Envisaging Heaven in the Middle Ages

Envisaging Heaven in the Middle Ages considers medieval notions of heaven intheological and mystical writings, in visions of the otherworld and in medievalarts such as drama, poetry, music and vernacular literature.

The volume considers the inuence of images and visions of heaven on thesecular literature by some of the greatest writers of the period, such as Chrtiende Troyes and Chaucer. The coherence and beauty of these notions make heavenone of the most impressive medieval cathedrals of the mind.

The book shows that the idea of heaven in the Middle Ages was as varied asthose who wrote about it, and reveals the extent to which the Christian afterlifewas (as it is today) a projection of human hopes and fears. Because the realityof heaven was one based on speculation, as well as fancy, medieval heavenswere products both of ingenious thought and of creative, wishful imagination.

With contributions from such experts as Peter Dronke, Beverly MayneKienzle, Robin Kirkpatrick, Bernard McGinn, Peter Meredith, Barbara Newmanand A.C. Spearing, this collection will be essential reading for all those inter-ested in medieval religion and culture.

Carolyn Muessig is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Theology at the University ofBristol. She is the author of Sermon, Preacher and Audience in the Middle Ages,Medieval Monastic Education and The Faces of Women in the Sermons ofJacques de Vitry: most recently, she co-edited Hildegard of Bingens Exposi-tiones euangeliorum. Ad Putter is Reader in English Literature at the Univer-sity of Bristol. He is the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and FrenchArthurian Romance and An Introduction to the Gawain-Poet, and co-edited TheSpirit of Medieval Popular Romance.

Routledge studies in medieval religion and cultureEdited by George FerzocoUniversity of Leicesterand

Carolyn MuessigUniversity of Bristol

This series aims to present developments and debates within the eld ofmedieval religion and culture. It will provide a broad range of case studies andtheoretical perspectives, covering a variety of topics, theories and issues.

1 Gender and HolinessMen, women and saints in late medieval EuropeEdited by Samantha J.E. Riches and Sarah Salih

2 The Invention of SaintlinessEdited by Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker

3 Tolkien the MedievalistEdited by Jane Chance

4 Julian of NorwichMystic or visionary?Kevin J. Magill

5 Disability in Medieval EuropeThinking about physical impairment in the high Middle Ages, c.1100c.1400Irina Metzler

6 Envisaging Heaven in the Middle AgesEdited by Carolyn Muessig and Ad Putter

Envisaging Heaven in theMiddle Ages

Edited by Carolyn Muessig and Ad PutterWith the assistance of Gareth Grifthand Judith Jefferson

First published 2007by Routledge2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canadaby Routledge270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2007 Carolyn Muessig and Ad Putter for selection and editorial matter;individual contributors, their contributions.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced orutilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, nowknown or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or inany information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writingfrom the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication DataA catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN10: 0-415-38383-8 (hbk)ISBN10: 0-203-96621-X (ebk)

ISBN13: 978-0-415-38383-7 (hbk)ISBN13: 978-0-203-96621-1 (ebk)

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006.

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Contents

List of plates viiiList of contributors ixPreface xiAcknowledgements xiiList of abbreviations xiii

PART I

Introduction 1

1 Envisaging heaven: an introduction 3C A R O L Y N M U E S S I G A N D A D P U T T E R

PART II

The theology of heaven 13

2 Visio dei: seeing God in medieval theology and mysticism 15B E R N A R D M c G I N N

3 Constructing heaven in Hildegard of Bingens Expositioneseuangeliorum 34B E V E R L Y M A Y N E K I E N Z L E

4 The completeness of heaven 44P E T E R D R O N K E

5 Heaven, earth and the angels: preaching paradise in the sermons of Jacques de Vitry 57C A R O L Y N M U E S S I G

PART III

Mystical and visionary traditions 73

6 Access to heaven in medieval visions of the otherworld 75R O B E R T E A S T I N G

7 Bringing heaven down to earth: beguine constructions of heaven 91M A R Y S U Y D A M

8 Von Aller Bilden Bildlosekeit: the trouble with images of heaven in the works of Henry Suso 108S T E V E N R O Z E N S K I , J R

9 Marguerite Porete: courtliness and transcendence inThe Mirror of Simple Souls 120A . C . S P E A R I N G

PART IV

The art of heaven 137

10 Some high place: actualizing heaven in the Middle Ages 139P E T E R M E R E D I T H

11 Heaven as performance and participation in theSymphonia armonie celestium revelationum of Hildegard of Bingen 155S T E P H E N D E V E L Y N

12 Afterlives now: a study of Paradiso canto 28 166R O B I N K I R K P A T R I C K

13 The artice of eternity: speaking of heaven in three medieval poems 185B A R B A R A N E W M A N

vi Contents

PART V

Vernacular appropriations 207

14 Exchanging blood for wine: envisaging heaven in Irish bardic poetry 209S A L V A D O R R Y A N

15 Chaucers lovers in metaphorical heaven 222E L I Z A B E T H A R C H I B A L D

16 The inuence of visions of the otherworld on some medievalromances 237A D P U T T E R

Index 252

Contents vii

Plates

10.1 Meg Twycrosss reconstruction of the York Mercers pageantwagon, Petergate, York, 1988 (photo: David Mills). 145

10.2 The top of the Weinmarkt in Lucerne showing the position of heaven on the Haus zur Sonne. (Part of the lay-out for the play in 1583, redrawn from the original sketch-plan in the Zentralbibliothek, Luzern.) 148

Contributors

Elizabeth Archibald is Reader in Medieval Studies at the University of Bristol.She has published studies of the Apollonius of Tyre romance and of theincest theme in medieval literature, and co-edited a collection of essays onMalory. She is currently working on medieval baths and bathing.

Peter Dronke is Emeritus Professor of Medieval Latin Literature at the Univer-sity of Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, and a Correspond-ing Fellow of the Real Academia de Buenas Letras, the Royal DutchAcademy and the Austrian Academy of Sciences. His books includeMedieval Latin and the Rise of the European Love-Lyric (2nd edn 1968), TheMedieval Lyric (3rd edn 1996), Fabula (1974), Women Writers of the MiddleAges (1984), Dante and Medieval Latin Traditions (1986) and editions ofBernardus Silvestris Cosmographia (1978) and Hildegard of Bingens Liberdiuinorum operum (with Albert Derolez, 1996).

Robert Easting, MA, DPhil (Oxon), has taught medieval (and later) EnglishLanguage and Literature at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand,since 1973. His research has focused on medieval Latin and vernacularvisions of the otherworld.

Stephen DEvelyn is Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Erasmus Institute,University of Notre Dame. He is presently nishing a commentary on Hilde-gard of Bingens Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum and writing astudy of ancient and medieval poetry of gift-giving.

Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Professor at Harvard Divinity School, is completing astudy of Hildegard of Bingens Expositiones euangeliorum. Other publica-tions include The Sermon. Typologie des sources du moyen ge occidental,fasc. 813 (2000) and Cistercians, Heresy and Crusade (11451229):Preaching in the Lords Vineyard (2001).

Robin Kirkpatrick is Professor of Italian and English Literatures at Universityof Cambridge and Fellow of Robinson College. He has published widely onDante and the relations between English and Italian literature and is currentlynishing a verse translation of Dantes Commedia for Penguin Classics.

Bernard McGinn is the Naomi Shenstone Donnelley Professor Emeritus at theDivinity School of the University of Chicago. His major interests are in thehistory of apocalypticism and in Christian mystical traditions.

Peter Meredith is Emeritus Professor of Medieval Drama at the University ofLeeds. He was a founder editor with Meg Twycross of the journal MedievalEnglish Theatre and one of the team which set up the Records of EarlyEnglish Drama in Toronto. His major work has been in editing and the prac-tical study of drama.

Carolyn Muessig is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Theology at the University ofBristol. Her interests include the sermons of Jacques de Vitry and female reli-gious education. Most recently, she has co-edited (with Beverly MayneKienzle) Hildegard of Bingens Expositiones euangeliorum.

Barbara Newman is Professor of English, Religion, and Classics at Northwest-ern University, where she holds the John Evans Chair in Latin. Her mostrecent book is God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in theMiddle Ages (2003).

Ad Putter is Reader in English Literature at the University of Bristol. He is theauthor of two books on the Gawain-Poet and co-editor (with Jane Gilbert) ofThe Spirit of Medieval Popular Romance (2000). He is currently working onalliterative metre.

Steven Rozenski is an Assistant Language Teacher for the Tome-shi Board ofEducation in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. He was a 20032004 FulbrightScholar at the University of Cologne, Germany; his work focuses on the theo-logical implications of the turn towards the vernacular in fourteenth-centuryGerman and English religious texts.

Salvador Ryan teaches Church History at St Patricks College, Thurles, CountyTipperary, Ireland. He has published widely in the area of late medievalpopular piety and is currently preparing a monograph entitled Popular Reli-gion in Gaelic Ireland, c.1450c.1650 for Four Courts Press.

A.C. Spearing is Kenan Professor of English at the University of Virginia and aLife Fellow of Queens College, Cambridge. His work focuses on medievalto early modern poetry, late-medieval religious prose and the interactions ofmedieval literature with modern theory. His most recent book is TextualSubjectivity: The Encoding of Subjectivity in Medieval Narratives and Lyrics.

