FRANCIS COURTNEY KNEUPPER: The Empire at the End of Time: Identity and Reform in Late Medieval German Prophecy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016; pp. xii + 259.

Abstract

<p><i>Tu terribilis es et quis resistet tibi</i>? The prophetic landscape of the later Middle Ages is an uneven terrain echoing acclamations of dread and a worried ethos about resistance. Prophecies were everywhere and eschatological predictions in the Empire were not only unexceptional but bedeviled by obscurity. A recent discovery of fifteenth-century letters at Augsburg outlining radical interpretations of the Gospels, urging ecclesiastical and social reform, along with imminent calamity, were couched in a cloud of uncertainty. A contemporary copyist commented: "Below are written words that have such an obscure meaning that neither the author is known, nor the words understood. No one can tell what they mean and some think that a great heresiarch wrote them. Made 1465." What a predicament! And Frances Courtney Kneupper tells us this is the tip of the iceberg of the untidy world of medieval prophecies that survived long tortuous lives.</p>