Prophecy, Alchemy, and the End of Days: John of Rupescissa in the Late Middle Ages by Leah DeVun (review)

REVIEWS 246 symbol of the mirror in early modern spiritual writings; she argues that Renaissance penitential views began to deemphasize the interpretation of Christ as a victim of man’s sin and focus rather on His role as a savior to sinners. João J. Vila-Chã evaluates evolving notions of love, from the Middle Ages, as exemplified by courtly love and Minne-poetry, Augustine’s notion of Caritas, Anders Nygren’s concept of Agape, and the love for the divine in Dante’s Divina Commedia, to the Renaissance, which synthesized earlier concepts of love with doctrines of Platonic love, as expressed in works by Marsilio Ficino and Leone Ebreo. Guigo Giglioni considers the shared intellectual and philosophical heritage of a Renaissance scholar, Girolamo Cardano (1501–1576), and a medieval scholar, Pietro d’Abano (1257–1317), even while Cardano dismissed much of Pietro’s astrological worldview as “not true” because, for one reason, “it presupposes demons and walking dead” which is “nonsense.” Olga Wijers concludes that during the Renaissance in Northern Europe the disputation generally transformed from a teaching and research tool employed to expose the truth to a ceremonial exercise in “defense of doctrinal convictions,” whose modern day analogue is the dissertation. This fine volume of essays will surely be enjoyed by nearly all historians of the late medieval and early modern era. DANIEL MAZE, Art History, UCLA Leah DeVun, Prophecy, Alchemy, and the End of Days: John of Rupescissa in the Late Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press 2009) viii + 255 pp. John of Rupescissa (1310–ca. 1365), a fourteenth-century Franciscan friar and visionary, proclaimed the imminent arrival of the Antichrist from his captivity in the papal prison at Avignon. More importantly, Rupescissa claimed to have developed secret alchemical remedies essential for the survival of true Christians in their battles with the Antichrist. In tracing the life and writings Rupescissa , Leah DeVun shows the power of medieval apocalyptic traditions to make sense of human struggle and to foster hope during a particularly bleak period of the Middle Ages. Along the way, DeVun reveals how late medieval Christians used naturalistic knowledge, such as medicinal alchemy, to forge an active and triumphant role for themselves during what they imagined was the End of Days. Whatever his initial offenses might have been, Rupescissa spent most of his adult life in prison. After confinements in a series of Franciscan convents, Rupescissa escaped to appeal his case to pope Clement VI in Avignon. There he defended his apocalyptic visions over the course of a year-long trial before the court rendered him “a foolish person” (fantasticus) and confined him to the papal prison for the next decade. Ironically, imprisonment in the papal jail afforded Rupescissa the opportunity to write, consult books, and disseminate his apocalyptic writings like never before. He was also allowed to see visitors, and copies of his prison writings appeared in vernacular translations within his lifetime . Although writing from a Joachite spiritual tradition, Rupescissa seems to be the first apocalyptic writer to suggest that European emperors and “Angelic Popes” would join military forces an engage in battle with the Antichrist in a REVIEWS 247 great military prelude to the millennial age. In contrast to earlier writers who spiritualized the length of the millennium, Rupescissa interpreted its duration as a literal thousand years of terrestrial paradise before the Great Judgment. Rupescissa had no reservations about correcting or denying the teachings of earlier eschatological luminaries, such as Augustine and Jerome. On the contrary, Rupescissa believed that God had granted to him and his contemporaries a clearer understanding of these imminent events because they lived closer to the end times (40). Rupescissa never claimed the title of prophet in the Old Testament sense of the word, that is, one sent by God to “say this or that to the people .” But Rupescissa claimed that God had “opened his mind” to a fuller understanding of the apocalyptic age. This “fuller understanding” revealed the new and active role Christians would play in resisting the actions of the Antichrist. In particular, Rupescissa believed that an inspired knowledge of alchemical cures would prove critical to the success of a Christian resistance to the Antichrist ’s...