Grimm Library

No. 18

AN IRISH PRECURSOR OF DANTE

[Uncial: (Fis Adamnáin)]

    The Grimm Library.

    _Half buckram. Net prices._

    I. GEORGIAN FOLK-TALES. By M. WARDROP. _Out of print._

    II., III., V. THE LEGEND OF PERSEUS. A Study of Tradition and
    Story, Custom and Myth. By E. S. HARTLAND. 3 vols. _Out of
    print._

    IV., VI. THE VOYAGE OF BRAN, SON OF FEBAL, TO THE LAND OF THE
    LIVING. An old Irish Saga, now first edited, with Translation,
    Notes, and Glossary by KUNO MEYER. With an Essay upon the Irish
    Vision of the Happy Otherworld, and the Celtic doctrine of
    Rebirth, by ALFRED NUTT. 2 vols. £1, 1_s._

    VOL. I. THE HAPPY OTHERWORLD. 1895. xviii, 331 pp.

    VOL. II. THE CELTIC DOCTRINE OF REBIRTH. 1897. xii, 352 pp.
    10_s._ 6_d._

    VII. THE LEGEND OF SIR GAWAIN. Studies upon its Original Scope
    and Significance, By JESSIE L. WESTON. 1897. xvi, 117 pp. 4_s._

    VIII. THE CUCHULLIN SAGA IN IRISH LITERATURE. By ELEANOR HULL.
    _Out of print._

    IX., X. THE PRE- AND PROTO-HISTORIC FINNS. By the Hon. J.
    ABERCROMBY. 2 vols. _Out of print._

    XI. THE HOME OF THE EDDIC POEMS. By SOPHUS BUGGE. _Out of
    print._

    XII. THE LEGEND OF SIR LANCELOT DU LAC. Studies upon its
    Origin, Development, and Position in the Arthurian Romantic
    Cycle. By JESSIE L. WESTON. 1901. xii, 252 pp. 7_s._ 6_d._

    XIII. THE WIFE OF BATH’S TALE. By G. F. MAYNADIER. _Out of
    print._

    XIV. SOHRAB AND RUSTEM. The Epic Theme of a Combat between
    Father and Son. A Study of its Genesis, Use in Literature and
    Popular Tradition. By MURRAY A. POTTER, A.M. 1902. xii, 224 pp.
    6_s._

    XV. THE THREE DAYS’ TOURNAMENT. A Study in Romance and
    Folklore. Being an Appendix to the Legend of Sir Lancelot. By
    JESSIE L. WESTON. 1903. xvi, 59 pp. 2_s._

    XVI. THE CATTLE RAID OF CUALNGE (Táin bó Cuailnge). By L.
    WINIFRED FARADAY, M.A. _Out of print._

    XVII. THE LEGEND OF SIR PERCEVAL. Studies upon its Origin,
    Development, and Position in the Arthurian Cycle. By JESSIE L.
    WESTON. Vol. I. 1906.

    XVIII. AN IRISH PRECURSOR OF DANTE. By C. S. BOSWELL. 1908.
    8_s._ 6_d._

                      An Irish Precursor of Dante

       A Study on the Vision of Heaven and Hell ascribed to the
      Eighth-century Irish Saint Adamnán, with Translation of the
                              Irish Text

                                  By
                             C. S. Boswell

                                London
                        Published by David Nutt
                       at the Sign of the Phœnix
                               Long Acre
                                 1908

                                  TO
                              H. M. H. B.

CONTENTS

                                                                       PAGE

                                PART I

    1. INTRODUCTORY

    Dante’s _Commedia_ preceded by a long series of Visions of the
    Otherworld--The Vision a favourite subject with Irish writers of
    the Middle Ages--Dante’s originality                                1-4

    2. THE SEER

    The Irish Church at the close of the seventh century--Its
    missionary activity--Irish scholars and clerics on the
    Continent--The authorities for Adamnán’s life--His birth
    and parentage--Meaning of his name--Enters the monastery of
    Iona--Becomes abbot--Missions to Northumbria--Intercourse with
    the Venerable Bede--The Paschal controversy--Adamnán adopts the
    Roman usage--His labours in the cause--Wins over Ireland except
    Iona--His death--His _Life of St. Colm Cille_--His treatise
    _De Locis Satutis_--Miscellaneous and apocryphal writings--His
    scholarship--Adamnán in the later annals--Anecdote of his
    student days--The Boruma Tribute--Remitted by Árd Rí Finnachta
    Fledach--Adamnán’s opposition thereto--Doubtful authenticity
    of the record--Further dissensions with the Árd Rí--Death
    of Finnachta--Adamnán’s legislation on behalf of the women
    of Ireland--Their previous status and liability to military
    service--The _Cáin Adamnáin_--Character of Adamnán--The _Fis
    Adamnáin_, why associated with his name--MSS. and editions of the
    _Fis Adamnáin_                                                     4-28

    3. TRANSLATION OF THE FIS ADAMNÁIN

    1. Exordium--2. Enumeration of previous revelations of the
    Otherworld--3. Adamnán’s translation from the body--4-6. The Land
    of Saints--7-8. The Throne of the Deity--9. The Divine Presence
    enthroned, and 10. Pictured as a mystic omnipresent face--11. The
    Celestial City, its seven walls and its floor; 12. Its inhabitants;
    13. Its design, as of a Christian Church--14. Limbo of the
    excluded--15-18. The Soul’s progress through the seven Heavens;
    15. Their doors and porters; the first Heaven; 16. The second
    Heaven, Purgatorial pains; 17. The third and fourth Heavens; 18.
    The fifth and sixth Heavens--19. The Judgment of the Soul--20. The
    fate of the damned--21. Hell, a fiery glen--22-23. The Bridge of
    Doom--24. The half good, half wicked--25-29. Punishments of the
    wicked described; classification of crimes and punishments--27.
    The charitable but carnal--29. Fiery wall reserved until after the
    Last Judgment--30. Description of Hell; impatience of the damned
    for Judgment; respite on Sundays--31. Adamnán returns to Heaven;
    is restored to the body, and bidden report what he has seen--32.
    This the subject of his subsequent preaching; consonant with the
    doctrine of the Apostles and Saints--33. Enoch, Elias, and the
    Bird-flocks of Paradise--34. Peroration; L’Envoy--35. Rhapsodical
    description of Heaven                                             28-47

                                PART II

    1. THE CLASSICAL TRADITION

    Sources of the mediæval legend of the Vision of the
    Otherworld--The Classical Tradition--The Otherworld in
    the Greek poets--Influence of the Mysteries--The effect
    of initiation on the future life--Ethical teaching of the
    Mysteries--Plato’s _Vision of Er_--Plato’s opinion of the
    Mysteries--Description of Elysium in the _Axiochus_--The
    _Frogs_ of Aristophanes; visit to Hades by Dionysos;
    light thrown on the Greek views of the Mysteries of the
    next world--Plutarch’s _Vision of Thespesios_--Plutarch’s
    eschatology--Rebirth theory in Plato and Plutarch--The Vision
    in Latin literature--The _Somnium Scipionis_--Virgil’s
    description of the Otherworld--Literary character of his
    treatment--Composite nature of his eschatology--His authority
    in the Middle Ages                                                48-67

    2. THE ORIENTAL TRADITION

    Dante’s attitude towards Virgil--His scheme in the
    Commedia--Non-classical elements thereby necessitated--Process
    of accretion in the later Jewish Church--The Chaldæan
    eschatology--Visits to Hades of Ishtâr and Gisdubar--The
    Chaldæan Elysium--Arali, the Chaldæan Hades--Aristocratic
    conception of Elysium--The effect of the Median conquest--The
    Avestan eschatology--The soul after death--The Chinvât
    Bridge--Judgment--The Avestan Elysium--The Tree of Life and
    the World-Sea--The bird Karshipta--the Vara of Yima--Yima
    and the Indian Yama--Allegoric tendencies of the Avesta--Its
    adoption of earlier animism--The question of its influence
    on Judaism--Darmesteter on Neo-Platonic elements in the
    Avesta--Older elements in the Avestan theory of the Otherworld;
    Achæmenian, Indian and Chaldæan--The Amesha Spentas and the
    Philonic emanations--Their probable connection with the
    Chaldæan Spirits of Earth--Chaldæan and Persian influences
    upon Jewish speculation--Oriental conceptions present in the
    Vision of Adamnán: the seven Heavens, the mystical Bird, the
    Tree of Life, the World-Sea, the Bridge--Rebirth theory absent
    from the Avestan religion--Egypt and Neo-Judaism--The Jewish
    colony in Alexandria; its culture mainly Hellenic; interchange
    of ideas with the Egyptians--Egyptian cults in the Hellenic
    world--Egyptian eschatology; Judgment, the ‘Eater of the Dead,’
    Elysium--Purgatorial and kindred theories of the Rabbis and
    early Christians--Special treatment of half good, half wicked
    souls--Greek and Oriental influences on the Otherworld conceptions
    of the Christian Church--Rebirth rejected by the Jews, and by the
    ancient Egyptians                                                 67-94

    3. THE ECCLESIASTICAL TRADITION

    The Vision of the Otherworld a favourite subject in the Jewish
    apocryphal scriptures--The _Book of Enoch_--Parallels to Christian
    Visions--Care for topographical details--Dissertations as in
    Dante--Purgatorial theory--Descriptions of Hell and Heaven--The
    Celestial Mountain--Sheol--The Tree of Life--Judgment--The _Gospel
    of Nicodemus_--The _Vision of Esdras_ in the Old Testament
    Apocrypha--Another _Vision of Esdras_ in the Christian apocryphal
    books--The _Vision of Isaiah_--Little information respecting the
    Otherworld in the canonical books of the New Testament--Details
    in the Epistles of St. Jude and St. Peter and the
    Revelation--Græco-Roman speculations during the early ages of the
    Church--The Sibylline books--The ‘Harrowing of Hell’ legend--Spread
    of eschatological writings--The _Shepherd of Hermas_--An
    anticipation of Dante and Beatrice--Its scope rather anagogical
    than eschatological--The Apocalypse of St. Peter--The Revelation
    of St. Paul--Their influence apparent in the _Fis Adamnáin_--The
    _Transitus Mariæ_--Blending of Hebraic and Hellenic conceptions of
    the Otherworld--Persistence of the moral teaching in the Mysteries;
    and of the popular belief in Tartarus--The Vision legend little
    affected by Pagan cults or Neo-Platonic speculation--The Vision
    legend in the Western Church--Instances recorded by St. Augustine
    and St. Gregory--Minor importance of the legend in the West until
    developed by the Irish Church                                    94-113

    4. THE LEGEND IN IRELAND

    Relations of the Irish Church with Southern Gaul and the
    East--Irish Pilgrimages to Egypt--The Egyptian _Book of Adam and
    Eve_ preserved in Ireland only--Resemblances between the Irish
    and Oriental monastic systems--Irish knowledge of Greek writers
    and intercourse with the Greeks--The ecclesiastical conception of
    the Otherworld influenced by cognate ideas in Irish literature
    and mythology--Dignity of the Irish literary profession;
    its classifications--Categories of the Irish historical and
    romantic tales--Tolerance of the Irish clergy--Survival of
    the Imram and Fis, and their influence upon the literature of
    mediæval Europe--The Otherworld a favourite subject in Irish
    legend--Elysian realms of the Irish Gods; of the Dagda and
    Oengus Óg, of Mider, of Manannán Mac Lír--Poetic description
    in the _Voyage of Bran_--Tethra, king of the dead--His
    messengers to summon mortals to him--The story of Connla--The
    Orpheus myth in Ireland--The _Serglige Conchulaind_--No
    Tartarus in the Irish mythology--Malignant powers--Sinister
    aspects of the Otherworld--The realm of Scathach--The Bridge
    of the Cliff--Whether of Norse origin, or ecclesiastical, or
    native--Parallels in the Avesta and among primitive peoples--The
    _Adventures of Nera_--The legend in the Finn Cycle--Late
    survivals--The legend in the Conn Cormac Cycle--Conn’s visits to
    the Tír Tairngire--Christian redactions of Pagan stories--The
    adventures of Árt in the Tír Tairngire, and the courtship
    of Delbchaem--The visit of Cormac to the Tír Tairngire--The
    introduction of allegory--First rudimentary ethical conceptions
    in connection with the Otherworld--Whether original or due to
    clerical redactors--Interpolations by the redactors--Increasing
    prominence of eschatological ideas in the Christian Imrama--The
    chastity ideal existing side by side with its opposite in the
    Tír Tairngire--Cuchulainn and the children of Doel Dermait--The
    enchanted castle and its Otherworld origin--The _Voyage of
    Maelduin’s Curach_--Greek influences--Elysian islands--Infernal
    elements--The ‘Miller of Hell’--Picture of Elysium--Adaptation
    of the Phœnix legend to old Irish myths--Bird souls--Island
    hermits--The cook of Torach--The _Voyage of the Curach of
    the Ui Corra_--Eschatology in the ascendant--Influences of
    Nature--Purgatorial theory introduced into the Imram--The _Voyage
    of Snedgus and Mac Ríagla_--Transition from Pagan to Christian
    conceptions of the Otherworld--Visions of the Otherworld in
    Ireland--Visions of St. Colm Cille--St. Fursa; his Vision--Vision
    of Laisrén--The _Scél Lái Brátha_--The fourfold division of human
    souls--The _Dá Brón Flatha Nime_                                113-174

