Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians
- 2 Dying and Death in a Complicated World
- 3 Dying with Decency
- 4 The Body under Siege in Life and Death
- 5 The Gravestone, the Grave and the Wyrm
- 6 Judgement on Earth and in Heaven
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
6 - Judgement on Earth and in Heaven
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians
- 2 Dying and Death in a Complicated World
- 3 Dying with Decency
- 4 The Body under Siege in Life and Death
- 5 The Gravestone, the Grave and the Wyrm
- 6 Judgement on Earth and in Heaven
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
Summary
In an influential passage of his Moralia in Job, Gregory the Great draws together relevant biblical texts to construct a Doomsday narrative. He identifies four groups of people: the very good and bad, who will not come to judgement, and the ordinarily good and bad, who will be called to God's tribunal. Gregory's fourfold schema of ultimate human destinies is a useful one against which to measure the complexity of burial practice in later Anglo-Saxon England and to assess its purpose. He first deals with those to be judged and damned, associating them with the dismissal of those who have failed to recognize Christ in the poor (Matthew 25:41–3). He then moves on to consider bad people who do not even merit judgement, having lived entirely outside the law of Christ (Psalm 1:5, John 3:18 and Romans 2:12). They will rise again but only to go directly to hell since they either rejected or had no access to the sacramenta fidei. He then discusses those who are judged and saved, to whom Christ speaks in Matthew 25:34–5, welcoming them into His Father's kingdom. The last group are the saints, and Gregory connects them with Christ's promise in Matthew 19:28 to those who give up everything in His name, that they shall sit upon thrones and be judges with Him. In this brief analysis, Gregory rounds up many of the biblical texts central to the understanding of the court-room aspect of the Last Judgement, and his fourfold structure was picked up by early medieval English and Irish writers, although modified by Ælfric, who imagined the heathens also coming to judgement but meeting an automatic verdict of damnation.
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- Information
- Dying and Death in Later Anglo-Saxon England , pp. 170 - 206Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2004