St Patrick's Purgatory is an ancient pilgrimage site on Station Island in Lough Derg, County Donegal, Ireland.

According to legend, the site dates from the fifth century, when Christ showed Saint Patrick a cave, sometimes referred to as a pit or a well, on Station Island that was an entrance to Purgatory.

It is clearly indicated on documents dating from that time, and it appears as "Caverna Purgatory" on the detailed map of Station Island in Sir James Ware's De Hibernia (1654) and Fr.

From modern practice we know that people would enter these small enclosed places to inhale medicinal smoke produced by burning various plants.

[13] They would then spend fifteen days fasting and praying to prepare themselves for the visit to Station Island, a short boat ride away.

At the end of the fifteen days, pilgrims would confess their sins, receive communion and undergo a few final rituals before being locked in the cave for twenty-four hours.

The next morning the prior would open the door, and if the pilgrim were found alive, he would be brought back to Saints Island for another fifteen days of prayer and fasting.

St. Patrick's Purgatory would be a likely destination for these penitential pilgrims, or exiles, since communities of anchorites were often considered to have special power to absolve them.

Here a duke lends him a boat so that he and his companions could travel up Lough Erne, most likely stopping at Devenish, Inishmacsaint and White Island.

[17] At the 31st Irish Conference of Medievalists (2017)[18] has been presented a new hypothesis for the historical reconstruction of the so-called first "closure" of the pilgrimage which is thought to have occurred in the late 15th century.

The Acta Sanctorum contains a document in which the closure is attributed to the denunciation of a Dutch monk, who had been to Lough Derg and subsequently traveled to the Vatican, where he accused the pilgrimage's organizers (including the bishop and the prior) of simony.

[19] According to Taviani, the true story is that in 1497 it was Cathal Óg Mac Maghnusa (at the time active as a bishop of the Diocese of Clogher), encouraged by the Guardian of the Franciscan Observant Donegal Abbey, who wanted to radically change the course of the pilgrimage.

[22] Shane Leslie gave freehold of the island to the diocese in 1960, and was made a Knight Commander of St Gregory by Pope John XXIII in recognition.

It is a three-day pilgrimage open to pilgrims of all religions, or none, who must be at least fifteen years of age, in good health and able to walk and kneel unaided.

Pilgrims, who should begin fasting at the previous midnight, assemble at the Visitor Centre on the shore of Lough Derg early in the day (between about 10 am and 1 pm).

[26] Tractatus de Purgatorio Sancti Patricii is a twelfth-century account in Latin of a pilgrimage to St Patrick's Purgatory.

A more detailed description of 'the cave' of St Patrick's Purgatory was provided by the accomplished seventeenth-century Irish historian, Sir James Ware, in his work De Hibernia (1654, 2nd ed.

Station Island is a long poem written by Séamus Heaney about his experience of the pilgrimage: it is part of a collection of the same name (published 1984).

"The Lough Derg Pilgrim"[34] by the Irish writer William Carleton recounts his experience there, which led him to abandon thoughts of becoming a Roman Catholic priest; he converted to the Church of Ireland.

Thirty-two are listed in Haren and de Pontfarcy;[39] Francesco Chiericati saw the name of the 33rd, Guarino da Durazzo, in a book on Station Island during his visit, before all of the records on St. Patrick's Purgatory were presumably destroyed on 25 October 1632.