    5. THE FIS ADAMNÁIN

    Its structural and literary superiority to other Visions
    before Dante--The general plan--Indications of composite
    authorship--Authorities followed by the writer of the Vision--The
    guide to the Otherworld--The author’s use of old Irish
    imagery--His ecclesiastical treatment of the subject--Pictorial
    grouping and imagery--Parallels to the Imrama--The Cockayne
    idea and the ascetic idea--The state described to continue
    to the Last Judgment only--Deferred Judgment of certain
    spirits and their Limbo--The soul’s progress through the seven
    Heavens--The Purgatorial theory--Dante parallels--Judgment--The
    fate of the reprobate--Insistence on the spiritual side of
    their sufferings--The further description of Hell apparently
    interpolated--The Bridge incident--Fourfold division of the
    souls--The punishments of the reprobate--Increasing minuteness
    of these descriptions by successive Vision writers--Attempts
    at classification--Dante parallels--Temporary punishment of
    certain sinners--The region of the damned after the Last
    Judgment--Characteristics of northern and southern writers
    respectively--The four rivers of Hell--Adamnán’s message--Enoch
    and Elias with the Bird-flocks about the Tree of Life--Rhapsodical
    description of Heaven                                           174-206

    6. LATER DEVELOPMENTS

    Irish influences upon Continental writers--Enduring effect of
    St. Brendan’s legend--The _Voyage of St. Brendan_--Old Irish
    incidents preserved therein--The Paradise of Birds and the
    rebel angels--Cessation of the Imram and continuance of the
    Fis--The _Vision of Tundale_--Great development of Purgatorial
    incidents--The Bridge episode--Hell described as the mouth of a
    dragon--Description of Hell--The half righteous--Converse with
    persons whom Tundale had known in life--King Cormac--Paradise--The
    Tree of Life and Bird-flocks--Blending in this vision of Irish
    and ecclesiastical elements--Influence of the result upon
    European literature--Relations to the _Fis Adamnáin_ and to
    the St. Patrick’s Purgatory legend--Dante probably acquainted
    with the Vision of Tundale--Comparison between the _Vision_
    and the _Commedia_--Prevalence of the Vision legend on the
    Continent--Foreign Visions derived from Irish sources--The
    _Vision of Drihthelm_--St. Patrick’s Purgatory--The Vision of
    Owen--Doubtful origin of the legend of St. Patrick’s Purgatory--Its
    popularity on the Continent--Treatment by Continental
    writers--The _Vision of Alberic_--Waning influence of the Irish
    school--Increased number but diminished importance of the
    Otherworld stories--Lack of originality                         206-241

    7. CONCLUSION

    Recapitulation--No theory propounded as to Dante’s indebtedness
    to the Irish school--His probable acquaintance with the later
    Visions of that school--Probable nature and limitations of their
    influence--Tendency of each school to drop the more characteristic
    traits of its predecessors--Dante’s rejection of many conventional
    incidents--The literary qualities of the _Fis Adamnáin_--Irish
    susceptibility to the beauties of Nature and to music--Absence of
    dissertations from the _Fis Adamnáin_--Interruption of the Irish
    national literature--Modern renaissance                         242-249

    INDEX                                                               251

AN IRISH PRECURSOR OF DANTE

PART I

1. INTRODUCTORY

Few, if any, of the great masterpieces of literature, even of those
which bear the most unmistakable imprint of an original mind, are
‘original’ in the vulgar sense of being invented ‘all out of the
head’ of the author. Most frequently they are the development and
the sublimation of forms and subjects already current; for, as Dumas
_père_ truly said, it is mankind, and not the individual man, that
_invents_. The wagon of Thespis preceded the stage of Æschylus, while
Thespis himself had predecessors who did not even adopt the wagon. The
great dramatic schools of all periods took the greater and better part
of their themes from the myth, history, or fiction current in their
day. So it has been with most other kinds of literature, and to this
rule the _Commedia_ of Dante, though one of the most truly original
creations of the human mind, forms no exception. The main subject of
the poem, the visit of a living man, in person or in vision, to the
world of the dead, and his report of what he had seen and heard there,
belongs to a class of world-myths than which few are more widely
distributed in place or time, and none have been more fortunate in
the place won for them by the masters of literature. After occupying
an important place in several of the antique religions it afforded
subjects to the genius of Homer, Plato, and Virgil; it was then adopted
into the early Christian Church, and afterwards constituted one of the
favourite subjects in the popular literature of the Middle Ages, until,
finally, Dante exhausted the great potentialities of the theme, and
precluded all further developments.

The _Commedia_ is like a mighty river formed by the confluence of
several great tributaries, each of which is fed by innumerable springs
and streamlets, which have their rise in regions remote and most
diverse from each other, and are all tinged by the soil of the lands
through which they flow. It is with one of these tributary streams
that the following pages deal, and that not the least important among
them, for to it the Vision of the Otherworld, as current in the later
Middle Ages, owed much both of its popularity and its contents, not,
indeed, by way of direct derivation or suggestion--a view which several
circumstances forbid us to entertain--but as the result of an influence
which, in an earlier stage of culture, had determined the direction
which the Vision legend actually followed in its later developments.

The subject would appear to have possessed a special fascination for
the Irish writers at the time when Ireland was the chief intellectual
centre of Western Europe, and the constant flux and reflux of Irish
teachers and foreign students necessarily tended to spread abroad so
much, at any rate, of the compositions of the Irish schools as was in
harmony with the tastes and beliefs of Christendom at large.

By far the most important of the Apocalyptic writings which proceeded
from the Irish schools is the Vision which bears the name of St.
Adamnán, of which a translation is given in the present volume. It is
interesting to compare it with the later and greater work, and to mark
the numerous points of resemblance which may be discerned in works so
widely different. This and the like productions of a ruder, but not
ignorant nor uncultured, age, deserve no less attention than that which
we bestow upon the works of the primitive schools of art and letters,
before Giotto and his compeers had effected the release of painting
from the bonds of formalism, and had opened out the ways of Nature
and imagination, and before the immediate predecessors of Dante had
rendered possible his _dolce stil nuovo_.

At the same time it may be seen how the legend which received its
apotheosis in Dante’s immortal verse came into being upon the misty
heights of primitive myth, and after forming the theme of poets and
philosophers in classical antiquity, entered into the literature and
teaching of the early Christian Church; how the ecclesiastical legend,
as it had now become, was adopted into the Irish Church at the time of
its greatest activity, and there received the impress of the national
genius, and became blended with the national traditions; thence it
returned again to become a part of the general literature of Europe,
and received yet further elements from the newly popular romances of
chivalry, and still more from the revived classical tradition, until
the elixir of the great magician’s genius finally transmuted the
amalgam into gold to be a κτῆμα ἐς ἀεί.

To recognise these facts is not to disparage or limit the originality
of Dante’s genius; rather his true originality is thrown into higher
relief by a comparison with all other labourers in the same field
who had gone before him. Nothing but the study of these labours
will enable us to give him his due place in European literature and
thought, while such a study will explain and justify certain features
in his treatment of the theme which may be repugnant to modern
ways of thinking, but were not only justified, but necessitated,
by the beliefs and traditions universally accepted in his own day.
Dante himself always loved to acknowledge his indebtedness to his
literary progenitors, alike among the writers of antiquity and his
own contemporaries or immediate predecessors; and it seems fitting to
preserve the memory of a school of writers to whom, although he knew it
not himself, are largely due the actual character and scope of the work
by which he achieved immortality.

2. THE SEER[1]

By the close of the seventh century the Irish Church had almost reached
the period of its greatest prosperity and of its greatest influence
upon the culture of Western Europe. The Three Orders of Saints had
done their work, and although in Ireland, as throughout the rest of
Europe, Christianity had not entirely prevailed over the heathenism
of the more sequestered populations--the _pagani_--yet, through the
length and breadth of the country, the National Church was established
in close conjunction with the State, of which, indeed, it had come to
form an integral part; and wherever the Irish clergy prevailed, studies
flourished.

The missionary zeal of the Irish clergy had made known the Gospel to
the courts of barbarian princes, and to the still pagan inhabitants of
North Britain and Germany, Gaul and Burgundy, Switzerland, Styria, and
Lombardy, and even carried it to the Faroe Isles and Iceland. At home,
what sparks of antique learning yet lurked beneath the ashes to which
the fires of civilisation had smouldered down were gathered into a
focus in schools where crowds of students from the surrounding nations
found hospitality and instruction; while abroad, the foundations of
Iona, Lindisfarne, and Malmesbury, Luxeuil, St. Gall, and Bobbio,
with many more of lesser fame, stood out like citadels erected to
maintain a peaceful conquest. And from the schools of Ireland were to
issue the men who were destined, during the next two centuries, not
merely to leave their mark upon the Church as theologians and founders
of monasteries, but, further, to play an important part in moulding
the new civilisation of the Frankish Empire, to lay the foundations
of modern philosophy, and to promote the study of natural science
and literature by lucubrations, crude, indeed, as compared with the
productions of more favoured ages, but standing out conspicuous above
the level of their own time.[2]

Meanwhile, though the Three Orders of the Irish Saints had come to an
end about the middle of the seventh century, they were succeeded by
many great Churchmen, who combined with their ecclesiastical duties
a lively interest in secular politics, in which they were wont to
intervene, most commonly, no doubt, with beneficial effect, though
occasionally with results nothing less than disastrous.

One of the foremost, if not the very foremost, among the Irish clerics
of this period was St. Adamnán, the reputed seer of the Vision which
bears his name. This great prelate is a striking figure both in the
ecclesiastical and secular history of his times; but the information
we possess concerning him, though not altogether scanty, is not all of
equal value. It consists partly of the evidences furnished by his own
writings and contemporary records, partly of the further particulars
which have been preserved in the annals compiled from the tenth to the
twelfth centuries, though these, no doubt, are derived in great measure
from earlier records.

Adamnán was of high birth, as were many of the leading Irish Churchmen,
the constitution of the National Church being thoroughly aristocratic,
in accordance with the civil society upon which it was moulded. His
father was Ronán, son of Tinne, a man of chiefly rank in the territory
of Sereth, or Tír Aedha, now the barony of Tirhugh, in south-west
Donegal, and the descendant of Conall Gulbán, the founder of a famous
house, various branches of which ruled Tír Conaill from the fifth
century until the fall of the O’Donnells at the beginning of the
seventeenth century. Adamnán’s mother, Ronat by name, was of the Cinel
Enda, a sept of West Meath.[3] The date of his birth is variously
stated, but he appears to have been born between the years 624 and 627
at Drumhome, in Tír Aedha.[4] The name Adamnán is a diminutive of Adam,
but through the tendency of Irish phonetics to elide the _d_ and _m_
in certain positions, it came to be written sometimes in the confusing
forms Eunan and Onan, and has even been travestied into Theunan and
Dennan.

Adamnán entered the great monastery of Iona as a novice, probably
about the year 650, as Segine (_ob._ 652) was then abbot. There he
was distinguished for his devotion and learning, and in the year 679,
soon after the death of Abbot Failbhe, was elected to succeed him,
being ninth in descent from St. Colm Cille, the founder, to whom he
was akin. Indeed, all Adamnán’s predecessors, and his successors for
several generations, were members of the same great family. In the
government of his house and of the ecclesiastical establishments
in the neighbouring islands, he displayed the qualities of an able
administrator, as well as those of saint and scholar; nor did he
confine his activities to matters ecclesiastical, but, like most of the
Irish saints, took an active part in public events.

About the year 684, King Ecgfrid of Northumbria made a descent upon
the Irish coast, between Magh Breg, the plain north of the Liffey,
and Belach Dúinn, now Castlekieran, north-west of Kells, and carried
away many captives. In the following year he invaded the Picts of
Scotland, and was slain at Dun Nechtan. His successor, Aldfrid (the
son, according to some accounts, of an Irish mother), had been driven
into exile in early youth, and taking refuge in Ireland was educated
in the schools of that country, to which he paid a grateful tribute
in after-life. He had sojourned for a while at Iona, and there became
acquainted with Adamnán, who now took advantage of this intimacy, and
came to Aldfrid’s court to plead the cause of the captives. He was
successful in this, and had the happiness to redeem from slavery sixty
of his countrymen, whom he brought back with him on his return. This
visit produced results of great importance to the Irish Church. During
his stay in Northumbria, Adamnán contracted a close intimacy with the
Venerable Bede--who strongly censured Ecgfrid’s unprovoked, aggression
(_Hist. Eccl._ iv. 26)--upon whom he made a strong and favourable
impression, as being _vir bonus, et sapiens, et scientia scripturarum
nobilissime instructus_. Their frequent colloquies during this, and,
apparently, a second mission of Adamnán to Northumbria, about two years
later, turned upon the two main points wherein the Irish usage differed
from that of Rome: _i.e._ the form of the tonsure, which, in Ireland,
was made crescent-wise across the head, and the time of keeping Easter.
In the latter respect, Ireland retained the older computation, founded
upon the Jewish method of calculating the Passover, which had been
adopted by Rome during the disputes on the subject with the East and
with Alexandria, and was in force at the conversion of Ireland. In
463 Pope Hilarius introduced an improved system of calculation, which
ultimately was generally adopted throughout the West, though not
without a struggle in those many parts of the Continent where Irish
influence was powerful. As a matter of course, the reformed system was
brought into England by Augustine, and contributed to widen the gulf
between the English and British Churches. The south of Ireland, or part
of it, appears to have accepted the change in the year 633, but it took
nearly another century to win over the rest of the country. Bede urged
upon Adamnán the propriety of conforming to the general rule of the
Church, and his arguments wrought such conviction in his hearer that
Adamnán devoted much of the latter portion of his life to the task of
inducing his countrymen to accept the Roman usage.

