Visio Thurkilli

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The Visio Thurkilli (lat. Vision des Thurkill) describes a journey to the hereafter made by farmer Thurkill from the English village of Stisted in 1206 .

Like other famous visions, for example by Tnugdal or Gottschalk , it can be assigned to the journeys to the hereafter and is considered a prime example of a journey that the Purgatory has as its destination. The editor of the vision could not be determined beyond doubt until today. Due to various information about regionally venerated saints and the extensive knowledge of Latin grammar, it can be assumed that he was either a high cleric of the Order of St. Osyth or a member of the Cistercian monastery of Coggeshall .

content

The vision begins with some information about the circumstances surrounding the show. The farmer Thurkill, "who was a simple man and was used to working in the field", is working in the fields when a strange rider visits him and predicts an imminent vision. It turns out that the rider is Saint Julian, who will become the guide and protector of the Thurkill in the afterlife. The following night, Julianus reappears and separates Thurkill's soul from his body, which remains frozen but continues to breathe. During this ecstasy , which lasts for two days, the lifeless body attracts attention, so that spiritual resuscitation attempts are made, from which the instillation of holy water can actually free Thurkill's body from its rigidity. At the following mass, Thurkill initially tells nothing of his experiences in the hereafter, which only changes through the intervention of Julianus. Thurkill then describes that during the ecstasy he set off for the afterlife together with St. Julianus. His journey begins "at the center of the earth" at a large basilica in which the recently deceased await their judgment. Through a trick, Thurkill and his companion manage to travel further into purgatory and hell, where various sinners are just tormented by committing their sins again in a theater play. After Thurkill succeeds in meeting various saints, he comes across his father on his journey through the afterlife, who also has to suffer a punishment for not atoning for fraud. However, Thurkill gains the realization that he can prevent this punishment by taking ten masses to save his father. Soon after, Thurkill is brought back to life by the clergy's attempt at resuscitation and tells church members about the punishments they await for certain offenses and encourages them to repent to a godly life.

expenditure

  • Visio Thurkilli relatore, ut videtur, Radulpho de Coggeshall. Rec. Paul Gerhard Schmidt. Leipzig: Teubner 1978 (Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana)
  • The vision of the farmer Thurkill = Visio Thurkilli with German transl. Ed. by Paul Gerhard Schmidt. Leipzig: Teubner 1987; License edition: Weinheim: Acta Humaniora 1987 ISBN 3-527-17590-3

literature

  • Paul Gerhard Schmidt: The Vision of Thurkill, in: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 41 (1978), pp. 50-64.
  • Michael Lorber: Visio Thurkilli - theater as punishment from hell. On the relationship between hostility to theater, theatricality and theater in the larger context of a medieval vision of the hereafter, in: Applied Theater: Frames and Positions , ed. v. Matthias Warstat, Florian Evers, Kristin Flade, Fabian Lempa u. Lilian Seuberling, Berlin: Theater der Zeit, 2017, pp. 9–35.