Journey to St Patrick’s Purgatory 9781855663572, 9781800104846, 1855663570

Table of contents :
Front Cover
Contents
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
The Journey to Saint Patrick's Purgatory
Prologue
The Life of Saint Patrick
The First Successor of Saint Patrick
The Conditions of Entry into the Purgatory
The Journey Begins
Through England to Ireland
The Customs of the Irish
The Journey to Saint Patrick’s Purgatory
The Entrance to the Purgatory
The Arrival of the Demons
The First Field
The Second Field
The Third Field
The Fourth Field
The Fifth Field
The Sixth Field
The Seventh Field
The Eighth Field
The Ninth Field
The Earthly Paradise
The Gate of Heaven
Return from Purgatory
The Return Journey
Index
Previous Barcino-Tamesis Volumes

Citation preview

Ramon de Perellós Journey to St Patrick’s Purgatory

Ramon de Perellós Journey to St Patrick’s Purgatory Introduced and translated by Stephen Boyd

barcino·tamesis barcelona/woodbridge 2022

© Introduction and translation, Stephen Boyd, 2022 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2022 By Tamesis (Serie B: TEXTOS, 62) in association with Editorial Barcino ISBN 978 1 85566 357 2 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 80010 484 6 (ePDF) Tamesis is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA www.boydellandbrewer.com Editorial Barcino, S.A. Via Augusta 252–260, 5è 08017 Barcelona, Spain www.editorialbarcino.cat The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library Cover image: MS M.673. Jacobus de Voragine, approximately 1229–1298. Golden Legend, vol. 2, fol. 178v. Bruges, Belgium, 1445–1465. The Morgan Library & Museum. MS M.673. Purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913) in 1911. Photographic credit: The Morgan Library & Museum, New York

For Mercè Clarasó

Contents

Acknowledgementsix Abbreviationsx Introduction1 Journey to St Patrick’s Purgatory

47

Index109

Acknowledgements

For their help along the way, my sincere thanks are due to Xavier Renedo, Joan Santanach, Katharine Simms and, most especially, Barry Taylor.

Abbreviations

A

Archives Départementales du Gers (Auch), MS I. 4066, fols 22r–37r, as edited by Margherita Boretti, Rialto (Repertorio informatizzato dell’antica letteratura trobadorica e occitana ‹http://www.rialto. unina.it/Prosanarrativa/Viage/Viage.htm›)

DCVB

A.M. Alcover and F. de B. Moll, Diccionari català-valencià-balear, ‹https://dcvb.iec.cat›

MyP

Llegendes de l’altra vida: Viatges del Cavaller Owein y de Ramón de Perellós al Purgatori de Sant Patrici; Visions de Tundal y de Trictelm: Aparició de l’esperit de G. de Corvo; Viatge d’en Pere Portes a l’Infern. Textes antics, ed. by Ramon Miquel y Planas (Barcelona: F. Giró, 1914)

T

Bibliothèque Municipale de Toulouse, MS 894, fols 1r–40v, as edited by Alfred Jeanroy and Alphonse Vignaux, in Voyage au Purgatoire de St Patrice; Visions de Tindal et de St Paul: textes languedociens du quinzième siècle, Bibliothèque Méridionale 1ère série, 8 (Toulouse: E. Privat, 1903)

Introduction

In the winter of 1397, the Catalan nobleman, Viscount Ramon de Perellós, travelled to Ireland with the aim of entering the underground cavern on Station Island in Lough Derg (in the modern county of Donegal) known as St Patrick’s Purgatory and famous throughout medieval Europe as a gateway to the next world. His stated reason for undertaking the journey was to ascertain if the soul of his recently deceased master and friend, King John I of Aragon, was, if not in Heaven, at least in Purgatory, and so ‘in the way of salvation’. Setting off from the papal palace in Avignon on 8 September, he travelled to Paris, crossed from Calais to Dover, and, having passed through Canterbury and London, spent ten days near Oxford as the guest of King Richard II of England, who supplied him with a letter of safe conduct.1 He then made his way to Chester and, in time honoured fashion, took ship from Holyhead to Dublin, stopping off on the way at the Isle of Man. Once in Ireland, he travelled northwards through Drogheda and Dundalk, traversed Ulster and spent Christmas with Niall Óg O’Neill, lord of Tyrone and effectively king of Ulster, before reaching Lough Derg in the far north-west. While enclosed for twentyfour hours in the underground cave, he claimed to have witnessed the different kinds of suffering undergone in nine distinct fields or zones by the souls in Purgatory, 1.  The text of the letter of safe conduct is collected in Thomas Rymer, Fœdera, conventiones, literæ, et cujuscunque generis acta publica, inter reges Angliæ […], 20 vols, 2nd edn (London: J. Tonson, 1727–35), VIII (1727), pp. 14–15; for a partial translation of the letter, see n. 11 below.

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briefly entered the mouth of Hell, been welcomed into the Earthly Paradise and, from there, to have been afforded a glimpse of the Heavenly Jerusalem. Most importantly, in the fourth field of Purgatory, he encountered the soul of King John along with those of a niece (of whose death he had been unaware when he set out for Ireland), and of a Franciscan friar of his acquaintance. With his mission successfully completed, he returned by the way he had come, and by March of 1398 had already resumed his diplomatic activities in France. The Viatge al Purgatori, translated here, is Perellós’s account of his journey in both the earthly and the supernatural realms. It is important to point out, however, that only the passages that deal with the former are original. With the notable exception of his encounters with the souls of the king, his niece, and Friar Francesc, his account of the origins of St Patrick’s Purgatory and of his experiences in the otherworld is very closely based on the Tractatus Purgatorii sancti Patricii, composed around 1185 by the English Cistercian monk, H [Henry or Hugh]. de Saltrey. This text, which enjoyed enormous popularity in the Middle Ages, was chiefly responsible for spreading knowledge of the Purgatory to the world beyond Ireland, and, indeed, as Jean-Michel Picard has observed, it ‘played a major part in the concept of Purgatory as it was created in the twelfth century’.2 This Introduction will provide an outline of the life of Ramon de Perellós, of the factors that motivated his visit to Ireland, and of the history of St Patrick’s Purgatory.

2.  Jean-Michel Picard, ‘Inferno, v. 73–142: The Irish Sequel’, in Dante and the Middle Ages: Literary and Historical Essays, ed. by John C. Barnes and Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin (Dublin: Irish Academic Press for The Foundation for Italian Studies University College Dublin, 1995), pp. 271–86 (p. 286). For a fuller account of the Tractatus, see pp. 19–23 below.

Introduction

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It will also consider the literary influences on his text, and pay special attention to the nature and credibility of his account of Ireland and the Irish.

Ramon de Perellós The precise date of Perellós’s birth is unknown, but is likely to have been around 1350.3 He was the second son of Francesc de Perellós, lord of Perellós and Millars and other estates in the region of Perpignan, now in the French Département of Pyrénées Orientales, but then, like the whole of Roussillon, part of the territory of the Kingdom of Aragon.4 Francesc was a steward and councillor of King Peter IV (‘the Ceremonious’) of Aragon (r. 1336–87), on whose behalf he undertook many diplomatic missions to the court of Charles V of France (r. 1364–80). He was granted the title of Viscount of Rueda (in Aragon) in 1366, and the French king made him his chamberlain and an admiral. It was, no doubt, after one of his father’s visits to Paris that, as Perellós tells us at the beginning of the Viatge, he was left to be brought up at the French court. This must have been a profoundly formative experience, for the court was a great political and cultural centre, frequented by visitors

3.  This biographical summary is based on Maria Teresa Ferrer i Mallol, ‘Noves dades per a la biografia de Ramon de Perellós, autor del Viatge al Purgatori de Sant Patrici’, in Miscel·lània en honor del doctor Casimir Martí (Barcelona: Fundació Salvador Vives Casajuana, 1994), pp. 215–30, and her ‘Activitats polítiques i militars de Ramon de Perellós (autor del Viatge al Purgatori de Sant Patrici, durant el regnat de Joan I)’, in Medievo hispano: estudios in memoriam del Prof. Derek W. Lomax (Madrid: Sociedad Española de Estudios Medievales, 1995), pp. 159–73. 4.  A composite monarchy made up of the Kingdoms of Aragon and Valencia and the Principality of Catalonia, whose de facto capital and administrative centre was Barcelona, and whose official language was Catalan.

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from near and far, and Perellós records that his listening to travellers’ tales there inspired in him a desire to seek adventure and to experience ‘the marvellous and strange things that are in the world’.5 His adult career, like his father’s before him, was that of a soldier and diplomat, in the service, successively, of Peter IV, of his son John, first as Duke of Girona and later as John I (b. 1350, r. 1387–96) and, eventually, of the anti-pope, Benedict XIII. In light of his later sojourn in England, it is interesting to note that one of the first important missions he undertook was to that country, in 1374, to negotiate a treaty with John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. On his return journey by sea, he was taken prisoner by the Muslim ruler of Granada and eventually ransomed by King Peter. Other missions followed, taking him to France in 1375 and 1376, and Cyprus from 1377 to 1378. Following the death, on 27 March 1378, of Pope Gregory XI, two rival popes emerged, each claiming to have been legitimately elected: Urban VI, supported by England, the Emperor Charles IV, Hungary and almost all the Italian states, and Clement VII, supported by France, Castile and Leon, Naples, Savoy and Scotland. Thus began the Western Schism, the split in the Church that was to last until 1417. Although the Aragonese were eventually to declare for Clement, they were initially undecided about the legitimacy of the rival claimants, and Peter IV issued instructions to his military commanders and diplomats not to assist either of them. It seems that Perellós (and others) disobeyed this order for, as he recounts in the Viatge, in the spring of 1379, he commanded one of the galleys in a flotilla that conveyed Clement from Naples to the south of France, where he sought refuge in Avignon.6 He was later to maintain a very close relationship with 5.  See p. 50 below. 6.  See p. 57 below.

Introduction

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Clement’s successor, Benedict XIII.7 In 1380, following the death of Charles V of France, Perellós officially entered the service of Prince John, becoming his chamberlain, chief steward and councillor in 1384. Between 1382 and 1387, he undertook embassies, many of them related to issues of dynastic politics, to the courts of Avignon, France, and of the Duke of Bar. Following John’s accession to the throne in January 1387, his status in terms of land, titles and responsibilities grew considerably: he was confirmed as Lord of Ceret,8 was made Captain General of Roussillon in 1389, and, in 1391, 1st Viscount of Perellós with jurisdiction over Rodès and Montner.9 In early May 1396, he was sent to Avignon to engage in negotiations with Charles VI of France and with the Count of Armagnac in the hope of staving off a threatened invasion of Catalonia. The talks were mediated by Pope Benedict XIII – by birth, the Aragonese nobleman, Pere Martines de Luna – who, two years earlier, had succeeded Clement VII. As he tells us in the Viatge, Perellós was already in his service, and was with the pope when news reached him of the death, on 19 May 1396, of King John: ‘And at that moment’, he recounts, ‘I resolved in my heart that I would go to Saint Patrick’s Purgatory to see […] if I could find my lord in Purgatory and [discover] what pains he was suffering’.10 One can have the impression when reading the Viatge that Perellós set out on this journey alone. He does mention that Richard II’s Lieutenant in Ireland, Sir Roger Mortimer, designated two squires to accompany him on his way north to Ulster, one of whom, the Irish-speaking John Talbot, acted as his interpreter. He mentions, too, that this role was taken 7.  See p. 57 below. 8.  See p. 49, n. 6 below. 9.  Rodès and Montner lie, respectively, about 26 kilometres west, and 18 kilometres north-west, of Perpignan. 10.  See p. 58 below.

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over in Ulster itself by a cousin of Talbot’s made available to him by the Archbishop of Armagh. However, it is only when he is describing the preparations that he made in the church on Station Island, immediately prior to entering the cave, that it emerges that his two sons Lluís and Ramon, his nephew Bernat de Centelles, a Valencian nobleman called Pere de Maça, as well as a retinue of his servants, had been with him all along. In addition, he mentions the presence of two Anglo-Norman noblemen: Thomas Hawkwood, whom he made a knight, and Sir William de Courcy, who accompanied him into the cave.11 On his return from Ireland in the spring of 1398, he resumed his diplomatic career, travelling back and forth between Avignon and Paris over the next four years on behalf of Pope Benedict. France had withdrawn its recognition of him as pope in 1398, and for the next five years the papal palace in Avignon was besieged by Geoffrey Boucicaut, Governor of the Dauphiné. The siege ended only when Benedict fled the city at the beginning of March 1403. Later documented references to Perellós relate mostly to his political activities: in 1410, he represented the Catalan 11.  The letter of safe conduct supplied (at the behest of his fatherin-law, Charles VI of France) by Richard II, and issued on 6 September 1397, two days before Perellós’s departure from Avignon, anticipates that his retinue will consist of twenty men and thirty horses: ‘Know that whereas the nobleman Raymond Viscount of Perilleux [sic] and Chevalier of Rodes, chamberlain of our most dear father of France, intends and proposes, with our permission, to come into our kingdom of England, and, with twenty men and thirty horses in his retinue, to cross and proceed through the same realm to our land of Ireland and in that same place to see and visit Saint Patrick’s Purgatory’ (‘Sciatis quod, cum, Nobilis Vir, Reymumdus Vicecomes de Perilleux & de Rodes Chivaler, Camerarius carissimi Patris nostri Franciae, in Regnum nostrum Angliae venire, & per idem Regnum versus Terram nostram Hiberniae ad Purgatorium Sancti Patricii ibidem videndum & visitandum, cum Viginti Hominibus, & Triginta Equis in Comitiva sua, transire & proficisci intendat & proponat, nostra Licentia mediante’; Rymer, Fœdera, VIII, p. 14).

Introduction

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Corts (parliament) at that of Aragon; in 1412, first at the Corts of Barcelona, and then at Lleida, he swore fealty, on behalf of the Count of Urgell to the Castilian, Ferdinand of Antequera, a rival (and eventually successful) claimant to the throne of Aragon following the death in 1410 of King Martin I. Even so, throughout the period of the interregnum, Perellós continued to support the count, who never actually renounced his claim. He arrived late with Gascon reinforcements at the Battle of Morvedre (27 February 1412) in Valencia, at which Ferdinand inflicted a heavy defeat on the count’s allies, and in the following year, intervened in his favour at the Corts of Tortosa. The last records of him are as a deputy of the Generalitat of Catalonia (the standing council of the Catalan Corts) between 1416 and 1419, and it seems likely that he died shortly after this. He was survived by his second wife, Violant de Luna.

The Background to the Viatge al Purgatori As we have seen, Ramon de Perellós’s decision to travel to St Patrick’s Purgatory was sparked by the sudden death of King John I. In order to understand why he should have been particularly concerned about the eternal destiny of the king’s soul, we need to consider a number of things: the closeness of the relationship between the two men, the circumstances of the king’s death, and the political crisis that this provoked. In the Viatge, Perellós places particular emphasis on his bond of friendship with his master: And for a long time I was very close to him and was loved by him as much as a servant can be loved by his lord. And I was aware that this lord showed me great love, and I found the

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same in him, and loved him as much as a servant can love his lord; so much so, that there would be nothing in the world that I could possibly do that I would not do for him.12

In fact, this intimacy with the king was shared by other members of Perellós’s family: his elder brother, Francesc was his chamberlain, and he and his wife, Constança de Pròixida, were powerfully influential figures in his household when he was a prince. Another brother, Ponç, who is mentioned in the Viatge, was majordomo to John when he was king.13 John I died, in circumstances that remain unclear, and without the last sacraments, on 19 May 1396, while hunting at the castle of Foixà, close to Torroella de Montgrí in the province of Girona. Although his death may have been due simply to a fall from his horse, or the result of a pre-existing medical condition, there were persistent rumours that he had been murdered or committed suicide. In this period, death by suicide would have automatically signified eternal damnation, but there were other reasons for concern about the fate of the king’s soul. He was renowned for the cultural refinement of his court, at which French influence was very marked,14 and for his great love of music and poetry. He was responsible, in 1393, for instituting the Jocs Florals, a competition for troubadour poets (in imitation of that of Toulouse) which survives to this day, having been revived in the nineteenth century. He also had a passion for hunting, and was interested in astrology and the occult. While 12.  See p. 56 below. 13.  They sided with John and his wife, Violant de Bar, in their many disputes with Peter IV. For that reason, in 1383, at the Corts of Monsó, which Ramon was forbidden to attend, the king removed them from their positions, and they were only reinstated following protests from fellow courtiers. 14.  His second wife, Violant de Bar, was a niece of Charles V of France.

Introduction

9

the king’s indulgence in these pastimes earned him the sobriquets of ‘the Hunter’, ‘the Musician’, and ‘the Lover of Elegance’, his neglect of duty, promotion of favourites, and financial irresponsibility led to him being given the less flattering title of ‘the Neglectful’. Between 1387 and 1390, he lost the Catalan-controlled Duchies of Athens and Neopatras in Greece, and mounting political and financial difficulties towards the end of his reign provoked angry protests from the cities of Valencia and Barcelona.15 In June 1396, less than a month after the king’s death, thirty-eight royal councillors, among them Ramon de Perellós, were put on trial on charges of maladministration and treason. By March of the following year, all who had been imprisoned had been released, and by December 1398 the new king, John’s brother, Martin I (r. 1396–1410), had exonerated all the accused.16 Perellós and his brother Ponç seem to have escaped particularly lightly, for as early as July 1396 they are documented as being sent on a diplomatic mission to Paris by the new queen, Maria de Lluna.17 It seems unlikely, then, that Perellós made and recorded his pilgrimage to St Patrick’s Purgatory because he felt under political pressure to prove that the bad advice he and his fellow accused had given the king, as well as their connivance in creating the circumstances that led to him dying unconfessed, had resulted in the eternal loss of his soul. The probable motivations behind the journey and the writing of the Viatge will be considered below. But it is

15.  In these senses, there are many parallels between John, and Richard II of England (r. 1377–1400), the other king of whom Perellós makes particular mention in the Viatge. 16.  A full account of the trials is given in Marina Mitjà, ‘Procés contra els consellers, domèstics i curials de Joan I, entre ells Bernat Metge’, Boletín de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona, 27 (1957–58), 375–415. 17.  Ferrer i Mallol, ‘Activitats polítiques’, p. 170.

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opportune, at this point, to note that Perellós was not the only one of the accused to write about his encounter with the spirit of the dead monarch. Whereas he went to great lengths to bring it about, his colleague, the royal secretary and humanist scholar, Bernat Metge (1340/46–1413), claimed in Lo somni (The Dream), written in 1399, and one of the most celebrated works of medieval Catalan prose, that the dead king had unexpectedly appeared to him one Friday night around midnight, surrounded by ‘many falcons, goshawks and various kinds of dogs, which screeched and howled most hideously’.18 The king, Metge wrote, explained that by means of these deafening animal noises he was undergoing punishment in Purgatory for his excessive love of hunting, and, for his ‘great pleasure in singers and minstrels’, by being subjected to discordant music, played on the lyre, ‘all bereft of rhythm and measure and, indeed, of any kind of melody’.19 As a correction for his impertinent attempts to see into the future, the king lamented that he was continually being reminded of the most unpleasant experiences of his past. These not so very onerous trials – more inconveniences than torments – convey something of the spirit of urbane, ironic scepticism that pervades Metge’s text. In Perellós’s Viatge, things are very different. His encounter with the soul of the king takes place in the fire-suffused fourth field of Purgatory, a place of acute suffering. Although he says that their conversation was lengthy, he does not – quite unlike Metge – record what was said or even what subjects they discussed; he mentions only that the monarch was 18.  ‘[…] molts falcons, estors e cans de diversa natura, qui cridaven e udolaven fort llejament’; Bernat Metge, Lo somni, ed. by Josep Ma de Casacuberta, 2nd edn (Barcelona: Els Nostres Clàssics, 1925), p. 18. 19. ‘[…] gran plaer en xandres e ministers […] llunyants de bon temps e mesura, e finalment, de tota melodia’; Metge, Lo somni, pp. 69–70.

Introduction

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unwilling to disclose the reasons why he found himself in Purgatory. Nevertheless, Perellós tactfully hints at his own view of the matter, and points the finger, not at the king’s pursuit of pleasure, but at the corruption and cronyism that characterised his administration: And I must say that, above all else, the kings and princes of this world should avoid committing injustice in order to please or show favour to anyone, male or female, or to others, whether men or women, […] closer to the family from which they themselves come and are descended.20

To return to the question of Perellós’s motives for making and recording his pilgrimage to Ireland, he himself states that they were two: the desire to see if the king’s soul was ‘in the way of salvation’ and the wish to expiate his own sins.21 Considering his very close and warm relationship with his royal master, and bearing in mind the religious culture of the period, it would seem that we cannot easily discount either of them. Indeed, towards the end of the Viatge, and also at its conclusion, Perellós stresses the value of his experiences as a spiritual lesson: we should avoid sin in order not to have to experience the pains of Purgatory in the first place.22 However, it is very clear that the text was also conceived as an entertaining travelogue, a tale of adventure in both the earthly and supernatural realms, full of the kinds of ‘marvellous and strange things’ that (as we have seen) the author confesses had fascinated him from his youth. As a tale of adventure, it is imbued with a markedly chivalric spirit:23 Perellós was the product of an 20.  See p. 85 below. 21.  See p. 58 below. 22.  See p. 108 below. 23.  At the end of the Toulouse manuscript version of the text Perellós refers to it as ‘aquest romans’ (T, p. 54, line 1136).

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age and an aristocratic culture in which chivalry and religion profoundly interpenetrated each other, in which tales of knightly questing could be read allegorically as spiritual journeys, and when saints like St George and St James, who were, or were imagined to be, soldiers, were popularly venerated.24 John I’s father, Peter IV, for example, had particularly promoted the cult of St George, who would eventually be recognised as the patron saint of Catalonia in 1456; in 1378, his nephew, the king of Cyprus, sent him as a gift the relic of the saint’s arm encased in silver, while in July 1400, King John’s successor Martin I wrote to Perellós asking him to acquire the head of St George, then, apparently, on sale by a Greek bishop.25 In the Viatge, Perellós observes that the Isle of Man ‘belonged to the King of the Hundred Knights in the time of King Arthur’, and it is clear that this was why he stopped off there.26 Similarly, on his homeward journey, he made a point of visiting Dover castle to view two Arthurian relics: the head of King Arthur’s nephew, Sir Gawain, and the tattered coat that had given the nickname of ‘La Cote Male Taile’ to Sir Breunor le Noire, another of the Knights of the Round Table.27 Throughout the text, in the manner of a writer of chivalric romance, he creates suspense through repeated allusions to the many warnings he was given about the mortal danger incurred by those who dared to enter the Purgatory, and to his always steadfast refusal to heed them, even when they came from 24. The Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal (c. 1220–25), which remained popular into the sixteenth century, is a prime example of a chivalric adventure deliberately designed to be read allegorically. 25.  Ferrer i Mallol, ‘Noves dades’, p. 224; Jordi Tiñena (ed.), Viatge al purgatori, El Garbell, 26 (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1988), p. 10. 26.  See p. 61 below. 27.  See p. 107 below. For these reasons, Juan Miguel Ribera Llopis (‘Una altra lectura de Ramon de Perellós prèvia a al seu viatge. 1ª part’, Revista de l’Alguer, 8 (1997), 233–51 (p. 233)) has dubbed Perellós a ‘turista arturià’ (an Arthurian tourist).

