Doubt, Faith, and the World to Come in Peter of Cornwall’s Book of Revelations By Michael D. Barbezat A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Center for Medieval Studies University of Toronto © Copyright by Michael D. Barbezat 2013 Doubt, Faith, and the World to Come in Peter of Cornwall’s Book of Revelations Michael D. Barbezat Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Medieval Studies University of Toronto 2013 Abstract This dissertation explores the relationship between doubt and faith as it appears in a large collection of visions and revelations from the turn of the thirteenth century, entitled the Liber revelationum, or the Book of Revelations. The Liber revelationum was compiled in London by an Augustinian canon named Peter of Cornwall around the year 1200. He collected scores of visions and revelations from books, friends, and acquaintances in order to prove that angels, God, and the human soul existed. My work focuses on the first book of the collection dealing with proofs for life after death. This study explores the context of this manuscript both in Peter’s works and also in the larger twelfth-century literary genres in which it participates. I interrogate the various means by which the spiritual world is revealed to the living. I question what exactly about the spiritual world is revealed, and what specific doubts these revelations address. Finally, I explore the culture of desire for contact with the spiritual world at the turn of the thirteenth century that is glimpsed through Peter’s collection and its immediate sources. Peter’s work results from what he took as a central epistemological problem facing human beings: as a result of sin, humanity has lost the ability to directly know God. As a result, ii it is natural to doubt His existence as He cannot be known through experience. Peter’s revelations address this doubt. I analyze the ways in which visions and revelations in their response to these doubts run up against recurrent restrictions and frustrations due to the very epistemological limitations that inspire them. These very shortcomings played a role in the process of faith to the religious culture around visions and the desire for them around the year 1200. This faith, which also required a similar separation from the divinity, exists in the same space as visionary and revelatory experience, defined by humanity’s limited ways of knowing and desire for a seemingly infinitely deferred transcendence. I argue that experiential medieval religion and belief, as glimpsed in Peter’s collection, requires and is enriched by doubt as well as challenged by it. iii Acknowledgements In the course of the research and writing of this dissertation, I have accumulated a number of debts. I would first like to thank my dissertation supervisor, Professor Joseph Goering, and my dissertation committee: professors Suzanne Akbari, Jill Ross, and Robert Sweetman, for their advice, guidance and patience. Professor Richard Sharpe graciously shared his work on the Liber revelationum before its publication, and I extend my sincere gratitude to him for this kindness. Professor Barbara Newman served as an insightful reviewer, providing important suggestions, corrections, and guidance. Professor Alexandra Gillespie served on the defence committee and offered a number of insights and suggestions. Professor James Carley provided indispensable encouragement and support. At the University of California, Davis, I benefitted greatly from my time spent with Joan Cadden and Sally McKee, under whose supervision the idea of this study took its initial shape. Many of my peers at the University of Toronto have contributed enormously to my work: Kaitlin Heller, Daniel Price, Caroline Smith, Rachel Stapleton, and Anna Wilson have all looked over parts of individual chapters, provided bibliographical suggestions, and helped me to develop the ideas presented in the following pages. Mary E. Barbezat and Mich P. Barbezat never wavered in their support. Victor Millete read through the manuscript and helped to catch numerous errors. Those that remain are my own. In the early phase of writing, the suggestions I received at the 2011 MARCO Manuscript Workshop at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville helped me to identify issues in the collection that spoke to wider interests, and I would like to thank the faculty and staff there for their invitation. iv Table of Contents Table of Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................................... v List of Appendices ....................................................................................................................................... vii Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1 – The Contexts for the Liber revelationum: Author, Genres, and Contents .............................. 15 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 15 Section 1: Peter of Cornwall’s Life and Works ........................................................................................ 16 Section 2: Writing and Collecting Revelations Around the Year 1200 .................................................... 28 Visions and Revelations ...................................................................................................................... 30 The Developing Other World .............................................................................................................. 34 Miracles as a Category ........................................................................................................................ 36 Collections of Miracles and Visions ..................................................................................................... 38 Section 3: The Liber revelationum .......................................................................................................... 42 Section 4: The Liber revelationum, Book I .............................................................................................. 47 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................... 57 Chapter 2 – The Delivery of Revelation or Crossing Between Worlds in the Liber revelationum .............. 60 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 60 Part 1: Peter’s Framing of Access to Revelation ..................................................................................... 62 Part 2: The Language of the Experiences: Sensory Descriptions ............................................................ 70 Part 3: Access to Revelation in the Stories Themselves.......................................................................... 72 Access to Revelation (1): Gift of Sight or Special Senses .................................................................... 74 Access to Revelation (2): Encounters with Death ............................................................................... 77 Access to Revelation (3): Revelations Received While Asleep ............................................................ 90 Conclusion Part 3 ................................................................................................................................ 95 Part 4: Questionable Access - Problems in the Delivery of Revelation ................................................... 96 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 105 Chapter 3 – The Objects of Revelation ..................................................................................................... 109 v Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 109 Part 1: Demonstrability, Doubt, and What Follows After Death .......................................................... 111 Inquisitio Post Mortem: Questioning the Dead ................................................................................ 114 Death and Its Ministers ..................................................................................................................... 121 Penance and Contrition .................................................................................................................... 124 Suffrages for the Dead ...................................................................................................................... 127 The Punishment of Souls................................................................................................................... 129 The Rewards of the Just .................................................................................................................... 133 Part