Chapter 32: would provide the work with a symmetrical conclusion. As (2)

A few years before the Vision of Owen, a somewhat similar work had been produced in Italy--the Vision of Alberic, the son of a Campanian noble, and a monk of the famous Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino. For the most part, this vision is constructed on the conventional lines, but in several of its details it is in such close agreement with Dante’s _Inferno_ as to call for some remark.[225] The commencement, indeed, appears to be original. At the age of ten, Alberic fell into a trance, which lasted for nine days. While in this state he was visited by a dove, which put its bill within his mouth, and carried him to St. Peter, who, in company with two angels, conveyed him to the nether world. On his way thither he passed through the _Limbus infantium_, which also is an unusual feature in works of this class. Among the penalties of Hell which bear a more or less close resemblance to Dante’s _Inferno_, are a valley where the unchaste stood in fire and ice to a greater or less depth according to the gravity of their offence; tyrants and infanticides were enclosed in masses of fire; homicides were plunged in a lake of fire, like blood; breakers of ecclesiastical vows were gnawed by serpents. One purgatorial infliction resembles the punishment of suicides in _Inferno_ xiii.: the souls in question were hunted by a demon, mounted on a dragon, through plains full of thorns and briars, where they left scraps of their clothes and flesh upon the thorns, until, being lightened of their superfluous flesh, they escaped, and were thus purged. Several familiar features reappear, and are, in some measure, reduplicated; thus, besides the bridge, there is a red-hot ladder, which the wicked have to ascend until they drop off; Hell’s mouth again appears as the mouth of a serpent, drawing in and ejecting the souls with his breath, to which are added a dog and a lion, who, by their breath, blow the souls to their allotted stations. Alberic, like several of his predecessors, and also like Dante, is assailed by demons armed with hooks. He crossed the bridge to the Terrestrial Paradise, where the purified spirits dwell until the Beatific Vision shall be revealed to them after Judgment. This place is a flowery plain, from out of which rises the Mountain of Paradise, surrounded by a wall, over which Alberic was permitted to look, though he might neither enter, nor repeat what he saw there. Alberic, too, received St. Peter’s instructions in cosmology--of a very crude description--and as to the virtues of a monastic life, etc.; he was then bidden to return and relate his vision.

As the influence of the Irish school upon European letters waned, and gradually spent itself, a deterioration in the Vision literature became apparent; it lost what little method and symmetry that school had introduced into it, and reverted to the primitive amorphous type; we can no longer trace any indication of original thought or invention; little, even, of vividness or picturesque description is left. Not that this deterioration of quality is attended by any diminution of quantity: on the contrary, several causes combined to render the output greater than ever. The rapid revival of ecclesiastical literature led, as one of its results, to increased activity in this long-worked field, and improved communications enabled the inmates of each monastery to study and imitate the works of their fellows in other countries and provinces. Moreover, the anticipation of a speedy end of this world, which prevailed towards the close of the tenth century, directed the trend of religious thought towards the world to come, and even after the cause had ceased to be operative, the effect remained. Then came the reform of several monastic orders, and the establishment of the friars, resulting in a renewed activity in preaching and teaching, which would naturally quicken the demand for subjects so well adapted to moving exhortation and edification; while the rise of pictorial art, which found attractive subjects in visions of Judgment, and representations of the Divine Glory, at once fostered, and was fostered by, the prevalence of those same subjects in popular literature. At the same time, the rise of a literature in the vernacular tongues would naturally co-operate with the development of a genuine theology to diminish the importance of the Visions of the Otherworld as works of imagination or vehicles of instruction, and to relegate them to the domain of the homilist and fabliast.

Accordingly, the literature of the Middle Ages teems with stories dealing with the Otherworld, and the lot of departed souls therein. Some of them occur in the lives of Saints and Martyrs; others describe a visit to Heaven or Hell, made either in vision, or _in propria persona_, or else record some traveller’s temporary return from the bourne, charged with a message for the living. Many were composed with some particular end in view, in order to convey a warning to some notorious sinner, or to instruct by the edifying fate of some one remarkable for virtue or vice; often, again, with the practical object of exacting restitution or reparation from the sinner or his heirs.

The subject was equally popular in sacred and profane literature, appearing in homily and apologue, folk-tale and fabliau, in poems serious and comic, tending to edification and otherwise.

In all this there was little enough of originality, or intrinsic merit of any kind, save only when some aspect of the subject happened to fall into the hands of a skilled _raconteur_. Nevertheless, it all served to keep the subject present to the public mind, and thus to afford that degree of preparation, which always appears necessary alike for the production and reception of any great and novel work of art, and likewise to amass a considerable store of material, ready for any hand capable of dealing with it. At length, in Dante, the one poet arose whose genius was sufficient to extricate from this heap of trivialities the great dogmas of the Christian faith which lay at the bottom, and, by his matchless constructive power, to give form and substance to the theme, to illustrate it with all that his age could afford of philosophy and learning, to animate it with the spirit of devotion and sublime human passion, and to enrich it with all the resources of the poetical imagination.[226]

7. CONCLUSION

In the foregoing pages it has been attempted to trace, from its various sources, the progress of the legend which culminated in Dante’s _Commedia_. It did not form a part of this design to collect the corresponding traditions which abound in the folklore of many times and peoples, nor even to give an exhaustive account of the forms which the legend assumed in the several fields which have come within our purview; rather to confine our examination to those examples which may be regarded as its sources, or may have contributed to its transmission, or determined the form which it assumed in later stages of its development. We have seen that Dante’s poem had been led up to by a long series of predecessors, like it in theme, if in nothing else, and that it had already approved its fitness for a place in the world’s literature, by the success which it had achieved, in countless forms, among peoples of widely diverse stages of culture. We have also seen how the Irish Church, in its palmy days, developed a highly characteristic treatment of the theme, and while following, in the main, the accepted traditions of the mediæval Church, introduced certain modifications of a strongly individual and national type. Of this class the Vision of Adamnán has been selected for a specimen, as representing the highest level attained by the school to which it belonged, and as being the most important contribution made to the growth of the legend within the Christian Church prior to the advent of Dante.

