Entertainment / Literature / Purgatory: Donald Logan writes: It would be nearly impossible to exaggerate the significance of purgatory in the life of the medieval church, especially in the way that life was lived by individual Christians. The antechamber of heaven where the good but not perfect souls suffer their temporary punishment had a fixed place in the beliefs of virtually all Christians in the Western Church and deeply affected their religious practices. Apart from heretics like the Waldensians and the Cathars and, later, John Wyclif, purgatory was believed in as firmly as the Eucharist, the divinity of Christ, the Trinity and other central beliefs of the church and played a role almost as large as the Eucharist and the Virgin in the daily devotional lives of people. The one could assist one's deceased father and mother and other loved ones and shorten their stay in purgatory led to the development of a rich variety of religious devotions and practices, from which, it is safe to say, no parish in Christendom was exempt. -- F. Donald Logan, A History of the Church in the Middle Ages. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. P. 287. The medieval and Catholic doctrine of purgatory stated that Christian souls who had accepted rites of baptism and been accepted into the body of the faithful church, but who died unexpectedly with unconfessed sins or minor venial faults, would not be sent to hell, but would rather spend an indeterminate period in a spiritual place of temporal punishment. The same temporary suffering was believed to be the fate of baptised infants who had not yet reached the age of reason where they could choose to accept Christian doctrine and make first confession. In this spiritual place, popularly called purgatory, such souls would suffer for awhile as an act of penance. This would purify them so they could enter heaven. The Council of Florence (1431 AD) was the first time the church officially embraced purgatory as a doctrine, but the belief in purgatory had long been a part of church practice going back to the patristic period of the fourth century, when Epiphanius mentions the practice of praying for deceased souls in order to lessen their time in purgatory. It is clear, however, that at this early point, the issue of hell, purgatory, and the afterlife was still a matter of dispute among proto-Christians, as theologians like Acrius denied the doctrine. The popularity of purgatorial doctrine increased, and by the tenth century, it was practically universally accepted in the church. (Latin, purgare, 'to purge')
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