am doing a service
to my fellow-countrymen in making them acquainted with these pages,
though doubtless they are far from forming a unique example of this
class of mediaeval Latin literature. Among the fictions that may be
compared with them we may mention "The Voyage of St. Brendan,"
"The Vision of Albericus," and "St. Patrick's Purgatory," imaginary
descriptions, like Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy," of the supposed
abode of the dead. The narrative of Marbodius is one of the latest works
dealing with this theme, but it is not the least singular.

THE DESCENT OF MARBODIUS INTO HELL

In the fourteen hundred and fifty-third year of the incarnation of the
Son of God, a few days before the enemies of the Cross entered the
city of Helena and the great Constantine, it was given to me, Brother
Marbodius, an unworthy monk, to see and to hear what none had hitherto
seen or heard. I have composed a faithful narrative of those things so
that their memory may not perish with me, for man's time is short.

On the first day of May in the aforesaid year, at the hour of vespers, I
was seated in the Abbey of Corrigan on a stone in the cloisters and, as
my custom was, I read the verses of the poet whom I love best of all,
Virgil, who has sung of the labours: of the field, of shepherds, and
of heroes. Evening was hanging its purple folds from the arches of the
cloisters and in a voice of emotion I was murmuring the verses which
describe how Dido, the Phoenician queen, wanders with her ever-bleeding
wound beneath the myrtles of hell. At that moment Brother Hilary
happened to pass by, followed by Brother Jacinth, the porter.

Brought up in the barbarous ages before the resurrection of the Muses,
Brother Hilary has not been initiated into the wisdom of the ancients;
nevertheless, the poetry of the Mantuan has, like a subtle torch, shed
some gleams of light into his understanding.

"Brother Marbodius," he asked me, "do those verses that you utter
with swelling breast and sparkling eyes--do they belong to that great
'Aeneid' from which morning or evening your glances are never withheld?"

I answered that I was reading in Virgil how the son of Anchises
perceived Dido like a moon behind the foliage.*

* The text runs

. . .qualem primo qui syrgere mense
Aut videt aut vidisse putat per nubila lunam.

Brother Marbodius, by a strange misunderstanding, substitutes an
entirely different image for the one created by the poe