Indeed, the remainder of Adamnán’s life appears to have been divided
between his abbatial duties and long and frequent visits to Ireland,
in the course of which he is said to have taken that part in secular
politics to which we shall have to recur. The greater part of this
time, however, he appears to have spent in travelling about Ireland,
occupied with his favourite scheme for bringing the time of the
Easter celebration into conformity with the general practice of the
Western Church. His efforts were generally successful; Bede, in fact
(_Hist. Eccl._ v. 15), asserts that he succeeded in winning over to
the Catholic observance ‘almost all those who were not subject to the
rule of Iona.’ In the year 700, or shortly after, he returned to Iona,
and attempted to introduce his reform into his own monastery, but in
spite of his abbatial authority and of his great personal influence, he
found the conservatism of that great stronghold of the Irish Church too
much for him, and his monks refused to admit any innovation upon the
national practice. He died on the 23rd September 704, and was buried at
Iona. His relics were brought to Ireland in 727, but are said to have
been restored to his monastery in 730.

Adamnán earned well the epithet ‘High Scholar of the Western World,’
which is conferred upon him at the opening of his Vision. His most
celebrated work was the _Life of St. Colm Cille_, written in a Latin
which is generally admitted to be far superior to that commonly in use
at his day. The work suffers from the form in which it is cast; it does
not relate the events of the Saint’s life in chronological sequence,
but is divided into three books, the first being devoted to Colm’s
prophetical revelations, the second to his miracles, and the third to
his angelical visions. Nevertheless, it gives much information of great
interest, relating as well to the life and acts of St. Colm as to the
internal life of the Irish Church, while the prefaces contain important
biographical matter. The prominence given to the miracles, visions,
and the like, associated with Colm’s name, is merely what we find in
a large proportion of the hagiology of all periods of the Church’s
history, while the narrative possesses a character of its own, and a
human interest, which preserve it from the monotony and conventionality
often prevailing in writings of this class, and establish a certain
kinship with the _Fioretti_ of St. Francis. Altogether, the _Life_
is commonly accepted as the most important extant monument of the
Celtic Church, and also one of the most notable pieces of biography,
ecclesiastical or lay, produced by the early Middle Ages.

Another work proceeding from his pen was a treatise upon the Holy
Places of Palestine. This, too, was written in Latin, and is considered
by Dr. Reeves to be superior, in point of style, to the _Life of
Colm Cille_. He was instigated to undertake this task by Arculf, a
bishop of Gaul, who had travelled in Palestine, Syria, Constantinople,
Alexandria, and other parts of the East, and on his return had been
blown out of his course, and wrecked on some coast near to Iona. Here
he was hospitably entertained by Adamnán, and in the course of a
prolonged sojourn through the stormy winter months held much learned
converse with his host, to their mutual edification. Arculf had studied
the topography and history of the places he visited with a thoroughness
almost unique at that day, and had even preserved accurate
measurements and descriptions of buildings, etc. He freely imparted the
results of his investigations to Adamnán, who was himself possessed of
the learning which could be acquired from such books as were accessible
to him.

Several ecclesiastical works--a Rule, eight Canons, etc.--are
attributed to Adamnán; there have also been preserved a poem and
several devout _opuscula_ in Irish which have been ascribed to him,
without foundation.

It would appear that he had some knowledge of Greek, and even possessed
a certain acquaintance with, at any rate, the Hebrew vocabulary,
whether at first or second hand.

It now remains to be seen what further light is cast upon Adamnán’s
character by the later annals; and here we find a mixture of _Dichtung
und Wahrheit_, and no criterion whereby we may distinguish with any
certainty between the two. The additional particulars derived from
this source, if we except a few legends of miracles and visions of the
usual type, relate for the most part to Adamnán’s political activity
during the last decade of the seventh century. One episode, however,
of Adamnán’s schooldays gives the earliest recorded fact, if a fact,
of his career. It is a mere anecdote, unsupported by evidence, yet it
contains no inherent improbability, and is worth repeating, if only
as an authentic picture of one aspect of scholastic life in ancient
Ireland, and also as affording the first glimpse, probably, of the
‘beggar-student’ who figured so conspicuously in the later Middle
Ages, and in Ireland survived as the ‘poor scholar’ almost to our own
day. The students at the Irish centres of learning--Universities, as
they have been called, not without reason--used to dwell about their
teachers in huts of wattle, provision for their maintenance, education,
and books being made by the chiefs and ecclesiastical foundations.
So great, however, were the throngs of students, native and foreign,
who flocked to these schools, that many were compelled to eke out the
public allowance by having recourse to the charity of neighbours. Among
these was Adamnán, who was one of a company, or mess, of five students
and their tutor, the younger students taking it in turn to provide for
all. One day this task procured Adamnán an adventure, which introduced
him to the future monarch, Finnachta Fledach, his future relations
with whom, if truly related by the annals, were destined to be fraught
with momentous consequences to them both and to the whole of Ireland.
Finnachta, though of royal race, had once been so poor that his whole
worldly possessions consisted of a house, a wife, an ox, and a cow. At
the time of which we speak, he possessed a following, and one day, as
he and his retinue were travelling at full gallop, they came across a
young student laden with a pitcher of milk, who, in his haste to avoid
the horses, upset the pitcher and spilt the milk. This boy was Adamnán,
bringing home the day’s provision for himself and his messmates. He set
out to run by the side of the horsemen, and kept up with them until
they reached their destination. Finnachta took notice of the boy, and,
entering into conversation with him, was so well pleased, that he not
only made good the loss, but provided the five youths and their tutor
with a house and maintenance, receiving in return from the tutor a
prophecy that he, Finnachta, should one day become monarch of Ireland,
with Adamnán for his _anamchara_, or confessor. It does not appear that
this interview was immediately productive of any further consequences
to Adamnán, who, in due course, entered the monastic life, as before
mentioned.

The next incident of importance, not already mentioned, which the
annalists relate concerning Adamnán, is at once one of the most
momentous and most obscure portions of his career--namely, his action
in connection with the Boruma tribute. This was a heavy fine, in
cattle and various precious articles, which Tuathal Techtmar, Árd-Rí
of Ireland about the end of the first century A.D., had laid upon
Leinster in perpetuity (or, according to some authorities, for forty
years) to punish a grave crime committed by the king of that province.
The intermittent exaction of this tribute was not the least among the
many causes of discord which prevented the ideal polity of Ireland,
viz. a confederation of kingdoms and principalities--an Empire we might
call it--under the overlordship of the Árd-Rí, from ever becoming
realised in a permanently efficient form. This grievance St. Moling,
with the support of several other leading prelates, determined to
remove, and, it is said, induced Finnachta (who had become Árd-Rí in
673-4, having defeated and slain in battle his predecessor Cennfaelad)
to issue a decree for its abolition. This event is commonly dated in
the year 693, but Canon O’Hanlon, on the authority of O’Flaherty’s
_Ogygia_, thinks it must be earlier, and is inclined to place it in
692, the year of Adamnán’s visit to Ireland.[5] It is recorded in a
treatise on the Boruma, printed and translated by Mr. Standish Hayes
O’Grady in his _Silva Gadelica_; it is there told in narrative form,
with dialogues in the _oratio recta_, and intermingled with many
fictitious circumstances so as to make up a story; however, the main
incidents accord with a fragment of Irish annals given by Mr. O’Grady
in the same work, and with the Irish poem formerly ascribed to Adamnán.
The means by which St. Moling induced the king to grant his request
show all the symptoms of a folk-tale. By the promise of eternal life
immediately after death, he procured Finnachta’s promise to remit the
tribute until _Luan_, which in Irish properly means Monday, but was
also and still is a frequent term for the Day of Judgment--‘Black
Monday.’ The monarch, understanding the word in its literal sense,
thought the terms easy, and gave his promise; the saint, however,
insisted upon putting his own interpretation on it, and Finnachta had
to consent to the perpetual remission of the tribute. The measure
itself was most wise and statesmanlike; nevertheless, pernicious as
the tribute was, the abolition of it touched the pride of the Ui
Néill, the ruling race of Ireland. The organisation of the Church was
based upon the clan system which prevailed in the State; religious
communities were often composed of fellow-tribesmen, ecclesiastical
dignities passed from one generation to another of the same chiefly
family, and the head of an order was practically a clerical chieftain,
sharing with the lay princes that fatal tendency to prefer local
to national interests which has been fraught with consequences to
Ireland more dire than the Boruma itself. Adamnán is represented as
possessing his full share of this family or racial pride, and joined
with the clergy of his race in offering a bitter opposition to the new
measure. The narrative of his dealings with Finnachta is more graphic
than authentic. With an authority, to say the least of it, worthy
of a Hildebrand or Innocent III., he sent a clerk to Finnachta to
summon him to instant conference. The king was then playing at chess,
and declined to budge until his game was ended. Adamnán, informed of
this, sent back word that he would chant fifty psalms while waiting,
the effect of which would be to deprive the king’s whole race of the
kingdom for ever. This was announced to the king, but he had begun
a second game, and declined to stir until it was over. Adamnán then
sent word that he would chant another fifty psalms, which should bring
on the king shortness of life; but Finnachta, now engaged in a third
game, sent the same answer as before. Then Adamnán sent word that he
would chant yet another fifty psalms, which should deprive Finnachta
of the Lord’s peace. Then Finnachta hastily arose, quitted his chess,
and repaired to Adamnán’s presence. On being asked why he came, after
ignoring all previous messages, he explained that the exclusion of his
posterity from his kingdom troubled him but little, neither did he care
for a speedy death, seeing that Moling had promised him eternal life,
but he could not bear to be excluded from the Lord’s peace. However,
though Finnachta then made personal submission to Adamnán, the decree
remained, and God would not suffer Adamnán to deprive the king of the
reward which Moling had promised him.

It is obvious that this narrative, in point of form, is fiction pure
and simple; as fictitious as the speeches in Thucydides, or the
dialogues in Herodotus or Plutarch. For this reason, and because of
the discrepancy of dates, and the uncertainty attending the whole
question of the remission of the Boruma, some authorities are inclined
to call in question the entire story of Adamnán’s relations with
Finnachta, and to relegate it to the domain of fiction. This summary
method of cutting the knot appears to be somewhat arbitrary: if a
liberal admixture of fiction be sufficient absolutely to discredit the
chronicles into which it enters, we may be called upon to disbelieve
that there is any historic basis for Livy’s _History_, or the records
of Charlemagne, for instance. In the present case it seems most
doubtful whether any means exist for determining what, if any, basis
of fact underlies the narrative, but having regard to the attention
paid by the Irish writers to the record of past and contemporary
events--which by no means implies the strict accuracy of the record--it
seems improbable that the recorded acts, in matters of great public
interest, of such notable characters as Árd-Rí Finnachta and St.
Adamnán should not represent, in substance, the parts which they
actually played in the public life of their time.

About this time another cause of discord is said to have put a further
strain upon the relations subsisting between the Saint and the Árd-Rí.
Finnachta having excluded the lands belonging to the Order of St. Colm
Cille from the privileges accorded to the foundations of SS. Patrick,
Finian, and Ciaran, Adamnán again provoked, and this time apparently
with better reason, by this fresh infringement of the dignity of Ulad,
put a curse upon the king, and foretold that his life should be short,
that he should fall by a fratricidal stroke, and that the kingdom
should pass from his race for ever; which triple prophecy was fulfilled
when Finnachta and his son Bresal were slain by a cousin in the year
693-4.

A few years after these events, according to the annals, Adamnán
acquired a more honourable distinction by means of the ecclesiastical
legislation embodied in his ‘Canons,’ and by the more famous
law, or code of laws, known as the _Cáin Adamnáin_. Each of these
was promulgated at a _Mórdáil_--‘Great Assembly’--the Diet or
States-General of Ireland. According to the more general account,
both were passed at a Mórdáil held in 697 at Tara, or, according to
others, at Ballyshannon, Derry, or Raphoe. Probably Tara was assumed
inadvertently to have been the place of meeting by some chronicler
who, bearing in mind the ancient custom, had forgotten that Tara had
been abandoned since the cursing of it by St. Ruadán. According to
the Four Masters and Tigernach, the last Feis of Tara was held in the
year 554 A.D. Or, possibly, there is a confusion between the general
Mórdáil of Éire and an ecclesiastical Synod which appears to have
been held at Tara about the time in question. In this uncertainty as
to which of the several Synods and Mórdála, held towards the close of
the seventh century, was the scene of Adamnán’s legislation, Canon
O’Hanlon suggests that the Synod of 694-5 would be the most likely
occasion of the enactment of the Canons, if it were certain that
Adamnán was present (_op. cit._ ix. 508 and 512), and that the _Cáin_
was passed at the Mórdáil of 696-7, in the reign of Árd-Rí Loingseach
mac Oengusa, according to the general account; this likewise agrees
with the treatise about to be mentioned, which, however, gives Birr as
the place of assembly. The most important article of the _Cáin_ was the
renewal of a law passed by St. Colm Cille at the Mórdáil of Druimceatt
in 590, but since fallen into desuetude, whereby women were exempted
from military service. The _Cáin Adamnáin_ is an Old Irish treatise,
probably of the tenth century, according to Professor Kuno Meyer, who
has published an edition of it, with notes, in _Anecdota Oxoniensia_
(_Mediæval and Modern Series_, pt. viii.). It is not the work of
Adamnán himself, but merely purports to give an account of the laws
which he passed, and the circumstances of his doing so. It is clearly
compounded of various elements, and it is worked up into a complete
story by dint of the employment of a number of fictitious details. It
opens with a melancholy picture of the status of women in Ireland in
Adamnán’s day, their home life being depicted as a state of abject
slavery, while they were further liable to military service. These
descriptions can only be accepted with very great limitations, for
the laws, the Church literature, and the romances of Ireland contain
abundant evidence to prove that the state of things here depicted, if
it existed at all, was not generally prevalent, the picture drawn in
the _Cáin_ being greatly exaggerated for the greater honour and glory
of Adamnán. At the same time there is no need to go to the opposite
extreme, and assume that the position accorded to women in ancient
Ireland realised in practice the theories of chivalry. It does not
follow that the author of the _Cáin_ invented the circumstances he
describes; indeed, there is evidence that a similar state of things
existed in Ireland so late as Tudor times at least, while parallels
might be found in the great cities of a much more recent date. But it
is the wont of those who treat of social and moral evils, whether as
reformers or satirists, or in a less worthy capacity--from Juvenal to
Zola, and from Salvian to Father Bernard Vaughan--to represent the
sporadic and occasional evils of society as its habitual condition.
As regards the military service of women, it appears certain that
women did, and probably were required to, serve in the wars to some
extent. Nevertheless, neither the annals nor the romances warrant the
conclusion that great troops of women swelled the Irish armies. It
seems probable that in the varied and complicated system of the Irish
land tenure, female tenants may have been obliged to render military
service _ratione tenurae_, instances of which practice occur in other
parts of Europe.

