Richard Landes - Böcker

The essays in this book challenge prevailing views on the way in which apocalyptic concerns contributed to larger processes of social change at the first millennium. Several basic questions unify the essays: What chronological and theological assumptions underlay apocalyptic and millennial speculations around the Year 1000? How broadly disseminated were those speculations? Can we speak of a mentality of apocalyptic hopes and anxieties on the eve of the millennium? If so, how did authorities respond to or even contribute to the formation of this mentality? What were the social ramifications of apocalyptic hopes and anxieties, and of any efforts to suppress or redirect the more radical impulses that bred them? How did contemporaries conceptualize and then historicize the passing of the millennial date of 1000? Including the work of British, French, German, Dutch, and American scholars, this book will be the definitive resource on this fascinating topic, and should at the same time provoke new interest in and debate on the nature and causes of social change in early medieval Europe.

The essays in this book challenge prevailing views on the way in which apocalyptic concerns contributed to larger processes of social change at the first millennium. Several basic questions unify the essays: What chronological and theological assumptions underlay apocalyptic and millennial speculations around the Year 1000? How broadly disseminated were those speculations? Can we speak of a mentality of apocalyptic hopes and anxieties on the eve of the millennium? If so, how did authorities respond to or even contribute to the formation of this mentality? What were the social ramifications of apocalyptic hopes and anxieties, and of any efforts to suppress or redirect the more radical impulses that bred them? How did contemporaries conceptualize and then historicize the passing of the millennial date of 1000? Including the work of British, French, German, Dutch, and American scholars, this book will be the definitive resource on this fascinating topic, and should at the same time provoke new interest in and debate on the nature and causes of social change in early medieval Europe.

Millennialists through the ages have looked forward to the apocalyptic moment that will radically transform society into heaven on earth. They have delivered withering critiques of their own civilizations and promised both the impending annihilation to the forces of evil and the advent of a perfect society. And all their promises have invariably failed. We tend, therefore, to dismiss these prophets of doom and salvation as crackpots and madmen, and not surprisingly historians of our secular era have tended to underestimate their impact on our modern world. Now, Richard Landes offers a lucid and ground-breaking analysis of this widely misunderstood phenomenon. This long-awaited study shows that many events typically regarded as secular--including the French Revolution, Marxism, Bolshevism, Nazism--not only contain key millennialist elements, but follow the apocalyptic curve of enthusiastic launch, disappointment and re-entry into "normal time." Indeed, as Landes examines the explicit millennialism behind such recent events as the emergence of Global Jihad since 1979, he challenges the common notion that modern history is largely motivated by secular interests. By focusing on ten widely different case studies, none of which come from Judaism or Christianity, he shows that millennialism is not only a cultural universal, but also an extremely adaptive social phenomenon that persists across the modern and post-modern divides. At the same time, he also offers valuable insight into the social and psychological factors that drive such beliefs. Ranging from ancient Egypt to modern-day UFO cults and global Jihad, Heaven on Earth both delivers an eye-opening revisionist argument for the significance of millennialism throughout history and alerts the reader to the alarming spread of these ideologies in our world today.

This unusual biographical work traces the life and career of Ademar of Chabannes, a monk, historian, liturgist, and hagiographer who lived at the turn of the first Christian millennium. Thanks to the unique collection of over one thousand folios of autograph manuscript that Ademar left behind, Richard Landes has been able to reconstruct in great detail the development of Ademar's career and the events of his day, and to suggest several major revisions in the general picture held by current medieval historiography.Above all, the author's research confirms and elaborates the realization (first articulated over sixty years ago by the historian Louis Saltet) that in 1029 Ademar suffered a humiliating defeat at the height of his career and spent his final five years feverishly producing a dossier of forgeries and fictions about his own contemporaries that has few parallels in the annals on medieval forgery. Not only did that dossier of forgeries succeed in misleading historians from the twelfth century right up to the twentieth, but few historians have been willing to explore the implications of so striking a revision in Ademar's biography. Richard Landes is the first to systematically examine the evidence and the implications for our understanding of the period, and he offers an explanation of how these remarkable developments might have occurred.

