“He Doubted That These Things Actually Happened”: Knowing the Otherworld in theTractatus De Purgatorio Sancti Patricii

Abstract

[Extract] The twelfth-century account of the Irish knight Owein’s descent into the otherworld through St. Patrick’s Purgatory, the Tractatus de Purgatorio sancti Patricii, distinguishes itself from many other contemporary visions by its insistence upon the embodied experience of its visionary protagonist and the epistemic value of that embodiment. In most contemporary accounts of voyages to the afterlife, visionaries traveled in spirit or saw the sights of the otherworld within their own minds. In contrast, Owein claimed he reached the afterlife differently, literally walking into it through a cave in northern Ireland.1 He then saw the otherworld “with his own bodily eyes” and endured the torments there in his own flesh.

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