I'm new to this list and have been lurking for a few days. It seems a
very amenable--not to say knowledgable--place, so I thought I'd come to
you all with a problem.
While rereading Dante's _Inferno_ and preparing for class, I was struck
with a question I'd never considered but feel I should know the answer to
(both as a medievalist and as someone who spent a purgatorially long time
in Catholic school). When were heaven and hell, the heaven and hell of
the later Middle Ages, split from Hades/Sheol (I realize these aren't
necessarily synonymous), and when did heaven start receiving souls? Were
the virtuous Hebrews Christ took from the netherworld in _The Gospel of
Nicodemus_ the first admitted?
I looked to Alan Bernstein's excellent _The Formation of Hell_, where he
writes: "This action [the 'harrowing'] simultaneously sealed the conquest
of death and anticipated the Last Judgment. All involved went either with
Christ to paradise or with Satan (and Hades) into Tartarus ([_Gospel_]
9.25)" (278).
Was this, for folks like Dante, the moment of division and the opening of
heaven for "business"?
Dan Terkla
Dept of English
Illinois Wesleyan University
Bloomington, IL 61702
309-556-3649
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