A doctrine that developed in stages
It is tempting to treat purgatory as a single teaching with a single date. The record is messier. Elements of it appear early, other elements were added by medieval theologians, and the medieval church formally stated its position at councils that were often responding to other disputes. Understanding that sequence is the easiest way to see what was firm and what was not.
Early roots
Christians were praying for the dead from the earliest centuries, as inscriptions and liturgical texts show. Alongside this, writers such as Tertullian and Cyprian in North Africa mention offerings for the dead, and Origen in Alexandria taught that souls might be purified through fire. Augustine, in the early fifth century, accepted that some people might be saved “as through fire” after death and that the prayers of the church could help them, while admitting how much remained obscure. Gregory the Great, around the end of the sixth century, argued that minor faults could be cleansed after death and told stories that gave the idea wide circulation.
At this stage the teaching was about cleansing and prayer, not about a named realm with its own geography.
The twelfth and thirteenth centuries
The next step came with the scholastic method, a style of careful question-and-answer reasoning that suited the subject. In the twelfth century, the term purgatory came to be used as a noun for a particular state or place, and writers began to sort the afterlife into clearer categories. Some historians argue this amounts to the “birth” of purgatory. Others stress the long earlier development and prefer to speak of its consolidation. The disagreement is partly about definitions: whether you count the idea when it first appears or when it is first named.
In the thirteenth century, the major teachers at the medieval universities, among them Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure, discussed the subject systematically. They asked what exactly was punished, how a soul could suffer without a body, whether the fire was bodily, and how the prayers of the living could help. Their answers did not all agree. Aquinas, for example, held that the pains are real and that the mercy of God is also at work, but he did not claim to know the details.
Councils
The church’s formal statements came in a few major moments.
- Second Council of Lyons, 1274. In a profession of faith proposed to the Greek church as part of an attempt at reunion, the council stated that souls who die repentant but without having completed penance are purified after death by purgatorial pains, and that the prayers, masses, alms and other works of the faithful can help them. This is a key medieval text.
- Council of Florence, 1439. This council, again dealing with relations between Latin and Greek Christians, repeated that teaching in similar terms.
- Council of Trent, 1563. After the Reformation, Trent affirmed the existence of purgatory and the value of prayers for the dead, and told bishops to avoid teaching that was uncertain or likely to cause scandal, or that encouraged profit-making.
Note what these texts do not say. They do not define a location, a length of time, or the exact nature of the pain. They set out a minimum.
East and West
Eastern Christians had long prayed for the dead and believed that souls could be helped. They were, however, uneasy with the Latin framework. Concerns included the language of a place of fire, the legal-sounding idea of satisfaction owed for sins, and the notion of a fixed doctrine on something the East considered mysterious. The disagreement was real, though historians point out that the two sides were often discussing different questions in different vocabularies. Efforts to agree, such as at Lyons and Florence, did not produce lasting union.
Disputes before and during the Reformation
Purgatory was never wholly free of criticism in the Middle Ages. Groups regarded as heretical, such as some followers of Peter Waldo and other movements, are said to have rejected prayers for the dead, though the surviving evidence is mostly from hostile sources and needs careful use. In the fourteenth century, John Wycliffe questioned practices associated with purgatory, especially the selling of masses and indulgences. There were also complaints within the church about abuses, of the sort known as church corruption in later historical writing.
In the sixteenth century, Martin Luther and other reformers rejected purgatory. Their main objections were that the doctrine lacked a clear basis in scripture, that it seemed to place human works alongside Christ’s work of salvation, and that it had led to a system in which money was exchanged for remission of punishment. Protestant churches generally dropped the doctrine and the practice of masses for the dead. The Catholic Church defended the doctrine while tightening rules about abuses.
What remained uncertain
Even in the Catholic tradition, a number of questions were left open and still are treated as matters of theological opinion rather than defined teaching:
- whether the fire is literal;
- where, if anywhere, purgatory is located;
- how long a given soul stays there and whether time applies at all;
- how the prayers of the living are applied to specific souls;
- whether souls in purgatory can pray for the living, which many medieval writers thought likely.
This is worth remembering when reading medieval visions and sermons, which speak with much more confidence than the councils did.