Astronomical Myths Part 16

In every case, however, both among pagans and Christians, the locality was somewhere in the centre of the earth. The poets and philosophers of Greece and Rome made very detailed and circ.u.mstantial maps of the subterranean regions. They enumerated its rivers, its lakes, and woods, and mountains, and the places where the Furies perpetually tormented the wicked souls who were condemned to eternal punishment. These ideas pa.s.sed naturally into the creeds of Christians through the sect of the Essenes, of whom Josephus writes as follows:--"They thought that the souls of the just go beyond the ocean to a place of repose and delight, where they were troubled by no inconvenience, no change of seasons.

Those of the wicked, on the contrary, were relegated to places exposed to all the inclemencies of the weather, and suffered eternal torments.

The Essenes," adds the same author, "have similar ideas about these torments to those of the Greeks about Tartarus and the kingdom of Pluto.

The greater part of the Gnostic sects, on the contrary, considered the lower regions as simply a place of purgatory, where the soul is purified by fire."

Amongst all the writings of Christian ages in which matters such as we are now pa.s.sing in review are described, there is one that stands out beyond all others as a masterpiece, and that is the magnificent poem of Dante, his _Divine Comedy_, wherein he described the infernal regions as they presented themselves to his lively and fertile imagination. We have in it a picture of mediaeval ideas, painted for us in indelible lines, before the remembrance of them was lost in the past. The poem is at once a tomb and a cradle--the tomb of a world that was pa.s.sing, the cradle of the world that was to come: a portico between two temples, that of the past and that of the future. In it are deposited the traditions, the ideas, the sciences of the past, as the Egyptians deposited their kings and symbolic G.o.ds in the sepulchres of Thebes and Memphis. The future brings into it its aspirations and its germs enveloped in the swaddling clothes of a rising language and a splendid poetry--a mysterious infant that is nourished by the two teats of sacred tradition and profane fiction, Moses and St. Paul, Homer and Virgil.

The theology of Dante, strictly orthodox, was that of St. Thomas and the other doctors of the Church. Natural philosophy, properly so called, was not yet in existence. In astronomy, Ptolemy reigned supreme, and in the explanation of celestial phenomena no one dreamt or dared to dream of departing in any way from the traditionally sacred system.

In those days astronomy was indissolubly linked with a complete series of philosophical and theological ideas, and included the physics of the world, the science of life in every being, of their organisation, and the causes on which depended the apt.i.tudes, inclinations, and even in part the actions, of men, the destinies of individuals, and the events of history. In this theological, astronomical, and terrestrial universe everything emanated from G.o.d; He had created everything, and the creation embraced two orders of beings, the immaterial and the corporeal.

The pure spirits composed the nine choirs of the celestial hierarchy.

Like so many circles, they were ranged round a fixed point, the Eternal Being, in an order determined by their relative perfection. First the seraphim, then the cherubim, and afterwards the simple angels. Those of the first circle received immediately from the central point the light and the virtue which they communicated to those of the second; and so on from circle to circle, like mirrors which reflect, with an ever-lessening light, the brilliancy of a single luminous point. The nine choirs, supported by Love, turned without ceasing round their centre in larger and larger circles according to their distance; and it was by their means that the motion and the divine inflatus was communicated to the material creation.

This latter had in the upper part of it the empyreal, or heaven of pure light. Below that, was the _Primum mobile_, the greatest body in the heavens, as Dante calls it, because it surrounds all the rest of the circle, and bounds the material world. Then came the heaven of the fixed stars; then, continuing to descend, the heavens of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the sun, Venus, Mercury, the moon, and lastly, the earth, whose solid and compact nucleus is surrounded by the spheres of water, air, and fire.

As the choirs of angels turn about a fixed point, so the nine material circles turn also about another fixed point, and are moved by the pure spirits.

Let us now descend to the geography of the interior of the earth. Within the earth is a large cone, whose layers are the frightful abodes of the condemned, and which ends in the centre, where the divine Justice keeps bound up to his chest in ice the prince of the rebellious angels, the emperor of the kingdom of woe. Such are the infernal regions which Dante describes according to ideas generally admitted in the middle ages.

The form of the infernal regions was that of a funnel or reversed cone.

