The afterdeath life cartography that runs through Christian thought from Bernard of Clairvaux to Aquinas is thus composed of five real and physical places: Paradise, Limbo of Patriarchs, Limbo of the Infants, Purgatory and Hell.
The unofficial term Limbo /ˈlɪmboʊ/ (from Latin limbus 'edge, boundary', referring to the edge of Hell) is the afterlife condition, in medieval Catholic theology, of those who die in original sin without being assigned to the Hell of the Damned.
Some medieval theologians of Western Europe described the underworld ("hell", "hades", "infernum") as divided into three distinct parts: Hell of the Damned,[1] Limbo of the Fathers or Patriarchs, and Limbo of the Infants.
The Limbo of the Fathers is the state or place for people who were friends of God but died before the death of Jesus Christ; when Jesus died he descended into hell and rescued the souls of those who had died before him: this is traditionally known as the Harrowing of Hell.
In Classical Greek mythology, the section of Hades known as the Fields of Asphodel were a realm much resembling Limbo, to which the vast majority of people who were held to have deserved neither the Elysian Fields (Heaven) nor Tartarus (Hell) were consigned for eternity.[citation needed]
