Purgatory and Dante's Divine Comedy

Purgatory - what a grand thing!
Saint Catherine of Genoa

Thoughtful people have long disputed whether Purgatory - a place, it is said, where a person’s soul is purified after death - actually exists.

Far from viewing it as “a grand thing,” Protestant reformers, like Martin Luther, thought Purgatory (and the economy which supported it) was nothing more than a Church scheme to separate people from their money. The soul of a dead person, reformers declared, either went straight to heaven, or straight to hell. Souls didn’t make an intermediate stop at a place called Purgatory.