The Empire at the End of Time

Download or read book The Empire at the End of Time written by Frances Courtney Kneupper and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even within the sensational genre of eschatological prophecy, the prophecies of the late medieval Empire stand out as strikingly bitter and violent texts. They foresee the savage chastisement of the clergy, the murder of clerics, and the forceful restructuring of the Church. But they also infuse the apocalyptic narrative with explicitly German elements. German speakers are frequently cast as the agents of these stirring events, in which the clergy suffer tribulations and the Church hierarchy is torn down. Thus the central argument of this book is that popular German prophecies encouraged a vision of members of the Empire as the ordained reformers of Christendom at the end of time.