Sources, Context, and English Provenance of the Old Danish Visio Pauli

As with most religions, the Christian doctrine asserts that the fate awaiting the souls of individuals depends directly upon their obedience or misconduct during the lives of devotees. As a result, Christian cosmological and eschatological inquiries have naturally, since their early history, focused on primary questions concerning the physical features of heaven and hell and speculated on the concrete quality of the rewards and torments in the afterworld.¹ The medieval preoccupation with and curiosity about these weighty metaphysical questions that are deeply rooted in Hebrew and classical (most notably Virgilian) traditions can be seen in the vast corpus of devotional literature reporting dreamlike journeys and transits to the afterworld, frequently visited by living individuals.² In their out-of-body expeditions, these (often fortuitous) travelers would be shown, or experience themselves, the comforts and agonies of heaven and hell. They would subsequently return to the physical world and relate to both the faithful and the unfaithful their extraordinary adventures.³

Few medieval texts feature the comprehensive, evocative depictions of the joys of heaven and the pains of hell as the so-called Visio Pauli or Apocalypse of Paul. A New Testament apocryphon, the Visio Pauli was probably written in Greek in Egypt in the middle of the third century and translated into Arabic, Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopic, Georgian, Syriac, and Old Church Slavonic between late antiquity and the High Middle Ages, and notably Latin sometime between the fifth and the sixth century.⁴ The Latin text survives in at least twelve main redactions, which underlie virtually all European vernacular versions of the text.⁵

The preface to the text states that during the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Theodosius the Calligrapher (†450) and the consulship of Cynegius (†388), a certain nobleman in Tarsus was instructed by an angel to unearth a mysterious marble box that had been buried for centuries in the foundations of the house where Paul the Apostle had once lived.⁶ The box contained the hidden “revelation” or “vision” of Paul, a narrative inspired by the notorious passage of 2 Corinthians 12:1–4, where the apostle claims to have ascended to the third level of heaven but admits that he is unable to reveal any details of the experience.⁷ The narrative of the Visio Pauli attempts to fill the gap of 2 Corinthians and describes his alleged travel to the afterworld accompanied by the Archangel Michael. Paul is said to have traveled through multiple heavens and to have witnessed firsthand the alluring delights and rewards awaiting the righteous before descending to the macabre dungeons of hell, where he was shown the grotesque (and often bizarre) bespoken punishments afflicting the sinners, uniquely crafted in response to their earthy disobediences.⁸

The text opens with a brief introduction where the sun, moon, stars, sea, rivers, and especially the earth complain in turn to God about the terrible sins of men (fornication, adultery, homicide, theft, perjury, sorcery, etc.). A multitude of angels speak to God about the souls of mankind, and Paul is shown the blessed and the sinful at the moment of death. The actual metaphysical journey begins with Paul and Michael’s visit to the third heaven, described as a golden, highly luminous palace with blooming and luxuriant vegetation and orchards closely resembling the Garden of Eden.⁹ They proceed to the City of Christ, where four great rivers flow: one of honey, where Paul sees minor and major prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Micah, Zechariah); one of milk; one of oil; and one of wine, where Paul meets some of the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Lot, and Job).¹⁰ The last magnificent vision is that of the tenth heaven, where King David abides in a high altar and is classically depicted singing the psalms in praise of the Lord with a psaltery and a harp.¹¹ At that point, Paul is taken to the profound darkness and desolation of hell where he is shown a series of sinners condemned to lay immersed in a river of fire, each according to his offence (heretics up to their...