Last Things

by Bynum, Caroline Walker; Freedman, Paul;

13. Backman, “Reception,” 118, nn. 16–17.

  14. Expositio in Apocalypsi, prologue:

  “Pertransibunt plurimi et multiplex erit scientia.” Quamvis hoc dictum commune sit toti scripturae sacrae, quia tamen angelus qui dixit hoc Danieli tunc eum alloquebatur super intellectu visionis cuiusdam, idcirco specialius convenit eloquiis visionum: per omnia quidem eloquia sacra transierunt et adhuc transeunt, passibus meditationis et studii, multi expositores, et multiplicius exponunt secundum rationem scientiae mysticae sive spiritualis aut litteralis, sicut plenarie declaratur, ex his quae iam tradita sunt, in regulis expositionis eorum.

  Sed, in eloquiis visionum, expositorum scientia multiplicius variatur, quoniam in illis valde occulta sunt ea quae proponuntur, ubi sunt eventus ignoti, vel quia iamdiu praeteriti, vel quia sunt omnino futuri; rursum etiam quoniam exprimuntur per figuras profundorum aenigmatum, quia per nomina rerum habentium quamplures proprietates et magna ex parte communiter ignotas etiam sapientibus; est etiam una de causis praedictae multiplicitatis diversitas finis vel intentionis, propter quam auctor visionum dictarum, scilicet Deus, dat intellectum earum: ipse enim qui claudit et aperit quando et quantum vult.

  15. Ibid.:

  Quandoque dat intellectum visionum ad certitudinem habendam de illis eventibus, quos praenuntiat per easdem; et hoc regulariter facit illo Ecclesiae tempore, quo scit expedire suis electis quod certam habeant illorum notitiam, et tunc principalem sensum aperit visionis cuiusque. . . . Cum autem Deus aperit intellectum visionum ad exercitium supradictum, tunc expositores ducit magis per sensus accessorios quam per principalem, praecise cum nondum advenit tempus in quo principalis debeat aperiri. Qualiter autem sensus principalis ab accessoriis discernatur, declaratum est sufficienter in regulis.

  16. Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).

  17. Backman, “Reception,” 122–23, 126.

  18. Paul Diepgen, Die Theologie und der ärtzliche Stand (Berlin: Rothschild Verlag, 1922), and Jacques LeGoff, “Body and Ideology in the Medieval West,” in his The Medieval Imagination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 83–85 give general background. On the Jewish tradition, see Joseph Shatzmiller, Jews, Medicine, and Medieval Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), and Gerrit Bos, “R. Moshe Narboni—Philosopher and Physician: A Critical Analysis of Sefer Orah Hayyim” Medieval Encounters 1 (1995): 219–51. On the Christian and Galenic traditions, see David L. D’Avray, “Some Franciscan Ideas About the Body,” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 75 (1991): 343–63, and Luis García Ballester, “Soul and Body: Diseases of the Soul and Diseases of the Body in Galen’s Medical Thought,” in Le opere psicologiche di Galeno, ed. Paola Manuli and Mario Vegetti (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1988), pp. 117–52.

  19. Alós Moner, “Collecció,” doc. 20.

  20. Finke, Aus den Tagen Bonifaz VIII, clxxvii–cxcii.

  21. The text appears in the collection of Arnau’s writings compiled at Montpellier in 1305. See Vatican City, Vat. lat. 3824, fol. 226–30.

  Of Earthquakes, Hail, Frogs, and Geography: Plague and the Investigation of the Apocalypse in the Later Middle Ages

  I am indebted to the careful readings and suggestions of Philippe Buc, Thomas Kaiser, Maureen Miller, Amy Remensnyder, and Bruce Smoller.

  1. Heinrich von Hervordia, Liber de rebus memorabilioribus sive chronicon Henrici de Hervordia, ed. August Potthast (Göttingen: Dieterich, 1859), 268–69: “Tricesimo primo anno Lodewici in conversione Pauli [January 25] et circa fuit terremotus in Carinthya tota et Cornicula, sevus in tantum, quod quilibet de vita desperavit. . . . Hec ex littera conventus Frisacensis ad priorem provincialem Theutonie. Item in eadem dicitur, quod hoc anno ignis de celo cadens terram Turchorum ad 16 dietas consumpsit. Item hoc anno pluit aliquot diebus bufones et serpentes. De quibus multi homines perierunt. Item hiis temporibus pestilentia jam invaluit in multis partibus mundi.” Portions of Heinrich’s descriptions of the plague are translated in Rosemary Horrox, The Black Death, Manchester Medieval Sources Series (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), 127–30, 150–53.

