Anglik 14.03

GUREVICH, AARON J., Oral and Written Culture of the Middle Ages: Two "Peasant Visions" ofthe Late Twelfth-Early
Thirteenth Centuries , New Literary History, 16:1 (1984:Autumn) p.51

Oral and Written Culture of the Middle Ages: Two "Peasant
Visions" of the Late Twelfth- Early Thirteenth Centuries

Aaron J. Gurevich

HE QUESTION of the relationship between popular or folk
cul
ture and ecclesiastical or learned culture in the Middle Ages,
which has been much debated in recent scholarly literature,

raises the question also of the relationship between the oral and
written traditions of that period. Nowadays it is evident that the study
of medieval culture solely, or predominantly, as a written culture leads
to a dead end, since the Middle Ages was a period when the Book was
dominant only in one "elitist" hypostasis of culture. The great mass of
members of feudal society, including the peasants, a large part of the
town dwellers and of the knights, sometimes even the monks and
lower clergy, were illiterate. The division of society into ignorant
illitterati, idiotae, and literate, educated people reflected a particular
cultural situation: written culture, the culture of books, existed as a
kind of oasis among oral communication systems and oral translations
of cultural values.
But the oral tradition of the distant past could not be directly re-
corded, and everything which we learn of it in the sources, the texts of
the literary tradition, is only an indirect reflection. What is more, this
reflection of the oral through the written, which is always and
inevitably transformed and distorted, has been filtered through ec-
clesiastical ideology.
Given that this is the case, is it then possible to "dig down" to the
level of popular culture? In spite of all the difficulties, the answer
must be an affirmative one, as the results of recent historiography
show.1 The historian has to take account of such works as the lives of
saints, "examples," descriptions of the wanderings of souls through the
other world, sermons, texts of vulgar theology, "confession books"—
handbooks for confessors—that is, the genres of middle Latin

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literature intended for the broad mass of the population. These works,
mostly of a didactic nature, served the clergy as a means of
influencing the religious and moral behavior of their flocks. But to
achieve these aims the author had to enter into a dialogue with his
audience, and these medieval Latin authors could not but feel a cer-

52 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

tain pressure from the side of their public to whom the works were
addressed: a kind of feedback came into being. Hence one may as-
sume that fragments of the popular cultural tradition are to be found in
Latin texts of these "low" genres.2 The nub of the problem is to what
extent and in what form these fragments are expressed.
Among the genres mentioned above, visions of the other world hold
a special place. In a very original way they bear the imprint of the
ideas that medieval people held about death and retribution in the next
life, and about the ordering of the other world. But in addition, the
study of this kind of narrative sheds light on contemporary
understanding of the human personality, on the treatment of time and
space; it can reveal important aspects of the medieval "world picture."
I should like to discuss the problem of the interrelation of oral and
written traditions from the examples of two medieval visions of the
other world, Visio Thurkilli (The Vision of Thurkill, referred to as
VT) and Visio Godeschalci (The Vision of Godeschalk, referred to as
VG). They deserve special attention because they are accounts of the
visions of simple peasants as written down by clergy evidently "hot on
their tracks." Thurkill, an inhabitant of the English county of Essex,
saw his vision in 1206; Godeschalk, or Gottshalk, a peasant from
Holstein, saw his vision in 1189. Recent scholarly editions of both
these visions are now available for the historian of culture.3

Before passing to an analysis of these visions, we must consider the
possible hypothesis that they are fictions. Granted that some of the
medieval visions of the other world were invented, the category of
literary invention when applied to the Middle Ages is hardly identical
with the same category in modern literature. Even if no actual facts lay
at the basis of the narrative, the author of the vision, hagiography, or
saga as a rule believed in its truth. He did not freely invent what he
wrote about: he heard about it from "reliable people," eyewitnesses, or



bystanders, or it was widely spoken of; and the author believed his
task was to record what he heard on parchment, to do this
conscientiously and in accord with the genre in which he was working.
The sources for the written tradition of the Middle Ages lie
overwhelmingly in the sphere of oral tradition, folklore.
As regards the visionaries themselves, there are no grounds for
suspecting them of invention. Medieval man was predisposed by the
whole cultural order to see the other world, and his dreams and
feverish visions were inevitably colored in the necessary tones. In his
dreams and delirium he saw what folklore tradition and religious
ideology imposed on him, and in his intimate mystical experiences

