answers: antiquity
context: there is often a Hellmouth leading to some special compartment. Hellmouth Hellmouth is the entrance to Hell envisaged as the gaping mouth of a huge monster, an image which first appears in Anglo-Saxon art, and then spread all over Europe, remaining very common in depictions of the "Last Judgment" and "Harrowing of Hell" until the end of the Middle Ages, and still sometimes used during the Renaissance and after. It enjoyed something of a revival in polemical popular prints after the Protestant Reformation, when figures from the opposite side would be shown disappearing into the mouth. A notable late appearance </s> documentation for fifth-century Ireland, it is not surprising that there is no proof that St. Patrick ever visited Lough Derg. And while this is the legend, it is a rather late legend dating probably from the twelfth century. There is however a much more firmly established tradition regarding St. Dabheog or Dabheoc, a local abbot who presided over, and possibly established, the monastery on the site during the lifetime of Patrick. His name has been associated from these early centuries with several places in the area, for instance: St. Dabheoc’s Chair on the south bank of Lough Derg, the townland </s> their former vanity and frivolity". History of Purgatory The idea of purgatory has roots that date back into antiquity. A sort of proto-purgatory called the "celestial Hades" appears in the writings of Plato and Heraclides Ponticus and in many other pagan writers. This concept is distinguished from the Hades of the underworld described in the works of Homer and Hesiod. In contrast, the celestial Hades was understood as an intermediary place where souls spent an undetermined time after death before either moving on to a higher level of existence or being reincarnated back on earth. Its exact location varied from
question: where does the idea of purgatory come from