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This chapter utilizes sources such as medieval world maps, chronicles, and Irish bard poetry to reveal that a purgatory cave was a popular destination for medieval Europeans. The cave in Ireland was an important site of anchoritic practices. The works of Isabela Moreira, Carl Watkins, Jean-Claude Schmitt, and Carol Zaleski are examined, and the author argues that the cave functioned as a site where penitents could alter their afterlife fates through penances “satisfactory to God.” Additionally, this chapter examines how purgatory was not just a doctrine formulated by Church authorities in the thirteenth century, but was also a penitential practice linked to physical places and caves.

Although depictions of the afterlife constitute a ‘special case’ in having a clearly defined meaning derived from an ideology external to the text, they also share much imaginative and thematic material with descriptions of places like fairyland. This chapter focuses on two of the most widely disseminated otherworld depictions: the Tractatus de Purgatorio Sancti Patricii and the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis. It also highlights a particularly striking use of biblical allusions in a fantastical context in the late medieval Irish text Echtra Thaidhg. It concludes by arguing that many otherworld motifs actually owe more to Christian culture than potential layers of pre-Christian Celtic beliefs. This is particularly evident in the case of Sir Orfeo. This text features an otherworld description often considered Celtic in origin, but which actually draws most heavily on the Book of Revelation.

This chapter examines the discussions about the location of purgatory in the works of medieval scholastics such as William of Auvergne and Thomas Aquinas. It also examines representations of purgatory in visionary literature about the afterlife. This chapter also contains an analysis of the works of scholars Jacques Le Goff and Alan Bernstein pertaining to the figurative or literal status of purgatory in the works of William of Auvergne. The chapter ends with an examination of the visionary myths and legends of the purgatory cave at Lough Derg, Ireland, called St. Patrick’s Purgatory, revealing the gradual development from a material conception of purgatory to a more abstract conception.

This introduction provides an overview of the problem that purgatory’s materiality has presented throughout its history. It frames the problem as an issue of the materiality of religion, the contours of which are discernible with the rise of empiricism. The introduction also suggests that the doctrine of purgatory sheds light on Catholic historiography and in particular on the hermeneutic of continuity, which suggests that the reforms of Vatican II do not represent a rupture in tradition, but reveal a continuous tradition of Catholic practice. Contemporary advocates of spatial representations of purgatory suggest that purgatory has been forgotten since the Vatican II reforms.