Moving beyond the standard 'Terrors of the Year 1000', The Apocalypse in the Early Middle Ages opens up broader perspectives on heresy, the Antichrist and Last World Emperor legends, chronography, and the relationship between eschatology and apocalypticism. Drawing on evidence from late antiquity, the Frankish kingdoms, Anglo-Saxon England, Spain and Byzantium and sociological models, James Palmer shows that apocalyptic thought was a more powerful part of mainstream political ideologies and religious reform than many historians believe. This groundbreaking study reveals the distinctive impact of apocalyptic ideas about time, evil and power on church and society in the Latin West, c.400–c.1050. In this light, the enthusiastic participation of the natural world in its own destruction in the Old English “Fifteen Signs” can be seen as a retaliation for perceived Norman misuse of the English landscape. This active participation of the elements differs starkly from contemporary versions of the “Fifteen Signs.” The motives behind these additions may be related to the frequent portrayal in post-Conquest English texts of the Norman nobility as changing the familiar geography of England for the worse. These additions create a form of the legend in which nature and geography are personified and, rather than being victims of God's wrath, cooperate with it to destroy the world. Unusually, the author of this text has added moralizing interpretations to many of the terrors that are to precede the Last Judgment. The most substantial of these is a text of the “Fifteen Signs before Doomsday” legend. xiv also contains several anonymous works, many of which are focused on eschatology. xiv includes, among other items, homilies by Ælfric and translations of works by Norman writers, and thus represents an early attempt at the integration of English and Continental homiletic traditions. One of the most fascinating of these manuscripts is London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian D. Recent years have seen a growth of interest in the composition of Old English manuscripts in the twelfth century.
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