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Out of this world: words, vision and the afterlife in late medieval culture

走出这个世界：中世纪晚期文化中的文字、愿景和来世

基本信息

批准号：
AH/H003770/1
负责人：
Mark Chinca
金额：
$ 3.17万
依托单位：
University of Cambridge
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2010
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2010 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FH003770%2F1
关键词：
Out world words vision afterlife

项目摘要

From the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, heaven, hell and purgatory had a grip on the imaginations and also the actions of Christians as never before and never since. What were the different regions of the afterlife like as places? What should one do in order to increase the chances of going to heaven after one's death? Even if one had not led an entirely blameless life, was it still possible to make sufficient amends on one's deathbed in order to avoid hellfire and be sentenced to a spell in purgatory instead? My research is concerned with the ways in which late medieval believers were encouraged and instructed to go out of this world, both in their imaginations and on their actual deathbeds. I will be focusing on a number of highly influential devotional or pastoral treatises which teach techniques for meditation or dispense advice on preparing the sick and dying for their last hour. Over and above the detailed reading of the original sources, however, there are two points of fundamental significance that I want to make. The first concerns the relationship between words and vision. Long before the thirteenth century, imaginative contemplation of death and the afterlife was well-established as a spiritual exercise in monastic communities. Once, however, an ascetic practice that was hitherto grounded in the daily life of a community starts to be disseminated more widely in society through the medium of books, the verbal dimension assumes a new importance. Authors of 'how to meditate' exercises face the challenge of stimulating visions by means of words on the page. And certain old problems acquire renewed urgency, such as whether we should believe other people's verbal reports of things that normally transcend our capacity for sense-experience. The positions adopted by different authors in respect of these problems are various, and also often equivocal or precarious; what is beyond dispute, however, is that words are somehow always integral to late medieval visions of the afterlife. This point cannot be emphasized enough, because scholarship on medieval spirituality has tended to focus on the visual and the sensual dimensions at the expense of the verbal and conceptual.The second point of wider significance concerns the impact of the Protestant Reformation. Luther's 'Sermon on preparing to die' of 1519 has been said to represent a radical break with the entire late medieval rite of passage for the dying. On a superficial level, this appears to be true. Luther expresses indifference to the traditional deathbed sacraments; above all, he dispenses with all the forms of words that traditionally accompanied the business of dying, and recommends that the dying person concentrate on a set of mental pictures instead. Yet if Luther's 'Sermon' is set in the context of other sources from both before and after the Reformation, it becomes plain that his radically inward 'imagistic' approach completely failed to supplant the late medieval word-based rituals for going out of this world. These continued to provide the basis for Protestant rites of passage (albeit with altered theological content) well into the second half of the sixteenth century. It is not my intention to deny that the Reformation made no fundamental difference to anything at all - that would be an untenably extreme position. The point is rather that the break with late medieval culture was not always sudden, and may have happened at different times in different domains. The results of this research will be presented in a book ('Out of this world: words, vision and the afterlife in late medieval culture') whose theme will appeal to medievalists beyond the author's own background in German studies - to specialists of other medieval literatures, to historians of religious thought and devotion, to art historians.

从13世纪到16世纪，天堂、地狱和炼狱对基督徒的想象和行动产生了前所未有的影响。来世的不同地方是什么样的？为了增加死后上天堂的机会，人应该做些什么？就算不是一生清白，在临死之前，还能弥补足够的过错，避免地狱之火，而被判炼狱法术吗？我的研究关注的是中世纪晚期信徒被鼓励和指示离开这个世界的方式，无论是在他们的想象中还是在他们实际的临终之床上。我将专注于一些非常有影响力的灵修或田园论文，这些论文教授冥想的技巧，或提供建议，让病人和垂死的人在最后一小时做好准备。然而，除了详细阅读原始资料之外，我还想提出两点具有根本意义的观点。第一个是关于文字和视觉之间的关系。早在13世纪之前，对死亡和来世的想象性沉思就已经成为修道院社区的一种精神锻炼。然而，一旦一种迄今为止植根于社区日常生活中的苦行开始通过书籍在社会中更广泛地传播，语言层面就具有了新的重要性。“如何冥想”练习的作者面临着通过页面上的文字刺激视觉的挑战。某些老问题变得更加紧迫，比如我们是否应该相信别人对通常超出我们感官体验能力的事情的口头报告。不同的作者在这些问题上所采取的立场各不相同，而且往往模棱两可或不稳定;然而，无可争议的是，文字在某种程度上总是中世纪晚期对来世的看法所不可或缺的。这一点无论怎样强调都不为过，因为对中世纪灵性的研究往往侧重于视觉和感官层面，而忽视了语言和概念层面。第二点具有更广泛意义，涉及新教改革的影响。路德在1519年的“关于准备死亡的布道”被认为是对整个中世纪晚期死亡仪式的彻底突破。从表面上看，这似乎是真的。路德对传统的临终圣礼表示漠不关心;最重要的是，他摒弃了传统上伴随着死亡的一切形式的话语，并建议垂死的人专注于一组心理画面。然而，如果路德的“布道”是在宗教改革前后的其他来源的背景下设定的，那么很明显，他激进的内向“意象主义”方法完全未能取代中世纪晚期以文字为基础的仪式。直到16世纪后半叶，这些仪式仍然为新教的成人仪式提供了基础（尽管神学内容有所改变）。我并不打算否认宗教改革对任何事情都没有产生根本性的影响--那将是一个站不住脚的极端立场。关键在于，与中世纪晚期文化的决裂并不总是突然发生的，可能发生在不同的时期和不同的领域。这项研究的结果将在一本书中提出（“走出这个世界：中世纪晚期文化中的文字，视觉和来世”），其主题将吸引中世纪学者超越作者自己的德国研究背景-其他中世纪文学的专家，宗教思想和奉献的历史学家，艺术史学家。