[182] Cp. the brazen wall wrapped in flame in the Revelation of St. Paul.

[183] Cp. Revelation ix. 6, upon the authority of which text a similar passage is introduced into many of the mediæval descriptions of Hell. Cp. the Book of Adam, where the damned ‘call aloud for the second death, and the second death is deaf to their prayer’ (Ancona, op. cit. 107). So Dante, ‘che la seconda morte ciascun gride’ (Inf. i. 115). Cp. too Dante, Inf. iii. 124-6, where the guilty are eager to cross the river to their place of suffering: ‘Chè la divina giustigia gli sprona Sì che la tema si volge in disio,’ when, however, Dante was probably following Virgil, Æneid, vi. 313-14.

[184] See, especially, Paradise Lost, ii. 587 sqq.

[185] ‘Now seeing that they who make this moan are the Saints, to whom are allotted everlasting mansions in the heavenly Kingdom, how much more meet were it for men that are yet on earth,’ etc., ch. 34. Cp. the similar passages in the Félire Oengusa and the Scéla Lái Brátha referred to in the preceding section.

[186] Verbal differences between the two versions are frequent throughout, though generally the later copy is the fuller, owing to the insertion of a certain amount of ‘padding.’ Far wider divergences exist between the different versions of most of the mediæval legends, e.g. the Vision of Paul, the Voyage of St. Brendan, and the Vision of Tundale. This circumstance strengthens the internal evidence of interpolations in the Fis Adamnáin. At the same time, it adds to the difficulty of determining the relative priority of the incidents contained in the several Visions.

[187] The Acts of St. Brendan, and the accounts of his voyages, have often been translated by modern scholars. Besides the collections of hagiologists and Church historians, standard works on the subject are Jubinal, La Légende latine de Saint Brendaines, Paris, 1836; Schröder, Sanct Brandan, Erlangen, 1871; Moran, Acta Sancti Brendani, Dublin, 1872. The Irish Life is edited, with a translation and notes, by Mr. Whitley Stokes, in Anecdota Oxoniensia (Mediæval and Modern Series, pt. 5). In the Rev. Denis O’Donoghue’s Brendaniana the subject is treated in an interesting and compendious manner. The summary of the principal incidents of the voyages given in the text, is taken, for the most part, from Mr. Stokes’s edition of the Irish life.

[188] The imaginary island of St. Brendan was delineated in the maps of the Middle Ages, and even of later periods. It was claimed by the Portuguese, but afterwards ceded to Spain. Many voyages were undertaken in quest of it, one so late as 1721.—Ancona, op. cit., p. 50.

[189] Father O’Donoghue points out that the whale episode appears too early in mediæval churches to be due to an imitation of Sinbad. It occurs in a mediæval life of St. Machutus, or Malo, which, however, Father O’Donoghue considers an imitation of St. Brendan, into whose legend the incident entered at a very early period, being mentioned in a poem by St. Cumin, who lived in the seventh century (Brendaniana, pp. 88-91), where the author refers to parallels occurring in the Mediæval Bestiaries. Signer D’Ancona (op. cit.) says that the episode occurs in the Romance of Alexander, which is likely to be the origin of the Western variants. However, the idea is one which may well have presented itself spontaneously in several distinct quarters.

[190] Apparently a travesty of Manannán Mac Lír as he appeared to Bran in the Imram Bráin, but quantum mutatus, or, literally, diablement changé en route. Already have the Celtic deities followed the Olympians, and become converted into demons.

[191] Cf. Virgil, Æneid, vi. 557-8, and Dante, Inferno, iii. 22-28.

[192] We may note one curious incident which illustrates the sympathy, before mentioned, with which Irish Churchmen treated the beings who pertained to that older faith which it was their mission to destroy. One day St. Brendan came upon a maiden of vast stature and exceeding beauty floating upon the sea, dead, and a spear through her. He restored her to life, and asked her who she was: she replied that she was one of the dwellers in the sea, who were praying for the Resurrection. He baptized her, and gave her the choice—to die, and go at once to Heaven, or to return to her own people. She chose to go direct to Heaven, so he administered to her the last Sacrament, and she died.

[193] Mr. Whitley Stokes suggests that ‘his feathers may be a reminiscence of some hermit’s dress of bird-skins’ (op. cit., p. 354). Or, maybe, of some anchorite who may have lived into extreme old age, as doubtless many did, in the condition of King Nebuchadnezzar after his fall, until his long white hair and beard suggested the plumage of a white bird. Or, again, it is just possible that this bird-like hermit, dwelling in an island Paradise, may be an attempt to euhemerise one of the many avatars of the sacred bird.

[194] The influence of the Fis Adamnáin likewise appears in the opening portion of the Life, which cites precedents for the Saint’s devout and holy life among the worthies of the Old and New Testaments.

[195] The principal Latin Life of St. Brendan, though later than the Irish life, was written in the eleventh century. Both Lives, however, contain elements which the Lives of other Irish saints prove to have been of much earlier date.

[196] Imrama still continued to be written, and the late mediæval story of Tadg Mac Céin (published, with a translation, in Mr. Standish Hayes O’Grady’s Silva Gadelica), presents a very admirable specimen of its class. That work, however, is a more purely literary production, consciously imitative, and deliberately archaic in style.

[197] The summary in the text follows the Irish version contained in La Vision de Tondale, V. H. Friedel and Kuno Meyer (Paris, 1907), which also contains two French versions in prose, and a fragment of an Anglo-Norman version in verse. The Irish translation was made in 151-, by Muirgheas Mac Páidin ui Maoilchanaire (op. cit., Introduction). The original Latin has been edited by Scade, Halle, 1869, and A. Wagner (with an O. G. version), Erlangen, 1882. For translations into modern languages see op. cit., Introduction, and Ancona, op. cit., p. 53 n.

