 
 
Always, Purgatory has attracted to its intermediate realm condition: is inside you "plays" in heaven. Born from a paradox, invented by two Greek theologians, Clement of Alexandria and Origen, Purgatory was brought in the wake of the Christian tradition from two giants of Christianity, Augustine and Gregory the great. Until the year 1000, don't you ever conceived of purgatory as a noun (Purgatory), but as an adjective (is Purgatory): It was regarded as a purgatory type fire, that purgava and he cleaned the souls allowing them to ascend to Heaven, or even if their guilt was so serious, to fall to hell. Points were only ever two: Heaven and hell. This duality was the common way of thinking of the medieval society, that everything was duale: good and evil, servants and masters, Pope and Emperor, life and death, Heaven and hell. In the transition from low to high middle ages, society evolves towards forms of thought is no longer duals, but ternary: arise within the company the third orders (There are those who pray, There are those who fight and those who are working). If the feudal world had seen a rigid opposition between servants and masters, between Lords and vassals, now comes a third class, that bourgeois, that settles in the cities; not only, in ecclesiastical circles take the field the third orders, not just secular priests and monks, But even the Mendicant Friars. It evolves as well, therefore also the vision of the afterlife: Paradise, Hell and loci purgatori. There shall be directed toward the belief that the souls, that is not so good to have you deserve heaven, but not even so bad from falling into hell, must be purged somewhere, Yes, but where? Purgatory is conceived as an extension of hell, as an upper floor of the Hells. Was Dante to snatch the Purgatory from the clutches of Satan to bring him back to paradise. The Tuscan poet introduced us purgatory as a real place, determined, evident, represented by a circular mountain composed of seven layers, regions and kingdoms in which souls are the seven deadly sins. The ascent of the mountain by Virgil and Dante is an ascent to heaven, to God: as you reach the top the soul is purged, becoming so lightweight you can ascend to heaven. Despite the pains of purgatory are so harsh, to be almost infernal, the soul endures because looking up sees the light, see the face of God. The soul reaches its perfection, rediscovering the item that was absent in Purgatory, love. This is the great invention of Dante: If hell is a place of pain, Heaven is a place of love, purgatory is a place of hope not only for the dead souls in the afterlife, but especially for the living of the afterlife because they can live their lives without feeling always looming on the burden of sin and with knowledge of a hope of salvation after death. Like Dante could think of all this? Simply, thinking as she thought God: Jesus dying on the cross gave hope to the thief crucified next to him: "Today you will be with me in Paradise".
Roberto Rossetti