Abstract

In Late Medieval Christianity, the concept of hell was closely connected to the sacra-ment of penance. Hell could be avoided through the right use of penance. And the cleansing suff erings in purgatory could to a certain extent replace the eternal suff erings in hell. Th e Protestant Reformation rejected purgatory, and returned to a traditional dualistic view of the relationship between heaven and hell. At the same time, hell seems to lose some of its religious importance in early Protestant spirituality. Th is change is illustrated through a comparison of two central texts belonging more or less to the same genre: on the one hand the famous Late Medieval illustrated Ars moriendi and on the other Luther’s Sermon von der Bereitung zum Sterben from 1519.