03-23-2021, 09:04 PM
Ungrateful Children
If the torments of the parents who have subjected their daughters to immorality are frightening, the torments of the children who have not honored their father and mother, who have despised and neglected them, are no less frightening.
The ungrateful son is locked in a barrel full of boiling pitch and is forced to drink it as one drinks water. Many snakes are his fellow prisoners, in his narrow prison, and the walls of his prison are bristling with extremely sharp and burning razors. Demons roll this barrel here and there. The prisoner is cut and sliced in all directions and the snakes locked up with him bite him in the wounds made by the razor blades.
Envy
The envious are covered with an immense flame that completely covers them. Each of them carries within them a very long, very large and very poisonous worm, which gnaws at their heart and climbs to their throat.
When one of the two demons, especially assigned to each condemned person to be his torturer, sees this worm reaching the mouth, about to leave, he grabs the damned person by the throat with one hand and tightens it tightly, to force the worm to go down.
With the other hand the devil holds a sword and slices open the heart of the tormented. But this heart closes and immediately reforms itself to be able to suffer again and again.
The second executioner, armed with iron fangs reddened with fire, rips off this already reconstituted heart, makes his excrement on it and rolls it in rot; then, when he has thus soiled it, he moves it on the face of his victim while insulting and hurting him.
Haters
Just as the envious, those who have let themselves be guided in this life by hatred sit in the midst of the flames in the lower abode of the abyss. Demons tear them apart with burning iron combs. This is their particular punishment, in addition to the general punishments that all the souls in hell suffer.
Anger
The angry souls are punished in different ways, according to the different circumstances in which they had let themselves be driven to their vice, but the torture that is especially their punishment is this: they are placed in a location in which there is a huge and scary snake made of a flaming metal. This monster has a huge belly, which is completely open. Its neck bends like an arch and its head is tilted over its belly. Its open mouth shows inside reddened iron instruments, in the shape of a crescent, sharp and strident. Its open belly is also bristled inside with similar crescents.
The demons hold in their hands small burning iron wheels, all bristled with very long and very sharp burning nails. With the help of these wheels they throw the souls of the angry into the open mouth of the snake among the instruments of flaming iron with which it is armed.
Other demons, carrying fire fangs, are waiting to grab these souls as they appear in the belly of the monster while passing through it. As soon as they see them, they grab them and tear them away with extreme violence, then they carry them away, tear them apart and to shreds with unheard-of ferocity.
Homicides
In the depths of the abyss are placed two huge tanks: one full of boiling blood, the other of ice. They're prepared for the murderers.
The demons drag them with great violence and throw them sometimes into the first tank and at other times into the second.
They also torment them in other ways. In particular, they have flaming iron weapons with which they strike them in the heart and on the tongue. The murderers never see this torture stop, even during the one-second interval. This does not prevent them from suffering from the other sorrows common to all the inhabitants of hell.
Kept in the same place as the murderers are those miserable women who did not want to be mothers and killed their children before they were born. Their iniquity, their cunning and their perverse maneuvers to hide their faults have earned them the same torments that murderers endure. They suffer with them torments proportionate to the number and seriousness of their crimes.
Avarice
The avaricious are kept in a place full of gigantic crocodiles. Each of these reptiles grabs a reprobate, keeps him still with its front legs, bites him in the heart with its teeth and hits him in the mouth with its tail. Other demons, meanwhile, tear the damned with burning combs, then tear him away from the crocodile with violence.
In the dwelling of the avaricious is dug a deep cellar filled with liquid gold and silver. The executioners throw their victims into the air, who fall into this pit, where they drown them.
Then they retake them and tear them apart again with their combs; then they pour liquid gold and silver into their throats and overwhelm them with all kinds of shame.
Usurers
The usurers also endure many hardships. They are placed on a table of fire, on which they are nailed, their hands stretched out. However, they are not arranged in the shape of a cross. It was explained to Saint Frances of Rome by the Angel Raphael who accompanied her and supported her during her vision of hell, that the august sign of salvation cannot be used in the kingdom of Satan, in the abode of the outcasts.
