Dante and the Pauline Modes of Vision

Abstract

St. Paul, the “great vessel of the Holy Spirit” as Dante calls him (Par. XXI, 127–8), expanding the famous epithet of Acts, IX, 15, had the most famous if not the earliest Christian mystical experience. This is the experience he describes in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians and it was to be the point of departure and reference for much of later mystical and theological speculation. St. Paul describes his rapture as follows: “I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;), such an one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter.”

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