Guillaume de Deguileville

Le Pélerinage de l’Ame was the second in a trilogy of works in verse written by Guillaume de Deguileville, a Cistercian monk, in the mid-fourteenth century. Translated into English prose in the early fifteenth century, it became known as The Pilgrimage of the Soul,or Grace Dieu, after a character in the story. The tale recounts a dream by the narrator in which he follows his soul’s journey from his dead body through Hell and Purgatory, finally reaching the gates of Heaven. The soul is guided throughout its adventures by a guardian angel named Grace Dieu. This illustration shows Grace Dieu describing the spheres of the Heavenly Jerusalem at the end of the soul’s wanderings. This dream vision was intended as an instruction to the reader to live a moral and sinless life: as a result of increased self-awareness and greater penance while on earth, the reader’s soul, unlike the narrator’s, would bypass Hell and Purgatory and ascend to the Circles of Heaven immediately after death.