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

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Richard Landes, Andrew Gow, David Van Meter
Oxford University Press, 2003 M06 5 - 384 pages
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 millennial speculations 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 social ramifications 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, and American 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.
 

Contents

The Terribles espoirs of 1000 and the Tacit Fears of 2000
3
1 Awaiting the End of Time around the Turn of the Year 1000
17
I The Apocalyptic Year 1000 in Medieval Thought
65
II The Apocalyptic Year 1000 in Medieval Art and Literature
137
III Historiography of the Apocalyptic Year 1000
241
IV Tools and Sources
327
Index
347
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