Mary Suydam teaches religion, history and gender studies at Kenyon College.She is the author of numerous articles about Hadewijch of Antwerp. She isthe co-editor (with Ellen Kittell) of The Texture of Society: Medieval Womenin the Southern Low Countries, and the co-editor (with Joanna Ziegler)of Performance and Transformation: New Approaches to Late MedievalSpirituality.

x Contributors

Preface

In 20022004 the Centre for Medieval Studies of the University of Bristolorganized a two-year research programme entitled Envisaging Heaven in theMiddle Ages. Our aim was to explore heaven as it was envisaged by medievalpeople in art and literature, in popular and academic thought. An exploration ofthis kind seemed to us to call for expertise in a variety of elds, so we sought tobring together medievalists from a range of adjacent disciplines (theology,history, art history, literature and others). In the two project years, variousmedievalists from all relevant disciplines at the University of Bristol joinedforces with leading scholars from around the world. We hosted four public lec-tures, by Peter Meredith, Tony Spearing, Peter Dronke and Robin Kirkpatrick.The series of invited lectures was followed on 1619 July 2004 by an inter-national and interdisciplinary conference, with keynote addresses by BernardMcGinn and Barbara Newman. This book contains all of the public lectures andkeynote addresses and a selection of the conference papers, plus a chapterwritten by Carolyn Muessig to ensure coverage of an important source notstudied in any of the other chapters: the medieval sermon.

Acknowledgements

It is not usually the case that those charged with organizing a lecture series or a con-ference have nothing but happy memories of the events. The surprising fact is thatwe do, and we owe this rare pleasure not only to the quality and variety of all thelectures and conference papers, but also to the help and support of a number of indi-viduals and institutions that participated in the lecture series and the internationalconference Envisaging Heaven in the Middle Ages, 1618 July 2004. The projecthas been generously funded by the Read-Tuckwell Foundation of the University ofBristol. We thank Marcus Bull, Ian Wei and Beth Williamson, who rst conceivedof the idea and persuaded the Read-Tuckwell Foundation that it was worthy of theirnancial backing. Without that backing, the lecture series, the conference and thisbook would not have been. Paul Williams, then Academic Secretary of the Read-Tuckwell committee, has been helpful and encouraging throughout. The visits toBristol by Peter Dronke, Tony Spearing and Beverly Kienzle were facilitated byBenjamin Meaker Visiting Professorships. We are grateful for these to the Institutefor Advanced Studies, University of Bristol and its Provost Martin White.

For help in organizing the conference we thank our postgraduate students andthe staff at Clifton Hill House, Liz Bird for opening the conference and JonCannon for organizing a splendid excursion around medieval Bristol.

Carolyn Muessigs chapter was written especially for this book: we thank theArts Faculty Research Fund of the University of Bristol for sponsoring the neces-sary research trips to the British Library.

For alleviating the task of editing the collection we are grateful not only to allthe contributors, for their efciency and cheerful cooperation, but also to JudithJefferson and Gareth Grifth, for their excellent editorial assistance. The work ofensuring consistency of practice and compliance with the publishers house-styleis the most labour-intensive part of the editorial process and we are grateful toJudith Jefferson and Gareth Grifth for shouldering most of this work. Such errorsas remain are of course our responsibility.

An earlier version of the chapter by Barbara Newman appeared in Religion andLiterature, 2005, vol. 37.1, (Spring): 124. Reprint permission has been kindlygranted by the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN.

Carolyn MuessigAd Putter

Abbreviations

CCCM Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaeualis. Turnhout: Brepols,1971.

EETS Early English Text Society. Published in various series: Early EnglishText Society, Extra Series (EETS, ES); Early English Text Society,Original Series (EETS, OS); Early English Text Society,Supplementary Series (EETS, SS). London/Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1864.

MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Published in various series. Berlin,18771919; Stuttgart, 1938; Hannover, 18261934.

PG J.-P. Migne (ed.) Patrologiae cursus: Series Graeca, 161 volumes.Paris, 18571866.

PL J.-P. Migne (ed.) Patrologia cursus completus: Series Latina, 221volumes. Paris, 18441864.

SC Sources chrtiennes. Paris: Les ditions du Cerf, 1941.

Part I

Introduction

1 Envisaging heavenAn introduction

Carolyn Muessig and Ad Putter

The concept of heaven is broader than the theological tradition of heaven. Thetheological tradition is itself broader than abstract or academic theology, for itembraces not only formal theology but the life and thought of the entirecommunity. Tradition is not repetition, but the transmission of a living reality,which must be renewed and rethought as the community develops.1

Jeffrey Burton Russells words capture the expansive idea of heaven in theMiddle Ages and its shifting shapes across different times and different cultures.Many religions have posited heavens of some kind;2 and even when we con-centrate on a single religion, pre-reformation Christianity, and a single period,the Middle Ages, we discover that the idea of heaven in the Middle Ages was asvaried as the people who wrote about it. There was no one heaven, but apolyphony of heavens. Furthermore, because the reality of heaven was onebased on speculation as well as fancy, medieval heavens were products both ofingenious thought and of creative wishful imagination.

The interest of the topic of heaven is duly reected in the recent scholarshipdevoted to it. Because this scholarship forms the background of the newresearch collected in this volume, we begin with a brief survey of some import-ant books that have appeared in the last two decades.

In Heaven: A History, Colleen McDannell and Bernhard Lang provided agroundbreaking study on the development of heaven from its semitic back-ground to its decline in the modern era.3 The subtitle of their book emphasizesthe authors central point: representations of heaven changed with the times.Perhaps the most important change to occur in the medieval period is the changefrom visions of heaven as garden (which is what the word paradise originallymeant) to visions of heaven as a walled city. Both ideas have precedents in theBible the garden in Genesis and the Song of Songs, the city in the Book ofRevelation but, as McDannell and Lang argue, the resurgence of cities in thetwelfth century helped reinvigorate the conceit of heaven as a large city.

Jean Delumeau has taken a similar historicizing approach to the changingconceptions and meanings of paradise in his book Une Histoire du Paradis.4

Delumeaus study traces paradise and its pre-Christian roots, the theological

developments made by the church fathers and medieval theologians regardingthe differences between the earthly and celestial paradises and the loss of par-adise in the writings of Emmanuel Kant (17241804) and Jean-JacquesRousseau (17121778). Delumeau followed this study with Mille ans debonheur: Histoire du Paradis which has the same broad sweep as the rstvolume, but focuses rather on apocalyptic thought. In the medieval period, thebeliefs and teachings of such groups as Joachimites, Lollards and Hussites,receive particular attention.5 Although McDannell and Langs analysis andDelumeaus study present a general summary of the history of heaven and par-adise, they are valuable in the understanding of the specic development ofideas about heaven in the Middle Ages.

Two recent studies of the development of heaven in Christian thought areJeffrey Burton Russells A History of Heaven: The Singing Silence and AlisterMcGraths A Brief History of Heaven. Russells magisterial book presents manyexamples and concepts that were prevalent in the Middle Ages such as visionsand their signicance in revealing the mysteries of the afterlife, the use of poetryin expressing the inexpressible of the celestial abode and the experience of joyin the heavenly realm.6 Whereas Delumeaus history often emphasizes thenegative and apocalyptic aspects of the last things, Russells work highlights thepositive function of heaven as the individuals ultimate fullment. McGrathsbook focuses on a broad range of literature dating from the gospels to the songsof John Lennon. Looking at various themes of heaven such as the city, thegarden, atonement and paradise, signals of transcendence, the consolationof heaven and heaven as the goal of the Christian life, McGrath demonstratesthe effectiveness of literature in expressing (however approximately) experi-ences of paradise, for he argues that unlike theological treatises, which lacked asuppleness of language owing to their systematic approach, imaginative liter-ature allowed for a greater exibility of expression.7

The essay collections The Iconography of Heaven, edited by Clifford David-son, and Imagining Heaven in the Middle Ages, edited by J.S. Emerson andHugh Feiss, present detailed studies of heaven in the late Middle Ages that aremore tightly focused than the books so far mentioned.8 The Iconography ofHeaven brings together seven essays which are mainly concerned withrepresentations of heaven in the visual arts and the performing arts of drama andmusic.9 The contributors discuss some of the stereotypical sights, sounds andsmells associated with heaven (light, song, the fragrance of owers and so on)and the ways in which these sensations were articially produced for earthlyaudiences. Imagining Heaven in the Middle Ages contains eleven essays dealingwith the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The book is broken down into threesections: corporeality, which discusses the bodily enjoyment of heaven andissues concerning the corporeal versus the incorporeal reality of paradise; desireand fullment, which considers the monastic idea of completion in heaven andhow exactly this was experienced; the nal section, transcendence, is devotedto the ultimate heavenly attainment of union with God and the limits of humanlanguage in describing that union. At the heart of the collection is the inuential

4 C. Muessig and A. Putter

work of Caroline Walker Bynums The Resurrection of the Body in WesternChristianity, 2001336.10 Here Bynum brilliantly traced the development of per-sonhood and wholeness of self in the resurrected body making clear the central-ity of corporeality in medieval heaven.

