IMC 2024: Sessions

Session 234: The End of the World as We Know It?: Representing the Apocalypse, I

Organiser:	IMC Programming Committee,
Moderator/Chair:	Jeroen Puttevils, Centrum voor Stadsgeschiedenis, Universiteit Antwerpen
Paper 234-b	Unsaddling the Horsemen: Crisis, Disaster, and Medieval Interpretations of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Language: English) Ben Hatchett, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge Index terms: Biblical Studies, Ecclesiastical History, Mentalities and Theology
Abstract	This session has been grouped by the IMC Programming Committee from individually submitted paper proposals. Paper b: The Four Horsemen of Revelation 6:1-8 are among the most familiar of apocalyptic images. Today, they are each commonly recognised as harbingers of tribulations during the End Times: pestilence (or conquest), war, famine, and death. Through an investigation of the interpretations and terminology of Apocalypse commentaries and other apocalyptic texts, I hope to demonstrate that in the Middle Ages the Horsemen were understood in a very different way to how they are now, with little resonance to medieval understandings of crisis and disaster, contrary to many modern representations - both popular and academic - of the period’s notions of catastrophe.