"A book that is thoughtful, learned, and refreshingly independent-minded. She [Moreira] avoids the conventional explanations that have been advance by scholars since the Reformation... remarkable." --The New York Review of Books"This is an important and thoughtful study...This monograph does more than illustrate the development of the doctrine of purgatory; it contributes to the intellectual and social history of early-medieval Europe."--The Catholic Historical Review"An impressively researched and lucidly written monograph. Isabel Moreira's account of the coming together of Christian thinking on purgatory represents a compelling history of ideas which also manages to illuminate the social worlds of late antiquity and the early middle ages." --Peter Marshall, Professor of History, University of Warwick"This compelling investigation of the origins of purgatory gives long overdue recognition to late antique and Anglo-Saxon discussions of penance and topography of the afterlife. Moreira's superb study reminds us how anticipation of purgatorial suffering was deeply integral to Christian life from an early date. Had it not been for belief in purgatory, and attendant fears of the painful suffering that even devout Christians would undergo in this place, the subsequent development of Catholicism would have been very different." --Bonnie Effros, Professor of History and Rothman Chair and Director of the Center of the Humanities and the Public Sphere, University of Florida"Professor Isabel Moreira's masterful synthesis is the most comprehensive study of Purgatory in thirty years. She performs her sensitive and scholarly analysis in graceful, accessible language. Heaven's Purge will rivet the attention of specialists even as it introduces the controversial yet pivotal concept and the wrongly neglected but fascinating age that created it to the much broader public it deserves." --Alan E. Bernstein, author of The Formation of Hell: Death and Retr