De Conjugio (On Marriage) · 24 of 25

The Hells of Adulterers

88.THE HELLS OF ADULTERERS. There are many hells of these, according to the kinds of adultery, which are various.

89.I have seen harlots who hid themselves in the western region and obstructed the roads, that none might approach except they were willing; I was taken thither; and they were harlots who were all cast into a marshy pool, remote at the back, in the west; they were such as were openly harlots.

90.Those who had exercised whoredom secretly, without the knowledge of others, and were such to the end of life, were cast into a dark cavern in the west.

91.Some harlots of noble family who excelled in genius, and also could reason about God, are cast into a marshy pool in the southern region.

92.Other harlots who were able to steal men by arts not known in the world, compelling them into their proprium by praises and by the immersion of their mind into themselves, and because then being without protection from the Lord, they were delivered over to them, such women are cast into a place burning as it were with sulphur and fire, according to appearance. They dwell in the southwestern quarter, and similar men are cast into a dark abyss sloping under the pool of the women. Women fascinate men, and men women, by diabolical arts, which are many and which it is not allowed to recount.

93.Those who are adulterers spiritually are distinguished from adulterers naturally; the latter, if they perceive delight in adulteries, and no delight in marriages, are excluded from heaven, and are all sent into hells; but the adulterers spiritually, although they perceive nothing unlawful in adulteries, are yet explored and even amended, and others are allotted places according to life.

94.There are some in excrementitious hells who are addicted to variety, and by it have extinguished the conjugial; and at the same time are voluptuous; they are in the province of the intestines, under the former, where are everywhere sinks and a foul odor; and everywhere there are caverns from which such an odor exhales.

95.Those who had a communion of wives are bound as it were into a bundle, and the bundle is tied together by a stretched-out serpent and they are cast into a whirlpool which is beyond the spiritual world of this earth.

96.They who seduced by the appearance of piety, and thence persuade themselves that adulteries are not contrary to the Christian life, are sent into Gehenna, whence is perceived a stench as of burnt bones and hair, and are there in the fantasy that they are bitten by serpents; when in heat they are on fire, and when they approach heaven they become frozen like ice, and are miserably tortured.

97.Monks and Jesuits who have acted thus under the pretext of piety, and on account of pity towards them, with the promise that they would remit sins, are also committed to Gehenna.