The Dream of Gerontius
The Dream of Gerontius film [full video] The Dream of Gerontius film [chapter videos] The Dream of Gerontius was written by Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman in 1865. It is a dramatic poem which portrays the death of an old man and what happens to his soul as he enters into eternity and the state of Purgatory. Newman discovered much about the teaching of Purgatory from the Fathers of the Catholic Church when he was writing his "Essay on development of Doctrine". The musician and composer Edward Elgar began work on the "Dream of Gerontius" in 1900. The painting of the Dream of Gerontius was commissioned by the Pitt-Payne family from Alesbury in 2003, and is painted on wood with acrylic and gold leaf. The visual presentation of the painting is broken up into 8 parts which is just as much part of the symbolic language of the painting as the rich colour, the gold leaf for the Heavenly realm the unborn child in baptismal shawl surrounde