unique example of this class of mediaeval Latin literature. Among the fictions
that may be compared with them we may mention "The Voyage of St. Brendan,"

"The Vision of Albericus," and "St. Patrick's Purgatory," imaginary
descriptions, like Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy," of the supposed abode of

the dead. The narrative of Marbodius is one of the latest works dealing with
this theme, but it is not the least singular.

THE DESCENT OF MARBODIUS INTO HELL
In the fourteen hundred and fifty-third year of the incarnation of the Son of

God, a few days before the enemies of the Cross entered the city of Helena and
the great Constantine, it was given to me, Brother Marbodius, an unworthy

monk, to see and to hear what none had hitherto seen or heard. I have composed
a faithfulnarrative of those things so that their memory may not perish with

me, for man's time is short.
On the first day of May in the aforesaid year, at the hour of vespers, I was

seated in the Abbey of Corrigan on a stone in the cloisters and, as my custom
was, I read the verses of the poet whom I love best of all, Virgil, who has

sung of the labours: of the field, of shepherds, and of heroes. Evening was
hanging its purple folds from the arches of the cloisters and in a voice of

emotion I was murmuring the verses which describe how Dido, the Phoenician
queen, wanders with her ever-bleeding wound beneath the myrtles of hell. At

that moment Brother Hilary happened to pass by, followed by Brother Jacinth,
the porter.

Brought up in the barbarous ages before the resurrection of the Muses, Brother
Hilary has not been initiated into the wisdom of the ancients; nevertheless,

the poetry of the Mantuan has, like a subtle torch, shed some gleams of light
into his understanding.

"Brother Marbodius," he asked me, "do those verses that you utter with
swelling breast and sparkling eyes--do they belong to that great 'Aeneid' from

which morning or evening your glances are never withheld?"
I answered that I was reading in Virgil how the son of Anchises perceived Dido

like a moon behind the foliage.*
* The text runs

. . .qualem primo qui syrgere mense
Aut videt aut vidisse putat per nubila lunam.

Brother Marbodius, by a strange misunderstanding, substitutes an entirely
different image for the one created by the poet.

"Brother Marbodius," he replied, "I am certain that on all occasions Virgil
gives expression to wise maxims and profound thoughts. But the songs that he

modulates on his Syracusan flute hold such a lofty meaning and such exalted
doctrine that I am continually puzzled by them."

"Take care, father," cried Brother Jacinth, in an agitated voice. "Virgil was
a magician who wrought marvels by the help of demons. It is thus he pierced

through a mountain near Naples and fashioned a bronze horse that had power to
heal all the diseases of horses. He was a necromancer, and there is still

shown, in a certain town in Italy, the mirror in which he made the dead
appear. And yet a woman deceived this great sorcerer. A Neapolitan courtesan

invited him to hoist himself up to her window in the basket that was used to
bring the provisions, and she left him all night suspended between two

storeys."
Brother Hilary did not appear to hear these observations.

"Virgil is a prophet," he replied, "and a prophet who leaves far behind him
the sibyls with their sacred verses as well as the daughter of King Priam, and

that great diviner of future things, Plato of Athens. You will find in the
fourth of his Syracusan cantos the birth of our Lord foretold in a lancune

that seems of heaven rather than of earth.* In the time of my early studies,
when I read for the first time JAM REDIT ET VIRGO, I felt myself bathed in an

infinite delight, but I immediately experiencedintense grief at the thought
that, for ever deprived of the presence of God, the author of this prophetic

verse, the noblest that has come from human lips, was pining among the heathen
in eternal darkness. This cruel thought did not leave me. It pursued me even

in my studies, my prayers, my meditations, and my ascetic labours. Thinkin
that Virgil was deprived of the sight of God and that possibly he might even

be suffering the fate of the reprobate in hell, I could neither enjoy peace
nor rest, and I went so far as to exclaim several times a day with my arms

outstretched to heaven:
" 'Reveal to me, O Lord, the lot thou hast assigned to him who sang on earth

as the angels sing in heaven!'
*Three centuries before the epoch in which our Marbodius lived the words--

Maro, vates gentilium
Da Christo testimonium

Were sung in the churches on Christmas Day.
"After some years my anguish ceased when I read in an old book that the great

apostle St. Paul, who called the Gentiles into the Church of Christ, went to
Naples and sanctified with his tears the tomb of the prince of poets.* This

was some ground for believing that Virgil, like the Emperor Trajan, was
admitted to Paradise because even in error he had a presentiment of the truth.

