These were doubtless vulgar prejudices rather than dogmas recognised by orthodoxy, yet they did not remain without influence on the teaching of the doctors of the Church. For instance, Saint Ambrose[[495]] enlarges on the thought, probably borrowed from some philosopher, that death is good because in it the body, source of our uneasiness, our troubles and our vices, rests, calmed for ever, while the virtuous soul rises to heaven. After the travail of existence the dead rest as man rests on the Sabbath day, and this was, it was explained, the reason why the seventh day was the day of the commemoration of the departed.
The idea of rest in the infernal regions has left no deep traces on the Christian faith, for which the subterranean world became the abode of the wicked. It was, however, somewhere in the bowels of the earth that the dwelling of the righteous who lived before the Redemption was commonly placed, sometimes also that of children who died unbaptised. They found there according to the Pelagians a “place of repose and salvation” outside the kingdom of heaven.[[496]]
But in Roman times the idea of peace in the celestial light was dominant among the Jews and Christians as among the pagans. Thus the Book of Enoch shows us the prophet carried off in a whirlwind to the heights whence he perceived “the beds where the just rest” amid the saints.[[497]] We can here point out exactly the most important of the literary intermediaries through whom this conception was transmitted from paganism to Judaism and from Judaism to Christianity. Towards the end of the first century A. D., amid the desolation which followed on the destruction of the Temple, a pious Jew, somewhere in the East, composed and ascribed to the venerable authorship of Esdras an apocalypse which enjoyed singular popularity until the time of its rejection by the Church as apocryphal. The visionary who set it down combines a number of pagan reminiscences with biblical ideas. He promises eternal felicity to the just, and asks himself what will be the lot of souls between the time of their death and the end of the world. Will they be at rest or will they be tortured? And the angel who inspires him answers that when the vital breath has left the body to go again to adore the glory of the Most High, the soul which has violated the divine law will not enter the celestial dwellings but will “wander amidst torments, for ever suffering and saddened on seven paths.” But the soul which has walked in the way of God “will rest in seven orders of rewards.”[[498]] The sixth of these is the order in which its face begins to shine like the sun and in which it becomes incorruptible, like the stars; the seventh is that in which it wins to the sight of God.
These are conceptions and even expressions which belong to astral immortality, and the Jewish author, like the pagans before him, everywhere contrasts the state of agitation filled with anguish reserved for the guilty with the blessed tranquillity which is the reward of a pious life.[[499]] The description of the celestial dwelling which Saint Ambrose borrowed from the pseudo-Esdras is singularly like that given by the philosophers of the earlier period: a place in which there is no cloud, no thunder, no lightning, no violence of winds, neither darkness nor sunset, neither summer nor winter to vary the seasons, where no cold is met with, nor hail, nor rain. But the Christian doctor, like the Jewish visionary, adds a new feature: there will be no more sun nor moon nor stars; the light of God will shine alone.[[500]]
The idea of repose in the eternal light was, thanks to the apocalypse of the supposed Esdras, to become one of those most frequently expressed by epitaphs and ritual. It was from this apocryphal work that the Roman liturgy borrowed the form of a prayer introduced into the office of the dead at least as early as the seventh century and still sung in the funeral service—Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine et lux perpetua luceat eis. “Lord, give them eternal rest and may perpetual light shine upon them.”
The idea of the repast of the dead evolved, like that of their repose, as the conception of life beyond the tomb was gradually transformed, and it finally assumed a far higher significance than that originally attributed to it.
According to a belief found everywhere, the dead, as we know,[[501]] needed nourishment if they were not to suffer from hunger. Hence the obligation to make libations and sacrifices on the tomb and to deposit food and drink there. The neglect of these sacred duties entailed consequences fearful to him who failed to fulfil them, just as their exact observance ensured him the good will of the spirits of the dead.
The custom of holding banquets which united the members of a family beside a grave at a funeral or on certain consecrated days, was connected with this belief. This custom was no mere rendering of an honour to one who had gone, no unmixed manifestation of piety or affection. The motive for these ceremonies was much more concrete. As we have stated elsewhere,[[502]] men were persuaded that the spirit of him who lay beneath the ground was present at the meal, took its place beside its kin and rejoiced with them. Therefore its share was set aside for it, and by consecrated formulas it was invited to drink and eat. Moreover the guests themselves ate copiously and drank deeply, convinced that the noisy conviviality of the feast was a source of joy and refreshment to the shade in the gloom of its sepulchral existence. Sometimes the dinner took place in a room within the tomb, specially set aside for such meetings, sometimes in one of the gardens which men delighted to make around the “eternal house” of the dead[[503]] and to which inscriptions sometimes give the name of “paradise” (παράδεισος).[[504]]
These are customs and ideas which are found everywhere from the time when history had its origin, practices and ideas to which under the Roman Empire the people still clung, and which even partially survived the conversion of the masses to Christianity, although the Church condemned them as pagan. Until the end of antiquity and even in the Middle Ages, banquets, at which wine flowed abundantly, were still held on anniversaries by kinsfolk and friends near the remains of those they loved.[[505]]