Visions of Heaven and Hell

Visions of Heaven and Hell: A
Monastic Literature - Eileen Gardiner,

2021
Abstract
Medieval otherworld visions comprise a monastic genre: monks almost

universally recur as either visionaries, vision scribes or both. With this in
mind, the intention of this article is to interrogate the authorial and
narrative intent of these monastic visions to determine whether the
audience originally addressed and the concerns expressed could be
located exclusively within the monastic enclosure. After examining 36
monastic visions dating from the late 6th to the early 13th century,
ranging geographically from Ireland to Italy, it emerges that while many
visions specifically addressed monks, nuns, abbots and abbesses
about their actions in this life and destinies in the next, many also
focused on life outside the monastery.
Introduction
Medieval otherworld visions comprised a notable genre from the 6th to

the 13th century.1 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn1-
0012580621997061)
Their formulaic structure described an individual who,
in a dream, a vision or a near-death state, travelled to the otherworld2
(https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn2-0012580621997061)
with a guide who explained its inhabitants, geographies and activities.

Although related to both apocalyptic and mystical visions, the scope
and objectives of otherworld visions are specific and distinct. Their
protagonists, neither saints nor prophets, carried into this world
messages from the otherworld for both individuals and communities,
concerning the varied fates of souls immediately after death. This is a
monastic genre in that monks almost universally recur as either
visionaries, vision scribes or both. The intention of this article is to
interrogate the authorial and narrative intent of these monastic visions
to determine whether the audience originally addressed and the
concerns expressed can be located exclusively within the monastic
enclosure.3 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn3-
0012580621997061)
After examining 36 visions,4
ranging geographically from Ireland to Italy, it emerges that while many

visions specifically addressed monks, nuns, abbots and abbesses
about their actions in this life and destinies in the next, many also
focused on life outside the monastery, reaffirming the well-attested
liminal nature of the monastic and establishing the liminal nature of this
monastic genre.5 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn5-
0012580621997061)
During the medieval period, these otherworld visions circulated in

manuscripts and orally; were incorporated into letters, sermons and
paintings;6 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn6-
0012580621997061)
were adapted into histories and chronicles; and
translated from Latin into vernacular languages. For some visions, the
audience expanded far beyond each author’s specific intent and the
narrative’s original target group.7
Others survive in a single medieval manuscript.8

Such differing fates might be due to an individual work’s literary merit,

its author’s renown or some undetermined accident, including the
vagaries of manuscript preservation.
Early medieval visions
Gregory the Great (c. 540–604) serves as a starting point with his
Dialogues (593–94), which included three visions of the afterlife9
:
the Vision of Peter, the Vision of Stephen and the Vision of a Soldier.
Gregory’s relationship to monasticism and his own monastic sensibility
are well documented.10
Around 574, he founded seven monasteries, including St. Andrew’s on

the Caelian Hill, which he left to become the first monk to assume papal
duties. Among his protagonists, only Peter is a monk. Gregory heard
Peter’s vision from a monk, who lived at his monastery. As with
Gregory’s other afterlife visions, Peter’s message is not directed
particularly at monks, and his remark on seeing many ‘who were mighty
in this world hanging’11
in
flames reflects a concern with life outside the cloister appropriate for a
pope.
Almost simultaneously, Gregory, bishop of Tours (d. 593/4), included in
his Historia Francorum two otherworld visions – the Vision of Salvius
and the Vision of Sunniulf12
–
both specifically tied to monastic conduct. Sunniulf, a simple,
charitable, new abbot at Randan in Puy-du-Dôme, ruled his monastery
kindly until his vision of people falling into a flaming river from a narrow
bridge. Sunniulf is told that they neglected to discipline their flocks.
Shaken by his dream, Sunniulf becomes more severe with his monks.
Salvius, a monk, an anchorite and finally bishop of Albi, receives a vision
of heaven while still an abbot and subsequently warns his monks about
the vanity of this world compared with the glory of the next.
In the Vision of Barontus (25 March 678/9) from the abbey of Saint-
Pierre at Longoret,13
west of Bourges, the monk Barontus is accused of having three wives

before entering the monastery. This narrative of accusation, judgement
and redemption is told against the backdrop of heaven where Barontus
meets monks from his own abbey, specifically identifying six.
Promoting their own institution, they tell him that the devil has never
ensnared anyone from their monastery and show him a great house
prepared there for their abbot Francardus. One monk escorts Barontus
back to this world by way of hell, where countless clerics who
transgressed their vows and married endure their punishments. Also in
hell, he sees bishops Vulfoleodus of Bourges and Dido of Poitiers. The
vision is silent about why they are there, but scholars have suggested
interference with the monastery or various political involvements.14
Within this monastically focused vision, their presence indicates some

degree of concern with life outside the cloister.
Valerius of Bierzo was a monk at Compludo, founded by Fructuosus of
Braga near Ponferrada, Léon, in northwest Spain. Valerius became a
hermit and later a recluse15
attached to the nearby abbey of San Pedro de Montes. He wrote

specifically for its monks, including three otherworld visions16
:
the first concerns Baldarius, a stonemason carried to heaven who
returns to reveal the glory of Christ; the second concerns Bonellus, a
monk who became a hermit after witnessing the glory of heaven and
torments of hell; and finally, Maximus, a monk, who returned from his
vision determined to repent and lead a better life. All three caution
Valerius’s monastic audience to pursue the rewards of heaven.
St. Sadalberga (c. 605–65) was the founder and abbess of the abbey of
Notre Dame la Profonde (latter the abbey of Saint John) at Laon. Her
Vita records her vision of heaven.17
She saw a place reserved for her there but returned to this life because
her abbey still required her guidance. Her vision assures the heads of
monastic establishments that good management will be rewarded in
heaven.
Bede (d. 735), abbot of St. Peter (Wearmouth) and St. Paul (Jarrow) in
Northumbria, addressed his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum to
King Ceolwulf and wrote it for a wide audience hoping that ‘the devout
and earnest listener or reader is kindled to eschew what is harmful and
perverse, and himself with greater care pursue those things which he
has learned to be good and pleasing in the sight of God’.18
Bede included there three visions of the otherworld. Two, the Visio
Furseus (III.19) and the Visio Drythelm (V.12),19
concern visionaries who return to this world to lead better lives.

Furseus, already a monk and a holy man, becomes an ascetic, while
Drythelm, a layman, divides his wealth among his family and the poor
and becomes a monk. The Vision of Drythelm was later included in the
Flores Historiarum of the Benedictine monk from St Albans, Roger of
Wendover; in the Speculum morale of Vincent of Beauvais (c.1184/94–
c.1264), a Dominican at the Cistercian abbey of Royaumont, north of
Paris; and finally, as The Vision of the Monk of Melrose, in the
Chronicon of the Cistercian monk, Helinand of Froidmont.
Bede’s Vision of the Monk of Bernicia (V.14)20
describes a monk whose loose and drunken life was tolerated at his
monastery because he was a skilled smith. After a vision of hell, he
despairs of salvation and quickly dies. Even though this monk’s vision
failed to save him, his ‘story spread far and wide and roused many
people to do penance for their sins’.21
The late 8th- to early 9th-century fragmentary Old Irish Vision of Laisrén
relates the otherworld journey of the abbot of Lethglenn (Leighlin) in
County Carlow.22 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn22-
0012580621997061)
Laisrén identifies those he sees in hell as ‘the people of
the island’ and recognizes ‘multitudes [who] were alive when we left
them behind’.23 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn23-
0012580621997061)
His guide explains that they are still alive, but these are
their fates if they fail to repent. Laisrén is told not to identify them
specifically but simply to return with a message of repentance. Like
Bede’s work, this vision concerns the fate of a community not bound by
the monastery’s walls.
Two visions are associated with St. Boniface (672–754), Anglo-Saxon
missionary to Germany and archbishop of Mainz with a deep
connection to Fulda,24
who received his monastic education at Exeter and Nursling

