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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
The dead are the silent majority in the Church’s history – as they are, indeed, in humanity’s. The life after death is a matter of faith and conjecture more than tried and tested certainty, predicated on a soul which survives the death of the body. That raises issues about the nature and structure of the afterlife, its pains and delights. For the late medieval Church, the afterlife raised particular concerns and anxieties, its complex division into heaven, hell, and purgatory promising a future which had to be planned for. Strategies for eternity were a major force in religious practice, with death as the threshold to something unknown until experienced.
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14 Gervase, 759–85. The ghost said she could only serve as a conduit while she remained a virgin: ibid. 768–69.
15 Clusa, sig. Bivv.
16 Schmitt does include them in his analysis. One of the most vivid is the lengthy conversational encounter reported in Harley, M. P., A Revelation of Purgatory by an Unknown Fifteenth-Century Woman Visionary: Introduction, Critical Text, and Translation (Lewiston, NY, and Queenston, Ont., 1985), 60–65, 78–84 Google Scholar (trans, at 113–19. 132—38).
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34 Others may not yet have been highlighted or noticed.
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42 E.g. Clusa, sigs Bir-Biir.
43 Ibid, sigs Avv-Avir.
44 Ibid, sigs Biiiv-Ciir.
45 Ibid. sig. Aiir.
46 Ibid. sig. Bivr.
47 Ibid. sig. Biir. God’s control over when and where ghosts are released from purgatory is repeatedly affirmed at sigs Biv-Biiv. Clusa stipulates that the preliminaries to an interrogation should include prayers to God to cause the spirit to appear and explain itself: ibid. sig. Bivr.
48 Ibid. sig. Avr.
49 Ibid, sigs Avir-Bir.
50 Lyons, 1534 [hereafter, ‘Sibylla’]. The relevant section is fols 61r-63r.
51 Ibid. fol. 61V.
52 Ibid. fol. 61r.
53 Ibid. fol. 61r-v.
54 Ibid. fol. 61v.
55 Ibid.
56 Ibid. fol. 61r.
57 Ibid. fol. 61v. Cf. Christian, W. A. Jr, Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain (Princeton, NJ, 1981), 193.Google Scholar
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59 Ibid. fol. 75 v.
60 Ibid. fol. 127V.
61 P. A. Sigal, ‘La possession demoniaque dans la région de Florence au XVe siècle d’après les miracles de saint Jean Gualbert’, in Histoire et société: Mélanges offerts à Georges Duby, III: Le moine, le clerc et le prince (Aix-en-Provence, 1992), 101–12, at 105–06.
62 Suggested in Caciola, , Discerning Spirits, 254.Google Scholar
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64 Petrus Madonis, Flagellum maleficorum ([?Lyons, 1491]), sig. b.2r.
65 Muessig, C., ‘Heaven, Earth and the Angels: Preaching Paradise in the Sermons of Jacques de Vitry’, in Muessig, C. and Putter, A., eds, Envisaging Heaven in the Middle Ages (London and New York, 2007), 57–72, at 63.Google Scholar
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72 See Caciola, , ‘Wraiths’, 11–14.Google Scholar
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74 Ibid. 15–24.
75 See, for example, ibid. 15–16.
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83 James, , ‘Ghost-Stories’, 419–20 Google Scholar; Erbe, , Mirk’s Festial, 281 Google Scholar. See also comment in Watkins, C. S., ‘Sin, Penance and Purgatory in the Anglo-Norman Realm: The Evidence of Visions and Ghost Stories’, P&P 17 (May 2002), 3–33, at 23–24, 27 Google Scholar (esp. n. 80).
84 Had they not occurred in dreams, the conversations reported in Harley, Revelation of Purgatory, could also be included: see above, n. 16.
85 The case appears in Gervase, 759–85; see also Schmitt, , Ghosts, 87–97 Google Scholar. It and the Alès manifestation (below, 159–60) are considered in Beaulieu, M.-A. Polo de, ‘De Beaucaire (1211) à Alès (1323): les revenants et leurs révélations sur l’au-delà’, in La mort et l’au-delà en France méridionale (XIIe-XVe siècle), Cahiers de Fanjeaux 33 (Toulouse, 1998), 319–41.Google Scholar
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87 Ibid. 760–61.