More recently Bynum with Paul Freedman has edited Last Things: Death andthe Apocalypse in the Middle Ages.11 The eschatological subject and chronologyof this book of collected essays is broad, incorporating examples from the earlychurch to the fteenth century as well as discussion of not only heaven but alsodeath and the apocalypse. In regard to heaven this study claries the immediacyof heaven in the medieval mentality. In particular, Harvey Stahls article ThePlace of the Elect in an Illuminated Book of Hours, which examines numerousimages of heaven in art, concludes that the afterworld [. . .] was not shown con-sistently but it did move closer to earth.12 As illuminators made heaven lookfamiliar, the ineffable and unrepresentable somehow became accessible and tan-gible.

Such accessibility indicates a desire on the part of the artist of these booksand their owners to have some kind of concrete understanding of heaven.Indeed, the theme of heaven when applied to medieval culture emerges inalmost every context as it was the anticipated fullment and much hoped forcompletion of the Christian life. An ever-present anticipation of heaven madethoughts of the afterlife a vital part of ones daily existence. This explains thepopularity of vision literature. Vision literature usually presented accounts of anindividuals experience of the afterlife (heaven, purgatory and hell); often thesevisions happened as part of a near-death experience.13 Scholarly interest in thegenre is now such that we cannot attempt to survey the scholarship. Fortunately,however, Robert Eastings study Visions of the Other World in Middle Englishprovides an excellent bibliographical guide to this growing subject. The titlemight suggest the bibliography is limited to Middle English scholarship, butgeneral studies and criticism and editions of analogous visions in other vernacu-lars and Latin are also represented. The wide circulation of many of thesevisions, as documented by Easting, is testimony to the interest and entertainmentthey provided to medieval audiences.14 Eastings study builds on and comple-ments the classic treatment of medieval vision literature, Peter DinzelbachersVision und Visionliteratur im Mittelalter.15 One of the many signicant points inDinzelbachers study is the change that occurred in vision literature in the earlythirteenth century. In the twelfth century most visions were experienced by menand occurred once. In the thirteenth century, there was a shift with visions of theafterlife often being experienced by women and recurring on a regular basis.

The ideas raised in these studies on heaven are expanded and developed inthe present collection. Envisaging Heaven in the Middle Ages deals withmedieval notions of heaven in theological and mystical writings, in visions ofthe otherworld, in medieval drama, poetry and music, and in vernacular liter-ature. In order to indicate the range of interests and approaches on offer, wehave structured the book in four sections, each devoted to a different aspect ofthe theme of heaven. The rst section addresses theological controversies as

Envisaging heaven 5

well as established traditions concerning heaven. The chapters in the second partof the book deal with mystical and visionary traditions of heaven, and discussthe search for heaven in the writings of medieval mystics and in visions of theotherworld. The third section considers representations of heaven in medievalpoetry and drama. Putting heaven into verse or onto stage posed obvious chal-lenges; this section shows how poets and performers took on and overcamethese obstacles. The fourth and nal section examines vernacular appropriationsof the idea of heaven in a range of languages and idioms (Irish bardic poetry,Chaucers love poetry and medieval romance).

The theology of heaven

The nature of the actual experience of heaven was the focus of intense specu-lation and debate in the Middle Ages. Some in the tradition of John Chrysostom(d. 407) argued that when the blessed entered heaven they would not achieve acomplete understanding of the divine for such comprehension would be beyondthe human reach.16 Augustine viewed heaven as offering an unmediated intellec-tual understanding of God.17 Gregory the Great argued that God would be seenimmediately after death essentially and naturally.18 These and other tensions andcontroversies prevailed in the West throughout the Middle Ages. At the centreof the debate was the question of how the individual interacted with the divine.

The relationship between God and the soul in heaven was a fraught topic inthe later Middle Ages. Bernard McGinns chapter Visio dei: seeing God inmedieval theology and mysticism considers this relationship in heaven with ananalysis of the differing concepts of the beatic vision. Pope John XXII(13161334) and Pope Benedict XII (13341342) each articulated concrete butopposite conclusions regarding the souls ability to gaze upon God. McGinnshows clearly and precisely how this thread of argumentation developed fromPope Innocent III (11981216) to Meister Eckhart (d. 1327/1328).

The fullment of the desire to be united to God drove the argument andpassion behind the debate of the beatic vision. Jean LeClercqs classic study ofthe monastic life, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, demonstratedhow monks strove to achieve perfect understanding of self and God.19 This senti-ment was also entrenched in the writings of Hildegard of Bingen. BeverlyKienzle in her chapter Constructing heaven in Hildegard of Bingens Exposi-tiones euangeliorum, demonstrates that this desire for God is at the heart ofHildegard of Bingens theology of heaven. In the Expositiones, the monasticyearning for union with God nds expression in engineering and architecturalmotifs. Metaphors of building indicate the path to heaven, but, as Kienzle sug-gests, they also reveal Hildegards lived experience as she oversaw the buildingwork at her own monastery Rupertsberg.

The monastic life, so Hildegard of Bingen or Bernard of Clairvaux wouldhave argued, is the gateway to heaven. In this argument, heaven afforded privi-leged positions to those who had lived a life of monastic perfection. But therewere conicting views of who would gain access to heaven. Throughout the

6 C. Muessig and A. Putter

history of Christianity, some theologians argued that after a period of purica-tion all individuals could be restored to perfection, regardless of their way oflife. Even the greatest sinners would one day return to God; this theologicalbelief is known as apocatastasis among the Greek Fathers. In the West this beliefwas declared an anathema: only those who found redemption within the sacra-mental church could enter heaven. Yet, as Peter Dronke shows in his chapterThe completeness of heaven, apocatastasis was an attractive belief that con-tinued to nd advocates, for it was based on the idea (at once logical and beauti-ful) that heaven could only be perfected when all created things returned to it.Looking at an impressive breadth of material, from the New Testament to Dos-toyevsky, Dronke shows that even in the medieval West some theologiansretained elements of apocatastasis in their theological view of redemption.

Carolyn Muessigs chapter Heaven, earth and the angels: preaching paradisein the sermons of Jacques de Vitry uncovers a heaven that is militantly ortho-dox and designed to combat heretical views. Although heaven was the abode ofGod, the blessed and the angels, Jacques de Vitry reminds us that it was also thebirthplace of discord and schism; in particular heaven was the region fromwhich God had exiled the rebellious angels. His sermons demonstrate thatheaven could be anything but peaceful; it could be viewed as a parallel universewhich provided precedent for violent action against such groups as the Cathars.

Mystical and visionary traditions

As indicated above, the bodily resurrection was an expectation in Christian theo-logy.20 Such an expectation points to the logical conclusion that heaven was notonly a notional reality but a physical place where all the blessed would reside.Much time was spent in trying to gure out where this heaven was located andhow it was arranged. Many theologians perceived it to be above the earthly andheavenly rmaments.21 However, perceptions of heaven were often relayed notonly through theological treatises but visionary literature. Such writings madeheaven visible and tangible in the here and now, partly as an incentive to virtu-ous living on earth. As Robert Easting points out in Visions of the Other World:Medieval visionary experiences and everyday practicalities did not alwaysinhabit divided and distinguished worlds. Moreover, both religious and the laitywere encouraged to mediate and see the other worlds as part of a regularconsideration of ones mortality.22

This seeing accounts for perhaps the most dynamic and memorable accountsof heaven, the medieval legends of visits to the other world. As Robert Eastingshows in his chapter on these legends, Access to heaven in medieval visions ofthe otherworld, the authors of vision literature were careful not to reveal toomuch about heaven, by imposing restrictions not only on what the visionary wasallowed or able to report but also on what he was allowed to see. The visionarycan see but only imperfectly, from afar. And it is not always clear what place heis describing: some visions make it clear that the visionary is not seeing theheavenly city itself but only its surroundings. The male visionarys reticence to

Envisaging heaven 7

present all the details of his otherworldly encounter is a recurrent theme in thetwelfth century.

The thirteenth-century beguines offer a very different visionary mode. MarySuydam demonstrates how women could enter the spatial dimension of heavenand communicate with the divine. Her chapter Bringing heaven down to earth:beguine constructions of heaven substantiates Dinzelbachers observation con-cerning the rise of female visions in the thirteenth century. Suydam notes thatsuch female visionary abilities challenged ecclesiastical restrictions of the of-cial place of women in the church and allowed women a way to subvert hierar-chical limitations. Furthermore, where male visionaries were sometimes reticentto speak, female visionaries spoke of their visions in graphic and highly personaldetail, developing models of holiness that depended on the intimacy of theircontacts with the divine rather than on institutional recognition.

This tension between verbal profusion and reticence in attempts to describeheaven is at the core of many visionary accounts. Steven Rozenski grapples withthis seeming contradiction in his chapter Von Aller Bilden Bildlosekeit: thetrouble with images of heaven in the works of Henry Suso. Rozenski discussesone of the few male visionaries from the fourteenth century, Henry Suso, whoseuse of both cataphatic and apophatic imaging of God embraces at once the con-crete language of heaven as articulated by the beguines and the abstract intellec-tualization of Meister Eckhart under whom Suso studied.

The slippage between imagistic and imageless depictions of heaven in Susoillustrates the tensions inherent in the mystics enterprise. A.C. Spearingschapter Marguerite Porete: courtliness and transcendence in The Mirror ofSimple Souls provides an extreme case in point. In her controversial Mirror ofSimple Souls, Marguerite Porete acts out the turbulent and paradoxical move-ments of transcendence. In the writings of studiously orthodox mystics, theunion with God in this world is carefully distinguished from the union with Godin the afterlife; in Poretes Mirror this difference is one of a number of logicaldistinctions to be suspended at delirious moments in the discourse. At suchmoments, the mystical union with God in the here and now seems to be notmerely a foretaste of heaven but a complete achievement of it in the present life.The imaginative entertainment of such heretical possibilities eventually causedMarguerite to be burned to death as a heretic.

