For Catholics, the flames of purgatory, vividly rendered in this illustration from a sixteenth-century primer (the English name for a Book of Hours), awaited all who, like Hamlet's father, died in a state of venial sin. Evoked to spur repentance in the living, the pains of purgatory were the same as those of hell, but the souls of the dead in purgatory enjoyed God's grace and were certain of salvation once their sins were purged away.