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Limbus Fatuoʹrum

.

The Limbus of Fools, or Fool’s Paradise. As fools are not responsible for their works, they are not punished in Purgatory, but cannot be received into Heaven; so they go to a place called the Paradise of Fools.

“Then might you see

Cowls, hoods, and habits, with their wearers tossed

And fluttered into rags; then relics, beads,

Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls,

The sport of winds. All these, upwhirled aloft,

Into a Limbo large and broad, since called

The Paradise of Fools.”


Milton: Paradise Lost, book iii. 489–95.

⁂ One cannot wonder that Milton’s great poem was placed by the Catholics in the Index of books forbidden.

 

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.

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Lilliput
Lily (The)
Lily of the Valley
Lily Maid of Astolat
Lim Hay
Limb
Limb of the Law (A)
Limberham
Limbo
Limbus
Limbus Fatuorum
Limbus Patrum
Limbus Puerorum
Limbus of the Moon
Lime Street
Limited Liability
Limner
Limp
Lina
Lincoln
Lincoln College (Oxford)