Book Series Interdisciplinary Studies in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, vol. 3

Apocalyptic Cultures in Medieval and Renaissance Europe

Politics and Prophecy

Jay Rubenstein, Robert Bast (eds)

  • Pages: 301 p.
  • Size:156 x 234 mm
  • Illustrations:13 b/w, 25 col., 5 tables b/w.
  • Language(s):English
  • Publication Year:2024


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  • ISBN: 978-2-503-60669-9
  • Hardback
  • Forthcoming (May/24)

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  • € 90,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE


Offers new readings of medieval and Renaissance Apocalypticism as the expression of spiritualities that informed both debate and practice, covering subjects as diverse as warfare, pilgrimage, gender, cartography, environmentalism, and governance. From papers presented at the 2020 Symposium, 'Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Cultures in Medieval and Renaissance Europe' (Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of Tennessee).

Subject(s)
BIO

Jay Rubenstein is Professor of History and Director of the Center of the Premodern World at the University of Southern California

Robert Bast is Associate Professor of History at the University of Tennessee, and served as founding Director of the Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies

Summary

The essays in this collection were presented at the 2020 Symposium on Apocalypticism, sponsored by the Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of Tennessee. The authors offer new readings of medieval and Renaissance Apocalypticism in quotidian terms, not as ‘counterculture’ but as the pragmatic expression of spiritualities that informed both debate and practice, on subjects as mundane and diverse as warfare, pilgrimage, gender, cartography, environmentalism, and governance. Topics include the origins of imperial eschatology; reflections on cosmology and the fate of the earth; the fusion of history, prophecy, and genealogy; Joachite readings of the political landscape of Italy; the influence of the Great Schism on Burgundian art; eschatology and gender in pilgrimage literature; the late medieval interpretation of the Revelationes of Pseudo-Methodius; and the appropriation of apocalyptic tropes in the propaganda and policies of the German emperor Maximilian I. The essays that open and close this collection offer meditations on the enduring legacy of Apocalypticism by focusing on the events — pandemic, political unrest, and the proliferation of conspiracy theories manifest in both — that mark the historical era in which this symposium took place.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: Apocalypse and Politics, in the Middle Ages and Today
JAY RUBENSTEIN

Constantine and the Birth of Medieval Apocalypticism: Imperial Eschatology in Eusebius, Lactantius, Ephrem, Aphrahat, and the Tiburtine Sybil
STEPHEN SHOEMAKER

The Apocalypse and the Medieval Cosmos
BRETT EDWARD WHALEN

Apocalypse Unfurled: Origins and End Times in the Genealogical Roll
JENNIFER JAHNER

Prophetic Geography: Italy, the School of Joachim of Fiore, and the New Philistines
THOMAS MAURER

The Apocalypse of the Duc de Berry and the Apocalyptic Great Schism
RICHARD K. EMMERSON

The Eschatology of Pilgrimage Literature and the Gender of the Apocalypse in Late Medieval Europe
KATHRYNE BEEBE

Reading the End in Late Medieval Augsburg: Wolfgang Aytinger’s Commentary on the Revelationes of Pseudo-Methodius
LAURA ACKERMAN SMOLLER

Prophecy and Policy: Maximilian I as Last World Emperor in Theory and Practice
ROBERT BAST

The Apocalyptic 'Other': Nostos, Gog and Magog, and Revelation in the Time of Covid
COLIN MCALLISTER

Index

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