Divine DreamworkConfluence of Visionary Traditions in John of Morigny’s Flowers of Heavenly Teaching

This article considers some medieval traditions of practice and interpretation that surrounded the seeing of visions. Its particular focus is the background to the dream induction processes in John of Morigny's Flowers of Heavenly Teaching, a prayer manual written in the early fourteenth century, composed with the blessing and cooperation of the Virgin Mary, meant to be used with figures and visualizations to induce visionary dreams. Looking at both monastic and magical practices, I put some pieces of the context in place around the elements of John’s practice in order to show that his book, creative as it was, nevertheless originated against a background in which solicited visions, often occurring during a state on the edge of sleep, were not an oddity, but broadly common to the religious cultures of late medieval Europe.