I have purposely abstained from offering a conjecture as to any possible indebtedness on the part of Dante to the Visions of the Irish school, and to the _Fis Adamnáin_ in particular, further than as these, by reviving, transmitting, and popularising the theme, placed ready to his hand the subject which was, of all others, best adapted to his genius, and, at the same time, best calculated to appeal to the public of his day. The various topics into which this examination has compelled the writer to enter--Dante literature, Celtic tradition, folklore, mythology--are all favourite subjects with that type of theorist who is wont to accompany a small modicum of the bread of fact with an intolerable deal of the sack of hypothesis, to the no small detriment of critical sobriety, so that one who approaches the subject with no preconceived theory of his own to prove--unless, like those present at a revival meeting, he be set a-prophesying by contagion--is apt to become almost as sick of these shadows as was the Lady of Shalott of those in her magic glass. I have therefore endeavoured to present the author of the _Fis Adamnáin_ merely as a ‘precursor’ of Dante, without attempting to prove him Dante’s ‘progenitor.’ All the same, I do not think I am transgressing these limits by suggesting the almost certainty that so omnivorous a reader as Dante must have been acquainted with works so generally known at and prior to his day as the Voyages of St. Brendan, the Vision of Tundale, and the legends of St. Patrick’s Purgatory, all of which were more or less influenced by the _Fis Adamnáin_, and were productions of the same school. There is no ground to imagine that Dante was acquainted with the _Fis Adamnáin_, nor can that supposition be entertained unless it can be shown that there existed in his day a translation of it into Latin, or one of the Romance languages, to which he might have had access. Indeed, pending the results of future research, it is impossible to put forward any work, or group of works, as the model which Dante followed. Probably no such model will ever be discovered, for the simple reason that none such ever existed. It is true that Dante availed himself freely of all that the previous Vision literature could give him, just as he drew copiously from every source at his command. But for the Latin classics, and Virgil in particular; but for the Latin Fathers, Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory; the Schoolmen, from Erigena to Thomas Aquinas; the Romance poets of France and Italy, it is certain that Dante’s work, as we have it, could never have come into being. So much may be claimed for the Visions of the Irish school, and, apparently, no more, but even this much is enough to entitle them to a place in the history of modern literature. Indeed, independently of any such relation of cause and effect between the two, the writings of the Irish school would still constitute an interesting study, both as the fruits obtained by previous labours in the same field under widely different conditions, and even more for the light which they cast upon what is still one of the darkest places in the intellectual life of Europe.

We have had occasion to remark before upon several particulars wherein the analogy between the _Fis Adamnáin_--and, to a less extent, others of the Irish Visions--and the _Commedia_ would appear to go deeper than can be explained by their common subject, and their use in common of the same general stock of ideas. However, it does not appear that the influence exercised by the Irish school mainly consisted in the introduction of novel ideas and incidents, though even these were not entirely absent. Indeed, throughout the history of the Vision legend, we may observe a continual tendency to drop any national or personal characteristics which it may have acquired at a previous stage of its evolution. For instance, we have seen to how great an extent the popular Christian eschatology was modelled upon the classical Elysium and Tartarus, yet even the earlier Church works upon the subject contain no such references to classical personages and traditions as were employed so copiously by Dante, and, in a slight and tentative manner, by certain of his predecessors. The same may be said of the Oriental myths which formed part of the Hebrew contributions to the subject. So, in proportion as the late mediæval visions of the Otherworld recede in date from those of the Irish school, they tend to drop more and more of the structure and imagery which were peculiarly characteristic of the latter, as owing great part of their form or colour to the Irish national traditions. This process is carried still further by Dante, who rejected many of the most familiar incidents of the earlier visions: _e.g._ the bridge, the open mouth of the dragon as symbolising Hell, Enoch and Elijah beside the Tree of Life, and the bird-flocks about them, the special provisions for various kinds of the half-righteous, etc.

Thus, while exercising a secondary influence by further enriching the stock of material already in existence, the main function of the Irish Visions was to set a literary fashion, so to speak, whereby the Vision of the Otherworld came to be regarded as the most natural vehicle for conveying men’s thoughts and imaginations, as in other ages the epic, the drama, the dialogue, the pamphlet, the novel, and other forms of composition, have been specially affected for the like purpose.

It remains to say a few words respecting the literary merits of the _Fis Adamnáin_. Obviously there can be no rivalry, or even comparison, in this respect, between it and the poem which stands high among the supreme achievements of the human intellect. Noteworthy, rather, is the degree of excellence to which the earlier writer attains, when we consider what was the state of vernacular literature in the Europe of his day. His style, like the style of most Irish writers of the best period, is simple, picturesque, and forcible; the language is terse and pregnant, without being bald or meagre. There are certain writings of every age, differing much in merit, from which, as we read them, we seem to be hearing the author’s voice proceeding; where this is so, the style can hardly be other than good of its kind, however simple, and even rude, it may be, and however little it may owe to technical skill. This characteristic, I think, the work in question possesses; but this is an evanescent quality which must needs disappear in translation, especially such a translation as the present, where the aim has chiefly been at literal accuracy.

Mention has been made already of the advantages which this Vision possesses over most others of its class, by reason of its superiority in construction, which is manifested alike in the general design of the work, and in the superior grouping and visual presentment of certain portions, such as the description of Heaven, and the righteous assembled about the Throne. Our author, too, compares favourably with his fellows as regards his general cast of thought, as particularly in the stress which he lays upon the spiritual or emotional side of the sufferings of the lost, and the grave pity with which the contemplation of their fate repeatedly inspires him--a feeling wonderfully absent from the generality of his class.