The art of heaven

Those who had allegedly experienced the visions of heaven and came back tospeak of it often remarked upon its ineffableness. But this never stopped indi-viduals from saying as much as possible about what was beyond description.This tension between apophatic and cataphatic sensibilities created some of thenest poetry of the period. Pushing language to its limits, heaven was sungabout and lauded in poetry. Although poetry and visions in particular gaveauthors greater scope and licence to envisage heaven creatively and expansively,the task nevertheless challenged them to match the loftiness of their theme with

8 C. Muessig and A. Putter

the beauty and sublimeness of their own language. And it also challenged theingenuity of playwrights, directors and performers, who had to put heaven onstage and make actors ascend to and descend from it.

The chapters in this section discuss how heaven was represented in medievalpoetry and drama. Medieval religious plays (which included accounts of theCreation and the Fall) had to wrestle with the problem of how heaven could beaccommodated to the stage (or the wagon cart). Aesthetic ideas of paradise hadto be translated into creative sets that could capture the dramatic biblicalmoments involving heaven. In his chapter Some high place: actualizingheaven in the Middle Ages, Peter Meredith illustrates the performance ofheaven in late medieval mystery plays performed in Florence, Lucerne andYork. The ingenious stage directions and special effects of these plays demon-strates that, even as the emotion and meaning of heaven loomed large in theo-logical and visionary circles, it was also intensely realized for popularaudiences.

The emotion of a dramatic event is sometimes most powerfully conveyedthrough music, which reaches emotions that word and images alone cannottouch. In his chapter Heaven as performance and participation in the Symphoniaarmonie celestium revelationum of Hildegard of Bingen, Stephen DEvelynshows how ideas of mystery, beauty and community of heaven are evoked in thehaunting liturgical songs of Hildegard of Bingen. As he argues, in these songsthe words, the music and the setting of the performance are integrated to evoke,as it were, heaven on earth.

Of course, it is Dantes Divina Commedia that proves beyond all doubt thattheological thought and poetry can indeed enrich each other. Robin Kirk-patricks chapter Afterlives now: a study of Paradiso canto 28 is devoted toDante, as theological thinker and poet, and presents a close reading of canto 28of Dantes Paradiso. This section of the Paradiso addresses the ordering of theangelic hierarchies. Kirkpatricks analysis presents a fresh interpretation of thecanto, clarifying and bringing to the fore all the artistic and cultural componentsthat have gone into the realization of these angelic lines which invite the readerto participate in Dantes own vision of heaven.

Looking at Dante again in the context of two other vernacular poets, BarbaraNewman demonstrates in her article The artice of eternity: speaking of heavenin three medieval poems, how poets could elucidate the wonder of heaven withstunning effect. Newman analyses Pearl (anonymous, Middle English), Par-adiso (Dante, Italian) and Marienleich (Heinrich von Meien (Frauenlob),Middle High German), all of which have a heavenly Lady at their centre.Newman uncovers the celestial poetics of these works, demonstrating that eachauthors intimacy with the language allows for a myriad of mathematical, lin-guistic and poetic manoeuvres which all bring the reader to a heightened aware-ness of the excellence of heaven.

Envisaging heaven 9

Vernacular appropriations

The rst three sections of this book are devoted to Latin and vernacular sourcesthat are self-evidently crucial to our understanding of how medieval peopleenvisaged, represented and used heaven: visions, mystical works and the writ-ings of poets, preachers, theologians and academics. The chapters in the nalsection, Vernacular appropriations, focus on the distinctive forms in whichheaven found its way into texts where one might not, at rst sight, expect to ndit: in the bardic poetry of later medieval and early Modern Ireland, in the poetryof Chaucer, and in the medieval romances of England and the continent.

Both in the scholarship and in the general consciousness, the bardic poets aremuch better known for their secular verse than for their religious poetry. Theirdependence on the municence of wealthy chieftains is reected in the predomi-nance of bardic poems in praise of the (potential) patron. Naturally, these pane-gyrics emphasize the warm welcome extended to guests at the door, the hostsgenerosity, the friendliness and beauty of his wife or daughter, the abundance offood and more especially drink. Yet alongside this secular poetry of praise, theresurvives a considerable corpus of popular religious poetry. As Salvador Ryanshows in his chapter Exchanging blood for wine: envisaging heaven in Irishbardic poetry, in this poetry heaven is represented and expressed in the unmis-takable vernacular idiom of the secular bardic tradition. The poets like toimagine it as a lavish feast: God is the welcoming host (and there is no rudedoorkeeper to keep the poet out); Mary is the obliging and accessible hostess;the wine ows liberally.

Bardic poetry thus reveals, perhaps in a way that vernacular poetry does mosttellingly, that medieval (and modern) perceptions of heaven are always projec-tions of earthly ideals. And it is precisely the fact that heaven, then and now, isshot through with earthly hopes and fears, that explains why heaven was souseful and meaningful to secular writers as a source for comparisons or hyper-boles. In these gurative uses, heaven can be made to pay back some of thevalues and emotions that humans have invested in it from the beginning.

This gurative transference is explored in the two nal chapters by ElizabethArchibald and Ad Putter. In a comparison of Chaucer with his sources,Archibald in her chapter Chaucers lovers in metaphorical heaven highlightsChaucers fondness for using heaven in the context of human love. Chaucerslovers are frequently transported to heaven, or (when things have gone wrong)to hell or purgatory; gazing upon his blissful lovers is, as Chaucer frequentlytells us, like envisaging heaven itself. As Archibald argues, such tropes are usedin remarkably self-conscious ways in the Merchants Tale and Troilus andCriseyde. In the former, paradise is methodically invoked as the ultimatemodel of marital bliss, even as the sordid realities of the plot make it painfullyclear that in this tale the ideal exists only in the deluded fantasies of old January.In the tragic story of love that is Troilus and Criseyde Chaucer many timesspeaks of heaven and hell where his source does not: are the similes andmetaphors used in order to sacralize human love? Or, rather, to insist on the

10 C. Muessig and A. Putter

incomparability of human and divine love? Or perhaps both? These are some ofthe questions that Archibald opens up in her chapter.

Ad Putter in The inuence of visions of the otherworld on some medievalromances detects the presence of heaven in a number of medieval English andcontinental romances. As he shows, castle descriptions in particular betray theinuence of celestial visions: castles were often modelled on heaven, occasion-ally in graphic detail, as in the Roman de Troie, where Troy is imagined as beingembellished with the same twelve precious stones that adorn the new city ofJerusalem in St Johns Apocalypse. Putters chapter culminates in a discussionof two of Chrtien de Troyess romances, where Chrtien wittily and auda-ciously makes use of otherworldly motifs.

Conclusion

Because the pains of hell and the fullment of heaven were expected to beexperienced for eternity, the afterlife was central to the medieval imagination.As these chapters show, while many must have worried that theirs would be ahellish end, people never stopped hoping for heaven. The strength of humanoptimism is evident from the theological discussions regarding the beaticvision and apocatastasis. Such hopefulness combined with genuine curiosityabout the nature of heaven. The pulleys and ropes of the medieval stage, theliturgical imitation of heavenly music in the monastery, and the verbal wizardryof medieval poets and mystics brought individuals to a closer realization ofheaven, though the effort and artice expended in the attempt also remindedthem they were not in heaven yet.

The anticipation of heaven shaped the expectations of the medieval indi-viduals, but their lived experiences also shaped the contours of heaven withequal effect. Hildegard of Bingens choice of engineering images reects heridea of the heavenly city of Jerusalem as well her involvement in the construc-tion of her monastery. Jacques de Vitry promoted traditional views of heavenwhile introducing combative interpretations of paradise to justify persecution ofthe Cathars. In bardic poetry, too, heaven is in part the projection of earthlywishes: it is a banquet held by a generous chieftain and a charming hostess. Thelanguage of paradise in theological or secular writings, although rooted in bib-lical and patristic writings, mirrored the cultural milieux of its authors, and theirhistorical situation transformed received ideas of heaven into a colourful mosaicof inherited and contemporary values and practices. Because paradise meant somuch to medieval minds, poets of the period naturally used heaven gurativelyto evoke emotions of ecstatic joy or utter despair (as when Chaucers lovers arein heaven or hell) and drew on visions of heaven to give their settings a touch ofthe supernatural.

At the core of these varied notions and uses of heaven lies the desire to com-prehend heaven and to know who would earn a privileged place there. Driven byintellectual curiosity and intense emotion, both hope and fear, anticipation andtrepidation, this speculation generated a vivid array of heavens. The heavens that

Envisaging heaven 11

have survived in art and writing remain one of the most impressive creations ofthe medieval heart and mind. As our observations will have suggested, we are asyet far from knowing all there is to know about the multiple representations ofheaven in the Middle Ages. However, the richness of the ndings presented inthe following chapters shows the potential rewards for future study of themaking of medieval heaven.

