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John Watkins, Frances Courtney Kneupper. The Empire at the End of Time: Identity and Reform in Late Medieval German Prophecy., The American Historical Review, Volume 123, Issue 1, February 2018, Pages 294–295, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/123.1.294
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Well over a century before the Reformation, manuscripts circulating in southern Germany, especially in Franconia and Styria, prophesied a radical transformation of Christendom. God would soon pour out his wrath upon the Roman church, slaughter its simoniacal prelates, and transfer its wealth and authority to a new ecclesiastical order based in the German empire rather than Italy. Depending on the particular manuscript in question, the human agents for this reformation might be the emperor, the godly German-speaking peoples, or the citizens of particular imperial cities, especially Nuremberg or Augsburg. Even within the context of other anticlerical writings, these prophecies stand out for the savagery with which their authors imagine the pending sufferings of corrupt priests. Although not well known beyond a small circle of specialists on the late medieval empire, they deserve their own chapter in the larger history of European apocalypticism.
Frances Courtney Kneupper’s The Empire at the End of Time: Identity and Reform in Late Medieval German Prophecy is the first monograph devoted entirely to these prophecies. Kneupper’s contribution is primarily bibliographic. While a few of these prophecies, especially the one that appeared as a letter written by “Gamaleon, of the green field of the north,” are known by scholars working on the medieval empire, others are not. Most exist in unedited manuscripts. Kneupper opens the book with individual chapters on four of the most important prophecies, the Gamaleon prophecy, the Letter of Brother Sigwalt, the Auffahrt Abend prophecy, and the eschatological sections of two letters penned by Livin and Johannes Wirsberger, two brothers from Egerland who preached a radical interpretation of the Gospel and condemned contemporary clerics as false prophets. Each chapter provides a richly detailed account of the given prophecy, a consideration of its composition date and the circumstances of its circulation, and an interpretation of its content in light of contemporary social and political history. Kneupper is especially attentive to manuscript transmission, which offers us important insights into late medieval prophetic culture. Her volume includes three invaluable appendixes surveying the available manuscript sources for eschatological prophecies that originated in late medieval Upper German–speaking Europe, or at least circulated there even though they were composed in previous centuries or other regions.