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the tormenting demons themselves. However, perhaps the single incident in the Viatge that speaks most eloquently of Perellós’s journey as, indivisibly, a religious pilgrimage and a chivalric quest, is his knighting of four men – his sons, Lluís and Ramon, and two others – just when he was on the point of entering the underground cavern on Station Island and so crossing the threshold separating the earthly from the supernatural world.28 Bearing in mind that the Viatge includes an abbreviated life of St Patrick and a detailed description of the customs of the Gaelic Irish,29 we may say that it is a text in which what we would regard as the distinct genres, concerns and aims – didactic versus pleasure giving – of hagiography, vision literature, homily, chivalric romance, anthropological essay, autobiography and travelogue meet and fuse in a way that, at least for the author and his intended audience, seems to have been perfectly natural.30

28.  See p. 72 below. 29.  I.e. the Irish who lived outside the area of direct English control and who continued to maintain their traditional laws, customs and language; see also pp. 26–40, 65–69 below. 30. Nevertheless, as Barry Taylor has shown, the various works collected together with the three earliest surviving versions of the Viatge (see p. 45 below) suggest that it was read primarily as a religious text, albeit with a variety of emphases: on the visionary, in the Toulouse manuscript; on the devotional, in the Barcelona incunable; and on prophecy and prognostication in the case of the Auch manuscript; see his ‘Los Libros de Viajes de la Edad Media Hispánica: bibliografía y recepción’, in Actas do IV Congresso da Associação Hispânica de Literatura Medieval (Lisboa, 1–5 Outubro 1991), 4 vols (Lisbon: Edições Cosmos, 1993), I, ‘Sessões plenárias’, pp. 57–70 (p. 64). However, Taylor also points out that an entry in the inventory of John I’s books suggests that the Viatge was bound together with a copy of the mid-fourteenth-century Travels of Sir John Mandeville – perhaps the most popular travel narrative of the age – which combines the devotional with the (often outlandishly) fantastical; the source of the information about the inventory is cited (p. 70, n. 35) as Martí de Riquer, ‘El “Voyage” de Sir John Mandeville en català’, in Miscellània d’homenatge a Enric Moreu-Rey, III (Barcelona:

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Perellós’s Destination: St Patrick’s Purgatory St Patrick’s Purgatory, the place where Perellós hoped to learn of the destiny of King John’s soul, was, as we have seen, a cave or pit on Station Island on Lough Derg in the modern county of Donegal in the north-west of Ireland.31 From the late twelfth to the end of the fifteenth century, it was an important pilgrimage destination for people from all over Europe. A monastery had been founded on the shores of Lough Derg in the fifth century, supposedly by St Patrick (c. 420–90?), another on Saints Island by St Dabeoc, one of his disciples, followed by a ‘desert’ (hermitage) on Station Island, two miles to the south-east. According to Bishop Tírechán (fl. late 7th century), who collated material on the life of Patrick, the saint had undertaken a forty-day Lenten retreat on Croagh Patrick, a mountain in the modern county of Mayo, which is still a place of pilgrimage. Later accounts, particularly the 9th-century Vita Septima or Tripartite Life, relay the legends that had grown up around Patrick’s sojourn on the mountain: he was supposedly attacked by demons in the form of black birds, and then consoled by the singing of white birds sent by the angels; he called on Elias to save him from the demons, and Jesus gave him the present of a staff – a detail recorded by Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1988), pp. 151–62 (pp. 151–52, n. 3). I am grateful to Dr Taylor for making a copy of his article available to me. 31.  This outline is based on Yolande de Pontfarcy, ‘The Historical Background to the Pilgrimage to Lough Derg’, in The Medieval Pilgrimage to St. Patrick’s Purgatory: Lough Derg and the European Tradition, ed. by Michael Haren and Yolande de Pontfarcy (Enniskillen: Clogher Historical Society, 1988), pp. 7–34. There has been some confusion about whether the Purgatory was located on Saints Island or Station Island; de Pontfarcy makes the case for the latter (‘The Historical Background’, pp. 13–14). Similarly, early accounts speak of it variously as a cave or (as Perellós does) a pit; de Pontfarcy suggests that it was most probably a souterrain (‘The Historical Background’, pp. 20–21).

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Perellós.32 According to a folk tale associated with the area around Croagh Patrick, the saint fought with and defeated the Devil’s mother, Corra. When she fled to Lough Derg, Patrick followed and killed her. Her blood stained the water red, hence the name, Loch Dearg (the Red Lake). It seems that the legends and traditions, including that of the penitential pilgrimage associated with St Patrick’s fast on Croagh Patrick, were transposed to Lough Derg following an incident that occurred there on 16 March 1113, when thirty pilgrims were killed by a thunderbolt.33 Only thirteen years later, in 1126, a new church, dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul, was consecrated on Saints Island. Around 1135, the church became an Augustinian priory, dependent on the Augustinian Abbey of Saints Peter and Paul in Armagh, whose archbishop – at that time, St Malachy (1094–1148) – was the coarb (successor) of St Patrick as primate of Ireland, thus reinforcing and institutionalising the link between the island and the saint. It seems that the Augustinians revived and promoted the existing tradition of pilgrimage to the island so that, by the end of the twelfth century, it had begun to attract pilgrims from Britain and continental Europe. This was the period in which the term ‘Purgatory’ was beginning to be used to denote the place (long believed to exist) where the souls of the dead, destined for salvation but not yet sufficiently cleansed of the effects of sin to be able to enter Heaven, underwent a period of purificatory

32.  See p. 51 below. 33.  In his Vita sancti Patricii episcopi (1185–86), written at the same time as, but completely independently of, H. de Saltrey’s Tractatus Purgatorii sancti Patricii (see pp. 19–23 below), Jocelin of Furness locates the Purgatory on Croagh Patrick; see de Pontfarcy, ‘The Historical Background’, p. 33, n. 107. It is interesting to note that Perellós’s entry into and exit from the Purgatory (see pp. 75–76, 104 below) are marked by deafening thunderclaps. There is no mention of this detail in Saltrey’s Tractatus, and its source and meaning remain to be determined.

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suffering.34 At the Second Council of Lyons in 1274, the Church defined its teaching on Purgatory and affirmed the efficacy of the prayers of the living in assisting the souls of the dead who were there. While theologians may have preferred to think of it primarily as a spiritual state and process, in the popular imagination Purgatory was a place where purification was undergone physically, with an emphasis on fire as its primary agent. The cave on Station Island, which may originally have been a sweat house and a site of physical-medicinal purification, acquired the reputation of being a place in which Purgatory could be entered and experienced.35 Pilgrims who wished to enter it would first arrive at Saints Island, present the required letter of permission from a bishop (or from the archbishop of Armagh), and there spend a fortnight in prayer and penance, making their confession and taking communion, before being rowed over to Station Island to be locked in the cave for twenty-four hours. They would then return to Saints Island for a further fortnight of prayer and fasting. The cave was closed in 1497, but not, as was believed until recently, by order of Pope Alexander VI, but rather, as 34.  For an excellent discussion of the early ‘history’ of Purgatory, see Yolande de Pontfarcy, ‘The Topography of the Other World and the Influence of Twelfth-Century Irish Visions in Dante’, in Barnes and Ó Cuilleanáin (eds), Dante and the Middle Ages, pp. 92–115. 35.  In this way it had a parallel in the Cave of the Sibyl on Monte della Sibilla in the Apennines. Although a pagan site, it was visited in the Middle Ages by people who wished to enter the underworld and consult the oracle. The hero of Andrea da Barberino’s chivalresque romance, Guerrino detto il Meschino (c. 1410), spends a year in the cave in the hope of discovering from the Sibyl the identity of his parents. Instead, he is subjected to a series of sensual temptations from which (like Perellós in the Viatge) he is only freed by calling on the name of Jesus. When he abandons his quest and seeks pardon from the pope for having undertaken it, his ‘penance for visiting it’, as Hugh Shields notes, ‘is a pilgrimage to St Patrick’s Purgatory!’; see his ‘The French Accounts’, in Haren and de Pontfarcy (eds), The Medieval Pilgrimage to St Patrick’s Purgatory, pp. 83–98 (p. 92, n. 21).

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Paulo Taviani has shown, at the instigation of Cathal Óg MacManus (1439–98), then acting as Bishop of Clogher, in whose diocese Lough Derg was located.36 Aware that the notion of a physical entrance to Purgatory was superstitious, wishing to recast the pilgrimage in an exclusively penitential mode, and aware of the need to overcome opposition to his plan, it seems that he was responsible for the forgery of a papal order of prohibition. After the suppression, the numbers of continental pilgrims rapidly declined. Records survive for a total of thirty-three people (thirty-one of them named) who made the pilgrimage to St Patrick’s Purgatory between 1146/47 and 1517: one from Catalonia/Aragon (Ramon de Perellós), six from England, one from Flanders, six from France, two from Hungary, four from Ireland, eight from Italy, two from the Netherlands, one from Switzerland, one from Wallonia, and one of uncertain origin.37 A number of pilgrims, apart from Ramon de Perellós, wrote first-hand accounts of their experiences in Ireland and in the cave on Station Island; in other cases, they were recorded secondhand. Later in this Introduction mention will be made of two of the first-hand accounts: those by the Fleming, Guillebert de Lannoy, and the Italian, Francesco Chiericati, 36.  See Paolo Taviani, ‘La distruzione’, in Il Purgatorio di San Patrizio. Documenti letterari e testimonianze di pellegrinaggio (secc. XII–XVI), ed. by Giovanni Paolo Maggioni, Roberto Tinti and Paolo Taviani, Quaderni di Hagiographica, 13 (Florence: SISMEL-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2018), pp. 419–47. 37.  The relevant names, places of origin and dates are listed in a ‘Chronology of the Medieval Pilgrims (Historical and Literary) to St Patrick’s Purgatory’, in Haren and de Pontfarcy (eds), The Medieval Pilgrimage to St Patrick’s Purgatory, pp. 5–6. The one exception is Guarino da Durazzo, whose name is said by his compatriot, Francesco Chiericati (who visited Station Island in 1517) to be recorded in the church register there; see Mary Purcell, ‘St Patrick’s Purgatory: Francesco Chiericati’s Letter to Isabella d’Este’, Seanchas Ardmhacha: Journal of the Armagh Diocesan Historical Society, 12.2 (1987), 1–10 (pp. 5, 8).

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who made their visits in 1430 and 1517 respectively. The monastery was officially dissolved in 1632 by the Anglican Bishop of Clogher and the Augustinians were replaced by Franciscans who continued to open the island to pilgrims during the summer. In the meantime, the cave itself, which had been enlarged to accommodate groups of pilgrims, was reopened for a short period during the reign of the Catholic James II (r. 1685–88). In 1727, it was described by John Richardson in his The Great Folly, Superstition and Idolatry of Pilgrimages in Ireland as an over-ground structure made of ‘stone and clay […], covered with broad stones and all overlaid with earth’.38 Around 1790, the cave was definitively closed and destroyed because of the instability of its structure. Despite the closure of the cave, and attempts at suppression, the pilgrimage to Station Island has never been interrupted.39 Today, the season runs from 1 June to 15 August, and every year modern pilgrims in considerable numbers undertake a three-day penitential retreat – fasting, going barefoot, reciting prescribed prayers, and keeping an all-night vigil in the basilica in place of descending into the long-vanished cave. W.B. Yeats and Patrick Kavanagh are among the canonical Irish writers who have written about Lough Derg, but perhaps the greatest work of literature inspired by the pilgrimage (and by Dante’s Commedia), and which cannot go unmentioned, is the sequence of poems entitled ‘Station Island’ that comprises Part Two of Seamus Heaney’s 1984 collection of the same name: in the course of the three days of the pilgrimage, the poet encounters the souls of people he knew and of writers (including Kavanagh and James Joyce) whose work was important 38.  The Great Folly, Superstition and Idolatry of Pilgrimages in Ireland (Dublin: J. Hyde, 1727), cited in de Pontfarcy, ‘The Historical Background’, p. 20. 39.  With the exception, it so happens, of the year of writing (2020), due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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to him. At the end, when alighting from the ferry that has conveyed him back to the mainland, he speaks of the sense of strangeness he experienced as he re-crossed the threshold between the two worlds, and ‘sensed again | an alien comfort as I stepped on ground’.40

Perellós’s Primary Source: the Tractatus Purgatorii sancti Patricii As we have noted, the experiences that Perellós claimed to have had while enclosed in the cave on Station Island are in fact, sometimes almost word-for-word,41 those ascribed to a knight called Owein (who would have made his visit there around 1150) in the Tractatus Purgatorii sancti Patricii, the text that was chiefly responsible for the success of the site in attracting large numbers of pilgrims from all over Europe from the twelfth to the early sixteenth century.42 The Tractatus was written around 1185 by H. (Hugo or Henry) de Saltrey, a Cistercian monk of the abbey of Saltrey in the diocese of Lincoln. He claimed to be reproducing a tale told to him by another monk called Gilbert (very probably the man of that name who had been the first abbot of Basingwerk in North Wales), who had earlier founded a

40.  W.B. Yeats, ‘The Pilgrim’ (collected in Last Poems (1936–39); Patrick Kavanagh, ‘Lough Derg’ (1940); Seamus Heaney, Station Island (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), XII, p. 92. 41.  The points of correspondence are set out in detail in Llegendes de l’altra vida: Viatges del Cavaller Owein y de Ramón de Perellós al Purgatori de Sant Patrici; Visions de Tundal y de Trictelm: Aparició de l’esperit de G. de Corvo; Viatge d’en Pere Portes a l’Infern. Textes antics, ed. by Ramon Miquel y Planas (Barcelona: F. Giró, 1914) (hereafter MyP), pp. 307–13. 42.  For an English translation of the Tractatus (with a very helpful Introduction), see Saint Patrick’s Purgatory: a Twelfth-Century Tale of a Journey to the other World, trans. by Jean-Michel Picard, with an introduction by Yolande de Pontfarcy (Dublin: Four Courts, 1985).

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monastery in Ireland.43 During Gilbert’s two-year stay there, the knight, Owein, who acted as his interpreter, had given him a detailed account of the visions he had experienced in the cave at St Patrick’s Purgatory, and it is these that form the substance of the Tractatus.44 Copies of it circulated widely. The first translation, L’Espurgatoire Seint Patriz – an adaptation into French verse – was made around 1190 by Marie de France, and by 1300 there were four other French verse versions and three prose ones. The chapter on St Patrick in Jacobus de Varagine’s Golden Legend (written before 1264), the most important compilation of the lives of the saints in the Middle Ages, incorporates an account of the Purgatory closely based on the Tractatus, although in this case the knight who enters it is called Nicholas. The Tractatus was translated into Catalan in 1320 as Viatge del cavaller Owein al Purgatori de Sant Patrici by Friar Ramon Ros de Tàrrega, but there is no evidence that Perellós was aware of this version.45 The association of Purgatory with St Patrick that the Tractatus established in the European imagination in the Late Middle Ages is perhaps most intriguingly manifested in a fresco, rediscovered in the early 1970s, in the Clarissan convent of San Francesco in Todi (Umbria). Painted in 1346 and attributed to the Sienese artist Jacopo di Mino del Pellicciaio, it has a strong claim to be the earliest large-scale depiction of Purgatory.46 Here it is represented as a mountain (or volcano) containing 43.  This may have been the monastery of Baltinglass (in the modern county of Wicklow), founded in 1148. 44.  Gilbert may have called the knight ‘Owein’ in honour of the Welsh Prince Owen Gwynedd (†1168), who had been a generous benefactor of the abbey of Basingwerk. 45.  The text, as transcribed (from Escorial, MS (Cod. Escurialensis) M.II.3, fols 12–28r) and edited for the first time, appears in MyP, pp. 3–32. 46.  A colour reproduction of the fresco is included as an endpiece (figure 6) in Haren and de Pontfarcy (eds), The Medieval Pilgrimage to St Patrick’s Purgatory.

Introduction

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seven cavernous chambers, each labelled with the name of one of the deadly sins, in which naked human figures are shown undergoing different forms of torment. At the summit of the mountain, St Patrick, identified by name, and depicted as a saint and bishop, is shown accompanied by a kneeling figure, whose ermine-trimmed cap and robes suggest that he may be the nobleman who commissioned the painting. The saint points with his rod to a protruding well-like structure from which flames are issuing, and appears to be drawing his companion’s attention to the vision being offered to him.47 As Jean-Michel Picard has pointed out, the fact that the topography of Purgatory in the fresco differs considerably from that in the Tractatus (where it is imagined as an subterranean pit opening on to a series of nine, horizontally disposed fields or plains in which souls suffer terrible, mostly fiery torments that are undifferentiated in degree) suggests that the artist’s textual sources were not limited to Saltrey’s text.48 The character and topography of Purgatory in the second cantica of Dante’s Divina Commedia (c. 1312–20), in which there is no mention of St Patrick, are different again; there, it is envisaged as a mountain that souls ascend on their way to Heaven (located immediately above it), and where their sufferings on its different levels correspond to specific,

47.  For a detailed study of the fresco, see Noel Mac Tréinfhir, ‘The Todi Fresco and St. Patrick’s Purgatory, Lough Derg’, Clogher Record, 12. 2 (1986), 141–58. Mac Tréinfhir (p. 150) rejects the view that the subscript to the kneeling figure identifies him as ‘Dominus Nicolaus’ (in which case the fresco could be linked directly to the Golden Legend; see p. 20 above). 48.  See Jean-Michel Picard, ‘The Italian Pilgrims’, in Haren and de Pontfarcy (eds), The Medieval Pilgrimage to St Patrick’s Purgatory, pp. 169–89 (pp. 171–72). He points, in particular, to the extremely influential Vision of Tnugdal (Visio Tnugdali), written in Ratisbon in 1149, by the Irish monk, Marcus. It recounts the vision of the other world experienced in Cork, in 1148, by a knight from Cashel.

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clearly defined sins and degrees of sin. The fact that it is, thus, much more clearly a place of hope, leads Picard to observe, all too accurately, that ‘St Patrick’s Purgatory is more akin to Dante’s Inferno than to his Purgatorio’.49 As for Ramon de Perellós, it may well be that he first heard about the Purgatory from the travellers that he met when he was growing up at the French court. The earliest definite indication of his awareness of it comes, however, in a letter dated 16 August 1386, and addressed to him by Prince John while Perellós was acting as his emissary in Paris. The prince asks him to ‘send us, through a reliable person, a written copy of the entire account by that knight who, you say, entered St Patrick’s Purgatory, and which consists of what he saw and the things that befell him in the said Purgatory, for we are very anxious to know about them’.50 Almost undoubtedly, the ‘account’ referred to by the prince is the Tractatus – either the original Latin text or (very possibly) one of the French translations. Given John’s interest in the occult, it is not surprising that he was keen to read the whole story of Owein’s journey and intriguing to note that Perellós appears to have been the first to draw his attention to it. On 15 March 1394, John I (as he was by then) sent a copy of ‘a little book in which we have had copied the Purgatory of Saint Patrick’ to his daughter, Joanna, Countess of Foix.51 The term trelladar 49.  Jean-Michel Picard, ‘Inferno, v. 73–142: The Irish Sequel’, p. 272. 50.  The text of the letter is reproduced in MyP, pp. 295–96, and derived, in turn, from Antoni Rubió y Lluch, Documents per l’historia de la cultura catalana mig-eval, 2 vols (Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 1908–21), I, 342–43. 51.  The text of the letter is given in MyP, pp. 296–97, reproduced, in turn, from Documents histórichs catalans: colecció de cartes familiars corresponents als regnats de Pere del Punyalet i Johan I, ed. by Josep Coroleu i Inglada (Barcelona: La Renaixença, 1889), p. 130. The other gifts listed and commented on by the king – ‘a Breviary of Love, three sugar loaves, two baskets of raisins, two punnets of figs, some tuna preserve, belly

Introduction

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used in the king’s letter can mean either ‘to copy’ or ‘to translate’, but, whatever the case, it seems not unreasonable to imagine that the copy or translation was based on the text of the Tractatus that Perellós had dispatched from Paris eight years earlier.

The Historicity of the Viatge The fact that, with the exception of a few details, Perellós’s account of what he experienced in the cave on Lough Derg is so closely based on the Tractatus would seem to undermine the credibility of the rest of the text. Writing in 1903, in the Introduction to their transcription and edition of one of the two surviving manuscripts, Alfred Jeanroy and Alphonse Vignaux described Perellós’s claim to have personally visited the other world as ‘the first imposture of which the author has made himself guilty’ in a work that ‘offers a singular mixture of truth and fiction’.52 Although conceding that his itinerary through England and on to Dublin was a ‘perfectly reasonable’ one, they contended that ‘from the time, that we set foot in Ireland, our traveller’s account loses all semblance of of tuna, a dozen Mallorca cheeses, a turquoise set in a gold ring, two pieces of unicorn horn, one large and one small. The small piece is from the horn of which we already had a piece and which we advise you to keep carefully. The large piece is from another horn that was recently presented to us’ – say much about of the ethos of his court. 52.  Voyage au Purgatoire de St Patrice; Visions de Tindal et de St Paul: textes languedociens du quinzième siècle, ed. by Alfred Jeanroy and Alphonse Vignaux, Bibliothèque Méridionale 1ère série, 8 (Toulouse: E. Privat, 1903), p. xi: ‘La première imposture dont son auteur s’est rendu coupable a consisté à s’attribuer, et à raconter comme s’il l’avait réellement accompli, un voyage dans l’autre monde qui aurait été fait au douzième siècle’; ‘ouvrage [qui] offre un singulier mélange de verité et de fiction’. The manuscript in question is that held in the Bibliothèque Municipale de Toulouse (MS 894); hereafter ‘T’.

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plausibility’.53 They found particular evidence of this in the passages about his stay with King O’Neill, the ‘incoherent mishmash’ of which, they asserted, was unsurpassed even by the ‘extravagant stories’ and ‘bizarre inventions’ to be found in Marco Polo’s and John Mandeville’s tales of other ‘terrae incognitae’.54 Later, in 1914, in his edition of the earliest surviving printed text of the Viatge (on which the present translation is based), the Catalan scholar, Ramon Miquel i Planas, addressed the same issue and made similar observations about Perellós’s reliance on the Tractatus, and about how the perceived remoteness of Ireland (‘in a region so full of mists’) would have given him licence to say whatever he liked about it. He agreed with Jeanroy and Vignaux that the account of O’Neill’s court was ‘pure fable’, and asserted that ‘we are bound to start doubting Perellós because of his description of Ireland’. He was, however, more circumspect about this justifying an attitude of ‘systematic incredulity’.55 The most important reason he cites for this more cautious approach was his awareness (not shared by Jeanroy and Vignaux) of the survival of a copy of the safe conduct issued to Perellós by Richard II to allow him to pass unhindered through England on his way to Ireland to visit St Patrick’s Purgatory. Given that scholars now accept the overall accuracy of 53.  ‘Son itinéraire est fort raisonable […]’; ‘dès que nous mettons le pied en Irlande la relation de notre voyageur perd tout caractère de vraisemblance’ (T, pp. xi, n. 2; xi–xii). 54.  ‘[…] ce mélange incohérent’; ‘l’Irlande était sans doute alors, au moins pour ses compatriotes, une de ces terrae incognitae au sujet desquelles, comme l’ont bien montré Marco Polo et Jean de Mandeville, on pouvait raconter les plus extravagantes histoires: les plus bizarres inventions de ceux ci ne le cèdent en rien à ce qui est raconté ici au sujet du “roi Yrnel”’ (T, p. xii). 55.  ‘[…] una regió tant plena de boires’; ‘Evidentment, la descripció de la cort del rei Irnel és una pura faula’; ‘[…] hem de començar per dubtar d’en Perellós, per la seva descripció d’Irlanda’; ‘[…] sense haver de fer gala d’una sistemàtica incredulitat’ (MyP, p. 300).

Introduction

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the Viatge’s autobiographical content, there is little need to address the issue of credibility in any detail here. However, a few general observations can be made. First, with respect to Perellós’s use of the Tractatus, there is now a greater appreciation (compared to when Jeanroy and Vignaux, and Miquel i Planas were writing) that what we would regard as plagiarism was not so regarded in the Middle Ages. Second, a certain latitude with the literal, circumstantial truth was allowed (and expected) if it served the higher, didactic purpose of communicating a greater, spiritual truth: in this case, that the soul of King John was in the way of salvation, that Purgatory is a reality, and that one should take care to lead a virtuous life in order to avoid having to pass through it. Second, although many people would have thought of it as a real place, and accepted that the cave in Ireland was literally an entrance to it, others would have understood that being confined for twenty-four hours in a cramped space and in total darkness could stimulate a difficult but salutary spiritual experience analogous to that of Purgatory. Third, by saying that he fell asleep not long after entering the pit, and felt dazed and drowsy even after waking up, Perellós allows for a certain ambiguity about the literal reality of what he experienced there.56 Fourth, his itinerary through Ireland (from Dublin to Drogheda to Dundalk to Armagh to Termon Magrath to Lough Derg and back) is clearly as ‘perfectly reasonable’ as his itinerary through England. Also, the people he met there and whom he mentions by name, the Earl of March (Roger Mortimer) (1374–1398) and William de Courcy (?1365–1399/1410), are historically wellattested figures. In fact, as Dorothy Molloy Carpenter has observed, ‘modern historians who have found corroborative 56.  There is no such ambiguity in the Tractatus. In Metge’s Lo somni, as the title itself indicates: the soul of John I appeared to him, he says, after he had fallen into an exceptionally deep sleep of the kind experienced by ‘sick or famished people’ (‘malalts o famejants’; p. 17).

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evidence for [the] details (previously judged “bizarre” by nineteenth and early twentieth century commentators), consider Perellós a reliable witness’, and the Viatge, ‘particularly valuable for its account of the court of Niall O’Neill’.57 That account is examined in the following section.

Ireland and the Irish in the Viatge al Purgatori Before looking at what Perellós had to say about Ireland, it is worth considering what preconceptions he may have had about it. We know, of course, that he had read H. de Saltrey’s Tractatus, in which the Irish are presented in a very negative light: the opening section, for example, which is directly reflected in the Viatge, recounts St Patrick’s efforts ‘at dissuading from evil the savage souls of the men of this land’.58 ‘I myself have a true expert knowledge of how savage they are’, declares the internal narrator (a monk), and he goes on to illustrate his point by recounting his experience of hearing the confession of an old Irishman, who thought that his having killed at least five men was a trivial matter. He had no idea that it was a serious sin, but yet, on being informed that it was, declared himself willing to perform any penance that was necessary to expiate 57.  Dorothy M. Carpenter, ‘The Pilgrim from Catalonia/Aragon: Ramon de Perellós’, in Haren and de Pontfarcy (eds), The Medieval Pilgrimage to St Patrick’s Purgatory, pp. 99–119 (p. 102). Among the historians alluded to by Carpenter is Art Cosgrove, Late Medieval Ireland, 1370–1541 (Dublin: Helicon, 1981) (see esp. p. 73); a more recent example is Katharine Simms, ‘The Barefoot Kings: Literary Image and Reality in Later Medieval Ireland’, in Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium 30, 2010, ed. by Erin Boon, A.J. McMullen and Natasha Summer (Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press, 2011), pp. 1–21 (esp. pp. 4–5). 58.  Picard (trans.), Saint Patrick’s Purgatory, p. 46; see p. 51 below.

