Heaven's Purge: Purgatory in Late Antiquity (review)

This is an important and thoughtful study of a subject plagued by the success of Jacques Le Goff's The Birth of Purgatory (Chicago, 1984), which tried to prove that purgatory did not exist in Western consciousness until the twelfth century invented the noun. Isabel Moreira gets far beyond this oversimplification, thanks to a faithful reading of many difficult sources. Her book is a model for work in the humanities, with an interdisciplinary approach to law, theology, and visionary literature. Her conclusions are clear and succinct. However, the use of the term late antiquity for the Western world until the 700s results in a chronological misunderstanding and confuses the reader. In addition, in the first chapters there are frequent references to other scholars without presentation of their views. A separate chapter summarizing Stand der Forschung would have been helpful. However, the endnotes are helpful in substantiating the conclusions of the well-written text.

In a short review it is not possible to convey the rich layers of this monograph, but the reader can look forward to many fresh interpretations of a varied source material. The author largely rejects Peter Brown's attractive view that the concept of purgatory arose from an Irish context. The evidence is lacking that the classical idea of amnesty was exchanged for an Irish belief in the purgation of the individual (p. 142). Moreira shows instead how early-medieval culture was deeply dependent on monastic, biblical, and patristic literature. She does a superb job in showing how St. Boniface and the Venerable Bede, although they did not know each other, both contributed to a new understanding of the possibility of purgation in the afterlife. She refuses to accept the long-held belief that belief in purgation in the afterlife somehow comes from "barbarian" attitudes, whether found in law codes or other sources. We are assured that by the time of Bede and Boniface, a connection was seen between prayers for the dead and the alleviation of purgatorial fire, a linkage that St. Augustine had failed to make (p. 165). For the barbarian chieftain Radbod it was outrageous that he could not secure through his baptism the salvation of dead family members. But Bede and his successors refused to permit the heresy of Origen—that in the end all would be saved. Purgatory became a necessity for all the baptized, but not a guarantee of universal salvation. This "compassionate theology of purgatory" was useful for missionaries (p. 190).

This monograph does more than illustrate the development of the doctrine of purgatory; it contributes to the intellectual and social history of early-medieval Europe.