Whatever the nature or extent of the evil, it was greatly taken to
heart by Adamnán’s mother Ronat, and dutiful as her son was to her, she
counted his service as nought until he should effect the emancipation
of women. One day, as they were on a journey--Adamnán, after his usual
custom, carrying his mother on his back--they came to a battlefield,
where so great had been the slaughter that the women lay, the soles of
one touching the neck of another; but the most piteous sight of all was
a woman with her head in one place and her body in another, and her
baby lying on the breast of the corpse, with a stream of milk on one
cheek, and a stream of blood on the other. At his mother’s bidding,
Adamnán set the woman’s head upon the trunk, made the sign of the
cross with his staff, and she arose and related her experiences in the
next world between her death and resuscitation. Ronat, still further
confirmed in her purpose, imposed incredible austerities upon Adamnán
in order to coerce him into compliance. At the end of four years an
angel came to him and bade him rise, but he refused to do so until
he received a promise that women should be emancipated. He then came
forward with his proposals of reform, which offended several of the lay
princes, so that they combined to put Adamnán to death. At length terms
were agreed upon, and all parties pledged themselves that in future
women should be exempted from military service, and that no women
should be slain by men without full legal penalties being exacted. This
compact was solemnly sworn to by the contracting parties; the formula
of the oath was founded upon that whereby the kings in pagan times had
been wont to bind themselves in matters of great moment, and which
survived, with necessary modifications, for some centuries after the
introduction of Christianity. They took to witness the sun and moon,
and all the other elements of God; the Apostles, Gregory, the two
Patricks, and other Irish saints. The terms of the oath explain the
form of St. Patrick’s famous hymn.

The construction of the treatise is extremely loose; the form, in many
places, is that of the ecclesiastical legend, and the present redaction
was evidently made in the clerical interest. As a further instance
of its composite character, in c. 33 it makes a fresh start with the
words _Incipit sententia angeli Adamnano_, and relates how the angel,
after two previous punishments inflicted, came to Adamnán and smote him
on the side, bidding him go to Ireland and enact a law that no woman
should be slain with impunity. It also states that Adamnán’s law was
extended to clerical students and children, and further gives sundry
amendments of the laws relating to cases of assault, rape, slander of
chastity, etc. Women, in turn, were made liable for the crimes they
might commit; in particular, they were rendered punishable for poison,
arson, or undermining a church by the old Irish penalty of being set
adrift in a boat with a single paddle, and one vessel of meal and one
of water.

The accuracy of this treatise in point of detail hardly calls for
discussion. It is a specimen of the form in which we have received
much of our information concerning ancient Ireland; a form combining
fact and fiction in a manner which often renders it impossible to
distinguish between the two without extraneous evidence, which is
seldom to be had. Here we have as the substratum an account of
Adamnán’s actual legislation, set off with an abundance of fictitious
detail, in which a redactor has attempted to combine two different
accounts of the circumstances which brought about Adamnán’s action,
while he has added a quantity of other legislative reforms, more or
less connected with the subject, but only a part of which, if any,
can be due to Adamnán himself. Here, as in the case of the Boruma, it
is left for the most part to our subjective views of probability to
determine what amount of reliance is to be placed upon the historical
facts which form the main subject of the treatise. Despite the crudity
of the work, perhaps the evidence in favour is rather stronger in
this case, for not only is it natural to assume that the statements
of a legal nature would be tolerably in accordance with the facts,
which must have been known to many of the readers, but the ascription
of the reform to Adamnán--under the alternative name of the _lex
innocentium_--appears to have been accepted without hesitation by
several independent authorities, including the _Annals of Ulster_ and
the _Fis Adamnáin_.

The last action of Adamnán recorded by the annals, and one that seems
fairly well authenticated, is a sentence of excommunication pronounced
by him at Tara upon one Irgalach for murder. One of the annalistic
fragments preserves a report that Adamnán, at the close of his life,
was expelled from Iona by his own monks on account of his action in the
Easter controversy; this, however, appears to be without foundation,
for the fact of his death and burial at Iona seems certain. Another
rumour was that grief at the recalcitrance of his monks, for the same
reason, had brought about his death, for which no other explanation
seems needed than his seventy-seven years, mostly spent in strenuous
toil, though, of course, any vexation or distress of mind might well be
the immediate cause of death.

Our available information concerning Adamnán does not set a very vivid
picture of him before us. His own writings are of a somewhat impersonal
character, while the Irish annalists seldom bring to their portrayal
of historical persons that power of characterisation and description
constantly apparent in the romances. We have already seen Bede’s
testimony to Adamnán’s learning and high character; the Four Masters,
in their notice of Adamnán’s death (which they place in 703) refer to
that passage, and add that he was ‘tearful, penitent, given to prayer,
diligent, ascetic, temperate; for he never used to eat excepting on
Sunday and Thursday only; he made a slave of himself to these virtues;
and, moreover, he was wise and learned in the clear understanding of
the Holy Scriptures of God.’ And a few scattered notices of the kind
appear to comprise all that we have in the way of direct description.
Nevertheless, the authentic record of his actions, combined with
the more doubtful evidence of later annalists--which, at the very
least, serve to show what notion of him survived, and was transmitted
to posterity--may enable us to trace with tolerable accuracy the
more salient outlines of his character. That his was a striking and
commanding personality there is no doubt: he appears to have been
fashioned after the same type as so many of the leading Churchmen of
the Middle Ages, from Ambrose down; a type which combined a great
proficiency in learning, and a devotion to the virtues of the cloister,
with a strenuous activity which asserted itself alike in the diligent
administration of their ecclesiastical office, and in the exercise of
their influence upon secular affairs. In these last, their intervention
commonly made for righteousness, and aimed at putting a conscience into
politics, never a superfluous task. They often stood forward as the
champions of the wronged and oppressed, and in this cause, and, even
more, in defence of the claims and immunities of the Church, never
feared to encounter the temporal power; rather otherwise, in fact.
This side of Adamnán’s character appears in his mission to Northumbria
on behalf of the kidnapped Irishmen, and his alleged defence against
Finnachta of the privileges of his own order; above all, in his
amelioration of the lot of women--possibly, too, of students and
children--the records whereof, whatever the amount of historical fact
which they contain, reveal the estimation in which Adamnán was held.
At the same time, if the incident of the Boruma be either true in
fact, or true to his character, it is evident that he was as liable as
any of his great compeers, foreign or Irish--Colm Cille and Ruadán,
for instance--to allow his zeal to be enlisted in the cause of party
interest or personal sympathies, to the great public detriment. He
enjoyed a traditional reputation for filial piety, and, at least,
tribal patriotism. His recorded asceticism, however severe, does not
appear, save in some of the least credible passages of the _Cáin_, to
have been carried by him to the same lengths of self-torture, worthy of
a solitary of the Thebaid, or an Indian _yogi_, as it was by many of
the Irish saints. Indeed, his was mainly a life of action, and even
the learning for which he was famous is more apparent in the quality of
his work than in the quantity of it. The part of his career which left
the most enduring mark upon his Church and his country was the mainly
successful struggle which he carried on as the leading Irish champion
of Catholicism in the long contest, begun before his time, and only
finished by Malachi and Gelasius in the middle of the twelfth century,
between the respective partisans of national and of general usages in
the ritual of the Irish Church. That portion of his work which he left
unfinished, the submission of his own order, was completed within a
quarter of a century after his death, and the ties between the Churches
of Ireland and other countries of the West were drawn tighter by the
removal of the chief cause of separation.

The Vision which has come down to us under the name of Adamnán is not
to be included among his own works. The language and style, which
belong to a much later period, are conclusive as to this; while several
allusions in it, as that to the donation of Constantine, also point
to a later date. Dr. Whitley Stokes, indeed, considers that ‘it is
not older than the eleventh century,’ but Professor Windisch, in the
preface to his edition, demurs to this conclusion, and holds that it
was written in the tenth century, possibly even in the ninth (_Irische
Texte_, i. 167 _sqq._). Nevertheless, it is not to be classed among the
literary forgeries with which the Middle Ages teem, composed sometimes
_animo fraudandi_, sometimes, in the loose views then prevailing
as to literary property and literary fame, in order to secure the
prestige of a great name. The present work, however, never professes
to be Adamnán’s own composition. It invariably speaks of him in the
third person, terming him the ‘High Scholar of the Western World,’
and refers to his legislation at the Mórdáil, where he is said to
have first received his Vision, and to his subsequent preaching as
matters of past history. It remains, then, to be considered how this
Vision came to be associated with his name. We have seen that he
had become the hero of a saga-cycle, into which fiction had made an
entrance: whether we must class the doubtful episodes as historical
romance merely, or as facts set off by the aid of fiction. This,
however, brings us little further, for it is certain that this popular
reputation was earned by his actual achievements: again, therefore, we
are faced with the question how to distinguish fact from fiction. It
may be that the true author sought for his own teaching the authority
of so famous a saint; or he may have had before him an anonymous work,
and inserted the name of Adamnán from a like motive, or from a belief
in the fact; or, again, the work may be what it professes to be, and
may have for its basis a more or less accurate tradition of Adamnán’s
own teaching. A tradition, I venture to think, should be allowed a
certain weight where it is in conflict neither with ascertained fact
nor with probability; and here the probabilities appear to be rather
favourable than otherwise, which, perhaps, in the absence of further
evidence, is the nearest approach to a conclusion we can hope to make.
It is not a forgery; it is not a polemical work, where the author might
wish to shoot forth his darts from under the shield of some Ajax of
controversy. Neither is it a mere floating legend, ready to be tacked
on to any name indifferently; on the contrary, it is written with great
care, and with a literary and constructive skill rare at that day. It
makes no profession, and betrays no purpose, save to give the substance
of the Vision which Adamnán related to the Mórdáil, and of his
subsequent preaching. The fashion of the day renders it highly probable
that Adamnán’s teaching or preaching may have assumed this form. Then
his fame and authority, at the most active period of Irish letters,
might avail to preserve a work, thus widely published, for a longer
time than the 150 or 250 years which intervened between his death and
the composition of the Vision, even in its present form, while if
the reasons adduced in a later place (Part 11. Sec. 5, _post_) for
supposing it to be of a composite character be correct, it follows that
the latest author must have had before him--as in any case he probably
had--materials of an earlier date.

Thus the _Fis_ and the _Cáin_ appear to institute an exact parallel. We
have as the basis of the extant work, in the one case, a law enacted,
in the other, a Vision recited, by the saint, which a later writer has
worked up into literary form, while other details relating to the same
subject-matter, but entirely irrelevant, have been added later.

Two versions of the _Fis Adamnáin_ exist, in two mediæval MSS., now
in the Library of the Royal Irish Academy. Of these, the _Lebor na
h-Udri_, or ‘Book of the Dun’ (_sc._ ‘Cow’), is the oldest extant
Irish MS. which contains a collection of secular literature, being
copied about 1103 from another MS., probably about fifty years older,
which was itself compiled from various earlier writings. The other
MS., the _Lebor Brec_, ‘Speckled Book,’ was written towards the end
of the fourteenth century. Both versions have been edited and printed
by Professor Windisch in _Irische Texte_, vol. i. I believe that no
complete translation of either version has been published in a form
generally accessible, though O’Donovan made and translated extracts
from it, and Dr. Whitley Stokes has edited and translated it, with
notes, but printed fifty copies only for private distribution (Simla,
1870). I have had the advantage of referring to this edition, thanks
to the courtesy of Mr. Alfred Nutt, to whom I am indebted for several
valuable suggestions and corrections.

The following translation has been made from the L.U. version. There
is little difference in substance between the two versions, but the
L.U. is more attractive from a literary point of view, the L.B. being
somewhat overloaded in places with Latin quotations, while it wants the
concluding chapter, which the L.U. possesses.

3. TRANSLATION OF THE FIS ADAMNÁIN

1. Noble and wonderful is the Lord of the Elements, and great and
marvellous are His might and His power. For He calleth to Himself in
Heaven the charitable and merciful, the meek and considerate; but He
consigns and casts down to Hell the impious and unprofitable host
of the children of the curse. For upon the blessed He bestows the
hidden treasures and the manifold wages of Heaven, while He inflicts a
diversity of torments, in many kinds, upon the sons of death.