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it.59 The man’s unexpected docility prompts a rare but backhanded compliment: The men of this country have the kind of natural disposition that, while they are more prone to evil through ignorance than the people of another country, they are also swifter and more steadfast in repentance once they learn their error.60

These remarks represent what is, in fact, a relatively mild version of the typical Anglo-Norman view of the Irish as savage. That view finds classic, and much more extensive and full-blooded expression in the single most influential medieval account of Ireland: Gerald of Wales’s Topographia Hibernica, first composed between 1186 and 1187. Gerald was the major apologist for the Anglo-Norman conquest of Ireland that had been initiated just under two decades previously, and the portrayal of the Irish as barbarians fitted his propagandistic purposes very well. The following remark is representative: ‘They [the Irish] are a wild and inhospitable people. They live on beasts only, and live like beasts. They have not progressed at all from the primitive habits of pastoral living.’61 In this context, the Topographia is significant for another reason: although not naming it as St Patrick’s Purgatory, Gerald was the first to locate it in Ulster and in a lake.62 Juan Miguel Ribera Llopis has made a strong case for the likelihood that Perellós was acquainted with the Topographia, noting that it had been translated 59.  Picard (trans.), Saint Patrick’s Purgatory, p. 46. 60.  Picard (trans.), Saint Patrick’s Purgatory, pp. 46–47. 61.  Gerald of Wales, The History and Topography of Ireland, trans. by John O’Meara, rev. ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982) (III, 93) p. 101. 62.  Gerald of Wales, The History and Topography (II, 38), p. 61. In the second recension of the Topographia (1187–89), ‘certainly under the influence of H. de Saltrey’s account’, Gerald does name it as St Patrick’s Purgatory; see Yolande de Pontfarcy, ‘The Historical Background to the Pilgrimage to Lough Derg’, p. 16.

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into Provençal in the 14th century.63 Having systematically surveyed the ways in which the Catalan pilgrim’s account of Irish customs coincides with and differs from that of the Topographia, he concludes that, while the former is often more sympathetic and offers more precise detail clearly based on direct observation, ‘he [Perellós] does not dismantle the repertoire of commonplaces about Ireland established by Giraldus Cambrensis [Gerald of Wales]’.64 It seems likely, too, that Perellós’s expectations about what he might encounter in Ireland would have been shaped by his conversations with the powerful people that he met in England. Chief among these was, of course, King Richard II. Just three years previously (from October 1394 to May 1395), Richard had personally commanded the greatest English military expedition in Ireland in the whole of the Middle Ages, and secured the surrender of all the major Irish kings, including that of Niall Mór O’Neill, the father of Perellós’s host in Ulster, Niall Óg,65 who, like his father, had sworn an oath of obedience and did reluctant homage to Richard at Drogheda on 16 March 1395. When Richard hosted Perellós, he would already have been planning his second (smaller and unsuccessful) 63.  Juan Miguel Ribera Llopis, ‘Una altra lectura de Ramon de Perellós prèvia a al seu viatge’, 2ª part, Revista de l’Alguer, 9 (1998), 273–89 (p. 274). The translation to which Ribera refers, ‘De las meravilhas de la terra de Ybernia’, was based on an abridged version of Gerald’s text by Philip of Slane, O.P., Bishop of Cork (1321–26). It was presented to the second Avignon pope, John XXII (r. 1316–34), probably in response to the ‘Remonstrance of the Irish Princes’ – a detailed account of and protest against English misconduct and a rebuttal of the stereotype of Irish barbarism, drawn up by a group of Irish chieftains, and submitted to the same pope c. 1317. A manuscript of the translation is held in the British Library (BL, Add. MS 17290, fols 19v–29v). 64.  ‘No desfà, però, el repertori de llocs comuns sobre Irlanda establert per Giraldus Cambrensis’; Ribera Llopis, ‘Una altra lectura’, p. 284. 65.  Literally, ‘young Niall’.

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campaign in Ireland, which took place in 1399. We know from the Viatge itself that Perellós’s host in Dublin, Sir Roger Mortimer, Earl of March and Earl of Ulster, and Richard’s Lieutenant in Ireland, a man who had a particularly fractious relationship with the O’Neills, warned him off making the journey to Lough Derg, telling him that he ‘would have to pass through strange places inhabited by savage people who knew nothing of the rule of law and should not be trusted’.66 Similarly, and specifically with regard to Ulster, the Archbishop of Armagh, an Englishman, like Mortimer,67 warned him that ‘neither he nor anyone else could guarantee me safe passage through the lands of King O’Neill, or those of the other lords that I would have to traverse before I reached the Purgatory’.68 With an eye to the question of reliability, we turn now to look at what Perellós himself had to say about Ireland and the Irish. Along the way, his remarks on specific points will be compared with those of three other visitors. The first is Sir Henry Chrysted (or Castide) (fl. c. 1340–1395), an Anglo-Norman nobleman who, like Perellós, although in completely different circumstances, had come into close contact with Niall Óg O’Neill. Chrysted had been brought up in the household of Thomas Butler, Earl of Ormonde, and had learned Irish during a seven-year-long period of captivity in the home of Brian Costeret, whose daughter he eventually married. He had taken part in Richard II’s 1394 expedition to Ireland, and spoke about it to the French chronicler, Jean Froissart, when the latter visited England in 1395. Froissart recorded their conversation in Book IV of his Chronicles.69 The second visitor is Guillebert de 66.  See p. 61 below. 67.  See p. 62 below. 68.  See p. 63 below. 69. Richard Hawkins, ‘Chrysted […], Henry’, in Dictionary of Irish Biography. ed. by James McGuire and James Quinn (Cambridge:

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Lannoy (1386–1462), a Flemish soldier, diplomat, traveller and Chamberlain to the Duke of Burgundy, who visited St Patrick’s Purgatory in 1430.70 The third is Francesco Chiericati (c. 1480–1539) who, following a route that coincided very closely with that of Perellós, visited it in the summer of 1517 towards the end of his period of residence (1516–17) as Papal Nuncio at the court of Henry VIII in London. He recorded his experiences in a letter, dated 28 August 1517, addressed to Isabella d’Este, Marchioness of Mantua.71 With regard to the governance of Ireland, Perellós, as we have seen, records that he was informed of the distinction between the part of the island (traditionally known as The Pale) under the control of the English and that ruled by a variety of Irish kings. Thus, he speaks of being accompanied, as he left Dublin, by a squire called John of Ivry ‘who guided me through the land that the King of England holds in Ireland’, and, similarly, on his way back from Ulster, of returning ‘to the land that the English hold in that island of Ireland’.72 The distinction was dramatically borne in upon him early on in his sojourn, when, having set off from Dundalk and advanced only five miles into ‘the territory of the Irish’, the escort of a hundred armed men provided by the Archbishop of Armagh suddenly

Cambridge University Press, 2009). Jean Froissart, Chronicles of England, France, Spain, and the Adjoining Countries: From the Latter Part of the Reign of Edward II to the Coronation of Henry IV [by Sir John Froissart], trans. by Thomas Johnes, 2 vols (London; New York: Routledge, 1868), II, 577–82. 70.  Guillebert de Lannoy, ‘Le voyaige du trau Saint-Patrice’, in Oeuvres de Ghillebert de Lannoy: voyageur, diplomate et moraliste, ed. by Ch[arles] Potvin (Louvain: P. & J. Lefever, 1878), pp. 166–73. 71.  See Purcell, ‘St Patrick’s Purgatory’. An earlier translation of the letter appears in J.P. Mahaffy, ‘Two Early Tours in Ireland (by Count John [sic] de Perilhos, in 1397, and by F. Chiericati, Bishop, c. 1515)’, Hermathena: A Dublin University Review, 18.11 (1941), 1–16 (pp. 10–15). 72.  See pp. 62, 105 below.

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abandoned him: ‘[they] did not dare to go any further – for they are all great enemies of each other – but stayed behind on a hill’.73 He was, of course, aware of the fact that the Irish ‘have been warring against the English for a long time’, and that ‘the King of England cannot bring them to heel’, but his remark that ‘they are all great enemies of each other’, and a later allusion to Termon Magrath as a place where the Irish kings guarantee the safety of pilgrims to St Patrick’s Purgatory, shows that he was also conscious of conflict among the Irish themselves.74 When it comes to Perellós’s account of Gaelic Irish society, two initial observations are worth making. First, that it is clearly based on first-hand experience: he enjoyed the hospitality of, and personal contact with, Niall Óg O’Neill,

73.  See p. 64 below. Chrysted contrasts the mercantile society of the Pale with the ‘barbarian’ one outside of it: ‘the inland natives […] are unacquainted with commerce, nor do they wish to know anything of it, but simply to live like wild beasts. Those who reside on the coast opposite to England are better informed, and accustomed to traffic’ (Froissart, Chronicles, p. 581); De Lannoy emphasises the differences in settlement: of the town of Kells, he says that it is ‘a very badly fortified town, still belonging to [the territory of] the king of England, lying on the frontier of the savage Irish’, and of Cavan (outside The Pale), that it is ‘a poor, unfortified town, belonging to King O’Reilly’ (p. 169). Chiericati (characteristically) speaks of the distinction in yet starker terms: ‘The king [of England] owns about a third (of Ireland) mostly coastal areas. The remainder is ruled by different lords who are slightly higher in rank than our contadini (Italian peasants)’; ‘I have heard that in places further north people are more uncivilised, going about nude, living in mountain caves and eating raw meat’ (Purcell, ‘St Patrick’s Purgatory’, pp. 9, 10). 74.  See p. 66 below. Chiericati makes a similar point: ‘The people are very astute and ingenious and set great store on arms because they are always making war on one another’ (Purcell, ‘St Patrick’s Purgatory’, p. 9). In fact, throughout much of 1397, the year of Perellós’s visit, Niall O’Neill was at war with Toirdhealbhach O’Donnell, King of Tyrconnell, his rival for supremacy in Ulster; see Emmet O’Byrne, ‘O’Neill (Ó Néill), Niall Óg’, in Dictionary of Irish Biography.

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lord of Tyrone, the most important of the Irish kings,75 on his way to Lough Derg, and spent Christmas with him on his return journey. Second, Perellós was a widely travelled man, indeed a cosmopolitan, and it seems likely that his eye for detail, which is so evident in the Viatge, had been sharpened in the course of his contact with a wide range of societies, cultures and languages.76 This is particularly evidenced in his description of Irish weaponry, which, not surprisingly in the case of a man with extensive military experience, is the first aspect of his hosts’ culture that he singles out for (extended and detailed) comment: he is specific, for example, about the exact length of the lances and width of the knives, the precise form of the swords, and the relative dimensions and effectiveness of the Irish and English bows.77 Details of diet, dress and the management of livestock are also carefully recorded, and more will be said about these at a later point. He is particularly admiring of the courage and warlike spirit of the Irish (appearing impressed that the English have never managed to subdue them),78 and also of their good looks: ‘they are indeed amongst the handsomest men and the most beautiful women that I have seen in the whole world’.79 He also 75.  As Perellós observed; see p. 65 below. 76. A point emphasised by Ribera Llopis, ‘Una altra lectura’, pp. 275, 278, 284, 285. 77.  See pp. 65–66 below. 78.  See p. 66 below. 79.  See p. 67 below. Cfr. Chiericati: ‘The women are very beautiful, simple and open but smiling’ (Purcell, ‘St Patrick’s Purgatory’, p. 9). Writing almost exactly two hundred years after Perellós, in the aftermath of the defeat of the Armada expedition against England, Captain Francisco de Cuéllar, who had survived the wreck of his ship off the west coast of Ireland and taken refuge with the Gaelic chieftain, Tadhg Óg MacClancy, made remarkably similar observations: ‘these savages […] are all big men, handsome and well-built, and fleet as the roe-deer’; ‘Most of the women are very beautiful, but badly turned out’ (‘Letter From One Who Sailed with the Spanish Armada and Tells the Story of

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acknowledges the hospitality afforded him by Niall Óg and the generosity of his gifts: beef sent to him before his arrival, an ox accompanied (according to one version of the text) by O’Neill’s own cook, and, ‘as a special gift’, two small oaten cakes.80 His overall attitude towards the Irish, however, is best summed up in the remark with which he prefaces all his observations about them: ‘their customs and habits seem very strange to us’.81 Indeed, some of the things that he claimed to have seen appear so strange that, as noted earlier, they struck his early-twentieth-century editors (and are likely to strike many present-day readers) as ‘pure fable’. In the main, they have to do with matters of diet and dress (or the lack of it). With regard to diet, he twice observes that the Irish have no wine, and, if of high rank, drink only milk, and, if not, meat broth and water.82 The lack of wine may have seemed odd to him as also to his original readers. Wine was certainly not unknown in Ireland: Gerald of Wales remarks on the abundance of imported wines, particularly from Poitou.83 However, as Katharine Simms has shown, it would appear that, although, ‘highly prized’, wine was indeed in short supply in Gaelic Ireland in this period, probably due to its price ‘and the lack of coined money to give the merchants in exchange’.84 the Enterprise of England’, in God’s Obvious Design: Papers for the Spanish Armada Symposium, Sligo, 1988, ed. by P. Gallagher and D.W. Cruickshank (London: Tamesis, 1990), pp. 223–47 (pp. 238, 239)). 80.  See p. 68 below; for the probable reasons why the gift of the oaten cakes was considered ‘special’, see p. 34 below. 81.  See p. 65 below. 82.  See pp. 54, 64, 67 below. Cfr. Cuéllar (‘Letter’, p. 238), who makes what seems to be a more implausible claim: ‘They drink sour milk, for they have no other drink. And they don’t drink water, though it’s the best in the world’. 83.  Gerald of Wales, The History and Topography (I, 2), p. 35. 84.  Katharine Simms, ‘Guesting and Feasting in Gaelic Ireland’, The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 108 (1978), 67–100 (p. 87).

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Perellós’s claims that the Irish ‘never sowed any wheat […], but live solely on meat’ and that ‘in his [O’Neill’s] whole court there was [no] bread to eat’ would, at first sight, seem much more questionable.85 Art Cosgrove has argued that, in this instance, he was both right and wrong: His view that the Gaelic Irish did not grow any corn and, therefore, had no bread is contradicted by other evidence and is probably a reflection of the fact that 1397 was a year of widespread failure of crops. Hence it was as a special favour to Perelhos [sic] that O’Neill sent him two thin oaten cakes […].86

With regard to the dress and accoutrements of the ‘great lords’, and in the specific context of a description of them as horsemen, Perellós states that ‘they have no saddles, but [use] a cushion’ and that ‘they wear no leggings, or shoes, or breeches, but wear their spurs on their bare heels’.87 He is not alone in the claim that they did not wear breeches. Froissart’s informant, Chrysted, recounts that when, after their surrender to him, Richard II invited four of the Irish kings (Niall Óg O’Neill among them) to come to Dublin to be knighted in late March 1395, he was commissioned to give them a week-long preparatory course in English etiquette.88 He spent the first few days simply observing their habits, before attempting to reform them. Of their dress, he wrote: They had another custom I knew to be common in the country, which was the not wearing breeches. I had, in consequence, plenty of breeches made of linen and cloth, which I gave to 85.  See pp. 67, 68 below. 86. Cosgrove, Late Medieval Ireland, p. 73. 87.  See pp. 65, 67 below. 88.  Apart from O’Neill, the other kings were Art Mór MacMurrough Kavanagh of Leinster, Brian O’Brien of Thomond, and Turlough Óg O’Connor Donn of Connacht.

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the kings and their attendants, and accustomed them to wear them. I took away many rude articles, as well in their dress as other things, and had great difficulty at the first to induce them to wear robes of silken cloth, trimmed with squirrelskin or minever, for the kings only wrapped themselves up in an Irish cloak.89

Chrysted also concurs with Perellós’s remarks about the lack of saddles: ‘In riding, they neither used saddles nor stirrups, and I had some trouble to make them conform in this respect to the English manners’.90 With regard to another detail, Simms has shown that an illumination in Jean Creton’s Histoire rimée de Richard II (La Prinse et mort du roy Richart) (1401–c. 1405) depicts one of the four kings, Art MacMurrough, king of Leinster, riding forward to parley with Ricard’s uncle, the Earl of Gloucester, and wearing spurs on his bare feet, exactly as described by Perellós.91 The viscount claims, however, to have observed even stranger things about Irish dress, or, in this case, the lack of it: The common people go about as best they can – they are badly dressed – but most of them wear a frieze mantle, and both men and women display all their private parts with absolutely no shame. The poor people go naked, but they all wear those mantles – good or bad – including ladies.92

89. Froissart, Chronicles, p. 580. Gerald of Wales makes a similar observation: ‘When they are riding they do not use saddles or leggings or spurs’ (The History and Topography (III, 93), p. 101. 90. Froissart, Chronicles, p. 580. 91.  Simms, ‘The Barefoot Kings’, pp. 4–5; the illumination appears in Jean Creton, Histoire rimée de Richard II (La Prinse et mort du roy Richart), British Library, Harley MS 1319, fol. 9r. The MS can be viewed online at: ‹http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Harley_MS_1319›. 92.  See p. 67 below.

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Yet more bizarre, it would seem, is his assertion that this semi-nudity was the norm not only for the common people, but also for the female attendants of O’Neill’s wife: ‘The queen’s maidens, who numbered about twenty, were dressed [‘in green’] as I have described above, and showed their private parts with as little shame as people here show their faces’.93 Can this be true? An anecdote recounted by the Elizabethan traveller, Fynes Moryson, in his Itinerary, indicates that it might be. The story concerns the visit, in 1601, of a Bohemian baron to the Irish chieftain, Donal Ballagh O’Cahan, at his residence in Limavady (in the modern county of Derry): […] he comming to the house of Ocane a great Lord among them, was met at the doore with sixteene women, all naked, excepting their loose mantles; […] with which strange sight his eyes being dazelled, they led him into the house, and there sitting downe by the fier, with crossed legges like Taylors, and so low as could not but offend chast eyes, desired him to set downe with them. Soone after Ocane the Lord of the Countrie came in all naked excepting a loose mantle, and shooes, which he put off as soone as he came in […].94

Moryson’s reliability is, of course, questionable. He was part of the Elizabethan administration in Ireland in the 93.  See p. 67 below. 94.  Fynes Moryson, An Itinerary, containing his ten Yeeres Travell through the twelve Dominions of Germany, Bohmerland, Sweitzerland, Netherland, Denmarke, Poland, Italy, Turky, France, England, Scotland & Ireland, 4 vols (London: Iohn Beale, 1617; repr. Glasgow: James MacLehose, 1907–1908) [Part III, iv. 2], IV, 237; Moryson prefaces the anecdote with the general claim that ‘For the rest, in the remote parts where the English Lawes and manners are unknowne, the very cheefe of the Irish, as well men as women, goe naked in very Winter time, onely having their privy parts covered with a ragge of linnen, and their bodies with a loose mantel’ (p. 237). I am grateful to Dr Katharine Simms for drawing my attention to this passage.

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opening years of the 17th century, and, like most of his compatriots, had a far from favourable view of the Irish. Audrey Horning has observed that, although his description could be read merely as a sexualisation of the ‘other’ […] as well as a clear indication of the perceived immorality, incivility, and inferiority of the Irish […] the tale may possibly contain some truth. […]. The wearing of scant apparel within the chief’s dwelling likewise might conceivably have reflected generosity, given the many references to the fire that warmed the dwelling and rendered heavy clothing unnecessary.95

Perellós was also bemused by the way in which Gaelic Irish society functioned. He noted, as we have seen, that differences in social rank were marked by differences in dress and in diet – that much he would have expected – but his description of how Christmas was celebrated at what, having no other term, he calls the ‘court’ of Niall O’Neill shows that he was surprised by the physical proximity to the chieftain of large numbers of the poorest of his ‘subjects’ and of horses: ‘with the king there were about three thousand horses, and also many poor people, to whom I saw the king ordering generous alms of beef to be given’.96 Instead of sitting on a dais, O’Neill sat on the ground: ‘His table was nothing more than a great quantity of rushes spread out on the ground, and close by him they set down the finest grass that they could find for wiping the mouth’.97 All of which, ‘to those of us from these parts,

95.  Audrey J. Horning, Ireland in the Virginian Sea: Colonialism in the British Atlantic (Chapel Hill, NC: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia by the University of North Carolina Press, 2013), p. 192. 96.  See p. 67 below. 97.  See pp. 67–68 below.

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seems extremely strange for someone of royal rank’.98 Perellós’s remarks about, what to him, as someone imbued with the notions of hierarchy proper to a feudal society, seemed an astonishing lack of decorum, correspond closely to those of Chyrsted. In the course of his encounter with the four Irish kings in Dublin, he noted with surprise that when they were seated at table, and the first dish was served, they would make their minstrels and principal servants sit beside them, and eat from their plates and drink from their cups. They told me, this was a praiseworthy custom of their country, where everything was in common but the bed. I permitted this to be done for three days; but on the fourth I ordered the tables to be laid out and covered properly, placing the four kings at an upper table, the minstrels at another below, and the servants lower still.99

Chiericati made a similar observation on the Irish disregard for the outward markers of social rank: ‘They hold that we (foreigners) are uncivilised [bestiali] because we keep the gifts of fortune for ourselves, while they live naturally, believing that all things should be held in common’.100 In considering all of this, it is important to understand that Perellós (and Chrysted) came into contact with Gaelic Irish society at a very particular point in time, characterised, as Simms has pointed out, by ‘the aristocracy’s revived interest in the traditions and culture of Ireland in its pre-conquest days’.101 Among the manifestations of that interest was a deliberate reversion to more ancient forms of dress, or undress, in the form of bare feet, linked, in turn to a revival of bardic poetry that lauded ancient warriors’

98.  See p. 105 below. 99. Froissart, Chronicles, p. 580. 100.  Purcell, ‘St Patrick’s Purgatory’, pp. 9–10. 101.  Simms, ‘The Barefoot Kings’, p. 6.

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contempt for comfort and extolled their heroic feats of endurance.102 The great chieftains displayed their hospitality (a highly prized virtue) by holding lavish feasts and made a point of inviting large numbers of poets and men of learning to them. Although Perellós does not specify that poets were among the many guests who surrounded Niall Óg O’Neill at his Christmas ‘court’ in 1397, the fact that, as Simms points out, he erected ‘a temporary feastinghall for all the poets of Ireland on the site of the Iron Age hill-fort of Emain Macha, the legendary home of […] King Conchobar mac Nessa of Ulster and his hero Cú Chulainn’, makes it seems likely that they were.103 In marked contrast to Froissart, De Lannoy and Chiericati, and except when citing what others have said about the Irish, Perellós never uses terms like ‘savage’, ‘bestial’ or ‘barbarian’. As we have seen, his upbringing at the French court had imbued him with an enduring fascination with ‘the marvellous and strange things that are in the world’,104 and it would seem that the Irish turned out to be as strange and as interesting as he perhaps hoped that they might be. Not only ‘strange and interesting’ but even, in some respects, exotic – enough to warrant a series of comparisons with the Muslim world: the swords and round helmets of Irish soldiers, their way of making war, and their battle cry, are he says, ‘similar to [those] of the Saracens’; when grazing is exhausted in one place whole communities up sticks and move with their animals to another, ‘like the swallows of Barbary and of the land of the Sultan’.105 There are occasions, however, when this prevailing attitude of benign curiosity shades into one of ironic bemusement, 102.  See Simms, ‘The Barefoot Kings’, p. 16. 103.  Simms, ‘The Barefoot Kings’, p. 3. 104.  See p. 50 below. 105.  See pp. 66, 69 below; in the latter case, the textual variants all retain the mention of ‘Barbary’ (see p. 69, n. 74 below).

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as when he remarks of the ‘squires’ serving food to Niall O’Neill at his Christmas feast: ‘You can well imagine how badly dressed [they] were’.106 Or, similarly: As briefly as I can, I will tell you a few things about their manners and way of life, about what I observed of them while with the king, with whom, on my return, I celebrated the feast of Christmas – even though I had already seen enough when I first stayed with him on my way through.107

O’Neill himself is not spared, as we see in this account of the one-to-one conversation that Perellós had with him before travelling back to Dublin: And he spoke at length, and eagerly and very diligently asked me about the kings of Christendom, and especially about the kings of France, Aragon and Castile, and about their customs and ways of life. And, from what he said, it would appear that they [the Irish] have the best and most perfect customs in the whole world.108

In summary, then, while Perellós’s picture of Gaelic Irish society is distinguished from those of other external observers by its range, eye for detail, relative objectivity and openness to the ‘other’, it still remains that of a man thoroughly imbued with the values and preoccupations of continental feudal society. And, in the end, perhaps the most fascinating thing about the Viatge is not its spectacularly grim (even if borrowed) account of otherworldly torments, but its evocation of the encounter between two earthly, historical worlds, each as strange to the other, as both are to us.

