Here begins a certain revelation. A Revelation recently shown to a holy woman

May the praise for all manner of things begun, that may turn to the profit of man's soul, be given to God alone and to our Lady, Saint Mary, and to no other earthly man nor woman.

Dear brothers and sisters and all other true Christian friends who read this treatise, listen and hear how a woman was afflicted in her sleep with a spirit from purgatory and how she made her complaint to her spiritual father, speaking in this way:

Father, I wish you to know how I had great tribulation in my sleep upon the night of St Lawrence's Day, the year of our Lord 1422. I went to my bed at eight o’clock and thus I fell asleep. And then between nine and ten it seemed I was ravished into purgatory, and suddenly I saw all the pains which were shown to me many times before – as you, father, know well by my confession and telling.

But, dear sir, I was not shown the sight of them by a spirit on this night of Saint Lawrence. But suddenly, dear father, it seemed I saw them; and in truth, dear father, I was never as deeply afraid as I was then when I woke from the showing of the pains, and the reason was that I was not guided by a spirit whom I knew previously who might have comforted me.

And in this vision of purgatory it seemed I saw three great fires, and it seemed that each fire was at a different end. But sir, there was no separation between them, but each one was enhancing the other. And these three fires were wonderful and horrible, especially the greatest of all in the middle. For that fire was so horrible and so stinking that all the creatures in the world might never tell the

wicked smell of it, for there was pitch and tar, lead and brimstone and oil and all manner of things that might burn, and all manner of pains that man could imagine, and all manner of Christian men and women who had lived here in this world, whatever rank they were [when alive].