POPULAR BELIEFS. 



wonders, did not hesitate to believe that access could be gained to purgatory, 

 and that Paradise could be seen from afar, without leaving the world of the 

 living. Sorcerers alone were believed to have the power of descending into 

 hell. The entrance into purgatory, whither certain persons claimed to have 

 made their way and to have returned from, was believed to be in Ireland, 

 in an island of Lake Derg. This purgatory, according to the legend, had 

 been discovered by St. Patrick (Fig. 184), guided by Jesus Christ himself, 

 who was said to have left him for a day and night in this " very obscure pit," 

 on emerging from which the saint found himself " purged from all his 

 former sins," in gratitude for which he at once built, close to the pit, a 

 handsome church and a monastery of the order of St. Augustine. After his 



Fig. 184. The Purgatory of Monsignor St. Patrick. Miniature of a Manuscript of the Fourteenth 

 Century (No. 6,326). In the National Library, Paris. 



death the people came there in pilgrimage : a few rash persons attempted to 

 enter the pit, but they never reappeared. There was one more report 

 brought from purgatory by an English knight named Owen, who, loaded 

 with sins, determined to try the experiment of St. Patrick (Fig. 185), and 

 who was fortunate enough to behold again the rays of the sun, after having 

 arrived at the gate of hell, and seen from afar the heavenly Jerusalem. The 

 story which he told of the strange and wonderful things he had seen in 

 the company of the devils, who refrained from harming him because he 

 incessantly invoked the name of the Saviour, was implicitly believed, and 

 generally referred to throughout the Middle Ages. The monks who kept 



