of the
future life, whether with respect to the hair drawn scholastic
metaphysics by which it was defended, or with respect to the
concrete forms in which the popular apprehension held it, let him
read the Divina Commedia of Dante; for it is all there. Whoso with
adequate insight and sympathy peruses

32 Hecker, Epidemics of the Middle Ages.

33 Quarterly Review, July, 1819: article on Monachism.

34 Perry, History of the Franks, p. 467.

35 Eccl. Hist., XIII. Century, part ii. ch. 2, sect. 29.

the pages of the immortal Florentine at whom the people pointed as
he walked the streets, and said, "There goes the man who has been
in hell" will not fail to perceive with what a profound sincerity
the popular breast shuddered responsive to ecclesiastical threats
and purgatorial woes.

The tremendous moral power of this solitary work lies in the fact
that it is a series of terrific and fascinating tableaux,
embodying the idea of inflexible poetic justice impartially
administered upon king and varlet, pope and beggar, oppressor and
victim, projected amidst the unalterable necessities of eternity,
and moving athwart the lurid abyss and the azure cope with an
intense distinctness that sears the gazer's eyeballs. The Divina
Commedia, with a wonderful truth, also reflects the feeling of the
age when it was written in this respect, that there is a grappling
force of attraction, a compelling realism, about its "Purgatory"
and "Hell" which are to be sought in vain in the delineations of
its "Paradise." The mediaval belief in a future life had for its
central thought the day of judgment, for its foremost emotion
terror.36

The roots of this faith were unquestionably fertilized, and the
development of this fear quickened, to a very great extent, by
deliberate and systematic delusions. One of the most celebrated of
these organized frauds was the gigantic one perpetrated under the
auspices of the Dominican monks at Berne in 1509, the chief actors
in which were unmasked and executed. Bishop Burnet has given an
extremely interesting account of this affair in his volume of
travels. Suffice it to say, the monks appeared at midnight in the
cells of various persons, now impersonating devils, in horrid
attire, breathing flames and brimstone, now claiming to be the
souls of certain sufferers escaped from purgatory, and again
pretending to be celebrated saints, with the Virgin Mary at their
head. By the aid of mechanical and chemical a