TWO "PEASANT VISIONS" 53

he found the images and situations which the parish priest or wan-
dering preacher told him about and which he saw represented in his
church and cathedral. When the Holy Virgin appeared to the mother of
Guibert de Nogent, she looked like the Virgin of Chartres cathedral;
the blind peasant whose sight was restored by St. Faith recognized her
in his vision, since she exactly corresponded to the statue of the
Madonna from the cathedral; the young monk from Monte Cassino
realized that it was the Archangel Michael who was taking away the
soul of his brother who had just died, for he saw that he was "just as
the artists usually depict the archangel."4 We encounter the same
"aesthetics of identity" in VG, which ends with the words: "We need
not doubt the truth of what has been recounted for, as we have read,
the same occurred to others" (VG, B, ch. 25, sec. 10). In order to
express his spiritual experience, medieval man related it to the
tradition and recognized in it an archetype.
In this respect the visions of our peasants are no different from
many others. For the historian of culture the problem is not whether
these visions were "genuine" or fictional; what is important is that
their contemporaries ascribed great significance to these visions,
which some members of the clergy thought useful and important
enough to record, and that they were eagerly and avidly listened to and
incorporated into the store of knowledge. The visions became facts of
culture. As such they deserve to be studied.



The account of Gottshalk's vision is preserved in two variants, an
extensive one (text A: Godeschalcus) and a shorter one (text B: Visio
Godeschalci). The relationship between these variants is not clear.
Their editor, Erwin Assmann, suggests that they are two independent
records of conversations with the visionary held by two different cler-
gymen; he refers to the absence of direct textual coincidences in
variants A and B. The situation is unusual because in the space of a
short time the two authors, independently of each other, wrote down
the vision of one and the same peasant, and the vision evidently
enjoyed great success among the local population.5 If we agree with
Assmann and regard texts A and B as independent records originating
in the "interviews" that the authors held with Gottshalk (text B in
Assmann's opinion being a little later than text A), then we must be
struck by the fairly wide area of difference between the texts. One of
the causes for these divergences, according to Assmann, is that the
second author had no interest in the events that occurred in Gottshalk's
homeland; these events crop up frequently in text A in the form of
"inset stories" concerning certain people and conflicts which took
place in those lands not long before the vision, but which are


passed over in silence in text B. If this is the case then we must
assume that the authors of these texts recorded the peasant's tale
somewhat freely. Moreover, the very form in which the tale is
recorded is different: the first author writes of Gottshalk in the third
person, while the second one preferred Ich-Erzählung (first-person
narration), thereby giving the impression of a literal transcription of
the visionary's words.6
Besides, there is an obvious difference in the tale of the peasant
himself: while preserving the basic framework of the narrative and the
sequence of exposition in his journey through the other world in both
interviews with the clerical scribes, he "recalled" what he saw very
differently. The existence of the two written versions of one peasant's
vision, versions that came about as a result of two conversations with
him, is of exceptional interest for the student of oral and written
traditions in medieval culture. What we have in fact are two planes of



existence of one and the same tale. On one plane Gottshalk himself
figures, telling over and over again the tale of his experiences in the
other world; and this narration, in accordance with the laws of
folklore, while remaining the same when looked at as a whole, varies
from one telling to another in its details and separate parts. This is the
plane of the oral tradition.
On the other plane, the anonymous clerics come into action: they
write down the tale, translating it onto the level of literature and
undoubtedly reworking it in accordance with the requirements of the
genre of visions, which, by the period we are concerned with, had long
since become established and made certain canonic requirements on
the narrative. We have here an opportunity, rare for this period of the
Middle Ages, of observing how one and the same narrative continues
to live, if only for a short period, two lives, in the oral and the literary
traditions. The recording of the peasant's tale did not mark the end of
its folkloric existence, and although we find a reference to VG as a
literary authority in the first two decades of the thirteenth century in
Caesarius of Heisterbach's Dialogue of Miracles,1 it is not impossible
that among the peasantry of Holstein oral tales continued to exist
about how their fellow countryman visited purgatory and the gates of
hell and paradise.
The author of VT is not named in the text, but it is assumed he was
Radulph, well known as the compiler of Chronicon Anglicanum and
Abbot of the Cistercian monastery at Coggeshall from 12071218. The
author makes no reference to his acquaintanceship with the visionary
and does not mention any informants from whom he learned of the
vision. But on the other hand, some interesting infor-

TWO "PEASANT VISIONS"

55

mation is given which is not available to the student of other visions.
This information is invaluable for the study of the correlation of oral
and written cultural traditions in the Middle Ages.



