"As hard and wild as if they were beasts"

"As hard and wild as if they were beasts"

Lough Derg--Travelogue--Middle Ages--Purgatory

A famous account of a 1398 visit by Viscount Ramon de Perellós to Saint Patrick's Purgatory

Ramón de Perellós

The Journey of Viscount Ramon de Perellós to Saint Patrick's Purgatory, p. 2

CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts

1398

CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts: a project of University College, Cork. Translated by Alan Mac an Bhaird.

Citation for the purposes of criticism

Electronic text translation

English, translated from Spanish

Travelogue

DD_0567

54.6083, -7.8714

https://celt.ucc.ie//published/T100079A/

"At the time when Saint Patrick preached the holy gospel in Hibernia, which we call Ireland, and reinforced his preaching by wondrous miracles of Our Lord, Saint Patrick found the people of that land as hard and wild as if they were beasts and used enormous labor and pains to indoctrinate them and teach them to convert to the faith of Our Lord God Jesus Christ; and often he spoke to them of the pains of hell and the glory of paradise in order to turn them from their wretchedness and sins and confirm them in the good life; but all this did nothing for them for they said that they would believe nothing of it unless some of them saw it, that is to say the glory of the good and the pain of the wicked, and they did not wish to abstain on the orders of Saint Patrick who had his intent in God."

The Journey of Viscount Ramon De Perellós to Saint Patrick's Purgatory. Alan Mac an Bhaird (ed), First edition [i + 23 pp] CELT Cork (2012)