The Entangled Cities: Earthly Communities and the Heavenly Jerusalem in Late Medieval England

Abstract

This project examines medieval adaptations of the image of the New Jerusalem, an image of heaven drawn from the biblical book of Revelation. The book of Revelation was composed at a period of social and spiritual crisis for early Christians, when they were a persecuted minority in Asia Minor and expected imminent apocalypse. Their situation could not be more different from that of late medieval Christians in England, who constituted a cultural majority and lived long after the expected millennium. Late medieval English adaptations of the image of the New Jerusalem detach the city of God from its roots in agonistic cultural conflict and instead, relying on the theology of Saint Augustine, imagine a heaven interwoven with the temporal and flawed world.

I examine seven medieval English poems: The Prick of Conscience, Sir Owayne, The Voyage of Saint Brendan, Pearl, The House of Fame, Sir Orfeo, and Saint Erkenwald. Some of these texts are overtly religious while others have been traditionally associated with secular discourse, but they share an intended lay audience. I show that when the heavenly city appears in literature designed for an increasingly urbanized laity, it emphasizes the spiritual imperative to discern truth from fiction, fantasy from fact, city of God from city of man.