ABSTRACT
In a letter to the abbess Eadburga in 716, Boniface described a monk’s vision of the afterlife. The monk had seen the souls of sinners slipping into fiery pitch, from which they were finally able to scramble out. He was told by his angel guide, “These are the souls, which having left this mortal life with some trifling sins not quite removed, needed kindly chastisement (castigatione) from a merciful God that they might be a worthy offering to him.”1 That this terrible violence against the body was considered a purification for the soul and evidence of kindly treatment by a “merciful” God prompts a number of questions about how Christian writers of Late Antiquity understood the role of violence in God’s justice and the limits and quality of divine mercy. How did pain in the afterlife contribute to purification? How was God’s role in the violence of the afterlife understood? And how far did God’s mercy extend?
