The Apocalyptic Year 1000: Religious Expectation and Social Change, 950-1050 [Paperback]

Richard Landes (Editor), Andrew Gow (Editor), David Van Meter (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 5, 2003

The essays in this book challenge prevailing views on the way in which apocalyptic concerns contributed to larger processes of social change at the first millennium. Several basic questions unify the essays: What chronological and theological assumptions underlay apocalyptic and millennial speculations around the Year 1000? How broadly disseminated were those speculations? Can we speak of a mentality of apocalyptic hopes and anxieties on the eve of the millennium? If so, how did authorities respond to or even contribute to the formation of this mentality? What were the social ramifications of apocalyptic hopes and anxieties, and of any efforts to suppress or redirect the more radical impulses that bred them? How did contemporaries conceptualize and then historicize the passing of the millennial date of 1000? Including the work of British, French, German, Dutch, and American scholars, this book will be the definitive resource on this fascinating topic, and should at the same time provoke new interest in and debate on the nature and causes of social change in early medieval Europe.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The collection is a first-rate guide to the state of the question and would well suit undergraduate and graduate courses on historiography and methodology." --Catholic Historical Review

About the Author

Richard Landes is at Boston University. Andrew Gow is at University of Alberta.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (June 5, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195161629
• ISBN-13: 978-0195161625
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,218,847 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Richard Landes is a professor of medieval history at BU. His work focuses on the role of religion in shaping and transforming the relationships between elites and commoners in various cultures, in particular the impact of "demotic religiosity" which prizes equality before the law, dignity of manual labor, and access to sacred texts and divinity for all believers.

In addition to Heaven on Earth, he has co-edited a volume on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion with Steven Katz: The Paranoid Apocalypse: A Hundred Year Retrospective on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, for which he wrote three chapters.

From 1996-2003, he directed the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University.

Following the publication of Heaven on Earth, he is currently completing the book he set aside in order to write Heaven on Earth, that is, a study of the role of millennialism in the shaping of the first thousand years of Christian history: While God Tarried: Disappointed Millennialism from Jesus to the Peace of God, 33-1033. This year he is a visiting fellow at the International Consortium for Research in the Humanities at Alexander University in Erlangen, Germany.

He has written and lectured widely on millennialism, especially in the medieval period, and more recently on the role of communications technology - from the invention of writing to modern media - in shaping public awareness and discussion, and, in some cases, in establishing and maintaining civil society. His work on the apocalyptic currents that built up during the approach to 2000 has led him to focus on Global Jihad as a) an apocalyptic millennial movement; and b) a new religious movement whose relationship to the internet may parallel that of Protestantism to printing.

In 2005 he launched a media-oversight project called The Second Draft in which he proposes to look at what the news media calls their "first draft of history." Since January 2005 he has been blogging at The Augean Stables, a name chosen to describe the current condition of the Mainstream Media in the West. When he has completed his book on medieval history he plans to write a Medievalist's Guide to the 21st Century.