ABSTRACT

Scholastic theologians, canon lawyers, ecclesiastical court personnel and even hagiographers had thus made a concerted effort to define and scrutinize the miraculous. Nevertheless, belief in divine intervention through revelation and the prophetic power of dream and vision was a universal value shared in the Middle Ages by Christian, pagan, Jew and Muslim alike, and the miracle narrative could not be immune from this. There is as yet no full census of all the recorded medieval dreams and visions, which would assist us to build a comparative portrait of the symbols and images that populated the imagination of medieval persons. Thousands of dreams were recorded in which members of all social classes, lay and clergy, noble, peasant and urban dweller, male and female, adults and children were allegedly visited by otherworldly forces both heavenly and infernal who were intent on communicating with the living.1