Dreams, Nature, and Practices as Signs of the Future in the Middle Ages
Klaus Herbers and Hans-Christian Lehner
A great number of historical examples show how desperate people sought to obtain a glimpse of the future or explain certain incidents retrospectively through signs that had occurred in advance. In that sense, signs are always considered a portent of future events. In different societies, and at different times, the written or unwritten rules regarding their interpretation varied, although there was perhaps a common understanding of these processes.
This present volume collates essays from specialists in the field of prognostication in the European Middle Ages. Contributors are Klaus Herbers, Wolfram Brandes, Zhao Lu, Rolf Scheuermann, Thomas Krümpel, Bernardo Bertholin Kerr, Gaelle Bosseman, Julia Eva Wannenmacher (†), Matthias Kaup, Vincent Gossaert, Jürgen Gebhardt, Matthias Gebauer, Richard Landes.
Dr. Klaus Herbers is Senior Professor of Medieval History at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. He was director of the Internationales Kolleg für Geisteswissenschaftliche Forschung “Schicksal, Freiheit und Prognose. Bewältigungsstrategien in Ostasien und Europa.” His main areas of work are hagiography (especially the cult of St. James), pilgrimage and pilgrimage reports, the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages, and papal history in the Carolingian period.
Dr. Hans-Christian Lehner was a research assistant at the Internationales Kolleg für Geisteswissenschaftliche Forschung “Schicksal, Freiheit und Prognose. Bewältigungsstrategien in Ostasien und Europa.” He received his doctorate at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg with a dissertation on the role of predictability of the future in high medieval historiography. His research focuses on theories and methods of historiography and the practices of medieval historiography.
Herbers, Klaus, and Hans-Christian Lehner, eds. Dreams, Nature, and Practices as Signs of the Future in the Middle Ages. Leiden: Brill, 2022. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004519176
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Reviews:
Matthias Schumann and Elena Valussi
Edward L. Shaughnessy
Klaus Herbers and Hans-Christian Lehner
Tze-ki Hon
Brandon Dotson, Constance A. Cook, and Zhao Lu
Hans-Christian Lehner