On the head of each usurer thus stretched out and nailed down is placed a crown of fire. The demons have stoves containing molten gold and silver. They pour these frightfully hot metals into the mouth of the damned; then they hasten to pierce his chest with a hole, above his heart, and in that hole, they pour liquid gold and silver again, saying to their victim:
- "O miserable soul, remember your past life!"
Then the executioners tear the patient off of its bed of pain and throw it into a tank that is filled with the same precious metals melted by the dreadful ardor of the infernal fire.
Thus, the usurers remain in continuous torments that follow one another without interruption. They move from one to the other and do not know what rest is.
Gamblers
In the kingdom of Lucifer, all vices meet. The gamblers are not far from the usurers of whom they were often the victims of.
The gamblers who played dices suffer the special pain of being thrown and rolled on bones crushed into small pieces, divided and mixed with burning coals. The demons take red iron dices and place them in the palm of the gamblers and in their mouths.
They also sit them down on reddened iron tables and beat them with whips armed with burning iron pallets.
The gamblers are also tormented by various particular tortures, depending on the faults they were dragged in by their master passion. If they went all the way to murder, they are beheaded.
In this way, everyone is punished according to the sin in which he fell because of the game.
Moreover, their executioners pour gold and silver into their throats, as they do to the avaricious and usurers, to punish them for their immoderate desire for wealth.
And other demons hurl these outrages at them:
- "Wretched gamblers who let yourselves be deceived and brought to this place, you have given us victory over you of your own free will. Now we have you in our power. You will always be subject to our domination now and in eternity."
And these souls blaspheme in despair and curse the name of God.
The Prideful
The men who on earth were proud and presumptuous descend into the last degree of abjection in hell. Because of the different circumstances in which they have sinned, they are divided into different places, but all of these dwellings are closed in themselves as if they were in a common enclosure. It is, so to speak, a prison of pride divided into many sections.
The ambitious are placed apart and face the worst oppositions of the demons; as much as they have desired honors in this world, so much so, they are, in the other, covered with confusion by the subordinates of the chained prince.
The same is true for all kinds of proud people. They are divided into separate groups according to the circumstances in which their vice had given itself a career, and they are punished according to the type and degree of their guilt.
But the general punishment they suffer is this: in their prison stands a gigantic lion made of flaming metal. It opens its mouth and is hollow inside.
In his throat are placed sharp razors which are reddened with fire. On his sides are swarming snakes and toads or, to put it more accurately, - as it should be understood from all the animals seen in hell by Saint Frances of Rome, - demons under the aspects of these filthy beasts.
On the rear part of this lion, as on the front, there are razors with burning blades.
The devils in charge of this function throw the proud into the air, so that they fall into the mouth of the metal monster on the razors. The wretched is cut and divided to such an extent that they appear dead.
After that, they pass through the lion's belly and find themselves immersed in the disgusting clusters of ugly, dirty and poisonous beasts. They seem crushed, but they do not take long to revive, to regain new strength, because the wretched cannot, alas! die, and are always ready to suffer new torments.
Demons stand at the lower part of the lion, armed with long fangs. They use it to reach the damn inside the monster and pull them out through the razor-sharp blades.
At the end of this narrow passage, the victims are torn into strips, cut into small pieces. But their flesh reunites, their limbs reform and, thrown into the air, they fall back into the lion's mouth to cross it again.
And this torment repeats over and over again.
These painful souls, in a terrible rage, caused by such terrible and atrocious tortures, scream in pain and throw horrible curses towards God.
The demons increase their sufferings by their mockery and reproaches.
- "O cursed proud ones," they repeat to them, "for many years you have struggled on earth to be the greatest and to eclipse other men; you have drawn vanity from your advantages and successes; now you are thrown into the sides of this metal monster, instrument of your punishment. From now on, and for eternity, you will only know pain and suffering..."