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Through analysis of written sources, architectural evidence, excavation reports and antiquarian records this paper argues that charnelling of human skeletal remains was more common in medieval England than has hitherto been fully recognized. It became increasingly widespread following formalization of belief in Purgatory in the late 13th century, and charnel houses can be found both at the better-documented greater churches and at parish churches, for which churchwardens' accounts are important sources. Charnel houses are mainly freestanding buildings in churchyards, or crypts within the body of the church, and both forms are often semi-subterranean, with the carefully maintained charnel visible through windows high in the charnel house walls. There was typically a chapel located above the charnel room, in which prayers for the dead were offered, similar to chantries. The paper presents the first detailed exploration of the potential liturgical contexts for charnelling. It is argued that the most likely form of rite to accompany the translation and deposition of charnel would have comprised a re-enactment of the Office of the Dead followed by an adapted version of the burial service, with possible secondary uses of the charnel house in the days leading up to Easter, the most solemn part of the Christian year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historians have often assumed that the development and dissemination of a clarified geography of the afterlife was central to late medieval eschatological preoccupations, albeit they have differed on a central question, the causes and chronology of purgatory's emergence as a space. This essay reconsiders that geography and pays special attention to purgatory, but it focuses on continued disagreement about its nature, with questions persisting about where purgatorial punishment happened, where purgatory (or purgatories) might be and what the places of pain looked like to the eye of visionaries. The essay also explores how these different conceptualisations were able to coexist in late medieval imaginations, noting that Protestant divines identified in this diversity a weakness of Catholic teaching about the fate of the dead, drawing attention not only to the unscriptural origins of purgatory, but also to the varied and sometimes contradictory stories retailed about just what and where it was. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The many opportunities libraries face with the advances of digital technology lead to an understandable assumption that providing a wide range of resources in electronic formats is a natural next step. Only now are some beginning to give serious attention to problems we need to solve before we move forward too quickly and create more problems for those managing information. This paper addresses these issues from the perspective of a research collection focused on scholarly use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of English medieval funerary practice have paid limited attention to the curation of human remains in charnel houses. Yet analysis of architectural, archaeological and documentary evidence, including antiquarian accounts, suggests that charnelling was more widespread in medieval England than has hitherto been appreciated, with many charnel houses dismantled at the sixteenth-century Reformation. The survival of a charnel house and its human remains at Rothwell, Northamptonshire permits a unique opportunity to analyse charnel practice at a medieval parish church. Employing architectural, geophysical and osteological analysis, we present a new contextualisation of medieval charnelling. We argue that the charnel house at Rothwell, a subterranean room constructed during the thirteenth century, may have been a particularly sophisticated example of an experiment born out of beliefs surrounding Purgatory. Our approach enables re-evaluation of the surviving evidence for charnel practice in England and enhances wider narratives of medieval charnelling across Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can souls be saved out of purgatory? This question became a very important one during the thirteenth century when the female experience heavily influenced the spiritual landscape. At the root of this question, lies a dynamic tension between divine compassion and justice. Debates about this tension are of great interest to contemporary theology because it strikes at the core of Christianity - it is a story about sin and grace. Using the female practice of saving souls from purgatory, I explore two different positions in the debate. To begin, I focus on the position of the Holy Women, more specifically, on how they were believed to save souls. Secondly, I contrast their position with the mystical theology of Hadewijch, who takes a new turn in the female history of spiritually. I demonstrate that the praxis of saving souls explores relevant theological themes, such as judgement and compassion, pain and unconditional Love. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the co-authored revenge tragedyTitus Andronicus(pub. 1594) as a subtly constructed space (as we read it on the page) that emphasizes its hellish torments and moral message through an oblique use of a graduated elemental scheme within it. The four elements are loosely clustered according to the act divisions of the play established in the First Folio. The play incorporates the elements according to a Virgilian–Aristotelian scheme, progressing naturally from earth to fire, and so demonstrates an intertwined dual framework of renaissance natural philosophy and religion reminiscent of classical and medieval purgatorial and hellish concepts. The elements thereby form a running and varying structural conceit that reinforces the “hellish” experience that an audience (or reader) might expect from a revenge tragedy, including George Peele’sBattle of Alcazar. When understood in this way, we see how the elemental scheme undergirding the play provides a structural moral and intellectual coherence relevant to all of us. The individual characters undergo horrendous torments and remarkable changes; they are, in a sense, writhing souls in communal suffering bound by the cosmic borders of the stage, which was commonly understood conceptually as a microcosm. The underlying elemental scheme reinforces the concept of the play as a virtual or parodic hell and/or purgatory: a play that begins amid earthly desires and burials ends with the destructive bonfires of the living hell that the characters thrust (and bake) themselves into. