Pars 7, Cap. 2
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/5/d/7/q/bon-brev-p7-c2
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### Chapter II. *On the things antecedent to the judgment, of which sort is purgatorial punishment.*

Next, in *particular*, concerning the state of the final judgment certain things are to be considered as *preambles*, certain as *concomitants*, certain as *consequents*. Now the preambles are two, namely *purgatorial punishment* and *ecclesiastical suffrages*.

First therefore, concerning *purgatorial punishments* this must be held: that the purgatorial fire is a corporeal fire, by which nevertheless the spirits of the just, who in this life have not fulfilled penance and condign satisfaction, are afflicted according to more and less, according as they have drawn with them out of this life more or less of what is combustible. — But they are afflicted less grievously than in hell, and more grievously than in this world; yet not so grievously but that they always hope and know that they are not in hell, although perhaps, because of the magnitude of the punishments, they sometimes do not advert to this. — And by this affliction inflicted by the corporeal fire the spirits are purged from their liabilities and from the dross and also from the relics of sins; and when these have been sufficiently expurgated, they immediately fly forth and are led into the glory of paradise

Now the reason for the understanding of the aforesaid is this: since the first principle, by this very fact that it is first, is the best and most perfect, and by this very fact that it is best, is supremely loving of the good and supremely detesting of evil; just as the highest goodness does not suffer that *the good* remain unrewarded, so neither ought it to suffer that *evil* remain unpunished. Since therefore just men sometimes depart who have not wholly fulfilled penance in this life; since the merit of eternal life cannot remain unrewarded in them, and the vice of fault cannot remain unpunished, lest the beauty of the order of the universe be disturbed: it is necessary that they themselves be finally rewarded; it is necessary also that the same be temporally punished according to the requirement of their faults and their liability. — And because the fault committed was *offensive* of the divine majesty and *damaging* to the Church and *deformative* of the divine image impressed upon our mind, most of all if it was a mortal fault, and the venial also disposes to this; and for the *offense* punishment is required, for the *damage* satisfaction must be made, and for the *deformation* expurgation must be sought: hence it is that it is necessary that that punishment be justly *punitive*, worthily *satisfactory* and sufficiently *expurgative*.

First therefore, since that punishment ought to be justly *punitive*; and the spirit which, having despised the eternal and highest good, subjected itself to the lowest, justly ought to be subjected to lower things, so that it may receive punishment from those by occasion of which it perpetrated the fault, and by reason of which it both despised God and made itself vile: hence it is that the order of divine justice requires that the spirit have to be punished by *material fire*; so that, just as according to the order of nature the soul is united to the *body* that it may pour in life, so it may be united to *material fire* according to the order of justice as the punishable to that which punishes, from which it may receive punishment. — And because just men who are in grace are not deserving save of a transitory punishment; and they are deserving of so much the greater punishment as they have committed the greater sins and done the lesser penance: hence it is that by the material fire they are punished *temporally*, some however longer, some indeed more briefly, some more bitterly, some more lightly, according as the liability of their offenses requires. « For it is necessary, as the excellent doctor Augustine says, that the pain burn as much as the love had clung ». For so much the more difficultly is one

purged, as the love of worldly things had clung the more intimately to the marrow of his heart.

Further, since that punishment ought to be *satisfactory*; and satisfaction regards the freedom of the will and the state of the way; especially since there is there no longer the state of meriting, and those punishments in no way hold the character of the voluntary: it is necessary that what is lacking on the part of *freedom* in the will that undergoes them be supplied in the *bitterness* on the part of the punishment. — But because those who are purged have grace, which indeed they can no longer lose; hence it is that they can neither be utterly absorbed by sadness nor fall into despair, nor can they nor will they in any way break out into blasphemy; and through this, although they are grievously punished, yet it is far otherwise and more mildly than in hell; and they know without doubt that that state also is other than this, in which are those who in hell are tormented beyond remedy.

Lastly, because that punishment ought to be *expurgatory*; and that purgation is spiritual: it is necessary either that that fire have a spiritual power divinely given to it, or, as I rather believe, that the very power of the grace dwelling within, aided by the extrinsic punishment, purge with a *sufficient purgation* the soul itself, now punished for its offenses and lightened of the burden of its liabilities, so that no unlikeness to glory any longer remain. — And since such spirits are disposed in the highest degree to receive in themselves the deiformity of glory; when the gate is open and the purgation consummated, it is necessary that those spirits fly forth, in whom is the fire of charity lifting them upward, and nothing retarding them on the part of the soul's impurity or of liability. For it does not befit the divine mercy or justice to defer glory any longer, when it finds a fit receptacle, and there is great punishment in the deferring of rewards, nor ought a spirit already purged to be punished any longer.

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