Other characteristics are shared by him with the Irish romantic writers. One characteristic was common to both of them: there was _life_ in what they wrote; the scene of their narrative became a veritable _Tír na mbeo_. They possessed, moreover, that sensibility to natural beauty, which is often, but most erroneously, assumed to be the peculiar property of modern times. They were keenly alive to the amenities of woods and meadows, flowers and birds, to the charm of colour, of brightness and light of every kind. Above all, they delighted in melodious sound, whether the music of strings or of the human voice, the note of birds and bees, the wind in the leaves, or the sound of falling water. Like Byron, they knew that ‘there’s music in all things, if men had ears.’ Nor did this delight in Nature consist in sensuous pleasure merely. They too were aware of ‘a something yet more deeply interfused’; it was ‘the light of setting suns’ across the ocean that wooed the Ui Corra to their quest of the Unknown; St. Brendan yearned for that retreat, ‘secret, hidden, secure, delightful, apart from men,’ which the ocean solitudes alone appeared to promise him.

This national susceptibility to beauty constantly asserts itself in our author, in manner appropriate to his theme. He also manifests the no less national capacity for vivid and picturesque description, and this without being led into redundancy, or straining after effect, the leading characteristic of his narrative being a simple earnestness which is often very effective. It is needless to dwell upon individual descriptions, most of which have been dealt with in their place. It is enough just to refer in particular to the description of Heaven, of the Throne, and the celestial choirs; the naïve but striking symbol of Omnipresence; the waste and desolate places of Hell in c. 30; the various kinds of penalties in cc. 25-29; the picture of the generous but carnally minded souls protected from the fiery sea by a rampart of the alms they had bestowed.

In two respects our author differs both from Dante and from several writers of his own school. His work contains no dissertations upon theology, morals, nor natural science; neither does he hold intercourse in the world of spirits with his own contemporaries, or with historical or mythical personages; hence we do not find in it even an anticipation of the dramatic episodes, or the endless procession of lifelike characters which render the _Commedia_ a veritable microcosm. We are tempted to speculate upon the results which might have been obtained, had our author brought to the treatment of his subject the dramatic force, the vivid portraiture, and the narrative power, which are displayed in the great romantic cycles of Irish story.

Soon after the time when our author wrote, the development of the national literature, and, indeed, all other forms of national development, were brought, by pressure of circumstances, to a stand. Often since then the subjects and characters of Irish tradition have furnished themes for masterpieces of European literature, but these intellectual triumphs have been like the victories which Irish arms have won for others, and under banners not their own. It is only in our own day that any serious and well-directed attempt has been made to resume the interrupted work upon truly national lines. Even within the last few years the results obtained, and the promise shown, warrant a belief that success may prove more speedy and complete than could have been deemed possible a single decade ago; and with success may come--who knows?--an infusion into modern literature of a new spirit and new methods, of which it stands so grievously in need. Καλὸν γὰρ τὸ ἆθλον, καὶ ἡ ἐλπὶς μεγάλη.

[Uncial: U ċríoċ annso, Buiḋeacas le Dia.]

FOOTNOTES

[1] For further particulars of the life of Adamnán, see Dr. Reeves’s introduction to his _Adamnán’s Life of St. Columba_, Dublin, 1857 (Irish Archæological Society); Dr. Healy’s _Ireland’s Ancient Schools and Scholars_; Canon John O’Hanlon’s _Lives of the Irish Saints_, vol. i.

[2] Mr. Alfred Nutt has suggested that the above passage appears to claim for the Irish scholars and clerics a monopoly of the educational and missionary work of the age to the exclusion of the eminent Anglo-Saxons who were labouring with success and distinction in the same field. I had no intention to disparage either the original genius nor the learning of Bede and Aldhelm, Caedmon and Cynewulf, Winifred and Alcuin, nor their missionary and scholastic work, both at home and in the Frankish Empire; only to point out that the position acquired by the Irish scholars and clerics enabled them speedily to disseminate through Western Europe the works of their compatriots. By recalling the names of a few of the most eminent Irishmen who enjoyed a Continental fame during the Middle Ages, we may perceive how wide was the area, and how long the duration, of their influence.

Clement was the chief of a group of Irish scholars who took a leading part in the educational reforms promoted by Charlemagne. Alcuin, Clement’s great English rival at the Frankish Court, had been educated at Clonmacnois. Joannes Scotus Erigena, in the reign of Charles the Bald, founded the scholastic philosophy, and by his translation of the pseudo-Areopagite, and his studies of the Neo-Platonists, bridged over the chasm between ancient and modern thought. Dungal, in the first half of the ninth century, was the first astronomer of his age; at the mandate of Lothair, King of Lombardy, he founded a school which afterwards developed into the University of Pavia, with branches in several other cities, and laboured with success at the task of civilising the Lombards. Add to these Dicuil, a geographer of the same date, the most accurate topographer of the early Middle Ages; Firghil, or Virgilius, Archbishop of Salzburg, who taught the rotundity of the earth and the existence of antipodes; Sedulius, the ninth-century grammarian; St. Donatus, Bishop of Fiesole (fl. _c._ 840), traveller, topographer, and Scripture commentator; Marianus Scotus, one of the leading chroniclers of the eleventh century; and many others, who laboured with distinction in France, Italy, Germany, England, and Flanders, down to the thirteenth century, when Frederick II., Emperor, summoned Petrus Hibernicus to the University of Naples, where he counted among his theological pupils no less a personage than Thomas Aquinas.

[3] There was also a Tír Enda, between L. Foyle and L. Swilly.

[4] Tigernach gives the date as 624, which Dr. Reeves is inclined to accept, _op. cit._ Introduction, xl-xli. Lanigan is in favour of 627, which agrees with the reputed age of Adamnán, 77, at the time of his death. Possibly the latter date is correct, the difference being explicable by the different system of chronology adopted by Tigernach.

[5] _Lives of the Irish Saints_, vi. 708; and see _Ibid._, ix. 505.

[6] Acts x. 11.

[7] 2 Cor. xii. 2-4. Cp. also Galat. i. 12, 16; Ephes. i. 3; and the _Apocryphal Acts of Paul_, Ante-Nicene Library, vol. xvi.

