Introduction The Rule of Exceptional Salvations

Abstract

The best-known story of the salvation of a righteous heathen, both in the Middle Ages and in writing about the Middle Ages, is that of the Roman emperor Trajan, supposedly released from the pains of hell several centuries after his death through the prayers of Pope Gregory the Great. Jacobus de Voragine, in his thirteenth-century Golden Legend, tells the story this way: Once when the Roman emperor Trajan was hurrying off to war with all possible speed, a widow ran up to him in tears and said: “Be good enough, I beg you, to avenge the blood of my son, who was put to death though he was innocent!” Trajan answered that if he came back from the war safe and sound, he would take care of her case. “And if you die in battle,” the widow objected, “who then will see that justice is done?”“Whoever rules after me,” Trajan replied.“And what good will it do you,” the widow argued, “if someone else rights my loss?”“None at all!” the emperor retorted. “Then wouldn’t it be better for you,” the woman persisted, “to do me justice yourself and receive the reward, than to pass it on to someone else?”Trajan, moved with compassion, got down from his horse and saw to it that the blood of the innocent was avenged… One day many years after that emperor’s death, as Gregory was crossing through Trajan’s forum, the emperor’s kindness came to his mind, and he went to Saint Peter’s basilica and lamented the ruler’s errors with bitter tears. The voice of God responded from above, “I have granted your petition and spared Trajan eternal punishment; but from now on be extremely careful not to pray for a damned soul!” Furthermore, John of Damascus, in one of his sermons, relates that as Gregory was pouring forth prayers for Trajan, he heard a divine voice coming to him, which said:“I have heard your voice and I grant pardon to Trajan.” Of this (as John says in the same sermon) both East and West are witness. On this subject some have said that Trajan was restored to life, and in this life obtained grace and merited pardon: thus he attained glory and was not finally committed to hell nor definitively sentenced to eternal punishment. There are others who have said that Trajan’s soul was not simply freed from being sentenced to eternal punishment, but that his sentence was suspended for a time, namely, until the day of the Last Judgment. Others have held that Trajan’s punishment was assessed to him sub conditione as to place and mode of torment, the condition being that sooner or later Gregory would pray that through the grace of Christ there would be some change in place or mode. Still others, among them John the Deacon who compiled this legend, say that Gregory did not pray, but wept, and often the Lord in his mercy grants what a man, however desirous he might be, would not presume to ask for, and that Trajan’s soul was not delivered from hell and given a place in heaven, but was simply freed from the tortures of hell. A soul (he says) can be in hell and yet, through God’s mercy, not feel its pains. Then there are those who explain that eternal punishment is twofold, consisting first in the pain of sense and second in the pain of loss, i.e., being deprived of the vision of God. Thus Trajan’s punishment would have been remitted as to the first pain but retained as to the second.1