Imagining Heaven in the Middle Ages: A Book of EssaysJan Swango Emerson, Hugh Feiss Medieval attempts to capture a glimpse of heaven range from the ethereal to the mundane, utilizing media as diverse as maps, cathedrals, songs, treatises, poems, visions and sewer systems. Heaven was at once the goal of the individual Christian life and the end of the cosmic plan. It was, simply stated, perfection. But interpretations varied from the traditional to the dangerously unique as artists and authors, theologians and visionaries struggled to define that perfection. Depending on the source, heaven's attributes vary from height to depth, darkness to light, silence to symphony; the souls within it from activity to passivity, experience to essence, participation to distant admiration. Questions addressed in this anthology include: Are erotic and spiritual love mutually exclusive? Does the soul's happiness depend on the resurrection of the body? What will be the nature of the transfigured body? Will it retain its gender? Will it have senses? Will it know desire? How can desire and fulfillment exist together? Can the human soul ever know God? Contributors to this volume examine well-known and previously unexplored texts and artefacts from historical and art historical, theological, philosophical, and literary perspectives, to complement and challenge more general surveys of the history of heaven, and above all to illuminate the richness and variety of medieval Christian ideas on heaven. |
Contents
Harmony Hierarchy and the Senses in the Vision of Tundal | 3 |
The Sexual Body in Dantes Celestial Paradise | 47 |
John of Fécamps Longing for Heaven | 65 |
The Discourse of Heaven in Mechtild of Hackeborns | 83 |
Heaven in Bernard of Clunys De contemptu mundi | 101 |
Hadewijch of Antwerps Dark Visions of Heaven | 119 |
Heaven in the Theology of Hugh Achard | 145 |
An Attempt | 185 |
Depetrifying Dantes | 211 |
Memory Metaphor and | 245 |
AFTERWORD | 317 |
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Common terms and phrases
anagogical angels Aquinas arca Noe Augustine Beatrice beauty Bergamo Bernard Bernard of Clairvaux Bernard of Cluny blessed body Booke of Gostlye Brepols Bynum CCSL celestial century Châtillon Christ Christian Commedia commune creation Dante Dante Alighieri Dante's death describes desire divine earth earthly essence eternal experience Fécamp glory God's Gostlye Grace Hadewijch heavenly Helfta hell Hereford map Hereford Mappa Mundi hierarchies Hugh of St Hugh's human images Inferno intellect Jeffrey Burton Russell John Leclercq and Bonnes light map's Mappa Marcus Marcus's Mechthild of Magdeburg Mechtild medieval memory metaphor Mierlo mulberry mystical nature paradise perfect pilgrim poem poet Pseudo-Dionysius punishment Purgatorio Pyramus Pyramus and Thisbe quae quod reprint Resurrection Richard Richard of St Saint Sancti sense Serm sexual soul spiritual Studies Suger sunt things Thisbe Thomas tion tradition trans translation Tundal Turnhout University Press Victor vols women words writings