The end of the millennium has always held the world in fear of earthquakes, plague, and the catastrophic destruction of the world. At the dawn of the 21st millennium the world is still experiencing these anxieties, as seen by the onslaught of fantasies of renewal, doomsday predictions, and New Age prophecies. This fascinating book explores the millenarianism that flourished in western Europe between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries. Covering the full range of revolutionary and anarchic sects and movements in medieval Europe, Cohn demonstrates how prophecies of a final struggle between the hosts of Christ and Antichrist melded with the rootless poor's desire to improve their own material conditions, resulting in a flourishing of millenarian fantasies. The only overall study of medieval millenarian movements, The Pursuit of the Millennium offers an excellent interpretation of how, again and again, in situations of anxiety and unrest, traditional beliefs come to serve as vehicles for social aspirations and animosities.

This is the first book to bring together studies of a wide variety of millenarians who were active in the 17th and 18th centuries in France, The Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, and eastern Europe. It provides much food for thought for students and teachers of early modern ideas, the history of philosophy and religion, and the making of the modern world. It opens up many avenues for further work.

A King's death was a critical and highly dramatic moment, often with major political consequences. This is an account of what is known about the deaths of all medieval English kings.

From the Middle Eastern politics of Donald Trump to the UK’s 2016 EU Referendum, large numbers of Christians are making decisions based on the alleged “end-times” aspects of modern politics. Such apocalyptic views often operate beneath “the radar” of much Christian thought and expression. In this book, historian Martyn Whittock argues that while the New Testament does indeed teach the second coming of Christ, complications occur when Christians seek to confidently identify contemporary events as fulfilments of prophecy. Such believers are usually unaware that they stand in a long line of such well-intended but failed predictions. In this book, Whittock explores the history of end-times speculations over two thousand years, revealing how these often reflect the ideologies and outlooks of contemporary society in their application of Scripture. When Christians ignore such past mistakes, they are in danger of repeating them. Jesus, Whittock argues, taught a different way.

The only book of its kind, The New Inquisitions is an exhilarating investigation into the intellectual origins of totalitarianism. Arthur Versluis unveils the connections between heretic hunting in early and medieval Christianity, and the emergence of totalitarianism in the twentieth century. He shows how secular political thinkers in the nineteenth century inaugurated a tradition of defending the Inquisition, and how Inquisition-style heretic-hunting later manifested across the spectrum of twentieth-century totalitarianism. An exceptionally wide-ranging work, The New Inquisitions begins with early Christianity, and traces heretic-hunting as a phenomenon through the middle ages and right into the twentieth century, showing how the same inquisitional modes of thought recur both on the political Left and on the political Right.

This is a study of millennialism - the idea that something climactic will happen in the year 2000 - in Latin America, from the pre-Columbian period up to the present.

How will the world end? Doomsday ideas in Western history have been both persistent and adaptable, peaking at various times, including in modern America. Public opinion polls indicate that a substantial number of Americans look for the return of Christ or some catastrophic event. The views expressed in these polls have been reinforced by the market process. Whether through purchasing paperbacks or watching television programs, millions of Americans have expressed an interest in end-time events. Americans have a tremendous appetite for prophecy, more than nearly any other people in the modern world. Why do Americans love doomsday?In Apocalyptic Fever, Richard Kyle attempts to answer this question, showing how dispensational premillennialism has been the driving force behind doomsday ideas. Yet while several chapters are devoted to this topic, this book covers much more. It surveys end-time views in modern America from a wide range of perspectives--dispensationalism, Catholicism, science, fringe religions, the occult, fiction, the year 2000, Islam, politics, the Mayan calendar, and more.

This groundbreaking book reexamines the Taiping and the Tonghak movements in 19th-century Asia. Providing an understanding of the movements as an expression, in part, of deeply rooted Asian spiritual ideas, the work also offers historical and philosophical reflections on what studies of Asian millenarianism can contribute to the comparative study of millenarianism.

What is the future of languages in an increasingly globalized world? Are we moving toward the use of a single language for global communication, or are there ways of managing language diversity at the international level? Can we, or should we, maintain a balance between the global need to communicate and the maintenance of local and regional identities and cultures? What is the role of education, of language rights, of language equality in this volatile global linguistic mix? A group of leading scholars in sociolinguistics and language policy examines trends in language use across the world to find answers to these questions and to make predictions about likely outcomes. Highlighted in the discussion are, among other issues, the rapidly changing role of English, the equally rapid decline and death of small languages, the future of the major European languages, the international use of constructed languages like Esperanto, and, not least, the question of what role applied scholarship can and should play in mapping and influencing the future.