This work on the early scholastic analysis of out-of-body experiences, such as trances, rapture, visions, and prophecy, adopts a different approach than found in most works in medieval intellectual history. Rather than using a chronological approach, moving through the contributions to this topic by Parisian theologians in the first half of the thirteenth century, each of Ayelet Even-Ezra's chapters poses a question that is answered or at least discussed at three different levels: the state of trance or rapture, the understanding of “self,” and what this reveals about theologians as a professional community. The questions are those posed by theologians in the period from 1215 to 1245. The method of analysis, however, utilizes approaches from modern psychology, linguistics and semiotics, and theories of cognition and altered states of consciousness. She places her work in line with the approach of John Baldwin, Alain Boureau, Étienne Anheim, Sylvain Piron, and Nathalie Gorochov, which bridges the gap between scholastic texts and their social and institutional milieu. It is not an easy read but well worth the effort.

Each chapter is composed of three sections, three approaches to intellectual and theological cognition based on the three themes of the book (trance and rapture; perceptions of self; and the development of theology as a professional community). All chapters begin with the analysis by Parisian theologians of St. Paul's description of his experience on the road to Damascus in his second letter to the Corinthians 12:1–5. The book takes one through what the author describes (12) as a “thick body of scholastic debates [that] constitute the core body of primary sources: quaestiones about rapture, prophecy, faith, wisdom and beatific vision that were written by regent masters of theology at the university of Paris, in the years 1215–45.”

The first chapter covers the nature of the rapture experience itself, from Godfey of Poitiers before 1215 to Alexander of Hales in the 1230s. The focus is on the classification of visions and aspects of the experience of rapture. Particularly important is whether there is a middle state that connects the spiritual and the corporeal. Chapter 2 concerns the nature of memory, how theologians understood Paul's ability to remember his experience and its content if it was direct and unmediated by images that could be retained in the memory. Chapter 3 shifts the focus from object to observer, namely the “self” and whether there was a habitus between the self and its object. Chapter 4 introduces the problem of certitude of belief and the contrast between simple faith and theology as a body of scientific knowledge similar to Aristotle's first principles, the difference, for example, of believing God exists and proving the existence of God by rational arguments. Chapter 5 concerns modes of cognition, whether one type of cognition remains, such as simple faith, when another, such as scientific knowledge, is introduced. Also discussed is whether scientific knowledge in theology makes theologians into a superior, elite group within the church. Chapter 6 examines that dichotomy between faith and knowledge in terms of the distinction of intellectual and affective, emotional forms of perception or knowing.

Unlike most studies of scholastic figures on a specific topic, which concentrate on a few major figures, the author has brought together the views of most theologians active at Paris in the 1215 to 1245 period, both those that have been edited as well as a significant number available only in manuscript. Thus one finds not only Philip the Chancellor, William of Auxerre, William of Auvergne, Alexander of Hales, Roland of Cremona, and Hugh of St. Cher but also less discussed figures such as Godfrey of Poitiers, Gauthier of Château-Thierry, Guerric of St. Quentin, John of La Rochelle, and John Pagus. The amount of primary research for this book, especially from manuscripts, is impressive. One strength of this study is that the theologians are looked at as a community of professional theologians, aware of each other and contributing to a common enterprise. While more might have been done with their institutional context as a faculty within the University of Paris, especially its contacts with the faculty of arts in which they previously studied or the faculty of medicine that shared an interest in the subject of the book, the author has concentrated on their collective contribution to defining modes of cognition or apprehension of God, the taxonomy of visions and out-of-body experiences, the physiology of memory, and the salvific value of theological knowledge in comparison to simple faith.

This reviewer would have preferred footnotes to endnotes, especially in a work written for a scholarly rather than a popular audience, but such decisions are often made by the publisher rather than the author. The relevant secondary literature in the bibliography is very thorough. This work is an important contribution to recent research on the University of Paris in its early decades, especially Nathalie Gorochov's Naissance de l'Université. Les écoles de Paris d'Innocent III à Thomas d'Aquin (v. 1200–v. 1245) (Champion, 2012) and Spencer Young's Scholarly Community at the Early University of Paris. Theologians, Education and Society, 1215–1248 (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Ecstacy in the Classroom will appeal to a wide audience, including those working on scholastic philosophy and theology, those interested in rapture, visions, and mystical experience, and those concerned with the intellectual history of the University of Paris in the first half of the thirteenth century.