Three Purgatory Poems: The Gast of Gy, Sir Owain, The Vision of Tundale

The idea of Purgatory, codified by Aquinas’ doctrine of the Communion of Saints, dictates that human souls not directly consigned into Heaven or Hell experience a period of purification that allows for salvation; moreover, the living can offer suffrages (prayers, masses, and almsgiving) that assist the striving soul. This edition’s three fourteenth-century Middle English poems dramatize purgatorial visions. The ghost story The Gast of Gy describes the titular spirit’s haunting of his wife and subsequent conversation with a Dominican prior, emphasizing suffrages. Sir Owain and the Vision of Tundale, influenced by the Irish legend of St. Patrick’s purgatory, both follow their protagonists’ penitential journeys through Purgatory, where they witness and temporarily suffer torments for their sins, before reaching the Earthly Paradise and returning to lives of virtue. But where Owain volunteers for pilgrimage, Tundale commits mortal sins before “death.” Edward Foster, in discussing theological developments and founding texts, demonstrates how Purgatory offered medieval Christians both horror and hope.