Jacques Le Goff
Ashgate Variorum
Paperback
440
1990
The best account we have of Purgatory is Dante's. But Dante could not have written ?The Divine Comedy? had not the ideas of Heaven Hell and Purgatory evolved as they did. It is the course of this evolution which forms the subject of this remarkable book. Jacques LeGoff is concerned not with the theological discussion but with the birth of an idea with the relation between belief and society with mental structures and with the historical role of the imagination. His central point is that the doctrine Purgatory does not appear in the Latin theology of the West before the late twelfth century. As he traces its origin growth and eventual triumph he shows that the formation of belief in an intermediate place between Heaven and Hell was closely bound up with profound changes in the social and intellectual reality of the Middle Ages with attempts to introduce ?middle class? or third orders between the powerful and the poor the clergy and the laity.
Ashgate Variorum
Paperback
440
1990
The best account we have of Purgatory is Dante's. But Dante could not have written ?The Divine Comedy? had not the ideas of Heaven Hell and Purgatory evolved as they did. It is the course of this evolution which forms the subject of this remarkable book. Jacques LeGoff is concerned not with the theological discussion but with the birth of an idea with the relation between belief and society with mental structures and with the historical role of the imagination. His central point is that the doctrine Purgatory does not appear in the Latin theology of the West before the late twelfth century. As he traces its origin growth and eventual triumph he shows that the formation of belief in an intermediate place between Heaven and Hell was closely bound up with profound changes in the social and intellectual reality of the Middle Ages with attempts to introduce ?middle class? or third orders between the powerful and the poor the clergy and the laity.