As recounted in VT, directly after Thurkill's soul returned to its
bodily shell, Thurkill told of what he had seen in the other world, "but
fragmentarily, recalling now one, now another episode, and with many
omissions and silences" (VT, p. 8); later, however, after his talk with
the priest, he told his story coherently and in order ("seriatim").
Naturally he told his listeners what he had seen in the other world in
his native language, becoming eloquent, a quality which previously
this "taciturn and shy man of extreme simplicity" had never mani-
fested. Now his narrative became more extensive and logical. Thurkill
several times repeated his tale on church festivals, before his lord and
lady and all the parishioners; later he recounted his vision "at the
invitation of many persons" in different churches and religious houses
and at popular gatherings. Among his listeners, not all believed his
miraculous tale and some even mocked him; this was of concern to the
author of VT. He put Thurkill's vision on a par with the stories of
visions recorded by Pope Gregory I and with the later tales of St.
Patrick's purgatory. He refers to the authority of the Bishop of Lincoln
and of the Prior of the monastery of Binham. He concludes his text
with the words that his record of Thurkill's revelations, made in
"simple language" and on the basis of "unskilled learning," would
better serve morality than "confused and profound theological
disputes" (VT, p. 37). The author of VT knew intimately the audience
to which his work was addressed and understood that it had to be won
over in the language of vivid images and not by abstractions and
complex theological deliberations.
He identifies himself, as it were, with the popular world outlook,
though of course he cannot express it adequately. As the textological
analysis of the vision has shown, this anonymous author reveals a
fairly wide knowledge of classical, early Christian, and medieval
scholarly literature. There are hardly any direct references to these au-
thorities in the text, but there are very many hidden quotations taken
from the originals or from some other guides. There are references to
the Old and New Testaments, to Horace and St. Augustine, to
Sulpicius Severus and to Gregory I, Isidore of Seville, and the Ven-
erable Bede, the authors of the vitae and historians; particularly fre-
quent are the expressions and images taken from medieval visions.
Unlike the majority of the visions in which medieval literature
abounds, in VT the mechanism of its creation is to some extent re-
vealed. Usually the person who writes down the vision simply refers
to the words of the visionary who has visited the other world and




does not separate his own text from the narrative he hears. As a result
there is an impression that the version told by the author is the very
same as the direct tale of the visionary. But the author of VT is careful
to demarcate two stages in the formation of Thurkill's story which
preceded its written version. The first stage was the disconnected tales
of the visionary immediately after waking from the dream into which
he had been plunged by St. Julian; incoherent images come into his
memory, and to his best ability he communicates them to his listeners
who eagerly question him about his vision. We cannot know the con-
tent of these utterances, but it must be assumed that there was a greater
degree of spontaneity than in his later stories. The second stage is
separated from the first by twenty-four hours; during this time St.
Julian again appeared to Thurkill in a dream, sternly commanding him
to give a detailed and coherent account of his vision; besides, Thurkill
visited the parish church and had a talk with the priest. This was the
time when Thurkill, to the amazement of his listeners, acquired
unprecedented eloquence, when his tale changed character, becoming
polished like a literary work and further perfected in the course of
subsequent repetitions to different audiences. It was this new version,
more coherent and fuller, that the anonymous author wrote down,
translating the peasant's narrative from English into Latin.
In this way we have evidence that the basis for VT was a tale many
times retold. The spontaneous and fragmentary utterance of the newly
awoken visionary was turned into a more ordered exposition, enriched
with details and even scenes which were absent from the original
version. In the words of the author of VT, much that Thurkill spoke of
subsequently had first been "passed over in silence"; it was only later
that what he had allegedly "forgotten" at first came into his head.
Finally, it is not implausible that the scholarly author, when translating
into Latin, did not merely write down the final oral version of the tale
but gave it a form which met with the requirements of the genre of
literary visions.8



In both VG and VT, then, we have tales of simple peasants but in
the reworked form which clerics, well acquainted with the literature of
visions, had given them. On the pages of VT and VG there is an
encounter between two traditions, the oral and the scholarly. What is
the outcome of this encounter? Which of the two traditions triumphed?
It is not easy to answer these questions. The vision of the illiterate
Thurkill inevitably lost elements of spontaneity as it passed from the
original version to the subsequent ones and especially when it was