(Winchester).25 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn25-
0012580621997061)
The first, the Vision of the Monk of Wenlock, survives in
26
a letter of 716 addressed to Abbess Eadburga of Minster-in-Thanet,27
Kent. He reports that Abbess Hildelida [Hildelith] of Barking related this

vision to him, which he later confirmed with the monk himself. During
the monk’s journey to the otherworld, devils accuse him of neglecting
his studies and monastic vows and failing to obey his spiritual advisors.
However, a troop of purified souls defends him claiming he was ‘our
elder and teacher … through his instruction he won us all to God’.28
The monk sees familiar souls, including one abbot, a monk from his
own monastery – who asks for his brother to release a bondswoman
they held in common – and King Ceolred of Mercia. Although Ceolred
was still alive, the monk witnesses devils charging him ‘with a multitude
of horrible crimes and threatening to have him shut in the deepest
dungeons of hell, there to be racked with eternal torments as his sins
deserved …’29 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn29-
0012580621997061)
Boniface’s interest in Ceolred resurfaces in his letter to
King Aethelbald30 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn30-
0012580621997061)
and has led to questioning whether Hildelith’s earlier
version would have mirrored Boniface’s account of Ceolred or whether
he re-interviewed the monk to clarify this point, and whether, in fact, an
attack on this king was the motivating force behind Boniface’s account.
Watt speculates that Hildelith’s abbess Mildburg would have
suppressed any negative reports about Ceolred because of his
generosity to the monastery of Wenlock.31
As Sims-Williams notes, ‘Wenlock is the only monastery known to have

claimed to have received a charter from Ceolred’, yet he opines that
Boniface’s inclusion of Ceolred indicates that ‘even at Wenlock
churchmen hated him’.32
Sims-Williams senses that Boniface may have had access to additional

specific names but did not include them either to protect identities or
because they would have meant nothing to his correspondent.33
Although, according to Sims-Williams, because ‘the Wenlock monk’s

vision interacted with the visible secular world, … it was more than
literary diversion’,34
clearly even without its secular content, it maintains a significance far

exceeding that. Its author, murdered in 754 while trying to convert the
Frisians, showed himself through his writing and actions to be both a
spiritual guide and a political force inside and outside the monastery.35
The second vision–letter associated with Boniface refers to the death

of King Aethelbald of Mercia in 75736
so presumably it was written at least three years after Boniface had

already died 754.37
Since the letter lacks its opening, it is impossible to identify the author
or determine much about the visionary, although he is clearly an Anglo-
Saxon monk. His monastery was apparently at Ingedraga, which
remains unidentified. The letter’s recipient is also a monk, since it refers
to his abbot, who appears in the penitential pits. The visionary claims to
have seen Bishop Daniel of Winchester (705–45) and a multitude of
abbots, abbesses and counts. He mentions queens Cuthburga and
Wiala punished for their carnal sins, the knights Daniel and Bregulf
punished for vulgar debaucheries, and the otherwise unknown and
banished Count Ceolla Snoding.38
Cuthburga, later abbess of Wimborne who died c. 718, might have been
the wife of King Aldfrith of Northumbria. Watt writes that both women
‘must have made powerful enemies who set out to destroy their
reputations and the reputations of the houses with which they were
associated through the dissemination of such visions’.39
Moreira believes that the ‘composition appears to have been strongly

motivated by a political agendum, the contours of which are evident in
the naming of individuals but whose full political substance eludes
us’.40 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn40-
0012580621997061)
One cannot discount the spiritual significance of this
vision, since the monk is specifically sent back to this world with
warnings for those living, and under order from his otherworld judge, he
imposes a 40-day period of fasting on his entire monastic community.
However, the vision is also clearly aligned with the political concern
displayed in Boniface’s Vision of the Monk of Wenlock.
Carolingian visions
The Benedictine monk Wetti (c. 775–824), head of Reichenau’s
monastic school, had a vision of the sufferings and rewards of the
otherworld.41 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn41-
0012580621997061)
He sees laypeople, clerics, priests, monks, abbots, at
least one bishop, counts and even the emperor Charlemagne. He may
have identified many of these people, but Heito and Walahfrid Strabo,
both abbots of Reichenau who recorded his vision, do not reveal names.
Heito (abbot, 806–23) in the earlier version suppresses all the names,
and 3 years later Walahfrid (abbot, c. 838) may have hidden the names
in his verses, as he did with Charlemagne’s. The specificity of some of
these descriptions indicates that contemporaries might recognize
certain individuals. Clearly, the vision focuses on monastic life and its
reform, and Wetti returns to this world with warnings concerning
monastic misconduct: sodomy, false piety and his own failing in the
example and teaching he provided to those under his care. And yet, it
did not consider life beyond the cloister wall outside its purview.
Charlemagne, ‘dissipated by the charms of sexual defilement’, has his
genitals mangled and bitten by animals while terrible pronouncements
are made against the counts of different provinces as ‘persecutors of
men … procuring bribes … benefitting their greed’.42
From Fleury Abbey at Saint-Benoît de Loire, the early 9th-century Vision

of Rothcarius describes a monk’s otherworld journey. He meets
Charlemagne in heaven, and in hell he identifies three monks from his
own monastery being punished in fire and boiling water. Clearly a
warning to monks, this vision closes in noting that the Lord visits his
flock in this way to ensure that no one will perish, and all will be
saved.43 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn43-
0012580621997061)
The Vision of Bernoldus (after 877) by Hincmar (806–82), archbishop of

Reims, tells of a layman from Voncq who shuttles between hell and this
world helping the souls that he encounters. He discovers 41 bishops,
including Ebbo of Reims, Pardullus of Laon and Aeneas of Paris.44
Although Roberts suggests their punishments derive from ‘spending too

much time at court’,45
the text is silent about their faults, and evidence suggests that Hincmar
had long-standing political grudges with Ebbo and Aeneas. Bernoldus
finds Charles the Bald (emperor 875–77) in mud from the poison of his
own filth, chewed by vermin until nothing remains but nerves and
bones. An unidentified Jesse46
is
implanted in a rock up to his armpits, while Count Otharius tries to hide
from Bernoldus, afraid of being recognized. Between each of
Bernoldus’s encounters with these souls, he returns to this world to
petition their familiars for intercession. Charles also asks Bernoldus to
tell Hincmar of Charles’s regret at not following the archbishop’s
counsel.
Hincmar was educated at the Paris monastery of Saint-Denis. At 16 he
left with his abbot for the court of Louis the Pious, a move that
determined much of his later life.47
Although his writings are highly political, his adaptation of this monastic
genre displays both the influence of his education – acknowledging
similar works by Gregory the Great, Bede and Boniface, as well as
Heito’s Vision of Wetti48
–
and his awareness of the genre’s possibilities beyond the monastic
context. On the question of the veracity of this vision, van der Lugt
believes that ‘the text is grounded in fact, but has been tampered with
by Hincmar to serve his needs’.49
Dutton sees it as focusing less on the moral failings of powerful men

than on their political choices.50
The Vision of Charles the Fat, like the Vision of Bernoldus, reflects a
concern with the declining fortunes of the Carolingian Empire. However,
Charles the Fat is more clearly political, written specifically to legitimize
Charles’s adoption of his nephew Louis of Provence (the Blind) to
assume his rule. Charles (emperor 881–87) recognized almost
everyone he met in the otherworld, including ‘the bishops of my fathers
and uncles’; ‘the souls of the vassals and princes of my father and
brothers’; ‘some of my father’s nobles, some of my own and some of
those of my brothers and uncles’; and ‘some kings of my race’.51
He meets his father, Louis II (the German), who is up to his knees in

boiling water. He asks his son as well as his bishops, abbots and
ecclesiastics to ‘quickly assist me with Masses, prayers and psalms,
and alms and vigils’,52
so that he might be released like his brother Lothair I (co-emperor 817–

