Christian Vision and Inwardness

In 1196 Edmund, a monk in a monastery at Eynsham, fell into a two day trance during which he had a vision of the other world, of purgatory and of heaven. When he awoke on Easter Sunday he reported the vision to his brother Adam who wrote it down in Latin. The text was copied through the generations and translated into Middle English, German and French verse.  This text in one of a genre of vision texts composed during the High Middle Ages. The lecture will examine this literature in relation to the question about the rise of individuality in the 12^thcentury and in light of the shift in the later period from ‘participation’ to ‘conscience’ with a view to comparison with the Hindu material we have seen.