An interdisciplinary approach, wit hits comparative study of sources, helps to highlight the intellectual preoccupations of many religious thinkers who grappled with the overwhelming prospect of Universal destruction.

The editors hope that enough material has been assembled to illustrate both the positive and the negative aspects of the eschatological element in mediaeval thought. An interdisciplinary approach, wit hits comparative study of sources, helps to highlight the intellectual preoccupations of many religious thinkers who grappled with the overwhelming prospect of Universal destruction, questioned the role of the individual in the economy of salvation, and attempted to see the relevance of everyday social and political events to a vision of history in which the end is nearer than the beginning.

An innovative overview of the influence of the Apocalypse on the shaping of the Christian culture of the Middle Ages.

Publisher description

First full-length study of attitudes to abortion in the early medieval west. When a Spanish monk struggled to find the right words to convey his unjust expulsion from a monastery in a desperate petition to a sixth-century king, he likened himself to an aborted fetus. Centuries later, a ninth-century queenfound herself accused of abortion in an altogether more fleshly sense. Abortion haunts the written record across the early middle ages. Yet, the centuries after the fall of Rome remain very much the "dark ages" in the broader history of abortion. This book, the first to treat the subject in this period, tells the story of how individuals and communities, ecclesiastical and secular authorities, construed abortion as a social and moral problem across anumber of post-Roman societies, including Visigothic Spain, Merovingian Gaul, early Ireland, Anglo-Saxon England and the Carolingian empire. It argues early medieval authors and readers actively deliberated on abortion and a cluster of related questions, and that church tradition on abortion was an evolving practice. It sheds light on the neglected variety of responses to abortion generated by different social and intellectual practices, including church discipline, dispute settlement and strategies of political legitimation, and brings the history of abortion into conversation with key questions about gender, sexuality, Christianization, penance and law. Ranging across abortion miracles in hagiography, polemical letters in which churchmen likened rivals to fetuses flung from the womb of the church and uncomfortable imaginings of resurrected fetuses in theological speculation, this volume also illuminates the complex cultural significance of abortion in early medieval societies. Zubin Mistry is Lecturer in Early Medieval European History, University of Edinburgh.

Wonder and Skepticism in the Middle Ages explores the response by medieval society to tales of marvels and the supernatural, which ranged from firm belief to outright rejection, and asks why the believers believed, and why the skeptical disbelieved. Despite living in a world whose structures more often than not supported belief, there were still a great many who disbelieved, most notably scholastic philosophers who began a polemical programme against belief in marvels. Keagan Brewer reevaluates the Middle Ages’ reputation as an era of credulity by considering the evidence for incidences of marvels, miracles and the supernatural and demonstrating the reasons people did and did not believe in such things. Using an array of contemporary sources, he shows that medieval responders sought evidence in the commonality of a report, similarity of one event to another, theological explanations and from people with status to show that those who believed in marvels and miracles did so only because the wonders had passed evidentiary testing. In particular, he examines both emotional and rational reactions to wondrous phenomena, and why some were readily accepted and others rejected. This book is an important contribution to the history of emotions and belief in the Middle Ages.

Apokalyptische Vorstellungen von Untergang und Verheißung, von letzten Dingen und äußersten Wahrheiten, von Endgültigem und noch nie Dagewesenem begleiten die europäische Kulturgeschichte seit mehr als 2000 Jahren. Die vorliegende Reihe Kulturgeschichte der Apokalypse legt eine heterogene und interdisziplinäre Durchmessung des Endzeitdenkens aus historisch-kulturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive vor. Sie betont die einzigartigen Verhaftungen apokalyptischer Diskurse in jeweils zeitgenössischen, epistemischen, medialen und politischen Kontexten und plädiert für den Mut zum Bruch – zum Bruch mit homogenen Lesarten, linearen Denktraditionen und lediglich formalen Rückführungen auf einen apokalyptischen Ursprung. Dabei öffnet sie den Blick in andere religiöse wie geographische Kontexte und lädt zum interdisziplinären Vergleich ein.

This book offers a fascinating exploration of the concept of the apocalypse in early medieval Europe. Calling upon a wealth of archival evidence ranging from the late antiquity to the first millennium, it surveys the role of religious ideas and apocalyptic thought in shaping medieval society in Western Europe.

This book addresses the critical terminologies of place and space (and their role within medieval studies) in a considered and critical manner, presenting a scholarly introduction written by the editors alongside thematic case studies that address a wide range of visual and textual material. The chapters consider the extant visual and textual sources from the medieval period alongside contemporary scholarly discussions to examine place and space in their wider critical context, and are written by specialists in a range of disciplines including art history, archaeology, history, and literature.

In The Song of Songs in the Early Middle Ages, Hannah W. Matis examines how the Song of Songs, the collection of Hebrew love poetry, was understood in the Latin West as an allegory of Christ and the church. This reading of the biblical text was passed down via the patristic tradition, established by the Venerable Bede, and promoted by the chief architects of the Carolingian reform. Throughout the ninth century, the Song of Songs became a text that Carolingian churchmen used to think about the nature of Christ and to conceptualize their own roles and duties within the church. This study examines the many different ways that the Song of Songs was read within its early medieval historical context.