55) and nephew Louis II (co-emperor 844–55, emperor 855–75).
Charles encounters them shortly afterwards in paradise. His uncle
warns him that he will soon die; his cousin endorses his own grandson,
Louis of Provence, and tells Charles to hand the realm over to him.
Charles has already seen two furiously boiling casks waiting for him if
he fails to amend his ways and repent his crimes.
Charles experienced this vision in late 887 and attempted to deliver the
empire to his cousin’s grandson that November. He died in January 888.
While the vision, emanating from Reims, has been considered an after-
the-fact attempt to bolster Louis’s claims, the history of the text cannot
confirm its date or origin. It may have been composed soon after 885,
or in 888 after Charles’s death, or in 901 when Louis became emperor. It
might have been contrived by Louis’s mother Ermengard of Provence
with the connivance of Fulk, archbishop of Reims (883–900). In that
case, it would have been disseminated from Saint-Remi, but the earliest
surviving manuscript is 10th century from the monastery of Saint-Bertin
at Saint-Omer. The work is known principally through Hariulf
d’Oudenbourg’s Chronicon centulense or Chronicle of the Abbey of
Saint-Riquier. Hariulf (1060–1143), a Benedictine monk of Saint-Riquier,
left that monastery in 1105. The chronicle seems to have been
abandoned in 1104. While the purpose of the text remains clear and the
monastic connection is apparent, the work is likely a combination of
traditional vision literature – promoting suffrages and admonishing the
living – with a newer vision literature aimed at promoting dynastic
claims, although still produced by the pens of monks.53
11th to early 13th century
At the behest of Odo, abbot of Saint Germain d’Auxerre (1032–52),

Ansellus Scholasticus, Odo’s former teacher, records the Vision of
Ansellus Scholasticus.54
The visionary, an anonymous pilgrim–monk, witnesses Christ

performing an annual Easter harrowing of hell. A devil, commandeered
by Christ to return this monk to his monastery, complains about how the
prayers and petitions of the living compel Jesus to empty hell annually.
He characterizes those praying as ‘sacrilegious bishops, and
undisciplined abbots, and wicked presbyters, most wicked priests and
deacons, harlot nuns with very young priests, or envious and wild
monks’.55 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn55-
0012580621997061)
In addition to Saint Germain, this vision is also
associated with the Benedictine houses of Saint-Remi (Reims) and
Fleury (Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire). Rather than a warning to clergy, laity or
royalty, it is a revelation about the relationship between petitions in this
life and their fulfilment in the afterlife, although the devil’s pointed
suggestion that monks should be less rigorous in performing their
duties focuses the work on a monastic audience.
The Benedictine Peter Damian (1007–72), a monastic leader and
church reformer, incorporates into his writings two otherworld visions,
both aimed at bishops. He warns them against accepting gifts from rich
and powerful men who unlawfully hold church property and offer gifts
to assuage their guilt in this world and obtain mercy for their souls in
the next. The visionaries specifically name those they see in hell, and
Peter repeats their names.
The first, the Vision of Rainerius,56
appears in a letter (14, before 1045) that Peter writes to a neighbouring

bishop relating what he learned from Gerard, a canon of the Florence
Cathedral. The priest Rainerius witnessed the otherworld journey of
another priest named Peter, confessor to Hildebrand (fl. 989–1015) of
the Gherardesca family, count of Tuscany and Capua, a man who
boasted of his vast properties. St. Benedict explains to this Peter, who
is stricken with leprosy, that the disease was caused by a cloak that
Peter received from Hildebrand. Benedict leads Peter to ‘a horrible river
that was foul, pitch-black, and filled with sulphur’57
to
reveal Hildebrand, so wasted away that he looks like a dead tree. Peter
also sees Count Lothar of Pistoia, recently dead and now suffering.
Lothar asks Peter to tell his people to return to St. Mary’s the land that
he stole. Further along Peter sees demons preparing a punishment for
Count Guido II of the Guidi family, a man still alive, but who will die the
following Wednesday. Damian closes his letter telling the bishop:
Be on your guard against gifts from evil men … For according to Paul’s
words ‘Do not be responsible for other people’s misdeeds’; and free
from such things, you can say with him in good conscience: ‘No man’s
fate can be laid at my door’.58
Another vision by Peter Damian is included in his Concerning the

Abdication of the Bishopric.59
He claims the story comes from a sermon preached by Pope Gregory

VII while still an archbishop. It tells of a holy man from Germany who
saw a certain count who had died 10 years previously. He is at the top
of a ladder extending into the pit of hell. Its lower rungs support his
previously deceased relatives. As each family member dies, those on
the ladder descend another rung. The holy man questions why such an
honest, decent and just man is condemned and learns that his family
held property belonging to the church of Metz. Fittingly the chapter that
includes this vision is on simony, and Peter uses it as a warning to
bishops and laymen alike.
Dated to January 1091, the Vision of Walkelin is anomalous among
otherworld visions, because Walkelin’s experience takes place in this
world. This priest of Bonneval (Saint-Aubin-de-Bonneval in the Lisieux
diocese) witnesses troops of sinners marching through a forest as they
are punished for and purged of their sins. The chronicler Odericus
Vitalis, an English Benedictine monk from the abbey of Saint-Evroul in
Normandy, recorded this vision, probably in the mid-1130s, in his
Historia Ecclesiastica.60
Odericus reinforces the proximity of the worlds of the living and the
dead61 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn61-
0012580621997061)
by the number of acquaintances that Walkelin
encounters and names. Many are recently dead people with good
reputations, many with no great sins, yet all of them suffering. He sees
many of his neighbours; among a troop of seducing women, he
recognizes many noble ladies; in a troop of clergy and monks, abbots
and bishops, he finds Bishop Hugh of Lisieux, Abbot Mainer of
Odericus’s own abbey and Abbot Gerbert of Saint-Wandrille; among an
army of knights he sees Richard of Bienfait (or Tonbridge), the sons of
Count Gilbert – Baldwin of Meules and Landry of Orbec – as well as
William of Glos. The latter, carrying a burning mill-shaft in his mouth,
asks Walkelin to tell his family to return to its rightful owner the mill that
he confiscated. Many ask Walkelin to deliver messages to the living. At
first reluctant, he finally meets his own brother, who convinces him to
help the dead through prayers and alms. His brother also warns him:
‘Take thought for your own welfare: correct your life wisely, for it is
stained by many vices, and you must know that it will not be long
enduring’.62 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn62-
0012580621997061)
Walkelin’s encounters with acquaintances, neighbours and familiars