2. Now there are multitudes of the saints and righteous ones of the
Lord of Creation, and of the apostles and disciples of Jesus Christ,
unto whom have been revealed the secrets and the mysteries of the
Heavenly Kingdom, and the golden wages of the righteous; likewise the
divers pains of Hell, with them that are set in the midst thereof. For
unto the Apostle Peter was shown the four-cornered vessel, let down
from Heaven,[6] with four cords to it, and they with sound as sweet
as any music. Also, the Apostle Paul was caught up to Heaven,[7] and
heard the ineffable words of the angels, and the speech of them that
dwell in Heaven. Moreover, on the day of Mary’s death, all the apostles
were brought to look upon the pains and miserable punishments of the
unblest; for the Lord commanded the angels of the West[8] to open up
the earth before the face of the apostles, that they might see and
consider Hell with all its torments, even as Himself had told them,
long time before His Passion.

3. Finally, to Adamnán ua Thinne, the High Scholar of the Western
World, were revealed the things which are here recorded; for his
soul departed from out his body on the feast of John Baptist, and
was conveyed to the celestial realm, where the heavenly angels are,
and to Hell, with its rabble rout. For no sooner had the soul issued
from out the body, than there appeared to it the angel that had been
its guardian while in the flesh, and bore it away with him to view,
firstly, the Kingdom of Heaven.

4. Now the first land to which they come is the Land of Saints. A
bright land of fair weather is that country. In it are diverse and
wondrous companies, clad in cassocks of white linen, with hoods of
radiant white upon their heads. The saints of the Eastern world form
a company apart in the East of the Land of Saints; the saints of the
Western world are to the West of the same land; the saints of the
Northern world and of the South, in their great concourse, are to the
South and North. For every one that is in the Land of Saints may freely
listen to the music, and may contemplate the vault,[9] wherein are the
nine classes of Heaven, after their rank and order.

5. For one spell, then, the saints keep singing marvellous music in
praise of God; for another, they are listening to the music of the
heavenly host; for the saints have no other need than to listen to the
music that they hear, and to contemplate the radiance that they see,
and to sate themselves with the fragrance that there is in that land.
The wonderful Lord is face to face with them, in the South-east,[10]
and a crystal veil between; to the South is a golden portico, and
through it they discern the form and adumbration of the people of
Heaven. No veil, however, nor cloud is between the Host of Heaven and
the Host of the Saints, but those are ever manifest and present unto
these, in a place that is over against them. A circle of fire surrounds
this place, yet do they all pass in and out, and it does scathe to
none.

6. Now, the Twelve Apostles and Mary the pure Virgin form a band
apart, about the mighty Lord. Next to the Apostles are the Patriarchs
and Prophets, and the disciples of Jesus. On the other side are holy
Virgins, at Mary’s right hand, and with no great space between. Babes
and striplings are about them on every side, and the bird-choirs of the
heavenly folk, making their minstrelsy. And amid these companies, bands
of angels, guardians of the souls, do perpetual suit and service in the
Royal presence. No man is there in this present life who may describe
those assemblies, or who may tell of the very manner of them. And the
bands and companies which are in the land of saints abide continually
in even such great glory as aforesaid, until the great Parliament[11]
of Doom, when the righteous Judge, on the Day of Judgment, shall
dispose them in their stations and abiding places, where they shall
contemplate God’s countenance, with no veil nor shadow between, through
ages everlasting.

7. But great and vast as are the splendour and the radiance in the
Land of Saints, even as hath been said, more vast, a thousand times,
the splendour which is in the region of the Heavenly Host, about the
Lord’s own throne. This throne is fashioned like unto a canopied
chair,[12] and beneath it are four columns of precious stone. Though
one should have no minstrelsy at all, save the harmonious music of
those four columns, yet would he have his fill of melody and delight.
Three stately birds are perched upon that chair, in front of the King,
their minds intent upon the Creator throughout all ages, for that is
their vocation. They celebrate the eight [canonical] hours, praising
and adoring the Lord, and the Archangels accompany them. For the birds
and the Archangels lead the music, and then the Heavenly Host, with the
Saints and Virgins, make response.

8. Over the head of the Glorious One that sitteth upon the royal throne
is a great arch, like unto a wrought helmet, or a regal diadem:[13] and
the eye which should behold it would forthwith melt away. Three circles
are round about it, separating it from the host, and by no explanation
may the nature of them be known. Six thousand thousands, in guise of
horses and of birds, surround the fiery chair, which still burns on,
without end or term.

9. Now to describe the mighty Lord that is upon that throne is not for
any, unless Himself should do so, or should so direct the heavenly
dignitaries. For none could tell of his vehemence and might, His
glow[14] and splendour, His brightness and loveliness, His liberality
and steadfastness, nor of the multitude of His Angels and Archangels,
which chant their songs to Him. His messengers keep going to and from
Him, ever and anon, with brief messages to each assemblage, telling
to the one host of His mildness and mercy, and to the other of His
sternness and harshness.

10. Whoso should stand facing about him, East and West, South and
North, would behold on each side of him a majestic countenance, seven
times as radiant as the sun. No human form thereto, with head or foot,
may be discerned, but a fiery mass, burning on for ever, while one and
all are filled with awe and trembling before Him. Heaven and earth are
filled full with the light of Him, and a radiance as of a royal star
encircles Him.[15] Three thousand different songs are chanted by each
several choir about Him, and sweeter than all the varied music of the
world is each individual song of them.

11. Furthermore, in this wise is the fashion of that city, wherein that
throne is set. Seven crystal walls of various hue surround it, each
wall higher than the wall that is before it.[16] The floor, moreover,
and the lowest base of that city, is of fair crystal, with the sun’s
countenance upon it(?), shot with blue, and purple, and green, and
every hue beside.

12. A gentle folk, most mild, most kindly, lacking in no goodly
quality, are they that dwell within that city; for none come there,
and none abide there ever, save holy youths, and pilgrims zealous for
God. But as for their array and ordinance, hard is it to understand
how it is contrived, for none turns back nor side to other, but the
unspeakable power of God has set, and keeps, them face to face,
in ranks and lofty coronels, all round the throne, circling it in
brightness and bliss, their faces all towards God.

13. There is a chancel rail[17] of silver between each two choirs,
cunningly wrought upon with red gold and silver, and choice rows
of precious stones, variegated with diverse gems, and against that
lattice are seats and canopies[18] of carbuncle. Between every two
chief companies are three precious stones, softly vocal with sweet
melody, and the upper halves of them are lighted lamps. Seven thousand
angels, as it were great candles, shine and illumine that city round
about; seven thousand others in the midst thereof are aflame for ever,
throughout the royal city. The men of all the world, if gathered into
one place, many as they are, would derive sustenance enough from the
sweet savour of any one of those candles.

14. Now, such of the world’s inhabitants as attain not to that city
after their life is spent, and to whom a dwelling-place therein is
allotted after the Words of Doom shall have been spoken, find a
restless and unstable habitation, until the coming of Judgment, on
heights and hill-tops, and in marshy places. Even so fare those hordes
and companies, with the guardian angel of every soul in their midst,
serving and tending them. In the main doorway of the city they are
confronted by a veil of fire and a veil of ice, smiting perpetually
one against the other. The noise and din of these veils, as they
clash together, are heard throughout the world, and the seed of Adam,
should they hear that din, would be seized thereat with trembling
and intolerable dismay. Faint and dazed are the wicked at that din;
howbeit, on the side of the Heavenly Host, nought is heard of that rude
discord, save a very little only, and that sweeter than any music.

15. Awful is that city, and wonderful to describe; for a little out
of much is that which we have told concerning its various orders, and
the wonders of it. Seldom indeed may a spirit, after its converse and
co-habitation with the body, in slumber and repose, in freedom and
luxury, win its way to the throne of the Creator, unguided of the
angels; for hard of essay are the seven Heavens, nor is any one of them
easier than the rest. Six guarded doors confront all those of mortal
race who reach the Kingdom. There sits a porter and warder of the
Heavenly Host, keeping guard over each door. At the door of that Heaven
which is nearest on the hither side sits the Archangel Michael, and
with him two youths,[19] with iron rods in their laps to scourge and
smite the sinners as they pass through this the first grief and torment
of the path they have to tread.

16. At the door of the next Heaven, the Archangel Ariel is warder, and
with him two youths,[20] with fiery scourges in their hands, wherewith
they scourge the wicked across the face and eyes. A river of fire, its
surface an ever-burning flame, lies before that door. Abersetus is the
angel’s name who keeps watch over that river, and purges the souls of
the righteous, and washes them in the stream, according to the amount
of guilt that cleaves to them, until they become pure and shining as
is the radiance of the stars. Hard by is a pleasant spring, flowery
and fragrant, to cleanse and solace the souls of the righteous, though
it annoys and scalds the souls of the guilty, and does away nought
from them, but it is increase of pain and torment that comes upon them
there. Sinners arise from out of it in grief and immeasurable sadness,
but the righteous proceed with joy and great delight to the door of the
third Heaven.

17. Above this, a fiery furnace keeps ever burning, its flames reaching
a height of twelve thousand cubits; through it the righteous pass
in the twinkling of an eye, but the souls of sinners are baked and
scorched therein for twelve years, and then their guardian angel
conveys them to the fourth door. About the entrance door of the fourth
Heaven is a fiery stream, like the foregoing. It is surrounded by a
wall of fire, in breadth twelve thousand measured cubits, through which
the souls of the righteous pass as though it were not there, while
the souls of the sinful tarry therein, amid pain and tribulation, for
another twelve years, until their guardian angel bears them to the door
of the fifth Heaven.

18. In that place is a fiery river, which is unlike all other rivers,
for in the midst of it is a strange kind of whirlpool, wherein the
souls of the wicked keep turning round and round, and there they abide
for the space of sixteen years; the righteous, however, win through it
straightway, without any hindrance. So soon as the due time cometh for
the sinners to be released thereout, the angel strikes the water with a
rod, hard as though it were of stone, and uplifts the spirits with the
end of that rod. Then Michael bears them up to the door of the sixth
Heaven; but no pain nor torment is meted out to the spirits at that
door, but there they are illumined with the lustre and the brilliancy
of precious stones. Then Michael cometh to the Angel of the Trinity,
and one on either side they usher the soul into the presence of God.

19. Infinite and beyond all telling is the welcome wherewith the Lord
and the Heavenly Host then receive the soul, if he be a pure and
righteous soul; if, however, he be an unrighteous and unprofitable
soul, harsh and ungentle is the reception of him by the Mighty Lord.
For He saith to the Heavenly Angels, ‘Take, O Heavenly Angels, this
unprofitable soul, and deliver him into the hand of Lucifer, that he
may plunge him and utterly extinguish him in Hell’s profound, through
ages everlasting.’

20. Thereupon that wretched soul is parted, fearfully, sternly,
awfully, from sight of the Heavenly Kingdom, and of God’s countenance.
Then utters he a groan, heavier than any groan, as he comes into the
Devil’s presence, after beholding the bliss of the Kingdom of Heaven.
He is then deprived of the guidance of the Archangels, in whose company
he had come unto Heaven. Twelve fiery dragons swallow up every spirit,
one after the other, until the lowest dragon lands him in the Devil’s
maw. There doth he experience the consummation of all evil, in the
Devil’s own presence, throughout all ages.

21. After that his guardian angel had revealed to Adamnán’s spirit
these visions of the Heavenly Kingdom, and of the first progress of
every soul after parting from its body, he brought him to visit the
nethermost Hell, with all its pains, and its crosses, and its torments.
Now, the first region whereunto he came was a land burnt black, waste
and scorched, but with no punishment at all therein. A glen, filled
with fire, was on the further side of it; huge the flame of it,
extending beyond the margin on either hand. Black its base, red the
middle, and the upper part thereof. Eight serpents were in it, with
eyes like coals of fire.

22. An enormous bridge spans the glen, reaching from one bank to the
other; high the middle of it, but lower its two extremities. Three
companies seek to pass over it, but not all succeed. One company find
the bridge to be of ample width, from beginning to end, until they win
across the fiery glen, safe and sound, fearless and undismayed. The
second company, when entering upon it, find it narrow at first, but
broad afterwards, until they, in like manner, fare across that same
glen, after great peril. But for the last company the bridge is broad
at first, but strait and narrow thereafter, until they fall from the
midst of it into that same perilous glen, into the throats of those
eight red-hot serpents, that have their dwelling-place in the glen.

23. Now the folk to whom that path was easy were the chaste, the
penitent, the diligent, they who had zealously borne a bloody testimony
to God. The band who found the path narrow at first, but afterwards
broad, were they who had hardly been constrained to do God’s will, but
had afterwards converted their constraint into the willing service of
God. They, however, to whom this way was broad at first, but strait
thereafter, were sinners who had listened to the precepts in God’s
word, and after having heard, fulfilled them not.

24. Furthermore, vast multitudes abide beyond, feeble and powerless,
upon the shore of perpetual pain, in the land of utter darkness. Every
other hour the pain ebbs away from them, and the next hour it returns
upon them again. Now these are they in whom good and evil were equally
balanced, and on the Day of Doom, judgment shall be passed between
them, and their good shall quench their evil on that day; and then
shall they be brought to the Haven of Life, in God’s own presence,
through ages everlasting.

25. Another great company is there, near to the last-named group, and
monstrous their torment. And this is their plight: they are fettered
to fiery columns, a sea of fire about them up to their chins, and
about their middle fiery chains, in the shape of vipers. Their faces
are aflame with agony. They who are tormented thus are sinners,
fratricides,[21] ravagers of God’s Church, and merciless Erenachs,[22]
who, in presence of the relics of the Saints, had been set over the
Church’s tithes and oblations,[23] and had alienated these riches to
their private store, away from the Lord’s guests and needy ones.

