Drythelm Returns from Death

[Stone]

Drythelm Returns from Death
Fr. Albert J. Hebert, S.M., Raised from Death,
Rockford TAN Books & Publishers, 1986, pp. 96ss.

TIA | October 12, 2024

St. Bede the Venerable (672-735), Doctor of the Church, one of the most respectable historians of ancient Europe and one of the most authoritative of the English History, was the one who narrated this case, which took place around 700 A.D.

The great and learned Cardinal St. Robert Bellarmine accepted as a real fact the report of the Venerable Bede about Drythelm, a man of Northumberland who returned from the world of the dead. This event became known in all of ancient England and from it came many conversions.


Resurrected without any human interference

After leading a Christian life along with his family, Drythelm died of an illness. Immediately before the burial, he returned suddenly to life, and, beginning to rise, stood up.

His family, who had spent the past night keeping vigil together over his coffin, were taken with fear. All fled, except his faithful spouse who, although trembling, remained alone with her resurrected husband.

“Do not be afraid,” he appeased her, “it was God who resurrected me. He desires to show in my person a man who returned from the dead. I must still live for a very long time on earth, but my new life will be very different from that which I have lived until now.”

Drythelm proposed to change his life, despite having always been a very good man. He then arose and went immediately in perfect health to the nearby church and there prayed for a long time.


Resurrected to make penitence

Drythelm said to his family that thenceforth he would live only to prepare himself for death. And he counseled each one to do the same. He divided what he had with his spouse and children and reserved a third for himself, for the purpose of giving alms. Then after having distributed his part to the poor, he went to the Monastery of Melrose, on the slopes of the River Tweed, where he asked the Abbot to receive him as a penitent religious who would be the slave of the others.

Ruins of Melrose Abbey where Drythelm was received as a monk

Drythelm received a cell for himself, where he lived to make a review of his life – or of the next life. He prayed, worked hard and made extraordinary penances: rigorous fasts and the recitation, while submerged in freezing water, of the entire Psaltery (the 150 Psalms).


He saw Purgatory, Hell & the threshold of Heaven

Drythelm also kept perpetual silence. All his posture, with the eyes downcast and his features ascetic, indicated a soul timorously conscious of the judgment of God. Therefore, he would break his silence in order to relate what he had seen in the other world for the edification and help of others.

The entire story can be read in the History of the Church by Bede, or in a more summarized form in the book Purgatory, by Fr. F. X. Schouppe, S J.

Drythelm said then: “Upon leaving my body, I was received by a benevolent person who took me under his guidance. His face was brilliant and appeared to be surrounded by light. He arrived to a large and deep valley of an immense extension, having in one part only fire and in another, only ice and snow. On one side, braziers and cauldrons in flames, on the other, the most intense cold and gusts of glacial wind."

Drythelm continued to recount how he saw innumerable souls as though launched by a furious tempest from one side of the freezing cold to the side with the ardent heat, from torture to torture, from here to there, continuously seeking refreshment in the extreme opposite.

He thought that this terrible place was Hell, but his guide told him that it was a special place in Purgatory. In this place found themselves the souls who had delayed their repentance until the end of their lives, but who had been saved by the mercy of God in the last instant. There in Purgatory they had to suffer their temporal punishment for the forgotten sins. He understood that the majority of them had to pay the penance there until the Last Judgment.

Drythelm was also shown the terrible scenes of Hell. Immense globes and masses of malodorous fire would issue from the dark crater of that hole full of cacophonous sounds. The souls that found themselves there were expelled in the apex of the flames and then sucked downwards, when the vaporous flames would descend again. Drythelm saw a multitude of sneering spirits dragging toward the hole five souls who moaned and wept, among which one had a [monastic] tonsure, another a layman and yet another a woman.

On the happy side he saw flowered fields, spirits full of happiness, pleasant dwellings, but it was not Heaven. Then he arrived at a place where he heard the sound of sweet songs in the middle of a pleasant fragrance and a splendorous light. His guide told him that Heaven was close, therefore Drythelm did not see it. So his celestial guide told him to return to Earth.


Many sinners converted

When other monks asked Drythelm why he did those great penances, such as that of submerging himself in freezing water, he responded: “I saw penances that are still more extraordinary.” Or, if they made some observation about his austere life, he said “I saw harder things!”

Even prostrated by his advanced age, he continued to punish his body without mercy. And so he produced a great impression on England and many sinners converted through his lively reports and the example of his reparative penances.