[8] With the ancient Irish, the abode of the departed was beyond the Atlantic, towards the setting sun; so, in the Hindu mythology, Yama, King of the Dead, crossed the stream towards the sunset, first showing the way by which all men were to follow him. This natural idea has been shared by many barbarous races.

[9] Vault; [Uncial: inna luinge], genitive of [Uncial: long], = ship. _Qy._ here = ‘nave’?

[10] South-east, possibly because that is the direction of Jerusalem, the Holy City.

[11] The word used is [Uncial: Mórdáil], the name of the Irish National Assembly, or States-General. See _ante_, Sec. 2.

[12] Or, ‘a chair highly wrought,’ [Uncial: Inna ċaṫair ċumtaċta].

[13] The comparison of the arch above the head of the Heavenly King to a wrought helmet or a regal diadem, may have been suggested by the picturesque and chivalrous custom of the Irish kings recorded in the ancient Irish poem upon the Fair of Carman, whence it appears that their head-dress on ordinary state occasions was a wrought helmet, the royal crown being reserved for the day of battle.

[14] ‘Glow,’ [Uncial: derge], lit. ‘redness,’ which, Mr. Whitley Stokes suggests, ‘symbolises divine love, creative power, royalty.’ If so, cp. Dante’s description of a ‘goodly crimson’ as ‘questo nobilissimo colore.’

[15] Or, _qy._ ‘comet’?

[16] Compare the description of the seven walls of Ecbatana, of different hue, in Herodotus, Book I.

[17] So Windisch trans. [Uncial: Crand caingil], = _cancelli_.

[18] ‘Seats,’ or _qy._ stalls; the author appears to have in mind the construction of a Christian church. Cp. note to ch. 31 _post._ ‘Canopies,’ lit. ‘crowns.’

[19] Or ‘virgins,’ W. S.

[20] See last note.

[21] Or ‘parricides,’ [Uncial: fingalaċ], which O’Donovan translates both as ‘a fratricide, one who has killed a tribesman,’ and ‘parricidal’ (Supplement to O’Reilly’s Dictionary).

[22] The Erenach, or [Uncial: aircindeċ], was the official guardian of Church temporalities.

[23] [Uncial: Dánaib], which signifies ‘gifts,’ ‘arts,’ etc.

[24] [Uncial: pluic], which W. S. trans, ‘maces,’ or ‘clubs.’

[25] ‘Reivers,’ [Uncial: aiṫdibergaig], which W. S. trans. ‘men who mark themselves to the Devil,’ but expresses doubt on the subject, and cites authorities which seem to imply the sense of rapine or plunder.

[26] Or ‘without remission, but they,’ etc.

[27] [Uncial: Co lár], which W. S. trans. ‘down to the ground.’

[28] [Uncial: Roṫa], so Windisch from [Uncial: ruṫ]; W. S. trans, ‘wheels’ from [Uncial: roṫ].

[29] Or, ‘the ordained who have broken their vows.’

[30] [Uncial: Erdam], which, Mr. Whitley Stokes says, was the name used by the Irish ecclesiastical writers as equivalent to the Greek _pronaos_ or _narthex_. See notes 1 and 2 to Ch. 13, _ante_.

[31] Cp. _ante_, Sec. 2.

[32] The Mórdáil at which these laws were passed was apparently held in the year 697, while Finnachta Fledach had been assassinated in 695. This anachronism affords yet further evidence of the comparatively late composition of our version of the Vision.

[33] [Uncial: Anmċairdine], ‘soul-friendship’; [Uncial: anmċara], ‘soul-friend,’ is the Irish name for a father-confessor.

[34] Professor Bryce considers that the first extant mention of the Donation of Constantine is contained in the letter of Pope Hadrian 1. to Charlemagne, dated A.D. 777 (_Holy Roman Empire_, ch. vii. p. 112 note, 4th ed.). If so, the allusion is couched in very general and obscure terms. Döllinger, who dates the letter in question 775, holds that it refers not to what is commonly understood by the Donation of Constantine, but to gifts of land in various parts of Italy, afterwards seized by the Lombards. The forgery of the Donation would appear to be later than 750, but prior to 774, as it refers to the state of things existing before the first Frankish settlement in Italy, which took place in 774. In any case, it is later than the time of Adamnán.

[35] Philip succeeded to Gordian III. in 224, but was not his son, being an Arab. He favoured the Christians, and corresponded with Origen, whence arose a report, countenanced by Eusebius, that he had embraced Christianity, but for this there is no authority.

[36] [Uncial: Taiṫleċ], so W. S.

[37] [Uncial: Suṫi]. So Windisch, though W. S. trans. ‘fruitfulness (?).’

[38] Mr. Alfred Nutt, in his _Essay on the Irish Vision of the Happy Otherworld and the Celtic Doctrine of Rebirth_, appended to Prof. Kuno Meyer’s _Voyage of Bran, Son of Febal_, 1895-7, points out that in Greece and Ireland alone of Aryan nations the Elysium legend existed devoid of any eschatological belief (i. 329).

[39] See _Odyssey_, xi. 36 _sqq._; 222, 391 _sqq._; 488 _sqq._ This gloomy impression is little mitigated by mention of the ‘Asphodelian meadow’ in which the dead reside (_Od._ xi. 539; xxiv. 13).

[40] See, in particular, Homer, _Odyssey_, iv. 563; Hesiod, _Works and Days_, 110, 166; Pindar, _Olympiad_, ii. 68, 120, which last, perhaps, contains the most finished picture of the Elysium drawn by the earlier poets.

[41] It would be possible to cull from the Greek writers a great wealth of allusions to the Otherworld; not only, however, do exigencies of space forbid this, but they are hardly pertinent to the present subject, for the reasons mentioned in the text. Still less need we enter into the burlesque descriptions of an Otherworld, conceived as a Land of Cockayne, several of which are preserved in fragments of the comic poets.

