LIMBO

(Lat. limbus, a hem or edge.) A region supposed by some of the school theologians to lie on the edge or neighbourhood of hell. This served as a receptacle for the souls of just men, not admitted into purgatory or heaven, Such were, according to some Christian writers, the patriarchs and other pious ancients who died before the birth of Christ: hence the limbo was called Limbus Patrum. These, it was believed, would be liberated.at Christ's second coming, and admitted to the privileges of the ble ed in heaven. Though some have a erted that, when our Saviour went down into hell, he liberated these souls, and carried them away with him into heaven. This latter idea is probably an adorned representation of the remarkable pa age in St. Peter's Epistle (i. 3. 19.). where he says that Christ preached to the spirits in prison; and, being held by certain of the later fathers, seems to have given some influence to the growing opinion in favour of a purgatory. The limbus puerorum, or infantum, was a similar receptacle allotted by some of the schoolmen to the souls of infants who die unbaptized. Dante has fixed his lim.bo, in which the distinguished spirits of antiquity are confined, as the outermost of the circle of his hell. The use which Milton has made of the same superstitious belief is well known. {Paradise Lost, book iii.) [s. 679]