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Whether there ever were such a person as the knight Owain, or whether he was a mere invention of Henry of Saltrey is uncertain. Saltrey's account is precise as to the various stages through which Owain passed, and it is a vulgar rendering of the common stories of visits to purgatory, of which Dante's is the highest and most poetical version.
This legend was probably known in Ireland from a very early time, but it had spread over all western Europe by the twelfth century. Henry of Saltrey, a Benedictine monk of the Abbey of that name in England, wrote an account in Latin of the descent of an Irish soldier named Owen into Saint Patrick's Purgatory in 1153; and this story soon became the subject of poetic treatment all over Europe.
Dante undoubtedly knew of Marie de France's version as well as the original of Henry of Saltrey and probably others besides. From what has been said it will be seen that Dante's masterpiece is largely based on literature of Irish origin; but there are other superlative exhibitions of human genius of which the same is true. One of these is the story of Tristan and Isolde.
The most remarkable representative in the Middle Ages of the cave of Trophonios was that in Lough Derg in Ireland, the purgatory of S. Patrick as it was called. The origin is obscure, but it sprang into notoriety through the publication by a monk, Henry of Saltrey, of the descent of a knight Owain into it. Owain had been in the service of King Stephen, and he made his descent in the year 1153.
"Enrique Saltarense" is Henry of Saltrey, a Benedictine monk of the Abbey of Saltrey in Huntingdonshire, who about the middle of the twelfth century first reduced to writing the Adventures of Owain, or Enius, in the Purgatory of St. Patrick. Of him Messingham writes thus. Referring to his authorities, he says: He flourished in the year of Grace 1140." "A Brief History of St.
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