[198] In Christian art, Hell was often symbolised by a picture of the Dragon, his open mouth filled with flames, into which the wicked were impelled. This image survived in book illustrations into the eighteenth century at least. It occurs in many of the mediæval visions; possibly the Vision of St. Paul may have been the immediate authority. It appears so early as the Vision of Esdras, if not before.

[199] This lake corresponds to the sea haunted by strange monsters which swarm about the hero’s curach in the early Imrama and in the modern romantic folk-tales.

[200] Signor D’Ancona (op. cit.) suggests that the apologue of the bridge in the Fioretti of St. Francis (cxxvii.) is an imperfect quotation from Tundale, as also a similar passage of Joachim of Flora.

[201] See the remarks in the preceding section upon a similar conception in the Fis Adamnáin, and contrast the treatment of it by the two authors.

[202] The destruction of the guilty soul, and its reintegration for a renewal of its suffering, dates back to Plutarch’s Vision of Thespesios. See Sect. I ante.

[203] Cp. the analogous ideas in the Shepherd of Hermas, and the vision in St. Gregory’s Epistle.

[204] It is said that the Hells of the Oriental religions even surpass those of mediæval Christendom in the morbid cruelty and obscenity, and in the childish extravagance of their descriptions.

[205] The angel who came to Tundale’s rescue may also be compared to the angel who came to the aid of Dante and Virgil when their entrance into the City of Dis was opposed by the demons (Inf. ix.). Signor D’Ancona (op. cit., p. 55 n.) compares the approach of Tundale’s angel, ‘with a radiance as of a star,’ to the approach of the angel in Purgatorio xii. 89 sq., nella faccia, quale Par tremolando mattutina stella, citing the passage from the Latin Tundale, where the resemblance is still closer—longe venientem velut stellam lucidam.

[206] Purg. xxvii. 130 sqq.

[207] Par. xxii. 129 sqq. Dante evidently follows the corresponding passage in the Somnium Scipionis, or the derivative passage in Book ix. of Lucan’s Pharsalia. The manner in which the idea appears in Tundale is not analogous. The doctrine—‘to whomsoever God giveth power to behold Himself, to him is power to see all other creatures likewise’—is precisely that of Dante. See Paradiso ix. 61 sq. and cp. viii. 90; ix. 73 sq.; xi. 19 sq., etc.

[208] For many specimens of these visions, both of earlier and later dates, see Ozanam, Dante et la Philosophie catholique au treizième Siècle; Wright, St. Patrick’s Purgatory, 1844; Ancona, op. cit. The learned author of the last-named work has recorded several curious and little-known examples, and, in his notes, gives references to many works upon special branches of the subject.

[209] ‘Andovvi poi lo Vas d’elezione, Per recarne conforto a quella fede,’ etc. (Inf. ii. 28-9).

[210] For this extreme tenuity, cp. Al Sirât, the Muslim equivalent of the Chinvât Bridge, narrow as a razor’s edge; also the souls’ bridge of the Inoits of Aleutia, which, as in several mediæval visions, is of the thickness of a single thread.

[211] Cp. the fate of the violent in canto xii. of the Inferno. The traitors also stand more or less completely congealed in the ice, according to the circumstances of their treachery (Inf. xxxii.-xxxiv.).

[212] It is possible that this circumstance was suggested by similar travel tales told of the serpents of India, and preserved by the Greek naturalists. However, the idea is one which might well occur spontaneously, as one of the usual Otherworld applications of the lex talionis.

[213] Cp. the fiery sepulchres in Inf. canto xi., wherein, likewise, infidels were immured.

[214] Northumbria, it will be remembered, was Christianised by Irish monks, who planted monasteries at Lindisfarne and elsewhere, which long maintained the connection between the two countries.

[215] Cp. Plutarch, Vision of Thespesios, ante, Sec. 1, where the souls ascended contained in bubbles.

[216] In the Fis Adamnáin Paradise is placed in the south-east.

[217] Cp. Inferno xii. and xxxii.-xxxiv.

[218] Inf. xxi.-xxii.; and cp. the Centaurs in Inf. xii. 56.

[219] Inf. xxxii.-xxxiv.

[220] Inf. ix.

[221] Inf. v.

[222] Inf. xxiv.-xxv.

[223] Inf. xxiii. 111 sqq.

[224] See a paper by M. Henri Gaidoz in Revue Celtique, ii. 482.

[225] Signor d’Ancona (op. cit., pp. 62-3) doubts whether this work was ever known beyond its birthplace in the Abbey of Monte Cassino, until its discovery less than a century ago, where Dante was not likely to have seen it. In the absence of direct evidence on this point, I leave the passage in the text as it stands, for the reader to form his own conclusions.

[226] Perhaps a reference should be made to the Vision of the Otherworld composed by Dante’s friend, the learned Jew Immanuel ben Salamone, as the question might occur whether Dante may not, by his means, have arrived at such part of his subject as relates to Old Testament lore and Jewish tradition by a shorter cut than the usual channels, which it has been here attempted to trace. Immanuel was born at Rome in 1265, the year of Dante’s birth, and, like his friend, was at once poet, scholar, theologian, philosopher, and exile, and, probably, one of the most learned men of his day. It is possible that Dante may have been indebted to him for stray pieces of information, scraps of Hebrew, and the like, but the debt can hardly go further than this. Immanuel’s vision of Hell and Paradise was not completed till 1325, and is a manifest imitation of the Commedia; it has been conjectured, even, that by Daniel, who served as his guide, as Virgil did to Dante, he signified the latter. See Signor Seppelli’s translation, with notes and introduction—Inferno e Paradiso di Emanuele di Salamone, Ancona, 1874.