106.  See p. 68 below. 107.  See p. 65 below. 108.  See p. 68 below.

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The Afterlife of the Viatge There were at least three early translations of Perellós’s text into Castilian: one dated 1544, and two produced in the early seventeenth century, of which one is dated 1618, and all of which survive (or survived) only in manuscript form.109 The manuscript of the 1618 translation wrongly attributes it to the great Franciscan devotional writer, Francesc Eiximenis (c. 1330–1409). Although it radically abbreviates the account of Perellós’s journey, which it dates to 1328, his name as original author is retained, and there is a note to the effect that he is buried in the Franciscan convent in Perpignan.110 The Viatge was also translated into Latin in early 17th-century Spain. This version appeared as part of the Catholic History of Ireland by the exiled Irish polemical writer and soldier, Philip O’Sullivan Beare (c. 1590–1636), which was published in Lisbon in 1621.111 O’Sullivan – understandably, in the context of a work about Ireland by an Irish author – retains more of the details of Perellós’s itinerary within Ireland and of the people he met there than the 1618 Castilian translation. However, although he mentions Perellós’s being in Ulster, O’Sullivan entirely omits his description of the customs of the Irish as he witnessed them when he was O’Neill’s guest. This

109.  They are, respectively: Viage maravilloso y digno de notar que hiço el conde Don Ramón de Perellos al purgatorio de San Patricio questá en Yrlanda, a donde allo al rrey Don Juan de Aragón y otros conocidos suyos […], Biblioteca Nacional de España (BNE), MS 10.825 [a colophon (fol. 16r) attributes the compilation of the text to Fr. Francisco de Ojeda ‘of the Order of Preachers of the Province of Aragon’]; the manuscript translation (then in private hands) discussed in MyP (pp. 314–15); and El Purgatorio de San Patricio, BNE, MS 11.087, fols 97r–138r. 110.  BNE, MS 11.087, fol. 97r. 111.  Historiae Catholicae Iberniae Compendium […] (Lisbon: Pedro Crasbeck, 1621 (II. 1, fols 14–31); repr. Dublin: John O’Daly, 1850), pp. 18–31.

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may be because he thought these passages irrelevant, but it seems just as likely that he considered that they conflicted with his main purpose in writing. In 1602, when he was still very young, O’Sullivan had been sent into exile in Spain, in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Kinsale (1601), at which the English had inflicted a decisive defeat on the great Gaelic Irish lords – who included members of his own family – and the Spanish expeditionary force sent to assist them. He wrote his Catholic History in order to persuade Spanish readers, and in particular, King Philip IV, to whom he dedicated it, of the antiquity of the Irish as a race, their Iberian origins as descendants of King Milesius (grandson of Breogan), and of their ancient, unbroken fidelity to the Catholic faith. Hence, his interest in giving a full account of St Patrick’s Purgatory, which he describes as the greatest wonder of Ireland.112 This vindication of Irish Christian civilisation necessarily required the refutation of English propaganda (old and more recent) about Irish ‘barbarism’, and most particularly of Gerald of Wales’s Topographia Hibernica.113 The more immediate, political aim of the work was to justify the recent rebellion that had been defeated at Kinsale, and to persuade Philip IV to ‘answer his true calling by recognising the terrible plight of Irish catholics and by liberating their country’.114 In this context, even if there were other reasons, it is not difficult to see why O’Sullivan may well have preferred to

112. ‘Superest adhuc omnium memorabilium rerum Iberniae maxima’ (O’Sullivan Beare, Historiae Catholicae, p. 18). 113.  O’Sullivan renewed his attack on Gerald of Wales in his unpublished Zoilomastrix (Vindiciae Hiberniae contra Giraldum Cambrensem et alios vel Zoilomastigis […] (Uppsala University Library, MS H 248) of c. 1625, and included a life of St Patrick (and an account of the Purgatory) in Patritiana decas (Madrid: Francisco Martínez, 1629). 114.  Hiram Morgan, ‘O’Sullivan Beare, Philip’, in Dictionary of Irish Biography.

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omit an account, especially by a Hispanic author, of the ‘very strange’ customs of the Irish. The Viatge also (indirectly and partially) inspired works of literature by three of seventeenth-century Spain’s greatest writers. In his Vida y Purgatorio de San Patricio, published in 1627, Juan Pérez de Montalbán (1601/02–1638) explicitly acknowledges O’Sullivan Beare and his account of Perellós’s visit to the Purgatory as one of his sources.115 The first five, expository chapters of the work concern the life of St Patrick, his establishment of the Purgatory at Lough Derg and the theology of Purgatory itself. The final four chapters constitute a novela a lo divino (a devotional novella) about a spectacularly vicious reprobate called Ludovico Enio, who ends up making a pilgrimage to St Patrick’s Purgatory to expiate his sins. The name, ‘Enio’, is clearly derived from that of Saltrey’s knight, Owein, and some aspects of Perellós’s biography find a faint echo in the trajectory of Ludovico’s life, while his seduction and abduction of a nun called Teodosia (who happens to be his cousin), and his encounter in Purgatory with a niece who was over fond of fine clothes and makeup are obviously inspired by Perellós’s own meetings there with Friar Francesc de Puig and with his niece, Na Dolça de Queralt, both of whom were guilty of similar failings.116 Pérez de Montalbán’s work enjoyed enormous popularity in Spain and wide diffusion beyond it in the form of translations into French, Italian, Dutch and Portuguese.117 It also directly inspired two plays in which Ludovico Enio is the central character: El mayor prodigio o El purgatorio en vida, published in 1627, and attributed to Lope de Vega (1562–1635), and Pedro 115.  Juan Pérez de Montalbán, Vida y Purgatorio de San Patricio (Madrid: Luis Sánchez, 1627). 116.  See p. 84 below. 117.  See Victor F. Dixon, ‘Saint Patrick of Ireland and the Dramatists of Golden-Age Spain’, Hermathena, 121 (Winter, 1976), 142–58 (p. 147).

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Calderón de la Barca’s (1600–1681) El purgatorio de San Patricio, written in 1627 or 1628 and published in 1636.118 The various translations of Perellós’s Viatge and the works of literature that they inspired reveal how the biographical elements of his text were progressively erased over time in a process that Ribera Llopis has characterised as the ‘supplanting of the historical personage by the literary protagonist’.119 Ramon de Perellós’s visit to St Patrick’s Purgatory in 1397 and his account of it has long been familiar to Irish historians of the period, but little known to the wider public. A small step towards correcting this was taken in 1997 when, as the official website of St Patrick’s Sanctuary (Lough Derg) records, a group of pilgrims from Catalonia visited Station Island to commemorate the six-hundredth anniversary of their compatriot’s presence there.120 In the same year, a group of Irish enthusiasts made a reciprocal visit to the abandoned village of Périllos, an event recorded in a plaque set in to the wall of the church of Sant Miquel.121

118. Calderón’s play was published in Primera parte de comedias (Madrid: María de Quiñones, 1636). 119.  Juan Miguel Ribera Llopis, ‘Itinerario documental de un viaje en las letras medievales y modernas: Ramón de Perellós y el camino irlandés del Purgatorio’, eHumanista, 28 (2014), 470–76. For an overview of the literary afterlife of the Viatge, in addition to Ribera Llopis, ‘Itinerario’, see Miquel i Planas, Llegendes de l’altra vida, pp. 314–37; Dixon, ‘Saint Patrick of Ireland’, and Juan Miguel Ribera Llopis, ‘A propósito de Ramon de Perellós y de otros excluidos del lar común’, in Actas del XIII Congreso Internacional Asociación Hispánica de Literatura Medieval (Valladolid, 15–19 septiembre 2009), ed. by José Manuel Fradejas Rueda and others (Valladolid: AHLM, 2010), pp. 217–43. 120.  See ‹http://www.loughderg.org/heritage/historical-chronology/›. 121.  An image of the plaque can be viewed at: ‹https://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File:600_aniversari_peregrinatge_Ramon_de_ Perell%C3%B3s.jpg›.

Introduction

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The Translation At the conclusion of the 1486 printed version of the Viatge, Perellós claims that it was ‘written by my own hand’.122 However, the autograph manuscript (if it existed) is no longer extant, and the text survives only in two earlyto mid-fifteenth century manuscript versions written in Provençal, and in the 1486 Catalan incunable.123 Scholarly opinion, it would seem, favours the view that Perellós originally wrote the Viatge in Catalan and that the many Provençalisms in the incunable reflect his closeness to the papal court at Avignon rather than translation from a Provençal original.124 The translation here is based on Ramon Miquel y Planas’s 1914 edition of the incunable.125 In cases where this text is clearly corrupt, I have translated the relevant passages as they appear in Alfred Jeanroy and Alphonse Vignaux’s edition of the Toulouse manuscript, and also (on occasion) in the on-line edition of the Auch manuscript by Margherita Boretti.126 In all cases, these passages are accompanied by an explanatory footnote. Where the Provençal texts offer alternative readings of interest, these are acknowledged in footnotes. I have consulted the previous, partial English translations by J.P. Mahaffy (1941), Dorothy Molloy Carpenter (1988) and the full-text translation by Alan 122.  See p. 108 below. 123. Archives Départementales du Gers (Auch), MS I. 4066, fols 22r–37r; Bibliothèque Municipale de Toulouse, MS 894, fols 1r–40v; Francesc Eiximenis, Tractat sobre els novíssims (Toulouse: Henri Mayer, 1486) (Biblioteca de Catalunya, Bon. 10-V-11), fols 37r–47v. 124.  According to Jordi Tiñena (ed.), Viatge al purgatori, p. 22. 125.  MyP, pp. 131–73. 126.  T, pp. vii–xxvi, 1–54; Ramon de Perellos, Viage al Purgatory, ed. by Margherita Boretti, Rialto (Repertorio informatizzato dell’antica letteratura trobadorica e occitana ‹http://www.rialto.unina.it/Prosanarrativa/ Viage/Viage.htm›) (hereafter ‘A’).

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Mac an Bhaird (2012).127 Where relevant, their versions of particular passages and/or their annotations on them are recorded in footnotes. Unlike Bernat Metge, Perellós was not a polished stylist. His expression is often tautological and pleonastic, but it is his syntax, characterised by frequent use of polysyndeton, which presents the greatest challenge to the translator. In the interests of clarity and readability, I have broken up his often long, sometimes garbled, sentences, held together by the repeated use of the conjunction ‘and’, into shorter ones. Generally, I have tried to convey the meaning of the text accurately in clear modern English while allowing Perellós’s (also characteristic) repetitions of single words and accumulations of synonyms to remain in place. Except in the case of monarchs, I have retained in their original form Catalan personal names, modes of address, place names and titles. The sectional divisions and headings are not original but correspond to those that appear in Jeanroy and Vignaux’s edition of the Toulouse manuscript.

127.  Mahaffy, ‘Two Early Tours’, pp. 3–9; Carpenter, ‘The Pilgrim from Catalonia/Aragon’, pp. 104–109; Alan Mac an Bhaird, The Journey of Viscount Ramon de Perellós to Saint Patrick’s Purgatory (2012), in CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts: a project of University College, Cork, ‹http:// www.ucc.ie/celt› (henceforth, ‘Mac an Bhaird’).

The Journey Made by Viscount Ramon of Perellós and Roda1 to the Purgatory called Saint Patrick’s

1.  The village of Perellós (Fr. Périllos) (42° 53′ 50″ N, 2° 50′ 49″ E), first documented in 1100, lies some twenty kilometres north of Perpignan, in the Pyrénées-Orientales. Its population began to decline as a result of the phylloxera blight of the mid-19th century. Having been effectively abandoned during the Second World War, it is now a ‘village fantôme’, overlooked by the remains of a castle that was known locally as ‘“lo castell del seignou”’ (T, p. xv, n. 1), and of a 12th-century romanesque church dedicated to Sts Lawrence and Michael; see ‹http://www.jeantosti.com/ villages/opoul.htm›. Roda (Rueda), in Aragon, lies on the banks of the River Ebro, about seventy-eight kilometres south-east of Zaragoza.

Prologue

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Prologue In nomine sancte et indiuidue Trinitatis. Amen.2 In the year of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, 1398,3 on the afternoon of the feast of the Nativity of Our Lady,4 having obtained the blessing of Pope Benedict,5 I, Ramon, by the grace of God, Viscount of Perellós and Roda, Lord of the Barony of Ceret,6 set off from the city of Avignon, to make my way to Saint Patrick’s Purgatory. Since all men in this world wish to know about strange and wondrous things, and since such things are naturally more pleasing than those that one can learn about by word of mouth,7 for that very reason – having been brought up in my youth at the court of King Charles of France,8 where my lord father, who was his admiral and chamberlain, left me in the company of all the squires and knights of his 2.  ‘In the name of the holy and undivided Trinity. Amen.’ 3.  The year is given in error: in fact, the author made his journey in 1397; see Introduction, pp. 1–2, 31, 44. 4.  In the original (MyP, p. 133, lines 5–6): ‘les vespres de Nostra Dona de septenbre’ (the afternoon of Our Lady of September), celebrated on 8 September. As noted in T (p. xvii, n. 1), the term vespra/vespres is not used here in its usual sense of ‘eve’ or ‘vigil’ (of a feast day), but means ‘afternoon’. A pilgrim would have set out on a feast day itself, rather than on the previous day. Later, the author states that he set out ‘on the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lady’ (see p. 59 below). 5.  The antipope, Benedict XIII (r. 1394–1417). By birth, he was the Aragonese nobleman, Pero Martines de Luna – hence his nickname of ‘Papa Luna’. In 1413, he issued the series of six papal bulls that formally constituted the University of St Andrews in Scotland. See also Introduction, pp. 4–6. 6.  Ceret (Fr. Céret) sits in the foothills of the Pyrenees, some twentythree kilometres south-west of Perpignan. 7.  The sense is clearer in T: ‘[…] que sian plus plasens naturalment aquelas que hom pot saber per vista que aquelas que hom pot saber per ausir dire’ (p. 4, lines 1–3) ([…] since those things that one can know by sight are naturally more pleasing than those that one can find out about by hearing them spoken of). 8.  Charles V (‘the Wise’), king of France (r. 1364–80).

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realm and other Christian realms – I too wanted to find out about the marvellous and strange things that are in the world. For people came here from many places, and my heart was set on seeing with my own eyes the things of which I had heard different knights and other people speak. And, indeed, I set out in pursuit of the adventures of the world through all the lands of Christians and infidels, both Saracens and others belonging to the different sects that are in the world – wherever one may reasonably travel – so that, by the grace of God, I have seen most of the things that I had heard spoken of as strange and marvellous, both on land and at sea, and can bear true witness to those that I have seen. And I have undergone great dangers, expense and hardships both on land and sea, and these I have experienced and undergone in infidel as well as Christian lands.9 But I do not intend to describe them since they have no bearing on the matter, which I wish to pursue here, of the journey to Saint Patrick’s Purgatory, which is in the land of Hibernia.10 A journey which, with the help of God, I have made and completed as well as anyone has ever done since the death of Saint Patrick.11 And I shall give a full account of it in four ways: first, explaining why Saint Patrick established the Purgatory; second, the reason why I set my heart on entering this Purgatory; third, where it is situated; fourth, the things that I saw and encountered in the Purgatory – those, that is, that may be revealed. For there are things that it is not

9.  T: ‘[…] e iei sostengut grans perilhs e despens, tant en terra quant en mar, e motz trebalhs e preysos suffertadas en terra de Sarrazis e de Crestias’ (p. 4, lines 26–28) ([…] and I have undergone great dangers and expense, both on land and sea, and many hardships and imprisonments in Saracen and Christian lands). 10.  The Latin name for Ireland. 11.  St Patrick (c. 420–?490), the ‘Apostle of Ireland’ and its patron saint. On St Patrick’s Purgatory, see Introduction, pp. 14–19.

The Life of Saint Patrick

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pleasing to God for me to reveal, because it is not fitting, or pleasing to God. Nor does he wish it on account of the danger that might ensue to me or to those to whom they might be revealed, which is something that would be irreparable.

The Life of Saint Patrick At the time when Saint Patrick was preaching the holy gospel in Hibernia (which we call Ireland) and confirming his preaching with wondrous miracles of Our Lord, he found the people of that land as hard and wild as if they were beasts. And he put a great deal of effort and toil into instructing them, teaching them and converting them to the faith of Our Lord God Jesus Christ. And he often spoke to them about the pains of Hell and the glory of Paradise in order to turn them away from their wretchedness and their sins, and to confirm them in goodness of life. But all of this was to no avail, for they said that they would not believe anything unless some of them saw it – that is to say, the glory of the good and the suffering of the wicked – with their own eyes, nor would they credit it on the authority of Saint Patrick, whose whole intention was directed towards God. And so, very devoutly, this good man began to fast, keep vigil, offer prayers to God, and do many other good things for the salvation of the people’s souls. And, as he had done on other occasions, Our Lord appeared to him, and gave him the book of the Gospels and a staff, which they call the staff of Jesus, since he gave it to his servant, and in his own life he bears witness to how that staff and that book are a sign that he is the apostle of Ireland.12 And afterwards, 12.  T: ‘[…] e ly baylec lo libre del Evangeli e .I. basto, e aquestas causas teno en Yrlanda per grans relequias, ayssi coma es degut’ (p. 6,

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Our Lord led him to a deserted place and showed him a very dark pit. And Our Lord told him that anyone who entered it having been absolved after confession, penitent and in purity of heart, would be freed from all his sins in the course of a natural day,13 and would see the torments of the wicked and the joy and glory of the good. And that is what Our Lord said to Saint Patrick, and after Our Lord had left him, the good man was very happy about what Our Lord had said to him when he had shown him the pit so that he could convert the people. And after this, he had a church founded very close to that place, and installed a community of canons regular in it, and had stout doors set over the pit. And the whole island is surrounded by the waters of a large lake, which is very deep [in the area] around the pit.14 And he had a cemetery made there, and a gate for it which he had locked with a key, so that no one could enter without permission. And he had good walls built to the east, and entrusted the keeping of the key to the prior of the church.15 And in the time of Saint Patrick many people entered the pit to do penance for their sins, and when they came out they said that they had seen Hell and gone through great and painful torments, and had also witnessed many great glories and many joyous things. And Saint Patrick had their accounts set down in writing inside the church, and afterwards, using the testimony of lines 60–61) ([…] and presented him with the Gospel book and a staff, and, as is fitting, these things are considered as great relics in Ireland). 13.  T: ‘en .I. jorn e en .la. nuoch’ (p. 6, line 68) (in one day and one night). 14.  Station Island in Lough Derg (County Donegal); see Introduction, p. 14. 15.  T: ‘[…] e fes entorn la fossa sementeri, e fec la dicha fossa tancar am clau, per tal que negun non y intres ses licencia, e fec la claure devas Orient de mur’] (p. 6, lines 76–77) ([…] and he had a cemetery made around the pit, and he had the said pit locked with a key, so that no one might enter it without permission, and he had it enclosed with a wall to the east).

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those who had entered there, he commended to the people, and told them about, all the things – all those wondrous things – that they had seen. And that is why it is called Saint Patrick’s pit, and the pit of Purgatory, since people purge themselves of their sins there. And because it was first shown to Saint Patrick by Our Lord, it is also called Saint Patrick’s Purgatory. And in the said land of Ireland there are several monasteries of this order, which are great and eminent, and larger than that of the Purgatory.16

The First Successor of Saint Patrick And the first prior of this church, who was a very worthy man of good life, had a room made for himself close to the dormitory where the canons slept, for he was very old and had only one tooth, and he did not want the young men to despise him on account of his age, or to cause him any annoyance. For Saint Gregory says that, even when he is not ill, an old man is, in fact, infirm all the time on account of his age. And some of the young men there would often visit him, saying to him in jest: ‘Father, how long would you like to remain in this world?’ And he would answer them: ‘My sons, if it pleased God, I would prefer to be gone from this world rather than stay in it a long time, for all I have ever found in it is misery and pain, and in the other world all I shall find is glory.’ And those who asked him this had often heard the angels singing in the good man’s room, and the songs were these and said: ‘You are blessed, and blessed be your 16.  T: ‘[…] majors que aquel ont es lo purgatori’ (p. 7, lines 90–91) (bigger than the one where the Purgatory is).

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mouth, for no delicate food touches it.’17 For the good man ate only dry bread, of the kind made in that land, which is made of oats. And they would eat [little pieces of] that bread only ten or twelve times [a day] but not all at once,18 nor do they [usually] eat bread or drink wine,19 but live alone on beef and drink water. And the great lords drink milk, as I will explain to you at greater length in due course.20 And, likewise, the good man used to drink cold water, and in the end he passed from this life and went to Our Lord just as he had always wished. In the time of Saint Patrick, and afterwards, he would have everything that he had learned from those who had entered that pit set down in writing,21 for some who went in there did not return, and so were lost because they were not firm in the faith.

The Conditions of Entry into the Purgatory The custom is such that no one may enter there except to purge his sins, and with the permission of the bishop or archbishop.22 And he [the bishop] is in the diocese where 17.  T: ‘“Benazeyt yest tu e benazeyta sia la teua dent de ta boca que no toca viandas delectablas”’ (p. 8, lines 108–9) (Blessed are you and blessed be the tooth in your mouth […]). 18.  T: ‘[…] d’aquest pa manja .I. home x o xii mealhas per jorn’ (p. 8, lines 111–12) ([…] one man eats only ten or twelve morsels of that bread a day). 19.  T: ‘[…] mas comunamen no manjo pa ni bevo vy’ (p. 8, line 112) (but usually do not eat bread or drink wine). 20.  See pp. 64, 67 below. 21.  T: ‘[…] el fazia metre en scrich tot so que avian vist aquels que intravo en la fossa’ (p. 8, lines 118–19) ([…] he had set down in writing all that those who entered the pit had seen). 22.  T: ‘[…] am licencia del evesque e del archivesque d’Armanhac, que es primat en Yrlanda, e lo avesque es aquel en la diocesa del quai es lo purgatori’ (pp. 8–9, lines 121–24) ([…] with the permission of the

The Conditions of Entry into the Purgatory

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the Purgatory is situated; and when the person who wants to enter it goes there, and has spoken to one of them and made known his wish to them, they first advise him that he should on no account seek to enter there,23 and tell him that many of those who have gone in have not come out. And if the man will not desist from entering, they give him their letters [of permission] and send him to the prior of the church. And when the prior has read the letters, and the man makes known his intention to him, the prior expresses strong disapproval of his entering and strongly advises him not to go in, and to choose another form of penance, since so many others have entered and never come out, but rather have perished there. The prior warns them in this way, and if he sees that he cannot make them change their minds, he has them brought into the church and makes them spend a certain time in penance and prayer. And after a time he brings together all the clergy of the area who can be gathered or found to sing an early-morning mass in the church, and the man who wishes to enter into the pit receives the body of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and holy water, just as Saint Patrick has laid down and prescribed. And after that, the prior together with all the clergy, singing the litanies, lead him in a great procession to the gate of the Purgatory. And then the prior opens the gate and reminds him of the dangers awaiting him in the place that he wishes to enter, of how the malignant spirits will come out to him and attack him, and of how great numbers of other people have been lost bishop, and of the archbishop of Armagh, who is the primate of Ireland, and the bishop is the one in whose diocese the Purgatory is situated). 23.  T: ‘[…] e quant aquel que y vol intrar s’en va a lahun d’aquestz prelatz e ly an dicha lor voluntat, primieyrament lor acosselha que per res no y vuelho intrar’ (p. 9, lines 124–27) ([…] and when the person who wants to enter goes to one of these prelates and makes known his will to him, he first advises him not on any account to seek to enter there).

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there. And if, on that account, the person refuses to desist from or abandon his purpose, he then makes the sign of the cross over him and blesses him and all those present, and the man commends himself to their prayers, makes the sign of the cross over them,24 takes his leave of them, and enters into the pit. And the prior shuts the gate, and then goes back in procession. And the following morning, all the clergy return to the gate of the pit, and the prior opens it, and if the man is found there, they lead him back to the church in a great procession, and he stays there for as long as he wishes. But if he is not found there at the very same time that he entered on the previous day, they know for certain that he is lost in body and soul. And the prior shuts the gate and makes his way back.

The Journey Begins When King Charles, who was king of France, died, I had been in his service for a long time.25 And then I entered the service of King John of Aragon, and was his principal knight, and he my liege lord. And for a long time I was very close to him and was loved by him as much as a servant can be loved by his lord.26 And I was aware that this lord showed me great love, and I found the same in him, and loved him as much as a servant can love his lord; so much so, that there would be nothing in the world that I could possibly do that I would not do for him. And with my lord’s permission, I took leave of him in the kingdom of Valencia, and came to the place called Millars, which is a 24.  T: ‘[…] e senha se […]’ (p. 9, line 147) ([…] and blesses himself […]). 25.  Charles V of France died on 16 September 1380. 26.  In 1380, John I of Aragon (r. 1387–96) was still Duke of Girona; for more on him, see Introduction, p. 4.

