Medieval History
Lots of talk about endings recently. I talked about the end of The Sopranos and the end of Charlemagne. Euromad used the end of his time in Rome to riff on the end of both The Sopranos and Veronica Mars (a show, I'll admit, I never watched). And now comes new revelations (pun intended) that Sir Isaac Newton, that "discoverer" of gravity, examined the biblical Book of Daniel to figure out that the world would end no earlier than 2060 CE.
The article's absolutely fascinating. Not so much for the fact that Newton cared about the Book of Revelations or the coming Apocalypse or anything like that, but rather because he took such a common, ancient/medieval line in trying to do so.
And here we are, doing similar things 300+ years after Newton. Remember Y2K? Remember 9/11? Why the modern Christian evangelical interest in supporting the state of Israel? That's right, the end is coming soon. Not right now but sometime soon. Fasten your seatbelts.
- Conference On ?alchemy And Medicine From Antiquity To The Enlightenment? Taking Place At University Of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is hosting an international conference ? Alchemy and Medicine from Antiquity to the Enlightenment ? which will include over 25 papes ranging from the ancient Greeks to the alchemical remedies of the fifteenth-century English...
- The ?mad? Egyptian Scholar Who Proved Aristotle Wrong
Ibn al-Haytham?s 11th-century Book of Optics, which was published exactly 1000 years ago, is often cited alongside Newton?s Principia as one of the most influential books in physics. Yet very little is known about the writer, considered by many to be...
- University Of Cambridge To Create Digital Library For The 21st Century
Cambridge University Library has announced visionary plans to become a digital library for the world - following a £1.5m lead gift pledged by Dr Leonard Polonsky. Home to more than seven million books and some of the greatest collections in existence,...
- Carolus Redivivus: He's Baaaack...
I have just now been informed (by Jeff Sypeck) that Charlemagne may be coming back. Like, soon. This is a subject of which I'm somewhat familiar, having written a blog post on this subject comparing Charles & Tony Soprano, edited a book about...
- Tony, Meet Chuck
Tony Soprano, please meet Charles -- also known as Charlemagne (or Karl der Grosse, if you're German). Tony looks unimpressed... If you live in the US, and unless you've been living under a rock lately, you know that the last episode of HBO's...
Medieval History
Postponing the End
Lots of talk about endings recently. I talked about the end of The Sopranos and the end of Charlemagne. Euromad used the end of his time in Rome to riff on the end of both The Sopranos and Veronica Mars (a show, I'll admit, I never watched). And now comes new revelations (pun intended) that Sir Isaac Newton, that "discoverer" of gravity, examined the biblical Book of Daniel to figure out that the world would end no earlier than 2060 CE.The article's absolutely fascinating. Not so much for the fact that Newton cared about the Book of Revelations or the coming Apocalypse or anything like that, but rather because he took such a common, ancient/medieval line in trying to do so.
In one manuscript from the early 1700s, Newton used the cryptic Book of Daniel to calculate the date for the apocalypse, reaching the conclusion that the world would end no earlier than 2060.Postponing the end. Not saying that the end won't come (because you really can't do that in a Christian cosmography) but saying that it's a ways off -- not too far, but far enough that you don't really have to worry about it. Richard Landes has a fascinating article on this pattern of postponement in the early Middle Ages, as biblical exegetes would periodically reinterpret the age of the world so that the year 6000 AM (annus mundi) wouldn't be too close (Richard Landes, ?Lest the Millennium Be Fulfilled: Apocalyptic Expectations and the Pattern of Western Chronography, 100?800 C.E.,? in Werner Verbeke, Daniel Verhelst, and Andries Welkenhuysen (eds.), The Use and Abuse of Eschatology in the Middle Ages (Leuven, 1988), pp. 137?211). One was never able to categorically reject the nearness of the Apocalypse, but these medieval scholars would postpone it just enough so that popular concern might be abated, at least for a while. And here Newton is, doing the same thing 1000 years later."It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner," Newton wrote. However, he added, "This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail." [my emphasis]
And here we are, doing similar things 300+ years after Newton. Remember Y2K? Remember 9/11? Why the modern Christian evangelical interest in supporting the state of Israel? That's right, the end is coming soon. Not right now but sometime soon. Fasten your seatbelts.
- Conference On ?alchemy And Medicine From Antiquity To The Enlightenment? Taking Place At University Of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is hosting an international conference ? Alchemy and Medicine from Antiquity to the Enlightenment ? which will include over 25 papes ranging from the ancient Greeks to the alchemical remedies of the fifteenth-century English...
- The ?mad? Egyptian Scholar Who Proved Aristotle Wrong
Ibn al-Haytham?s 11th-century Book of Optics, which was published exactly 1000 years ago, is often cited alongside Newton?s Principia as one of the most influential books in physics. Yet very little is known about the writer, considered by many to be...
- University Of Cambridge To Create Digital Library For The 21st Century
Cambridge University Library has announced visionary plans to become a digital library for the world - following a £1.5m lead gift pledged by Dr Leonard Polonsky. Home to more than seven million books and some of the greatest collections in existence,...
- Carolus Redivivus: He's Baaaack...
I have just now been informed (by Jeff Sypeck) that Charlemagne may be coming back. Like, soon. This is a subject of which I'm somewhat familiar, having written a blog post on this subject comparing Charles & Tony Soprano, edited a book about...
- Tony, Meet Chuck
Tony Soprano, please meet Charles -- also known as Charlemagne (or Karl der Grosse, if you're German). Tony looks unimpressed... If you live in the US, and unless you've been living under a rock lately, you know that the last episode of HBO's...