88 Ibid. 762–65, 768–75.
89 Ibid. 774–75: ‘magis experto magis consentio’.
90 Schmitt, Chosts, 92.
91 Gervase, 760–63, 770–71.
92 Ibid. 778–79.
93 Ibid. 762–65.
94 Ibid. 764–67. A similar belief about the quality of the clothing worn by the dead is suggested by Duvernoy, J., ed., Le registre d’inquisition de Jacques Foumier, évêque de Pamiers (1318–1325), 3 vols (Toulouse, 1965), 1: 541.Google Scholar
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96 Ibid. 776–77.
97 Ibid. 774–77.
98 Ibid. 778–81.
99 Ibid. 768–69, 772–73.
100 Ibid. 768–69.
101 Ibid. 774–75.
102 766-67.
103 The fullest survey of the evidence currently available is in Gobi, with a French translation of the short version of events at 51–61, and of the fuller tract at 71–107. For date, see 22–23.
104 Gobi, 72–74.
105 Ibid. 75.
106 Ibid. 103.
107 Ibid. 93–94.
108 Ibid. 82–86.
109 Ibid. 98.
110 Ibid. 77.
111 Ibid. 77, 98, 104.
112 Ibid. 78–80.
113 Ibid. 81–82.
114 Ibid. 90.
115 Ibid. 86–93.
116 Ibid. 90; see also 108.
117 Ibid. 99–100.
118 Ibid. 101.
119 Ibid. 104.
120 e.g. Welter, J. T., ed., Le speculum laicorum: Édition d’une collection d’exempla composée en Angleterre à la fin du XII siècle (Paris, 1914), nos 326-27 Google Scholar (cf. no. 86, for a transfer of merits from good deeds); M. Sensi, Il perdono di Assisi (Assisi, 2002), 211–12, 214, 219, 300, 326–27. Intriguingly, indulgences are not transferred in the Middle English version of the Alès apparition, The Gast of Gy, in Horstmann, C., ed., Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle of Hampole and his Followers, 2 vols (London, 1895-6), 2: 292–333 Google Scholar. See also Gobi, 148–49.
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125 Ibid. 74.
126 Ibid. 71.
127 Ibid. 79.
128 Ibid. 54.
129 Ibid. 59.
130 For the required commemorations, see ibid. 48–49.
131 Ibid. 79.
132 Ibid. 64–65.
133 Lecouteux’s translation first calls her an aunt, then a kinswoman (cousine), and finally a niece (ibid. 66–68). The German text calls her a niece throughout ( Seelmann, , ‘Arnt Buschmans Mirakel’, 53–54).Google Scholar
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135 Is this a let-out clause for other cases where possessing spirits request similar commemorative works for dead souls? See 153 above. The ghost offers a warning against false spirits: Lecouteux, , Dialogue, 54.Google Scholar
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137 Ibid. 54.
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144 Ibid. 71. The son later improves, partly thanks to Arm’s intervention: ibid. 72.
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148 Ibid. 1: 544–55.
149 Ibid. 1: 135, 534, 543. The souls kept together in groups who had known each other while alive: ibid. 1: 541.
150 Contrasting with other cases, these requests are fairly minor, e.g. three masses, or food for three paupers for one day (ibid. 1: 129, 131). See also ibid. 1: 135. If Gélis did not pass on the messages, he was beaten: ibid. 1: 136.
151 Ibid. 1: 135–56, 535, 543–44.
152 Ibid, 1: 136–37, 543.
153 Ibid. 1: 130, 134.
154 Only one ghost reports a journey through purgatorial fire, possibly as an alternative method of purification: ibid. 1: 130, 135, 542; Ladurie, Montaillou, 1: 348–49.
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156 Duvernoy, Require, 1: 134–35, 137, 537.
157 Ibid. 1: 132, 137, 533,535, 537, 551.
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161 Ibid. 1: 131–32, 540, 548
162 Ibid. I: 134, 538,541-42.
163 E.g. ibid, 1: 129–30, 133.
164 Ibid. 1: 133 (but the truly saintly will reach heaven earlier), 135, 541, 544, 551. Angels are messengers in the prelude to the move to the place of rest: ibid. 1: 543. See also 154 above.
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193 Gervase, 112–15.
194 Ibid. 588–91.
195 The phrase derives from Galpern, A., ‘The Legacy of Late Medieval Religion in Sixteenth-Century Champagne’, in Trinkaus, C. and Oberman, H. A., eds, The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion: Papers from the University of Michigan Conference, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Thought 10 (Leiden, 1974), 141–76, at 149.Google Scholar
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