Visions of Heaven and Hell: A Monastic Literature

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.