St. James’ Sunday Bible Study Lectures

Apocalyptic Fervour in the Late Middle Ages

Lecture 17
Sunday April 28 2019 12:15pm. to 1:30pm.

In the last lecture, we saw how the question of the meaning of history led Joachim of Fiore to search for a way to conceive of time as a whole, and in this task, he made wide use of the Apocalypse. In this lecture, we will see that this way of thinking caused people to view themselves as participants in an ongoing apocalyptic drama. It was a way of reading Revelation that differed from the older spiritual interpretations, which had focused on the internal struggles of the individual. In the Middle Ages, we’ll see Revelation turned into a map of history, a reading that had explosive potential.