Notes

1 J.B. Russell, A History of Heaven: The Singing Silence, Princeton: Princeton Univer-sity Press, 1997, p.17.

2 For examples of heavens in different religious faiths see C. and P. Zaleski (eds) TheBook of Heaven: An Anthology of Writings from Ancient to Modern Times, NewYork: Oxford, 2000.

3 C. McDannell and B. Lang, Heaven: A History, New Haven: Yale University Press,1988.

4 J. Delumeau, Une Histoire du Paradis, vol. 1, Paris: Fayard, 1992.5 J. Delumeau, Mille Ans de Bonheur: Histoire du Paradis, vol. 2, Paris: Fayard, 1995.6 Russell, A History of Heaven.7 A.E. McGrath, A Brief History of Heaven, Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.8 C. Davidson (ed.) The Iconography of Heaven, Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute,

1994. J.S. Emerson and H. Feiss (eds) Imagining Heaven in the Middle Ages, NewYork: Garland Publishing, 2000.

9 The essay on music is by Richard Rastall. Rastalls later monograph study on themusic of the angels in the drama and liturgy of the period also deserves to be men-tioned. See R. Rastall, The Heaven Singing: Music in Early English Religious Drama,Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1996.

10 C.W. Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 2001336, NewYork: Columbia University Press, 1995.

11 C.W. Bynum and P. Freedman (eds) Last Things: Death and the Apocalypse in theMiddle Ages, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.

12 H. Stahl, Heaven in View: The Place of the Elect in an Illuminated Book of Hours,in Bynum and Freedman, Last Things, pp.20532, at p.232.

13 C. Zaleski, Otherworld Journeys: Accounts on Near-death Experience in Medievaland Modern Times, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987; C. Zaleski, Life of theWorld to Come: Near-death Experience and Christian Hope, Oxford: Oxford Univer-sity Press, 1996.

14 R. Easting, Visions of the Other World in Middle English, Annotated Bibliographiesof Old and Middle English Literature, 3, Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1997.

15 P. Dinzelbachers Vision und Visionliteratur im Mittelalter, Monographien zurGeschichte des Mittelaters, 23, Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1981.

16 Russell, A History of Heaven, p.84.17 Russell, A History of Heaven, p.88.18 Russell, A History of Heaven, p.96.19 J. Leclercq, The Love for Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic

Culture, C. Misrahi (trans.), 3rd edn, New York: Fordham University Press, 1982.20 Bynum, The Resurrection of The Body.21 Basil of Caesarea, Bede and Thomas Aquinas are just a few of the theologians who

speculated about the place and organization of heaven.22 Easting, Visions of the Other World in Middle English, p.4.

12 C. Muessig and A. Putter

Part II

The theology of heaven

2 Visio deiSeeing God in medieval theology andmysticism1

Bernard McGinn

In the summer of 1202, Pope Innocent III and his court abandoned the fetid andmosquito-laden city of Rome for the salubrious retreat of the Benedictine abbeyat Subiaco. A curial ofcial reports on the set of splendid tents the court set upand the papal ofcials who swam like sh in the adjacent lake. The pope himselfwe are told enjoyed gargling with the icy water: The third Solomon loved tofreely put his holy hands into it and take a frigid gargle so that it might providemedical aid for the twofold need of human life [i.e. the inner and outer] with itsdouble power.2 During this retreat the pope took the opportunity to preach asermon to the Subiaco community about visio dei, that is, how God can be seenboth in this life and in the next, taking as his text the beatitude, Blessed are thepure of heart for they shall see God (Matthew 5:8).3

Though Innocent III was not an original theologian, he had received an up-to-date education at Paris and had a gift for eloquence. Why he chose to speakabout seeing God on this occasion may reect the delights of his summer vaca-tion, as well as his audience of monks devoted to the contemplative life. Inno-cents sermon begins with the classic distinction between two kinds ofblessedness, that possible in this life (in via) and the perfect happiness of heaven(in patria). He also discusses the seeming contradiction between the Mattheanpromise that the pure of heart will see God and the biblical texts that deny thatGod can ever be seen. In good scholastic fashion, the pope solves the contra-diction by distinguishing three kinds of vision: Thus it is necessary to distin-guish that one kind of vision is corporeal, another veiled, anothercomprehensive. The corporeal vision belongs to the senses; the veiled to images;the comprehensive to the understanding.4 The invisible God can never be seenby corporeal vision. In the present life, says the pope, he can be seen by theeffect of inspiration, contemplation, prayer, meditation, reading, and preaching,which lift the soul up to gazing on God,5 at least for those who have puriedhearts. These veiled, or enigmatic, forms of vision, all dependent on faith, are farinferior, however, to the comprehensive vision to come in heaven on whichInnocent waxes eloquent for most of the sermon.

Whatever kind of good you desire, if you see God you will have it in him.Since he is the highest Good, the fullness of all goods is in him. If you see

him, you will also comprehend him; if you comprehend him, you will alsopossess him.6

Innocents threefold distinction of visions of God is straightforward, clear andtraditional, being based primarily on St Augustine. One might think that the popehad settled the issue of what it means to see God for centuries to come. The story,however, turned out to be quite different. Perhaps no other period in the history ofChristianity witnessed more debate over the issues involved in Christs promisethat the pure of heart shall see God. Many issues remained under discussion, suchas: What kind of vision of God is promised in this beatitude? How can it besquared with divine invisibility and the numerous scriptural passages that afrmGod cannot be seen? If there is some vision of God both here and in heaven, howare the two related? The thirteenth- and fourteenth-century controversies overseeing God are evident not only from thousands of pages of mystical and theologi-cal texts on these themes, but also from the fact that 134 years after the Subiacosermon Innocents successor, Pope Benedict XII, took the unusual step of con-demning the view of his predecessor John XXII that the beatic vision was not tobe enjoyed by the saved until after the Last Judgement. The problems about whatit meant to see God were not as clear and simple as Innocent imagined.

We should not blame the vacationing pope too much, because visio dei hadlong been an issue in Christian thought. The problems began in scripture itself,as Innocent well knew. In Exodus 33:20 God tells Moses: You cannot see myface, for no one will see me and live. But in Genesis 32:30 Jacob claims, Ihave seen God face-to-face and my soul has been saved. After his vision of theLord sitting on a high and lofty throne in the Temple, Isaiah announces, withmy own eyes I have seen the Lord of hosts (Isaiah 6:5). Things do not get muchclearer in the New Testament. The beatitude text cited by Innocent does notclarify whether the promised vision will be in the here or hereafter. A number ofpassages seem to deny any vision of the hidden Father, especially the text in theprologue of Johns Gospel, No one has ever seen God; the Only Begotten God,who is in the Fathers bosom, has revealed him (John 1:18; see also John 6:46;1John 4:12; Matthew 11:27; 1 Timothy 6:16). But other texts both in the Paulineand Johannine letters promise a vision of God to come in heaven. For example,1 Corinthians 13:12 contrasts vision here below and the coming vision: We seenow mysteriously through a mirror, but then face-to-face; now I know in part;then I will know as I am known (see also 2 Corinthians 3:18). The eschatologi-cal character of vision is also stressed in 1 John 3:2 adding an important refer-ence to liation in Christ: Beloved, we are Gods children and it has not yetbeen revealed what we shall be; but we know that when he has appeared, wewill be like him, because we will see him as he is.

While there has been general agreement that the vision of God in heaven isthe goal of the Christian life, the diversity of the scriptural witnesses has encour-aged different views about how that vision is to be understood. Similarly, mostChristians have believed that some kind of seeing, or contemplation, of God ispossible in this life, but the nature of that vision and its relation to the visio beat-

16 Bernard McGinn

ica has been debated. Precisely why the early Christians placed such emphasison seeing God may have much to do with their cultural milieu in which thevisual was so strongly privileged. From the end of the second century, as isevident in Clement of Alexandria, the vision promised in the beatitudes wasexplained in terms of the Platonic philosophical ideal of contemplation of God(thoria theou). Like Innocent, Clement held that the perfect vision to come wasprepared for in this life by imperfect sight. A passage in book seven of his Stro-mateis says that gnostic souls

always keep moving to higher and higher regions, until they no longer greetthe divine vision in or by mirrors, but with loving hearts feast forever on theuncloying, never-ending sight [. . .] This is the apprehending vision of thepure of heart.7

The kind of vision of God possible in this life, as well as the nature of thenal vision in heaven, continued to be discussed throughout the patristic period.Despite the biblical prohibitions, some gures of the Old and New Testaments,notably Moses and Paul, were credited with higher and more direct contact withGod than that open to most other humans. Were these face-to-face visions thesame as the visio beatica? Augustine of Hippo took up these questions in anumber of places and set forth a theory of visio dei that was to have a powerfulrole in the Western Middle Ages.8

Augustine insisted that the only true satisfaction for all human longing was tobe found in heaven in the contemplation of the Good that is unchanging,eternal, always the same.9 At the end of the City of God he summarizes thecoming reward: There we shall rest and see, see and love, love and praise; thisis what shall be in the end without end.10 For Augustine, the reciprocity of loveand vision was essential, not only in heaven but also on earth. As he put it inbook eight of his treatise The Trinity, The more ardently we love God, the morecertainly and calmly do we see him, because we see in God the unchanging formof justice, according to which we judge one ought to live.11 When Augustineactually describes direct contact with God, however, metaphors of seeing oftenyield to language drawn from the other spiritual senses, especially touching andfeeling, but also smelling and hearing.12

Augustine wrestled with the contrasting biblical texts about whether or notGod could really be seen in this life. In his letter treatise On Seeing God from CE413 he argued against any corporeal vision of God, either here or hereafter, butallowed that some vision of God as he willed himself to be seen in imperfectfashion could be given to the saints in this life (chapter 20).13 As he explained in asermon on Psalm 41: With the ne point of the mind we are able to gaze uponsomething unchangeable, although hastily and in part (etsi perstrictim etraptim).14 The impossibility of seeing Gods plenitude in this life supports scrip-tural claims that God cannot be seen, though Augustine allows for the possiblemiraculous exceptions of Moses and Paul whose perfection of life allowed themsomething close to a vision of Gods substance (Epistula 147, chapters 317).