create a message of intensity and immediacy. Odericus uses this vision
to endorse the benefit of prayers and good works for the dead – laity,
clergy and nobility – even for those ‘of high repute, who in human
estimation are believed to have joined the saints in heaven’.63
Approximately a century later, Herbert of Clairvaux’s Book of the Visions

and Miracles of Clairvaux records a similar encounter, more apparition
than otherworld journey. Zachery – who, after his experience, joins the
Cistercian monastery of Vauluisant, near Courgenay in Yonne – meets a
flying troop of dead ‘blacksmiths, metal workers, carpenters,
stonecutters, tanners, weavers, and fullers, and men of mechanical
trades’.64 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn64-
0012580621997061)
He recognizes an old friend who asks him to return to
its rightful owner a ram that he had stolen. Evidence indicates that the
French manuscript tradition of this compilation was reworked at
Clairvaux to present a certain image of the order and the monastery, so
this particular case reinforces the idea that institutional interference
must be taken into account with these otherworld texts.65
Symeon of Durham,66
a
Benedictine from the abbey at Jarrow, probably joined the priory of
Durham in 1083, when William of Saint-Calais, appointed bishop of that
cathedral by William the Conqueror in 1080, replaced its secular clergy
with monks from Jarrow. Symeon served as precentor of Durham and
wrote several works, including his History of the Church of Durham.
Within that work, Symeon recounts the Vision of Boso of Durham,67
a
knight to Bishop William. After an illness, Boso seems near death when
he is taken into the otherworld. Outside a wall he recognizes the monks
from Durham Abbey in procession towards heaven. Two monks wander
from the path. Boso is told to tell the prior to exhort his monks more
diligently for the salvation of their souls and to identify specifically the
two who were wandering. Boso also recognizes knights on horses
tilting with long spears, French knights behaving in the same way, as
well as the wives of priests. Finally, he sees Bishop William calling for
the monk Gosfrid. Boso’s guide warns him that both will soon die, and
he again is told to report to the prior what he has seen to warn them
against an unprepared death. Although Gosfrid is unknown, the History
records that Bishop William embraced Boso’s warning, taking ‘greater
care of the health of his soul, being more generous in almsgiving,
praying at greater length and more intently, and not setting aside on
account of any business the periods reserved for daily prayer in
private’.68 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn68-
0012580621997061)
William soon dies, and the monks who had strayed
from the path repent and admit faulty confessions. Although focused
on messages for the monastic community and its bishop, in the wake
of the Norman Conquest, this work casts a critical eye on knights and
soldiers, consigning them to hell along with the Durham priests and
their wives, whom William had driven from the cathedral.
Approximately 30 years later (1126), Sigar of Newbald wrote to Symeon
of Durham, obviously aware of Symeon’s Vision of Boso, informing him
of another otherworld vision, the Vision of Orm.69
Sigar recounts this vision, including his examination of 13-year-old Orm,

Orm’s devout and ascetic nature, his 13 lifeless days and his surprising
revival. Orm visits heaven, hell and a separate paradise. Explaining that
‘Here and there I saw many, which it is not permitted to me to reveal to
any man’, Orm clearly indicates that he recognized them; yet he
mentions only categories: holy monks, religious men, holy boys and a
crowd of ‘holy bishops, priests, and different orders, and with them an
innumerable crowd of men and women’. He notes that ‘outside the wall
there were indeed some monks and priests, not so well decorated, nor
so rich as those who were inside the wall’.70
Orm identifies the daughter of a soldier named Stephen in heaven

dressed in white. She had taken a vow of virginity and gave up her life
rather than marry. Orm’s guide, Archangel Michael, advises him to tell
his vision to Sigar. Unlike many other visionaries, Orm does not return
from the otherworld with messages specifically aimed at particular
audiences but instead bears a general warning of an approaching
apocalypse, having observed Christ with a ‘great sword glittering just
like lightening … The sword was divided in two,71
and it seemed to me that the two parts were drawn out and the third
was in the scabbard’,72
which has been interpreted as a sign that in 1195 two thirds of the
world’s history had been completed. When Sigar asks if Orm heard
anything about the coming of the Antichrist, he answers that there is
still time.
In the decade before Orm’s vision, a 10-year-old named Alberic, lying for
9 days as if dead, had a vision of the otherworld. Afterwards, when he
entered the nearby monastery of Monte Cassino, its abbot Gerard
(1111–23) had this vision recorded, probably between 1121 and 1123,
by a monk named Guido. Although Peter the Deacon, librarian at Monte
Cassino, refers to Guido in the abbey’s chronicle as among the most
elegant writers of his time,73
Alberic is unhappy with this version and under the direction of Abbot
Senioretto (1127–37) rewrites the Vision of Alberic74
with Peter’s help. It is difficult to reconcile the significance of this

extensive vision and its reputed influence with the fact that it survives in
a single manuscript that has always been at Monte Cassino.75
Perhaps the manuscript’s claim that the story was ‘reported far and
wide to all people’76
must be accepted at face value and indicates a widespread oral

tradition.
Under the guidance of St. Peter, Alberic travels through hell, Tartarus,
purgatory,77 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn77-
0012580621997061)
paradise and heaven. In hell, he sees all sorts of
sinners: tyrants and murderers, rapists and symoniacs. He sees a place
in hell for those who leave ‘the ecclesiastical order and put aside the
monastic rule and return to the world’.78
He watches ‘a certain monk’ carried to punishment but does not name

him, and although he does not see St. Benedict in heaven, his guide, St.
Peter, assured him that he is among the Confessors. When Alberic
names people, they are not contemporaries, but men like Judas in hell
and Lazarus in heaven. Yet he says that
much was told to me and taught to me … concerning men living even in

this day, and many sins were made known to me, and he [Peter] ordered
that what I might hear concerning these I ought to bring back.79
Alberic remembers so many people and so much detail that Carozzi,

perhaps overlooking the capacious memory monks were trained to
develop, doubts the veracity of the text.80
And certainly, it is curious that a 10-year-old would focus so heavily on

the monks he finds in heaven, setting aside six whole sections to the
glory of the monastic life, while also pointing out the stink of sin not
only ‘of the laity, but also of popes, bishops, and all ministers of the
church’.81 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn81-
0012580621997061)
The example of Alberic’s conversion to the monastic life may be a

significant reason for the preservation of this story, but its paean to
monasticism, and particularly to Benedict’s rule, might point towards
Peter the Deacon. He supported Abbot Oderisius when he was deposed
in 1127 by Honorius II, a pope who favoured the new Cistercians and
Augustinians and tried to master control of both Monte Cassino and
Cluny. At that time, Peter was forced into exile. After Honorius’s death in
1130, Peter returned to the monastery under Abbot Senioretto, who had
been appointed to Monte Cassino by Honorius.82
The ecclesiastical politics of the time cannot be discounted as an

underlying impetus for the revision of the Vision of Alberic and for its
pronounced exaltation of Monte Cassino and Benedictine monasticism.
Guibert of Nogent (1055–c.1124), abbot from 1104 at Nogent-sous-
Coucy, northeast of Paris, was a Benedictine, historian, theologian and
memoirist. In his De Vita Sua, he recounts a vision granted to his
mother,83 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn83-
0012580621997061)
who meets her former husband in a hellish locale.
There he is punished for adultery and for fathering an illegitimate child
who died unbaptized. She also sees Count Renaud, who will be
murdered that same day; one of Guibert’s dead brothers, presumably
once a monk; and a religious woman guilty of vainglory. After her
husband assures her that her suffrages will bring him relief, she devotes
her life to this end, even adopting a wailing child. Although this work
was written c.1116, more than a decade after Guibert became abbot,
and although he was inclined to topological interpretations,84
for him, his mother’s vision was primarily a personal matter. Besides
confirming the value of suffrages for the souls of the dead, no wider
lessons are expounded for the clergy, laity or nobility.
G. G. Coulton considered the Vision of John, Monk of St. Lawrence of
Liège85 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn85-
0012580621997061)
to be ‘a better specimen of the monastic type’86
than many of the better-known visions. John, master of schools at this

