Abstract » Storchová
Prague 2009
Apocalypticism, Millenarianism, and Prophecy: Eschatological Expectations between East-Central and Western Europe, 1560–1670
Lucie STORCHOVÁ
Eschatological Discourses and Humanism at the University of Prague
In my paper I focus on how one of the most important eschatological discourses (Melanchthon´s concept of the so-called fatal periods, anni fatales) was modified by humanists at the University of Prague during the second half of the 16th century. While recent scholarly literature stresses a ‘pandemic character’ of eschatological thought after the outbreak of the Reformation, I would like to analyse how the eschatological discourses were rewritten and how they functioned in individual texts produced within the school of humanism that concentrated primarily on ‘writing in excerpts’. Historical narratives on fatal periods were mostly applied by the Prague university humanists without explicitly eschatological connotation; they became a part of a university curriculum and one of ‘rhetorical training’ topics for students as well. Fatal periods can be thus interpreted as a tool of shaping scholarly community, which also should be understood in this sense as a textual effect. They legitimised further the scholarly institution and enabled it to acquire patronage in the literary field. In the concluding part of my paper I compare university historical narratives on fatal periods with Czech vernacular humanism, where beside the vague transmission of the fatal period’s concept a rare apocalyptical vision may be thematised (in the texts by the so-called Veleslavín’s circle).
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