Miri Rubin

Conversations with the Dead

The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity

By

Harvard University Press 262pp £18.95 order from our bookshop

In the year 688, Bishop Julian of Toledo created a compilation of Christian teachings on the afterlife. This was an act of friendship for his fellow bishop Idalius, who was on his deathbed and filled with anxieties. The result was the Prognosticon futuri saeculi (‘A Medical Report on the Future World’). As its title suggests, it was meant to comfort the sick man, as a doctor might do. Julian traced the journey of the soul after death with the help of every authoritative work he could read in the rich library of Toledo Cathedral. He presented over four centuries of Christian thought on death and the afterlife as if it were a harmonious unfolding of a soul-reassuring vision.

Peter Brown, the most erudite and elegant historian of Christian life in late antiquity,

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'The lack of evidence ... of any definitive brain pathology in cases of schizophrenia and the absence of any reliab… ,
    • 'Since Dylan’s commercial and ideological heyday, the intrusion of sociology, semiology and post-structuralist thou… ,
    • 'One of the reasons for its longevity is that it has virtually nothing to say about science and technology at all,… ,
    • 'The characters in many of these stories are trapped in the obsessive present tense of their own thoughts; in the m… ,
    • 'Libraries, for much of their existence, have embodied in microcosm many of the characteristics of the totalitarian… ,
    • 'Moss and Cynthia buy several properties through which to launder their ill-gotten gains, take lots of drugs, have… ,
    • 'Never mind the imperial cult. This is the cult of Boris. What happened to Rome?' From the LR archive:… ,
    Follow Us