A Beautiful Ending: The Apocalyptic Imagination and the Making of the Modern World
An award-winning historian’s revisionary account of the early modern world, showing how apocalyptic ideas stimulated political, religious, and intellectual transformations
 
“A masterful synthesis of the prognostications of faith, knowledge, and politics on a global stage. Martin’s book illuminates one of the enduring themes that shaped the medieval and early modern world.”—Paula E. Findlen, Stanford University
 
In this revelatory immersion into the apocalyptic, messianic, and millenarian ideas and movements that created the modern world, John Jeffries Martin performs a kind of empathic time travel, entering into the psyche, spirituality, and temporalities of a cast of historical actors in profound moments of discovery. He argues that religious faith—Christian, Jewish, and Muslim—did not oppose but rather fostered the making of a modern scientific spirit, buoyed along by a providential view of history and nature, and a deep conviction in the coming End of the World.
 
Through thoughtful attention to the primary sources, Martin re‑reads the Renaissance, excavating a religious foundation at the core of even the most radical empirical thinking. Familiar icons like Ibn Khaldūn, Columbus, Isaac Luria, and Francis Bacon emerge startlingly fresh and newly gleaned, agents of a history formerly untold and of a modern world made in the image of its imminent end.
"1139899491"
A Beautiful Ending: The Apocalyptic Imagination and the Making of the Modern World
An award-winning historian’s revisionary account of the early modern world, showing how apocalyptic ideas stimulated political, religious, and intellectual transformations
 
“A masterful synthesis of the prognostications of faith, knowledge, and politics on a global stage. Martin’s book illuminates one of the enduring themes that shaped the medieval and early modern world.”—Paula E. Findlen, Stanford University
 
In this revelatory immersion into the apocalyptic, messianic, and millenarian ideas and movements that created the modern world, John Jeffries Martin performs a kind of empathic time travel, entering into the psyche, spirituality, and temporalities of a cast of historical actors in profound moments of discovery. He argues that religious faith—Christian, Jewish, and Muslim—did not oppose but rather fostered the making of a modern scientific spirit, buoyed along by a providential view of history and nature, and a deep conviction in the coming End of the World.
 
Through thoughtful attention to the primary sources, Martin re‑reads the Renaissance, excavating a religious foundation at the core of even the most radical empirical thinking. Familiar icons like Ibn Khaldūn, Columbus, Isaac Luria, and Francis Bacon emerge startlingly fresh and newly gleaned, agents of a history formerly untold and of a modern world made in the image of its imminent end.
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A Beautiful Ending: The Apocalyptic Imagination and the Making of the Modern World

A Beautiful Ending: The Apocalyptic Imagination and the Making of the Modern World

by John Jeffries Martin
A Beautiful Ending: The Apocalyptic Imagination and the Making of the Modern World

A Beautiful Ending: The Apocalyptic Imagination and the Making of the Modern World

by John Jeffries Martin

eBook

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Overview

An award-winning historian’s revisionary account of the early modern world, showing how apocalyptic ideas stimulated political, religious, and intellectual transformations
 
“A masterful synthesis of the prognostications of faith, knowledge, and politics on a global stage. Martin’s book illuminates one of the enduring themes that shaped the medieval and early modern world.”—Paula E. Findlen, Stanford University
 
In this revelatory immersion into the apocalyptic, messianic, and millenarian ideas and movements that created the modern world, John Jeffries Martin performs a kind of empathic time travel, entering into the psyche, spirituality, and temporalities of a cast of historical actors in profound moments of discovery. He argues that religious faith—Christian, Jewish, and Muslim—did not oppose but rather fostered the making of a modern scientific spirit, buoyed along by a providential view of history and nature, and a deep conviction in the coming End of the World.
 
Through thoughtful attention to the primary sources, Martin re‑reads the Renaissance, excavating a religious foundation at the core of even the most radical empirical thinking. Familiar icons like Ibn Khaldūn, Columbus, Isaac Luria, and Francis Bacon emerge startlingly fresh and newly gleaned, agents of a history formerly untold and of a modern world made in the image of its imminent end.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780300265446
Publisher: Yale University Press
Publication date: 04/19/2022
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 384
File size: 18 MB
Note: This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

John Jeffries Martin is professor and former chair of the Department of History at Duke University. His books include Venice’s Hidden Enemies and Myths of Renaissance Individualism. He lives in Hillsborough, NC.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 The Apocalyptic Braid 13

2 Publishing the Apocalypse 35

3 Christopher Columbus 56

4 Conquest and Utopia 75

5 The Last World Emperor 92

6 Antichrist and Reformation 112

7 "No One Knows the Hour," 133

8 Battles for God 150

9 The Spiritual Globe 169

10 Cannibals 187

11 The Restitution of All Things 206

12 Crossing the Pillars of Hercules 225

Epilogue 242

Acknowledgments 251

Notes 255

Illustration Credits 307

Index 311

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