  2. Annales Austriae, continuatio novimontensis, ed. D. Wilhelmus Wattenbach, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptorum 9 (Hanover: Hahn, 1851), 674 (version in column 1, Codex episcopalis):

  In die conversionis beati Pauli universalis terremotus hora vesparum emersit, sed in aliquibus locis vehementior ac crudelior, quemadmodum in Villaco [Villach, in Carinthia] evidentius est ostensum. . . . Item eodem anno infinita disturbia in diversis regionibus apparuerunt, quemadmodum principaliter orta fuit seva pestilentia ultra in partibus orientalibus, et per diversos effectus immanissime omnes ibidem interficiebat, ex maligna impressione superiorum causa efficiente. Nam sicut ex relatione veridica didicimus, homines et iumenta in illis temporibus quemadmodum erant in labore et loco qualicunque constituti, per validam aeris corruptionem in lapides transmutati sunt.

  There is an English translation in Horrox, Black Death, 59–61, but she translates the version from the Codex novimontensis, p. 674, col. 2. The only significant differences here are that the Codex novimontensis has “in partibus transmarinis” for “in partibus orientalibus” and “ita in lapides transmutabantur” for “in lapides transmutati sunt.”

  3. Continuatio novimontensis, 674, col. 1:

  Insuper in partibus ubi cinciber nascitur, letalis pluvia roravit, mixta cum serpentibus pestiferis et vermibus diversis, cunctosque super quos inundavit, penitus extinxit. Non longe etiam ab illa regione accidit, quod terribilis ignis de celo fulminavit, et cuncta que erant in superficie terre consumpsit; lapides vero virtute illius ignis ita ardebant, ac si naturaliter in arida ligna fuissent transmutati; fumus etiam inde procedens fuit valde contagiosus, ita ut mercatores ipsum a longe intuentes continuo inficerentur, nonnulli etiam ex eis ibidem finierunt vitam. Qui autem fortuitu evaserunt, pestilentiam quam arripuerant, secum deportaverunt; et cuncta loca ad que cum mercimoniis applicuerunt, quemadmodum in Greciam, Italiam, Romam, infecerunt, et vicinas regiones per quas transierunt.

  4. Breve Chronicon clerici anonymi ex MS Bibliotheca Regiae Bruxellis, in J.-J.de Smet, ed., Recueil des chroniques de Flandre/Corpus chronicorum flandriae (Brussels:Hayez, 1856), 3: 14:

  Eodem anno [1347], in mense septembri, incepit quaedam et maxima mortalitas et pestilentia, ut vidi in transcripto literarum cantoris et canonici Sancti Donatiani [namely, Louis Heyligen] contineri, qui eo tempore in curia Romana cum cardinali domino suo consistebat, quas literas sociis suis Brugis pro novis et trementibus transmiserat: videlicet quod circa Yndiam majorem in orientalibus partibus in quadam provincia terribilia quedam et tempestates inaudite totam illam provinciam tribus diebus oppressam tenuerunt. Primo quidem die ranas pluit, serpentes, lacertos, scorpiones et multa hujus generis venenatorum animalium; secundo vero die audita sunt tonitrua, et ceciderunt fulgura et choruscationes mixte cum grandinibus mire magnitudinis super terram, que occiderunt quasi omnes homines, a majori usque ad minimum; tercio die descendit ignis fetido fumo de celo, qui totum residuum hominum et animalium consumpsit, et omnes civitates et castra illarum partium combussit. Ex quibus tempestatibus tota illa provincia est infecta, et conjecturatur quod ex infectione illa, per fetidum flatum venti ex parte plage meridionalis venientis, totum litus maris et omnes vicine terre infecte sunt, et semper de die in diem plus inficiuntur, et jam venit circa partes marinas, voluntate Dei, per hunc modum, ut quidam suspicantur.

  This letter also is translated in Horrox, 41–45, who identifies its author.

  5. There has been surprisingly little written about the apocalyptic interpretation of the plague. Many modern authors note that people living in the fourteenth century viewed the plague as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, but do not add much beyond that observation. For example, Robert S. Gottfried notes that “The Black Death was an ideal spur to millenarianism, and several natural disasters that occurred in 1348, including a number of earthquakes, seemed to provide physical evidence of
the demise of the world.” The Black Death: Natural and Human Disaster in Medieval Europe (New York: Free Press, 1983), 72. He devotes less than one paragraph to millennial movements and beliefs attendant on the plague, however. Plague figures not at all in Marjorie Reeves’s magisterial The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969; rep. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993). Robert E. Lerner’s work poses one significant exception to this rule. In an article devoted specifically to the plague’s impact on European eschatology, Lerner argues that plague did little to change ideas about the apocalypse (as, say, the rise of papal monarchy had done), but rather fourteenth-century Europeans readily fit the plague into preexisting apocalyptic scenarios. Lerner discusses several ways in which apocalyptic prophecies were retooled to provide an explanation of plague in his “The Black Death and Western European Eschatological Mentalities,” American Historical Review 86 (1981): 533–52; see also his The Powers of Prophecy: The Cedar of Lebanon Vision from the Mongol Onslaught to the Dawn of the Enlightenment (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 114–22. See also Faye Marie Getz, “Black Death and the Silver Lining: Meaning, Continuity, and Revolutionary Change in Histories of Medieval Plague,” Journal of the History of Biology 24 (1991): 265–89, esp. 267–74. Getz offers a brief analysis of the apocalyptic slant of several plague chronicles.

