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Limbus Fatuoʹrum

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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.