Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 edition. Excerpt:... fire which is never kindled, there the worm which never dies. There the awful cold, the intolerable stink, the incessant wailing, the reduplicated blows, the confusion of sinners, the frightful faces of demons, the fertile multitude of inextricable chains. Jbi alternantia mala impios sine pietate discerpunt. There are the impious ones distracted without ruth by ever alternating ills." A Q starveling picture of Peter's hell from Die verdambt Seel, a "choice and noble little book" dealing with Damiano, and printed at Augspurg (sic) at the end ofthe fifteenth century, is here introduced (fig. 51). Hildebrand (Pope Gregory VII.), preaching before Pope Nicholas II. in the church of Arezzo, says a certain rich man died and was buried. An ecclesiastic in a vision of hell saw him standing on the top rung of a ladder which, though leading into hell's black abyss and surrounded with fire, was unconsumed. The ladder was placed expressly for the rich man's family. As the last comer stood on the top rung, all his ancestors courteously moved down one step to give him room. This went on age after age, and thus the whole of that ill-starred generation was ultimately immersed in hell. The holy man, asking the reason of the last comer for this terrible damnation, is told that it was because of certain lands belonging to the Church of Metz, which were taken from the blessed Stephen by one of the sufferer's early ancestors. For this primeval sin all his descendants, however good, are thus punished. It is the old story of the apple, but the progressive novitiate of this conception of the infernal ladder is not without merit. _ Perhaps not the least interesting portion of mediaeval literature is to be found in these...