All its circles were concentric, and continually diminished; the princ.i.p.al ones were nine in number. Virgil also admitted nine divisions--three times three, a number sacred _par excellence_. The seventh, eighth, and ninth circles were divided into several regions; and the s.p.a.ce between the entrance to the infernal regions and the river Acheron, where the resting-place of the d.a.m.ned really commenced, was divided into two parts. Dante, guided by Virgil, traversed all these circles.

It was in 1300 that the poet, "in the midst of the course of life," at the age of thirty-five, pa.s.sed in spirit through the three regions of the dead. Lost in a lonely, wild, and dismal forest, he reached the base of a hill, which he attempted to climb. But three animals, a panther, a lion, and a thin and famished wolf, prevented his pa.s.sage; so, returning again where the sun was powerless, into the shades of the depths of the valley, there met him a shadow of the dead. This human form, whom a long silence had deprived of speech, was Virgil, who was sent to guide and succour him by a celestial dame, Beatrice, the object of his love, who was at the same time a real and a mystically ideal being.

Virgil and Dante arrived at the gate of the infernal regions; they read the terrible inscription placed over the gate; they entered and found first those unhappy souls who had lived without virtue and without vice.

They reached the banks of Acheron and saw Charon, who carried over the souls in his bark to the other side; and Dante was surprised by a profound sleep. He woke beyond the river, and he descended into the Limbo which is the first circle of the infernal regions. He found there the souls of those who had died without baptism, or who had been indifferent to religion.

They descended next to the second circle, where Minos, the judge of those below, is enthroned. Here the luxurious are punished. The poet here met with Francesca of Rimini and Paul, her friend. He completely recovered the use of his senses, and pa.s.sed through the third circle, where the gourmands are punished. In the fourth he found Plutus, who guards it. Here are tormented the prodigal and the avaricious. In the fifth are punished those who yield to anger. Dante and Virgil there saw a bark approaching, conducted by Phlegias; they entered it, crossed a river, and arrived thus at the base of the red-hot iron walls of the infernal town of Dite. The demons that guarded the gates refused them admittance, but an angel opened them, and the two travellers there saw the heretics that were enclosed in tombs surrounded by flames.

The travellers then visited the circles of violence, fraud, and usury, when they came to a river of blood guarded by a troop of centaurs; suddenly they saw coming to them Geryon, who represents fraud, and this beast took them behind him to carry them across the rest of the infernal s.p.a.ce.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 52.--DANTE'S INFERNAL REGIONS.]

The eighth circle was divided into ten valleys, comprising: the flatterers; the simoniacal; the astrologers; the sorcerers; the false judges; the hypocrites who walked about clothed with heavy leaden garments; the thieves, eternally stung by venomous serpents; the heresiarchs; the charlatans, and the forgers.

At last the poets descended into the ninth circle, divided into four regions, where are punished four kinds of traitors. Here is recounted the admirable episode of Count Ugolin. In the last region, called the region of Judas, LUCIFER is enchained. There is the centre of the earth, and Dante, hearing the noise of a little brook, reascended to the other hemisphere, on the surface of which he found, surrounded by the Southern Ocean, the mountain of Purgatory.

Such was the famous _Inferno_ of Dante.

Not only was the geography of the infernal regions attempted in the middle ages, but even their size. Dexelius calculated that the number of the d.a.m.ned was a hundred millions, and that their abode need not measure more than one German mile in every direction. Cyrano of Bergerac amusingly said that it was the d.a.m.ned that kept turning the earth, by hanging on the ceiling like bats, and trying to get away.

In 1757 an English clergyman, Dr. Swinden, published a book ent.i.tled, _Researches on the Nature of the Fire of h.e.l.l and the Place where it is situated_. He places it in the sun. According to him the Christians of the first century had placed it beneath the earth on account of a false interpretation of the descent of Jesus into h.e.l.l after his crucifixion, and by false ideas of cosmography. He attempted to show, 1st, that the terrestrial globe is too small to contain even the angels that fell from heaven after their battle; 2nd, that the fire of h.e.l.l is real, and that the closed globe of earth could not support it a sufficiently long period; 3rd, that the sun alone presents itself as the necessary place, being a well-sustained fire, and directly opposite in situation to heaven, since the empyreal is round the outside of the universe, and the sun in the centre. What a change to the present ideas, even of doctors of divinity, in a hundred years!

So far, then, for mediaeval ideas on the position and character of h.e.l.l.