[42] The Greeks themselves referred to a foreign origin most of their mystical rites, and the deities worshipped therein. No doubt it is often the case that peoples who observe in foreign nations practices akin to those existing among themselves, are apt to derive these from the former; nevertheless it appears certain that while the cults which formed the basis of the mysteries existed, in a primitive form, in the indigenous Greek religion, they received a great impetus, at several distinct periods, through the importation of similar myths and rites from abroad. Thus M. Paul Foucart (_Recherches sur l’origine et la nature des Mystères d’Eleusis_, p. 75) accepts the Greek theory of the Egyptian origin of the Demeter cult and the Eleusinian rites at a date prior to the eleventh century B.C. These rites, he assumes, were purely agricultural at first, but at a later day (seventh century B.C.) became associated with the doctrine of a future life (pp. 75-9). He further holds that this doctrine was itself brought from Egypt by the philosophers, Pythagoras and others, who are reported by tradition to have travelled thither for instruction (p. 83). This latter part of M. Foucart’s theory presents certain difficulties. The name of Pythagoras is commonly associated with the Orphic mysteries, to which M. Foucart denies any connection with Eleusis, while the conception of a future life which prevailed both in the Orphic and Eleusinian mysteries and in the teaching of Pythagoras, differed in important points from the Egyptian doctrine, as will be pointed out in a later place. Professor Rohde likewise holds that while the Dionysiac mysteries existed in Greece in pre-Homeric times as a minor and local cult, the Dionysos-Zagreus rites, which formed the basis of the Orphic mysteries, were imported from Thrace at an early date; probably, Mr. Nutt suggests (_op. cit._, ii. 141), during the period of change which followed upon the Dorian invasion. Thrace, apparently, derived the Zagreus myth from Phrygia. Prof. Percy Gardner (_Contemporary Review_, March 1895) is also inclined to accept the Greek traditions as to the derivation of many of their mystical rites and cults from Asiatic sources, differing herein from Prof. Dieterich, who holds that these were native developments. For a discussion by Mr. Alfred Nutt of these various theories see _op. cit._, 1. ch. xi.

[43] The best authorities appear to be agreed that there are no grounds for the views once held that the mysteries contained either some esoteric creed of a religion purer than that held by the multitude, and jealously guarded from the latter, or, according to others, a system of occult philosophy or theosophy.

[44] See his article, ‘Mysteries,’ in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ ed. 9, vol. xvii.

[45] Sir W. M. Ramsay further mentions a Rhodian inscription of the fifth century B.C., which required the candidates for initiation at the temple of Lindus to bring a pure heart and a conscience free from crime (_loc. cit._).

[46] This may possibly represent the conception originally prevailing in the mystic schools concerning the future life of mankind in general. (See Mr. Nutt hereon, _op. cit._, i. 256.) If so, redemption from such a lot would be one of the most important objects to be compassed by the theurgic effects of initiation, until the growth of moral ideas in connection with the mysteries converted this ‘place of filth and gloom’ into a place of punishment for the wicked.

[47] In like manner, the spirits were amazed to see that Dante’s body cast a shadow, as the souls of the dead did not (_Purg._, iii. 88 _sq._), and that he breathed (_ib._, ii. 67-9). According to the old Persian belief, the souls of the beatified dead were to cast no shadows. See Sec. 2, _post._

[48] See Books iv. and vi. of his _De Civitate Dei_.

[49] See Dante’s Tenth Epistle, addressed to Can Grande della Scala, _Oxford Dante_, pp. 414 _sqq._

[50] _Op. cit._, p. 416, ll. 173-5.

[51] _Ib._, l. 169.

[52] _Ib._, p. 417, l. 268.

[53] Lenormant, _Origines de l’Histoire_, vol. ii., cited by Ragozin, _Chaldæa_, p. 276, which work gives a compendious account of the subject. For fuller particulars see Sayce, _Hibbert Lectures_, 1887, Lectures iv. and v., and his article ‘Chaldæa’ in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, ed. 9, vol. iii.

[54] Sayce, _Hibbert Lectures_, 1887, p. 364.

[55] ‘She makes the soul of the righteous one go up above the Hara-berezaiti (Mount Elborz), above the Kinvad bridge she places it, in the presence of the heavenly gods themselves.’--_Vendîdâd_, xix. 30; in Darmesteter’s translation, _Sacred Books of the East_, iv. 219; and see Ragozin, _Media_, c. iv.

[56] In the Avesta we meet with an idea which is prominent in Jewish and Christian examples of the Vision legend. If, at the balance of any soul’s account, when his good and evil deeds were weighed one against the other, the scales were equally poised, he was reserved for the last Judgment in a place set apart for his like.

[57] _Vendîdâd_, p. 55.

[58] _Loc. cit._, footnote.

[59] _Vendîdâd_, p. 20, note. A similar bird occurs frequently in the Hindu mythology. The Accadian ‘divine storm-bird’ stole the lightning from heaven, and was thereby enabled to impart to man the knowledge of fire, and of divination by lightning flashes.--Sayce, _Hibbert Lectures_, 1887, 293-4. The Babylonian Semites identified this bird with their culture-god Zu, who, in form of a bird, robbed the gods of the ‘tablets of destiny’ (_op. cit._, 295-7). All the world over, the part of Prometheus has been played by a supernatural bird, such as Yehl, the crane, of the Thlinkeets; Pundgel, the eagle-hawk, of Australia, etc.

[60] _Vendîdâd_, vi. 15-16.

[61] _Op. cit._, p. 17.

[62] Speaking of the effects which the conquest of Babylon by the Persians produced upon the religion of the latter, Professor Dill remarks: ‘The conquerors, as so often happens, were to some extent subdued by the vanquished. Syncretism set in; the deities of the two races were reconciled and identified. The magical arts and the astrolatry of the valley of the Euphrates imposed themselves on the purer Mazdean faith and never released their hold, although they failed to check its development as a moral system.’--_Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius_, 1904, p. 587, where the author cites Cumont, _Monuments relatifs aux Mystères de Mithra_, and Gasquet, _Le culte de Mithra_.

[63] _Vendîdâd_, Introduction, sec. v.