26. Great multitudes there are, standing in blackest mire up to their
girdles. Short cowls of ice are on them. Without rest or intermission,
through all time, their girdles are perpetually scorching them with
alternate cold and heat. Demon hosts surround them, with fiery
clubs[24] in their hands, striking them over the head, though they
struggle against them continually. These wretches all have their
foreheads to the North, and a rough, sharp wind blowing full upon their
foreheads, in addition to every other woe. Red showers of fire are
raining on them, every night and every day, and they cannot ward them
off, but must needs endure them throughout all ages, wailing and making
moan.

27. Some of them have streams of fire in the hollows of their visages;
some, fiery nails through their tongues; others, through their heads,
from side to side. They who are so punished are thieves and liars,
and they who have practised treachery, reviling robbery and rapine;
judges of false judgment and contentious persons; women who have dealt
in poison and spells, reivers,[25] and learned men who have practised
heresy. Another great throng is set upon islands, in the midst of the
fiery sea. About them is a silver wall [built] of the raiment and the
alms [which they had bestowed]. These are they who have practised
mercy without zeal,[26] and have remained in loose living, and in the
bonds of their sin, until the hour of their death; but their alms are
a bulwark unto them, amid the fiery sea, until the Judgment, and after
Judgment they shall be brought into the Haven of Life.

28. Another great multitude is there, clad in red and fiery mantles
down to their middle.[27] Their trembling and their outcries make
themselves heard, even unto the firmament. An unspeakable throng of
demons is throttling them, holding in leash the while raw-hided,
stinking hounds, which they incite to devour and consume them. Red
glowing chains[28] are constantly ablaze about their necks. Every
alternate hour they are borne up to the firmament, and the next hour
they are dashed down into Hell’s profound. Now they that are punished
in this wise are the regulars who have transgressed their rule,[29] and
become loathers of piety; also, impostors who have deceived and seduced
the multitude, and have undertaken miracles and wonders which they are
not able to perform. Moreover, the children that are tearing the men
in orders, are they who were committed to them for amendment, but they
amended them not, neither reproved them for their sins.

29. Thereafter, is another vast company; East and West they go,
unresting, across the fiery flagstones, at war with demon hosts.
Innumerable showers of red-hot arrows are rained upon them by the
demons. Running, they go on without stop or stay, making for a black
lake and a black river, that they may quench those arrows therein. A
weeping and wailing, truly miserable and piteous, do the sinners make
in those waters, for in them they only meet with augmentation of their
pain. Now they that are punished thus are cheating artificers, weavers,
and merchants; judges that judged falsely, both Jews, and others
likewise; impious kings, Erenachs of lewd and crooked ways, adulterous
women, and the panders that destroyed them by their evil practices.

Beyond the land of torment is a fiery wall; seven times more horrible
and cruel is it than the land of pain itself. Howbeit, no soul dwells
therein till Judgment, but it is the province of the demons only, until
the Day of Judgment.

30. At that time, woe unto him that shall dwell amid those pains, in
company with the Devil’s own tribe! Woe unto him that is not ware of
that tribe! Woe unto him over whom a vile and savage demon is set in
dominion! Woe unto him that shall be hearkening unto the spirits,
making moan and complaining unto the Lord, for the speedy coming of
the Day of Judgment, that they may know whether they shall find any
remission of their doom; for they get no respite ever, save only for
three hours on every Sunday. Woe unto him unto whom that land shall
be for a lasting inheritance, even for ever and ever! For this is the
nature of it: Mountains, caverns, and thorny brakes; plains, bare and
parched, with stagnant, serpent-haunted lochs. The soil is rough and
sandy, very rugged, icebound. Broad fiery flagstones bestrew the plain.
Great seas are there, with horrible abysses, wherein is the Devil’s
constant habitation and abiding-place. Four mighty rivers cross the
middle of it: a river of fire, a river of snow, a river of poison, a
river of black, murky water. In these wallow eager hosts of demons,
after making their holiday and their delight in tormenting the souls.

31. What time the holy companies of the Heavenly Host are singing the
eight hours with harmonious melody, praising the Lord with cheerfulness
and great gladness, then do the souls of the wicked utter piteous and
weary wailings, as they are buffeted unceasingly by the demon hordes.

Such then are the pains and torments which his guardian angel revealed
to the spirit of Adamnán, after his journey towards the Heavenly
Kingdom. After which he was borne in the twinkling of an eye through
the golden forecourt,[30] and through the crystal veil, to the Land of
Saints, whereunto he had been brought at first, after his departure
from the body. But when he bethought him to rest and tarry in that
land, he heard, through the veil, the angel’s voice enjoining him to
return again into that body whence he had departed, and to rehearse in
courts and assemblies, and in the great congregations of laymen and
of clerics, the rewards of Heaven and the pains of Hell, even as his
guardian angel had revealed them unto him.

32. This, then, was the doctrine that Adamnán continually taught to
the congregations, from that time forth, so long as he remained in
life. This, too, is what he preached in the great assemblies of the
men of Éire,[31] wherein the Constitution of Adamnán was imposed upon
the Gaels, and the women were emancipated by Adamnán and by Finnachta
Fledach,[32] King of Éire, and the princes of Éire, of one accord.
Such, too, were the tidings which Patrick, son of Calpurnius, at the
Gospel-dawn, was ever wont to proclaim--to wit, the rewards of Heaven
and the pains of Hell--to all them that would believe in the Lord,
through his teaching, and would accept his guidance of their souls.[33]
That, too, is the doctrine most constantly taught by Peter and Paul,
and the [other] apostles likewise, to wit, the enumeration of the
rewards and pains which had been revealed to them in like manner. And
so did Silvester, Abbot of Rome, teach Constantine, son of Helen, High
King of the World, in the General Synod when he offered Rome to Paul
and to Peter.[34] Even so did Fabian, successor to Peter, teach Philip,
son of Gordian, the King of Rome, whereby he believed in the Lord, and
many thousands beside believed in that hour.[35] For he was the first
King of Rome that believed in the Saviour, Jesus Christ.

33. And these are the tidings which Elias declares continually unto the
souls of the righteous, under the Tree of Life, which is in Paradise.
So soon as Elias opens his book in order to instruct the spirits,
the souls of the righteous, in form of bright white birds, repair to
him from every side. Then he tells them, first, of the wages of the
righteous, the joys and delights of the Heavenly Realm, and right glad
thereat are all the throng. After that he tells them of the pains and
torments of Hell, and the woes of Doomsday; and easy it is to mark the
look of sorrow that is upon his face, and upon the face of Enoch; and
these are the two sorrows of the Heavenly Kingdom. Then Elias shuts
his book, and thereupon the birds make exceeding great lamentation,
straining their wings against their bodies till streams of blood issue
from them, in dismay of the woes of Hell and of the Day of Doom.

34. Now, seeing that they who make this moan are the Saints to whom
have been allotted everlasting mansions in the Heavenly Realm, how much
more fitting were it for the men that are yet on earth to ponder, even
with tears of blood, upon the Judgment Day, and upon the pains of Hell.
For at that time will the Lord render due recompense to every one on
earth; that is to say, rewards to the righteous, and punishments to the
guilty. And at that very time shall the guilty be set in the abyss of
everlasting pain, and the book of the Word of God shall then be closed,
under the curse of the Judge of Doom, for ever. But the saints and the
righteous, the charitable and the merciful, shall be borne to the right
hand of God, to a lasting habitation in the Kingdom of Heaven, there to
abide without age or death, end or term, for ever and ever.

35. This, then, is the manner of that City: A Kingdom without pride,
or vanity, or falsehood, or outrage, or deceit, or pretence,[36] or
blushing, or shame, or reproach, or insult, or envy, or arrogance,
or pestilence, or disease, or poverty, or nakedness, or death, or
extinction, or hail, or snow, or wind, or rain, or din, or thunder,
or darkness, or cold,--a noble, admirable, ethereal realm, endowed
with the wisdom,[37] and radiance, and fragrance of a plenteous land,
wherein is the enjoyment of every excellence.

FINIT--AMEN--FINIT.

PART II

1. THE CLASSICAL TRADITION

The legend which forms the ground-plan of the Vision of Adamnán and of
the _Commedia_ of Dante, can claim a pedigree of great antiquity that
may be traced back along several widely divergent lines. The principal
of these may be grouped roughly under the heads of the Classical
Tradition, the Eastern Tradition, the Ecclesiastical Tradition,
resulting from the fusion in the early Christian Church of Hellenic and
Oriental schools of thought; and the Irish Tradition, which last does
not so much represent an entirely independent growth of the legend, as
a new departure, whereby the Ecclesiastical Tradition, transplanted
to Ireland, and there coming into contact with certain cognate ideas
which were prominent in the native mythology and romantic literature,
acquired a fresh development, and reappeared in several forms which
became the most popular exponents of the mediæval theories of the
Otherworld, until the revival of classical learning, in the twelfth and
following centuries, enabled Dante to carry the leading idea, common to
all forms alike, to its culmination.

The Classical Tradition was preserved in the Middle Ages chiefly
through the sixth book of Virgil’s _Æneid_, which relates the visit of
Æneas to Hades; but this episode was itself suggested by the similar
adventure of Odysseus, told in the eleventh book of the _Odyssey_. The
fundamental conception, a visit paid to the Otherworld by a living man,
appears in many of the Greek myths: _e.g._ in the journey to Hades of
Demeter, in the course of her search after her daughter Persephone,
stolen away by Pluto; of Orpheus in quest of Eurydice; of Theseus and
Peirithoos in their attempt to abduct Persephone; of Herakles, Castor
and Pollux, and others. Like most of the myths that have contrived to
‘make their fortune’ by virtue of their strong appeal to the human
imagination, these legends, when the myth-making age had long departed
from the Hellenic peoples, and the age of creative imagination had
given place to one of literary culture, passed into the domain of
literature pure and simple. As such they entered upon a new life in the
writings of the Latin authors; for even in Virgil the literary aspect
of the legend predominates, though not to the exclusion of its more
serious elements. This merely literary character is yet more apparent
in the treatment of the legend by the tragic poets, and by Lucan and
Claudian, while Apuleius, the Perrault of antiquity, found in it a
theme for the play of his graceful fancy.

The early descriptions of the Otherworld, being originally myths
of spontaneous growth, and not composed to be the vehicles of
instruction or edification, contain little of eschatological or
ethical significance,[38] the few stock examples which they give
of the penalties attached to guilt being rather instances of the
private vengeance of Zeus upon those who had rebelled against him,
or had outraged the dignity of some member of the divine family of
which he was the head. In these accounts the abode of the departed
appears as a dreary region, wherein they lead a shadowy and undesirable
existence;[39] and although, side by side with this conception, another
theory subsisted, assigning to the happy dead a serene existence in
the Elysian plain, or in the enchanted isle of Leuke, this belief did
not go beyond the notion, vaguely, however beautifully, expressed,
of a bright and happy region of perpetual calm, where death or decay
or care was unknown, and the departed spirits dwelt in flowery and
fragrant meadows, beneath blossoming trees, beside calm seas or
smoothly flowing streams, while soft breezes were perpetually blowing.
The Greek poets, from Homer downwards, contain innumerable references
to this Elysium,[40] but although we sometimes find a hint, as in
Pindar and some of the tragic poets, that these joys are reserved for
those who have deserved them by a righteous life on earth, the later
instances show scarcely any advance upon the earlier in the direction
of a systematic eschatology, and consequently brought the Vision legend
little, if any, further on its way.[41]

Our legend, however, received fuller development in another school of
Hellenic thought. Simultaneously with the mythology of the Greeks,
and on one side distinct from it, though on the other side closely
connected with it, existed a tradition of a more essentially religious
character; religion being distinguished from philosophical speculation
on the one hand, and myth and legend on the other. Hence, apparently,
proceeded the Neo-platonising tendency in Greek philosophy--to adopt
the familiar and convenient name, though the thing is older than the
Neo-Platonists, or than Plato himself--the tendency to regard the old
myths as a repository of the ‘Wisdom of the Ancients,’ and to disengage
from the husk of fable the moral and scientific truths which it was
supposed to contain. In so doing, the philosophic schools were not
merely attempting to read their own notions into the traditions of
antiquity, but were also, to some extent, endeavouring to develop germs
which already existed in the best and most serious thought of their
own and earlier times. This side of the Hellenic religion would appear
to have existed in its purest and most highly developed form in the
Mysteries, especially those practised at Eleusis, and at other places
in which the Eleusinian rites prevailed.