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to contribute to the history of medieval Jewish perceptions of the afterlife. It presents Rabbi Joshua ben Levi’s ‘Vision of heaven and hell’, a twelfth-century text that differs sharply from all other descriptions of heaven and hell, whether Jewish or Christian, by disregarding graduated judgements of sinners and the righteous in the afterlife. Rather, it depicts a strictly segregated scenario, with Jews in heaven and non-Jews in hell. Psychologically, this vision transformed privation into privilege: misfortune in this world became proof of Jewish elevation in the next one, and Christians’ prosperity in this world foretold their inevitable damnation. This study then surveys evidence of both Christian familiarity with Rabbi Joshua’s composition and subsequent Jewish notions of separate realms in the world to come. This analysis demonstrates that Jewish views of the afterworld were forged through considerable knowledge of and dialogue with Christian sources and thought, although this level of awareness did not foster amity between these religious communities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Naples is a city run by miracles. Canonical miracles like the thrice-annual liquefaction of San Gennaro's blood, and vernacular miracles, like those effected by the capozzelle, anonymous skulls venerated at Fontanelle, the largest ossuary in Europe. Devotees visited these "little skulls" at the cemetery, cleaned them, adopted them into their families, even had them rebaptized. In return for these favors, the anime pezzentelle (vagabond souls) conjured by the skulls were expected to be conduits for divine favors or to provide more concrete benefits, like revealing winning lotto numbers in dreams. In the wake of Vatican II reforms, the Neapolitan archbishop denounced the anime pezzentelle cult as fetishism, and ordered the closure of Fontanelle, along with public access to the last two churches which still housed capozzelle. Based on field research in 1999, 2002, 2006, and 2013,1 have documented the contest between the official church and partisans of the vernacular cult over the stewardship of the capozzelle, as well as the significance of this struggle for the practice of vernacular religion in Naples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents the particular case of the medieval mystic Christina of Hane in the Early Modern transmission to uncover the dynamics of sanctity across traditional period boundaries. It discusses the interest of copying and transmitting the Life of this local saintly figure with a legend on Mary Magdalene's conversion in the sixteenth century. Christina of Hane's medieval Life becomes refashioned in a seventeenth-century Flemish text that addresses the religious needs of its time, stressing apolitical forms of devotion such as prayers for the souls in purgatory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I respond to commentaries on my target article “An Evolutionary Life History Framework for Psychopathology.” I start by addressing criticism of my basic assumptions about life history strategies and their implications for individual differences in human behavior. Next, I examine the theoretical structure of the proposed framework and respond to the commentators’ challenges to its generality and flexibility. I show how the framework can be expanded to include multiple levels of analysis and to integrate behavioral control with neurological functionality; I also reinterpret the recent finding of a general factor of psychopathology in the context of the expanded framework. In the last section I discuss specific psychopathological conditions, namely attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, borderline personality disorder, substance abuse, autism spectrum disorders, schizophrenia spectrum disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, eating disorders, and depression. For each condition, I reply to the commentators’ criticism of my life history analysis, integrate their suggestions and insights, highlight the present weaknesses of the theory, and indicate promising directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article reviews Peter Martyr Vermigli's hermeneutical principles outlined in his I Corinthians commentary and examines Martyr's understanding of the authority of Scripture and the Church as contrasted with a Roman Catholic interlocutor, Stanislaus Hosius; it also analyzes two test cases in Vermigli's loci that demonstrate a constructive and destructive use, respectively, of his hermeneutical principles. The demonstrations evaluate Vermigli's positive statement of the doctrine of justification and his polemical engagement with the doctrine of purgatory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The moors surrounding Wuthering Heights, Thrushcross Grange and Gimmerton are mysterious not only owing to their description in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, but also owing to their direct influence on the characters in the novel. Specific instances of character exit and return from the world outside these moors create significant changes in these characters, off-scene. The nature of these instances of character change, and also the nature of what that mysterious realm outside the moors might actually be is explored in this essay in terms of good and evil, particularly in relation to heaven, hell and purgatory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1627–28, the legend of St. Patrick's Purgatory served as inspiration for three literary works: Vida y purgatorio de San Patricio (1627) by Juan Pérez de Montalbán, El mayor prodigio y purgatorio en la vida (1627) by Lope de Vega, and El purgatorio de San Patricio (1628) by Pedro Calderón de la Barca. This curious phenomenon has intrigued scholars for more than a