Visio dei 17

In his famous discussion of the three modes of vision in book twelve of theLiteral Commentary on Genesis Augustine summarized his views, distinguish-ing between corporeal, spiritual (i.e. imagistic) and purely intellectual seeing the three categories we have seen in Pope Innocents sermon. In discussing God-given raptures during this life, ones in which the souls intention is completelyturned away or snatched away from the bodys senses (12.12.25), Augustineallowed for both imaginative visions sent by God, such as the images of heavengiven to John in the Apocalypse, and also for the higher gift of intellectualvisions. There, he says, the brightness of the Lord is seen, not through a sym-bolic or corporeal vision [. . .] nor through a spiritual vision, but through a directvision and not through a dark image, as far as the human mind elevated by thegrace of God can receive it.15 Thus, Augustine went beyond Innocent in admit-ting some forms of miraculous direct vision of God in this life, though thesealways lack the perfection and stability of the beatic vision.

Despite the weight of Augustines inuence, there was an alternate view, onethat took the biblical prohibitions against seeing God more literally, denying thatGods essence could ever really be seen either in this life or in the one to come.This tradition is evident in such gures as Gregory of Nyssa and Dionysius inthe East, and John Scottus Eriugena in the West.16 Commenting on Matthew 5:8,Gregory highlights the contradiction between the statements of Moses, John andPaul that God cannot be seen and the claim of the beatitude that only the visionof God gives nal happiness.17 Gregory solves the contradiction differently fromAugustine by distinguishing between the divine essence that is always invisibleand the divine energies; that is, the manifestations of Gods wisdom, goodnessand other operations, that can be seen in the world. But Gregory also has a dif-ferent reading of the beatitude. He fuses the two parts of the text, arguing that itis in our own inner purity that God becomes present and visible. Hence, hesays, if the person who is pure of heart sees himself, he sees in himself what hedesires; and thus he becomes blessed, because when he looks at his own purity,he sees the Archetype in the image.18 Therefore, what the beatitude reallypromises is union with God through purity of life, not by means of knowing theNature that is above the universe.19

Dionysius and Eriugena took this line of thought further. For Dionysius,thoria, or seeing the manifestations of God in the hierarchies of created being,plays a vital role in our ascent to God, but his Mystical Theology also insistsupon the absolute invisibility of God, claiming that Moses, the exemplarymystic, cannot contemplate the God who cannot be seen, but only the placewhere he dwells. According to Dionysius, Moses must break free of everythingperceptible by the eyes of the body or of the mind, away from what sees and isseen, and plunge into the truly mysterious darkness of unknowing in order to besupremely united to the Wholly Unknown by an inactivity of all knowing.20

Dionysius therefore separates mental activity and seeing from union with God.Removing all seeing and knowing, however, results in a higher, but paradoxical,vision that chapter two of the Mystical Theology describes as unhiddenlyknowing that unknowing which itself is hidden from all those possessed of

18 Bernard McGinn

knowing amid all beings, so that we may see above being that darkness con-cealed from all the light among beings.21 This non-seeing seeing is the highestattainment possible in this life and will continue in heaven, at least with regardto the divine essence. What is added to it in the life to come, as a discussion inchapter one of the treatise on the Divine Names shows, is the vision of the glori-ed body of Christ, just as the Apostles were illuminated at the time of hisdivine Transguration.22

Eriugena was indebted to both Gregory of Nyssa and Dionysius in his effortto work out a concordance between Greek patristic thought and Latin theology,predominantly Augustinian. Nevertheless, his teaching on visio dei is far morenegative or apophatic than that of the bishop of Hippo.23 In reality, if not in thesame language, he accepted Gregorys distinction between Gods hiddenessence and his manifested energies, or theophanies, as the Irishman calledthem, following Dionysius. The entire universe for Eriugena was one vastharmony of theophanies, or illuminations, meant to lead us back to God Omnia quae sunt lumina sunt (All things that exist are lights), as he put it.24

The Carolingian scholar admitted special forms of illuminative vision given tobiblical heroes of the past and still available to the pure of heart. A passage frombook ve of his Periphyseon distinguishes three kinds of contemplation illus-trated by the three protagonists of the Transguration account of Matthew 17.25

Elijah is the type of those who contemplate God while still in the body; Mosespregures those who see God when released from the body, while Christ himselfrepresents those who will enjoy perfect contemplation after the resurrection ofthe body. Most contemplation in this life is of the rst kind; but Eriugena, likeAugustine, admitted that Moses, Paul and John the Evangelist all enjoyedexperiences of deathlike rapture in which they beheld heavenly realities, even, inthe case of John, of the causa omnium, the very Word of God.26 What can neverbe seen, however, either in this life or even in the perfect state of the return atthe end, is the essence of God. The divine essence is absolutely unknowable,even to God himself! (God cannot know what he is because God is not a what.)Although Gods self can never be beheld, God is seen in his theophanies, theilluminations that objectively are nothing else than God showing himself, andsubjectively are the deifying graces that transform humans. At the end of timethe saved will gaze upon theophanies of theophanies (theophaniae theopha-niarum), things unimaginable to us in this lesser world of lights, but these arestill theophanies.27 As Eriugena puts it toward the end of the Periphyseon:

Since that which human nature seeks and towards which it tends [. . .] isinnite and not to be comprehended by any creature, it necessarily followsthat its quest is unending [. . .] And yet although its search is unending, bysome miraculous means it nds what it is seeking for; and again it does notnd it, for it cannot be found. It nds it through theophanies, but throughthe contemplation of the divine nature itself it does not nd it [. . .] What itis is not found, but only that it is, because the nature of God itself canneither be expressed or understood.28

Visio dei 19

The mystics and theologians of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuriesinherited this complex tradition regarding the vision of God in this life and in thenext. Two factors gave their debates over what it means to see God particular force.The rst was the visionary explosion in Western mysticism; the second was thedebate over the nature of the visio beatica impelled, at least in part, by the revivalof Dionysianism and its conict with the standard Augustinian view. Althoughthese two factors arose independently, they intermingled in interesting ways.

The standard form of vision in the early Middle Ages emphasized a singleextended vision (often a dream vision), ordinarily involving a tour of the otherworld. In the twelfth century a new wave of visions began that featured fre-quently repeated brief raptures to a supernatural realm and encounters withheavenly gures, often of a direct and transformative and therefore mysticalcharacter. Such showings were frequently designed to emphasize the sanctity ofthe seers and the importance of their message.29 By the thirteenth century vision-ary collections, sometimes in the form of spiritual diaries, had become animportant feature of female sanctity and a signicant element in the mysticalliterature of the time, as shown by such authors as Beatrice of Nazareth,Hadewijch of Antwerp, Mechthild of Magdeburg, as well as a host of hagio-graphical texts about women. Many of these writings describe encounters withJesus of a new type more direct, more excessive, more somatic, and evensexual, in nature than had been customary in the monastic mysticism prior to1200.30 This explosion of visionary material, especially from women, fosteredrenewed interest in what it means to see God and in the criteria used to discerntrue visions from false. The need for discernment of spirits, stressed by bothPaul and John (1 Corinthians 12:10; 1 John 4:1), had never been absent fromChristian history; but it increased exponentially in the last centuries of theMiddle Ages as learned clerics and the mystics themselves sought to make senseof the visionary explosion.31

The second factor in the thirteenth-century debates over visio dei was the newDionysianism. Eriugenas translation of the Dionysian corpus and his Periphy-seon were by no means totally neglected from the tenth through to the twelfthcenturies, but Dionysian theology experienced a remarkable renewal in thesecond quarter of the thirteenth century. The revival may have begun earlierunder more dubious circumstances, since the heretic Amaury of Bne and hisassociates at the University of Paris in the rst decade of the thirteenth centurywere accused of using the Irishmans work as support for their pantheisticviews, thus leading to the letter of Pope Honorius III in 1225 that ordered thedestruction of manuscripts of the Periphyseon found in French monasteries.32

The rising tide of Dionysianism became a ood between 1230 and 1250 as threemajor thinkers wrote commentaries on the entire Dionysian corpus (suchextended commentaries were quite new) and the Parisian annotated corpusdionysiacum was prepared. The import of this Dionysian moment for the historyof medieval thought has yet to be fully explored.

