Bernard McGinn
Ashgate Variorum
Hardback
336
1994
Apocalypticism has always been an integral part of Christian history whether held in an extreme even violent and sensational form or reinterpreted to postpone the end of days safely into the future or to act as a focus for spiritualizing the believer?s inner life. In the first two essays here Professor McGinn aims to define the topic and to provide a summary of its historiography. The following papers analyse the influence of and interpretations given to apocalyptic ideas and texts inherited by the medieval West Sibylline as well as Biblical and the creation of new texts and symbols such as that of the angelic pope. The final section then concentrates on the thought of the Calabrian abbot Joachim of Fiore the outstanding Western exponent of apocalyptic ideas and on its reception.
Ashgate Variorum
Hardback
336
1994
Apocalypticism has always been an integral part of Christian history whether held in an extreme even violent and sensational form or reinterpreted to postpone the end of days safely into the future or to act as a focus for spiritualizing the believer?s inner life. In the first two essays here Professor McGinn aims to define the topic and to provide a summary of its historiography. The following papers analyse the influence of and interpretations given to apocalyptic ideas and texts inherited by the medieval West Sibylline as well as Biblical and the creation of new texts and symbols such as that of the angelic pope. The final section then concentrates on the thought of the Calabrian abbot Joachim of Fiore the outstanding Western exponent of apocalyptic ideas and on its reception.