57

given literary form. Of the visionary's peasant nature hardly anything
is preserved apart from the references to his social position, posses-
sions, and illiteracy. Examples of the sinners tormented in the other
world are of not much use either in helping us to reveal the social
basis of his views, since VT (like other visions) is imbued with the
idea that representatives of all classes and conditions are sinful and
deserve punishment.
In the study of visions our interest is drawn primarily to that level of
world view of which the authors remained unaware and which is
imprinted in the texts unintentionally. The discovery of the mental
orientations, of the picture of the world which lies at the basis of such
narratives, should make it possible to attempt to answer the question,
Which cultural tradition is expressed in the visions? To this level of
world view belong in particular notions of time and space.9
First let us point out certain characteristic features of the picture of
the other world drawn in VT. One cannot help being struck by its
great vividness. It is not just that the evaluative qualities of the coun-
tries of the world are picked out in the vision with great clarity: a
journey to the East is a journey toward the salvation of the soul, while
the West and North are lands oriented toward hell. These "geograph-
ical" coordinates, of which the narrator is constantly aware, can easily
be picked out in almost all visions. What is special about the treatment
of the other world in VT is that it is not made "bitty" or indeterminate,



as is the case in other visions. It is compact and easily surveyed.
Unlike the "raggedness" of the other world in most visions, where the
different parts of the other world are obviously not coordinated but are
represented as isolated "places" visited by the wanderer who travels
from one "locus" to another, as it were, by leaps and bounds, the
world of VT is strictly organized spatially. The consciousness of the
narrator overcame the mythopoetic fragmentariness of otherworldly
space and brought it into a system. All parts of the world of the dead
are disposed along a straight line running from west to east. From "the
center of the world," where stands the Basilica of the Virgin Mary, the
way leads eastward to the fires of purgatory and to the lake into which
fall the souls who come out of the flames; and further, beyond the
bridge of ordeals, to the Mountain of Joy. This is the road taken by
souls who are not condemned to be cast into Gehenna, which is
situated just behind the wall of the basilica; this is the road from
purgatory to paradise.
The author of VT refers to the spatial characteristics of the other
world twice. First he gives a summary general description, passing
rapidly with his hero over the road just described. Then he returns to
the key points on this road in order to describe their "sights" in


more detail: the procedure by which the merits and sins of the de-
parted are weighed up, the fires and lake of purgatory, the bridge
strewn with thorns and spikes over which the souls must pass, the
devils' "theater," the halls with cauldrons into which fall the souls of
sinners, and finally the church on the Mountain of Joy. The fact that
this detailed description is preceded by the preliminary survey of the
other world bears witness, evidently, to the clarity of the picture in the
author's mind. This feature of the treatment of space in VT can more
likely be explained by the systematic nature of the Latin author's mind
than by the folkloric sources of the work.
The world beyond the grave, in the words of the author of the
vision, is vast and full of innumerable crowds of souls. Yet at the same
time it recalls the places where Thurkill came from: he meets there
friends and relatives; he is told the names of the sinners for whom
torments are prepared in the other world, and they are all from his



county or village. Provincialism of thought, which is typical of me-
dieval man, is in VT narrowed to parochialism, thinking on the scale
of the church parish. The other world is a kind of offshoot of one little
corner of England.
Time in our vision, as in all other works of this genre, is church
time. In the other world, days are counted by the Christian calendar
and hours by the church services. The passage of time there and on
earth is the same. The author is especially attentive to the time of the
narrative and continuously notes the hour at which an event took
place. This kind of temporal orientation in the narrative must be more
typical of the monk who wrote it than of the peasant in whose mind
the church hours could hardly have occupied such a prominent place.
More important is another aspect of time which is central to all the
literature of visions—eschatological time. Visions tell of the Last
Judgment; but this is not the Judgment which follows on the Second
Coming of Christ, but the judgment passed on the soul of each mortal
directly after his death. The Last Judgment, which the Gospels and
Apocalypse foretold and which the church has always taught, is not
thereby denied: it is rather that the visions somehow ignore it. It
inevitably formed part of the consciousness of medieval man, but a
reading of the visions leaves no doubt that eternity and time are here
fused into one, just as the future is combined with the present and the
past. Indeed, the Judgment which will come to pass "in the end of
times" is accomplished before the eyes of the visionary; or it has
already taken place, since he sees the sinners burning in hell fire and
the righteous glorifying the Creator in paradise.
This is how things are in VT. Our wanderer was witness of the
weighing up of the merits and sins of the dead; after the weighing