We are not compelled to believe it, but I can easily persuade myself that it
is true."

*Ad maronis mausoleum
Ductus, fudit super eum

Piae rorem lacrymae.
Quem te, intuit, reddidissem,

Si te vivum invenissem
Poetarum maxime!

Having thus spoken, old Hilary wished me the peace of a holy night and went
away with Brother Jacinth.

I resumed the delightful study of my poet. Book in hand, I meditated upon the
way in which those whom Love destroys with its cruel maladywander through the

secret paths in the depth of the myrtle forest, and, as I meditated, the
quivering reflections of the stars came and mingled with those of the leafless

eglantines in the waters of the cloisterfountain. Suddenly the lights and the
perfumes and the stillness of the sky were overwhelmed, a fierce Northwind

charged with storm and darkness burst roaring upon me. It lifted me up and
carried me like a wisp of straw over fields, cities, rivers, and mountains,

and through the midst of thunder-clouds, during a long night composed of a
whole series of nights and days. And when, after this prolonged and cruel

rage, the hurricane was at last stilled, I found myself far from my native
land at the bottom of a valley bordered by cypress trees. Then a woman of wild

beauty, trailing long garments behind her, approached me. She placed her left
hand on my shoulder, and, pointing her right arm to an oak with thick foliage:

"Look!" said she to me.
Immediately I recognised the Sibyl who guards the sacred wood of Avernus, and

I discerned the fair Proserpine's beautiful golden twig amongst the tufted
boughs of the tree to which her finger pointed.

"O prophetic Virgin," I exclaimed, "thou hast comprehended my desire and thou
hast satisfied it in this way. Thou hast revealed to me the tree that bears

the shining twig without which none can enter alive into the dwelling-place of
the dead. And in truth, eagerly did I long to converse with the shade of

Virgil."
Having said this, I snatched the golden branch from its ancient trunk and I

advanced without fear into the smoking gulf that leads to the miry banks of
the Styx, upon which the shades are tossed about like dead leaves. At sight of

the branch dedicated to Proserpine, Charon took me in his bark, which groaned
beneath my weight, and I alighted on the shores of the dead, and was greeted

by the mute baying of the threefold Cerberus. I pretended to throw the shade
of a stone at him, and the vain monster fled into his cave. There, amidst the

rushes, wandered the souls of those children whose eyes had but opened and
shut to the kindly light of day, and there in a gloomycavern Minos judges

men. I penetrated into the myrtle wood in which the victims of love wander
languishing, Phaedra, Procris, the sad Eriphyle, Evadne, Pasiphae, Laodamia,

and Cenis, and the Phoenician Dido. Then I went through the dusty plains
reserved for famous warriors. Beyond them open two ways. That to the left

leads to Tartarus, the abode of the wicked. I took that to the right, which
leads to Elysium and to the dwellings of Dis. Having hung the sacred branch at

the goddess's door, I reached pleasant fields flooded with purple light. The
shades of philosophers and poets hold grave converse there. The Graces and the

Muses formed sprightly choirs upon the grass. Old Homer sang, accompanying
himself upon his rustic lyre. His eyes were closed, but divine images shone

upon his lips. I saw Solon, Democritus, and Pythagoras watching the games of
the young men in the meadow, and, through the foliage of an ancient laurel, I

perceived also Hesiod, Orpheus, the melancholy Euripides, and the masculine
Sappho. I passed and recognised, as they sat on the bank of a fresh rivulet,

the poet Horace, Varius, Gallus, and Lycoris. A little apart, leaning against
the trunk of a dark holm-oak, Virgil was gazing pensively at the grove. Of

lofty stature, though spare, he still preserved that swarthycomplexion, that
rustic air, that negligent bearing, and unpolished appearance which during his