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doi: 10.101 7/S000964071 1001302 Heaven 's Purge: Purgatory in Late Antiquity. By Isabel Moreira. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. x + 310 pp. $65.00 cloth.
Purgatory is a complex notion. Thirty years ago Jacques LeGoff informed us of its rather late "birth," and now Isabel Moreira, historian at the University of Utah, invites us to reconsider it within an earlier, broader, and more social context. By sidestepping the importance of the admittedly late term purgalorium, and thus its topographical locus in the geography of the afterlife, she concentrates on the related issues of sin and salvation, spiritual cleansing or purging, and of fire as the agent of cleansing. Moreira considers these to be embedded deeply in Christian theology, and her study traces at least one major strand of development from scripture through the controversies over Origen's teachings and the Augustinian synthesis that influenced Pope Gregory 1, and finally the Anglo-Saxons Bede and Boniface.
The Christian is called to holiness or spiritual purity despite a natural tendency to sin, and baptism has long served a purifying function. Scripture calls one to repent, amend, and repair the sin-sick soul while one is able in this life, seeming to preclude postmortem measures. Yet in a Christianity of free will is the perfection necessary for heaven even remotely possible for any but the faith's heroes and heroines? Moreira traces the evolution of postmortem purgation in preparation for heavenly bliss. She begins with the standard scriptural evidence in 1 Corinthians 3: 11-15, with Paul's reference to works being tried...