Envisaging Heaven in the Middle Ages (review)

The excellent papers in this well-focused anthology were delivered at a research program at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Bristol in 2002–04. The editors' introductory survey of recent scholarship also introduces the other fifteen essays in the book, which allocates them to four parts.

Part 2 contains two magisterial surveys of medieval theology. Bernard McGinn traces the developing and conflicting ways in which theology and mysticism envisaged the vision of God. Peter Dronke surveys the notion of apocatastasis (the salvation of all humanity). The other two essays in this section are more specific. Beverly Kienzle studies, in Hildegard of Bingen's Expositiones on the Gospel, the role of the virtues and the Holy Spirit in the Christian's effort rebuild the lost paradise, and the contours of the heavenly Jerusalem. Carolyn Muessig presents the heavenly empyrean, visionary experiences of it on this earth, and angelology in the sermons of Jacques de Vitry (c. 1160–1240).

Several articles in the book refer to the observations of Peter Dinzelbacher and Bernard McGinn that in the twelfth century most visions of heaven were one-time, otherworld journeys by men, whereas in the thirteenth century women often had recurring experiences of the afterlife that offered specific prophetic information. Part 3 offers four studies of such visionary experiences. Robert Easting surveys the literature of such visions of heaven and finds the accounts reticent on what the seers actually saw and heard. The other articles in this section are more narrowly focused. Mary Suydam investigates beguine experiences of heaven, which enhanced the status of the seers while bringing other people information about the status of souls. Steven Rozenski, Jr., shows the tension between heavenly apparitions and apophaticism in Henry Suso's works. A.C. Spearing finds that Marguerite Porete's Mirror for Simple Souls dissolved the orthodox boundary between heaven and earth and suggests that Porete's self-understanding was elitist and disturbingly masochistic.

Part 4 includes studies of how heaven was presented in medieval drama (Peter Meredith), the lyrics and performance of four of Hildegard's songs (Stephen D'Evelyn); canto 28 of Dante's Paradiso (Robin Kirkpatrick); and the intricate poetry of the Pearl, the Marienleich of Heinrich von Meissen (d. 1318), and Dante's Paradiso (Barbara Newman). These last three articles are models of close, insightful literary analysis. Part 5,"Vernacular appropriations," opens with a very interesting study of how Irish traditions of hospitality and banqueting blended with devotional currents from the continent to form a particularly Irish vision of the heavenly banquet, open to all who would enter, where the wine-blood of Christ was both requisite and reward. The final two articles discuss how romantic love was described in heavenly terms in Chaucer's works (Elizabeth Archibald) and how the fairy world of medieval romances incorporated the descriptions of the heavenly Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation and New Testament apocrypha (Ad Putter).

It is a tribute to the editors and authors that they are able to enter into a world so different from our own. The titles of two books suggest just how different: Jeffrey Burton Russell, Paradise Mislaid: How We Lost Heaven—and How We Can Regain It (Oxford, 2006), and Robert Wuthnow, After Heaven: Spirituality in America since the 1950s (Berkeley, 1998). Wuthnow believes that in our mobile society we are "seekers" rather than "dwellers." The medieval thinkers and artists discussed in this book were seekers also, but most of them sought a lasting dwelling place that they envisaged as heaven.