The History of Gnosticism

Dante is in the mainstream with his Gnosticism. He's also though influenced heavily by again Islamic traditions where there's the counter of the Prophet Muhammad on his night journey going through domains of well hell and heaven. And so that feeds into these cleansing practices to from the Islamic tradition as much as the Christian tradition. Dante sort of definitely takes it to a new level and purgatory the experience of that region of reality is a distinctively Christian thing.