Next as to purgatory.

The voyage to purgatory that has met with most success is certainly the celebrated Irish legend of St. Patrick, which for several centuries was admitted as authentic, and the account of which was composed certainly a century before the poem of Dante.

This purgatory, the entrance to which is drawn in more than one illuminated ma.n.u.script, is situated in Ireland, on one of the islands of Lough Derg, County Donegal, where there are still two chapels and a shrine, at which annual ceremonies are performed. A knight, called Owen, resolved to visit it for penance; and the chronicle gives us an account of his adventures.

First he had his obsequial rites performed, as if he had been dead, and then he advanced boldly into the deep ravine; he marched on courageously, and entered into the semi-shadows; he marched on, and even this funereal twilight abandoned him, and "when he had gone for a long time in this obscurity, there appeared to him a little light as it were from a glimmer of day." He arrived at a house, built with much care, an imposing mansion of grief and hope, a marvellous edifice, but similar nevertheless to a monkish cloister, where there was no more light than there is in this world in winter at vesper-time.

The knight was in dreadful suspense. Suddenly he heard a terrible noise, as if the universe was in a riot; for it seemed certainly to him as if every kind of beast and every man in the world were together, and each gave utterance to their own cry, at one time and with one voice, so that they could not make a more frightful noise.

Then commenced his trials, and discourse with the infernal beings; the demons yelled with delight or with fury round him. "Miserable wretch,"

said some, "you are come here to suffer." "Fly," said others, "for you have not behaved well in the time that is pa.s.sed: if you will take our advice, and will go back again to the world, we will take it as a great favour and courtesy."

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE XII.--THE LEGEND OF OWEN.]

Owen was thrown on the dark shadowy earth, where the demons creep like hideous serpents. A mysterious wind, which he scarcely heard, pa.s.sed over the mud, and it seemed to the knight as if he had been pierced by a spear-head. After a while the demons lifted him up; they took him straight off to the east, where the sun rises, as if they were going to the place where the universe ends. "Now, after they had journeyed for a long time here and there over divers countries, they brought him to an open field, very long and very full of griefs and chastis.e.m.e.nts; he could not see the end of the field, it was so long; there were men and women of various ages, who lay down all naked on the ground with their bellies downwards, who had hot nails driven into their hands and feet; and there was a fiery dragon, who sat upon them and drove his teeth into their flesh, and seemed as if he would eat them; hence they suffered great agony, and bit the earth in spite of its hardness, and from time to time they cried most piteously 'Mercy, mercy;' but there was no one there who had pity or mercy, for the devils ran among them and over them, and beat them most cruelly."

The devils brought the knight towards a house of punishment, so broad and long that one could not see the end. This house is the house of baths, like those of the infernal regions, and the souls that are bathed in ignominy are there heaped in large vats. "Now so it was, that each of these vats was filled with some kind of metal, hot and boiling, and there they plunged and bathed many people of various ages, some of whom were plunged in over their heads, others up to the eyebrows, others up to the eyes, and others up to the mouth. Now all in truth of these people cried out with a loud voice and wept most piteously."

Scarcely had the knight pa.s.sed this terrible place, and left behind in his mysterious voyage that column of fire which rose like a lighthouse in the shades, and which shone so sadly betwixt hope and eternal despair, than a vast and magnificent spectacle displayed itself in the subterranean s.p.a.ce.

This luminous and odorescent region, where one might see so many archbishops, bishops, and monks of every order, was the terrestrial paradise; man does not stay there always; they told the knight that he could not taste too long its rapid delights; it is a place of transition between purgatory and the abodes of heaven, just as the dark places which he had traversed were made by the Creator between the world and the infernal regions.

"In spite of our joys," said the souls, "we shall pa.s.s away from here."

Then they took him to a mountain, and told him to look, and asked of him what colour the heavens seemed to be there where he was standing, and he replied it was the colour of burning gold, such as is in the furnace; and then they said to him, "That which you see is the entrance to heaven and the gate of paradise."

The attempts at identification of h.e.l.l and purgatory have not been so numerous, perhaps because the subjects were not very attractive, except as the spite of men might think of them in reference to other people; but when we come to the terrestrial paradise, quite a crowd of attempts by every kind of writer to fix its position in any and every part of the globe is met with on every side.