Most questions relating to the Greek mysteries, their place of origin,
the date of their introduction, the relation of one school to another,
the rites practised therein, and the nature of the instruction imparted
to the neophytes, have given rise to many debates, and some of them
can hardly yet be regarded as entirely settled. Happily, our subject
does not call for discussion of these contested points, all that we are
concerned with being the significance of the mysteries to the spiritual
life of Greece at the time of their highest development. The general
result of investigation would seem to make it probable that the Greeks,
from a very early period, practised certain rites in honour of Demeter,
and that these rites were connected with agriculture, and with the
means whereby the unseen powers presiding over it might be rendered
propitious. These rites, as in many barbarous nations, were held to
confer certain privileges upon the participants, who could only obtain
access thereto by a secret initiation; and when the ideas of death and
renovation, which arose naturally out of the subject, proceeded by an
easy transition--partly by an inherent principle of growth, and partly
through the introduction of foreign elements[42]--to questionings
concerning man’s fate after death, the same rites were regarded as
efficacious in ameliorating his condition in the unseen world. At the
same time, as the doctrine of the effect of conduct upon the future
life gained ground, this side of the question likewise came within the
purview of the mystical schools, and an ethical as well as a theurgic
efficacy was ascribed to the initiation rite. This important step in
advance would appear to have been taken in the sixth century B.C. at
latest, when the theories of the Orphic-Pythagorean school became
widely diffused. M. Foucart, as we have seen in the last note, holds
that this movement was due to the Egyptian researches carried on by
the early Greek philosophers in the course of their travels; Rohde, on
the other hand, regards it as a strictly national movement, and denies
the late adoption of any alien faith of a highly developed character.
In any case, it is certain that the theories of which Pythagoras was
the most famous exponent assumed great prominence at this time. The
leading principle of these was the doctrine of the soul’s rebirth on
earth, in another body, after undergoing a process of purification in
the Otherworld. It was one of the primary objects of the mysteries to
ensure that the soul’s progress through the intermediate state should
be as easy, and the conditions of its rebirth as favourable, as could
be effected by the due performance of the mystical rites; and while the
great progress of ethics, which with the early philosophers went hand
and hand with philosophical speculation, effected a fuller recognition
of moral conduct in this life as one of the means most conducive to the
desired end, preference was still given, even among the righteous, to
those who had undergone the initiation ceremony.[43]

Professor Gardner even traces the Hades theory from the mystic rites
(_loc. cit._); probably this derivation would only apply to that
theory in its more fully developed form. He holds that the Orphic cult
‘occupies the background of religious life’ in Greece; that it was an
enthusiastic type of religion, and capable of ready association with
the ideals of such moral and political revivalists as Pythagoras and
Empedocles. According to this authority, there were two foci of the
Orphic cult: at Eleusis, and in the rites of Dionysos. M. Foucart,
it will be remembered, denies any connection between Eleusis and the
Orphic mysteries; in which contention he would appear to be supported
by Plato, who speaks slightingly of the latter, while several passages
in his writings testify to his respect for the mysteries of Eleusis.
Certainly the two were respectively connected, originally, with the
worship of two separate and widely different divinities, although,
both having to do with the earth as the source and the renewer of
life, they soon tended towards certain common developments. Perhaps we
may not greatly err if we assume that the Orphic mysteries, in their
most perfected form, were more especially concerned with the orgiastic
ritual and with the doctrine of reincarnation, now reduced to a
philosophical system, while in the Eleusinian school ritual became more
closely connected with personal morality, thus assuming an aspect more
strictly ‘religious,’ in the modern sense of the word.

M. Foucart, indeed, holds that the instruction imparted in the
Eleusinian mysteries was _essentiellement pratique; elle avait pour
objet de mettre l’homme en état de se tirer d’affaire lorsqu’il
arrivait dans la demeure d’Hades_ (_op. cit._, p. 63). By ‘practical’
M. Foucart would appear to refer exclusively to those automatic or
quasi-mechanical effects which are supposed, all the world over,
to result from the due performance of certain rites. However, the
testimony of the Greeks themselves, as appears from the examples
about to be cited in connection with our own subject, and from other
evidences that have come down to us, appears to be conclusive as to the
value attributed to the Eleusinian mysteries, at any rate, as an agent
of moral reformation. Sir W. M. Ramsay[44] distinguishes between the
mysteries which had in view the proficiency and advancement of morals,
and the mysteries which were of an exclusively ritual and orgiastic
nature, associating the former kind with Eleusis, and places where
kindred rites were celebrated. In support of this contention, he cites
a number of passages occurring in Greek writers from the fourth century
B.C. onwards, whence it plainly appears that the Greeks regarded a
moral regeneration as a natural concomitant of initiation into the
mysteries, and even as a condition of happiness in the future life.[45]

It is in connection with the mysteries, as representing the moral
and spiritual side of the Greek religion, whencesoever derived, that
the Vision legend becomes impressed with an epideictic character and
develops those elements which had barely existed in germ in the popular
mythology.

In the Dialogues of Plato, the legend already appears as a vehicle of
religious instruction. Plato, indeed, merely gives literary form to
theories which had existed for at least two centuries before his time,
but as he is the first to employ the Vision legend in this connection,
and as it is in his hands that it first assumes its final type,
essentially identical with that of its successors in the Christian
Church, it is convenient to make him a point of departure.

In the tenth book of his _Republic_ (pp. 614 _sqq._) Plato records
the narrative of one Er, an Armenian, concerning his experiences in
the world of spirits. This Er had been killed in battle, and brought
away with the rest of the slain, but was restored to life. His soul,
upon issuing from the body, had been conveyed to a certain spiritual
(δαιμόνιον) place, where there were two openings leading down below
the earth, and two others leading up into heaven, over against one
another. Between these openings judges were stationed, who dismissed
the souls of the righteous to heaven by the upper and right-hand way,
having first impressed upon their foreheads the decree of absolution,
and despatched the wicked downward by the left-hand path, branded
behind with the record of their misdeeds. The judges commanded Er to
see and hear all that passed, that he might become the messenger of it
all to mankind. The souls of the departed, after a progress lasting
a thousand years, returned by the second openings from the celestial
and subterranean regions respectively. The return of the one company
was marked by joy and gladness, by reason of the delights which they
had enjoyed, and the spectacles of inconceivable beauty through which
they had passed, in the course of their heavenly journey; they then
entered for a while into a smiling meadow, there to hold converse with
others of the just, both those whom they had known while in the body,
and others whom they then met for the first time. The other company
appeared all parched and dusty from their journey, weeping and dismayed
at the remembrance of all they had seen and suffered during their
passage beneath the earth, for there each sinner was requited tenfold
for all the crimes that he had committed. Among these guilty ones,
special mention is made of homicides: of those who had betrayed cities
or armies, and brought them into captivity; of those who had committed
impiety towards the gods, or inflicted violence upon their parents;
all of whom were singled out for eximious penalties. Some indeed, such
as bloody tyrants, and certain private persons who were stained with
enormous crimes, lost their return entirely; these were dragged back
by wild-looking, fire-scathed men, fettered hand and foot, beaten down
and flayed, carded with carding-combs, and finally cast down into
Tartarus. With the exception, however, of this last and worst class
of criminals, the punishments allotted to all were but of temporary
duration, and the ‘souls of a day’ entered upon ‘another period of
mortal, death-fraught existence’ under conditions imposed by ‘the
Destinies, daughters of Necessity.’

This account agrees in principle, though not in detail, with _Phædo_,
p. 14. In the _Phædrus_, Plato speaks of the Eleusinian mysteries as a
means of salvation, and that, apparently, by means of the reformation
effected through a conscientious adherence to the instructions there
imparted to the initiate, rather than by any thaumaturgic virtues
inherent in the rites themselves; the true mystics, in his eyes, being
those whom he terms, in the passage of the _Phædo_ cited above, οἱ
φιλοσοφίᾳ ἱκανῶς καθηράμενοι.

In the _Axiochos_, a dialogue once ascribed to Plato, but written since
his time, Socrates is made to describe the abode of the righteous
as a country of flowery meadows beside clear streams, and full of
fruit-bearing trees. The light is full and radiant, the air soft and
pleasant, free from extremes of heat and cold. Fit places are provided
for philosophical discourse, and there are theatres where poets may
recite their verses. The most honourable place is allotted to the
initiated, who celebrate the sacred mysteries. This description,
which exhibits a naïve adaptation of the most primitive Elysium to
the intellectual requirements of a highly civilised society, is
interesting merely as affording additional evidence as to the Athenian
belief concerning the rewards of the righteous in a future life,
and the intimate connection between initiation into the mysteries,
righteousness of life, and bliss in the life to come.

In this connection, perhaps, we ought not to pass over the Hades
journey of Dionysos, as portrayed in the _Frogs_ of Aristophanes,
for, burlesque as it is, it repeatedly expresses views concerning the
Otherworld coinciding closely, in substance, with the description
contained in Plato’s Vision of Er. The _Frogs_ being prior in date
to the _Republic_, this coincidence affords an independent testimony
to the representative character of Plato’s eschatological theories,
the more so as Aristophanes, in his comedy, would naturally treat his
subject in a form that he knew to be familiar to the audience. In this
play, reference is made to a true Inferno for punishment of the graver
sins. In ll. 145-151, Herakles affirms that they who had violated the
laws of hospitality, beaten their mother, smitten their father on the
cheek, perjured themselves, etc. etc., are condemned to wallow in a
morass of mud and ordure, like the wrathful, the gloomy-minded, and the
flatterers, whom Dante consigns to a similar doom in Cantos 7 and 18 of
the _Inferno_.[46] On the other hand, ‘happy bands of men and women’
inhabit myrtle groves, ‘in the midst of fairest light’ (ll. 155-7),
in the dingles of well-flowering meadows (347-8), and fields blooming
with roses (448-9), in the enjoyment of dance and song and feast (369
_sqq._). These are they who have been initiated into the mysteries (l.
158); nor does this imply a merely ritual initiation, as may not only
be inferred from a comparison with the passages from Plato, quoted
above, and with the testimonies to the like effect cited by Sir W. M.
Ramsay, but, further, appears from the words of the beatified mystics
themselves: ‘For us alone the sun shines, and the light is cheerful;
for us, who are initiate, and have followed the way of righteousness
in all our dealings, alike with strangers and with our own folk’ (ll.
454-9).

Four centuries later, Plutarch takes up the tale. His treatise ‘On the
tardy vengeance of God’ describes the vision of one Soleus, similar in
character to that of Plato’s Er, but, in many of its circumstances,
approximating far more closely to the Christian visions. This Soleus
had led a life of extreme wickedness, stained with all manner of
vice and debauchery; he had been violent, unjust, and fraudulent in
his dealings, and had squandered his patrimony by his extravagance.
Beginning, it would seem, to realise his condition, he sent to the
oracle of Amphilochus to inquire whether the remainder of his life
should be better than the earlier part: the oracle replied that it
should be better with him after his death. Sometime after this he fell
down a precipice, and was taken up for dead; but three days later,
having been carried out for burial, he came to himself just as he
was being lowered into the grave, and sat up. Thenceforth he became
a reformed character, and the remainder of his life was as exemplary
for virtue as the earlier part had been for wickedness. He explained
the reason of this conversion to his friends, by the story of his
experiences during his temporary demise. His first sensation was as of
a steersman swept into the sea by a sudden squall. Upon emerging, he
could discern, at first, nothing but stars of great magnitude, and very
far apart, emitting radiant beams, upon which the soul rode as though
in a chariot. Looking downward, he descried little fiery bubbles rising
through the yielding air, which, bursting, released aerial forms of men
and women, some of which mounted straight upward, with great velocity,
while others whirled and span rapidly about in all directions. Among
these latter he recognised several of his acquaintance, and tried
to accost them, but they all avoided him. He was more successful
with those spirits who mounted upright, among whom he recognised a
kinsman who had died young. This spirit saluted him by the name of
Thespesios, or Divine, saying that he must have come thither by order
of the gods, seeing that he was manifestly alive, for the spirits of
the dead neither cast shadows nor open and shut their eyelids.[47]
Under his kinsman’s guidance, Thespesios noted the various kinds of
souls, and observed that while all were of transparent substance, some
emitted a pure untroubled light, ‘like the full moon in her greatest
resplendence,’ others being marked with long streaks, and others,
again, repulsive with black splotches, like those on the skins of
vipers. His guide accounted for this diversity by expounding the laws
which regulate the condition of departed spirits. Adrasteia, daughter
of Zeus and Necessity, was charged with a general superintendence
over the punishments awarded to the guilty, and none of any rank or
kind might escape her vengeance; but guilt is of various degrees, so
Adrasteia deputed the chastisement of offences, after their several
kinds, to three Furies, or avenging spirits. The first of these, Poine,
is the minister of temporal penalties, whereby minor sinners are purged
of their guilt by their sufferings in this life. Those whose guilt
is not to be purged so easily are delivered over, after death, to
Dike, or avenging Justice, to be chastened in manner after described;
while the absolutely incurable are abandoned to Erinnys, who, after
pursuing them in their unavailing flight through countless torments,
plunges them, at last, into an abyss of unspeakable horror. The souls
which Dike takes in hand she first exposes naked to the gaze of their
kin, in order, if these were virtuous, that the guilty soul may be
stricken with the greater shame, or, if they too had been wicked, that
their mutual remorse may be augmented by the sight of one another’s
disgrace and sufferings. She then afflicts them with sufferings ‘as
far surpassing in sharpness and severity all torments of the body, as
reality surpasses an empty dream.’ These punishments leave upon the
soul stripes and scars which correspond to the gravity of the offences,
and gradually disappear as the soul recovers its proper temperament;
though certain souls, incapable of thorough reformation, are compelled
to complete their expiation by inhabiting the bodies of brutes for a
term. After this, the spirit conveyed Thespesios across a vast expanse
over which he was borne upon a ray of light, as easily and swiftly as
though upborne by an eagle, until he came to a yawning, unfathomable
chasm. Here the force which had hitherto sustained him failed; his
further course was stayed, and he, and several others in like case,
were left hovering about the mouth of the cavern, like birds that
desired to enter in, but dared not. The interior of the chasm was all
green with trees and grass, and adorned with flowers of every hue,
which emitted a fragrance sweeter than is the fragrance of wine to
them that love it, and amid all these dwelt the souls of the blest in
the utmost mirth and good fellowship. Ere long, Thespesios was carried
hence and brought to the place of punishment, and among the guilty he
recognised certain of his own kin. Here his kindly spirit guide quitted
him, and he was taken in charge by several grisly sprites, who thrust
him forward and made him observe the torments that were inflicted on
the wicked. In the enumeration of these, a quite Dantesque intention
‘to make the punishment fit the crime’ is apparent. For instance,
certain who had cloaked a vicious life with fine professions were
turned inside out, and compelled to wriggle onward in this guise;
hypocrites were flayed and gashed, so as to reveal their inner nature;
deadly enemies were twined together, and gnawed one another, as Ugolino
gnawed the Archbishop of Pisa in the _Inferno_. Furthermore, there were
three lakes--one of molten gold, one of lead, exceeding cold, and one
of iron; demons armed with tongs, like smiths, plunged the souls of the
avaricious into the lake of molten gold until they were heated through
and through; then into the leaden lake until they were congealed like
hail; and, finally, into the iron lake, where they were broken to
pieces; after which they were reintegrated, for a repetition of their
punishment. But most wretched was the case of them whose crimes had
communicated a taint to their posterity; for when they deemed that the
Divine justice had wrought its utmost upon them, they were met by the
scarred and distorted souls of their descendants, who, when their
parents in grief and shame tried to shirk away from them, would seize
and cling to them, sometimes, even in clusters like bees or bats, and
would hale them back to renewed torments. Finally, the souls who were
destined to return to earth in other bodies were wrought and forged
like iron to fit them for their new state.

