Peter of Cornwalls Book of Revelations

(Hardback)

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This is the first book-length study of Peter of Cornwall, prior of Holy Trinity, Aldgate, London. His Liber Reuelationum (Lambeth Palace Library, MS 51), dated to the year 1200, is a compilation of over 1,100 chapters, excerpted from some 275 Latin texts, dealing with visions of the otherworld and revelatory appearances of God, Christ, Mary, angels, saints, devils, and revenants. Peter collected the material from saints' lives, chronicles, and free-standing vision texts from the first century AD through to his own day - for the purpose of providing evidence of the existence of God, the soul, and life after death to unbelievers. Accounts of new visionary experiences circulating in England in the 1190s doubtlessly prompted his collection. Like his other large-scale work, Pantheologus, Peter of Cornwall's Book of Revelations was intended to assist preachers with propagating the fundamentals of the faith. This volume introduces Peter's life and writings and presents editions with parallel English translations of those parts of the Lambeth manuscript that Peter composed himself. A detailed description of the manuscript is included, and a Calendar identifies the source for each of Peter's chapters. A bibliography and indices complete this volume, which provides a marvellous resource for scholars interested in the Latin literature of medieval dreams, visionary experience, and the eschatological concerns of sin, penance, death, the afterlife, and the judgement of the soul.

Reviews

"This volume succeeds admirably as an introduction to the works of Peter of Cornwall, prior of Holy Trinity, Aldgate, London (c. 1140-1221), with a particular focus on his monumental "Liber Reuelationum", preserved uniquely in London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 51. The authors blend the old with the new in a series of revised articles and a large selection of editions, translations and discussions of unpublished texts, some unique to the Lambeth manuscript. The heart of this study is the publication of the Calendar, which documents the contents of the entire collection of the "Liber Reuelationum". It offers an indispensable guide to the source texts available to Peter and provides access to hundreds of often macabre but edifying tales that remain unedited. Its value as a finding tool is enhanced by three indices that enable the reader to search the Calendar by author, work, and name. In the course of illuminating the various contexts of Peter's writings, the authors control an impressive span of interdisciplinary scholarship, which ranges over Irish and English monastic records, biblical scholarship, social history, vision literature, and the Cistercian Order in England and on the Continent." -Christopher McDonough, University of Toronto

Author Bio

Robert Easting was Personal Chair in English Language and Literature at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, from 1973 to 2010. His publications on vision literature include St Patricks Purgatory (1991) and The Revelation of the Monk of Eynsham (2002). Richard Sharpe is Professor of Diplomatic at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Wadham College. He was assistant editor of the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, and is general editor of the Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues.