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  • L’Islam et la Fin des temps: L’interprétation prophétiques des invasions musulmanes dans la chrétienté médiévale
  • Daniel F. Callahan
L’Islam et la Fin des temps: L’interprétation prophétiques des invasions musulmanes dans la chrétienté médiévale. By Jean Flori. [L’Univers Historique.](Paris: Éditions du Seuil. 2007. Pp. 444. €25,00 paperback. ISBN 978-2-020-59266-6.)

Jean Flori—director of research at the Centre d’études supérieures de civilisation médiévale de Poitiers and author of a number of books on the crusades, French chivalry, and several monarchs of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—offers in his most recent work a valuable study of apocalyptic motivation behind the crusades, particularly the place of Islam in such perspectives.

To achieve his goals he divides the work into three sections. The first, the period before Mohammed, serves as a general introduction to the central importance of an apocalyptic perspective in the first six centuries of the existence of the Church. Here he distinguishes between those who espouse an absolute chronology based on the six ages of the 6000 years and the more relative view of thinkers who emphasize Christ’s words about our not knowing when he will return. The latter viewpoint is most closely associated with the dominant figure of patristic theology, St. Augustine of Hippo.

Section 2 runs from Mohammed to 1000 and separates the development of Islam in the east from that in the west. In the east it faced the eastern Roman Empire and became prominent in the Christian apocalyptic perspective, as is evident in the Pseudo-Methodius. In the west, the writings of Bede, among others, reflect the identification of Islam with the End Times, but it was in Spain, where its presence was so manifest, that it became so closely attached to the evolving Antichrist legend, as for example in the writings of Beatus of Liebana. [End Page 113]

It is the third section, about one-half of the book, that is the central part of the work, Islam, apocalypticism, and the crusades. Flori first considers the role of apocalyptics in generating the crusades in the tenth and eleventh centuries and sides with those who view the terrors of the Year 1000 as, to some extent, a reality. Eschatology appears as an important motivation in the rescuing of Jerusalem. Once the crusaders triumphed in 1099, the apocalyptic perspective changed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to reflect the threat of reconquests in the Holy Land by the Moslems. New ideas on eschatology also reflect the growing theological sophistication of the west and the changing relationship between pope and emperor. Movements such as the Franciscans and writers such as Joachim of Fiore receive much consideration for their importance to the changing eschatological concerns. Particularly fascinating is the growing tendency of some of the apocalyptic proponents to see the pope as the Antichrist, especially someone like Boniface VIII. By that point, however, the crusades were no longer so important. Chapter 20, the final chapter, is in some ways the least valuable of the book as it examines earlier apocalyptic concerns from the reality of a very different period. The work ends with a general conclusion that nicely summarizes many of the main points.

Flori has produced a work that covers so much material that the reader wishes constantly for more details on individual points or central features, such as the importance of Charlemagne as the last emperor, especially in the eleventh and twelfth centuries in the light of a work like The Song of Roland, or on his close identification with Jerusalem. So much more also could have been written about the role of the Reconquista in Spain from an apocalyptic viewpoint and the preparation of the way for the crusades. However, this book nicely recapitulates much recent scholarship on its subject and will serve as a vade mecum for works yet to come.

Daniel F. Callahan
University of Delaware
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