Medieval Hell(s)

The concept was simple: be good and go to Heaven, be bad and go to Hell. Each of these outcomes was eternal: you either had bliss or torment forever. Eternal bliss was a fairly straightforward concept, but eternal torment opened the gates for imagination.

We've recently seen some version of Hell specifically for Judas Iscariot in posts here and here. Dante Alighieri of course offers his version of Hell in the Divine Comedy. The Gospel of Luke tells of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus; when they die, Lazarus is carried to Heaven, from which he can look down on the rich man (called Dives), tormented in flame so badly that he wants Lazarus to be sent by Abraham with just the water from the tip of his finger to cool the rich man's tongue. 

Modern theology has abandoned this imagery, and describes Hell is being as far distant from God as it is possible to be. Medieval theologians, however, preferred to make Hell such a ghastly outcome that avoiding sin in this world was preferable.

Some individuals had visions of Hell that were shared to help others avoid that fate. The Vision of Tnugdalus shows what an evil life can lead to, and saves the man from continuing in his wicked ways. Even the non-wicked had visions: Hildegard of Bingen in her 1171 Liber Vitae Meritorum ("The Book of the Rewards of Life") relates a vision she had (which surely wasn't needed to turn her away from a sinful life):

I saw a great swamp. A black cloud of smoke hung over it and a mass of little worms swarmed all over it. In the swamp were the souls of those who had enjoyed foolish fun when they were alive. And I saw a great fire, black, red and white, and in it horrible fiery vipers spitting flame; the vipers tortured the souls of those who had been nasty to others. And I saw a great fire burning in the blackness, and there were dragons in it. Nearby was an icy river. The liars were punished here. To escape the heat, they went into the river. Then, because of the cold, they returned to the fire, and the dragons tormented them. And I saw the thickest darkness. In it were those people who had not obeyed their bishop. They lay on a fiery pavement and were bitten by sharp-toothed worms. And I saw high in the air a hail of ice and fire falling ... and I saw demons with fiery whips beating here and there.

Common aspects of Hell for the Middle Ages were heat/flames, often including brimstone (sulphur), being immersed in blood or boiling water, demons conducting torture, different punishments for different sins, and a subterranean nature (as in the Greek hades), with an opening somewhere on the surface of the Earth that would resemble a gaping maw.

The torturing being conducted in the illustration above is an example of how artists tried to capture the horrific nature of the afterlife for the damned. This particular illustration was by a 13th century Florentine painter by the name of Coppo di Marcovaldo. I think four posts in four days about sin and Hell are sufficient, and it's time to move to something a little more wholesome, like Italian art by Marcovaldo. I'll see you tomorrow.

Other Versions of Judas

The character of Judas in the New Testament fascinated the Middle Ages, even so far as creating more stories about him that take place after his death. One of the common places to find him is the various versions of the voyage of Brendan. Whether there is an original, authentic version of this tale is unknown; what is true is that 1) almost every version of the tale (and there are about 100) includes the encounter with Judas, and 2) the accounts do not all match. Different authors produced different versions of the meeting.

Judas is found on a rock in the ocean. One version does not tell of the encounter in "real time," but has Brendan mention it afterward to his companions. His companions, set with the cold and hail they've been enduring, complain that the warmth of Hell would not be worse. Brendan says:

We have seen Judas, the betrayer of our Lord, in a dreadful sea, on the Lord’s day, wailing and lamenting, seated on a rugged and slimy rock, which was now submerged by the waves and again emerged from them somewhat. Against the rock there rushed a fiery wave from the east, and a wave of coldness from the west alternatively, which drenched Judas in a frightful manner; and yet this grievous punishment seemed to him a relief from pain, for thus the mercy of God granted this place to him on the Sundays as some ease amidst his torments. What, therefore, must be the torments suffered in hell itself?

Some think that, because this is such a simple way to describe it, that this is an earlier version that gave later writers the motivation to expand with more detail. The author might have wanted to skip over (if he knew them) some of the details of the version we saw yesterday, since they have had theological implications that would be unorthodox and unwelcome.

Another version describes a devil that appears on the ship, visible only to Brendan, who questions why he is present. The devil explains that he is being tortured in the deep dark sea, and shows Brendan a vision of Hell. There Brendan sees various torments, and, at the very bottom of Hell, hears weeping. There he sees Judas on a rock in the sea (but this is in Hell), being buffeted by fire at the front and ice from behind. Judas looks up and explains that this will continue until Judgment Day. There are no mollifying circumstances because of any good deeds he may have performed in his lifetime, as we saw yesterday.

(Interesting that Dante also puts Judas at the very bottom and that ice is involved.)

An Anglo-Norman version has him clinging to the rock himself lest he be washed away, and he tells Brendan his whole story, claiming that his punishment is because he despaired of Christ's mercy and killed himself instead of asking forgiveness. This Judas lists two Hells, and that he is the only soul tortured by both: one is a hot mountaintop, one is a cold and odorous valley, with a sea in between. Six days of the week he is tortured in a different way in the alternate Hells, and on Sunday he gets to cling for life to this rock in the middle sea.

Scholars have tried to match details of Brendan's voyage with geography, linking the voyage to the Canary Islands, the Azores, Faroes, or even as far as Greenland or North America. One person thinks the rock on which Judas is found is Rockall, a granite islet of <8500 square feet (see illustration).

But away from geography and back to literature. There is a lot of variety in Judas' suffering because of his status as (probably) Hell's most famous citizen. Writers felt comfortable outing various methods of suffering. So what was the medieval concept of Hell? Was there a uniform, agreed-upon version of what Hell was for, who went there, and how souls were treated? Let's take a very un-Dante-esque trip starting tomorrow.