Before we can turn to the Civil War-era writers mentioned in the last entry, it is first necessary to understand how deeply engrained apocalyptic beliefs were in American culture at the time. Most Americans are probably familiar with the famous Union marching song, the Battle Hymn of the Republic, as it has remained an occasional patriotic standard ever since the Civil War. What most are not aware of is how much the song draws upon apocalyptic themes and... Read more
In “To the Queen,” the verse epilogue to his great Arthurian work, Idylls of the King, Alfred, Lord Tennyson assured Queen Victoria that rumors of the British Empire’s demise were no more than: morning shadows huger than the shapes That cast them, not those gloomier which forego The darkness of that battle in the West, Where all of high and holy dies away.” (“To the Queen” ll. 63-66) Of course, Tennyson missed the mark with his prophecy of a... Read more
It is remarkable, given the number of centuries that Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur reigned as the English-speaking world’s chief Arthurian text, that the concept of the return remained such an important part of Arthur’s story. For what most readers take away from Malory’s treatment of Arthur’s return is how deeply his own skepticism appears to run. On the prospect of Arthur’s return, Malory offers the tart observation, “Yet I will not say that it shall be so; but rather... Read more
If one were to compile a list of texts that have defined the shape and scope of the Arthur story in the popular imagination, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain) and Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (The Death of Arthur) would be at the top. Geoffrey’s text is generally regarded as the beginning of Arthurian literature as we know it. He did not invent Arthur; as shown last week, the king had a... Read more
The Arthur myth has always had a complicated relationship with the Christian faith. On one hand, Arthur is most certainly a Christian king and a champion of Christendom. Indeed, he was, in medieval Europe, ranked among the “Nine Worthies,” a selection of nine rulers from history who were seen as exemplifying the virtues of proper kingship and warrior chivalry. The Nine Worthies were divided into a pagan, a Jewish, and a Christian triad; Arthur was one of the three Christian... Read more
The Tiburtine Sibyl is one of the Sibylline Oracles, prophetic texts from the first few centuries of the common era that were supposedly written by the Sibyls of Greek and Roman mythology. In actual fact they were usually written by partisans of Judaism and Christianity in an attempt to convert Greco-Roman audiences through an appeal to their own antiquity. The Oracle of the Tiburtine Sibyl is one such work, and features the title Sibyl offering a prophecy to a large... Read more
We ended last entry with a brief consideration of the remarkable anti-monarchist message that closes out the Pseudo-Methodian Apocalypse. That message is all the more remarkable because the Apocalypse of Methodius has been, unlike the New Testament apocalyptic tradition, stridently on the side of worldly power in general, and the Roman Empire specifically, since it began. The confidence that it has in the piety of the Roman Emperors and in God’s favor toward the Empire more broadly would have... Read more
The Book of Revelation, also simply called the Apocalypse, is one of the most famous books of the Bible, for better or worse. How much of a surprise it must be for moderns, then, to find out that in the Middle Ages, there was another Apocalypse. And how much of a shock to learn that it was the one attributed not to John of Patmos but to Methodius of Patara that enjoyed the greater degree of acceptance, circulation, and... Read more
One of the most infuriating things for any medieval scholar is the continued public perception of the Middle Ages as a step backward for humanity, a caesura in history during which the advancement of civilization stalled out, not to begin again until the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. Many scholars have diligently tried to point out that the Middle Ages were a dynamic time that had a direct impact on the shape of modernity—one only has to think of Charles... Read more
Christianity considers Jesus of Nazareth to be the Davidic messiah whose coming is promised throughout the prophetic books of the Old Testament. This is its foundational fact, arguably even more foundational that the belief in Jesus’s divinity, for the claim of his divinity rests upon his being the messiah for whom the Jewish people have long waited. And yet, it is abundantly clear that if Jesus was indeed the messiah, he was a very different one than the Jewish... Read more
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