some were cast into the shaft of hell and others passed through the
ordeals of purgatory before coming to paradise. In other visions the
judgment most often takes place at a man's deathbed, and angels and
demons dispute for mastery of his soul; but in VT the dispute is
between the Apostle Paul and the devil, who weigh up the deeds of
those who have just died. Here we find once again a "little escha-



tology," the promise of immediate retribution for a life lived, a phe-
nomenon which there are grounds for connecting with features of the
popular world outlook.10
Probably the most distinctive feature of VT is the description of the
devils' "theater." On the night before Sunday the devils draw the souls
of those eternally condemned out of Gehenna and bring them in turn
into the arena to enjoy the spectacle of their new torments. This is a
spectacle in which the actors are condemned compulsorily to repeat
the actions which brought them to hell, to imitate the gestures and
words which in their life were acts of free will. What once was a
source of their pleasure now is a means to inflict suffering on them.
The proud man condemned for the mortal sin of pride to eternal
torment is forced to parade proudly before the audience of devils,
arousing their merriment with his pompous manners; lovers con-
demned for fornication have to copulate publicly and then to torment
their partners; the warrior armed, as it were, for battle sits astride a
red-hot spit, which is what his horse has been turned into; a complete
pantomime representing bribery and injustice is performed by a
lawyer whom the devils force to swallow, spit out, and reswallow red-
hot coins which he had acquired formerly through his dishonorable
deeds; the miller is forced to show how he stole the grain—and all
these people, or rather, their souls, are turned into involuntary puppets
who amuse the demons and after their "performance" suffer terrible
punishments and abuse.
The torments which the involuntary actors in the infernal "theater"
endure are not only physical, but also moral ones. The sin which at
first was a man's free action now is separated from its source and
turned into an action forced from outside and mechanically renewed at
the will of the forces of hell. There is nothing like this devils' show in
other visions, and it is hard to believe that such treatment of the
retribution for sins originated with the illiterate Thurkill. On the other
hand, it is well known that in the scholarly tradition the likening of the
Last Judgment to a theatrical performance goes back to Ter- tullian.11
Another feature of VT is the constant talk between the saints on the
one hand and the devil and demons on the other. On the west doors of
cathedrals of the period decorated with scenes of the Last




Judgment, the inhabitants of the celestial world are always placed on
Christ's right hand, while the demons and the damned taken by them
into hell fire are allocated to the left side. Or the sacred and infernal
forces are hierarchized, the former being placed in the upper sections
and the latter in the lower sections of the depiction. Heaven and hell
are not mixed spatially. In VT they seem drawn together. While the
apostle Paul and the devil, who are weighing the sins and merits of the
dead, are separated by the wall to which the scales are fixed, the other
saints wander through different sections of the underworld, have
conversations with Satan, not only contradicting each other and
arguing but quite peaceably questioning each other about a soul; the
devil willingly satisfies the saint's curiosity and agrees to his visiting
the "theater." The irreconcilable antagonism of heaven and hell is
momentarily moved to the background; the sacramental boundary
between them is of course not forgotten, but it is made more fluid.
Should we not see in this ambivalence in the relationships between the
forces of good and the forces of evil an expression of the popular view
of demons?12

As in VT, the numerous inhabitants of the other world who are
named in VG all without exception come from the same locality as the
visionary; they are his contemporaries. Having visited a town of the
dead, Gottshalk learned that their souls are disposed in it according to
their parishes, so that he could recognize as old friends all who sit in
one place (VG, A, ch. 52). The visitor to the other world is wholly
absorbed in the interests of his diocese, and the conflicts and events
which occurred in it determine his outlook and interests as he wanders
in the spheres beyond the grave. Purgatory and other penalia loca
which he manages to reach are nothing else than a specific projection
of certain districts of Holstein. He encounters no more strangers in the
other world than does Thurkill. The center of Gottshalk's attention is
fixed on the families of prominent and obscure compatriots who in the
other world pay for the evil they did on earth. And what is more, the
tale of what he saw "there" is interrupted by stories of the clashes and
hostility between these families which took place not long before
Gottshalk's vision (VG, A, chs. 2126). Such stories, which are
obviously not obligatory from the point of view of the genre of



visions, are highly indicative of the characteristics of a peasant who,
when he contemplates the mysteries of the other world, cannot detach
himself from the burning issues of this world. He is so engrossed with
earthly passions and concerns that, in the view of the cleric who wrote
down his tale, he did not show the necessary interest in the
arrangement of the abode of God's elect.