The new Dionysian wave assumed two forms. The rst was created by a Vic-torine canon resident in northern Italy known as Thomas Gallus (i.e. the French-

20 Bernard McGinn

man). Building on early Victorine interest in Dionysius, Thomas produced aseries of commentaries on the whole corpus between c.1230 and 1246 in whichhe changed the course of the mystical use of Dionysius by reinterpreting negat-ive theology in terms of the priority of supreme affectivity over all intellectualcontact with God.33 Adopted by Franciscans such as Bonaventure and theGerman mystical preacher Marquard of Lindau (d. 1392), and also by inuentialtexts like the Cloud of Unknowing, this affective Dionysianism was a signicantstrand in late medieval mysticism. During the years 12401243, Thomassfriend, the one-time Paris master Robert Grosseteste, a Greek scholar in his ownright, began a learned commentary on the corpus, which in some particularsshared Galluss approach.34

In the 1240s a second option began to emerge. During this decade anunknown editor produced a glossed version of the corpus dionysiacum thatbecame widely used in the University of Paris. This work included the transla-tions of Eriugena and John Sarrazin, as well as the glosses of Gallus, along withthe scholia ascribed to Maximus Confessor and large amounts of commentarialmaterial drawn from Eriugenas Periphyseon.35 Toward the middle of the samedecade the learned Dominican master Albert the Great began to study theDionysian writings. In 1248 he was called by his order to establish a new houseof theological studies at Cologne. (He took along with him his prize student, acorpulent Italian friar today known as Thomas Aquinas.) In Cologne Albertcompleted the rst of his commentaries, that on the Celestial Hierarchy. Duringthe next four years he issued massive commentaries on the remainder of thecorpus.36 Alberts approach was quite different from that of Gallus, because ofhis insistence that Dionysius tells us how it is necessary to be united to Godthrough intellect.37 This intellective Dionysianism was to be of great signic-ance for German Dominican theology and mysticism for the next century. Theheritage of Alberts intellectual reading of the Dionysian corpus was realized inthe writings of Meister Eckhart whose views on the vision of God challengedmost of the traditional verities set forth by Pope Innocent a century before.

The debates over the nature of the visio beatica initiated, at least in part, bythe Dionysian revival, have been much studied.38 In the year 1241 and again in1244, William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris, along with the authorities of theuniversity, condemned the view that even in heaven God will never be seendirectly, but only through theophanies. As the rst of ten rejected articles in thelist of errors states:

The rst [error is] that the divine essence in itself will be seen by neitherman nor angel. We reject this error and we excommunicate its upholdersand defenders by the authority of Bishop William. We rmly believe andassert that God will be seen in essence or substance by the angels and all thesaints and he will be seen by the gloried souls.39

This denial of a direct vision of God in heaven, the expression of a form ofDionysianism inuenced by Eriugena, seems to have been found mostly among

Visio dei 21

Dominicans.40 The subsequent reaction against this view in the order of preach-ers champions of orthodoxy as they were is evident in Thomas Aquinasstheology of the beatic vision, the classic expression of scholastic Augustiniantheology of heaven.41 But this was not the only option. While it was impossibleto contradict a doctrinal decision of such weight, there was much room formanoeuvre in how it was to be interpreted.

Albert the Great worked out a solution to the nature of the beatic vision thatboth adhered to the Paris denition and also managed to save signicant aspectsof Dionysian apophaticism for the future of German theology and mysticism.42

Like almost all theologians, Albert contrasted the modes of contemplative visionrealized here below with the supreme enjoyment of heaven. In order to grasp thesimilarities and differences between these two forms of visio dei, it is useful tonote some distinctions that Albert employed in his teaching: (1) the differencebetween vision and comprehension; (2) the distinction between knowledge ofGod quid est and knowledge quia est; (3) the meaning of the face-to-face visionof the Bible (Genesis 32:30, Exodus 33:11, 1 Corinthians 13:12); and (4) therole of intermediaries (mediae/theopaniae) in knowing God.

Central to Alberts position is his claim that It is one thing to be in contact[with something] through the intellect and to be poured out into the intelligiblereality; and it is another thing to seize or to comprehend that intelligible thing.43

On this basis Albert argues, in accord with the 1241 decision, that the createdintellect can directly attain the divine substance through what he calls simpleregard (per simplicem intuitum), but that it can never comprehend God. ThomasAquinas also distinguished between the immediate vision of God in heaven andthe impossibility of any created intellect attaining comprehension of the divineessence (Summa Theologiae, Ia. q.12, a.7). Therefore, both Dominicans wouldnot have been happy with Pope Innocents characterization of the heavenlyvision as comprehensiva. An important difference between Albert and Thomasemerges, however, with respect to the second issue, that is, knowledge quid est(what God is) and knowledge quia est (that God is).

Both Albert and Thomas do not allow for any quid est knowledge of God onearth or in heaven.44 To attain such knowledge would be to know God as Godknows himself something impossible for nite created mind. But what aboutknowledge quia est, that is, knowing that God is? Here Albert differs fromThomas. For the Angelic Doctor, knowledge quia est is a straightforward term the demonstration that a cause exists from knowledge of its effect, the kind ofproof involved in Thomass ve ways of demonstrating Gods existence setforth in Summa theologiae Ia.2.a.3. For Albert, however, knowledge quia est isrealized in several analogous ways. In dependence on Aristotle, for whomknowledge quia est is a form of precise philosophical demonstration based on aremote cause or an effect that is convertible with or proportionate to its cause,in his Commentary on the Mystical Theology Albert denies that we can havenatural quia est knowledge of God in this life, because there is nothing reallyproportionate to God.45 In other places, however, the German Dominican seemsto advance the possibility of some kind of quia est knowledge of God, even on

22 Bernard McGinn

the basis of natural reason.46 The clearest statement of this sliding scale of quiaest knowledge is found in Alberts remarks on the fth Dionysian letter wherehe says that although we do attain the vision of God in heaven, we never do soin a perfect way. Rather, the created intellect [. . .] is joined in a kind of con-fused way to the God who, as it were, goes beyond it. Therefore, for Albertthere is no knowledge quid est of God, because he has no dening feature; nor isthere any knowledge propter quid because God has no cause. There is also nodetermined or perfect quia est knowledge of God because God has no remotecause or proportionate effect. Albert concludes, neither in this life, nor inheaven, do we see more of God than a confused quia, although God himself isseen more or less clearly according to the different ways of seeing and of thosewho see.47 Albert, like Eriugena, remains deeply negative even about the natureof the knowledge of God found in heaven.48

The Bible speaks of face-to-face vision, both in this life and the next. Theseeming contradiction between such texts and those that deny any human canever see God was also taken up by Albert. His fullest treatment is found inchapter four of the treatise on divine knowability in the rst part of his Summatheologiae where he discusses not only the issue of face-to-face vision, but alsowhether such vision involves an intermediary.49 Once again, Albert expressesagreement with the 1241 decision that the bare and pure intellect will see theessence of God in heaven. In order to understand this properly, however, he saysthat it is necessary to introduce some important distinctions about the differentways of understanding the terms face of God (facies dei) and medium, orintermediary. The face of God can be used in three ways, according to Albert.The common understanding signies anything in which God appears and fromwhich he can be known. Second, The face of God is used in the proper sensefor his evident presence through an effect of grace aiding or protecting to somepurpose [. . .] This mode differs from the rst the way nature differs fromgrace.50 Finally, In the most proper sense the face of God is Gods essentialpresence demonstrated and displayed without an intermediary in the way inwhich he shows himself to the blessed.51 These qualications make it easy tosee that the facial visions ascribed to Old Testament gures like Jacob andMoses were different from the face-to-face vision enjoyed by the saints inheaven, because they belong to the second not the third category.

To understand the difference between the graced visions of God given in thislife and the beatic vision one must advert to the ways in which God uses inter-mediaries. Visions of God in this life always employ intermediaries, or theopha-nies, such as the supernatural habits and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.52 In the caseof the most proper form of facial vision in heaven, however, there is no mediumor intermediary in the sense of an instrument God himself must employ to conveyor reect his essence. Nor is there an intentional medium, nor an aiding medium(medium coadiuvans), that is, something the divine essence needs to make itselfvisible. God is pure light in himself. There is, Albert goes on to say, still need fora medium on the souls side, that is, something to help the soul to see what is in-nitely beyond it. If someone sees by the vision of glory, Albert avers,

Visio dei 23

he must be perfected by the habits of glory and beatitude. But these interme-diaries do not mask or carry away or create distance between the one seeingand what is seen, but they strengthen the power of seeing and perfect it inthe act of seeing. And to see through an intermediary in this way is notopposed to immediate vision, but agrees with it.53

Alberts doctrine of the light of glory (lumen gloriae) was a crucial aspect ofhis teaching on the immediate nature of the beatic vision, but his treatment ofthis theme highlights more differences between himself and Thomas Aquinas.The key difference is that Albert continued to use the DionysianEriugeneanlanguage of theophany to describe both the light of glory itself and the differentforms of divine illumination by which God strengthens souls in this life in orderto lead them to eternal felicity.54 In his discussion of theophany in chapter fourof his Commentary on the Celestial Hierarchy, Albert identies four forms oflumen divinum. The rst two belong to this life: any seeing of creatures thatleads to God and all divinely-sent special visions. The last two forms belong toheaven.

