The Apocalyptic Year 1000 Religious Expectaton and Social Change, 950-1050

by Landes, Richard; Gow, Andrew; Van Meter, David

• ISBN13: 9780195111910
• ISBN10: 0195111915
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-06-05
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The essays in this book challenge prevailing views on the way in which apocalyptic concerns contributed to larger processes of social change at the first millennium. Several basic questions unify the essays: What chronological and theological assumptions underlay apocalyptic and millennialspeculations around the Year 1000? How broadly disseminated were those speculations? Can we speak of a mentality of apocalyptic hopes and anxieties on the eve of the millennium? If so, how did authorities respond to or even contribute to the formation of this mentality? What were the socialramifications of apocalyptic hopes and anxieties, and of any efforts to suppress or redirect the more radical impulses that bred them? How did contemporaries conceptualize and then historicize the passing of the millennial date of 1000? Including the work of British, French, German, Dutch, andAmerican scholars, this book will be the definitive resource on this fascinating topic, and should at the same time provoke new interest in and debate on the nature and causes of social change in early medieval Europe.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations	xv
Introduction: The Terribles espoirs of 1000 and the Tacit Fears of 2000	3	(14)
Richard Landes
Awaiting the End of Time around the Turn of the Year 1000	17	(50)
Johannes Fried
I. The Apocalyptic Year 1000 in Medieval Thought
Stalking the Signs: The Apocalyptic Commentaries	67	(14)
Guy Lobrichon
Adso of Montier-en-Der and the Fear of the Year 1000	81	(12)
Daniel Verhelst
Thietland's Commentary on Second Thessalonians: Digressions on the Antichrist and the End of the Millennium	93	(16)
Steven R. Cartwright
Avarice and the Apocalypse	109	(12)
Richard Newhauser
Waiting for the Millennium	121	(18)
Umberto Eco
II. The Apocalyptic Year 1000 in Medieval Art and Literature
Apocalypse and Last Judgment around the Year 1000	139	(16)
Yves Christe
The Millennium, Time, and History for the Anglo-Saxons	155	(26)
Malcolm Godden
The Cult of St. Michael the Archangel and the ``Terrors of the Year 1000''	181	(24)
Daniel F. Callahan
Eschatology, Millenarian Apocalypticism, and the Liturgical Anti-Judaism of the Medieval Prophet Plays	205	(26)
Regula Meyer Evitt
Visualizing the Millennium: Eschatological Rhetoric for the Ottonian Court	231	(12)
Susan E. von Daum Tholl
III. Historiography of the Apocalyptic Year 1000
The Fear of an Apocalyptic Year 1000: Augustinian Historiography, Medieval and Modern	243	(28)
Richard Landes
Eschatological Imagination and the Program of Roman Imperial and Ecclesiastical Renewal at the End of the Tenth Century	271	(18)
Benjamin Arnold
``Satan's Bonds Are Extremely Loose'': Apocalyptic Expectation in Anglo-Saxon England during the Millennial Era	289	(22)
William Prideaux-Collins
Apocalyptic Moments and the Eschatological Rhetoric of Reform in the Early Eleventh Century: The Case of the Visionary of St. Vaast	311	(18)
David C. Van Meter
IV. Tools and Sources
The Astronomical Situation around the Year 1000	329	(8)
Bradley E. Schaefer
Selected Documents on Eschatological Expectations and Social Change around the Year 1000	337	(10)
David C. Van Meter
Index	347