place is this,” I asked, “and who are these?” Arazel answered, “This is the middle ground, and these are humans and fallen angels who have suffered their way this far.”
He got two rakes and gave one to me. “Sinful man,” he said, “it is your turn to suffer. But my turn has not yet come to its end, and here on this higher level we must do it to each other.”
Each rake had seven tines, and the tines were sharper than swords. We raked each other, and our skin peeled up behind the rakes in great curls, and blood ran down to hide our nakedness. People are very naked indeed without their skins. After that, we tore each other’s flesh away and pulled out each other’s entrails until we stood white skeletons in a shambles of our own broken meat. Last, we ate each other’s hearts, and were made whole again.
“Now I am completely purified,” said Arazel. “But you have still to suffer somewhat more. Come.”
I followed, and he led me to a great place of burning. As far as eye could see, in every direction, stakes stood high, with wood piled around them, and some of the piles were green wood, and some were dry, and some were tall, and some were tiny, and some were charcoals. Many of the stakes were empty and waiting, but many more had men and women burning at them. Demons walked through the burning-place, carrying lighted torches.
Arazel said, “In this place are the best mortals and the worst fallen angels, for the mortals have suffered their way here through the lower levels and will go on from here to heaven, but all the better demons have already gone. But these are good enough so all they must do here is light fires. You must find your own stake.”
He bade me farewell and hurried on to heaven, and I saw him no more, but wandered on until I found a stake that seemed fitted to my size. It had a crosspiece, and when I stood with my back to the stake and my arms to the crosspiece, salamanders came and wound themselves around my limbs and body. They held me fast, and a fallen angel came and lit my pyre with his torch.
The dry wood blazed up and seared my skin black and crisp. My eyes boiled and burst, and while they ran in streams down my cheeks and chest, everything looked strange, as if I looked through water. I saw the green wood and charcoals catch fire at my feet, and then I was blind. The salamanders danced in their delight, for fire is their natural home. Their feet cut my flesh, and I heard my blood sizzle in the fire, but not enough to put it out, and I was roasted to ashes.
Then someone came and took me by the hand and led me on farther. There were sweet breezes, and they restored my body to me. When I could see again, I beheld a fair plain all around, as far as eye could see, and flowers bloomed, and birds sang, but still there was wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Then I saw my new guide, and he was a man, but very ugly. “Who are you?” I asked. He said, “I am King Herod, who was never baptized, and was very wicked besides, and killed all the babies of Bethlehem, and so I am still here in the lowest room of limbo.”
I looked around again, and everywhere I saw people racking other people on ladders. “Who are these?” I cried.
He said, “Fallen angels are a higher order of creation than mortal men and women. Even so, baptized souls are a higher order than unbaptized souls. Here, we unbaptized must torture those of you baptized who still remain.”
He summoned two others, who were Cain and Goliath, and together they bound me into a ladder so that my limbs and body were woven under and over its rungs, and the rungs were heavy and sharp. Then they bound strong ropes around my wrists and ankles, and Goliath slowly pulled at my ankles while Cain and King Herod slowly pulled at my wrists, until both my body and the ladder were lifted high off the ground, and blood ran down from every place the rungs cut into my flesh, and all my bones were broken.
Then they pulled me out of the ladder, like pulling one thread from woven cloth, and laid me on the flowery grasses, and sat and talked with me of their great desire to be baptized, until I was whole again and could go on.
Then all three of them bowed to me, because now I was a blessed soul. And Cain and Goliath clasped King Herod by the hands and clapped his shoulders, because in death we are all equals, and wished him happiness, for that now he was sufficiently purified to go on with me. We went on, and crossed a wide, quick-flowing stream, into another flowery meadow, where more birds sang and the air was sweeter than incense.
In that place were ladders laid out on trestles everywhere, and countless people bound all on top of the ladders, while other people gave them the water torture. “What place is this?” I asked, and King Herod answered me, “Here is where we unbaptized receive our baptism, and because we received it not in life, here we must receive it interiorly. But they who give it are the worst of the baptized, who are not yet ready to enter the third heaven, so you have nothing else to do.”
I watched, and Judas and Ganelon came and stripped King Herod and laid him on a ladder and bound him tight. Then Judas got a great bellows filled with clear, clean water and pushed it down his throat, and Ganelon got a great bellows filled with clear, clean water and pushed it up his buttocks, and then both of them squeezed their bellows slowly, and King Herod swelled up like a bladder, and finally burst, and clear water mingled with blood sprayed over everything like a fountain.
Then they unbound his arms and legs, and his head smiled up and said to me, “Now am I well and truly baptized, and as soon as I am healed from my baptism, I must return to the first heaven and there suffer for my own sins until I am purified, but you must go on at once to the third heaven.”
So I went on and entered the third heaven, but of what I saw there, tongue may not speak, only that it was glory and happiness beyond measure.
Here ends the vision of
San Juan de Calamocha
which he dreamed in
the eleventh year
of his age. AD
MCCCCLXXVI.
“It is a great pity,” Don Felipe pronounced on coming to the end, “that this little work is so riddled with heretical fancies. Put it into poetry, and in certain passages it might almost be worthy of Dante, were it not for the manner in which it implies that between Hell and Purgatory, or Limbo and Heaven, there is no fundamental difference, but only measures of degree, and that salvation is freely available to the unbaptized after death, and even to fallen angels.”
Fra Guillaume nodded, smiling. “It would be a very pretty work, if it were not heresy.”
“Is the author truly in his eleventh year?”
“Or twelfth.”
“How has he come by Saint Paul’s description of the Third Heaven, of which mortal tongue may not speak?”
“Most likely from some wholesome sermon. His father testifies that the boy always pays close attention to every sermon he hears. Which is of course commendable in itself.” The inquisitor’s voice grew more somber. “It is a troubling case. The boy’s name is not properly Juan, but Mehmoud. He himself has never been baptized, but it appears that he likes to call himself after his father or, perhaps, the Evangelist or another Saint John. His father is Juan Maria Delgado—formerly Fazoud Aben Fazoud—of Calamocha, who accepted the holy Faith into his heart and was baptized, along with his wife and his children by her, six years ago. Our young author, however, was Juan Maria’s son by his concubine. Juan Maria has ceased to cohabit with her as his wife, and now she lives beneath his roof as sister only. Alas, he made it a condition of his own Baptism that, having been put away, his former
