ABSTRACT
Terrestrial Jerusalem was the city in which one could engage in a physical imitatio Christi in a way impossible elsewhere on earth. It was traditionally linked to Jerusalem, the visio pacis, the heavenly city whose prime characteristics were freedom (Galatians 4:22-31) and perfect peace (Revelation 21:1-27; 22:1-5). The intimate connection between Heavenly and Earthly Jerusalem affected medieval thought in many ways. As Henri de Lubac has pointed out, in a classic medieval exegesis it had a tropological sense, directly attuned to personal appropriation of the meaning of Jerusalem in the believer’s life. The anagogical aspect of the relationship appeared in two quite different manifestations: one, which might be termed ‘horizontal anagogy’, connected with the Last Things, and conceived in a historical manner; and another, ‘vertical anagogy’, that sought to achieve the present realization of heaven on earth. It was in the latter sense that the monastic cloister was described as ‘Jerusalem’, which helps to explain the reservations entertained by some medieval thinkers about the physical Jerusalem.1
Accordingly, the authoritative exegesis of the early Middle Ages interprets the very term ‘Jerusalem’ as follows: historically, as the city of the Jews, allegorically, as the Holy Church, anagogically, as the heavenly fatherland and tropologically, as the soul of the Christian believer.2