The author had to reproach Gottshalk for inattention to the description
of this abode, the structure of which interested the clerical author far
more closely than the visionary himself (VG, A, ch. 30, sec. 4).
The clerical author—who had several conversations with Gottshalk,
assiduously recording his vision—was most amazed at the fact that he
learned of the great mysteries of the other world from the mouth of
such a primitive clodhopper ("ex ore tam ydiote gle- bonis," VG, A,
ch. 40, sec. 4).13 In text B, which as we have already remarked is
written in the first person, Gottshalk himself also calls himself "a
simpleton and an idiot" ("a me simplici et ydiota," VG, B, ch. 21, sec.
5). At the end of this narrative, however, we read something rather
different: "Of course no wise man would scorn this vision for the
reason that it was told by a simpleton, a poor and uneducated man (a
simplici et paupere et idiota promulgata sit), as if he were unworthy
to have such holy mysteries revealed to him and as if this could
happen only to men worthy in life, position, and education (qui vita et
ordine et erudicione prediti sunt)" (VG, B, ch. 25, sec. 11).
The other world is not only populated with Gottshalk's acquain-
tances just like the world he has temporarily left, but it is not disem-
bodied. At any event the wounds and burns which the visionary re-
ceived in the other world when his soul left its bodily shell remained
on his body when he reawoke, and he suffered greatly from them until
the end of his days (VG, A, chs. 57-60). The author of text B could
not, on his own admission, explain how what was experienced in the
soul could be passed onto the body, but believed that this was proof of
the truthfulness of Gottshalk's story (VG, B, ch. 25, sec. 7, 9). The



peasant himself would not have made such a marked contrast between
body and soul as the learned cleric.
The places of torment as they are depicted in VG are very different
from those of other visions. The bridge over the stream swarming with
demons who wait for the souls who tumble in, which is traditional for
visions, is absent from this one. But on the other hand, Gottshalk
comes across a tree on the branches of which are hung shoes which
are granted to only some of the travelers. This footwear is
indispensable for crossing the field strewn with terrible thorns, but the
angel who is in charge of distributing the shoes refuses them to grave
sinners, and these poor folk have to drag themselves across this field
in excruciating pain. Then the travelers come to a stream in which
floats a sharp cutting weapon. The stream has to be crossed, but few
are fortunate enough to scramble onto the raft and safely avoid this
ordeal. Later there comes a junction of three ways onto which the
angel drives the souls. One way leads to the right to heaven, but it is
predestined for very few. The second leads to the left but to


hell (a little to one side of it), and this is the road taken with many
others by our visionary. The middle road is not so dangerous as the
road leading near to hell. Gottshalk describes the ordeals of the souls
by fire, which for some sinners lasts for as long as the time that they
sinned in life, while for others it will continue until the Judgment Day.
The souls passing through all the stages of ordeals and purgatory
described, together with Gottshalk, disperse to the places allotted to
them until the Last Judgment.
The suspicion arises as to whether some of the places through which
the souls wander have their origins in folklore. Such would seem to be
the tree with the shoes and the field with the terrible thorns, the stream
in which floats the cold weapon, and the parting of the three ways—
but with the difference that in a folktale the hero chooses his way,
while in VG the angel indicates to each soul the direction that accords
with the severity of his sins.
There is a marked difference between these "peasant visions" in
their understanding of the function of the other world. Thurkill has not
the shadow of doubt that hell and heaven already exist and that those