  6. For a discussion of geography as conquest and possession, specifically within a medieval context, see Sylvia Tomasch and Sealy Gilles, eds., Text and Territory: Geographical Imagination in the European Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), especially Sylvia Tomasch, “Introduction: Medieval Geographical Desire,”1–12.

  7. The text appears in Robert Hoeniger, Der schwarze Tod in Deutschland: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des vierzehnten Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Eugen Grosser, 1882; rep. Wiesbaden: Martin Sändig, 1973), 155: “Coniunctiones enim et alie causa predicte partes istas [the south and the east] plus quam nostras respexerunt. Ista tamen cum indiciis [iudiciis?] astrologorum secundum dictum ptolemei inter necessarium et possibile sunt reponenda amplius quia uise fuerunt exalationes et inflammationes quam plurime, velut draco et sydera volantia.” (Hereafter cited as Opinion of the Paris Medical Faculty.) There is an English translation in Horrox, Black Death, 158–63.

  8. See Sylvia Tomasch, “Medieval Geographical Desire.”

  9. There is an enormous body of literature on the marvels of the east. See, e.g., John Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981); Mary B. Campbell, The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400–1600 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988); Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, Fines Terrae: Die Enden der Erde und der vierte Kontinent auf mittelalterlichen Weltkarten, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Schriften, 36 (Hanover: Hahn, 1992); and Iain Higgins, Writing East: The Fourteenth-Century “Travels” of Sir John Mandeville (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997). By the thirteenth century the marvels of the east were being naturalized in the writings of authors like Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon, who attributed the diversity of species and races in the east to the different influence of the stars on differing regions of the earth. See Katharine Park, “The Meanings of Natural Diversity: Marco Polo on the ‘Division’ of the World,” in Edith Sylla and Michael McVaugh, eds., Texts and Contexts in Ancient and Medieval Science: Studies on the Occasion of John E. Murdoch’s Seventieth Birthday (Leiden: Brill, 1997), esp. 140–43. Since I completed this chapter, there has also appeared Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750 (New York: Zone Books, 1998).

  10. For a discussion outside the mappaemundi of the far from universal medieval notion of Jerusalem as the world’s center, see Iain Macleod Higgins, “Defining the Earth’s Center in a Medieval ‘Multi-Text’: Jerusalem in The Book of John Mandeville,” in Tomasch and Gilles, eds., Text and Territory, 29–53. On the mappaemundi, see David Woodward, “Medieval Mappaemundi,” in J. B. Harley and David Woodward, eds., The History of Cartography, vol. 1, Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 286–370.

  11. M. C. Seymour, ed., Mandeville’s Travels (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 83.

  12. See Seymour, Mandeville’s Travels, ch. 13, 80–81. Adso Dervensis, De Ortu et tempore Antichristi necnon et tractatus qui ab eo dependunt, ed. D. Verhelst, Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis 45 (Turnholt: Brepols, 1976), 24. An English translation appears in John Wright, trans., The Play of Antichrist (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1967), 100–110. On medieval Antichrist lore in general see Richard Kenneth Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages: A Study of Medieval Apocalypticism, Art, and Literature (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981); and Bernard McGinn, Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil (San Francisco: Harper, 1994).

  13. Quoting from Robert Lerner’s composite edition of the prophecy as re-dated for 1347, ed. in Lerner, Powers of Prophecy, 226–31. Lerner’s book remains the fundamental study of this prophecy.

  14. On the expectation of this universal conversion and its relationship to geography, see Jacques Chocheyras, “Fin des terres et fin des temps d’Hésychius (Ve siècle) à Béatus (VIIIe siècle),” in Werner Verbeke, Daniel Verhelst, and Andries Welkenhuysen, eds., The Use and Abuse of Eschatology in the Middle Ages, Mediaevalia Lovaniensia, series 1, 15 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1988), 72–81; and Pauline Moffitt Watts, “Prophecy and Discovery: On the Spiritual Origins of Christopher Columbus’s ‘Enterprise of the Indies,’ ” American Historical Review 90 (1985): 73–102.

