Description
Book SynopsisIn late medieval Catholicism, mourners employed an array of practices to maintain connection with the deceased—most crucially, the belief in purgatory, a middle place between heaven and hell where souls could be helped by the actions of the living. In the early sixteenth century, the Reformation abolished purgatory, as its leaders did not want attention to the dead diminishing people''s devotion to God. But while the Reformation was supposed to end communication between the living and dead, it turns out the result was in fact more complicated than historians have realized. In the three centuries after the Reformation, Protestants imagined continuing relationships with the dead, and the desire for these relations came to form an important—and since neglected—aspect of Protestant belief and practice.
In Speaking with the Dead in Early America, historian Erik R. Seeman undertakes a 300-year history of Protestant communication with the dead. Seeman chronicl
Table of Contents
Introduction. Speaking with the Dead
Chapter 1. The Transatlantic Science of the Dead
Chapter 2. Elegy in Puritan New England
Chapter 3. Talking Gravestones and Visions of Heaven
Chapter 4. Voices of the Dead in the American Enlightenment
Chapter 5. Eighteenth-Century Imaginative Literature
Chapter 6. Revelations and New Denominations
Chapter 7. Religious Objects, Sacred Space, and the Cult of the Dead
Chapter 8. Ghosts, Guardian Angels, and Departed Spirits
Conclusion. Continuing Relationships
Notes
Index Acknowledgments
