Eschatology played a central role in both politics and society throughout the early modern period. It inspired people to strive for social and political change, including sometimes by violent means, and prompted in return strong reactions against their religious activism. From the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, numerous apocalyptical and messianic movements came to the fore across Eurasia and North Africa, raising questions about possible interconnections.
Why were eschatological movements so pervasive in early modern times? This volume provides some answers to this question by exploring the interconnected histories of confessions and religions from Moscow to Cusco. It offers a broad picture of Christian and, to a lesser extent, Jewish and Islamic eschatological movements from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, thereby bridging important and long-standing gaps in the historiography.
Apocalypse Now will appeal to both researchers and students of the history of early modern religion and politics in the Christian, Jewish and Islamic worlds. By exploring connections between numerous eschatological movements, it gives a fresh insight into one of the most promising fields of European and global history.
Author(s): Damien Tricoire, Lionel Laborie
Series: Routledge Studies in Early Modern Religious Dissents and Radicalism
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 296
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
Eschatological Movements in Judaism and Christianity (Fifteenth–Eighteenth Centuries)
A Shared Jewish-Christian History
Fitting Islam into the Picture
Character and Focus of the Book
Notes
Part I: Reformations
Chapter 1: Táborite Revolutionary Apocalypticism: Mapping Influences and Divergences
Background and Problems
The Waldensians
The Free Spirit
Joachim of Fiore and Joachites
John Wyclif and the Lollards
Other Notable Sources
The Place of Christian Platonism
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 2: Heretical Eschatology and Its Impact on Radical Reformation Movements: The Flagellants of Thuringia in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, Thomas Müntzer, and the Anabaptists
Konrad Schmid’s Vision of the End Times
Fifteenth-Century Flagellant Apocalypticism
The True and the False Church
Müntzer’s Fight Against the Antichrist
Anabaptist Apocalypticism in Thuringia after Müntzer
A Connected History?
Notes
Chapter 3: Terror, War and Reformation: Ivan the Terrible in the Age of Apocalypticism
Introduction
Muscovy in the Age of Christian Religious Reforms
Latter-Days Expectations and the War against “Heretics”
The Fight Against the Antichrist and Terror Against Muscovite Subjects
The Oprichnina and the Creation of the Latter-Days Zion
Conclusion
Notes
Part II: Messianisms
Chapter 4: A Messiah from the Left Side
Shlomo Molcho, His Life and Education
Christian Influences on Molcho’s Messianic Thought and Writings
Molcho’s Use of Christian Sources
Molcho and Paul
Counter-Messianism
Notes
Chapter 5: Millenarian News and Connected Spaces in 17th-Century Europe
Introduction
Millenarianism as Veiled Critique of Government
Rycaut the Englishman at Smyrna
Paul Rycaut and Millenarianism
Early Modern Millenarian Movements
The Nuqtavi Sūfi Millenarian Movement in Persia
The Fifth Monarchy Millenarian Movement in England and the English World
The Millenarian Movement of Sabbatai Zevi in the Ottoman Empire and Europe
Rycaut, Millenarian News, and Connected Spaces—Cambridge, London, Smyrna, and Beyond
Conclusion: Millenarianism as Process, as Veiled Advice, and as “Cognitive Alternative”
Notes
Chapter 6: Carvajal and the Franciscans: Jewish-Christian Eschatological Expectations in a New World Setting
Luis de Carvajal el Mozo and Sixteenth-Century Iberian Crypto-Judaism
Luis de Carvajal’s Last Will
America, the Last Days, and the Franciscan Friars
Carvajal, the Franciscans, and Early American Imaginaries
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 7: Kabbalistic Influences on “Pietistic” Millenarian Expectations: Philipp Jakob Spener’s (1635–1705) Eschatological View Between Scripture and Christian Kabbalah
Spener’s Eschatological View
Spener’s Millenarianism and Christian Kabbalah
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 8: Everyday Apocalypse: Russian and Jewish “Sects” at the End of the Eighteenth Century
Orthodoxy and Judaism Before the Fifteenth Century
The Novgorod and Other Early Judaizers
“Judaizers” as a Continuous or Invented Tradition?
The Karaites
The Molokans
The Subbotniks
Connected History of Everyday Apocalypse
Notes
Part III: Messianic Kings
Chapter 9: Margins of the Encubierto : The Messianic Kings’ Tradition in the Iberian World (15th–17th Centuries)
Comunidades and Germanías
American Experiences
Sebastianism and the Iberian World
Sebastianism’s Wider Iberian Connections
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 10: Mirror Images: Imperial Eschatology and Interreligious Transfer in Seventeenth-Century Greek Orthodoxy
Connected Traditions
Reinterpreting Byzantine Oracles
Interreligious Transfers
Mutual Perceptions
Shared Challenges
Apocalypticism as a Self-Referential Discourse
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 11: Restorers of the Divine Law: Native American Revolts in the New World, Christianity, and the Quest for Purity in the Age of Revolution
Juan Santos and Neolin: Two Nativist Leaders?
Prophecy and Christian Innovation
The Modernity of Amerindian Prophetic Movements
Christianity as a Weapon Against Assimilation
The Struggle for Purification of Society and Political Independence
Revolutionary Religions
Notes
Index of Names
