The End of the World in Medieval Thought and Spirituality

This essay collection studies the Apocalypse and the end of the world, as these themes occupied the minds of biblical scholars, theologians, and ordinary people in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and Early Modernity. It opens with an innovative series of studies on "Gendering the Apocalypse," devoted to the texts and contexts of the apocalyptic through the lens of gender. A second section of essays studies the more traditional problem of "Apocalyptic Theory and Exegesis," with a focus on authors such as Augustine of Hippo and Joachim of Fiore. A final series of essays extends the thematic scope to "The Eschaton in Political, Liturgical, and Literary Contexts." In these essays, scholars of history, theology, and literature create a dialogue that considers how fear of the end of the world, among the most pervasive emotions in human experience, underlies a great part of Western cultural production.

Auteur

Eric Knibbs is a researcher at the Monumenta Germaniae Historica in Munich, Germany, and studies legal history, with special focus on the early medieval canonical tradition and the False Decretals of Pseudo-Isidore.

Jessica A. Boon is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill, USA, specializing in premodern Spanish mysticism and theories of embodiment. She has published The Mystical Science of the Soul: Medieval Cognition in Bernardino de Laredo's Recollection Method (2012) and numerous articles on Castilian visionaries.

Erica Gelser is an independent scholar, USA, who specializes in devotional movements and the history of Christian thought, particularly with respect to later medieval Germany.

Contenu

1. Introduction, Jessica A. Boon and Eric Knibbs

Part One: Gendering the Apocalypse

2. The Sobered Sibyl: Gender, Apocalypse and Hair in Dio Chrysostom's Discourse 1 and the Shepherd of Hermas, Mary R. D'Angelo

3. The Marian Apocalyptic of a Visionary Preacher: The Conorte of Juana de la

Cruz, 1481-1534, Jessica A. Boon

4. The City Coming Down Out of Heaven (Rev. 21:10): Bologna as Jerusalem, Gabriella

Zarri

Part Two: Apocalyptic Theology and Exegesis

5. Risen to Judgment: What Augustine Saw, Francine Cardman

6. Berengaudus on the Apocalypse, Eric Knibbs

7. Apocalypticism and Mysticism in Joachim of Fiore's Expositio in

Apocalypsim, Bernard McGinn

8. Juan de Horozco y Covarrubias's Tratado dela verdadera y falsa prophecia

(1588) and the Influence of Medieval Apocalyptic Traditions in Post-Tridentine Spain, James F. Melvin

Part Three: The Eschaton in Political, Liturgical, and Literary Contexts

9. The End of the World as They Knew it? Jews, Christians, Samaritans and

Endtime Speculation in the Fifth-Century, Ross S. Kraemer

10. End Time at Hand: Innocent III, Joachim of Fiore, and the Fourth

Crusade, Marcia L. Colish

11. The End of a Single World: The Sacrament of Extreme Unction in Scholastic

Thought, Lesley Smith

12. Amorous and Religious Apocalypses in John Donne's Metaphysical

Imagination, Angela Locatelli