ABSTRACT
I. THE belief in the immortality of the soul and the natural desire of man to lift the veil shrouding the mysteries of the after-life appear to have been the psychological motives that inspired the authors of the many legends, popular throughout medireval Christian Europe, the main theme of which is the picturesque description of a fantastic journey to the realms beyond the grave. These are the legends that, in the opinion of the scholars, provided Dante with the raw material for his poem.! Accordingly, they have been collected and analysed with scrupulous care by the leading critics, who, needless to add, consider them to be of purely Christian origin, either the spontaneous outcome of popular imagination or the result of centuries of monastic learning embellished by the artistic fancy of the troubadour.s The main centre from which these legends radiated over Europe appears indeed to have been the monasteries of Ireland. But it is interesting to note the marked difference between the legends that appeared before and those that appeared after the eleventh century. The monastic tales prior to that century are so poor in material and inartistic in treatment, the scenes representing the future life of the soul so trivial and at times coarse that, even had Dante known of their existence, they could scarcely have served as models for his work. This is
admitted by D'Ancona himself. Later on, however, fresh tales appear, revealing a more fertile imagination and greater refinement on the part of the authors. These D' ...Ancona calls tt veri abbozzi e prenunziamenti del poema dantesco."l
2. How is this sudden change in the development of the eschatological theme in Western Christian literature to be accounted for? The hypothesis of the influence of elements, foreign to Western culture but adaptable thereto-inasmuch as their origin may in the end be traced back to the same early Christian stock-would not appear to be extravagant. Graf has observed that many particulars of the universal myth of paradise, although omitted from the Biblical narrative, reappear in these Christian legends; and he adds significantly that it is not known whence they came nor by what means they were transmitted.2 Yet Graf made most methodical use of all the sources available to modem European erudition. The eschatological literature of Islam alone seems to have escaped the attention of this keen critic, for the Arabic texts, when not translated into some European tongue, were as a sealed book to him. In the following pages an attempt will be made to fill this gap by examining the Moslem legends for evidence of poetic features that may have influenced the Christian legends and thus explain their remarkable efflorescence in the eleventh century.
