Prophecy, Alchemy, and the End of Time: John of Rupescissa in the Late Middle Ages

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Leah DeVun (Assistant Professor, Rutgers University)

Prophecy, Alchemy, and the End of Time

John of Rupescissa in the Late Middle Ages

Leah DeVun (Assistant Professor, Rutgers University)

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English

Columbia University Press
28 January 2014

Christianity; Magic, alchemy & hermetic thought

In the middle of the fourteenth century, the Franciscan friar John of Rupescissa sent a dramatic warning to his followers: the last days were coming; the apocalypse was near. Deemed insane by the Christian church, Rupescissa had spent more than a decade confined to prisons-in one case wrapped in chains and locked under a staircase-yet ill treatment could not silence the friar's apocalyptic message.

Religious figures who preached the end times were hardly rare in the late Middle Ages, but Rupescissa's teachings were unique. He claimed that knowledge of the natural world, and alchemy in particular, could act as a defense against the plagues and wars of the last days. His melding of apocalyptic prophecy and quasi-scientific inquiry gave rise to a new genre of alchemical writing and a novel cosmology of heaven and earth. Most important, the friar's research represented a remarkable convergence between science and religion.

In order to understand scientific knowledge today, Leah DeVun asks that we revisit Rupescissa's life and the critical events of his age-the Black Death, the Hundred Years' War, the Avignon Papacy-through his eyes. Rupescissa treated alchemy as medicine (his work was the conceptual forerunner of pharmacology) and represented the emerging technologies and views that sought to combat famine, plague, religious persecution, and war. The advances he pioneered, along with the exciting strides made by his contemporaries, shed critical light on later developments in medicine, pharmacology, and chemistry.

By: Leah DeVun (Assistant Professor Rutgers University)
Imprint: Columbia University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 18mm
Weight: 368g
ISBN: 9780231145398
ISBN 10: 023114539X
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 28 January 2014
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Leah DeVun is associate professor of history at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on the history of the human body in premodern Europe and the legacy of that history in the modern world. Her published work centers on issues of gender and technology.

Reviews for Prophecy, Alchemy, and the End of Time: John of Rupescissa in the Late Middle Ages

DeVun's book is well-constructed, thoroughly documented, instructive, and very useful. -- Chara Crisciani American Historical Review [H]ighly readable text, amply supported by some fifty pages of endnotes, a bibliography, and a usefully compiled index, Leah DeVun has produced an original and valuable book. -- Stanton J. Linden, Washington State University SPECULUM This book offers the reader a tour of one of the more peculiar corners of medieval thought, a corner defined by the intersection of three enterprises: Spiritual Franciscanism, Joachite apocalypticism, and alchemical speculation. -- David E. Timmer Church History DeVun has written a splendid book about medieval alchemy and apocalyptic prophecy that is truly a pleasure to read. Prophecy, Alchemy, and the End of Time will be an essential item for anyone hoping to understand the history of science and religion in the later Middle Ages. -- Laura Ackerman Smoller Medievalia et Humanistica An excellent study... not only for its careful description of an underappreciated figure, but also because of the important theoretical contributions [DeVun] makes to a more holistic approach to our understanding of the history of science and to late medieval culture. -- Gregory J. Miller H-German