THE SCENE: Saint Brendan the Navigator encountered many strange things on his voyages, including Judas, floating on an iceberg, talking about all the vacation days that he got to spend away from Hell.
THE TEXT: There appeared to them in the sea the outline as it were of a man sitting on a rock with a cloth suspended between two small iron fork-shaped supports about a cloak’s length in front of him. The object was being tossed about by the waves just like a little boat in a whirlwind. Some of the brothers said that it was a bird, others a boat. When St. Brendan drew near, the waves, glued as it were in a circle, kept them at a distance. They found a man, shaggy and unsightly, sitting on a rock. As the waves flowed toward him from every side, they struck him even to the top of his head. When they receded, the bare rock where the unhappy man was sitting was exposed. The wind also sometimes drove the cloth hanging in front of him away from them, and sometimes blew it against his eyes and forehead.
Blessed Brendan question him as to who he was, or for what fault he was sent here, or what deserved to justify the imposition of such penance? The man replied: “I am unhappy Judas, the most evil trader ever. I am not here in accordance with my deserts but because of the ineffable mercy of Jesus Christ. This place is not reckoned as punishment but as an indulgence of the Saviour in honour of the Lord’s Resurrection.”
That day was in fact the Lord’s day. “When I am sitting here I feel as if I were in a paradise of delights in contrast with my fear of the torments that lie before me this evening. For I burn, like a lump of molten lead in a pot, day and night. But here I have a place of refreshment every Sunday from evening to evening, at Christmas until the Epiphany, at Easter until Pentecost, and on the feasts of the purification and assumption of the mother of God. After and before these feasts I am tortured in the depths of Hell.”
– The Voyage of Saint Brendan, 10th Century AD