Benedictine abbey c. 1150, is guided in the otherworld by St. Lawrence,
the patron of his monastery. John recognizes ‘men in monk’s cowls …
silent and sad’,87 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn87-
0012580621997061)
sitting on a bench in purgatory. He also sees his father,
quite possibly also a monk, in chains. This vision delivers a pointedly
monastic message when John compares two monks in purgatory: The
greater sinner will spend less time in purgatory because he adhered to
his monastery’s patron, whereas the lesser sinner, who attached himself
to the patron saint of another monastery, will be in purgatory for a
greater duration because the other patron will not come to his aid.
John also meets St. Maurice, who had a church at a grange not far from
Liège. Maurice complains that although John frequently visited it, he
never celebrated Mass or sang an office there. John pleads that he
suffered from ‘contradiction, affliction, and temptation … while that
grange was in my care’,88
and he is excused. But then he attacks Maurice for not protecting the
peasants at the grange. Maurice brings John to the grange to watch
these peasants petitioning for help and to witness Maurice verbally
attacking them, claiming that they bring evil upon themselves.
John’s vision focuses closely on the things of his monastery and
perhaps on a specific conflict with the monastery’s tenant farmers. He
returns with advice for his fellow-monks and neighbours. St. Lawrence
assures him that while he will live for many years, he should not use his
obligations as an excuse for neglecting his spiritual life: ‘Take heed unto
thyself, and see that thou be not overwhelmed with too great
business’.89 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn89-
0012580621997061)
This resonates with the tension between the monastic
life and the worldly obligations – and worldly powers – of monastic
administrators, as noted in the Vision of Boso of Durham and
bemoaned by contemporaries like Bernard of Clairvaux and Malachy of
Armagh.
Within a year or two of the Vision of John of Liège, Marcus, a
Benedictine from Cashel, Ireland, travelled with St. Malachy to Clairvaux,
then on to the monastery of St. James at Regensburg where, in 1149, he
wrote the Vision of Tundale. It describes a young knight’s journey
through eight purgatorial regions to the gate and pit of hell and finally to
heaven. Tundale mentions different classes of sinners in hell but only
sees clergy, monks, nuns, canons and others in sacred orders in areas
set aside for gluttons, fornicators and liars. In hell, he recognizes two
Ulster mythological figures, and in the pit of hell, he discovers a group of
prelates and princes guilty of abusing their power.
When Tundale arrives before the gates of heaven, he recognizes
laypeople, and specifically three infamous kings, whom surprisingly he
finds relatively unscathed: Conchobhar Ua Briain of Thomond (1118–
42), Donachus MacCarthaigh of Desmond (r. 1127 and 1138–42) and
Cormac MacCarthaigh of Desmond (r. 1124–38). In heaven, a
wonderous camp is laid out for monks. Higher in heaven, Tundale
recognizes St. Patrick and four contemporary bishops: Celestine and
Malachy of Armagh, Christian of Louth (Malachy’s brother) and
Nemeniah of Cloyne. An empty chair awaits a fifth, unidentified, bishop.
Unlike John’s vision, specifically focused on monastic matters,
Tundale’s vision foregrounds two issues. First is the importance of
divine mercy. Instead of emphasizing suffrages to benefit the dead, this
vision emphasizes the role of divine mercy in redemption. The key to
this may rest in Marcus’s visit to Clairvaux, since the Vision of Tundale’s
teachings on the nature of grace and free choice reflects Bernard’s De
gratia et libero arbitrio of 1128.90
Bernard does not always clearly expound his theology of grace, but here
Marcus may be attempting to distil Bernard’s thought for his own
audience.91 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn91-
0012580621997061)
Marcus’s concern for ‘legitimate marriage’ is also evident. Two places in

deepest hell just above the pit are set aside for fornicators. Cormac
MacCarthaigh is punished there in part because he defiled the
sacrament of marriage. The first place in heaven is allocated to the
married, ‘who did not mutually befoul their marriage by the stain of illicit
adultery and who served the faith of legitimate union’.92
Marcus’s concern reflects both Bernard’s and Malachy’s efforts to bring

Ireland into conformity with Rome on matters of marriage, a position
endorsed by the four reforming bishops seen in heaven.93
The Vision of Gunthelm, also known as the Vision of a Cistercian

Novice, from the mid–late 12th century, displays a strictly monastic
focus. Circumstantial evidence indicates that Peter the Venerable
(1092–1156), abbot of Cluny from 1122 until his death, may initially
have recorded it. The Cistercian Helinand de Froidmont (c.1150–1237?)
included an abridged version in his Chronicon at 1161, which Vincent of
Beauvais repeated in his Speculum Historiale at 1187.94
In
the otherworld, Gunthelm mentions monks several times, both among
the blessed and those suffering. He meets St. Benedict and Matthew, a
monk from his own abbey, presumably Rievaulx in North Yorkshire, who
enjoins Gunthelm to warn their current abbot Aelred (1110–67), ‘to
strive to mend his ways and see to it that the discipline of the order is
kept with greater diligence and care’.95
One manuscript96 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn96-

0012580621997061)
specifically illustrates the divergence between the
Cistercians and Cluniacs by providing them with separate gates into
heaven. In this manuscript, the Virgin directs the novice to make a
public confession, which was already in decline among the reform
orders,97 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn97-
0012580621997061)
as private versus public confession became a point of
controversy between the orders. But when Gunthelm is about to return
to his earthly life, his guide Raphael advises him to keep his vision
confidential except for telling it in ‘secret confession’ and ‘under the
silence of confession’ to his abbot. This vision’s monastic perspective is
further buttressed by its emphasis on particularly Cistercian ideal, of
‘stabilitas loci’. Gunthelm enters the monastery after being advised
against travelling to Jerusalem as a crusading pilgrim. According to
Helinand, once inside the monastery, this ‘temptation by Satan’, returns.
The Virgin, who confronts Gunthelm in the otherworld, extracts from
him an oath never to abandon her house.
A remarkable and remarkably popular otherworld journey was the knight
Owein’s visit to St Patrick’s Purgatory98
during the reign of King Stephen (1135–54) and recorded c. 1179–86 by