In the seventeenth century, under Louis XIV., Daniel Huet, Bishop of Avranches, gave great attention to the question, and collected every opinion that had been expressed upon it, with a view to arriving at some definite conclusion for himself. He was astonished at the number of writings and the diversity of the opinions they expressed.

"Nothing," he says, "could show me better how little is really known about the situation of the terrestrial paradise than the differences in the opinions of those who have occupied themselves about the question.

Some have placed it in the third heaven, some in the fourth, in the heaven of the moon, in the moon itself, on a mountain near the lunar heaven, in the middle region of the air, out of the earth, upon the earth, beneath the earth, in a place that is hidden and separated from man. It has been placed under the North Pole, in Tartary, or in the place now occupied by the Caspian Sea. Others placed it in the extreme south, in the land of fire. Others in the Levant, or on the borders of the Ganges, or in the Island of Ceylon, making the name India to be derived from Eden, the land where the paradise was situated. It has been placed in China, or in an inaccessible place beyond the Black Sea; by others in America, in Africa, beneath the equator, in the East, &c. &c."

Notwithstanding this formidable array, the good bishop was bold enough to make his choice between them all. His opinion was that the dwelling-place of the first man was situated between the Tigris and Euphrates, above the place where they separate before falling into the Persian Gulf; and, founding this opinion on very extensive reading, he declared that of all his predecessors, Calvin had come nearest to the truth.

Among the other authors of greater or less celebrity that have occupied themselves in this question, we may instance the following:--

Raban Maur (ninth century) believed that the terrestrial paradise was at the eastern extremity of the earth. He described the tree of life, and added that there was neither heat nor cold in that garden; that immense rivers of water nourished all the forest; and that the paradise was surrounded by a wall of fire, and its four rivers watered the earth.

James of Vitry supposed Pison to come out of the terrestrial paradise.

He describes also the garden of Eden; and, like all the cosmographers of the middle ages, he placed it in the most easterly portion of the world in an inaccessible place, and surrounded by a wall of fire, which rose up to heaven.

Dati placed also the terrestrial paradise in Asia, like the cosmographers that preceded him, and made the Nile come from the east.

Stenchus, the librarian of St. Siege, who lived in the sixteenth century, devoted several years to the problem, but discovered nothing.

The celebrated orientalist and missionary Bochart wrote a treatise on this subject in 1650. Thevenot published also in the seventeenth century a map representing the country of the Lybians, and adds that "several great doctors place the terrestrial paradise there."

An Armenian writer who translated and borrowed from St. Epiphanius (eighth century) produced a _Memorial on the Four Rivers of the Terrestrial Paradise_. He supposes they rise in the unknown land of the Amazons, whence also arise the Danube and the h.e.l.lespont, and they deliver their waters into that great sea that is the source of all seas, and which surrounds the four quarters of the globe. He afterwards says, following up the same theory, that the rivers of paradise surround the world and enter again into the sea, which is the universal ocean."

Gervais and Robert of St. Marien d'Auxerre taught that the terrestrial paradise was on the eastern border of the _square_ which formed the world. Alain de Lille, who lived in the thirteenth century, maintained in his _Anticlaudia.n.u.s_ that the earth is circular, and the garden of Eden is in the east of Asia. Joinville, the friend of St. Louis, gives us a curious notion of his geographical ideas, since, with regard to paradise, he a.s.sures us that the four great rivers of the south come out of it, as do the spices. "Here," he says, referring to the Nile, "it is advisable to speak of the river which pa.s.ses by the countries of Egypt, and comes from the terrestrial paradise. Where this river enters Egypt there are people very expert and experienced, as thieves are here, at stealing from the river, who in the evening throw their nets on the streams and rivers, and in the morning they often find and carry off the spices which are sold here in Europe as coming from Egypt at a good rate, and by weight, such as cinnamon, ginger, rhubarb, cloves, lignum, aloes, and several other good things, and they say that these good things come _from the terrestrial paradise_, and that the wind blows them off the trees that are growing there." And he says that near the end of the world are the peoples of Gog and Magog, who will come at the end of the world with Antichrist.

We find, however, more than descriptions--we have representations of the terrestrial paradise by cartographers of the middle ages, some of which we have seen in speaking of their general ideas of geography, and we will now introduce others.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 53.--PARADISE OF FRA MAURO.]