Introduction

Summary

In the winter of 1397, the Catalan nobleman, Viscount Ramon de Perellós, travelled to Ireland with the aim of entering the underground cavern on Station Island in Lough Derg (in the modern county of Donegal) known as St Patrick's Purgatory and famous throughout medieval Europe as a gateway to the next world. His stated reason for undertaking the journey was to ascertain if the soul of his recently deceased master and friend, King John I of Aragon, was, if not in Heaven, at least in Purgatory, and so ‘in the way of salvation’. Setting off from the papal palace in Avignon on 8 September, he travelled to Paris, crossed from Calais to Dover, and, having passed through Canterbury and London, spent ten days near Oxford as the guest of King Richard II of England, who supplied him with a letter of safe conduct. He then made his way to Chester and, in time honoured fashion, took ship from Holyhead to Dublin, stopping off on the way at the Isle of Man. Once in Ireland, he travelled northwards through Drogheda and Dundalk, traversed Ulster and spent Christmas with Niall Óg O’Neill, lord of Tyrone and effectively king of Ulster, before reaching Lough Derg in the far north-west. While enclosed for twentyfour hours in the underground cave, he claimed to have witnessed the different kinds of suffering undergone in nine distinct fields or zones by the souls in Purgatory, briefly entered the mouth of Hell, been welcomed into the Earthly Paradise and, from there, to have been afforded a glimpse of the Heavenly Jerusalem. Most importantly, in the fourth field of Purgatory, he encountered the soul of King John along with those of a niece (of whose death he had been unaware when he set out for Ireland), and of a Franciscan friar of his acquaintance. With his mission successfully completed, he returned by the way he had come, and by March of 1398 had already resumed his diplomatic activities in France.

The Viatge al Purgatori, translated here, is Perellós's account of his journey in both the earthly and the supernatural realms. It is important to point out, however, that only the passages that deal with the former are original.