[64] The cult of Mithra, which, in the earlier ages of the Empire, extended not only over the Mediterranean littoral, but throughout all Europe so far as the Roman legions went, even to Yorkshire and the forests of Pannonia, was full of symbolism, the meaning and even the nomenclature of which are only to be explained by the Persian religion, in which the cult originated, although it came to receive an interpretation consonant with the Neo-Platonic theories.

[65] He further suggests that the original notion of the Var as a place of refuge for the seeds of things from a coming destruction is borrowed from the Judaic account of Noah. This would seem to be a very strained inference from a slight analogy. The Biblical account finds much closer parallels not only in the Chaldæan traditions, but in the Vedic account of Manu and the Rishis being saved from the deluge in an ark containing the seeds of things, not to speak of deluge myths in the East and in the West, as the Thlinkeets, the Natchez, and other tribes of North America; the Muyscas and Orinoco Indians of South America; the Samoans, Tahitans, etc.

[66] He assumes that Vohu Mano (Good Thought) is the Neo-Platonic Logos, and if so, that the other Amesha Spentas are of post-Alexandrian development, and he goes on to find parallels for them too in the rest of the seven emanations enumerated by Philo. However, even if the parallels are so close as to compel the conclusion that the character and functions ascribed to the Amesha Spentas in their latest form are due to Neo-Platonic influences--and even this is not shown very convincingly--it by no means follows that the very conception of the seven celestial powers is due to the same source.

[67] We have here, in Persia, an anticipation of the Neo-Platonic æons before the time of Plato himself--a conception which can hardly be referred to the earlier theory of the kind propounded by Hesiod.

[68] _Vendîdâd_, Introduction, p. liv, and see p. lxi. For the dead casting no shadow, cp. Plutarch’s Vision of Thespesios.

[69] _Op. cit._, p. lxv.

[70] Article ‘Chaldæa,’ in _Encyclopædia Britannica_, vol. iii.

[71] Revelation xv. 2, and cf. _Fis Adamnáin_, ch. II.

[72] Herodotus, _Euterpe_, ii. 156.

[73] Dill, _op. cit._, p. 561.

[74] Athenian colonists were settled in the Nile delta in the seventh century B.C. at latest, and at an even earlier date intercourse had been maintained between Greece and Egypt by the medium of Greek traders to the Nile, and Greek mercenaries in the Egyptian service. The cult of Isis was introduced into Attica, at the Peiraios, in the fourth century B.C. (Foucart, _Associations réligieuses_, etc., p. 83), and extended over the Grecian islands and the mainlands of Greece and Ionia.

[75] Budge, _Book of the Dead_, 1901, 1. lxv., and _Ib._ lxvii. _sqq._ Le Page Renouf, _Hibbert Lectures_, 1879, pp. 180-1.

[76] According to one Rabbi Leo, the wicked are tortured by fire and otherwise, some without hope of remission, others for a time only.--E. Cowper, _Apocryphal Gospels_, Introduction, lxviii.

[77] At a somewhat later date, the doctrine of the end of the world by fire, held by many of the Stoics who, in the first century of the Empire, represented the best and most serious side of Pagan thought, would appear to have encouraged the bent of Christian teaching in that direction rather by familiarising the subject to men’s minds than by the contribution of any new matter.

[78] The speculative writings of the Rabbis belong to a time when the Jewish schools of learning had fallen under the spell of Hellenism. So preponderating was the influence of the latter that Professor Percy Gardner appears inclined to trace the entire Hades theory to the Orphic rites, and suggests a ‘great probability that the Christian doctrine of the Descent into Hades, together with the imagery in which the future world was presented to the early Christian imagination, was derived neither from a Christian nor a Jewish, nor even a Hellenic source, but from the mystical lore of Dionysos and Orpheus.’--_Contemporary Review_, March 1895. So Mr. Alfred Nutt, speaking of the Elysium of the Christian apocryphal writers, considers that the ‘source must be sought for not in Jewish but in Greek conceptions,’ and that the Christian Heaven derives immediately from the Hellenic one.--_Voyage of Bran_, i. 256, and see ch. xi. generally. With all respect to these eminent authorities, I would submit that it would be going too far absolutely to exclude from those parts of late Jewish and early Christian eschatology which deal with the theory of Hades, including the Descent thither, and with the description of Elysium, all indebtedness to the Oriental creeds which have contributed so much to that eschatology in other respects. With this reservation, we may readily agree with Mr. Nutt that ‘Christian eschatology, as so much else of Christian doctrine, is emphatically a product of the fertilising influence of Hellenic philosophy and religion upon Eastern thought and fancy’ (_op. cit._, p. 281); only contending that Eastern thought and fancy contributed much of the raw material.

[79] Le Page Renouf, _op. cit._, p. 183.

[80] _The Book of Enoch_, translated from Dillman’s text, with notes, by Charles. Oxford, 1893. See also _The Book of Enoch_, trans. Lawrence. Oxford, 1821.

[81] Cp. the veil of fire and veil of ice in the doorway of Adamnán’s celestial city.--_F. A._ 14.

[82] 2 Esdras iv.

[83] _L.c._ ii. 12, 18-19; and cp. Isaiah xxv. 6; Revelation xxii. 2.

[84] 2 Cor. xii. 2-4; and cp. Galatians i. 12, 16; Ephesians i. 3.

[85] _E.g._ in Revelation ii. 7. ‘To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the Tree of Life, which is in Paradise’; and xxii. 2, ‘In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the Tree of Life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations’; also the Throne and One seated thereon in ch. iv., xx. 11; the sea of glass mingled with fire in ch. xv.; the city built of precious stones, etc.

[86] _Vide_ Dante, _Inferno_, canto iv.

[87] The fact that the work was most in repute in the Eastern Church, and that several of the leading Western fathers wrote of it in disparaging terms, may possibly be held to militate to some extent against this ascription.

[88] This passage, so thoroughly Dantesque, reminds us curiously of chapters 9 and 12 of the _Vita Nuova_. Indeed, the little episode might almost be termed a painting of Dante and Beatrice executed by one of the primitives. In like manner, the passage that ensues recalls the reproaches which Beatrice addressed to Dante on meeting him in the Earthly Paradise at the close of the _Purgatorio_.