The Journey Begins

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part of my patrimony in the viscounty of Perellós.27 And then there followed the death of Pope Clement, a member of the family of the Count of Geneva, and a few days later Cardinal de Luna was elected pope by the cardinals, and is styled Benedict XIII.28 And when I was on a certain journey off the shores of Italy, where I was out on the open sea with three well-armed galleys, it happened that they came into the service of Pope Clement and his college of cardinals.29 And I had close dealings with his cardinals, who left Italy on my galleys and on two belonging to the Seneschal of Provence, whose name was Fouquet d’Agoult.30 They came to me in the first year of the schism which has lasted so long, and the Bishop of Bari, stayed in Rome and, as pope, took the name of Urban.31 And I was closely acquainted with the cardinals, especially with Cardinal de Luna, who had recently been elected, and [who, as] the aforementioned Pope Benedict, sent me a message ordering me to come and serve him. And this is what I did, and I served him with the permission of my lord the king.

27.  Millars (Fr. Millas) is about twenty kilometres west of Perpignan. 28.  Robert of Geneva, antipope Clement VII (r. 1378–94), son of Amadeus III, Count of Geneva, died on 16 September 1394. For Benedict XIII, see note 5 to text, and Introduction, pp. 4–6. 29. For details of this expedition which, in 1378, conveyed Clement VII from Naples to Provence (on his way to Avignon), see Ferrer i Mallol, ‘Noves dades’, pp. 226–27. 30.  Fouquet d’Agoult de Reillanne, Grand Seneschal of Provence (1376–1385), and Chamberlain of Joanna I, Queen of Naples and Countess of Provence. 31.  MyP is clearly corrupt here: ‘e atura a Roma lo bisbe de Bar, ab lo papa, que se appella Vrba’ (p. 139, lines 215–16) (and the Bishop of Bari stayed in Rome, with the pope, who is called Urban). Bartolomeo Prignano, Archbishop (rather than Bishop) of Bari, was elected pope, as Urban VI, in 1378. The election of a rival pope, Clement VII (see note 28 to text) later that year initiated the Western Schism that lasted until 1417; see Introduction, p. 4.

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It happened that I was with the pope when my lord the king died contrary to God’s will, and I was extremely sorrowful and sad, as much as any servant can be over the death of his lord.32 And at that moment I resolved in my heart that I would go to Saint Patrick’s Purgatory to see – if it were possible – if I could find my lord in Purgatory and [discover] what pains he was suffering.33 And these things came into my imagination because of what I had heard people say about the Purgatory.34 And after some days of experiencing this desire that I had to go and enter Purgatory, I spoke to the pope in confession, telling him all about my intention. He very sternly discouraged me and tried very hard to frighten me, urging me on no account to do it. And apart from what he himself said to me, he got some cardinals, especially two who were close to him, to speak to me. One was the titular Bishop of Tarazona, a member of the Calvillo family; the other was called Jofré de Santa Elena.35 And a brother of mine, called Mossen Ponç de Perellós, was also present.36 And the Pope strongly urged me not to go, while they held 32.  John I died on 19 May 1396; see Introduction, pp. 7–13. 33.  T: ‘[…] per saber, se far se podia, se atrobero mos-senhor en purgatori’ (p. 11, lines 175–76) ([…] to see, if it was possible to do so, if I would find my lord in Purgatory). 34.  T: ‘E en aysso me emageniey las causas e las razos que avia ausit dire a alcus del purgatori’ (p. 11, lines 175–77) (And so I imagined the things and the words that I had heard some say about the Purgatory). 35.  MyP: ‘[…] la vn era [titolat de Tarasçona, que era] del linatge que lo noble [sobre] nom [sapella Galniello; laltre cardenal] sapellaue Jofre de Sancta Lena’ (p. 140, line 240); T: ‘[…] la .i. era de titolat de Tarascona, que era del linatge que lo sobrenom se appela Galnielho, l’autre cardenal se appelava Josue de sanct’Alena’ (p. 11, lines 183–85). Fernando Pérez Calvillo (†1404), was dean of Tarazona (in the province of Zaragoza) from 1386, bishop from 1392, and cardinal from 1397; Jofré de Boïl (†1400), cardinal of Santa Maria in Aquiro (1397–1400). 36.  Ponç de Perellós (†1416), majordomo to Joan I and chamberlain to his Queen, Violant de Bar (c. 1365–1431); see Introduction, pp. 8–9.

Through England to Ireland

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me back me so forcefully that I was barely able to escape from them. And a few days later, I met with the Pope, and told him that I would not abandon that journey for anything in the world. And after obtaining his blessing, I took my leave of him on the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lady in the aforementioned year, and made my way through France to the court of the king in Paris.37 I was a former servant of his, and his father, who was called Charles, had brought me up from a very young age, and had also made me his chamberlain. And from the King of France, and from his uncles, the Duke of Berry and the Duke of Burgundy, who are brothers, I was given letters of recommendation addressed to the King of England, who was his son-in-law, and to other English nobles.38 At the beginning of the marriage they had agreed a thirty-year truce.39 I left Paris and, after some further days of travel, reached Calais, where I took ship to cross over to England.

Through England to Ireland I set off from there on All Saints Day,40 taking the road to London, and passing by [the cathedral of] Saint Thomas of Canterbury. And in London I had news that the King The title ‘Mossen’ (a contraction of ‘Monsenyor’ – ‘my lord’) was given to men of high social rank. 37.  Charles VI (‘the Beloved’ or ‘the Mad’) of France (r. 1380–1422). 38.  John (‘the Magnificent’), Duke of Berry (1340–1416), commissioner of the famous Très riches heures, and Philip (‘the Bold’), Duke of Burgundy (1342–1404). 39.  Richard II (r. 1377–1400) was betrothed to his second wife, Isabella of France (Isabelle de Valois) (1389–1409), the daughter of Charles VI, at Calais in 1396; she was then only six years old. The marriage sealed a peace that was to last for twenty-eight years. 40.  1 November 1397.

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of England was staying at a great deer-park, like the forest of Vincennes near Paris, called Woodstock,41 eight miles from Oxonia42 where there is a great university, a place that the English call Oxford.43 This park is very beautiful, and the king has a very handsome dwelling there, and the residence is a most lovely one comprising many lodgings and buildings. And, on account of the letters that I was carrying from the king of France, I was extremely well received, and they did me very great honour. And they ensured that I was guided and kept safe throughout the whole of his kingdom, all of which I traversed without stopping anywhere, although it is true that I stayed with the king for ten days.44 Having left the court, I travelled so far by daily stages that I reached an area called Cheshire in the Welsh Marches,45 [and got] as far as the city of Chester;46 where I hired a ship to cross over to Ireland. I boarded it, and, sailing along

41.  ‘Got’ (MyP, p. 141, line 265; T, p. 12, line 207). For Jeanroy and Vignaux (T, p. 139a) it is Godstow (four kilometres west of Oxford) but it seems more likely to refer to Woodstock, which is about eight miles from Oxford. Here, in 1129, Henry I had built a royal hunting lodge and created a large enclosed demesne. His son, Henry II (r. 1154–1189), turned the lodge into a palace. Richard II’s father, Edward of Woodstock, the Black Prince, was born there in 1330. The palace fell into ruin in the 16th century and the remnant, then in the grounds of Blenheim Palace, was demolished in 1720 on the orders of Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough. Louis VII (r. 1137–1180) built a hunting lodge in the Bois de Vincennes (close to Paris) around 1150. 42.  MyP: ‘[…] pres de Tersom .viii. milas’ (p. 141, line 265); T: ‘[…] pres Ocsonia’ (p. 12, line 207). 43. MyP ‘Estauafort’ (p. 141, line 267); T: ‘Estancfort’ (p. 12, line 208). 44.  For an extract from the letter of safe conduct issued by Richard II, see Introduction, p. 6. 45.  MyP: ‘Esteper’ (p. 141, line 275); T: ‘una encontrada appelada Sestrexier’ (p. 12, lines 215–16). 46.  MyP: ‘la ciutat de Sixte’ (p. 141, lines 276–77); T: ‘la ciutat Xistier’ (p. 12, line 217).

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the coast of Wales, came to a place called Holyhead.47 Setting off from there, I crossed the open sea with a fair wind, holding course for Ireland. I stopped off on the Isle of Man, which in the time of King Arthur belonged to the King of the Hundred Knights, and today is well populated and belongs to the King of England.48 And from there, all the while with good weather, I crossed over, and arrived in Ireland and, after a few days, I landed in the city [of Dublin].49 And here I met the Earl of March,50 a cousin of King Richard of England, who received me very graciously on account of the letters of recommendation from the King of England and from the Queen, and I told him about my intentions regarding the journey that I wanted to undertake. And this lord strongly advised me against it, saying that there were two reasons why I should not undertake this journey: the first was that I would have to pass through strange places inhabited by savage people who knew nothing of the rule of law and should not be trusted. The other reason was that entering into the Purgatory is a very dangerous thing and many good knights had been lost there and never 47.  ‘Oliet’ (MyP, p. 141, line 279; T, p. 12, line 219). 48.  ‘Le roi des cent chevaliers’, an opponent of King Arthur, is first mentioned in the 13th-century Prose Lancelot. He is named as Berrant le Apres in Book X, Chapter 60, of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur (first printed in 1485). His connection with the Isle of Man is unclear. 49.  MyP: ‘[…] e aribi en Irlanda e a cap de alguns iorns dauali a la ciutat’ (p. 141, lines 285–86) (and I arrived in Ireland and, after a few days, came down to the city); T: ‘[…] e aribiey en Irlanda al cap de alcuns jorns de espalege, davant la ciutat de Belvi, que es asses gran ciutat’ (p. 13, lines 24–25) ([…] and I arrived in Ireland and, after a few days, disembarked in the city of Belvi [sic], which is quite a big city). 50.  Roger Mortimer (1374–1398), 4th Earl of March and 7th Earl of Ulster. He was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1382 and also from 1392 to 1398. Through his maternal grandfather, Lionel, Duke of Clarence, a son of Edward III, Mortimer was a cousin of Richard II, and from the time of his mother, Phillippa of Clarence’s, death in 1382, to his own death in 1398, presumed to be Richard’s heir.

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returned. And so, on no account should I seek to enter it or deceive myself. The earl did all that he could to stand in the way of my departure, but when he saw that I was so set on it, he gave me some of his horses and jewels, and [also] two squires, one of whom was called John of Ivry, who guided me through the land that the King of England holds in Ireland. And the whole time we were riding he would not allow us to pay for anything; rather – much to my displeasure – he attended to our expenses.51 The other squire was called John Talbot.52 He knew the Irish language and was my interpreter. And these two gentlemen had orders to conduct me to the Archbishop of Armagh, which they did. He is the highestranking [cleric] in the island of the Irish, and they regard him as a pope.53 We met him in the town of Drogheda, a town which is as big as Puigcerdà or Tarragona.54 And 51.  MyP: ‘Johan Diuri’ (p. 142, line 303); T: ‘Johan Dimi’ (p. 13, line 241). 52.  ‘Johan Talabot’ (MyP, p. 142, line 307; T, p. 13, line 144). Dorothy Carpenter (‘The Pilgrim from Catalonia/Aragon’, p. 108, n. 37) speculates that this may be John Talbot, first Earl of Shrewsbury and first Earl of Waterford (c. 1387–1453). There appears to be no record of him being in Ireland before 1414, when he was appointed Lord Lieutenant, and it seems unlikely that he could have become proficient in the Irish language at the age of ten (or possibly a little older) without having been brought up there. He was, however, related to the Talbots of Malahide Castle (Fingal, County Dublin), and it seems more likely that it was a member of this branch of the family who acted as Perellós’s interpreter; see A.J. Pollard, ‘Talbot, John, first earl of Shrewsbury and first earl of Waterford’, in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 53.  John Colton (c. 1320–1404), the English-born Archbishop of Armagh (r. 1383–1404). He was a supporter of Pope Urban VI. For his biography, see A.J. Watt, ‘Colton, John’, in Dictionary of Irish Biography, ed. by James McGuire and James Quinn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 54.  MyP: ‘Drudan’ (p. 142, line 312); T: ‘Diondan’ (p. 14, line 249). Drogheda is some forty-five kilometres north of Dublin. Puigcerdà is the capital of the Pyrenean comarca (formerly comtat or county) of

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the squires introduced me to the archbishop, to whom I presented letters from the King and Queen of England and from the Earl of March. And the archbishop received me very graciously and did me great honour. Afterwards, when he learned of my intentions, he came out strongly against my journey, and sternly warned me not to go there, saying that, apart from the danger involved in entering Purgatory, neither he nor anyone else could guarantee me safe passage through the lands of King O’Neill, or those of the other lords that I would have to traverse before I reached the Purgatory.55 If he [himself] was reluctant to court disaster in that territory, on no account should I attempt to do so.56 And afterwards, he led me into the sacristy of the great church, where he solemnly warned and implored me not on any account to attempt to enter the Purgatory, telling me about the many dangers and terrible things that had befallen several people who had been lost inside it. He was telling me yet more about all the dangers that could arise or which are actually present there, when I replied, as God had directed me, declaring that I would never renounce or abandon making my journey. And when he saw that he could not divert me from my purpose, he gave me all the guidance he could, along with permission to go. And I made my confession and received Our Lord from his hands in absolute secrecy. And he told me that within the

Cerdanya in the north of Catalonia; Tarragona is the capital of the province of the same name in the south east. 55.  Niall Óg O’Neill (†1403), king of Tyrone. His father, Niall Mór, died some time in 1397, the year of Perellós’s visit, but his son had effectively taken over from him some four years earlier; see Emmet O’Byrne, ‘O’Neill (Ó Néill), Niall Óg’, in Dictionary of Irish Biography, and Introduction, pp. 1–2, 26, 28–40. 56.  T: ‘[…] e si no me volia perdre de certa sciencia, que per res non o essages’ (p. 14, lines 259–60) ([…] if I wanted to avoid the certainty of coming to grief, I should on no account attempt it).

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week he would be in a town called Dundalk, and indeed that is what he did.57 And at once I took my leave of him and went to the said town, and from there I sent a message to King O’Neill, who was in the city of Armagh. He, indeed, sent me a [letter of] safe conduct and one of his knights and a messenger to guide me until I reached them. And the archbishop arrived on the appointed day, bringing with him a hundred men-at-arms, armed in their fashion, to accompany me, and he left me an interpreter, a first cousin of John Talbot.58 So, with the hundred men-at-arms I entered the territory of the Irish, where King O’Neill ruled.59 And when I had ridden ahead about five miles,60 the horsemen did not dare to go any further – for they are all great enemies of each other – but stayed behind on a hill, and I took my leave of them, and journeyed onwards. And after I had gone about half a league further, I met King O’Neill’s constable with some hundred men on horseback, all armed in their fashion, and I spoke with him. And after leaving him, I continued on until I reached the king, who received me well, in accordance with their custom, and sent me a present of food – that is to say, beef, for they do not eat bread or drink wine, since they have none. Rather, they drink water, and, on account of their noble rank, the great lords drink milk, and some, broth made from the meat.

57.  MyP: ‘Dondela’ (p. 143, line 339); T: ‘Dandela’ (p. 14, line 272). Dundalk is about eighty kilometres north of Dublin. 58.  T adds: ‘[…] lo qual avia nom Thomas Talabot’ (p. 15, lines 279–80) ([…] who was called Thomas Talbot). 59.  T: ‘[…] ieu intriey en la terra dels iretges salvatges’ (p. 15, lines 80–81) ([…] I entered the territory of the wild Irish [?]). 60.  T: ‘.V. legas’ (p. 15, line 32) (five leagues).

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The Customs of the Irish61 Since their customs and habits seem very strange to us, as briefly as I can, I will tell you a few things about their manners and way of life, about what I observed of them while with the king, with whom, on my return, I celebrated the feast of Christmas – even though I had already seen enough when I first stayed with him on my way [to St Patrick’s Purgatory]. It is true that the king inherits by succession, and that there are several kings on that island, which is as big as the island of England. This O’Neill, however, is the greatest king, and all the others have come from his line. And he has a good one hundred and forty horsemen.62 They have no saddles, but [use] a cushion, and they wear slashed cloaks, each one according to his rank. And they are armed with coats of mail, which they wear unbelted,63 [and] with mail gorgets and round iron helmets, in the style of the Moors or Saracens. And some had what looked like bassinets,64 61.  For a discussion of Perellós’s account of Irish customs, see Introduction, pp. 26–40. 62.  T: ‘[…] ben .xl. homes a caval’ (p. 16, lines 303–04) (some forty horsemen). 63.  T: ‘[…] els se armo de quota de malha, e porto las senchadas’ (p. 16, lines 304–05) ([…] and they arm themselves with coats of mail and wear them belted). 64.  MyP (p. 144, line 379): ‘[…] he auia ne a manera de bernes’. ‘Bernes’ is a difficult word to interpret. Tiñena (ed.), Viatge al purgatori (p. 42, n. 68) suggests that it may refer to ‘un capot sense màneques’ (a short sleeveless cape) perhaps made of bèrnia, a type of coarse, dark-coloured wool. Cfr. DCVB, s.v. bèrnia and burell (esp. 1, 4). Mac an Bhaird (p. 8) translates it, without explanation, as ‘foot soldiers’. In A it appears as ‘beruetz’, which may be equivalent to the Catalan barroer, ‘a type of iron helmet’ like a bassinet – I am grateful to Dr Xavier Renedo for this suggestion; see DCVB, s.v. barroer: ‘Espècie de capell de ferro. “Un barruer o bassinet o salada de ferre”, doc. a. 1434 (Boll. Lul. iii, 312)’). DCVB, s.v. bacinet (5), notes that the term was applied metonymically to an ‘Home d’armes guarnit de capell de ferro, però no

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with swords and knives and very long, thin spears, which, like other old-fashioned spears, are two fathoms in length.65 The swords are just like those of the Saracens, the ones that we call Genoese. The pommel and the crossguard have a different shape, almost like that of an outstretched hand. The knives are long and as narrow as a little finger, and extremely sharp. This is their way of arming themselves, and some use bows, which are as small as half an English bow, and strike home as powerfully as the English ones. They are courageous and have been warring against the English for a long time, and the King of England cannot bring them to heel. He has had to engage in various battles with them,66 and their way of making war is similar to that of the Saracens, and they make the same kind of battle cry. And the great lords wear an unlined tunic that comes down to the knees, with a very low neckline, like that worn by d’armadura completa’ (A man at arms wearing an iron helmet but not full armour), which would seem to justify Mac an Bhaird’s translation of it as ‘foot soldiers’. Carpenter, whose translation is based on the Auch MS, renders it, without annotation, as ‘the Bernese’ (’Some of them are like the Bernese’) (‘The Pilgrim from Catalonia/Aragon’, p. 110). 65.  MyP: ‘de doas brassas’ (p. 141, lines 381–82). DCVB, s.v. braça: ‘Mida longitudinal equivalent a 1’67 m. i que originàriament és la distància que hi ha des de l’extrem d’una mà a l’extrem de l’altra tenint els braços estesos en línia recta’ (A measure of length equivalent to 1.67 metres, and which, originally, is the distance between the end of one hand and the end of the other when the two arms are held stretched out in a straight line). Dr Katharine Simms points out that ‘the lances were long and thin because the Irish horsemen fought without stirrups and therefore did not couch their lances in jousting manner but stabbed overarm like the knights on the Bayeux tapestry, and continued to do so to the end of the sixteenth century’; personal correspondence with the translator. 66.  Richard II had personally led a military expedition to Ireland in the winter of 1394–95, just a few years before Perellós’s visit, but although he secured the submission of the most important Gaelic chieftains (including Niall Óg O’Neill), tensions between the Anglo-Irish and Gaelic lords, particularly between Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, and the O’Neills, persisted; see Introduction, pp. 28–29.

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women. And they wear great long-tailed hoods that come down to the waist, with the pointed end as narrow as a finger.67 And they wear no leggings, or shoes, or breeches, but wear their spurs on their bare heels.68 It was in this fashion that the king appeared on Christmas Day, and all his clerics and knights and bishops and abbots and other great lords. The common people go about as best they can – they are badly dressed – but most of them wear a frieze mantle, and both men and women display all their private parts with absolutely no shame. The poor people go naked, but they all wear those mantles – good or bad – including ladies. The queen and her daughter and sister were dressed, and had their hair tied up, in green, but wore no shoes. The queen’s maidens, who numbered about twenty, were dressed as I have described above, and showed their private parts with as little shame as people here show their faces.69 And with the king there were about three thousand horses, and also many poor people, to whom I saw the king order generous alms of beef to be given. And they are indeed amongst the handsomest men and the most beautiful women that I have seen in the whole world. And, moreover, they never sowed any wheat, nor do they have any wine at all, but live solely on meat. And the great lords drink milk on account of their noble rank, and the others, meat broth and water. But they have a plentiful supply of butter, for all their meat comes from oxen, cows and fine horses. According to my interpreter, and some others who could speak Latin, the king holds his great court on Christmas Day. His table was nothing more than a great quantity of 67.  I.e. Chaperons: an elaborate headpiece with many folds and often with a hood or tail reaching down over the shoulders and back. 68.  See Introduction, p. 34. 69.  See Introduction, p. 36.

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rushes spread out on the ground, and close by him they set down the finest grass they could find for wiping the mouth, and they brought him the food on two poles, just as they carry buckets [of grapes] [during the wine harvest]. You can well imagine how badly dressed the squires were.70 The animals ate only grass instead of oats, and also holly leaves, which they toast a little because of the prickles on them. But let this suffice with regard to their customs, for I do not wish to say anything more about them. The king received me very well, and sent me an ox.71 In his whole court there was neither bread to eat nor wine to drink, but, as a special gift, he sent me two little bread cakes, as thin as wafers,72 and as easily folded as raw dough. They were made of oats and had an earthen appearance, and were as black as charcoal, but truly delicious. And then the king gave me a letter of safe conduct for travel, on foot or on horseback, throughout his whole land and among his people. And he spoke at length, and eagerly and very diligently asked me about the kings of Christendom, and especially about the kings of France, Aragon and Castile, and about their customs and ways of life. And, from what he said, it would appear that they [the Irish] have the best and most perfect customs in the whole world. Their dwellings, for the most part, are usually close to their cattle, and they make their home with the cattle. And on a particular day,73 when the grazing runs out, they 70.  T: ‘[…] podes pessar cossi los scudiers eran abilhatz, Dieus o sap’ (p. 17, pp. 350–51) ([…] you can imagine how the squires were dressed, God knows). 71.  T: ‘Lo rey me reculhic fort be e me trames .I. buou e lo seu quoc’ (p. 18, lines 355–56) (The King received me very well and sent me an ox and his cook). 72.  The word used by Perellós (MyP, p. 148, line 438) is ‘neules’ (from Latin nebula), a specifically Catalan type of wafer, ‘as fine as mist’. 73.  T: ‘[…] e cascun dia se van mudan per los erbatges’ (p. 18, line 368) ([…] and every day they move off for [new] pastures).

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migrate like the swallows of Barbary and of the land of the Sultan.74 They behave in just this way when moving their settlement, and they all go off together.75

The Journey to Saint Patrick’s Purgatory I left that king’s court and journeyed onwards for several days – for the road is long – until I came to a town of theirs called Termon.76 And they call it that because no harm will be done to anyone here. It would seem that they have great

74.  T: ‘[…] a la manieyra dels alams’ (p. 18, line 369); Mac an Bhaird, who prefers this reading, considers ‘alams’ to be ‘a corruption of “alarb” i.e. bedouin, Arab’ (p. 9, n. 19), and renders the phrase as ‘like the bedouins of Barbary’. Cfr. A: ‘s’n van mudan a manieyra de issams de Barbaria’ (fol. 26r [L’arrivo al Purgatorio]), which Carpenter translates as ‘[…] like the swarms of Barbary’ (‘The Journey of Ramon de Perellós’, p. 111). 75.  MyP: ‘en mudant lur vila’ (p. 146, line 452) (lit.: in moving their town). 76.  MyP: ‘Processio’ (p. 146, line 456). Perhaps due to confusion with the other Lough Derg (in the Shannon River Basin), both MyP (p. 355) and Jeanroy and Vignaux (T, p. 140) speculate that this may be Parsonstown (now Birr) in County Offaly. Carpenter considers that ‘it is probably Termon Magrath’ (‘The Pilgrim from Catalonia/Aragon’, p. 111, n. 45). Mac an Bhaird concurs and offers a detailed explanation: ‘clearly a garbled version of *Protessió (= Protecció), a translation of the Irish Tearmann (refuge, sanctuary), which in this case is Tearmann Dábheog (now Tearmann Mhéig Raith [Tearmann Mhic Craith])’ (p. 10, n. 20). O’Sullivan Beare (Historiae Catholicae, p. 23) supports this interpretation: ‘Protectio vel Asylum (Tearmuin) nuncupatur’. Termon Magrath in County Donegal, on the shores of Lower Lough Erne, lies about nine kilometres south-east of Lough Derg and about 1.8 kilometres south-west of the village of Pettigo, which straddles the Irish border between Counties Donegal and Fermanagh. The name of the village derives from the Latin Protectio, a translation of the original Irish name, An Tearmann (‘place of sanctuary’), given to the whole area. Pettigo is still an assembly point for modern pilgrims making their way to and from Lough Derg.