places which he visited are located between these poles; they are
places where sinners undergo punishment and where souls purified
prepare to enter the halls of paradise. In this respect VT is no different
from other visions. Gottshalk also saw only purgatory and the places
of bliss for the holy souls who had not yet entered into the kingdom of
heaven, but he saw "neither the torments of hell nor the glory of the
heavenly home" (VG, B, ch. 25, sec. 1). But whereas in VT there is
judgment on the souls of the departed, in VG judgment is postponed in
accord with official doctrine "until the end of time." The souls of the
saints are in blissful expectation of this moment when they will finally
enter the kingdom of heaven, whereas the souls of sinners undergo all
kinds of purifying ordeals on the orders of the angel who meets them
after death, but the actual judgment has not yet taken place, and
everyone—the righteous and hardened sinners—awaits the Day of
Judgment (VG, A, ch. 21, sec. 2; ch. 26, sec. 1, 14; ch. 37, sec. 1; ch.
43; ch. 49, sec. 2; ch. 54, sec. 2; VG, B, ch. 11, sec. 1; ch. 12, sec. 1;
ch. 19, sec. 2; ch. 21, sec. 2, 4; ch. 25, sec. 4).
In other words, VG proposes a kind of way out of the paradox that
underlies the picture of the other world in both VT and the whole
literature of visions, namely, the coexistence at the same time in one
mind of both eschatologies, the "little" and the "great." How was it
possible to resolve this contradiction even in compromise form? If we
are to believe Gottshalk, the souls of the departed are already un-
dergoing punishment in the other world, though judgment is deferred
usque ad diem judicii. For this reason these punishments as de-


63

picted in VG are in fact not punishments as sentenced by the Supreme
Judge, but purifying procedures by which the souls are prepared for
the coming Last Judgment. It is not possible to ascertain exactly who
found this compromise solution, the actual peasant visionary or the
clerical authors who interpreted his vision in their own way. Most
probably the latter. But the main point is not the question of who
found the solution but the fact that at the end of the twelfth century—



that is, just when the idea of purgatory became established in Latin
Christianity—there arose the urgent need to solve the paradox of the
notion of the two eschatologies.
So what then is the relationship between the oral and the literary
traditions in the visions under consideration? The traditions float up in
turn in the texts, but it would be absurd and impossible to put them in
pigeonholes. They are in constant and complex interaction and in the
visions seem like an integrated fusion, hard to distinguish. It would be
vain to seek in them traces of the unsophisticated tale by the illiterate
peasant about what he experienced in his vision, because it is
presented to us from the pen of an educated cleric in a new form,
having been transformed in accordance with the requirements of the
literary genre.
At this point we must return again to the story of the origins of VT.
As we know, at first his tale of what he had seen in the other world
was of a fragmentary nature. It took on a new form after the
conversation with the priest. We cannot know what the content of the
conversation was, but it may readily be assumed that it was precisely
as a result of that talk that Thurkill's narrative took the form in which
he recounted it to the parishioners of the lord, and in the monasteries
to which he was invited. Evidently the priest gave Thurkill the ex-
planations he needed about what he had seen and helped him to
organize the tale in accordance with the canonic structure of the
visions of the other world. This is only an assumption, but it has
foundation in the light of what we know about other visions. Confir-
mation of the authenticity of the vision experienced by someone was
usually sought in the tradition. Hinkmar of Rheims, recounting the
vision of a certain Bernold, wrote: "I am convinced that this is true
because I read something similar in St. Gregory's Dialogues, in the
history of the Angles [by the Venerable Bede], in the writings of the
holy bishop and martyr St. Boniface, and also in the story of the vision
of a certain holy man Vettin relating to the time of the Emperor
Ludovic."14 In the same way the author of VG ends his narrative with
the words: "Even if it is difficult to find a rational explanation for this,
there is no need to doubt its veracity, for surely something sim-




ilar happened, as we have read, to others" (VG, B, ch. 25, sec. 10). We
encounter the same reasoning in VT as well. If anyone should think it
absurd and improbable that the Apostle and the devil should weigh the
merits of the departed, remarks the author, then let him read the story
by St. John, Patriarch of Alexandria, about a certain tax gatherer Peter:
the bread which he once gave to a beggar outweighed all his evil
deeds; "Besides one can read about this in many other visions" (VT, p.
15). In other words, reference to the fact that similar tales are to be
found in the literature served medieval man as convincing proof of the
veracity of his own story, as did the resemblance of the holy
personages he contemplated in his visions to the statues in the
cathedrals. The picture of the other world which, as he imagined,
appeared to him in his vision could be communicated only in the
language of familiar and generally accepted images. The authority
who could decide whether all that Thurkill saw in his unusual dream
corresponded with the canon was naturally his priest, and it was to
him that he hastened to turn.
It is important to note that the direct, spontaneous vision of Thurkill,
in which it is quite possible that there were other themes and motives
than those which we find in the written text, remained "a thing in
itself," since this vision became a fact of culture and of religious life, a
story to be told publicly, repeated and eventually written down, only
after Thurkill's encounter with the cleric. This "edited" version of the
vision received sanction to be further disseminated. In this way there
are grounds for stating that the version of the vision that is preserved
was the only one that was culturally significant; only it passed the
"preventive censorship" of society and was accepted by it. This
censorship was in this case exercised by the parish priest. But as is
narrated in VT, Thurkill himself expressed the desire to go to church
and talk with the priest before telling others what he had seen in the
afterlife. Evidently he was not without doubts about the accuracy of
his own observations, and he needed to discuss them and check them
with his spiritual mentor, that is, to make them accord with the
generally accepted norm.
The student of medieval popular culture may be discouraged by the
difficulties standing in his way: elements of that culture are "clouded,"
masked by church learning, subordinate to it, and have lost their
integrity in the texts that have come down to us. But if the historian