century; however, while critics have studied various textual aspects of these works, they have ignored the sociopolitical factors that made the Irish question a topic of interest to a Spanish audience. During the first quarter of the seventeenth century, many Irish émigrés fleeing Protestant persecution in their homeland sought refuge in Spain, which caused much heated debate throughout the country. With the arrival of Felipe IV to the throne, the 1620s saw a concerted effort in the Irish colleges to justify to the king and his court the Irish presence in Spain on the basis of their religious, ancestral, and political affinities with the Spaniards. This article proposes that Montalbán, Lope de Vega, and Calderón understood these arguments and used their respective literary works to contribute to the efforts of the Irish émigrés who strived to create a positive image of their country, its people, and its history by reinventing the legend of St. Patrick's Purgatory for a Spanish audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper represents an attempt to develop a psychological attitude to Jung's The Red Book. Less about interpretation, it hints at a process that involves the whole person, ready to explore those interim realms of human existence that are veiled in unfamiliar mystery. Such an attitude might be ambivalent, cautious, and uncertain, yet ventures to discover the new horizons of a divine presence in the human soul. A psychological attitude that embraces the transpersonal might well appreciate four gifts present in The Red Book. Jung's adventure provides posterity with a beautiful illuminated manuscript; his harrowing of hell challenges the traditional split between the eternal bliss of heaven and damnation of hell; his submission to the dictates of the soul encourages humans to create new icons of transcendence; and he accesses a wisdom that provides the foundations of his unique contribution to depth psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on pictorial and textual modes of communication used in the narrative poem "Divine Comedy," by Dante Alighieri in connection with the theological and philosophical authority of its author. It highlights the various literary forms and means used by Alighieri in his depiction of Hell, Purgatorio and Paradiso as each aspect of the poem delves on an inquiry into the afterlife. It asserts that the use of text and miniatures to describe the journey from Hell to Heaven are two distinct ways of expression. It tells that the Divine Comedy, as some commentators of the 14th and 15th century see it, is a work inspired by God. However, it says that commentators such as Leonardo Bruni, Guiniforte Barzizza and Gianozzo Manetti believe that the opposite is true for the work.

Hell is traditionally understood as a theological and eschatological matter concerned with the destiny of the dead in an otherworld even until eternity. Although the beliefs and characteristics of the various hells in the world religions share many similarities, there are nevertheless some striking differences. In a comparative perspective the Christian hell is the worst, but the belief that hell is solely an eternal abyss of fire torturing the damned is a late construct. Apart from theological explanations, in order to understand how these beliefs have developed a perspective emphasizing historical processes and the role of materiality in religion may add new knowledge to why the different hells have various characteristics. With regards to the Christian hell, it became physically manifest on earth in several ways. The burning of witches alive on pyres illuminated the gruesome pains the sinners faced and thus visualized the suffering in hell. Various places were also ascribed the characteristics of hell and purgatory creating a "topography of hell" in this world. Hence, as will be argued, these visualizations and materializations of hell on earth had an important role in the process of developing ideas of hell as an eternal and torturing abyss of fire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I will discuss Murphy's exploration of the (un)bearable nature of an existence characterised by loss, and by longing, in his recent play sequence Alice Trilogy (2005). Positing the explicitly dualised characterisation in the first and third of these plays as a reflection of, and natural progression from, earlier dramaturgic representations of duality, I will examine Murphy's overt rendering of subjectivity, in Alice Trilogy, focusing upon the ways in which such theatrical duality explicates the silences which pervade the Purgatorial affective no-man's-land - or 'in-betweenness' - of mind, body, and soul. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism of the poem entitled "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is presented. It relates to the vision of Saint Patrick's purgatory. The poem is based on the experiences of a knight named Owein, who journeys in the purgatory alone without bringing any protective guide for himself. The place is named as Tractatus de Purgatorio Sancti Patricii, which considered the oldest extant account by the pilgrims in the sixteenth century.

Stoppard (1998) in his great play "The Invention of Love" has suggested that the love poem "Like everything else, like clocks and trousers and algebra … had to be invented" (emphasis added). In this essay I argue that the concept of Purgatory was not always with us either, but also had to be invented. If theology got the concept started, I suggest that eventually it may have found its way into psychology, even influencing psychoanalytic ideas about the origins of the Superego. If the concepts Heaven and Hell reflect primitive Superego absolutes, the concept of Purgatory seems like the primitive Superego modulating its own severity and becoming more mature in the process. This influence of a theological concept (Purgatory) on a psychoanalytic concept (Superego) is then outlined and explicated in some detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes William Shakespeare's 'Hamlet.' Shakespeare's treatment of ghost in 'Hamlet'; Stephen Greenblatt's book 'Hamlet in Purgatory'; Main schools of thought about the Ghost of Hamlet's father; History of purgatory.