Publisher's Synopsis
The best account we have of Purgatory is Dante's. But Dante could not have written æThe Divine ComedyÆ had not the ideas of Heaven, Hell and Purgatory evolved as they did. It is the course of this evolution which forms the subject of this remarkable book. Jacques LeGoff is concerned not with the theological discussion but with the birth of an idea, with the relation between belief and society, with mental structures, and with the historical role of the imagination. His central point is that the doctrine Purgatory does not appear in the Latin theology of the West before the late twelfth century. As he traces its origin, growth and eventual triumph, he shows that the formation of belief in an intermediate place between Heaven and Hell was closely bound up with profound changes in the social and intellectual reality of the Middle Ages, with attempts to introduce æmiddle classÆ or third orders between the powerful and the poor, the clergy and the laity. This change in the geography of the other world, in LeGoff's view, altered time in the afterlife and hence the link between earthly, historical, and eschatological time, bringing about a gradual but crucial intellectual revolution - - Throughout, LeGoff makes use of a wealth of archival material, much of which he has translated for the first time. One of the most illustrious of French medievalists, he brings to this important study a notable breath of vision, using sources that range from anthropology to narratives of journeys through the other world, and recreating the intellectual and imaginative texture of an age.