H. of Saltrey, a monk at that Cistercian abbey in Yorkshire. Easting
believes this account to be a clerically embellished version of a real
event.99 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn99-
0012580621997061)
It is based on reports from another Yorkshire
Cistercian, Gilbert of Louth, later abbot of Basingwerk in Wales, who
was in Ireland c. 1148 establishing the monastery at Baltinglass, west
of the Wicklow Mountains, where Owein served as his interpreter. The
Cistercian connections to this vision are evident, yet the text is
somewhat disappointing in its vagueness. Owein has no guide in the
otherworld, which might explain the lack of specificity. As Owein passes
through 10 places of punishment, he describes those he sees simply as
‘humans of both sexes and all ages’.100
Perhaps because they are naked, he cannot distinguish them, but he

also makes no distinctions among their sins or crimes. Only once does
Owein recognize anyone in hell, noting some of his former companions.
Inside the earthly paradise, Owein is slightly more specific: he sees
people of every religious order … archbishops … bishops … abbots,

canons, monks, priests, and ecclesiastics of all the orders in the Holy
Church. Also, everyone, clerics and laypeople alike, seemed to be
dressed in the type of clothes – although now much more sumptuous –
in which they had served God in this world.101
Two unidentified archbishops welcome Owein, and within the

multitudes, he singles out kings and others carrying palms, presumably
martyrs. In his introduction, H. of Saltrey offers that he has written this
vision at the instruction of his lord, Abbot H. (possibly Hugh) of Sartis
(Wardon in Bedfordshire), for the ‘betterment of simple folk’.102
He appears to be without a monastic or political agenda, although

Owein ‘did not see … people endowed with so much glory as were the
men of this [Cistercian] order’.103
Perhaps growing scepticism about the value of these works for an

educated clergy, but their continuing usefulness for the laity, was
already penetrating these reports from the otherworld.104
H. states clearly that he is writing in metaphors about the afterlife, that

visionaries are given ‘signs, which are similar to material things but are
intended to represent spiritual ones … That is why … a mortal and
material man tells how he saw spiritual things under the aspect and
form of material things’.105
The 1190 vision of Gottschalk, a Holstein farmer, is twice recorded

anonymously: a longer version, Godeschalcus, by a monk of
Neumünster, who served as the pastor of Nortorf, and a shorter version,
Visio Godeschalci, by a neighbouring-parish priest.106
The monk’s version, which concerns us here, places Gottschalk’s vision

of purgatory and paradise solidly in the context of local politics,
struggles and crimes. Gottschalk, already ill, takes part in a siege of
Segeburg Castle, during an incursion by Henry the Lion, and falls into a
death-like state. In the otherworld, he recognizes a number prominent
men and simple neighbours, killers and their victims, as well as canons,
lay brothers and a cook from the monastery. He also sees places set
aside for the reward of some who are still living. In one case, he is
surprised to meet a man, whom he thought was still alive, who has just
rejoined his first wife. The man asks Gottschalk to deliver a message to
his son, but Gottschalk, who often forgets names and details, cannot
remember the message once he returns to this world.107
The author of Godeschalcus cross-examines the visionary several

times, rebukes him for neglecting to ask pertinent questions of his
guides and is distressed by his faulty memory. The author is fully
engaged in the details of life outside the monastery and although he is
diligent in including monks and lay brothers from his monastery in the
places of reward in the otherworld, ‘the decisive reason [for his writing]
is love of one’s neighbour on whose edification our plan primarily
aims’,108 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn108-
0012580621997061)
and he urges ‘fasting and other mortifications …
donations of alms and other works of mercy for the salvation of the
dead’.109 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn109-
0012580621997061)
A complex Latin vision from 1196, The Vision of the Monk of
Eynsham,110 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn110-
0012580621997061)
is associated with Eynsham Abbey, northwest of
Oxford. The visionary, Edmund, is a novice there, and his brother Adam,
who will become Eynsham’s abbot in 1213 and who is the author of the
Magna Vita of St. Hugh of Lincoln, recorded this vision.111
Notably, although the visionary recognizes many in the otherworld, the

work preserves their anonymity to prevent sadness and scandal.112
Easting asserts that, despite its later popularity and wider

dissemination, this ‘was a Benedictine work, doubtless originally
intended for monastic consumption’.113
It extols the benefits of monastic life and its redemptive value in the
afterlife. Unlike Gunthelm’s vision, it pointedly praises pilgrims and
pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
The otherworld’s topography is glancingly described, as the text
focuses on individuals, frequently mentioning the suffrages required by
those trapped in a purgatorial state. Edmund identifies several bishops
in the places of purgation, including Hugh Pudsey of Durham, Joscelin
of Salisbury and Reginald of Bath and Wells, as well as Baldwin,
archbishop of Canterbury. An abbot, later identified as Godfrey, who
served for 44 years at Eynsham, suffers there for his nepotism and
pastoral neglect. By highlighting the punishment of bishops and abbots,
the vision demonstrates a concern with corruption in the church and the
necessity of ecclesiastical reform. It shows little or no interest in
secular political matters.
And yet, beneath the surface of the text, there is evidence of the
struggle between the bishop of Lincoln, who had jurisdiction over
Eynsham, and the crown, which sought to abrogate that jurisdiction to
itself.114 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn114-
0012580621997061)
Edmund also describes King Henry II’s suffering in the
place of purgation for murder, adultery and excessive taxation, and
most notably for slaying those who asserted their rights to hunt the
king’s deer. His pain is eased by the prayers of religious men, probably
connected to his founding of England’s first Carthusian monastery at
Witham and by his devotion to Hugh of Lincoln, who is intricately
associated with Eynsham, the visionary and his scribe.
The Vision of Thurkill (1206) is unusual in many ways. The visionary
from the Essex parish of Stisted is neither monk nor priest nor holy man
nor knight, but, like Gottschalk, a farmer. The vision was recorded with
varying details by three monks: Ralph of Coggeshall (d. after 1227),
abbot of that Cistercian house (1207–18), author of the Chronicon
Anglicanum and of a book of miracles and visions; Roger of Wendover
(d. 1236), monk of St Albans and author of the Flores Historiarum; and
Matthew Paris (c. 1200–1259), also monk of St Albans and author of
the Chronica Majora. Roger’s version and Matthew’s following it omit
many notable details, particularly concerning those in the otherworld.
The version presumably recorded by Ralph of Coggeshall115
sets the vision to give the impression of a work aimed specifically at a

rural, lay audience.116
He mentions Thurkill’s former landlord, Roger Picoth, in purgatory for

withholding money from his labourers and from the canons of nearby
St. Osith’s Abbey. Roger asks Thurkill to persuade his son to clear these
debts. The number of masses still wanting to free souls from purgation
is a recurring theme. Thurkill sees Robert de Cliveland, still in need of 50
masses, as well as his own father in need of 30 masses, who is
released as soon as Thurkill promises to pay for 10 masses once the
angel has reduced the number on account of Thurkill’s poverty. He
mentions one monk from a neighbouring cloister who overindulged
once and died promptly without confessing. He still needs 40 masses.
In this vision’s famous theatre scene, Thurkill sees some of the torture
seats empty, set aside for the living. His guide ‘named many names, and
Thurkill knew some of them, and warned the men when he returned to
earth’.117 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn117-
0012580621997061)
Despite the fact that this vision was recorded by three monastic
authors, their accounts preserve the concerns particular to the
visionary, perhaps indicating that adapting a tale to deliver a message
to a monastic audience was not always of paramount concern.
Monastic authors could remain faithful to the received text, even if the
frequent reminder about masses for the dead might point to a certain
pecuniary interest.
Some conclusions
Despite the monastic context of the 36 otherworld visions examined

