Aspects of Purgatory in Byzantine Vernacular Literature (12th–15th cent.)

The absence of explicit references to the details of the afterlife in the Scriptures led the Byzantines to leave this topic open to discussion. As a result, every individual was free to form his own opinions about the afterlife and death, and many traditions about the provisional fate of the soul have appeared. After this provisional Judgment, there is an intermediate state, during which both the souls of the righteous and the sinners experience only a foretaste of what reward or punishment is coming to them after the Last Judgment. Towards the end of the 12th century, Roman Catholics canonized a similar idea. Purgatory was a middle place between Heaven and Hell for souls needing purification. The Orthodox rejected this notion because it lacked scriptural or patristic support, and simultaneously, they stopped discussing provisional Judgment as it dangerously resembled the Latin concept of Purgatory. Only at the Council of Ferrara-Florence did Greek metropolitan Mark Evgenikos articulate the first official Orthodox thesis on the afterlife, asserting that souls are provisionally judged immediately after death. This paper aims to present how aspects of Purgatory were incorporated into Byzantine Vernacular Literature from the 12th to 15th century, despite the fact that the Orthodox never accepted it officially.