‘Falseness Reigns in Every Flock’: Literacy and Eschatological Discourse in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381
The literature of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, a miscellany of fourteenth-century poetry and prose penned before, during, and after the insurrection, often stresses the importance of literacy to the nonaristocratic population of England.
Nourishment for the Soul – Nourishment for the Body: Animal Remains in Early Medieval Pomeranian Cemeteries
Late medieval sources clearly refer to souls, which in traditional folk beliefs were periodically returning to feed and warm themselves by the fires made by the living. This kind of conception can be merged with Slavic eschatology. There is multiple evidence to confirm that belief some form of spirit or soul was spreading amongst the people, who in the early medieval period, bordered directly with Pomerania.
Bede’s Temple as History
Another IHR paper, this time, a talk given about Bede’s writing and his interest in the image of the Temple and its relation to Christianity. This paper also examined how Bede’s views shifted over time. How did Bede view Judaism? Was he truly ambivalent?
Jewish Shock-Troops of the Apocalypse
It would not be difficult to dismiss the legend of the Antichrist in its medieval manifestations as pure fantasy—analogous to such entertaining motifs as fire-breathing dragons, unicorns, enchantments and the like.
Death and Retribution: Medieval Visions of the End of Judas the Traitor
Although being described in the Book of Job as “the land of gloom and chaos” (“terra ubi umbra mortis et nullus ordo” Iob 10:22), Hell for Christian tradition was not a region of disorder and chaos, but a realm of well ordered justice.
The Final Countdown: A Historiographical Analysis on Language in the Year 1000 A.D.
We must now begin to ask ourselves what led to this increase in millenarian belief that the world would end between either 1000-1033 A.D.; 1033 being the 1000th year anniversary of the death of Christ. From the evidence provided in the first hand accounts of religious figures in the early eleventh century, it can be argued that this millenarian idea was not uncommon throughout Europe.
Why All the Fuss about the Body? A Medievalist’s Perspective
erhaps some help is to be found in the usual scholarly move of sur- veying the literature. What does the phrase mean in the rapidly increas- ing number of books with the body in the title-an increase only too apparent to anyone who walks these days into a bookstore?
Jerusalem in Medieval Christian Thought
In the prophetic tradition, the dwelling of God is understood as a spiritual one. Yet, in spite of the expressed manner in which Jerusalem was called The Holy City, an element of imperfection remained.
Sin, Penance and Purgatory in the Anglo‐Norman Realm: The Evidence of Visions and Ghost Stories
Historians have tended to explore these two changes of the ‘long twelfth century’ — the reinvention of penance and the rise of purgatory — in isolation from each other. Here I intend to focus on the relationship between the two, and to look in particular at one aspect of it: the implications of theological change for perceptions of the fate of the dead.
Painful Restoration: Transformations of Life and Death in Medieval Visions of the Other World
Bearing in mind this distinction, we must be aware of the fact that, in the context of the Christian religion, we are dealing with the fundamental concept of a double life—the life of the body and the life of the soul; and consequently with a double death—the death of the body and the death of the soul.
The Concept of Purgatory in England
The notion of purgatory or a third place had great and direct impact on the way people thought because this third place was the immediate destination of the soul after death in the minds of most Christians. People imagined at death that this would be the next form of being.
“Neither Mine Nor Thine”: Communist Experiments in Hussite Bohemia
Because of such circumstances the intoxicating influence of idealism and utopia continued to be pressed forward. One pervasive ideal was communism.