[89] Herein the plan of the work accords to some extent with that of the _Book of Enoch_.

[90] _Ante-Nicene Christian Library_, vol. xvi. p. 480.

[91] Two Latin versions, together with the account of the pseudo-John, are translated in vol. xvi. of the _Ante-Nicene Christian Library_.

[92] Using the word ‘people’ in its wider sense, not as equivalent to the _popolaccio_, for there were persons of rank and culture among the early converts, but as distinguished from those who were in high station, or were remarkable for learning.

[93] _De Legibus_, II. xiv. 36.

[94] See Plutarch’s Consolatory Epistle to his Wife.

[95] Plutarch: _On Superstition, On the Tardy Vengeance of God, On the Impracticability of a Happy Life on Epicurean Principles._ Lucian: _Philopseudes, De Luctu_.

[96] See _Ireland and the Celtic Church_, by Dr. G. T. Stokes; ed. 5, 1900, pp. 169-174.

[97] _Op. cit._, p. 229, and cp. pp. 215-16.

[98] Edited by Mr. Whitley Stokes in _Anecdota Oxoniensia_, _Mediæval and Modern Series_, vol. i., part 3.

[99] G. T. Stokes, _op. cit._, pp. 228-9. For other points of resemblance and instance of communication between the Irish and the Eastern Churches, cited by the learned author, see pp. 105 _n._, 173-4, 186-7, 229, and Lecture x., _passim_.

[100] This classification, in theory at least, regulated the structure of society from top to bottom. There were four ranks of kings, from the _Árd Rí_, High King, or Emperor, of all Ireland, to the _Rí Tuatha_, King of a Tribal Territory. The territories themselves were divided according to a descending scale, analogous to the English division into county, hundred, tithing, etc. There were six grades of princes under the king, classified according to the extent of their lands. Society was divided into nobles, freemen, and serfs, and each of these classes was subdivided into a great number of minor grades. The family was traced to the seventeenth degree, and was grouped into six classes, whose rights and liabilities in matters of inheritance, in the receipt or payment of fines and damages, etc., are defined with the utmost minuteness. The land tenure, and the dues to be paid in respect of each kind; the circumstances of crimes and civil injuries, and the fines or damages to be paid for each; in short, all the details of public and private life, were elaborated with similar minuteness. For particulars, the reader may be referred to the ancient legal and customary treatises, and the respective commentaries thereon, printed in the Rolls Series, the _Lebor na g-Cert_, ed. O’Donovan, 1847, and O’Curry’s _Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish_, ed. W. K. Sullivan, 3 vols., 1873.

[101] The _Filid_ must be distinguished from the _Bárd_, a name often applied to the poetic and literary class promiscuously, but really the title pertaining to a rank far below the _Filid_ in dignity. See Dr. Douglas Hyde, _The Literary History of Ireland_, pp. 486, etc.

[102] It is not to be supposed that so elaborate a system ever existed, or could exist, in its entirety, or that the population of Ireland was ever sorted out into sets of social pigeon-holes with anything like the completeness represented by the chroniclers. The old Irish writers combined two characteristics, which may appear, at first glance, contradictory, though reflection may enable us to see how compatible they are on psychologic grounds, viz. a tendency to run riot in the exuberance of fancy, and an equally excessive love of system and minute detail. Nevertheless, writing as they did of the state of society in which they lived, and for readers who were acquainted with the facts which they described, they cannot be supposed to have invented their systems and classifications, but rather to have idealised and elaborated their picture of an existing state of things so as to make it accord with their conception of the true significance of the social scheme. Modern writers have often done much the same thing in a different way, in their treatment of the Feudal System, the Imperial Theory, the Renaissance, Reformation, and similar movements, etc.

[103] The Irish writers are further remarkable for not confining their tolerance to traditional practices and the like, but extending it even to the spiritual beings of the national faith. This point has been well put by Mr. Nutt, _Voyage of Bran_, ii. 205: ‘And whereas in every other European land the ministers of the new faith were as bitterly opposed to the fanciful as to the business aspect of the older creed, in Ireland it is the saint who protects the bard, the monk who transcribes the myth, whilst the bird-flock of Faery, alike with the children of Adam, yearn for and acclaim the advent of the Apostle.’ And even when it has seemed necessary to regard these beings as demons, several tales show priest or saint feeling for them the like regretful kindliness as Origen, Burns, and Uncle Toby expressed for the chief of the demons. A very striking instance of the eagerness shown by the Christian writers to put the best possible construction upon their pagan predecessors, occurs at the close of ‘The Irish Ordeals,’ etc., trans. by Mr. Whitley Stokes, _Irische Texte_, III. i. 221: ‘The wise declare that when any strange apparition was revealed of old to the royal lords … it was a divine ministration that used to come in that wise, and not a demoniacal ministration. Angels, moreover, would come and help them, for they followed Natural Truth, and they served the commandment of the Law.’

[104] Most of the principal Irish deities include among their functions that of ruler of the dead. One of the most pronounced examples of the Yama type is Tethra, who is described in the legends as Chief of the Fomorians, whereby his distinctly Chthonian character is asserted; and, after the defeat of his people at the battle of Mag Tured, as ruler of a land beyond the ocean, like Varuna, when overcome by Indra (and cp. Hesiod, _Works and Days_, 168-9, and Pindar, _Olymp._ ii.). Thence, from time to time, he would send beautiful maidens to summon to him the chiefs and heroes of Éire.

[105] The subject of the Otherworld in Irish literature has been treated very fully by Mr. Nutt in his _Essay on the Irish Vision of the Happy Otherworld, and the Celtic Doctrine of Rebirth_, appended to Professor Kuno Meyer’s _Voyage of Bran, Son of Febal_, 2 vols., 1895-7.

[106] Extracted from the _Lebor na h-Udri_, by O’Curry, _Manners and Customs_, etc., vol. iii.

