:19:17,319 --> 01:19:20,279
the Symbolic world dot com and thank you for your support.