stylistic:style_transfer, quality:corruption
History of the belief

The noun "Purgatory" (in Latin purgatorium, a place of cleansing, from the verb purgo, "to clean, cleanse") appeared perhaps only between 1160 and 1180, which encouraged speaking of Purgatory as a place.

Purgatory pre-dates the specific Catholic tradition of purgatory as a transitional state or condition; it has a history that dates back before Christ, to related beliefs also in Judaism, that prayer for the dead contributes to their afterlife purification. The same practice appears in other traditions, such as the medieval Chinese Buddhist practice of making offerings on behalf of the dead, who are said to suffer numerous trials.

The Catholic church found specific Old Testament support in after-life purification in 2 Maccabees 12:42–45, part of the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and Church of the East biblical canons but regarded as apocryphal by Protestants and major branches of Judaism. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, praying for the dead was adopted by Christians from the beginning, a practice that presupposes that the dead are thereby assisted between death and their entry into their final abode. The New American Bible Revised Edition, authorized by the United States Catholic bishops, says in a note to the 2 Maccabees passage:

"This is the earliest statement of the doctrine that prayers and sacrifices for the dead are efficacious. …The author…uses the story to demonstrate belief in the resurrection of the just, and in the possibility of expiation for the sins of otherwise good people who have died. This belief is similar to, but not quite the same as, the Catholic doctrine of purgatory."

Sacred Tradition, by reference to certain texts of scripture, speaks of the process as involving a cleansing fire. According to Jacques Le Goff, in Western Europe toward the end of the twelfth century Purgatory started to be represented as a physical place, Le Goff states that the concept involves the idea of a purgatorial fire, which he suggests "is expiatory and purifying not punitive like hell fire".

At the Second Council of Lyon in 1274, when the Catholic Church defined, for the first time, its teaching on purgatory, the Eastern Orthodox Church did not adopt the doctrine. The council made no mention of purgatory as a third place or as containing fire, which are absent also in the declarations by the Councils of Florence (1431–1449) and of Trent (1545–1563). Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI have written that the term does not indicate a place, but a condition of existence.

The Church of England, mother church of the Anglican Communion, officially denounces what it calls "the Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory", but the Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodox Churches, and elements of the Anglican, Lutheran, and Methodist traditions hold that for some there is cleansing after death and pray for the dead, knowing it to be efficacious. The Reformed Churches teach that the departed are delivered from their sins through the process of glorification.

Rabbinical Judaism also believes in the possibility of after-death purification and may even use the word "purgatory" to describe the similar rabbinical concept of Gehenna, though Gehenna is also sometimes described as more similar to hell or Hades.