1st Edition
Expecting the End of the World in Medieval Europe An Interdisciplinary Study
Expecting the End of the World in Medieval Europe: An Interdisciplinary Study examines the phenomenon of medieval eschatology from a global perspective, both geographically and intellectually. The collected contributions analyze texts, authors, social movements, and cultural representations covering a wide period, from the 6th to the 16th century, in geographically liminal spaces where Catholic, Byzantine, Islamic, and Jewish cultures converged.
The book is organized in eleven chapters which reflect and explore the following arguments: the study of specific eschatological episodes in medieval Europe and their interpretations; the analysis of apocalyptic visionaries, apocalyptic authors, and their individual contributions; the social and political implications of eschatology in medieval society; the study of medieval apocalyptic literature from a rhetorical, narratological, and historiographical perspective; the history of the transmission of apocalyptic literature and its transformation over time; and a comparative examination of apocalypticism between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern era.
This study provides a lens through which academics, specialists, and interested researchers can observe and reflect on this entire eschatological universe, dwelling both on well-known texts, authors, and events, and on others which are much less popular. In gathering different paradigms, tools, and theoretical frameworks, the book exposes readers to the complex reality of medieval anxiety regarding the end of the world.
Introduction
Israel Sanmartín and Francisco Peña
Rodrigo Furtado
2. Christian Time-Reckoning, the Fall of Rome, and the Coming of the Carolingian Epoch: Disorder in the Skies, saltus lunae, and the End of Times
Dimitri N. Starostin
3. The End of the World Happens Within. The Mystical Eschatology of the Syriac Book of Secrets (6th c.)
Nicolò Sassi
4. The First Treatise on Christian Eschatology: The Prognosticon of Julian of Toledo
Eva Castro
5. Medieval Eschatology and Invading Peoples in Eastern Slavic and Astur-Leonese Spheres
Enrique Santos Marinas
6. The Apocalyptic Drift of the Story of the Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in the General e Grand Estoria
David Navarro and Francisco Peña
7. Eschatology as a Political Warning in the Libro de Gracián during the Reign of John II of Castile (1405-1454)
Roque Sampedro
8. A Contextual Proposal for the Study of the Debate on the Castilian Rocaçisas
Israel Sanmartín
9. Eschatological Memories of the Reign of the Catholic Monarchs in Late Sixteenth-Century Histories of Spain
Pablo Fernández Pérez and Iago Brais Ferrás García
10. The Antichrist Critique in Jan Hus’s Letter to Christian of Prachatice from 1413 and its Inspiration from John Wyclif
Lucie Mazalová
11. Rebels and the Antichrist: The Circulation of Prophecies during the Revolt of the Comuneros
Hipólito Rafael Oliva Herrer
Biography
Israel Sanmartín is Lecturer in Medieval History at the Universidad de Santiago de Compostela. His main lines of research are the history of medieval eschatology, historiography and theory of history, and neo-medievalism.
Francisco Peña Fernández is Professor of World Literatures at the University of British Columbia, and director of the international research project entitled “The Confluence of Religious Cultures in Medieval Historiography: Digital Edition of the General estoria” (DEGE). His main lines of research are Jewish-Christian relations in medieval Iberia, medieval historiography, and the Bible as literature.