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devotion to Saint Patrick,77 and it is a secure place within the kingdom.78 And the kings keep that town safe, and the pilgrims who go there are forced to leave their animals behind, for neither horses nor other animals would be able to cross the mountains or the waters. And so, setting off from there, I made my way on foot to the town where the priory is. And the Purgatory is in this town, and there is a large, deep lake where the island is, and the water is good for drinking, and in the lake there are several other islands.79 The waters around the island are so extensive that one can scarcely cross over the highest mountains because of them – rather, one enters them up to one’s knees80 – so that it is very difficult to make one’s way on foot, and even more so on horseback. On leaving Termon, the lord of that place, who is a great lord, and his brother, who had great devotion to my lord Saint Patrick, greatly assisted in guiding me, as they did all pilgrims.81 And he wanted to come with me, and accompanied me as far as the monastery, where I was very well received. And we crossed the lake in a boat made out of a piece of hollowed-out timber, for there was no other

77.  T: ‘[…] ant an be en gran devotion Sanct Patrici’ (p. 18, lines 373–74). 78.  MyP: ‘[…] he es bona entre lo realme’ (p. 146, line 459) (lit.: it is good within the realm). 79.  There are some thirty islands in Lough Derg, the most important of which (apart from Station Island) is Saints Island; see Introduction, pp. 14–16. 80.  Here I follow T: ‘[…] an s’en intra hom entro al ginolh […]’ (p. 19, lines 383–84) rather than MyP (‘per las ayguas que hy son intrar daqui a la fi’ (p. 147, lines 469–70) (through the waters that are here entering from here to the end)), which is corrupt. 81.  The head of the McGrath family (and his brother). The McGraths were the hereditary erenachs, or coarbs (lay guardians and administrators) of Termon Magrath, of which Lough Derg formed a part; see Introduction, p. 31.

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boat there. The lord of Termon and the prior, who was [also] there, got into another. As soon as I reached the monastery, they asked me if I wanted to enter the Purgatory, and I answered ‘yes’. And then they warned me very sternly not on any account to try to go in there, or to put God to the test, for it would mean putting not only my body but, more importantly, my soul in danger, and all the while they were telling me about the dangers involved and pointing out the graves of those who had died there.82 But when they saw how firm my resolve was, they told me – especially the prior – that I would have to abide by their rules in the monastery, as they were laid down by Saint Patrick and the prior’s predecessors, and as explained in the chapter which deals with Saint Patrick. And so I acted in accordance with their rules, which stipulate that, with great devotion, one must do all the things done by people who, because of illness or other dangers, are expecting to die. And once all that is done, their custom is to lead the one who is about to enter [the pit] in a great procession to the church, all the while sternly warning him not on any account to attempt to enter there. And they told me that, in order to purge my sins, I should abandon going in, and enter a religious order to serve the brothers, or become one of them, and not risk putting myself in such great danger. And having observed all the ordinances in the church, the ones which, as mentioned above, Saint Patrick laid down – with all that done, together with all the clergy from the area who can attend, and as early in the morning as they

82.  Since MyP (‘la forsa daquells que mortz hy eran’ (p. 147, line 485) (the strength of those who had died there’)) is almost certainly corrupt, I follow T (‘las fossas d’aquels que y son mortz’ (p. 19, lines 398–99).

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can – they sing a requiem mass for the one who is entering [the pit].83 And they did everything that pertains to this. And while I was in the church, I spoke with one of my nephews, my sister’s son, a doctor [of theology] and a member of the Centelles family, called Mossen Bernat de Centelles, and with two of my sons, the elder of whom was called Lluís, and the other, Ramon, and with my retinue and servants.84 And so it was that they made arrangements for their return in the event that it was God’s will that I should die. And I handed my will to my nephew, Mossen Bernat Centelles, who was sacristan of Mallorca. And when all this was done, the prior and the friars and the lord of Termon asked me where I would like to be buried in the event of my death, and I replied that the earth was the resting place of the dead, and that I was leaving the matter to them. And they led me in procession to the door of the Purgatory, and here I dubbed four men knights, of whom two were my sons, and the other two, an Englishman called Sir Thomas Hawkwood, and Mossen Pere de Maça from the kingdom of Valencia.85 After this, 83.  MyP (‘tant gran mayti com poguerem cantem […]) (p. 48, lines 505–06) (lit.: as early in the morning as we could, we sing […])) is corrupt here. 84.  Bernat de Centelles was the son of Eimeric II, Baron of Centelles and Perellós’s sister, Brunissenda. A document of 1402 shows that he was then already a canon and sacristan of the cathedral of Palma de Mallorca; see Ferrer i Mallol, ‘Activitats polítiques’, p. 173, n. 72. Lluís de Perellós died sometime around 1437. Ramon was, variously, Governor of Roussillon (from 1419), Lieutenant General of Calabria, Captain General of the navy (from 1428), and eventually Viceroy of Sicily. He played a prominent part in military campaigns in Sardinia, Naples and North Africa. He died in 1441/44. 85. MyP: ‘Thomas Agut’ (p. 148, line 524). I follow Mac an Bhaird (p. 11) in taking this to be Sir Thomas Hawkwood. Carpenter (‘The Journey of Ramon de Perellós’, p. 113, n. 47) suggests that ‘Agut’ may be a mistranscription for ‘Montague’ or ‘Montacute’, and speculates this man might be Thomas Montacute, fourth Earl of Salisbury (1388– 1428). Pere Maça de Liçana i d’Alagó (†1448), was lord of Moixent, near

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they sang the litanies, and sprinkled me with holy water, and the prior opened the door and, in front of all present, spoke the following words to me: ‘See here the place that you wish to enter and go in to, but if you will heed me and take my advice, you will turn back from there, and amend your life in this world in some other way, for many men have gone in there and have never returned, and all have perished in body and soul because they had no firm belief in Jesus Christ, and so they could not endure the torments that are in that place. However, if you do wish to enter, I will tell you what you will find there.’ And then I told him that, with the help of God, I would enter there to purge my sins. And then he said to me: ‘I will not say anything about what the pit is like, for you can see it and you will find out, but in another place God will send you his messengers, who will show you everything that you must do. And they will depart at once and leave you all alone, and that is what has happened to all those who have entered before you.’ And then I took my leave of all who were there, and kissed them on the mouth, and commended myself to God, and went inside. And after me there entered a knight, called Sir William de Courcy, who was appointed chief steward, and his wife, principal lady-in-waiting, to the Queen of England,86 who was the daughter of the King Xàtiva, in the comarca of Costera in Valencia. For details of his life, see Martí de Riquer, Vida i aventures de don Pero Maça, Biblioteca Mínima, 10 (Barcelona: Quaderns Crema, 1984), reissued as Vida i aventures del cavaller valencià don Pero Maça, D’un dia a l’altre, 18 (Barcelona: Quaderns Crema, 2004). 86.  MyP: ‘Guilhem, senyor de Torsi’ (p. 149, line 550); T: ‘Guilhem, senhor de Corsi’ (p. 21, lines 452–53). A (fol. 27r [L’ingresso in Purgatorio]) adds: ‘lo cal era normant’ (who was a Norman). Observing that there has been ‘some uncertainty’ about his identity, Carpenter (‘The Pilgrim from Catalonia/Aragon’, p. 114, n. 50), notes that the husband of Isabelle de Lorraine, lady-in-waiting to Isabella of France, was

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of France.87 And he had fulfilled all the requirements for entering, those which had likewise been enjoined on me by the friars. And they sternly warned us not to speak to each other at all, and [reminded us of] the words and the dangers that had been so much spoken of concerning the various torments, and on account of which those who had entered there had perished and been lost. And so they did indeed sow doubts in my heart and mind, but the great desire I had to know about the state in which my lord the king found himself, and also to purge my sins, made me forget everything that was to come.88 Commending myself to the good prayers of these worthy gentlemen, I armed myself with faith and belief as best I could,89 blessed myself with the sign of the cross, commended myself to God, and entered into the Purgatory, and my companion after me. And at once the prior shut the door and together with his clergy made his way back to the church.

called Enguerrand and had died in February 1397. Mac an Bhaird (p. 12, n. 24) identifies him as William de Courcy (c. 1355/65–1399/1410), 4th Lord of Kinsale (in County Cork) (from 1387), whose wife was Margaret Peinnel. He notes that ‘By a patent dated January 1 1397 Richard II granted them an annual pension of £100 in consideration of their good services to him and his Queen Isabella’, and cites as his source, John Lodge, The Peerage of Ireland: or, A Genealogical History of the Present Nobility of that Kingdom, rev., enlarged and continued to the present time by Mervyn Archdall, 7 vols (Dublin: James Moore, 1789), VI, p. 148. 87.  Since MyP is clearly defective here (‘[…] e sa muller la maior dona, que fos en lo realme de Anglaterra, he ques filla del rey de Fransa’ (p. 149, lines 551–53) ([…] and his wife the principal lady, who was in the realm of England, and is the daughter of the King of France)), I follow T: ‘[…] e sa molher la major dama que fossen entorn la regina d’Englaterra, que era filha del rey de Franssa’ (p. 21, lines 451–55). 88.  T: ‘[…] me fazia oblidar tot so que endevenir me podia’ (p. 22, lines 464–65) ([…] made me forget about all that could happen to me). 89.  Here, and elsewhere (see note 98 below), Perellós (through his source text) appears to echo St Paul’s metaphor of spiritual armour: ‘Put on the full armour of God so as to be able to resist the devil’s tactics’ (Ephesians 6, 11).

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The Entrance to the Purgatory When I entered the pit, I found the far end at once, for it was only about two Montpellier ells in length,90 and at the end it twists a little to the left. And as soon as I got to the end, I felt with my hands to see if I could find an opening or a place that I could pass through, but I could not find any. It is true that, as I made my way forward, I could feel that the end [wall] of the pit was very weak, and it looked as if one could get through if one kept pressing against it. And then I sat down as comfortably as I could, and stayed in that position for more than an hour, thinking that there was nothing else there. It is true, indeed, that I began to sweat and was overtaken by great anguish of heart, as if I were seasick or at sea. And after a while, almost from sheer discomfort, I fell asleep due to the great anxiety that I had experienced. Afterwards, there came such a mighty clap of thunder that everyone in the monastery, both the canons and the others who had come with me, heard it as clearly as if it were a September thunderstorm. But the sky was clear, which everyone outside [the pit] considered to be a great wonder.91 And at that moment I fell down a distance

90.  MyP: ‘[…] doas canas de Monpeller’ (p. 152, lines 172–73): i.e. about three metres long. DCVB defines a cana as ‘Mida longitudinal que consta de vuit pams i equival aproximadament a un metre i seixanta centímetres. La cana de Tortosa es e deu esser de VIII palms e de una pollegada […]’ (A measure of length […] approximately equivalent to three metres and sixty centimetres). DCVB also notes one slightly longer local variant, the ‘cana de Tortosa’. 91.  T: […] sentiro ayssi coma si fos dels troneyres que se fan en estieu; e lo temps en que eram era yvern, en lo mes de dezembre, e era lo cel clar, de que totz aquels que lo ausiro agro grans meravilhas’ (pp. 22–23, lines 486–89) ([…] they heard something like the claps of thunder that come in summer; but the season that we were in was winter, in the month of December, and the sky was clear, which caused all those who heard it to wonder greatly).

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of about two ells.92 However, owing to the drowsiness caused by the anxiety that I had experienced, and because of the great thunder clap which had been so terrible that it had almost deafened me, I felt a little dazed. And after a short while, I groaned,93 and recited the words that the prior had taught me, which are: ‘Christe filii Dei vivi, miserere mei peccatori’.94 And then I saw the pit opened, and I made my way a good distance along it, and I lost my companion, for I could not see him, and did not know what had become of him. Then, all alone, I made my way through the pit, and the more I advanced the emptier and darker I found it,95 until I lost even the smallest glimmer of light. And when I had gone a little way, I entered a place that seemed to be the end, and here, just as the prior had told me, I found a room. And there was no more light there than that which people in the world speak of as the twilight between day and night on winter days.96 This room was not closed in at all, but had pillars and vaulted arches like the cloister of a monastery. And when I had paced up and down it quite a bit, I was filled with wonder at its form and the very fine workmanship that I saw there. And I went into 92.  T: ‘E en aquela hora ieu caziey, ayssi coma si cazes del cel; a mon avejayre casiey qualque dos canas de naut’ (p. 23, lines 489–91) (And at that moment I fell, as if I had fallen from the sky; as it seems to me, I fell some two ells in height). 93.  T: ‘[…], e a cap d’un pauc ieu revenguy […]’ (p. 23, line 494) (And after a short while, I came to […]). 94.  ‘O Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner’. 95.  Here, I follow T: ‘[…] tant plus anava avant, tant plus la trobava cava e scura’ (p. 23, lines 500–01). MyP reads: ‘[…] que tant pus anaua auant, tant pus la trobaue caua en scuretat’ (p. 151, lines 601–03) ([…] for the further I advanced, the more I found it hollow in darkness). 96.  T: ‘[…] e ela non avia autra clartat se non enayssi coma en lo mon es entre nuog e jorn en los jorns de yvern’ (p. 24, lines 505–7) ([…] and it had no more light than there is in the world between night and day in the days of winter).

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it and sat down. And I was filled with amazement at the great beauty and elegance of that most delightful room, and also at its curious form and design, for it seemed to me that I had never seen such a lovely room in any place that I had ever been. And when I had been sitting for a good while, twelve men came to me, all looking like members of a religious order and all dressed in white robes, and they all entered the room, and, as they arrived, greeted me with great humility. One of them seemed to be more important, almost like a prior, and this man spoke to me on behalf of all of the others, and he comforted me greatly, saying: ‘Blessed be God, who holds all things in his power, and who has set this good purpose in your heart. May he perfect in you the good thing that you have begun. And since you have come to this Purgatory on account of your sins, you should know that you need to show great courage in this enterprise, for if you did not, you would lose both body and soul on account of your wickedness. For as soon as we leave this room, it will fill with demons, who will band together to torment and threaten you, and, what is worse – if you are ready to believe them97 – will promise to bring you back safe and sound, and with no danger, to the door through which you came in, and so they will attack you in order to deceive you. And if you give in to them because of the great harm they inflict on you with their torments, or because of the fears that they will instil in you and the threats that they will make, you will perish in both body and soul. And if you believe firmly and place all your trust and faith in God, you will be freed from all the sins that you have committed, and you will see the torments that are prepared for sinners so that they may purge their sins, 97.  T: ‘[…] et te menassaran de far encara pietz’ (pp. 24–25, lines 528–29) ([…] and will threaten to do even worse things to you).

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and the peace in which the just shall find rest and delight. And be very careful to keep God always in mind, and when the demons torment you, always invoke the name of our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, for in that way you will always be delivered from all the torments to which you will be subjected. And with this, we commend you to God, for we can stay here no longer.’ And then, each one gave me his blessing, and they departed.

The Arrival of the Demons And I was left here all alone, clothed in the garment of the faith of Jesus Christ, and armed with all my strength and with great hope of achieving victory,98 with great contrition in my heart for all the sins that they might remind me of having committed, and having my whole mind and hope firmly fixed on God, humbly and devoutly begging him not to abandon me in such a very difficult and dangerous pass. And praying and beseeching in the same way, I asked him, in his mercy, which has never failed anyone who places their hope in him, to give me strength and power against my enemies. And so, as I was sitting all alone in that room, awaiting the great battle with the malignant spirits, suddenly, I heard a loud din, as if everyone in the whole world had assembled there to make a great uproar, all shouting at the very tops of their voices. I do not think that it would be possible to make a greater noise, and if I had not been protected by 98.  Once again (see note 89 above), we see an echo of the metaphor of spiritual clothing or armour used by St Paul in several of his epistles: ‘since every one of you that has been baptised has been clothed in Christ’ (Galatians 3, 27); ‘Let your armour be the Lord Jesus Christ’ (Romans 13, 14).

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Heaven’s power, and those good men had not forewarned me, I would have gone out of my mind. After that din came the vision of the devils, horrible demons, who crowded so thickly into every corner of that delightful and pleasant room that no one could count them. And I saw them in various ugly shapes and forms, and they greeted me, and stared at me, and said to me, as if in both flattery and reproach: ‘The other people in the world who are wise do not come here until they are dead. And so we must be truly grateful to you and proffer greater thanks and gratitude to you than to the others who do not come back.99 Since you have served [us] so very well and with such great diligence, you are coming here to undergo torment for the sins that you have committed and perpetrated, and for which you will have to endure great torments and sufferings with us. But seeing as you have served us so well, if you are prepared to take our advice and go back, we will leave you to continue living in the world, enjoying great happiness and pleasure for a long time yet. But if not, you will lose all the things that can help you and which are good and sweet for body and soul.’100 And they told me this in order to deceive me through threats and lies. But God gave me the courage to show them that I despised all of it. And I cared nothing for all their threats, and would never have gone away because of any one or the other of these things. On the contrary, I held firm and said nothing in reply. And when the demons saw that 99.  T: ‘[…] als autres que no retenen[m?]’ (p. 26, line 568) ([…] to the others whom we do not keep back). 100.  Here, I follow T: ‘[…] sino, tu perdras totas las causas que te poyran ajudar e esser bonas ni dossas al cors e a l’arma’ (p. 27, lines 574–75). MyP reads: ‘[…] las cosas quet puyran aiudar a esser bonas he dossas al cos he a la anima’ (p. 153, lines 687–89) ([…] the things that can help you to be […]); emphases added.

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I utterly despised them, they began to gnash their teeth at me, and all at once they made a great fire in the middle of the room, and bound my arms, legs and hands tightly, and then they threw me onto the fire. And, using iron hooks, they dragged me by the arms, and cried and howled to make me feel more afraid and terrify me all the more. But God, who had provided me with hope and strengthened me, did not allow me to forget his holy name or what the good gentlemen had taught me – that I should call on the name of God – and in this way I defended myself against their temptations.101 And after they had flung me onto the fire, as soon as I uttered the name of Jesus Christ, I was delivered, and the fire put out, so that not a single spark was left. And when I saw this, I took new heart and was much bolder than before, and resolved in my heart that I would never again be afraid of them, for I had defeated them by calling on God’s name.

The First Field And then the demons made a great roaring and rustling sound, and left the room, and made off in many different directions. But more than enough were left for me, and for a long time they led me through a barren land. And that land was very black and dark, and all that I saw there were evil spirits who dragged me through the middle of it. And a very strong wind blew there, but so very softly that one could scarcely hear it. Even so, it seemed to me that that wind blew right through my whole body and distressed me so much that I could no longer bear it. 101.  T: ‘[…] e en aquesta manieyra me deffendiey a lor assaut’ (p. 27, lines 566–69) ([…] and in this way I defended myself against their attack).

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And from there, those demons led me on towards the east, to where the sun rises on the longest days of summer. And when they had gone a little way, they brought me back to where the sun in winter rises on the shortest days of the year, and we came almost to the end of the world. And here I heard many people weeping, shouting, groaning and wailing so intensely and pitifully that I thought that great crowds from all over the world had gathered there to mourn. And when we moved on we could hear and see their terrible suffering more clearly. And we emerged from there into a great field filled with pain and suffering, and it was so long that I could not see where it ended. And here there were men and women of all sorts and conditions,102 lying completely naked and stretched out on the ground on their stomachs. And they were nailed to the ground with burning nails, and flaming dragons were lying on top of them, and they had nails piercing their feet and hands, and the dragons bit at them and plunged their teeth into the flesh of their bodies, as if intent on eating them. And because of the intense pain that those people were suffering, they bit the ground many times and cried out for mercy. But they found none,103 for the demons went shouting in amongst and over them, and tormenting and beating them most cruelly. And then the demons threatened me with that torment, and told me: ‘You will undergo similar torment if you do not make up your mind to heed our advice. And all we are asking of you is to leave off what you have set out on and undertaken and are to do, and that you turn back, for we will leave you outside the door through which you entered, and you will be able to depart with no harm done to you.’ 102.  T: ‘[…] de totas e diversas etatz’ (p. 28, lines 615–16) ([…] of all different ages). 103.  T: ‘[…] mas non y avia qui pietat ni merce ne agues’ (p. 29, line 623) ([…] but there was neither pity nor mercy there).

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But I did not deign to listen to them, and would not reply to them, for I thought that, just as Our Lord had delivered me from the other torments, so he would deliver me from that one. And when they saw this, they flung me down on the ground to drive nails through my hands and feet. And I called on the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, so that the demons were not able to do me any harm at all. Rather, I was delivered from the torment that was in that field.

The Second Field And then they led me to another field where there was more suffering than in the first. This field was full of different people of various kinds, and these people were nailed down with nails like the others, but [suffered] in another and different way, for these had serpents that bit into the veins and arteries of their necks, and plunged their heads into their bodies – in under their chests – and planted needles in their chests. And there were others who had burning toads and lizards on top of them, which, with long, sharp snouts, burrowed into the middle of their chests and drew their hearts out through their stomachs. And these people wailed as loudly as they could, which was very terrible indeed. And the demons went running among them, brutally beating and tormenting them. And that field was so long that one could not see the end of it, but I could see how wide it was, and afterwards the demons told me: ‘You will suffer this torment if you do not turn back.’ And I did not say a word, and when I would not do anything, they tried to torment and force me. But they could not, because of the name of Jesus Christ that I spoke, and I was immediately delivered from that danger.

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The Third Field But the demons led me to yet another field, where there were people for whom I could feel only great pain and great distress and pity in my heart, for there were so many of them that they could not be counted. They were lying on the ground on top of little, fiercely burning nails that pierced their whole bodies, so completely, that there was nowhere on their whole bodies, from heat to foot, where one could place the tip of one’s little finger, that was not pierced. And they wailed like people close to death, and only with great difficulty were they able to use their voices like the others.104 And a wind was blowing so fiercely that it tormented all of them when it touched them. And together with the torments, the demons that were here beat and tortured them so cruelly that no man alive could bear to see such suffering. Then, the demons said to me: ‘You will suffer these torments if you will not turn back.’ But I would not agree to this, and then they threw me down on the ground, and made to torture me like the others. But they could not do this, for I called on the name of Jesus Christ, and so I escaped.

104.  T (p. 31, footnote to line 666) cites the translation of the Tractatus Purgatorii Sancti Patricii by John Colgan (?1598–1658): ‘sed sicut homines, qui mort(u)i proximi sunt, ita utrinquo vocem emittebant; nudi et isti, sicut ceteri videbantur’ (emphasis added), which would suggest that this passage ought to end with: ‘and were naked like the others’. See John Colgan, Triadis Thaumaturgae, seu Divorum Patricii Columbae et Brigidae, trium Veteris et Majoris Scotiae, seu Hiberniae, Sanctorum Insulae, communium Patronorum Acta, Tomus Secundus Sacrarum ejusdem Insulae Antiquitatum (Louvain, 1647), as reproduced in Eduard Mall, ‘Zur Geschichte der Legende vom Purgatorium des heil. Patricius, I’, Romanische Forschungen, 6 (1891), 139–197 (p. 167).

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The Fourth Field And then they made a great effort to torment me in that third field, which was completely filled with fire.105 And then they lead me to another field that was full of fire (and in which there was every kind of fire) and full of the most terrifying, ferocious and cruel torments, and where there were so many people that they were numberless: some were hanging by their feet in burning chains of iron; others by the hands; others by the arms; and others by the legs. And the field where they were hanging burned beneath them in flames of sulphurous fire,106 and they roasted them on great red-hot gridirons. The others they roasted over the fire on great iron spits and, to baste them, drizzled over them drops of various red-hot metals which the demons melted over them. In this way, the demons tortured them with various torments, and no one could possibly begin to imagine or conceive of the torments that were there. And here I saw a good number of my companions – people whom I knew – and of my relations, male and female, including the king, Don John of Aragon, and Friar Francesc de Puig of Girona, from the house of Friars Minor in that city,107 and Na Dolça de Queralt, who was my niece, and

105.  T makes more sense here: ‘[…] e meneren me d’aquest ters camp en .I. autre camp, loqual era tot ple de fuoc’ (p. 32, lines 676–78) ([…] and they led me from that third field to another field, which was completely filled with fire). 106.  T: ‘[…] e avian los caps dejotz que cremavan en flama de solpre’ (p. 32, lines 682–83) ([…] and their heads hung down and burned in sulphurous flames). 107.  I.e. the Franciscans. Carpenter (‘The Journey of Ramon de Perellós’, p. 116, n. 53), citing Martí de Riquer, Història de la literatura catalana, rev. edn, 3 vols (Barcelona: Ariel, 1980), II, 323, notes that ‘in a letter to Perellós dated 6 January 1382, King John I asked for some books and added: ‘“… and send Frare Francesc dez Puig to us …”’.

