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Salve,
i have no idea were to put this, so...
I was reading the divine comedy by Dante and in this book he puts the soul of emperor Trajan in heaven (in the heaven of Jupiter - the spirits filled with justice).
Apparantly Trajan was first put into limbo as a noble pagan but pope Gregory the great so admired Trajan's love of justice (he punished the killers of the woman's innocent son) and his humility that Gregory prayed for Trajan's soul - after which Trajan came back to life so he could embrace the Christian faith and thereby reap his heavenly rewards!
Has anybody heard of this story before?
gr,
Jeroen Pelgrom
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Yes, i read that once. I think that medieval christians had a very favorable view of Trajan by his answers to the letters of Pliny (when he said that no christian should be persecuted by being a christian, but only if they commited some crime).
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The story is told in Purgatorio 10.76 ff: Trajan had helped a poor widow, and pope Gregory had, therefore, prayed that the emperor would be allowed to go to heaven. The story appears to have been popular; Aquinas reportedly tells it on several places.
Jona Lendering
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Trajan is a very common "folk hero" of the Middle Ages, as an example of a righteous king. He therefore shows up in a lot of literary and artistic examples. That is also the reason my son is named Trajan! The "Justice of Trajan" is a very common medieval image. (My favorite is the "justice of Count Herkinbald", but my wife balked at calling our son "Herkinbald".)
On a theological note...
Gregory's vision demonstrates that non-christians can be justified, a HUGE theological debate, to say the least and many have taken positions on either side of this issue. C.S. Lewis incorporates this vignette into "The Great Divorce"
Most free-will theists, generally cite John 3 as evidence that damnation is a function of "men loving darkness" and therefore Man's free will, so the possibility of a non-christian finding heavan after the fact is ok, but, as is obvious, many disagree. What's interesting is that the Catholic church is pretty even split on the veracity of Gregory's vision.
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in a theological way it kind of surprised me but then again, Dante solves the trouble with other noble pagans by putting them into limbo: people like Plato, Caesar and even Saladin! Also, the prophet Mohamed & Ali are also in Dante's hell. Mohamed because in medieval times they thought that he was a christian priest before he went his own way and Ali because he created the Shiites & Sunnite's.
I was amazed that a division in Islam would put a man in a christian hel!
gr,
Jeroen Pelgrom
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