During the dissolution of the former Carolingian Empire, warfare and plunder went unchecked. An innovative response to this violence was the Church-led initiative known as the Peace of God, perhaps history's earliest mass peace movement. In the thirteen essays collected here, leading scholars consider key aspects of the movement and episodes in its history.

During the dissolution of the former Carolingian Empire, warfare and plunder went unchecked. An innovative response to this violence was the Church-led initiative known as the Peace of God, perhaps history's earliest mass peace movement. In the thirteen essays collected here, leading scholars consider key aspects of the movement and episodes in its history.

An in-depth analysis of an anti-semitic conspiracy theory, from its origins in the 20th century to its resurgence todayThe Protocols of the Elders of Zion, first published in Russia around 1905, claimed to be the captured secret protocols from the first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897 describing a plan by the Jewish people to achieve global domination. While the document has been proven to be fake, much of it plagiarized from satirical anti-Semitic texts, it had a major impact throughout Europe during the first half of the 20th century, particularly in Germany. After World War II, the text was further denounced. Anyone who referred to it as a genuine document was seen as an ignorant hate-monger.Yet there is abundant evidence that The Protocols is resurfacing in many places. The Paranoid Apocalypse re-examines the text's popularity, investigating why it has persisted, as well as larger questions about the success of conspiracy theories even in the face of claims that they are blatantly counterfactual and irrational. It considers the medieval pre-history of The Protocols, the conditions of its success in the era of early twentieth-century secular modernity, and its post-Holocaust avatars, from the Muslim world to Walmart and Left-wing anti-American radicalism. Contributors argue that the key to The Protocols' longevity is an apocalyptic paranoia that lays the groundwork not only for the myth's popularity, but for its implementation as a vehicle for genocide and other brutal acts.

In the Spring of 2015, a post-modern version of the Salem witchcraft trials took place at Connecticut College on the Thames River. Only this time instead of sorcery it was Zionism; instead of punishing in the name of God's law it was in the name of anti-hate speech and inclusive excellence; instead of young teenage girls leading the hysteria it was college-aged social warriors stampeding 200 professors into sacrificing one of their colleagues, and thereby contributing to a wave of administration-promoted hate-speech at their college.The Pessin affair offers us a case study in a tendency towards "public shaming" that not only deeply compromises the integrity of academia, but increasingly spreads to many aspects of our society, so susceptible to media-driven feeding frenzies.

“Richard Landes offers a sharply-drawn, no-holds-barred dissection of today’s campus politics at its worst. As a case study of the damage done to academic integrity by the intrusion of anti-Zionism into college life, his book is a must-read.”  —Alvin H. Rosenfeld, Irving M. Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies and Director, Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, Indiana UniversityThis compelling volume focuses on the story of Andrew Pessin, a tenured philosophy professor at Connecticut College, who was accused by students and faculty of having “directly condoned the extermination of a people” based on a deliberate misreading of his 2015 Facebook post on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Salem on the Thames captures the events as they unfolded and discusses topics such as Western sentiments concerning Israeli-Palestinian relations, academics and free speech, antisemitism and diversity on the college campus, and social media and politics. The Pessin affair offers us a case study in a tendency towards “public shaming” reminiscent of the Salem witch trials that deeply compromises the integrity of academia.

A Winner of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa 2023 Bernard Lewis PrizeLandes,a medievalist and historian of apocalyptic movements, takes us through thefirst years of the third millennium (2000-2003), documenting how a radicalinability of Westerners to understand the medieval mentality that drove GlobalJihad prompted a series of disastrous misinterpretations and misguidedreactions that have shaped our so-far unhappy century. These misinterpretationsin 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2005, contributed fundamentally to the ever-worsening moraland empirical disorientations of our information elites (journalists,academics, pundits). So while journalists reported Palestinian war propagandaas news (lethal journalism), they were also reporting Jihadi war propaganda asnews (own-goal war journalism). These radical disorientations havecreated our current dilemma of pervasive information distrust, deep splitswithin the voting public in most democracies, the politicization of science,and the inability of Western elites to defend their civilization, and instead,to stand down before an invasion.