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who was not dead when I left home, and of whose death I had no knowledge.108 All of them were in the way of salvation, but because of their sins they were here undergoing that pain. And the greatest pain my niece endured was on account of the paints and powders that she had used on her face while she was alive. And Friar Francesc, with whom I spoke, suffered the greatest pain on account of a nun whom he abducted from a convent, and he would have been damned if it were not for the great contrition he had for his sin, and the penance he did while he was [still] alive. And afterwards, I spoke at length with my lord, the king who, through the grace of God, was in the way of salvation. He did not wish to reveal the reason why he was suffering those pains. And I must say that, above all else, the kings and princes of this world should avoid committing injustice in order to please or show favour to anyone, male or female, or to others, whether men or women, [who happen to be] closer to the family from which they themselves come and are descended.109 I do not care to speak any further about this, except to give thanks to God that all of them are in the way of salvation. Please God that all people may be so, and may find themselves in that number, if they cannot do any better.110

108.  Perellós’s sister, Elionor, was the second wife of Dalmau de Queralt i Rocabertí († c. 1387), lord of Santa Coloma. In 1378/79, another sister, Clemència, married his son, Pere († c. 1408); see Ferrer i Mallol, ‘Noves dades’, p. 220. According to the genealogical table inset in Mco/AFE, ‘Queralt’, in the Gran enciclopèdia catalana ‹https://www. enciclopedia.cat›, Aldonça was the daughter of Dalmau and his first wife, Constança de Pinós, and, therefore, Perellós’s step-niece. 109.  For the reasons why Perellós’s contemporaries felt concern about the fate of the king’s soul, see Introduction, pp. 7–9. 110.  T: ‘Plassia a Dieu que siam en aquel nombre, se mielhs no podem’ (p. 33, lines 711–12) (Please God that we may all be in that number, if we cannot do any better).

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But if people in this world knew how sins are punished, they would let themselves be cut up into little scraps or tiny pieces rather than allow themselves to sin or think of any evil act or any wrongdoing whatsoever. For no one could even imagine or count the cries or the roars, or the vile things that are done to them, or the torments that they suffer. And the demons torment them every day, and make such an almighty din that it could not be any louder. Every one of them tried to torment me, but I called on the name of God, and because of that they were unable to harm me.

The Fifth Field After this, the demons led me into a large valley where there was a great wheel of burning fire, whose blades and spokes were covered in red-hot iron hooks. And from each hook there hung a soul. And that wheel hung down quite straight, one half of it downwards, and the other against the ground,111 where there was a fire as black as sulphur, and those who were hanging from that wheel were burning. And then the demons said to me: ‘You will undergo this pain, but before that we will show you what kind of torment this is.’ And then the demons positioned themselves on one side and the other, and pushed the wheel against each other,112 and they caused huge flames to come out from the middle 111.  Both MyP and T seem to be corrupt here. A seems to make more sense: ‘aquela roda era tota drecha, la meytat en aut, e l’autra meytat encontra la tera’ (fol. 31v [Quinto campo]) (that wheel was completely upright, one half of it [pointing] up, and the other down towards the ground). 112.  T: ‘E alavetz menero los demonis d’una part e d’autra la roda, (e fero) los us contra los autres’ (p. 34, lines 730–31) (And then the demons moved to one side and the other of the wheel, and pushed against each other).

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and all around the wheel, and they set it in motion and made it turn so rapidly113 that not one of those hanging on the wheel could see any of the others.114 Rather, because it was spinning so quickly, it seemed that there was nothing but fire. And the people hanging on that wheel wailed most pitifully. And then the demons took hold of me and threw me onto the wheel, and as I was spinning round I called on the name of Jesus Christ, and at once I was off the wheel and free from that danger and torment.

The Sixth Field From this great torment they led me to another, where there was a large house billowing with smoke like an oven or a furnace, and it was so long that I could not see the end. As the demons were dragging me through that place, and after I had gone a little way, I wanted to stop for a while, for I felt so hot that I could go no further. And the demons ordered me: ‘Why are you stopping? Whether you like it or not, this is a place to bathe in along with the [other] people bathing here.’ And when I saw it [the house] closer to,115 I heard people wailing and crying out in great distress. And when I went into that house, I saw that it was completely filled 113.  MyP is clearly corrupt here: ‘[…] he feran la tant solament rodar’ (p. 159, lines 873–74) ([…] and they made it turn so only [sic]). Therefore, I follow T: ‘[…] e fero la tan sobdament anar e rodar […]’ (p. 34, lines 733–34) ([…] and they made it move and turn so fast […]). 114.  T seems to make more sense here: ‘[…] negun non podia veser lahun [o] l’autre de totz aquels que penjavo a la dita roda’ (p. 34, lines 734–35) ([…] no one could distinguish one from another of all those hanging from the said wheel). 115.  T: ‘[…] e ieu vengui pres’ (p. 350, lines 750–51) ([…] and I came closer).

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with circular pits, which were so close together that one could not make one’s way between them. And each one of these pits was full of burning, molten metals. And here some people were being plunged into molten lead, others into boiling copper, others into iron (which, on account of the intensity of the fire and the great heat, looked like red wine), others into silver so hot and bubbling that it looked like clear water, and others into molten gold, so hot and bright that it was like the sun.

The Seventh Field Many kinds of people of different rank were undergoing great torments like this, and all were naked. All the kinds of torment that I had seen seemed as nothing in comparison with this one, for all those who were here seemed to be standing on tiptoe, and they all seemed to be looking towards a wind, the one, I think, called the tramuntana.116 And it looked as if they were waiting for death, and they were trembling in a very strange and violent way. And then I was filled with amazement, and one of the demons said to me: ‘You are wondering why these people are so very afraid, and what they are waiting for, but if you do not turn back, you will very soon find out.’ And scarcely had the demon said this, when there was a change in the wind, which carried off the demons, and me and all those people with it, into a cold, foulsmelling and very shallow river over towards the other side of the mountain. A great many people were weeping and complaining very pitifully of the cold and the stench, and when they tried to get out, the demons pushed them 116.  Tramuntana: a very cold wind coming from the north, from ‘across the mountains’.

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in even harder, and, filled with fear of the great torments, I began to call out to our Lord Jesus Christ, and so found myself out of the danger of that torment.

The Eighth Field After this, the demons took hold of me and led me towards the east, and I looked ahead of me and saw a huge flame, as foul-smelling as sulphur. And, as it seemed to me, that flame rose very high, and in it were men and women of different sorts, all burning and flying up into the air, as high as I could see, just like the sparks from a fire. And when the flame died down and got weaker, the people fell into the fire. And as we came closer, I thought that this was an oven or a well from which the flame issued. And then the demons said to me: ‘This well you see is the mouth of Hell where our dwelling place is. And since you have served us up to now, you will enter in there and stay with us for ever, for such are the wages of those who serve us. So, know that you will enter here, and perish in body and soul. And if you will heed our advice and turn back, we will take you to the outer door through which you entered without harming you.’ But I always had great and supreme trust in Our Lord, and utter contempt for their promise. And when they saw this, they seized me and threw me into the well, and the further down I fell, the wider I found it, and the more pain I felt, together with distress and great anguish, to the point that I almost thought that I would perish – so much so, that I thought that I was forgetting the name of God. And I called on Jesus Christ and on all his help in the midst of the very great anguish that I felt and the great suffering and torment which were, and are, present there. And so, since through his grace it pleased God not to abandon me,

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I invoked the name of Jesus Christ, and at once the force of the flame threw me out of the well and up into the air with the others, and I came down alongside the well,117 and here I remained for a good while, not knowing where I was or where I should go. And I was all alone, for I did not know where the demons had gone or what had become of those who had led me here.

The Ninth Field And then other demons emerged from the well and made straight for me, and said: ‘What are you doing here? Our companions have told you that that was the well of Hell, but they lied, for it is our habit to lie all the time, since we take pleasure in practising deception though lying. In truth, we deceive as many as we can. And so, this is not the well of Hell, but we will take you there and put you inside it.’ And they got up a great storm around me, and, saying this, led me far away. And from there we came to a very long, wide, foul-smelling river. And it seemed to me that it was all ablaze with fire and sulphurous flames, and packed full of demons. And the ones who had brought me there said: ‘You must go and cross over this bridge. As soon as you set foot on it, the wind in the [other] river will buffet you and hurl you into this river,118 and our companions who 117.  Since the sense of MyP (‘[…] la forsa de la flamma me gita fora del pou ab lo vent, e ab layre e ab los altres daualli de costa lo pou’; p. 161, lines 957–59) (the force of the flame threw me out of the well with the wind, and with the air and with the others I came down beside the well)) is unclear here, I follow T: ‘[…] la forssa de la flama me gitec foras del potz en l’ayre am los autres e devalec de pres lo potz’ (p. 38, lines 807–09). 118.  T: ‘[…] tantost, quant tu yssiras, lo ven que geta l’autre flum te buffara e te gitara en aquest’ (p. 39, lines 825–27) ([…] as soon as you

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are there will take you and plunge you into the deepest part of it. But you must keep crossing, looking ahead of you to see where the bridge leads.’ And there were three things about the bridge that inspire[d] great fear. The first was that it was narrow and covered with ice, and, even if it had been wide enough, one could scarcely keep one’s footing on it. The second thing was that it was so high that it was very fearful and terrible thing to look down at the ground. The third was that the wind blew so powerfully there that no one could imagine the great roaring that it made. Then they told me: ‘If you will heed us, you will escape from this torment, for this is the last one you will encounter.’ And then I recalled that Our Lord had protected and defended me, and, filled with great courage, I went up onto the bridge. The further I advanced along it, the broader I found it, and the more confidently I walked, for the bridge grew wider from one side to the other, so that two fully laden pack animals could easily pass along it. And the demons who had led me here stayed on the river bank, and when they saw that I was making my way along it so surefootedly, they wailed so loudly and in such a horrible and dreadful way that they terrified me all the more, and the horror of their cry filled me with greater dread than any fear caused by the torments that I had seen or heard or passed through. And I came off the bridge as easily as if no-one was there to prevent me. And when I had gone a good way farther on, I looked back at the river and the bridge that I had crossed, and at the demons, who had left me and who could no longer do me any harm.

set out on it, the wind that thrust [us into] the other river will blow on you and cast you into this one).

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I saw many things in that Purgatory,119 things that I was forbidden to speak of on pain of death, and which, God forbid, should ever be revealed through my mouth. Anyone who would ponder the sufferings and torments there would always keep them present within his heart, and the difficulties and sufferings of this world, or other illnesses, or poverty, would not trouble him at all. For all the torments of this world are like soft dewfalls compared to those.120 Nor would anyone take sensual pleasure in any of the delights of this world. And any person in religious orders who thinks aright and is subject to great penances,121 should consider how great the pains and torments of Hell and the pains and torments of Purgatory are. For it is a far easier thing to endure the sufferings of this world in both body and soul than the very many pains and sufferings that have to be endured and experienced in Purgatory, and even more so in Hell.

119.  Since MyP appears to be corrupt here (‘Mes totas coses vi en aquell purgatori’ (p. 163, lines 1009–1010) (I saw more all things in that Purgatory)), I follow T: ‘Motas causas vigui en aquest purgatori’ (pp. 40–41, lines 851–53). 120.  MyP includes a phrase which makes little sense and which has been omitted from the translation: ‘[…] car totz los turmens de aquest mon no son sino dolssas rosades de totz los mals que hi son al regart de aquells’ ([…] for all the torments of this world are but sweet dewfalls of all the evils that are there compared to those). T reads: ‘[…] quar totz los turmens d’aquest mon no so seno dossas rosadas e dos mel a regard d’aquels’ (p. 41, lines 859–60) (for all the torments of this world are but sweet dewfalls and sweet honey compared to those). 121.  In MyP, the religious are specifically female: ‘E [qui] be pensa de aquestas que son religioses […]’ (p. 163, pp. 1012–21). Cfr. T: ‘E qui be pensaria en aquestz. . aquels que son en relegio, e alsquals las religios son donadas, deven be pensar quais ni cossi son grans las penas d’yffern’ (p. 41, lines 862–64) (And anyone [of] those who are in religion, and to whom the rules of religious orders have been given, [and] who would think of these [the sufferings just mentioned], must consider well what, and how great, the pains of Hell are).

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Let us at all times pray to Our Lord that, in his divine mercy and great tenderness, he may grant and permit us to pass through the sufferings of Purgatory and come to the glory of Paradise [and] into the joy and bliss that will never pass away from us.122 And let us pray to Our Lord for our fathers and mothers and for all our good friends who have passed from this world to the next, and who are undergoing those torments, from which may it please Jesus Christ, in his grace and mercy, to release them. And may all those who pray, or give alms, or undertake other good works for the sake of those men or women who are experiencing those sufferings, be blessed by God and before his face, for that is the greatest necessity there can be, and having pity on those who are there the greatest act of charity that there can be.123 And this is a means whereby those who are tormented in Purgatory can find relief and be freed from their torments; although it is not so for those who have entered into the mouth of Hell.124 Now, let each one of us take care to do good and not evil, and to refrain from acting in such a way that would cause us to have to

122.  T: ‘[…] nos done e nos fassa gracia a passar e pervenir a la mot gran gloria e gaug de paradis’ (p. 41, lines 870–72) ([…] may he give and grant us the grace to pass and come into the very great glory and joy of Paradise). 123.  T: ‘[…] car aysso es lo plus gran besong que els ajo que nostre Senhor ne aja pietat, d’aquels que lay son, e caritat’ (p. 42, lines 878–80) ([…] for that this the greatest need that they have – that Our Lord have mercy on, and show charity to, those that are there). 124.  MyP is garbled and tautological here: ‘E asso es vna cosa per la qual aquells son turmentatz en purgatori per que sian aleugatz dels turmens e deliuratz’ (p. 164, lines 1042–44) (And this is a thing whereby they are tormented in Purgatory so that they may be relieved of the torments and delivered). I follow T: ‘E aysso es una causa per laqual aquels que son turmentats en purgatori son aleujatz e deliuratz dels turmens’ (p. 42, lines 880–82) (And that is something whereby those who are tormented in Purgatory are relieved and delivered from the torments).

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go to Hell, for there is no return from it and it is without end. And may that Lord who has all things in his power preserve all of us, men and women alike, from evil. Amen.

The Earthly Paradise And when I had crossed over [the bridge], I gave praise and thanks to God for the graces that he had given me, and for delivering me in this way from so many very cruel dangers. And in front of me I saw a great wall, very high, and of a marvellous and very strange kind, in which there was a gate that shone all over, for it was adorned with gold and covered in precious stones.125 And when I came closer to it – about two miles or more away – it opened, and such a great fragrance escaped from inside that it was as if spices were being toasted or roasted all over the world, or as if it was full of other sweet-smelling things. And this scent surpassed all others, so soft, so sweet and so pleasant did it seem to me. And here I recovered all my health and strength, and I had the sense that I had not experienced any harm, but rather everything good, with no pain or distress, and I completely forgot about all the bad things that had happened to me before. And so, standing before the gate, I looked, and I saw a great expanse of land, and it was brighter than the brightness of the sun, and I felt a very great desire to go inside. And before I entered, a great procession [of people] passed before me, so great and marvellous that I had never before seen the like. And they were carrying croziers and lighted candles and great palm fronds that seemed to be 125.  T: ‘E en aquel mur avia una porta que tota luzia d’aur e de peyras preciosas, e era clausa’ (p. 42, lines 890–92) (And in that wall there was a door that shone with gold and precious stones, and it was closed).

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made of gold.126 In the procession were men of great rank: a pope and cardinals and archbishops, monks and priests and a great number of other clerics, [according] as they are ordained for the service of God, just as they had been in this world, and many others. And [also] people of different appearance, each in accordance with the position they had occupied in this mortal life.127 And, similarly, a very fine company of ladies, by whom I was received with very great honour and with very great joy. And they led me in through the door with them, very sweetly singing a song the like of which I had never in my life heard before. And when they had been singing for a long while, what seemed to me to be two archbishops came and took me to their dwelling place and into their company. And they led me rejoicing through the middle of that land to see and behold the wonders that were there.128 And before they spoke with me they praised and blessed God for the way in which he had sustained my courage, and good and true faith, through which I had overcome the demons and escaped from so many torments. And then they led me through that whole land and showed me so many joyous, sweet and pleasant things that – so lovely was that land – I could not explain or describe or speak of them. And it seemed to me that all of this was like the sun when, in its great splendour, it has

126.  T: ‘e portero crotz’ (p. 43, lines 904–05) (and they carried crosses). Since MyP (‘grans robas de palmes’ (p. 165, lines 1072–73) (great garments of palm)) is clearly corrupt here, I follow T: ‘rams de palmas’ (p. 43, line 905). 127.  As emerges more clearly in T (‘e motas autras gens que avian autras formas e semblanssas’ (p. 43, lines 910–11) (and many other people who had different forms and appearances)), this would seem to be a reference to lay people. 128.  Since MyP (‘me menaren per lo mig daquella intrada’ (they led me through the middle of that entrance (p. 165, lines 1087–88)) is corrupt here, I follow T: ‘me menero per lo mieg d’aquela encontrada’ (p. 44, lines 917–18).

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utterly outshone the light [of a candle] when it is in the lantern. In just the same way, the sun [itself] seemed [much] less bright because of the brightness that I experienced there, which was so sweet and most soft and delightful.129 And that land and country was so wide that one could not see where any part of it came to an end. And it was full of bright green meadows and delicate plants set out in very harmonious order, and full of flowers adorned with different colours of the most beautifully soft and pleasing kind, along with delightful aromatic trees and fruits of every sort. And all of them of such great beauty and in such great quantity and abundance that I thought that one could very happily live there for ever and never die. And when one is there, it is impossible to feel any pain or discomfort, for the pure radiance coming from the sun in that place always shines very brightly.130 But the great crowd 129.  MyP appears to be corrupt here: ‘que tot asso fos com lo sol quant a morta lo lum duna part e daltre, cant es en la lanterna per la sua gran claredat, en ayssi hi fo lo sol ab menys poqua claror per la claretat que yo hi auia’ (p. 165, lines 1097–1011) (that all of this was like the sun when, because of its great brightness, it has extinguished the light on one side and the other, when [?] it is in the lantern, so the sun was here with less little light because of the brightness that I had here). In the translation, I have taken account of T, in which the basic meaning emerges more clearly: ‘e me semblava que enayssi coma lo solelh amortis e escantis lo lumh d’una petita candela en la terra per sa clartat, enayssi foc lo solelh scurizit per la clartat que ieu vezia mot dossa e gracioza’ (p. 44, lines 925–29) (and it seemed to me that, just as the sun, through its brightness, dims and blots out the light of a little candle on earth, so the sun was dimmed by the very sweet and pleasing brightness that I saw). Cfr. A: ‘E semblava a mi que enayssy coma lo solhel amorta per sa clardat una petita candelha en una lanterna, enayssy era lo solhel a respiegz d’aquela clardat, a ma semblansa, quar aquelha clardat era tan dossa e grassihoza’ (fol. 34r [Il Paradiso Terrestre]) (And it seemed to me that, just as the sun in its brightness blots out a little candle in a lantern, so, it seemed to me, was the sun with respect to that brightness, for that brightness was so sweet and delightful). 130.  Cfr. T: ‘E estant aqui non y avia ges de nuog, car la clartat depurada dels rachz del cel y relusia tostemps’ (p. 44, lines 934–35) (And

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of people that I saw there was so vast that I had never seen anything like it in this world. And they had the appearance of people in religion, just as they are in religious houses, each according to their order, and they were coming and going, one with another, just as they pleased, enjoying and disporting themselves, and celebrating with great joy as they praised and glorified the Creator. And just as one star is brighter than another, so were they. And they were dressed in clothes of gold and of green; others in white, others in red, according to the way in which they had served God in this world. And I recognised the appearance of the habits of the religious orders, for just as they were of different colours in this world, so, there, they had different degrees of brightness. And what looked completely golden in colour, and seemed to be the different colours of the clothes, were the colours of different degrees of glory and splendour.131 And there were some there who were crowned like kings. And it gave me very great pleasure to look at them and to hear all around the sweet songs that they sang. And there was so much sweetness there and such a beautiful scent that no human person experiencing that glory could imagine it, for there was nothing but joy and happiness as each one rejoiced in himself and in the others. And all those who looked at me praised and blessed God, and rejoiced anew over me, as if I had brought each one’s brother back from the dead. And in that place there is neither heat nor cold nor anything else that could harm or cause discomfort or give when one is here, there is no night at all, for the perfect brightness of the rays from heaven was always shining there). 131.  There is no mention of gold in T: ‘E aysso que semblava esser de diverssas colors de diverssas raubas ero colors de diverssas glorias e de clartatz’ (p. 48, lines 948–50) (And what looked like the different colours of different clothes were the colours of different degrees of glory and of brightness).

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pain to the human body. And that place is very pleasant and delightful indeed, for there is nothing there but joy and happiness and delight. And afterwards, I saw new things that I could not know or speak of in this world.132 And after I had heard the sweet songs and melodies, the two archbishops, who had led me in, then took me aside and said to me: ‘Our dear brother, now you have seen a part of what you wished to see, which is the joy and happiness of the just and the torment of sinners. Blessed be God who has made all things and redeemed us with his precious blood, and who inspired you with that good purpose, for you have passed through the torments that you have seen. And since, through his power and great grace, you have come to us, we say to you: know that what you have seen in this land is the earthly paradise, from which Adam, our first father, was cast out because of his sin; and from this came the suffering of the world.133 And from here he saw God and spoke with Him, and the company of the angels was with him.134 And because he did not keep God’s commandments, he lost the great heavenly delight of this place and the grace that God had given him, until, in his goodness, the Son of God took human flesh and accomplished our 132.  Cfr. T: ‘Pueys vigui de novelas causas que ieu no podia saber ni avia vist ni ausit dire en aquest setgle’ (p. 45, lines 960–62) (Then I saw new things that I could not have known nor had seen or heard spoken of in this world). 133.  The Earthly or Terrestrial Paradise was the Garden of Eden, the place of primal innocence and purity to which souls purified in Purgatory were thought to return before being admitted to the Celestial Paradise. It is the setting for Cantos 28–33 of Purgatorio in Dante’s Divina Commedia. 134.  Since MyP is garbled here (‘E de assi ell vehia Deu he parlaue ab ell e ab la companyha dels angels e stauem ambell’ (p. 167, lines 1159–61) (‘And from here he saw God and spoke with him and with the company of the angels and they were with him)), I follow T: ‘D’ayssi el vezia Dieu e parlava amb el, e la companhia dels angels estava amb el’ (p. 46, lines 975–76).

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redemption, through that faith we receive in baptism, by which we believe that there is a life other than the one into which we were born, and through his love and hope [?], just like Adam [?].135 And since, after our baptism, we were given over to the world and have committed many sins there, it is for that reason that we must come to Purgatory and pass through the midst of the sufferings that you have seen in that Purgatory through which you have come. And the penances that we are given before death do not take place in Purgatory, while the remainder are accomplished in Purgatory by undergoing the torments that correspond to what each person has done.136 And all of us who are here 135.  All three extant versions of the text are corrupt here, although to different degrees. MyP reads: ‘[…] per aquella [fe] que nos reheben al baptisme hon crehem que no hy a altra vida que aquella hon nosaltres forem natz, e per sa amor he speransa, ayssi com Adam […]’ (p. 167, lines 1166–69) ([…] through that faith that we receive in baptism whereby we believe that there is no other life than the one into which we were born, and through his love and hope, just as Adam […])). I follow T which, despite a lacuna, and the editors’ observation that ‘la phrase n’a pas de sens’ (p. 46, note to lines 982–83) is marginally clearer: ‘Per que en la fe que nos recebem al baptisme nos crezem que era autra vida que aquela, ont nos autres foram anatz, e per sa amor, e … esperanssa, ayssi coma Adam foc’ (pp. 46, lines 980–83) (For, through the faith that we receive at baptism we believe that there was a life other than this one into which we were born, and through his love … and hope, just as Adam was). In order to clarify how the text ought to have read, in their note on this passage, the editors of T ( Jeanroy and Vignaux) cite the Bamberg manuscript version of H. de Saltrey’s Tractatus, as edited in Mall, Zur Geschichte der Legende vom Purgatorium (p. 185a, lines 17–23): ‘Sed tamen per fidem domini nostri Ihesu Christi, quam in baptismate suscepimus, rediuimus ad hanc patriam. Vitam aliam esse credimus per spiritum sanctum; quam esse non potuimus scire, sicud [sic] ille, per experimentum’ (Yet, nevertheless, through the faith of Our Lord Jesus Christ, that we receive in Baptism, we return to that homeland. We know through the Holy Spirit that there is another life; for we could not know this, like him [Adam], through experience). 136.  T is much clearer (‘[…] e las penedenssas que nos recebem avans de la mort o a la mort, que nos non fazem pas en nostra vida,

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have been in Purgatory because of our sins, and, when they have been purged, all those whom you have seen in the torments through which you have passed will come to the place of rest where we are. And when others come, we must go out to meet them, as we have done with you, and guide them here. And of those who are purified in Purgatory, some spend longer there than others, and some not so long, and no one can know the time when he will emerge from it. But through the masses that are sung, and through the prayers and intercessions and alms offered on their behalf, they come out of torment or are in part relieved of it, until they are all completely freed – for no one of himself can know all this. Just as they have undergone the torments on account of their sins, so, in this way, we have a period of time to spend here which corresponds to the good things that we have done.137 And although we no[s] las avem acabadas en aquestz turmens, segon so que nos avem fach’ (p. 47, lines 987–90) ([…] and the penances that we receive before death, or at our death, and which we do not perform in our lifetime, we complete in these torments, in accordance with what we have done)), and corresponds more closely to the text of the Tractatus: ‘Penitentiam enim, quam ante mortem, uel in morte suscepimus et non perfecimus, in illis penalibus locis alij maiori, alii minori spacio temporis secundum quantitatem culparum tormenta luendo peregimus’ (Mall, Zur Geschichte der Legende vom Purgatorium, p. 185a, lines 28–34) (For the penances that we received before, or at, our death, and which we did not undertake, we complete by going through torments in those places of punishment for a greater or lesser period of time according to the number of our sins). 137.  MyP: ‘car nengu no pot saber de si tot asso, con ells suffiren los turmens per los peccats; he per asso nos en aquesta manera auem spasi de hy star segons los bens que auem feytz’ (p. 168, lines 1191–94) (for no one can know all of this of himself, how they suffer torments for their sins; and for that reason we have space in this way to remain here in accordance with the good things that we have done). Here, the translation is informed by the clearer syntax and sense of T (‘E, tot ayssi com els son, els sueffro los turmens per lors peccatz, e nos que em ayssi avem spasi de estar ayssi segon los bes que nos aurem faitz’ (p. 48, lines 1001–03)) which is closer to the text of the Tractatus: ‘Sicut enim in locis penalibus secundum quantitatem culparum percipiunt remorandi ita

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have been released from the fire of Purgatory, we are not worthy to enter Paradise. Yet, even so, we experience great joy and rest here, as you can see. And when it pleases God, we shall go to Paradise. And our company increases and decreases every day, as those who are in Purgatory come to us after they have been purified, and as some of us pass from the earthly to the celestial Paradise.’

