‘De Voluptate Aurium’: The Sounds of Heaven in a 1501 Sensory Treatise on the Afterlife

Abstract

Abstract In his De gloria et gaudiis beatorum , printed in 1501, the clergyman Zaccaria Lilio explores a popular topic in the religious life of Renaissance Italy: what is heaven like and what kind of experience awaits the blessed there? And his answer represents a snapshot of a characteristic manner in which heaven was imagined in the period, both in written and visual form, one strongly focused on a sensory understanding of the afterlife and in which music played an important part. By identifying the sources of Lillio's interpretation of the sense of hearing in the afterlife, a network of clergymen interested in heavenly sensory delights is revealed, initiated by an Italian curiosity for a fourteenth‐century text by a follower of Meister Eckart. This article aims not only to bring to the attention of scholars Lilio's neglected sensory treatise, but also to provide an in‐depth analysis of the intricate connections between Italian authors of sensory treatises from the fifteenth century. The implications of this textual tradition disseminated through preaching are of great importance to the development of the image of heaven and its music in Renaissance Italy, for which the sensory perspective was of crucial importance.