§121. THE FUTURE STATE. 761
Heaven includes three kinds of rewards, said Bonaventura: the substantial reward or the vision of God; the consubstantial or the glorification of the body to which belong the quali ties of transpicuity, lightness, agility, and impassibility which are granted in the degree we exercise love here on earth ; 1 and the accidental reward or the ornament of the aureole given for preaching and leading others to salvation, for vir ginal purity and martyrdom.
The bliss of heaven, said Thomas Aquinas, consists in the immediate vision of God.2 It is a state from which there will be no lapse. The beatified know what is occurring on earth, hear the prayers that ascend to them, and by their mer its intercede for their brethren here. St. Bernard, in his homilies on the Canticles,3 and Anselm4 give us lofty descrip tions of the blessedness of the heavenly estate. And the sat isfaction and glory of the soul in heaven has never been quite so well portrayed as in the poem of Bernard of Cluny : —
O sweet and blessed country, the home of God's elect, O sweet and blessed country, that eager hearts expect ; Jesus in mercy bring us to that sweet land of rest, To be with God the Father and Spirit ever blest.
It remained for Dante to give to the chilling scholastic doctrines of purgatory and the lower regions a terrible reality in poetical form and imagery and also to describe the bea tific vision of paradise.
The remarkable vision which a certain Englishman, Turchill, had of the future world, as related at length by Roger of Wendover5 and others, reveals the crass popular ideas of the future state. St Julian appeared to this honest laborer, and took him off to "the middle of the world," where they entered a church which, as Turchill was told, received the souls of all those who had recently died. Mary, through her intercession, had brought it about that all souls born again should, as soon as they left the body, be taken to this church and so be freed from the attacks of
1 Claritas, subtilitas, agilitas, et impassiUlitas quce . . . secundum majoritatem et minoritatem prius habitce charitatis. Brevil., VII. 7, Peltier's ed., VII. 340.
2 Deum per essentiam videre in quo consistit perfecta hominis beatitudo. Summa, III. 52, 5, Migne, IV. 482. 3 Serm., XL
4 Proslog., XXIV. sqq. 5 An. 1206, Luard's ed. of M. Paris, II. 497-512.
762 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
demons. Near one of the church walls was the entrance to hell through which came a most foul stench. Stretching from another wall was the great lake of purgatorial fire in which souls were immersed, some to their knees, some to their necks. And above the lake was a bridge, paved with thorns and stakes, over which all had to pass before they could arrive at the mount of joy. Those who were not assisted by special masses walked over the bridge very slowly and with excruciating pain. On the mount was a great and most wonderful church which seemed to be large enough to contain all the inhabitants of the world. St. Nicolas, St. James, and other saints had charge of the church of Mary and the purgatorial lake and bridge. Turchill also saw St. Peter in the church of Mary and before him the souls were brought to receive sentence. The devil and his angels were there to hurry off to the infernal regions those whose evil deeds tipped the balances. Turchill was also taken by a cer tain St. Domninus to behold the sports the devils indulge in. Coming to the infernal realm, they found iron seats, heated to a white heat and with nails driven in them, on which an innumerable multitude was sitting. Devils were sitting around against the walls poking fun at the unfortunate beings for the evils they had been guilty of in this life. Men of different occupations and criminal practices, the soldier, trades man, priest, the adulterer, thief, and usurer, were then brought forth and made to enact over again their wicked deeds, after which their flesh was fiercely torn by the demons and burnt, but again restored. Such are the popular pictures which form the vestibule of Dante's Inferno.
Of all the gruesome religious tales of the Middle Ages, the tales repre senting the devil as torturing the naked soul were among the most gruesome. The common belief was that the soul, an entity with form as the Schoolmen defined it, is at death separated from the body. Caesar of Heisterbach tells of an abbot of Morimond with whose soul the demons played ball, rolling it from hill to hill, across the valley between, until God allowed the soul to enter the body again. This was before the abbot became a monk.
Another of these stories, told by Caesar of Heisterbach,1 concerned a student to whom the devil gave a stone. As long as the student held it in his hand, he had supernatural knowledge. When he died, his body was taken to the church, and while his fellow-students stood around it singing, the devil carried his soul to hell. There the demons played ball with it. Their sharp claws stuck deep into it and gave it unspeakable pain. But, at the intercession of the saints, the Lord rescued the soul and reunited it with the body and the young man suddenly arose from his bier. In telling his experience he related that his soul had been like a round piece of glass through which he could see on every side. Fortunately, the fellow was scared badly enough to go to a convent and do sound
1 Dial, I. 32, Strange's ed., I. 36-39.