Dreams, Visions, and Spiritual Authority in Merovingian GaulCornell University Press, 2000 - 262 pages In early medieval Europe, dreams and visions were believed to reveal divine information about Christian life and the hereafter. No consensus existed, however, as to whether all Christians, or only a spiritual elite, were entitled to have a relationship of this sort with the supernatural. Drawing on a rich variety of sources--histories, hagiographies, ascetic literature, and records of dreams at saints' shrines--Isabel Moreira provides insight into a society struggling to understand and negotiate its religious visions. Moreira analyzes changing attitudes toward dreams and visionary experiences beginning in late antiquity, when the church hierarchy considered lay dreamers a threat to its claims of spiritual authority. Moreira describes how, over the course of the Merovingian period, the clergy came to accept the visions of ordinary folk--peasants, women, and children--as authentic. Dream literature and accounts of visionary experiences infiltrated all aspects of medieval culture by the eighth century, and the dreams of ordinary Christians became central to the clergy's pastoral concerns. Written in clear and inviting prose, this book enables readers to understand how the clerics of Merovingian Gaul allowed a Christian culture of dreaming to develop and flourish without compromising the religious orthodoxy of the community or the primacy of their own authority. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 36
... late antiquity , when the church hierarchy considered lay dreamers a threat to its claims of spiritual authority . Moreira describes how , over the course of the Merovingian period , the clergy came to accept the visions of ordi- nary ...
... late antiquity , when the church hierarchy considered lay dreamers a threat to its claims of spiritual authority . Moreira describes how , over the course of the Merovingian period , the clergy came to accept the visions of ordi- nary ...
... Late Antiquity , both scholars agree on an essential point : Christians of the late fourth century saw their rela- tionship to the supernatural differently than those of the second . While es- chewing Dodds's premise that social and ...
... Antiquity , 7 ( Amsterdam , 1987 ) , p . 221 , and Brown , who notes the presence of " oligarchies of bishops powerful enough to overshadow any other bearers of the holy , " in " Eastern and Western Christendom in Late Antiquity : A ...
... late antiquity such as those of Macrobius and Chalcidius . In Macrobius ' fivefold schema , for example , he recognized three veridical categories of dream and two that were " empty " or vana.11 The three veridical types were the ...