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Heaven Can Wait: Purgatory in Catholic Devotional and Popular Culture

Online ISBN:
9780190206826
Print ISBN:
9780195382020
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

Heaven Can Wait: Purgatory in Catholic Devotional and Popular Culture

Diana Walsh Pasulka
Diana Walsh Pasulka

Associate Professor of Religious Studies

University of North Carolina, Wilmington
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Published online:
20 November 2014
Published in print:
21 November 2014
Online ISBN:
9780190206826
Print ISBN:
9780195382020
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

This book examines the problems associated with the location of purgatory, which was defined by the Catholic Church in the thirteenth century. It argues that purgatory’s location and spatial qualities have been a problem throughout the history of the doctrine, as scholastic theologians William of Auvergne and Thomas Aquinas speculated and disagreed about its location and whether or not its torments were physical or nonphysical. At the same time, authors of devotional literature have described purgatory’s location in various ways, such as being within the earth, near hell, or even in Ireland. Artists have employed rich description to represent souls in purgatory. In the early modern era, a counter-movement of theologians arose who downplayed purgatory’s spatial descriptions, preferring to depict it in abstract and general terms. Later, the French Enlightenment was a decisive moment for depictions of purgatory as any reference to purgatory as a terrestrial location or a place of real fire was ridiculed by anti-Catholic polemicists and discouraged by the Church. The problem of purgatory’s materiality continues, as members of postmillennial “purgatory apostolates” seek to maintain spatial representations of purgatory

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