Last Things Death & the Apocalypse in the Middle Ages

Last Things Death and the Apocalypse in the Middle Ages Edited by Caroline Walker Bynum and Paul Freedman "Last Things will repay the serious attention of readers concerned with any aspect of medieval religion."--Speculum When the medievals spoke of "last things" they were sometimes referring to events, such as the millennium or the appearance of the Antichrist, that would come to all of humanity or at the end of time. But they also meant the last things that would come to each individual separately--not just the place, Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory, to which their souls would go but also the accounting, the calling to reckoning, that would come at the end of life. At different periods in the Middle Ages one or the other of these sorts of "last things" tended to be dominant, but both coexisted throughout. In Last Things, Caroline Walker Bynum and Paul Freedman bring together eleven essays that focus on the competing eschatologies of the Middle Ages and on the ways in which they expose different sensibilities, different theories of the human person, and very different understandings of the body, of time, of the end. Exploring such themes as the significance of dying and the afterlife, apocalyptic time, and the eschatological imagination, each essay in the volume enriches our understanding of the eschatological awarenesses of the European Middle Ages. Caroline Walker Bynum is Professor of Medieval History at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. She is the author and editor of numerous books, including The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women, and Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond, winner of the Award for Excellence in the Historical Study of Religion from the American Academy of Religion. Paul Freedman is Professor of History at Yale University. He is the author of various articles and books, including Images of the Medieval Peasant and The Origins of Peasant Servitude in Medieval Catalonia. The Middle Ages Series 1999 376 pages 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 17 illus. ISBN 978-0-8122-1702-5 Paper $29.95s 19.50 World Rights History, Religion Short copy: Eleven essays that focus on the competing eschatologies of the Middle Ages."

When the medievals spoke of last things they were sometimes referring to events, such as the millennium or the appearance of the Antichrist, that would come to all of humanity or at the end of time. But they also meant the last things that would come to each individual separately--not just the place, Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory, to which their souls would go but also the accounting, the calling to reckoning, that would come at the end of life. At different periods in the Middle Ages one or the other of these sorts of last things tended to be dominant, but both coexisted throughout. In Last Things, Caroline Walker Bynum and Paul Freedman bring together eleven essays that focus on the competing eschatologies of the Middle Ages and on the ways in which they expose different sensibilities, different theories of the human person, and very different understandings of the body, of time, of the end. Exploring such themes as the significance of dying and the afterlife, apocalyptic time, and the eschatological imagination, each essay in the volume enriches our understanding of the eschatological awarenesses of the European Middle Ages.

Settling scores: eschatology in the Church of the Martyrs / Carole Straw -- The decline of the empire of God: amnesty, penance, and the afterlife from late antiquity to the middle ages / Peter Brown -- From Jericho to Jerusalem: the violent transformation of Archbishop Engelbert of Cologne / Jacqueline E. Jung -- From decay to splendor: body and pain in Bonvesin da la Riva's Book of the three scriptures / Manuele Gragnolati -- Time is short: the eschatology of the early Gaelic Church / Benjamin Hudson -- Exodus and exile: Joachim of Fiore's Apocalyptic scenario / E. Randolph Daniel -- Arnau de Vilanova and the body at the end of the world / Clifford R. Backman -- Of earthquakes, hail, frogs, and geography: plague and the investigation of the Apocalypse in the later middle ages / Laura A. Smoller -- Community among the saintly dead: Bernard of Clairvaux's Sermons for the Feast of All Saints / Anna Harrison -- Heaven in view: the place of the elect in an illuminated book of hours / Harvey Stahl -- The limits of Apocalypse: eschatology, epistemology, and textuality in the Commedia and Piers plowman / Claudia Rattazzi Papka.