The Gate of Heaven And after they had spoken to me like this for a long time, they led me to a great mountain and told me to look ahead and upwards to the sky. And I looked up, and they asked me what colour it was and how it seemed to me, and where [I thought] I was. And I replied that it looked to me like the colour of gold and silver that had just come out of the furnace. And then they said to me: ‘Know that what you see is the gate of Paradise, and everything that comes down from Paradise comes down to us, and that is how one goes to Paradise. And every day, for as long as we are here, Our Lord sends us manna from heaven, and you will discover what kind of food that is.’ And scarcely had they said this when a great brightness, just like a great flame of fire, came down from the sky, and it seemed to me that that great brightness covered all of that land, and that it came down in rays on those that were here, and likewise on my head, and in no time those rays entered our bodies. And then it seemed to me that I felt spacium, ita et qui hic sumus, secundum merita bona minus plusve huc demorandi spacium p[er]cepimus’ (Mall, Zur Geschichte der Legende vom Purgatorium, p. 187, lines 74–80) (For just as they understand that they must remain in the places of punishment for a period corresponding to the number of their sins, so, we who are here understand that we must spend more or less time according to the merits of our good deeds).

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such a great sweetness within me, in my heart [and in my body],138 and such intense pleasure, that I did not know if I was alive or dead. And then the two archbishops said to me: ‘This is the food of Paradise which is prepared ceaselessly for those who will go up from here to Heaven.’ I would willingly have stayed here if I could, but after [experiencing] these things, which were full of sweetness and joy for me, the archbishops told me some news that made me feel very sorry and much sadder now: ‘Now you have seen a part of what you sought and wished to see: that is, the torment of sinners and the glory of the saved. And so, you must leave and go back by the way you came. In accordance with what you do and how you behave in the world, and if you live in a more godly way, you may be sure of coming to us when you pass beyond the mortal world. And if, God forbid, you lead a bad life, you have seen clearly what torments would be prepared for you. And, as you make your way back, you will have no fear at all of the torments that you have seen in coming; they will not be able to harm you or dare to come near you,139 or do you any ill, or trouble you in any way.’ 138.  MyP: ‘[…] en mon corratge he en mon cor’ (p. 169, lines 1223–24) ([…] in my heart [inner being?] and in my heart). T seems to make more sense: ‘[…] en mon cor e en mon cors’ (p. 49, line 1027) ([…] in my heart and in my body), and to correspond more closely to the Tractatus: ‘sed tantam inde delectationem et suauitatem in corde et corpore sensit […]’ (Mall, Zur Geschichte der Legende vom Purgatorium, p. 188, lines 24–26) (but on that account felt such great delight and sweetness in his body and soul […]). 139.  In T, the subject of the second clause is the demons: ‘[…] ni los demonis que tu as vistes al venir, car els no se auzaran appropiar ni acostar de tu’ (p. 50, lines 1043–45) ([…] nor will [you have any fear of] the demons that you saw in coming, for they will not dare to approach or come near to you). Cfr the Tractatus: ‘In isto autem reditu, quo nunc redibis, nec demones, nec tormenta formidabis, quia demones non audebunt ad te accedere, nec tormenta, que vidisti, te poterunt ledere’ (Mall, Zur Geschichte der Legende vom Purgatorium, p. 189a, lines 11–17) (On the return journey that you will now undertake you will fear neither

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And having heard these words, and seeing that I had to leave this place, and their company, and return by the path and by the torments that I had passed through, I could not keep from crying and weeping when I saw that I must go back. And then, all in tears, I said to them: ‘I will not leave this place, for I am very much afraid that, if I do go back, I will do something in the world that will prevent me from coming here.’ And then they told me: ‘That will not be for you to decide, but will depend on the pleasure of the One who has created both you and us.’

Return from Purgatory And then I went back, weeping, to the gate, and they came with me. And I went out through it, although this was against my will. And they closed the gate after me, and I went back along the way that I had come, as far as the room, and when the demons met me they fled before me as if they were very afraid of me. And the torments could not hurt me or do me any harm right up to the moment I reached the room that I had first passed through. And the twelve men who had spoken to me as I was setting out came out to meet me, and loudly praised God for sustaining and keeping alive in me that great and holy resolve. And here came my companion whom I had not seen since I entered. He was greatly weakened by the tribulations that he had gone through and, by the grace of God, I helped him to come out. Then, they said to me:

the demons nor the torments, for the demons will not dare to come near you, nor will the torments that you witnessed be able to harm you).

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‘You are free of all the sins you have committed, and you must go back to the earth at daybreak,140 for if the prior or those who have come there to look for you do not find you at the door, they would be doubtful of your return and would go back.’ And then we blessed ourselves,141 and they blessed us, and we pressed on as quickly as we could, and advanced quite a long way without reaching the end or knowing where we were.142 And so, my companion and I were much alarmed and disturbed, thinking that we were shut in. And then the two of us started to pray devoutly to God, who had freed and delivered us from so many great dangers, to free and deliver us from this one, and so that we might not perish. Beleaguered as we were,143 and owing to the [effort of] prayer and the difficulties that we had endured, together with distress such as anyone can imagine, we fell asleep. And as we were sleeping, there came a great clap of thunder, although not as loud as the first one, and at once we woke up. And my companion and I were very afraid, and we found ourselves at the door through which we had entered the first pit. And as we were there, wondering where the people, who had set us inside and should be coming from the monastery to look for us, were,

140.  Here, I follow T: ‘t’en cove tornar […] en la terra’ (p. 51, lines 1067–68); MyP reads ‘te conue a tornar […] en ta terra’ (p. 170, line 1274) (you must return […] to your land). 141.  T: ‘E adonc nos senheren’ (p. 51, lines 1070–71) (And then they made the sign of the cross over us). 142.  T: ‘[…] e nos nos cochem lo plus tost que poguem, e venguem asses avan entro que trobem cap’ (p. 51, pp. 1071–73) ([…] and we made as much haste as we could, and advanced quite far until we found the end). 143.  Instead of ‘assetiatz’ (MyP, p. 171, line 1287) (lit. ‘besieged’), T reads: ‘assegutz per lo lassec’ (p. 51, lines 1077–78) (sitting down on account of the tiredness).

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they arrived at the door.144 And as soon as they had opened it, they saw us approaching and coming out. And we were welcomed with great joy and immediately brought to the church where we offered our prayers and thanks to God, as he had instructed us to do.

The Return Journey And leaving there, we returned, on our way, to King O’Neill, who received us very well and with great pleasure. And there I celebrated the feast of Christmas Day, when he held a great court in their manner, which, to those of us from these parts, seems extremely strange for someone of royal rank, even though he was accompanied by so many people.145 And I left there and returned to the land that the English hold in that island of Ireland, and on New Year’s Day we stayed with the Countess of March in one of her castles.146 And she received us most honourably and made us a generous gift of jewels.147 And everywhere 144.  Here I follow T: ‘[…] foro vengutz a la porta’ (p. 51, lines 1085–86); MyP reads: ‘[…] he forem a la porta’ (p. 171, lines 1296–97) ([…] and we went to the door). 145.  Here I follow T: ‘[…] com be que el agues am si grans gens’ (p. 52, lines 1095–96); MyP reads: ‘[…] cum be que aquell agues aysi gran gent’ (p. 171, lines 1306–07) ([…] even though he had so many people). 146.  Here I follow T: ‘[…] e forem y lo jorn de cap d’an am la comtessa de la Marcha en hun seu castel’ (p. 52, lines 1097–98); MyP is obviously corrupt: ‘[…] la terra dels angleses, que tenen en aquella ylla de Irlanda, es lo cap de Anglaterra; [e forem ab] la contessa de la Marcha […]’ (pp. 171–72, lines 1308–10) ([…] the land that the English hold in that island of Ireland, is the head of England; and we stayed with the Countess of March […]). Eleanor, Countess of March (†1405), was the daughter of Thomas Holland, Earl of Kent and half-brother of Richard II. 147.  The meaning of MyP is not entirely clear here: ‘[…] e nos dona de yuells competenment’ (p. 172, lines 1311–12) ([…] and generously [?] gave us jewels’); T reads: ‘[…] nos donec de sos dos’ (p. 52, line 1099) ([…] and gave us of her gifts).

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we went people did us great honour, showing us great devotion, seemingly because we had been delivered from those very great dangers. And – had I cared to reply – I was more eagerly questioned within the island than ever I was afterwards. The Earl of March had gone to England and, leaving there, we came down over the mountains to where we could take ship to cross over to England.148 And I was remarkably well received in that city by the noblemen and by the religious.149 And setting out from there, I crossed the sea, and we reached Wales at a port called Holyhead, and from there, after some further days of travel, we reached England, where I met the king in a town called Lilleshall where there is a very fine abbey of black monks, where the king was staying, and likewise the queen, and where I was extremely well received.150 And from there, in the course of several further days of travel, I crossed the island of 148.  T: ‘D’aqui partim e aribem a Daneli, ont me mezi en la mar per passar en Englaterra’ (p. 52, lines 1103–05) (We left here and arrived in Dublin [?], where I took ship to cross over to England). 149.  T: ‘E en aquela cieutat fory mot notablament reculhit per los gentils homes, e especialment per los regios [sic]’ (p. 52, lines 1105–07) (And in that city I was most remarkably well received by the noblemen, and especially by the religious). 150.  MyP: ‘Lo Quisiel’ (p. 172, line 1326); T: ‘Liquesiel’ (p. 52, line 1110); A: ‘Liquesiel’ (fol. 37r [Il viaggio di ritorno]). Mac an Bhaird (p. 26), without explanation, takes this to be Chester. As Carpenter (‘The Pilgrim from Catalonia/Aragon’, p. 118, n. 56) notes, several scholars believe it to be Lichfield. However, there was no ‘abbey of black monks’ (i.e. Benedictines) there. Carpenter also notes that J.H. Wylie (The Reign of Henry the Fifth (1413–1415) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914)) considered it to be the Abbey of Lilleshall in Shropshire. This seems a likely identification because there was an abbey of ‘black canons’ (i.e. Arrouasian Augustinians) there, and Richard II is recorded as having visited it, together with Queen Isabella, on 24–26 January 1398, on his way to attend the parliament in Shrewsbury; see M.J. Angold, G.C. Baugh and others, ‘Houses of Augustinian canons: Abbey of Lilleshall’, in A History of the County of Shropshire, vol. II, ed. by A.T. Gaydon and R.B. Pugh (London: Oxford University Press, 1973),

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England and, passing through London, reached the port of Dover, where I saw the head of Sir Gawain, for he died there, and also La Cote Male Taile, for so the knight who wore it was called.151 And they kept these in the castle on account of their great chivalry. And here I took ship and crossed over to Calais. And from there, after several further days of travel, I made my way through Picardy to the court of the King of France, whom I found in Paris, where he welcomed me most nobly because I had been his servant and chamberlain, as also of his father, who brought me up. And here, by order of the pope, I stayed some four months, and I went with him to the tournament hosted by the Emperor of Germany, who was then King of Bohemia.152 And the King of Navarre was there and several other dukes and great lords.153 And when the king had returned to Paris,

pp. 70–80, as cited in British History Online ‹http://www.british-history. ac.uk/vch/salop/vol2/pp70-80› [accessed 4 November 2020]. 151.  Sir Gawain was one of the Knights of the Round Table. In the Preface to his 1485 printing of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, William Caxton observes that ‘in the castle of Dover ye may see Gawain’s skull and Craddock’s mantle’; see Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte D’Arthur, ed. by Janet Cowen with an Introduction by John Lawlor, 2 vols (London: Penguin, 2006), vol. I, 4). In Book 9, Chapter 1 of Le Morte D’Arthur, Sir Kay gives the nickname of ‘La Cote Male Taile’ to Sir Breunor le Noire because he wears the tattered, ‘evil-shapen coat’ (vol. I, 381) that his father had been wearing when he was hacked to death. It seems that Craddock was a different figure whose story, also involving a cloak, was woven into Arthurian legend. According to Tiñena (ed.), Viatge al purgatori, p. 20, n. 12, Caradoc is a character in the late 12th-century Lai du mantel mautillé, who comes to King Arthur’s court with a cloak that will only fit ladies who are chaste. 152.  Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia (r. 1378–1419) and I of Germany (of the Romans) (r. 1376–1400), Elector of Brandenburg (r. 1373–78), Duke of Luxembourg (r. 1383–88). 153.  Charles III (‘the Noble’), of Navarre (r. 1387–1425). The tournament took place in the context of a meeting at Rheims on 22 March 1398 between Charles VI of France (accompanied by the Dukes of Berry and Bourbon) and Wenceslaus with the – unachieved – aim

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I took my leave of him and returned to Avignon and to the pope who received me with great honour. Now let us pray to Our Lord, who holds all things in his power, that through his holy grace and mercy he may permit us so to live in this world that we may be able to purge our sins so that, at the last, at the hour of our death, we may be able to escape the pains and torments that you have heard spoken of; and that we may, at the last, come to possess the good that will never perish. Let us pray God to keep us, and may it please all of you who will read this book written by my own hand to pray for me.154 Explicit liber beati Patricii de penis purgatorii. Deo gratias.155

of resolving the crisis of the Papal Schism by agreeing to call for the resignation of both the Avignon and Roman claimants to the papacy. 154.  T: ‘[…] e prego totz aquels que legiran aquest romans per my, Ramon, vescompte de Perilhos e de Roda. Amen’ (p. 54, lines 1135–37) ([…] and let all those who will read this romance [book written in the vernacular] pray for me, Ramon, Viscount of Perellós and of Roda. Amen). 155.  ‘Here ends the book of Blessed Patrick on the sufferings of Purgatory. Thanks be to God’.

Index

Agoult, Fouquet d’ ​57 Aragon ​7 Armagh ​64 Armagh, Archbishop of. See Colton Arms of the Christian ​78 Arthurian elements King of the Hundred Knights ​ 12, 61 La Cote Male Taile (Sir Breunor le Noire) ​ 12, 107 Relic of Sir Gawain ​12, 107 Avignon ​5, 6, 108 Bar, Duke of ​5 Benedict XIII, antipope ​4, 5, 6, 49, 57, 108 Berry, Jean, Duke of ​59 Boucicaut, Geoffrey ​6 Burgundy, Duke of ​59 Calais ​107 Calderón de la Barca, El purgatorio de San Patricio ​44 Canterbury ​59 Castide, Sir Henry. See Chrysted, Sir Henry Centelles, Bernat de ​6, 72 Charles III of Navarre ​107 Charles V of France ​3, 5, 49, 56 Charles VI of France ​5, 59, 60, 107 Chester ​60 Chiericati, Francesco ​17, 30, 38, 39 Chrysted, Sir Henry ​29, 34, 38 Clement VII, antipope ​4

Colton, John, Archbishop of Armagh ​6, 29, 30, 55, 62, 63 Companion, Perellós’s ​103–4 Courcy, Sir William de ​6, 25, 73 Cyprus ​4 Dante ​21, 22 De Lannoy, Guillebert ​17, 29, 39 Demons ​79, 80, 81, 83, 84, 86, 88, 89, 90, 103 Dover ​107 Drogheda ​62 Dublin ​23, 29, 40, 61 Dundalk ​64 Eleanor, countess of March ​105 England ​23, 59, 106 Perellós’s route ​59–61 Enio ​43 Ferdinand of Antequera ​7 France ​4, 5, 22, 49 Froissart, Jean ​29, 39 George, St ​12 Gerald of Wales, Topographia Hibernica ​27, 28, 33, 42 Gilbert, abbot of Basingwerk ​ 19–20 Granada, Kingdom ​4 Hawkwood, Sir Thomas ​6, 72 Heaney, Seamus, ‘Station Island’ ​ 18–19 Holyhead ​61, 106 Hugh of Saltrey, Tractatus Purgatorii sancti Patricii ​15, 19, 22–3, 43

110

Interpreters ​20, 62, 64 Latin ​67 Ireland Governance of ​30–40, 105 Perellós’s route ​25, 60 Irish Arms ​32, 34, 35, 65–6 Courage and warlike spirit ​32 Customs ​13, 26–40, 65–9 ‘Beasts’ according to St Patrick ​51 ‘The best and the most perfect’ ​40 Compared with Muslims. See Muslims Never called ‘savage’ by Perellós ​39 Diet ​32, 33, 34, 39, 54, 64, 67–8 Good looks ​32, 67 Language ​29 (un)dress ​32, 35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 66–7 Isabella of France, consort of Richard II ​61, 63, 73, 106 Jacobus de Varagine, Golden Legend ​20 James, St ​11 Jocelin of Furness ​15 Jofré de Santa Elena ​58 John I of Aragon ​4, 5, 84, 85 Character and interests ​8, 9, 85 Relationship with Perellós ​ 7–11, 22, 56, 58 John of Gaunt ​4 John of Ivry ​30, 62 Kavanagh, Patrick, ‘Lough Derg’ ​ 18–19 Lilleshall ​106 Lluna, Maria de ​9 London ​59 Lough Derg ​14, 15, 32, 52

Index

Luna, Violant ​7 Maça, Pere de ​6, 72 Man, Isle of ​61 Mandeville, John ​24 March, earl of. See Mortimer Marie de France, L’Espurgatoire Seint Patris ​20 Martin I of Aragon ​9 Marvels ​28, 39, 43, 49, 50, 94 McGrath ​70 Metge, Bernat ​10, 46 Millars ​56 Mortimer, Sir Roger (earl of March and earl of Ulster) ​ 5, 25, 29, 61, 63, 106 Muslims, compared with Irish ​ 39, 65–6, 69 Nicholas ​20 O’Neill, Niall Mór ​28 O’Neill, Niall Óg, lord of Tyrone ​ 24, 26, 29, 33, 34, 63, 64, 67, 105 Lack of hierarchy at his court ​ 37 O’Sullivan Beare, Philip, Historiae Catholicae Compendium ​ 41–2 Owein ​19, 20, 43 Oxford ​60 Paradise ​94–103 Brightness ​94, 95, 96 Food ​102 Gold and silver ​101 Tears of Perellós on leaving Paradise ​103 Paris ​6, 22–3, 59, 107 Patrick, St ​13, 21, 50, 51, 71 Pellicciaio, Jacopo di Mino del, ‘Purgatory’ ​20 Perellós ​47, 57 Perellós, Francesc de ​8 Perellós, Lluís de ​6, 13, 72

111

Index

Perellós, Ponç de ​8, 9, 58 Perellós, Ramon de Journey to St Patrick’s Purgatory Date ​1–2, 31, 44, 49 Motivations for Journey ​11 Chivalric spirit ​11 Discover state of John I’s soul ​58 Entertainment ​11, 13 Spiritual lesson ​11, 13 Life ​3–7 Viatge al Purgatori Afterlife ​41–6 Entertainment value ​11, 13 Historicity ​23–6 Spiritual lesson ​11, 13, 25 Style ​46 Transmission Editions Boretti ​45 Jeanroy and Vignaux ​ 45 Miquel y Planas ​45 Translations Castilian ​41 English ​41–2 Latin ​41 Provençal ​45 Witnesses Barcelona incunable 1486 (Catalan) ​ 45 Gers manuscript (Provençal) ​45 Toulouse manuscript (Provençal) ​45 Perellós, Ramon de (junior) ​6, 13, 72 Pérez Calvillo, Fernando, bishop of Tarazona ​58 Pérez de Montalbán, Juan, Vida y Purgatorio de San Patricio ​43 Peter IV of Aragon ​3, 4 Philip IV of Spain ​42

Pilgrimage and pilgrims ​15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 44 Polo, Marco ​24 Pròixida, Constança de ​8 Puig, Fr. Francesc de ​43, 84–5 Purgatory, concept of ​15–19, 99 Queralt, Dolça de ​43, 84–5 Religious practices Alms ​93, 100 Blessing ​78, 104 Confession ​63 Contrition ​85 Good works ​93 Invocation of Holy Name ​76, 78, 80, 82, 83, 86, 87, 89, 90 Litanies ​73 Masses ​100 Pity ​93 Prayer ​76, 93, 100, 104–5 Sign of the cross ​74 Way of salvation ​85 Richard II of England ​24, 28, 29, 59, 61, 63, 66, 106 Safe conduct for Perellós ​14 Roda ​47 Ros de Tàrrega, Ramon (trans.), Viatge del cavaller Owein al Purgatori de Sant Patrici ​20 St Patrick’s Purgatory ​14–25, 27, 75–94 Darkness ​25, 52, 76, 80 Lake ​52, 70 Noise of demons ​78, 86, 91 Weeping, shouting, moaning and wailing of souls ​81, 82, 83, 86, 87, 88 See also demons; torments Saints Island ​16 Station Island ​6, 13, 14, 16, 18, 44, 52 Superstition ​17

112

Talbot, John ​5, 62 Talbot, Thomas ​64 Termon Magrath ​31, 69, 70–1, 72 Torments Cold ​88 Dragons ​81 Fire ​80, 84 House billowing with smoke ​ 87 Wheel of fire ​86–7 Foul-smelling flames ​89 Foul-smelling river ​90 Gridirons ​84 Ice ​91 Nails ​81, 82, 83 Nakedness ​21, 81, 83, 88

Index

Red-hot metals ​84, 88 Serpents ​82 Well ​89–90 Wind ​83, 88, 90, 91 Urban VI pope ​4, 57 Vega, Lope de (attrib.) El mayor prodigio e El purgatorio en vida ​43 Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia and I of Germany ​107 Woodstock ​60 Yeats, W.B., ‘The Pilgrim’ ​ 18–19

Previous Barcino-Tamesis Volumes

Ausiàs March: Verse Translations of Thirty Poems Edited and translated by Robert Archer (Serie B: TEXTOS, 48) The Catalan Expedition to the East: from the Chronicle of Ramon Muntaner Introduced by J.N. Hillgarth Translated by Robert D. Hughes (Serie B: TEXTOS, 49) Francesc Eiximenis: An Anthology Introduced by Xavier Renedo and David Guixeras Translated by Robert D. Hughes (Serie B: TEXTOS, 50) The Book of Sent Soví: Medieval recipes from Catalonia Edited by Joan Santanach Translated by Robin Vogelzang (Serie B: TEXTOS, 51) Ramon Llull: A Contemporary Life Edited and translated by Anthony Bonner (Serie B: TEXTOS, 53) Bernat Metge: Book of Fortune and Prudence Introduced and translated by David Barnett (Serie B: TEXTOS, 55)

Isabel de Villena: Portraits of Holy Women: Selections from the Vita Christi Introduced by Joan Curbet Translated by Robert D. Hughes (Serie B: TEXTOS, 56) Cristòfol Despuig: Dialogues: A Catalan Renaissance Colloquy Set in the City of Tortosa Introduced by Enric Querol and Josep Solervicens Translated by Henry Ettinghausen (Serie B: TEXTOS, 57) Jacint Verdaguer: Mount Canigó: A Tale of Catalonia Introduced and translated by Ronald Puppo (Serie B: TEXTOS, 59) Ramon Llull: Romance of Evast and Blaquerna Introduced by Albert Soler and Joan Santanach Translated by Robert D. Hughes (Serie B: TEXTOS, 60) Ramon Llull: Doctrina pueril: A Primer for the Medieval World Introduced by Joan Santanach Translated by John Dagenais (Serie B: TEXTOS, 61)