Visions of Heaven and Hell: A Monastic Literature

Introduction

Medieval otherworld visions comprised a notable genre from the 6th to the 13th century. ¹ Their formulaic structure described an individual who, in a dream, a vision or a near-death state, travelled to the otherworld ² 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 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

During the medieval period, these otherworld visions circulated in manuscripts and orally; were incorporated into letters, sermons and paintings; ⁶ 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 afterlife ⁹ : 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 Sunniulf ¹² – 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 recluse ¹⁵ attached to the nearby abbey of San Pedro de Montes. He wrote specifically for its monks, including three otherworld visions ¹⁶ : 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 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 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 The first, the Vision of the Monk of Wenlock, survives in a letter of 716²⁶ 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 Boniface’s interest in Ceolred resurfaces in his letter to King Aethelbald ³⁰ 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 757 ³⁶ 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 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 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

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 Jesse ⁴⁶ 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 Wetti ⁴⁸ – 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 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 dead ⁶¹ 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

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 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 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 Alberic ⁷⁴ 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 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

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 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 Liège ⁸⁵ 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 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 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

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 manuscript ⁹⁶ 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 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 Purgatory ⁹⁸ 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 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 and he urges ‘fasting and other mortifications … donations of alms and other works of mercy for the salvation of the dead’. ¹⁰⁹

A complex Latin vision from 1196, The Vision of the Monk of Eynsham, ¹¹⁰ 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 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 Coggeshall ¹¹⁵ 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

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.