  15. “Tunc passagium erit commune ab omnibus fidelibus ultra aquas congregatas ad terram sanctam, et vincentur. Et civitas Ierusalem glorificabitur, et sepulcrum Domini ab omnibus honorabitur” (ed. in Lerner, Powers of Prophecy, 230). There were some apocalyptic expectations centering on Rome as well, reflected, for example, in the belief in a final angelic pope and a papal Antichrist. See Bernard McGinn, “Angel Pope and Papal Antichrist,” Church History 47 (1978): 155–73.

  16. Hugh of St. Victor, De area Noe morali, 4:9, in J.-P. Migne, ed., Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina (Paris: Garnier Fratres, 1854), 176, col. 677:

  Ordo autem loci, et ordo temporis fere per omnia secundum rerum gestarum seriem concurrere videntur, et ita per divinam providentiam videtur esse dispositum, ut quae in principio temporum gerebantur in Oriente, quasi in principio mundi gererentur, ac deinde ad finem profluente tempore usque ad Occidentem rerum summa descenderet, ut ex ipso agnoscamus appropinquare finem saeculi, quia rerum cursus jam attigit finem mundi.

  The Cedar of Lebanon vision is an example of a prophecy that was retooled to place the fall of Acre within an apocalyptic scenario. See Lerner, Powers of Prophecy, 622–83.

  17. See Iain Higgins, “Imagining Christendom from Jerusalem to Paradise: Asia in Mandeville’s Travels,” in Scott D. Westrem, ed., Discovering New Worlds: Essays on Medieval Exploration and Imagination (New York: Garland, 1991), 91–114.

  18. Henry Knighton, Chronicon Henrici Knighton vel Cnitthon Monachi Leycestrensis, ed. Joseph Rawson Lumby, 2 vols., Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores, Rolls Series (hereafter Rolls Series) 92 (London: HMSO, 1895), 2: 58–59:

  Isto anno et anno sequenti [1348–49] erat generalis mortalitas hominum in universo mundo. Et primo incepit in India, deinde in Tharsis, deinde ad Saracenos, postremo ad Christianos et Judaeos. . . . Rex Tharsis videns tam subitam et inauditam stragem suorum, iter arripuit cum multitudine copiosa nobilium versus Avinoniam ad papam disponens se Christianum fieri et baptizari a papa, credens vindictam dei populum suum enervasse propter eorum malam incredulitatem. Igitur cum fecisset viginti dietas itinerando audivit quod lues mortaliter invaluit inter Christianos sicut inter alias nationes, verso calle ultra non progreditur in illo itinere, sed repatriare festinavit. />
  Thus for Knighton the potential convert is the king of Tharsis, the second place the plague strikes. For the Meaux abbey chronicler, it is the “Saracens” in whom the plague begins and who send messengers to Christendom to initiate their conversion to Christianity. Chronica Monasterii de Melsa, a fundatione usque ad annum 1396, auctore Thoma de Burton, abbate: accedit continuatio ad annum 1406 a monacho quodam ipsius domus, ed. Edward A. Bond, 3 vols., Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores (Rolls Series), 43 (London: Longmans, 1868), 3:40:

  De ipsa autem pestilentia fertur, quod primo in Saracenismo nimium ingruebat. Unde Sarraceni residui adhuc superstites, sperantes vindictam Dei in eos propter fidem Christi non assumptam exarsisse, in Christum credere disponebant. Sed, primo missis nuntiis in Christianismum ad indagandum si dicta pestilentia ibidem sicut et inter ipsos inolevit, et ipsis regressis et pestilentiam generalem in Christianismo sicut et in Saracenismo renuntiantibus, in Christum credere iterum contemnebant.

  (The story is repeated on p. 68.) There are translated excerpts from both chronicles in Horrox, Black Death, 75–80 (Henry Knighton) and 67–70 (Meaux).

  19. Roger Bacon, The “Opus Majus” of Roger Bacon, ed. John Henry Bridges,2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1897), 1: 303:

  Quando igitur hae nationes inclusae in locis certis mundi exibunt in desolationem regionem et obviabunt Antichristo, multum deberent Christiani et maxime ecclesia Romana considerare situm locorum, ut posset percipere hujusmodi gentium feritatem et per eos percipere tempus Antichristi, et originem; nam debent obedire ei: ergo si illi ex una parte mundi veniant, ipse ex contraria procedet.

  20. See Andrew Runni Anderson, Alexander’s Gate, Gog and Magog, and the Inclosed Nations (Cambridge, Mass.: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1932); Vincent DiMarco, “The Amazons and the End of the World,” in Westrem, ed., Discovering New Worlds, 69–90; Scott D. Westrem, “Against Gog and Magog,” in Tomasch and Gilles, eds., Text and Territory, 54–75 and Andrew Colin Gow, The Red Jews: Antisemitism in an Apocalyptic Age, 1200–1600, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought 55 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995), 37–53, 65–89.