[107] A similar caldron was a favourite property of supernatural beings in the heroic tales of Ireland as of Wales; indeed, so desirable a possession enters into the folklore of most nations.

[108] _Aislinge Meic Conglinne_,‘The Vision of Mac Conglinne,’ edited, with translation, notes, and glossary, by Prof. Kuno Meyer, 1892.

[109] _Ante_, note 3, p. 44. The work is edited, with translation, notes, and glossary, by Prof. Kuno Meyer, who dates the composition of the tale in its present form in the seventh century; Mr. Nutt suggests the eighth century (_op. cit._, i. 141). Fragments of the tale exist in the L.U. Prof. Rhys identifies Bran with Cernunnos, the divine ancestor of the ancient Celts (_Hibbert Lectures_, pp. 85-95). Mr. Nutt further suggests an identity with Brons, the Fisher King, and keeper of the Graal (_Studies on the Legend of the Holy Graal_, 1888, p. 208).

[110] In the disputation between Neid and Fercertue which was to decide which of them should be Árd Ollamh (Chief Doctor) of Ulster, Fercertue put the riddling question, ‘What is it that thou traversest in haste?’ Neid replied, ‘The plain of age, the mountain of youth, the course of the ages, in pursuit of the King in the house of earth and stones, between the candle and its ending, between the combat and the hatred of combat, amid the brave warriors of Tethra.’

[111] Transcribed into the L.U. before 1103 A.D. from the earlier Book of Slane, now lost: edited (without a translation) by Professor Windisch in _Irische Texte_, vol. i. pp. 197 _sqq._ Professor Windisch, who states that the tale is composed of materials from several distinct sources (_op. cit._, pp. 202-3), calls attention to the thoroughly pagan character of it, despite the introduction of a passing allusion to Adam on p. 219. Portions of the descriptions of the Tír Tairngire contained in this tale and in the story of Mider have been rendered in metre by Dr. Douglas Hyde, _Literary History of Ireland_, pp. 202-3.

[112] As Zeus was brother to Pluto, and as the strife between the Olympian and Chthonian powers--the powers of light and darkness--are typified, in most mythologies, by discord between a pair of divine brothers; a conception surviving in such creations of the popular or the lettered imagination as Valentine and Orson, Alcina and Logistilla, etc.

[113] The episode is contained in the _Tochmarc Emere_, The Wooing of Emer, dated eighth century, by Professor K. Meyer. Miss Eleanor Hull translates the L.U. version in her _Cuchullin Saga_, pp. 56 _sqq._ Professor Meyer publishes a shorter version, with translation, in the _Revue Celtique_, xi. 442 _sq._

[114] Mr. Nutt gives abstracts of these stories in the _Voyage of Bran_, i. 297 _sqq._

[115] In the Perceval legend, a bridge of glass occurs in Gautier’s continuation of the _Conte du Graal_ (Nutt, _Studies_, etc., p. 17).

[116] A similar ‘obstacle bridge’ occurs in other Irish Sagas. In the _Voyage of Maelduin’s Curach_ is a bridge of glass, on which the passenger kept falling backwards. Of this kind must have been the bridge which the celebrated Irish M.P.--real or mythical--described as ‘separating’ two shores.

[117] Edited and translated by Professor K. Meyer in _Revue Celtique_, x. 212 _sqq._, from the MSS. in T. C. D.--H. 2, 16 and Eg. 1782.

[118] This flagstone, the Lia Fáil, was endowed with the property of shrieking whenever pressed by the foot of a lawful king. The frequency of vocal stones in Irish legend will be referred to later on. Popular tradition identifies the Lia Fáil with the stone now inside the Coronation Chair at Westminster, stolen by Edward I. from Scone, where the kings of Alban used to be crowned upon it, and whither it was said to have been brought from Tara by the Dalriad Scots. I believe, however, that the identity of the stone so taken to Scotland by the Dalriada with that of Tara has been impugned. The practice of inaugurating a king or chief upon a certain stone survived into late historical times.

[119] The habitual presence of the great tree outside the raths of the Tuatha Dé Danann is doubtless to be ascribed to the custom which prevailed in Ireland of having in a similar position a public tree of the tribe, round or beside which assemblies were held and games celebrated. The Irish chronicles frequently report the cutting down of such a tree by raiders as an insult to the invaded tribe. This practice was exactly paralleled in the mediæval republics of Italy, where an invading army would often put scorn and offence upon a city by cutting down the public tree which stood outside the gates, and was the central point in games and festivals.

[120] Cethlenn was the wife of Balor of the Mighty Blows, a Fomorian chief, and therefore of the Chthonian race of Tethra. She has left her name to Enniskillen, Inis Cethlenn, Cethlenn’s Island.

[121] _The Adventures of Árt, son of Conn, and the Courtship of Delbchaem, Érin_, iii. 149 _sqq._ Edited and translated by Mr. R. I. Best, from the _Echtra Áirt_, one of the _Prím-scéla_ of Ireland, preserved in Early Modern Irish in the Book of Fermoy, R.I.A., a MS. of the fifteenth century.

[122] Edited, with translation and notes, by Mr. Whitley Stokes, _Irische Texte_, III. i. 183 _sqq._, from the Book of Ballymote, R.I.A., and the Yellow Book of Lecan, T.C.D., both MSS. of the fourteenth century.

[123] Another instance of the sacred character with which the Irish code of honour invested a pledge, and which is apparent in the stories, before quoted, of Mider, Conn, Árt, etc. So in the _Baile Mongáin_, a story printed by Prof. K. Meyer as an appendix to his _Voyage of Bran_, Mongán is obliged to surrender his wife Dubhlaca to the King of Leinster (apparently an euhemerisation of Manannán, who figures in an earlier version, also given by Prof. Meyer (_op. cit._)) in fulfilment of a like promise.

[124] At the same time, it is perceptible that incidents of the _märchen_ type are more numerous in this group than in the great heroic cycles.

[125] In the story of Cormac, Manannán’s Paradise, instead of lying oversea, is placed within a dún, at which Cormac arrives by land.