The third mode [. . .] is when in a divine light, which is not God, an object isseen that is truly God, not in the light as in a medium the way a thing is seenin its image, but along with a light strengthening the intellect [so that] Godis seen immediately.55

The fourth and highest species of theophany is the direct visio dei of heaven.Albert describes this in the Eriugenean language of theophany:

Thus God himself is in each of the blessed as an illumination by whose par-ticipation he makes him a likeness to himself. In such a likeness the visionof God is called a theophany. In this way the same God will be illuminationand object, but object as he is in himself, illumination insofar as he isparticipated in by the blessed.56

It is obvious, then, that although Albert defended the 1241 declaration on directvision of God in heaven, his form of intellective Dionysianism abandonedneither Eriugenean apophaticism nor the Irishmans language of theophany.

Alberts apophatic view of the vision of God, both in this life and the next,was radically heightened in the preaching and writing of his student MeisterEckhart. Eckhart took a dim view of the visionary claims of many contemporarymystics, poking fun at those who want to see God with the same eyes that theysee a cow and who therefore loved God for his milk and his cheese!57 Eckhart,of course, never denied the existence of heightened experiences of God, the rap-tures ascribed to biblical gures, like Paul.58 He also uses terms like gezcken-verzcken-entzcken in his vernacular preaching to indicate being swept awayfrom or above ordinary consciousness.59 But the Dominican preacher did not seethese special graces as integral or important to deication conceived of as the

24 Bernard McGinn

birth of the Word in the soul. Indeed, they were more often dangerous, becausepeople might think of them as ways to God, and Eckhart insisted that

Whoever is seeking God by ways is nding ways and losing God, who inways is hidden. But whoever seeks for God without ways will nd him ashe is in himself, and that man will live with the Son, and he is life itself.60

Eckharts thought, as Denys Turner expresses it, is an apophatic critique of thedesire for experiencing and seeing God.61

What did Eckhart mean by seeking God without ways in order to live in theSon? And how does that relate to traditional understandings of the visio dei? Tobe sure, Eckhart often discussed the scholastic debates over whether the essenceof human beatitude here and hereafter rested more in the intellect or in the will,generally expressing the Dominican view of the priority of the intellect. ButEckharts true notion of eternal felicity went beyond all loving and knowing, atleast as we experience them in ordinary consciousness.62 In German Sermon 7he says that neither knowledge nor love unites, because even the intellect cannever encompass God in the sea of his groundlessness. Rather, true union,which Eckhart here describes as mercy (barmherzicheit), is found in the com-pletely mysterious something [in the soul] that is above the rst outbreak whereintellect and will break out.63

The key to Eckharts teaching on the vision of God is the priority he gives tofused identity, that is, the oneness of ground that can only be realized by seekingGod without ways. The one ground of God and human lies deeper than theduality of seeing and being seen. Eckhart expressed this by the use of ametaphor of specular identity: The eye with which I see God is the same eye inwhich God sees me. My eye and Gods eye is one eye and one seeing, oneknowing, and one loving.64 Or, as another sermon says, You must know inreality that this is one and the same thing to know God and to be known byGod, to see God and to be seen by God.65 Eckhart went even further by advanc-ing the claim that this specular identity is attainable in this life, not just inheaven.

To gain some insight into how Eckhart understood this form of beatifyingvision we can investigate some texts both from his technical Latin works and hisMiddle High German sermons and treatises, especially some passages from hisCommentary on the Gospel of John and a sermon where he discusses what itmeans to see God.

In his John commentary Eckhart took up the famous text of John 1:18, Noone has ever seen God, but the Only Begotten God, who is in the Fathersbosom, has revealed him. Eckharts exposition centres on how the Son revealsthe Father, but he also explains how although God is invisible to all other things,what is not different from God (alienum a deo) must be able to see God as Godsees himself. This is true both of Begotten Justice (iustitia genita), that is theSon, and also of the just person insofar as he is just (iustus in quantumiustus).66 This message is underlined and expanded upon in the subsequent

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discussions of seeing God found in the commentary. In exegeting the episode ofthe Samaritan woman in chapter four of the gospel, Eckhart contrasts the exte-rior knowledge gained through hearing and faith with the true interior know-ledge that comes through possession of virtue, which he here equates with theface-to-face vision promised in scripture.67 This tendency to make the eschato-logical vision of heaven immanent as a knowing through identity (cognitio peridentitatem) in the detached soul is heightened in other passages.68 The mostextended treatment of this form of vision comes in the treatment of Philipsrequest in John 18:8, Lord, show us the Father and it is enough for us. Eckhartprovides sixteen understandings of this verse in the rst part of his commentaryand eighteen in the second. One of the latter puts his view in a nutshell. TheFather is shown to us, the Dominican says,

when we are joint fathers of God, fathers of the One Image [i.e. the Word],as was said above about the knower and the thing known [. . .] What anyonemeditates, thinks upon, and loves, becomes in him and from him (and fromit and in it and out of it), a mental species, an image, a single offspringcommon to both.69

Thus, when we, like and with the Father, give birth to the Word in the soul, weenjoy face-to-face vision.

Eckhart preached this startling message to audiences of what Pope John XXIIin his bull condemning Eckhart called the uneducated crowd. Among thesermons that are especially rich in this regard are two on John 16:16 (A littlewhile and you will not see me and again a little while and you will see me).70

There is no space here to provide an analysis of these sermons in detail, but theirteaching is also present in a homily that summarizes Eckharts message aboutthe essentially apophatic nature of all visio dei.

German Sermon 71 deals with Pauls conversion, specically with the versein Acts 9:8, Paul rose from the ground and with open eyes saw nothing.71 Inthis sermon Eckhart rst discusses the light from heaven that struck Paul down(Acts 9:3), insisting that such a light cannot be anything created, that is, anykind of medium If God is to be seen, he says, it has to happen in a light thatis God himself.72 In the highest intellect, that is, in the intellect that does notseek but rather remains in its pure simple being which is enveloped by thislight,73 Paul was able to see all things as nothing, that is, to recognize the noth-ingness of creatures, and thus to begin to see God. If creatures are nothing byway of limitation and defect, however, God is also nothing, but by way of trans-cendence and excess.

The second half of the sermon explores four reasons for claiming that Paul sawGod as literally no-thing.74 First, He saw the nothing which was God. In explain-ing this, Eckhart cites Dionysiuss teaching on Gods transcendence of being, lightand life.75 In order to see the true light that is God we must become blind andremove all something from God. Here Eckhart has a passage that many inter-preters have seen as a self-reference:

26 Bernard McGinn

When the soul comes into the One and there enters into a pure rejection ofitself, it nds God as in nothing. It seemed to a man as in a dream it was awaking dream that he became pregnant with nothing as a woman doeswith a child, and in this nothing God was born; he was the fruit of thenothing.76

(Note how this passage emphasizes the language of inner feeling rather thanvision.)

Eckhart gives three further explanations for Pauls vision of nothingness.Knowledge of things depends upon external, that is, alien images; but when weknow things in God, we know nothing but God and we see that all creatures arenothing in themselves. Hence, we know God and eternal life without a mediumof any kind. The light that is God ows out and darkens all light, says Eckhart.Finally, The fourth reason why Paul saw nothing: The light that is God is notmixed with anything; no mixture enters in. Hence, Eckhart concludes, Inseeing nothing, [Paul] saw the divine nothing. Eckharts comment on what thismeans summarizes the fundamental message of the homily. If we think we canattain God by any mode or means, presumably even that of the light of glory inheaven, we are mistaken. One must receive God, Eckhart says, as he is amode beyond measure, a being beyond being, for he has no limited mode.77 Inother words, beatitude, both in this life and in the next, rests not in seeing orhoping to see something, but in recognizing that God is no-thing, a mysterybeyond all perception and description.

Eckharts teaching on seeing God, in harmony with the rest of his mysticism,is a dialectical coincidence of opposites. God can never be seen because insofaras he is transcendently distinct from all things he is totally invisible to physicaleye or mental vision. But when we recognize that God is literally nihil, ornothing, we begin to become aware that God is immanent, even more, that he isidentical with the soul in the one ground Gods ground and the souls ground isone ground; or, in terms of vision, the ocular identity of the phrase The eyewith which I see God is the same eye in which God sees me. From this perspect-ive, the differences that exist between the vision of God here and in the hereafter,differences that Eckhart occasionally mentions,78 tend to be relativized far morethan in other thirteenth-century mystics and theologians.79 Eckharts fundamentalmessage is that we should not so much long to see God in heaven as strive in thehere and now to see all things, including God, with Gods own eye. Pope Inno-cent would probably have been quite surprised at this form of visio dei.

Notes

1 This chapter makes use of some materials expounded more fully in two other pieces:B. McGinn, Visions and Visualizations in the Here and Hereafter, Harvard Theo-logical Review, 2005, vol. 98, 22746; B. McGinn, Seeing and Not-Seeing: Nicholasof Cusas De visione Dei in the History of Western Mysticism, in P. Casarella (ed.)Cusanus: The Legacy of Learned Ignorance, Washington, DC: Catholic UniversityPress, 2005, pp.2653.

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2 The account of Innocents summer stay at Subiaco can be found in a letter from acurial ofcial edited by K. Hampe, Eine Schilderung des Sommeraufenthaltes derrmische Kurie unter Innocenz III in Subiaco 1202, Historische Vierteljahrschrift,1905, vol. 8, 50935. The text translated is found at p.530: Hec a tercio Salomonediligitur, cum in eadem manus sacras apponat libenter et de ipsa frigido gargarismoutatur, ut eadem duplici necessitati h