here, only 17 were written specifically for monks with two by Peter
Damian and the Godeschalcus written particularly for bishops. The
remaining 18 did not address specifically or even primarily a clerical
audience. In 20, the visionary recognized in the otherworld-specific
people, either still living or dead, including clerics and laypeople. In
most cases, they are identified, although in five, the names are withheld
or suppressed. Monks are found among those in heaven as well as
those in hell, balancing the salvific nature of the monastic life and
sometimes even of a specific monastery or order against the faults of
individual monks. Claims that these visions were written to financially
benefit monasteries by encouraging masses and prayers for suffering
souls are not supported by the evidence, as only 7 of these 36 mention
suffrages. Five visions require the visionary to attempt to right a worldly
wrong to aid souls in the otherworld. Fifteen visions use either the
prospect of torments in hell or the promise of joy in heaven to exhort
both clerics and laypeople to a better life. Eight bear a political
message, either explicitly like the Vision of Charles the Fat, or a more
subtle ecclesiastically political message as in the visions of Bernoldus,
Alberic and the Monk of Eynsham. Fourteen visionaries return with
specific warnings admonishing reform and repentance for individuals,
lay and clerical, or for monastic communities.
The narrative of these monastic visions often indicated a specific
audience or specific audiences. The monks, who recorded these
visions, almost certainly interpreted the narrative to accentuate or
possibly alter the audience implied or to indicate one where none was
apparent. These audiences were monastic, clerical and lay, extending
from the monastery and its granges to local villages and regions, and to
nobles, bishops, kings and emperors. These otherworld visions
occupied a space betwixt and between the enclosure and the secular
world, corroborating the liminal nature of the monastic and affirming the
liminal nature of this monastic genre.
Footnotes
1.
Claude Carozzi, in both the introduction and conclusion to his Le
Voyage de l’âme dans l’au-delà d’après la littérature latine, Ve-XIIIe
siècle (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1994), defines the genre, its
antecedents and time frame. See pp. 1–9 and 635–49.
2.
Until the later 12th century, the otherworld generally comprised only
heaven and hell: a purgatorial space existed not as a distinct place but
in the upper regions of hell, while paradise might form a separate
location outside heaven.
3.
I thank Dr. Benjamin Pohl (University of Bristol) for his invitation to
participate in his History and Community Workshop, which made me
consider the place of these works in this world rather than as
descriptions of the otherworld. This article was written specifically for
Downside Review’s special issue on ‘History and Community’.
4.
The corpus under consideration numbered 48 visions before eliminating
variant versions of the same vision and one, the Vision of Ailsi, with no
monastic connection.
5.
Victor Tuner and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), pp. 1–39; Giles Constable,
The Reformation of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996), pp. 21–2.
6.
In addition to numerous manuscript illuminations and book illustrations,
most particularly of the Vision of Tundale (e.g. Getty Ms 30), frescoes
have also been identified: Noel Mac Tréinfhir, ‘The Todi Fresco and St
Patrick’s Purgatory Lough Derg’, Clougher Record, vol. 12, no. 2 (1986),
pp. 141–58.
7.
The Visio Tnugdali and Tractatus Purgatorii Sancti Patricii are the most
notable examples of this type of dissemination. See, for example, Eileen
Gardiner, ‘The Vision of Tnugdal’, in Richard Matthew Pollard (ed.),
Imagining the Medieval Afterlife (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2020), pp. 247–63 at 247.
8.
Erwin Assmann assumes from internal evidence that Gottschalk
(Godeschalcus) circulated at least as far as local bishops, yet we are
left with only the author’s fair copy and an 18th-century transcript. See
his Godeschalcus und Visio Godeschalci, Quellen und Forschunger zur
Geschichte Schleswig-Holsteins 74 (Neumünster: Karl Wacholtz Verlag,
1979), pp. 17–23 and 27.
10.
See Barbara Müller, ‘Gregory the Great and Monasticism’, in A
Companion to Gregory the Great, ed. Bronwen Neil et al. (Leiden: Brill,
2013), pp. 83–108.
11.
Eileen Gardiner, Visions of Heaven and Hell Before Dante (New York:
Italica Press, 1989), p. 47.
12.
Book 7, chapters 1 and 33. Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks,
trans. O.M. Dalton, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon, 1927), p. 285–8 and
2:142. Gregory’s Historia can also be quite political, as in King
Guntramn’s dream of Chilperic, which, however, lacks the journey
narrative intrinsic to this genre. See Isabel Moreira, Dreams, Visions,
and Spiritual Authority in Merovingian Gaul (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2000), pp. 95–9.
14.
James T. Palmer, The Apocalypse in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 86–7; Wilhelm Levison, ‘Die
Politik in Jenseitsvisionen des frühen Mittelalters’, in Aus Rheinischer
und fränkischer Frühzeit (Dusseldorf: L. Schwann, 1948), pp. 229–46, at
233–4; Yitzhak Hen, ‘The Structure and Aims of the Visio Baronti’,
Journal of Theological Studies, vol. 47 (1996), pp. 477–97 at 494.
15.
G. Cavero Domínguez, ‘Anchorites in the Spanish Tradition’, in Liz
Herbert McAvoy (ed.), Anchoritic Traditions of Medieval Europe
(Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2017), pp. 91–111, at 93–4.
16.
Maria Pia Ciccarese, Visioni dell’Aldilà in Occidente: Fonti Modelli Testi
(Florence: Nardini Editore, 1987), pp. 276–301.
17.
Jo Ann McNamara, John E. Halborg and E. Gordon Whatley, eds.,
Sainted Women of the Dark Ages (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
1992), pp. 192–4.
18.
Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Judith
McClure and Roger Collins and trans. Bertram Colgrave (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2008), p. 3.
22.
John Carey, ‘The Vision of Laisrén’, in The End and Beyond: Medieval
Irish Eschatology, ed. John Carey et al. (Aberystwyth: Celtic Studies
Publications, 2014), pp. 417–44.
24.
Petra Kehl, ‘Entstehung und Verbreitung des Bonifatiuskultes’, in
Bonifatius: vom angelsächsischen Missionar zum Apostel der
Deutschen, ed. Michael Imhof et al. (Petersberg: Imhof Verlag, 2004),
pp. 127–50.
25.
Levison Wilhelm, Vitae sancti Bonifatii, archiepiscopi Moguntini
(Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1905), p. 9; Charles H. Talbot,
ed., The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany: Being the Lives of S.S.
Willibrord, Boniface, Sturm, Leoba and Lebuin Together with the
Hodoeporicon of St. Willibald and a Selection from the Correspondence
of St. Boniface (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1954), p. 28.
26.
Letter 2 in Ephraim Emerton and George La Piana, The Letters of Saint
Boniface (New York: Columbia University Press, 1940), pp. 25–31.
27.
Or probably Wimborne, according to Diane Watt, Women, Writing and
Religion in England and Beyond, 650–1100 (London: Bloomsbury
Academic, 2020), p. 76.
35.
Rudolf Schieffer, ‘Boniface: His Life and Work’, in A Companion to
Boniface, ed. Michel Aaij et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2020), pp. 9–26.
37.
The letter is last in a collection (n. 21 above) connected to Boniface and
his successor at Mainz, Archbishop Lull, the first abbot of the
Benedictine Hersfeld Abbey.
38.
Carozzi, p. 262, n. 488; and Alan E. Bernstein, Hell and Its Rivals: Death
and Retribution among Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Early
Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017), p. 227.
41.
Heito and Walahfrid Strabo, Visio Wettini: Einführung, lateinisch-
deutsche Ausgabe, ed. Hermann Knittel (Heidelberg: Mattes Verlag,
2009).
43.
W. Wattenbach, ed., Anzeiger für Kunde der deutschen Vorzeit, new
series vol. 22 (1875), pp. 72–4.
44.
For identifications, see Maaike van der Lugt, ‘Tradition and Revision: The
Textual Tradition of Hincmar of Reims’ Visio Bernoldi, with a Critical
Edition’, Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi, vol. 52 (1994), pp. 109–49 at
110. She describes them as playing ‘an active role in politics’ (113). For
Ebbo, see Rachel Stone, ‘Introduction’, in Hincmar of Rheims: Life and
Work, ed. Rachel Stone et al. (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2016), pp. 3–4; and Paul Edward Dutton, The Politics of Dreaming in the
Carolingian Empire (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), pp.
184–5, 191–2 and 230–1; for Aeneas of Paris, see Matthew Bryan Gillis,
‘Heresy in the Flesh: Gottschalk of Orbais and the Predestination
Controversy in the Archdiocese of Rheims’, in Stone, 255, 260.
45.
Edward Roberts, Flodoard of Rheims and the Writing of History in the
Tenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), p. 198.
46.
Carozzi, p. 357, identified him as Jesse of Amiens, a political bishop,
who led the trial of Louis the Pious in 834. According to van der Lugt (p.
113), this identification is unlikely.
64.
Jean-Claude Schmitt and Teresa Lavender Fagan, Ghosts in the Middle
Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society (Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, 2007), pp. 115–6.
65.
Wim Verball, review of Liber visionum et miraculorum Clarevallensium,
by Herbert of Clairvaux, ed. Giancarlo Zichi, Graziano Fois, and Stefano
Mula, Speculum, vol. 93, no. 4 (2018), pp. 1209–11. See also Carl
Watkins, ‘Otherworld Journeys in the Central Middle Ages’, in Pollard,
Imagining, pp. 107–8.
67.
David Rollason, ed., Libellus de exordio atque procursu istius, hoc est
Dunhelmensis, ecclesie, Tract on the Origins and Progress of This the
Church of Durham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 246–51.
69.
Hugh Farmer, ‘The Vision of Orm’, Analecta Bollandiana, vol. 75 (1957),
pp. 72–82. See also Carozzi, pp. 449–53.
90.
Bernard of Clairvaux, Treatises III: On Grace and Free Choice, and, in
Praise of the New Knighthood, ed. Bernard McGinn and R. J. Zwi
Werblowsky (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1977), pp. 3–111.
91.
Brian Patrick McGuire, ‘Bernard’s Life and Works: A Review’, in Brian
Patrick McGuire (ed.), A Companion to Bernard of Clairvaux (Leiden:
Brill, 2011), p. 36; see also Bernhard Lohse, ‘Luther und Bernhard von
Clairvaux’, in Kasper Elm (ed.), Bernhard von Clairvaux: Rezeption und
Wirkung (Wiesbaden: Harrossowitz, 1994), pp. 271–301. Bernard,
Treatises, pp. 14–8.
93.
Marie Therese Flanagan, The Transformation of the Irish Church in the
Twelfth Century (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2010), pp. 184–95,
esp. 193.
94.
For background and earliest Latin text, see Giles Constable, ‘The Vision
of Gunthelm and Other Visions Attributed to Peter the Venerable’, Revue
Bénédictine, vol. 66 (1956), pp. 92–114.
96.
Cambridge, Sidney Sussex College 95. See Giles Constable, ‘The Vision
of a Cistercian Novice’, Studia Anselmiana: Philosophica, Theologia, vol.
40 (1956), pp. 95–8.
98.
The Tractatus de Purgatorio Sancti Patricii. See J.-M. Picard and
Yolande de Pontfarcy, Saint Patrick’s Purgatory: A Twelfth-Century Tale
of a Journey to the Otherworld (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1985).
99.
Robert Easting, ‘Owein at St. Patrick’s Purgatory’, Medium Aevum, vol.
55, no. 2 (1986), pp. 159–75 at p. 162.

