Peter of Cornwall’s Book of Revelations

This is the first book-length study of Peter of Cornwall, prior of Holy Trinity, Aldgate, London. His Liber Reuelationum (Lambeth Palace Library, MS 51), dated to the year 1200, is a compilation of over 1,100 chapters, excerpted from some 275 Latin texts, dealing with visions of the otherworld and revelatory appearances of God, Christ, Mary, angels, saints, devils, and revenants. Peter collected the material from saints’ lives, chronicles, and free-standing vision texts from the first century AD through to his own day – for the purpose of providing evidence of the existence of God, the soul, and life after death to unbelievers. Accounts of new visionary experiences circulating in England in the 1190s doubtlessly prompted his collection. Like his other large-scale work, Pantheologus, Peter of Cornwall’s Book of Revelations was intended to assist preachers with propagating the fundamentals of the faith.



This volume introduces Peter’s life and writings and presents editions with parallel English translations of those parts of the Lambeth manuscript that Peter composed himself. A detailed description of the manuscript is included, and a Calendar identifies the source for each of Peter’s chapters. A bibliography and indices complete this volume, which provides a marvellous resource for scholars interested in the Latin literature of medieval dreams, visionary experience, and the eschatological concerns of sin, penance, death, the afterlife, and the judgement of the soul.