St. Patrick's Purgatory

St. Patrick’s Purgatory is a cave on Station Island in Lough Derg, County Donegal, Ireland. It is a very old and well known pilgrimage site, despite its remoteness. The pilgrims’ journey to St. Patrick’s Purgatory is mentioned clearly in texts from as early as 1185 and shown on maps from all over Europe as early as the fifteenth century. It has long been famous as a penitential site, where pilgrims endured hardship to atone for their sins.

The earliest records for St. Patrick’s Purgatory predate the time when the Christian otherworld or afterlife included purgatory. Before the twelfth century, the otherworld comprised only heaven and hell. [Uhh, not even close.] The purgatory on Station Island was not an otherworldly purgatory, but, like most pilgrimage sites, it was an actual place where repentant Christians repaired to try to avoid hell in the otherworld.

Stories about this purgatorial cave are allegedly even more ancient than the surviving documents, and they are colored by the legends of saints and heroes. Over time these legends and descriptions of visions of, and journeys to, heaven and hell, which reportedly took place at Lough Derg, were conflated with the actual purgatorium to both create and reinforce a popular notion that St. Patrick’s Purgatory was an entrance to the otherworld — the world of heaven, hell and eventually an otherworld purgatory.

Italica Press

"Ichil thee conseyl, leve brother, As ichave don mani another That han ywent this way, That thou ben of gode creaunce, Certeyn and poure withouten dotaunce To God thi trewe fay; "For thou schalt se, when we ben ago, A thousend fendes and wele mo, To bring thee into pine. Ac loke wele, bise thee so, And thou anithing bi hem do, Thi soule thou schalt tine. "Have God in thine hert, And thenk opon His woundes smert, That He suffred thee fore. And bot thou do as Y thee telle, Bodi and soule thou gos to Helle, And evermore forlore.

I will counsel you, dear brother I have done have gone faith true; uncertainty true source of doctrine are gone fiends; many more pain But look well, ponder you so If; with them lose think; painful for you unless you go And [are] lost forever

- Sir Owain

Sir Owain is the story of the successful penitential visit of the sinful knight Sir Owain to Purgatory and the Earthly Paradise by way of "St. Patrick's Purgatory" on Lough Derg, County Donegal, Ireland.

Interested in more you could check out this:

This essential and widely used collection of visions of heaven and hell, the first in English, presents new translations of two visions and newly edited versions of previously translated ones. Describes the place of these works in medieval literature and provides a helpful resource for studying elements of medieval religion.

This collection of visions includes: St. Peter’s Apocalypse, St. Paul’s Apocalypse, St. Brendan’s Voyage, St. Patrick’s Purgatory, and the Visions of Furseus, Drythelm, Wetti, Charles the Fat, Tundale, the Monk of Evesham, and Thurkill.

Visions of Heaven & Hell Before Dante