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Luther and the Ascent of Jacob's Ladder

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

David C. Steinmetz
David C. Steinmetz
Affiliation:
professor of church history and doctrine in the Divinity School, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. This is his presidential address deliverd at the annual meeting of the American Society of Church History, 28 December 1985.
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Extract

On the west front of Bath Abbey there are carved two stone ladders stretching from heaven to earth on which twelve angels are climbing, six on each ladder. A tourist who sees the west front of the abbey for the first time is told that the carvings represent the dream of Oliver King, Bishop of Bath and Wells under Henry VII and his former chief secretary. The bishop had a nocturnal vision of angels climbing ladders to heaven. As he stood before the ladders in amazement, he heard voices saying that an olive should establish the crown and that the king should restore the church. He took the reference to olives and kings to be an allusion to his own name and concluded that he, Oliver King, should support the Tudor monarchy and rebuild the ruined abbey at Bath.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , June 1986 , pp. 179 - 192
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1986

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References

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14. Ibid.

15. See also my essay, “John Calvin on Isaiah 6: A Problem in the History of Exegesis,” Interpretation 36 (1982): 156–170, esp. pp. 163–164Google Scholar, for the medieval treatment of the nature of Isaiah's vision. Compare Steinmetz, David C., Luther and Staupitz: An Essay in the Intellectual Origins of the Protestant Reformation (Durham, N.C., 1980), pp. 129–131, 135–140.Google Scholar

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