The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Religion, War, Famine and Death in Reformation Europe

by Andrew Cunningham , Ole Peter Grell

• ISBN13: 9780521467018
• ISBN10: 0521467012
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-02-26
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Using the prism of DÜrer's woodcut, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Andrew Cunningham and Ole Grell offer a new and exciting interpretation of European history in the period 1490 to 1648. DÜrer's image came to characterize the outlook of most early modern Europeans, who saw repeated episodes of war, epidemics and famine as indicating the imminent end of the world. Lavishly illustrated with fascinating contemporary images, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse brings together religious, social, military and medical history, giving readers a unique insight into the early modern world. Andrew Cunningham is a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science in the University of Cambridge. His most recent book is The Anatomical Renaissance (1997). Ole Peter Grell is a Lecturer in Early Modern History at the Open University, Milton Keynes. Among his recent books are Calvinist Exiles in Tudor and Stuart England (Scolar Press, 1997) and Paracelsus: The Man and His Reputation (Brill Academic Publishers, 1998). Together the authors have published Health Care and Poor Relief in Protestant Europe 1500-1700 (Routledge, 1997) and Health Care and Poor Relief in Counter-Reformation Europe (Routledge, 1999). Since 1998 they have edited the series History of Medicine in Context published by Ashgate.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
List of illustrations	ix
Introduction: An Apocalyptic Age	1	(18)
The White Horse: Religion, Revelation and Reformation	19	(73)
Luther, the Reformation and the Last Days	19	(13)
The millennium and radical chiliasm	32	(11)
Persistent apocalypticism within European Protestantism	43	(8)
Reformed Protestantism and apocalypticism	51	(20)
Apocalyptic signs and protents in the sky	71	(8)
The eschatological decay of nature: the world turned upside-down and withcraft	79	(13)
The Red Horse: War, Weapons and Wounds	92	(108)
War	92	(22)
Weapons	114	(10)
Wounds	124	(13)
War and religion: the response of Christian humanists and Protestants	137	(14)
The experience of war	151	(49)
The Black Horse: Food, F(e)ast and Famine	200	(47)
Famines: natural or man-made?	202	(7)
Food	209	(7)
F(e)ast	216	(6)
Famine as divine punishment	222	(5)
Famine in the siege of Sancerre, 1573	227	(4)
Famine in the Great Siege of Paris, 1590	231	(3)
The `Great Famine' of the 1590s	234	(3)
Responses to famine	237	(6)
Escaping peace-time famine	243	(4)
The Pale Horse: Disease, Disaster and Death	247	(72)
Sexual disease	247	(23)
Siege disease	270	(2)
The English sweat	272	(2)
Plague	274	(21)
Contagion or corruption as cause of epidemic disease?	295	(3)
Epidemics as mortality crises?	298	(6)
Disaster	304	(5)
Death	309	(10)
Epilogue	319	(5)
Notes	324	(25)
Index	349