Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- Visions, Faith, and the Faith -- Five Key Dynamics of Late Medieval Spirituality -- Focus on Late Medieval England -- The Teachers and the Taught -- Didactic Visions: Past Visions as Teachers -- Sources of Didactic Visions -- Sermons -- Saints' legends -- Religious manuals -- Late Medieval English Lay Visions (LMEL) -- Overview of Book -- Explicit Purposes and Implicit Teachings of the Didactic Visions -- Summary -- Chapter One: Transactions of Satisfaction and Visions of the Otherworld -- The Satisfaction Theory of Atonement -- 'Ghost' -- Didactic Visions of Ghosts -- The negotiations of purgatory's ghosts -- Suffrages for the suffering -- Reward and coercion -- Warnings against ecclesial violations -- The Byland Abbey Ghosts -- The Admonitions of Hell's Ghosts -- The seriousness of sin and the complexity of penance -- Hell-bound ghosts on morality -- Peregrinations to the Otherworlds -- Mock doom -- Enforced journeys -- Vision as pilgrimage -- Visionary Pilgrimages to the World of the Biblical Past -- Summary -- Chapter Two: Reciprocated Devotion and Visitations of the Saints -- Didactic Visions and the Cult of Saints -- Case Study #1: Visions in the Emerging Cult of King Henry VI -- Saint as visionary in Blacman's tract -- Saints as visitors: vision as miracle -- Cameos by didactic saints in visions of Henry VI -- Visions and images in the cults of the saints -- Images and King Henry VI's cult -- The demise of Henry VI's cult -- Case Study #2: Visions and the Auto-Hagiography of Margery Kempe -- Imitatio Birgitta: Margery and Bridget of Sweden -- Summary -- Chapter Three: Spiritual Warfare in Demonic Encounters -- Demons in the Didactic Visions -- The enemy on the offensive -- Demons and the guilty -- Demons and the innocent -- Meeting their match.

Illegitimate counter-offensive strategies -- The Church and magic -- Magic in the visionary accounts -- Legitimate counter-offensive strategies -- Demons in Late Medieval English Visions -- Demons and Margery Kempe -- A demon and Julian of Norwich -- Demons in Yorkshire -- William Stranton and Edmund Leversedge -- Deathbed Battles -- Summary: Limited Demons, Effective Piety -- Chapter Four: Seeing Through the Surface: Vision as Supra-Sacramental Sight -- The Surface and the Deeper Reality -- Sacraments and the deeper reality -- Transubstantiation and the deeper reality -- Deeper reality and the scriptures -- Symbolism in art -- Images of the saints and the deeper reality -- Omens and the deeper reality -- Numerology and the deeper reality -- This world and the deeper reality of the otherworlds -- Philosophy and the deeper reality -- The Incarnation -- Faith and the Faith -- Power of the hidden realities -- Seeing Through the Surface: Sacramental and Supra-Sacramental Sight -- The language of the visual in visionary experience -- The Passion-ate gaze -- Vision and veneration -- Vision and empathy -- Visual Stimulus to Repentance -- Repentance as exchange of "privitees" -- Vision and judgment -- Animation of the crucifix -- Vision and protection from demons -- The eucharistic gaze -- Unbelieving eucharistic sight -- Believing eucharistic sight -- Encounters with Christ in the Eucharist -- The concretizing gaze -- Concretizing of spirit/Spirit -- Concretizing of spiritual states -- Margery Kempe's vision-ized gaze -- When Deeper Reality Becomes the Surface: The Beatific Vision -- Chapter Five: Visions, Power, and the Dynamic of Mediated Revelation -- The Dynamic of Mediated Revelation -- Discernment: Medieval Dream and Vision Theories -- Chaucer's debate -- Macrobian dream theory -- Gregorian dream theory in Handlyng Synne.

Dream theory in Dives and Pauper -- Vision theory in Chastising God's Children -- Chaucer's smorgasbord and the Church's ambivalence -- Visions vs. dreams -- Anxiety, Disguise, and Source Concerns in the Didactic Visions -- The problem of disguise -- Concerns about validity -- Anxiety undermining visionary authority -- Margery Kempe: Personal Anxiety Resolved -- Jeanne d'Arc: Anxiety Exploited as Political Weapon -- St. Bridget of Sweden: Ironies and Authority -- Elizabeth Barton and the Changing of the Guard -- Conclusion -- Appendices -- Appendix A. Vision: Range of Uses of Term in Late Medieval England -- Appendix B. Byland Abbey Ghost Stories as Contemporary Accounts -- Appendix C. Additional Visions and Vision Types -- Bibliography -- Primary Works -- Secondary Works -- Index.