The History of Hell

In an interview on Italian television last month, Pope Francis was asked what he thinks about hell. The pope responded that hell is “difficult to imagine” and added that, in his personal opinion, he “like[s] to think hell is empty; I hope it is.” Even though Pope Francis was abundantly clear that his statements were “not a dogma of faith,” they sparked a backlash from those who, apparently, really do hope that people are being tortured for all eternity and have no problem admitting to it. ...Not until late antiquity did the impression of hell that we only faintly sense in the Gospels—whiffs of sulfur, flashes of flames, the hair-raising wriggle of worms—begin to flourish. Tours of hell, allegedly given to religious heroes in visions, reveal the ever-expanding scale of the underworld. The apocalypses of Mary, Peter, Paul and other non-canonical writings from the early Christian era flesh out the details of the subterranean torture chamber. Disobedient Christians, unlucky pagans and merciless persecutors find themselves shackled and buried in a world of grime and pain. By the time we get to Dante, we have a multistoried hell of epic proportions.