Talk:Tractatus de Purgatorio Sancti Patricii

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"It was read and adapted long after official Church teaching rejected several beliefs that feature prominently in it (e.g. the idea of the existence of the earthly paradise)."

Um. What?

'The earthly paradise' is just a name for the Garden of Eden. The fact that the Catholic Church does not dogmatically teach a literal interpretation of Genesis does NOT mean that the Church has officially rejected such an interpretation. There is nothing in Catholic dogma or doctrine that would preclude a literal belief in a physical Garden of Eden!

As for the medieval idea of the earthly paradise as a middle-state between Purgatory and Heaven (as also used by Dante in the Purgatorio)... it is certainly not written about now, but to my knowledge it has not been actually rejected officially. The Church dogmatically defines very little about Purgatory; certainly no 'geography' of it! 128.194.250.45 (talk) 10:28, 8 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's badly phrased. The point is that the Tractatus uses a fourfold division of the afterlife (hell, purgatory, the earthly paradise and heaven) rather than the, increasingly conventional, threefold division (hell, purgatory, heaven). This facet of the text was criticised in the period by Vincent of Beauvais among others. Thanks for pointing this out, and I'll try to clarify things. ANB (talk) 17:42, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]