Purgation, Penance, and the East

In Book IV of the Dialogues Gregory teaches that the soul is immortal and conscious after death, that the saints behold God, that prayer and almsgiving and above all the Eucharist offered for the departed avail to help them, and — most consequentially — that there is for certain souls a purification after death, a cleansing of lesser faults by a “purgatorial fire” before the final judgment. From this teaching, among other roots, the later Latin West developed its doctrine of purgatory, a defined place of temporal punishment satisfying the debt of sin, which the Council of Florence (1439) and Trent (1563) dogmatized. The Orthodox East prays fervently for the dead and believes the departed are helped by the Church’s prayers and the Eucharist, but it rejects the developed Latin doctrine of purgatory — the juridical satisfaction, the cleansing fire as a defined place, the treasury of merits. This file sets out what Gregory taught and what the East does and does not accept, distinguishing dogma from theological opinion.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism; Pope of Rome; Great Hierarch)

What Gregory Taught

Book IV of the Dialogues is Gregory’s fullest treatment of the last things, and it became one of the most influential eschatological texts of the medieval West. Its main affirmations are these (Gregory, Dialogues 4; trans. Zimmerman 1959):

The soul is immortal and conscious after death, and the state of the soul is determined at death; the saints already behold God and the damned already suffer, before the general resurrection.
The departed are helped by the prayers of the living, by almsgiving, and above all by the offering of the Holy Eucharist for them. Gregory tells stories — pinned, per METHODOLOGY §3.5, as the Dialogues’ own narratives — of souls released or relieved through the Mass offered on their behalf, including the much-cited account of a monk for whom Gregory ordered the Eucharist offered on thirty successive days, the practice from which the Western “Gregorian Masses” (thirty Masses for a soul) took their name and origin (Gregory, Dialogues 4.57; Markus 1997, 51–67) [Disputed: the thirty-days story at *Dialogues* 4.57 is reported by the text as a narrative; per METHODOLOGY §3.5 it is recorded as the *Dialogues*' claim, and its bearing is doubly affected by the authorship dispute (see [The Disputed Authorship](../06-the-dialogues/the-disputed-authorship.md))].
A purification after death for some souls. Most consequentially, Gregory teaches that certain souls, not damned but burdened at death with small and unrepented faults, undergo a purification before the judgment. He grounds this in part on the Lord’s words about the sin that “shall not be forgiven, neither in this world, nor in the world to come” (Matthew 12:32), reasoning that the implied possibility of forgiveness “in the world to come” points to a purgation of lesser faults after death, and he speaks of a “purgatorial fire” (ignis purgatorius) for such trivial sins (Gregory, Dialogues 4.41; cf. 1 Corinthians 3:11–15, “saved, yet so as by fire”; Le Goff 1984, 88–95).

It is important to note what Gregory does not do. He does not present a juridical system of temporal punishments satisfying a debt of justice; he does not speak of a defined “place” of purgatory in the later technical sense; he does not develop a treasury of merits or indulgences. His teaching is a theological reflection, in the mode of the fathers, on the mercy of God toward souls burdened with small faults, framed within the Church’s ancient practice of praying for the dead (Markus 1997, 51–67; Le Goff 1984, 88–95).

The Western Development

Gregory’s Book IV was one of the principal patristic foundations on which the medieval Latin West built its developed doctrine of purgatory. Over the following centuries — the process traced in detail by the historian Jacques Le Goff in The Birth of Purgatory — the suggestions of Gregory and others were systematized into a defined doctrine: a state or place in which souls who die in grace but still owe a temporal debt for forgiven sins are purified by suffering until the debt is paid, the suffering being shortened by the prayers, Masses, almsgiving, and indulgences of the living (Le Goff 1984). This doctrine was dogmatically defined for the Roman Church at the Second Council of Lyons (1274), the Council of Florence (1439), and the Council of Trent (1563), the last condemning those who denied purgatory and the value of the Mass and suffrages for the dead.

What the East Accepts and Rejects

The Orthodox East’s relation to this is precise and must not be flattened in either direction.

