Cultures of Eschatology: Volume 1: Empires and Scriptural Authorities in Medieval Christian, Islamic and Buddhist Communities. Volume 2: Time, Death and Afterlife in Medieval Christian, Islamic and Buddhist Communities

In all religions, in the medieval West as in the East, ideas about the past, the present and the future were shaped by expectations related to the End. The volumes Cultures of Eschatology explore the many ways apocalyptic thought and visions of the end intersected with the development of pre-modern religio-political communities, with social changes and with the emergence of new intellectual and literary traditions. The two volumes present a wide variety of case studies from the early Christian communities of Antiquity, through the times of the Islamic invasion and the Crusades and up to modern receptions, from the Latin West to the Byzantine Empire, from South Yemen to the Hidden Lands of Tibetan Buddhism. Examining apocalypticism, messianism and eschatology in medieval Christian, Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist communities, the contributions paint a multi-faceted picture of End-Time scenarios and provide their readers with a broad array of source material from different historical contexts. The first volume, Empires and Scriptural Authorities, examines the formation of literary and visual apocalyptic traditions, and the role they played as vehicles for defining a community's religious and political enemies. The second volume, Time, Death and Afterlife, focuses on key topics of eschatology: death, judgment, afterlife and the perception of time and its end. It also analyses modern readings and interpretations of eschatological concepts.

Cultures of Eschatology --; Frontmatter --; Contents --; Preface and Acknowledgements --; Notes on Contributors, volume 1 --; Notes on Contributors, volume 2 --; Cultures of Eschatology, volume 1. Empires and Scriptural Authorities in Medieval Christian, Islamic and Buddhist Communities --; Introduction: Approaches to Medieval Cultures of Eschatology --; Literary and Visual Traditions --; Making Ends Meet: Western Eschatologies, or the Future of a Society (9th-12th Centuries). Addition of Individual Projects, or Collective Construction of a Radiant Dawn? --; Apocalyptic Literature - A Never-Ending Story --; "When the Sun is Shrouded in Darkness and the Stars are Dimmed" (Qurʾan 81:1-2). Imagery, Rhetoric and Doctrinal Instruction in Muslim Apocalyptic Literature --; Volatile Images: The Empty Throne and its Place in the Byzantine Last Judgment Iconography --; Appendix --; On some Buddhist Uses of the kaliyuga --; Scriptural Traditions and their Reinterpretations --; Choices - The Use of Textual Authorities in the Revelation of John --; Manichaean Eschatology: Gnostic-Christian Thinking about Last Things --; The Third Latin Recension of the Revelationes of Pseudo-Methodius - Introduction and Edition --; Appendix: Cinzia Grifoni, cur., Pseudo-Methodius' Revelationes in the so-called Third Latin Recension --; Eschatological Relativity. On the Scriptural Undermining of Apocalypses in Jewish Second Temple, Late Antique and Medieval Receptions of the Book of Watchers --; Empires and Last Days 1 --; Eschatologies of the Sword, Compared: Latin Christianity, Islam(s), and Japanese Buddhism --; The Portents of the Hour: Eschatology and Empire in the Early Islamic Tradition --; The History of Ibn Ḥabīb: al-Andalus in the Last Days --; Apocalyptic Insiders? Identity and Heresy in Early Medieval Iberia and Francia --; Apocalyptic Cosmologies and End Time Actors --; Treasure Texts on the Age of Decline: Prophecies Concerning the Hidden Land of Yolmo, their Reception and Impact --; Gog and Magog Crossing Borders: Biblical, Christian and Islamic Imaginings --; Zaydī Theology Popularised: A Hailstorm Hitting the Heterodox --; Political Propheticism. John of Rupescissa's Figure of the End Times Emperor and its Evolution --; Cultures of Eschatology, volume 2. Time, Death and Afterlife in Medieval Christian, Islamic and Buddhist Communities --; Death and Last Judgment --; Death and Eschatological Beliefs in the Lives of the Prophets according to Islam --; Scattered Bones and Miracles - The Cult of Saints, the Resurrection of the Body and Eschatological Thought in the Works of Gregory of Tours --; Arguing for Improvement: The Last Judgment, Time and the Future in Dhuoda's Liber manualis --; Death and Pollution as a Common Matrix of Japanese Buddhism and Shintō --; Afterlife and Otherworld Empires --; Apocalypse Now? Body, Soul and Judgment in the Christianisation of the Anglo-Saxons --; The Evolution of the Buddhist Otherworld Empire in Early Medieval China --; Space and Power in Byzantine Accounts of the Aerial Tollhouses --; The End of the End: Devotion as an Antidote to Hell --; Empires and Last Days 2 --; The Multiple Uses of an Enemy: Gog, Magog and the "Two-Horned One" --; A.D. 672 - The Apex of Apocalyptic Thought in the Early Medieval Latin West --; Exegesis, Empire and Eschatology: Reading Orosius' Histories Against the Pagans in the Carolingian World --; The Bede Goes On: Pastoral Eschatology in the Prologue to the Chronicle of Moissac (Paris BN lat. 4886) --; The Afterlife of Eschatology --; The Testament of Time - The Apocalypse of John and the recapitulatio of Time according to Giorgio Agamben --; Eschatology as Occidental Lebensform: The Case of Jacob Taubes --; History beyond the Ken: Towards a Critical Historiography of Apocalyptic Politics with Jacob Taubes and Michel Foucault --; Index --; Proper Names --; Geographical Names and Toponyms