Visions of Heaven and Hell

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Visions of Heaven and Hell: A

Monastic Literature - Eileen Gardiner,

Medieval otherworld visions comprise a monastic genre: monks almost

Medieval otherworld visions comprised a notable genre from the 6th to

with a guide who explained its inhabitants, geographies and activities.

ranging geographically from Ireland to Italy, it emerges that while many

During the medieval period, these otherworld visions circulated in

Others survive in a single medieval manuscript.8

Such differing fates might be due to an individual work’s literary merit,

Early medieval visions

Around 574, he founded seven monasteries, including St. Andrew’s on

west of Bourges, the monk Barontus is accused of having three wives

Within this monastically focused vision, their presence indicates some

attached to the nearby abbey of San Pedro de Montes. He wrote

concern visionaries who return to this world to lead better lives.

who received his monastic education at Exeter and Nursling

Kent. He reports that Abbess Hildelida [Hildelith] of Barking related this

As Sims-Williams notes, ‘Wenlock is the only monastery known to have

Sims-Williams senses that Boniface may have had access to additional

Although, according to Sims-Williams, because ‘the Wenlock monk’s

clearly even without its secular content, it maintains a significance far

The second vision–letter associated with Boniface refers to the death

so presumably it was written at least three years after Boniface had

Moreira believes that the ‘composition appears to have been strongly

From Fleury Abbey at Saint-Benoît de Loire, the early 9th-century Vision

The Vision of Bernoldus (after 877) by Hincmar (806–82), archbishop of

Although Roberts suggests their punishments derive from ‘spending too

Dutton sees it as focusing less on the moral failings of powerful men

He meets his father, Louis II (the German), who is up to his knees in

so that he might be released like his brother Lothair I (co-emperor 817–

11th to early 13th century

At the behest of Odo, abbot of Saint Germain d’Auxerre (1032–52),

The visionary, an anonymous pilgrim–monk, witnesses Christ

appears in a letter (14, before 1045) that Peter writes to a neighbouring

Another vision by Peter Damian is included in his Concerning the

He claims the story comes from a sermon preached by Pope Gregory

Walkelin’s encounters with acquaintances, neighbours and familiars

Approximately a century later, Herbert of Clairvaux’s Book of the Visions

Sigar recounts this vision, including his examination of 13-year-old Orm,

Orm identifies the daughter of a soldier named Stephen in heaven

with Peter’s help. It is difficult to reconcile the significance of this

must be accepted at face value and indicates a widespread oral

He watches ‘a certain monk’ carried to punishment but does not name

much was told to me and taught to me … concerning men living even in

Alberic remembers so many people and so much detail that Carozzi,

And certainly, it is curious that a 10-year-old would focus so heavily on

The example of Alberic’s conversion to the monastic life may be a

The ecclesiastical politics of the time cannot be discounted as an

than many of the better-known visions. John, master of schools at this

Marcus’s concern for ‘legitimate marriage’ is also evident. Two places in

Marcus’s concern reflects both Bernard’s and Malachy’s efforts to bring

The Vision of Gunthelm, also known as the Vision of a Cistercian

One manuscript96 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0012580621997061#fn96-

during the reign of King Stephen (1135–54) and recorded c. 1179–86 by

Perhaps because they are naked, he cannot distinguish them, but he

people of every religious order … archbishops … bishops … abbots,

Two unidentified archbishops welcome Owein, and within the

He appears to be without a monastic or political agenda, although

Perhaps growing scepticism about the value of these works for an

H. states clearly that he is writing in metaphors about the afterlife, that

The 1190 vision of Gottschalk, a Holstein farmer, is twice recorded

The monk’s version, which concerns us here, places Gottschalk’s vision

The author of Godeschalcus cross-examines the visionary several