does not seek the sources for this or that genre, or the genesis of
particular motives, but wants rather to approach culture as an
integration which actually functioned in the given society, at one and
the same time reflecting its attitudes and forming them, he


65

must admit that in fact only in such a symbiosis with the scholarly
tradition could popular culture exist in the Middle Ages.15

SOVIET ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
(Translated by Ann Shukman)

NOTES
1Jacques Le Goff, Pour un autre Moyen Age: Temps, travail et
culture en Occident: 18 essais (Paris, 1977); Emmanuel Le Roy
Ladurie, Montaillou, village occitan de 1294 à 1324 (Paris, 1975)
{Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error, tr. Barbara Bray [New
York, 1978]); Jean Claude Schmitt, Le saint lévrier. Guinefort,
guérisseur d'enfants depuis le XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1979); Carlo
Ginzburg, Il formaggio e i vermi: Il cosmo di un mugnaio del '500
(Torino, 1976) {The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a
Sixteenth-Century Miller, tr. John and Anne Tedeschi [Baltimore,
1980]); La culture populaire au Moyen âge, ed. Pierre Boglioni
(Montreal, 1979).
2Aaron J. Gurevich, Problemy srednevekovoi narodnoi kul'tury
[Problems of medieval popular culture] (Moscow, 1981).
3Godeschalcus und Visio Godeschalci, in a German translation
edited by Erwin Assmann, Vol. 74 of Quellen und Forschungen zur
Geschichte Schleswig-Holsteins [Sources and research in the history
of Schleswig-Holstein] (Neumunster, 1979); Visio Thurkilli relatore,
videtur, Radulpho de Coggeshall, ed. Paul Gerhard Schmidt
(Leipzig, 1978).



4Jonathan Sumtion, Pilgrimage: An Image of Mediaeval Religion
(Totowa, N.J., 1976), p. 52.
5Godeschalcus und Visio Godeschalci, pp. 10 ff.
6However, this author admits that he wrote down Gottshalk's
vision of "the other life" only "in shortened form" and "in
general outline" {summatim) and that the visionary himself was
not in a state to talk about all that he had experienced as fully as
required {VG, B, ch. 1, sec. 3; ch. 2, sec. 1).
7Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus miraculorum, ed. Joseph
Strange (Kôln-Bonn, 1851), I, 330.
8Early in the twelfth century the vision of the ten-year-old Italian
boy Alberic was written down by a monk from Monte Cassino.
Soon afterwards Alberic entered the monastery and studied
reading and writing. When he read the record of his own vision,
he accused the author of falsification and demanded that some
sections of the text be excised or marked as not genuine. "Visio
Alberici," Bibliotheca Casinensis, V (Monte Casino, 1894), 191.
Quoted in P. G. Schmidt, "The Vision of Thurkill/'/owma/ of the
Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 41 (1978), 51.
9Aaron J. Gurevich, "Zapadnoevropeiskie videniya
potustoronnego mira i 'realizm' srednikh vekov" ["West
European visions of the other world and the 'realism' of the
Middle Ages"], Trudy po znakovym sistemam, VIII (Tartu, 1977),
15-20.
10Gurevich, Problemy, pp. 225-30, 237-39.
11De Spectaculis, ch. 30, in Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. 1, col.
660; see also Dino Bigongiari, "Were There Theaters in the Twelfth
and Thirteenth Centuries?" The Romanic Review, 37, No. 3 (1946),
215.
12Gurevich, Problemy, pp. 295-301, 313-17.
13"Glebo-arator" appears in the gloss to this place in text A. In the
introductory section of the narrative, the same author characterizes
Gottshalk as "a simple and


Anglik 14.03

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