Turn Your Hearts to God—Prayer

Abstract

For the writer of the 1808 Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, the Middle English translation of Sir Geoffrey’s book serves “to make one laugh at the extreme ridiculousness of gross Popery.” But for most people living in Western Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Roman Catholicism was the only game around. The most important thing in life was your relationship to God—in theory, at least. And the most important part of that relationship was your ability to achieve salvation. Where would your immortal soul spend all of eternity? Heaven, one hoped, and without a several-thousand-year delay in Purgatory, suffering the torments appropriate for your particular sins. Those who made it neither to Heaven nor to Purgatory suffered the all too real horror of eternal damnation, and from this Sir Geoffrey wanted to protect his daughters’ souls. He begins his book with chapters focusing on ways to honor God and his theme of salvation winds through every tale, much as Roman Catholicism wove medieval society together.