What the East holds with Gregory. The Orthodox Church firmly believes and constantly practises prayer for the departed. It offers the Divine Liturgy for the dead, keeps memorial services (panikhida, mnemosyna) and the Saturdays of the Souls, and teaches that the prayers, almsgiving, and especially the Eucharistic offering of the living truly help the departed. It confesses the immortality and conscious survival of the soul, the particular judgment, and the communion of the living and the dead in the one Body of Christ. On all of this the East and Gregory are at one — and indeed the Orthodox practice of the “forty-day” memorial and the offering of the Liturgy for the dead is closely akin to the piety Gregory’s Book IV reflects (Ware 1963/1993, 254–261; on the Eastern practice, see The Divine Liturgy).

What the East rejects. The Orthodox Church rejects the developed Latin doctrine of purgatory. This rejection was articulated definitively at the Council of Florence (1438–1439) by St. Mark of Ephesus (Mark Eugenikos), who argued against the Latin position in his orations on purgatorial fire. The Orthodox objections are: (1) the juridical framework — the notion of a temporal satisfaction paying off a debt of divine justice — which the East regards as a legalistic distortion of repentance and divine mercy; (2) the conception of a defined place and a cleansing fire as a doctrine rather than an image; (3) the treasury of merits and indulgences built upon it; and (4) the very idea that the souls’ state is fixed in a quantifiable penal process. The East prefers to leave the manner and means of post-mortem purification in the realm of mystery and the prayer of the Church, declining to dogmatize a mechanism (Ware 1963/1993, 254–261; on the East–West divergence, see Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism).

[Disputed: Orthodox theologians differ on how to read Gregory's own teaching in relation to the later Latin doctrine. Some (e.g., in the polemical tradition descending from St. Mark of Ephesus) treat any talk of a "purgatorial fire" as already an error to be resisted; others regard Gregory's Book IV as a legitimate patristic theologoumenon about post-mortem purification — within the bounds of the Eastern faith in prayer for the dead — that the later West then over-systematized into the objectionable doctrine of purgatory. The distinction the East insists on is between (a) the ancient, shared belief that the dead are helped by the Church's prayers and may be purified, which is held as the faith, and (b) the developed Latin doctrine of purgatory as a juridical, defined, fire-and-satisfaction system, which is rejected. Per METHODOLOGY §4 these are distinguished as dogma, theologoumenon, and rejected development respectively, and no single verdict is imposed on Gregory's intentions].

Gregory Between the Traditions

Gregory thus stands, on this question, exactly where a pre-Schism Roman father stands: he taught, within the common faith of the undivided Church, that the dead are helped by the living and that some souls are purified after death — a teaching the East can largely own — while the systematic doctrine of purgatory that the later West read out of him is a development the East does not accept. The Orthodox veneration of Gregory is untouched by this: it honours the father, not every later use made of his words. The careful course, which this guide follows, is to read Gregory’s actual text — its mercy, its rootedness in the Church’s prayer for the dead, its restraint — and to distinguish it from the elaborated Latin doctrine that grew partly from it. What the East shares with Gregory is large; what it declines is the medieval Western edifice, not the father who lies, in part, beneath it.

References

Gregory the Great. Dialogues, Book IV (the soul after death; the purgatorial fire at 4.41; the thirty Masses at 4.57). Trans. Odo John Zimmerman. Fathers of the Church 39. New York, 1959.
Le Goff, Jacques. The Birth of Purgatory. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984, 88–95. (Gregory’s place in the genesis of the Western doctrine.)
Ware, Timothy (Kallistos). The Orthodox Church. London: Penguin, 1963; rev. ed. 1993, 254–261. (The Orthodox teaching on prayer for the dead and the rejection of purgatory.)
Mark of Ephesus (Mark Eugenikos). Orations on Purgatorial Fire (at the Council of Florence, 1438–1439). (The classic Orthodox refutation of the Latin doctrine.)
Councils of Lyons II (1274), Florence (1439), and Trent (1563). (The Roman dogmatic definitions of purgatory.)
Scripture: Matthew 12:32; 1 Corinthians 3:11–15.