Plutarch’s eschatology displays more system than is to be found in
his predecessors, or even in many of the Christian visions; however,
neither by Plutarch nor by Plato is the doctrine of the metempsychosis
made to fit in quite perfectly with that of a state of eternal rewards
and punishments which co-exists with it. Moreover, the purgatorial
scheme, though highly elaborated, is conceived entirely with reference
to the preparation of the soul for a renewed existence upon earth.

In following up the Greek development of the Vision legend to its
completest exposition in Plutarch, we have passed by the Latin
contributions to the subject, earlier than the Vision of Thespesios in
point of date, though not in manner of treatment. A generation before
the birth of Virgil, Cicero, in his _Somnium Scipionis_, had utilised
the Vision as a vehicle of instruction; he, however, took natural
philosophy for his theme, not eschatology.

Virgil, indeed, alone of Roman writers, made any contribution of real
importance to the development of the Vision legend in literature,
though that contribution is the flower and consummation of the legend
as it appears in the purely classical tradition. For Virgil, saturated
with the Hellenic culture, while remaining intensely Roman in his
political views and national sentiment, remains free from any tincture
of Oriental ideas. Earlier than Plutarch by more than a century, his
treatment of the subject is more modern in style and spirit, although,
in his pictures of the other world, he repeats and combines the ideas
which the ancients had held concerning it. His topography of the other
world and of the approaches thereto agrees so closely with the humorous
account in the _Frogs_ of Aristophanes, which, evidently, he has no
intention of copying, as to make it clear that both poets followed, in
the main, a generally accepted tradition. So, too, in his descriptions
of the Elysian Fields and of Tartarus, Virgil simply reproduces in
substance the many similar descriptions which occur in the Greek poets
and philosophers; and although he perfects these with many exquisite
touches of his own, such original contributions of his belong rather
to the domain of art than of eschatology. To take one instance, his
enumeration of those righteous ones who are admitted to the seats of
the blest, including, as it does,

    Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes,
    Quique sui memores alios fecere merendo (_Æn._ vi. 663-4),

could only have been written in an age of self-conscious culture.

In his eschatology he is no less conservative than in his descriptions;
witness the judgment of the dead by Minos (431 _sqq._) and Rhadamanthus
(567-9); the Fate of the Giants (580 _sqq._), and other great
offenders against the persons of the gods (601 _sqq._), etc. etc.
Like Plutarch, he inflicts heavier penalties upon those who have
not expiated their guilt in this life (569). Moreover, he adopts,
without being able to reconcile, the two conflicting theories held
by his Grecian predecessors, and succeeds no better than Plato and
his followers in fusing into a consistent scheme the theory of
perpetual rewards and punishments, and the collateral theory of the
metempsychosis. In his treatment of the whole subject he betrays
the influence of several of the later schools of Greek philosophy,
and appears as a disciple of the Pythagoreans and Stoics as well as
of Plato. At the same time, he displays his modernity alike in this
eclectic and combining method, and in his general design, which is
mainly artistic and literary; the Vision legend is not introduced
with any hortatory or epideictic purpose, but, as in the earlier
epic, forms merely a part of the general machinery of the poem, the
several pictures and descriptive incidents of the Otherworld serving
as frescoes and statues and gargoyles to adorn the main body of the
edifice. An instance of this occurs in the picturesque grouping of the
monsters and personified abstractions about the gates of Hades (_Æn._
vi. 273-294), which is conceived in a purely artistic spirit, no less
than similar descriptions in Ariosto, Spenser, and Milton--we might
almost add the Rape of the Lock. The same may be said of the City of
Dis (548 _sqq._). In such passages as these, Virgil indulges the Roman
love of classification which appears in that tendency of the national
religion to apportion all phases of nature and humanity among countless
‘departmental deities,’ ridiculed by several of the early Christian
fathers, and notably by St. Augustine.[48]

In short, Virgil pressed into his service ideas, beliefs, and
speculations drawn alike from the popular creeds and traditions, and
from the philosophers of his own and earlier times. These he blended
with consummate art into one harmonious whole, uniting antiquity of
matter with modernity of treatment; and this completeness, aided by
the combination of circumstances which led him to be regarded, in after
times, as at once the epitome and the consummation of the Wisdom of
the Ancients, and as, moreover, the divinely inspired herald of the
coming transition from Paganism to Christianity, fitted him, at a time
when the higher achievements of the human intellect had to be sought
in classical antiquity, to become the _duce_, _maestro_, _guida_, that
Dante found in him.

2. THE ORIENTAL TRADITION

To Dante, Virgil appeared as the _sacer vates_ in every sense of the
term. As a poet, he towered above all other masters of the craft with
whom Dante was acquainted; the testimony of ages had concurred in
pronouncing him to be the repository and the exponent of the wisdom and
learning of the ancient world, the only secular wisdom and learning
to which the Middle Ages could turn for instruction and guidance. His
fourth Eclogue had led the Church to acclaim him as one of those pagan
seers to whom, jointly with the Sibyls, a share in the preparation for
the Gospel had been committed by Divine appointment, while the sixth
Æneid directly associated him with the Sibyls themselves; finally,
his great poem expressed the very spirit of that Roman Empire, of
which the theory at least constituted the basis and framework of the
ecclesiastical and civil polity of Christendom.

However, the task which Dante had set himself was nothing less,
according to his own affirmation,[49] than to expound the scheme of
Divine Providence with respect to ‘man, in so far as by his merit
or demerit, by virtue of freewill, he is liable to remunerative or
punitive Justice’;[50] and by the moving picture of ‘the condition
of souls after death,’[51] ‘to withdraw those living in the present
life from the state of misery, and to conduct them unto the state of
bliss.’[52] Having no desire to innovate upon the accepted beliefs, but
rather to expound them in their utmost completeness, and in accordance
with the fulness of knowledge, he naturally, and necessarily, availed
himself of the materials preserved in Christian legend and popular
tradition. These materials, in great measure, were the product of a
fusion in the primitive Church of the speculations of the Hellenistic
schools with an abundant heritage of analogous conceptions, which had
been bequeathed to it by the earlier dispensation.

Long before the Christian era, a gradual process of accretion had been
going on within the Jewish Church. In the days of their freedom, the
people of Israel had addicted themselves but little to speculations
concerning the Otherworld; during the captivity, however, they had
come into contact with the richer mythology of the conquering nations,
and after the return they fell under the influence of the various
schools of philosophy, whose teaching, coloured with a theosophic tinge
of continually increasing depth, permeated Syria in common with all
other lands in which the Hellenistic culture prevailed. These various
influences combined to produce a more spiritual type of religion, and
a more elaborate eschatology, than had originally entered into the
national faith of Israel.

The legend of a Vision of the Otherworld, in the East as in Hellas,
had gradually developed from the most primitive beginnings, the first
appearance of it occurring at a very early stage of popular tradition.
The sacred books of Assyria, which themselves embodied much of the
mythology of the earlier Accadian race, record the descent into
Hades of the goddess Ishtâr, in quest of the waters of life, and of
the national hero Gisdubar, who, like Odysseus and Æneas, had gone
thither seeking counsel from the shades of his ancestors. The abodes
of the dead are approached through seven successive gates, guarded by
monsters, and at each sits a porter who strips the souls that enter of
some part of their raiment, until, after passing the last gate, they
enter the world of shades as naked as when they came into the world
they have just left. Gisdubar, who had been conveyed to the regions of
the dead by a ferry, wherein we see the prototype of Charon’s boat,
was met on his arrival by monsters, between man and scorpion in shape,
who directed him to the abode of the blest, situate ‘at the mouth of
the rivers.’ He accordingly reached a grove by the sea-shore, at the
estuary of a river, which was the Waters of Death. The trees in this
grove were laden with precious stones, and guarded by two maidens, who
shut the door against Gisdubar, because he bore the marks of the Divine
wrath upon him. The Chaldean Elysium is described as a mountain lying
beneath a sky of silver, and bearing crops without need of tillage.
Here the souls of heroes and great men dwell for ever, reclining
on couches, and drinking the waters of life.[53] These waters are
represented in the story of the descent of Ishtâr as proceeding from
under a golden throne, set in the midst of Hades, whereon sat the
Spirits of Earth. In the grove of Eridu stood a Tree of Life, which
appears to have been a World Tree, like Yggdrasil, and at the same time
to have possessed the property of restoring life and strength to the
individual. This tree was guarded by cherubim, whose heads were like
the heads of hawks or eagles. From this Elysium a way led to Arali, the
abode of the dead in general.

That abode is described as ‘a gloomy realm beneath the earth, wherein
the spirits of the dead flit about in darkness, with dust and mud for
their food and drink.’[54] No hint is there of reward or punishment;
the same dreary lot awaits the evil and the good alike so soon as they
have quitted the light of day. The only attempt at a differential
treatment is found in that aristocratic conception of Elysium which
provides a place there for heroes and great men alone; a conception
which the ancient inhabitants of Chaldæa shared with many races of very
different type and origin, including several of the peoples of Central
America and Polynesia, and, apparently, the early Aryans of Europe. In
fact, the whole Chaldæan theory of the future life is very rudimentary,
notwithstanding the great proficiency in several departments of culture
to which the Accadian and Assyrian races had attained.

The Median conquest of Assyria and Babylon introduced the Hebrew exiles
to the Zoroastrian religion, with its mythology richer than any which
the Semitic or Pre-Semitic races had evolved, and taught them an
eschatology more elaborate than their own. The Avesta inculcated an
ethic of high morality, and taught a very systematic theory of rewards
and punishments in the future life. The experiences of the soul after
death are described with great minuteness and copiousness of detail.

For three nights after death the soul sits by the head of the body,
and all this time, if a righteous soul, experiences the consciousness
of a delight as great as any that the whole living world together are
capable of enjoying. At the end of this time it becomes aware of a
sweet-scented wind blowing from the south, and feels a pleasant sense
of being borne into a place of fragrant trees and verdure. The evil
soul, on the contrary, experiences a corresponding amount of misery
during its vigil, at the close of which it is assailed by a foul wind
from the north. Its vigil ended, every soul, good or bad, had to cross
the narrow Chinvât Bridge (_cinvata peretush_, the ‘Accountant’s
Bridge’), where good and evil spirits struggled for possession of
it, as did the angels and devils for the soul of Goethe’s Faust, and
as Michael and Satan contended for Moses, according to the tradition
referred to in the Book of Jude (ver. 9). On reaching the bridge head,
the soul of ‘good thoughts, good deeds, good words, and good religion’
was met by a lovely maiden, who was his own conscience. By her he was
conducted to the place of Judgment,[55] and there a book was opened
wherein had been kept a record of all the good and evil he had wrought
in life. Upon his righteousness being admitted, he was received with
acclamation by the celestial powers, and a place was allotted to him
among their golden seats.[56] The Avestan Elysium is described as a
holy mountain, its summit clothed with everlasting light, whither
‘come neither night nor darkness, no cold wind and no hot wind, no
deathful sickness, no uncleanness made by the Daêvas [demons], and the
clouds cannot reach up to it.’ At the foot of the mountain was a vast
sea, a _mar del essere_, in the midst of which grew the White Haôma
(Indian _Soma_), the Tree of Life. ‘The waters stand there boiling,
boiling up in the heart of the sea Pûitika, and when cleansed therein
they run back from the sea Pûitika to the tree _boura-kasha_, towards
the well-watered tree, whereon grow the seeds of my plants of every
kind.’[57] A godlike bird sits on that tree; when he flies off a
thousand branches grow out of it, and when he alights upon it he breaks
off a thousand branches.[58] Of this mystical bird, the Bundehesh, one
of the later of the sacred books, says, ‘The bird Karshipta dwells
in the heavens; were he living on the earth, he would be the king of
birds. He brought the Religion into the Var of Yima, and recites the
Avesta in the language of birds.’[59] With this we may compare the
angel described in Rev. xiv. 6 as an _angel di Dio_, flying ‘in the
midst of Heaven, bearing the everlasting Gospel to preach unto them
that dwell on the earth.’

Distinct from the Elysium of the Gods, and from the abode of the dead,
is Yima’s Heaven of Light, a _Vara_, or _hortus conclusus_, which is
a reduplication of the realm over which he presided in the Golden