The Apocalypsis Nova and Early Modern Prophetic Discourse

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• Department of History

During the early modern period, the radical claim of prophecies for divine authority made them a powerful discursive genre directly linked to the sacred history of revelation. However, the wide circulation of prophecies poses the question of their use and appropriation in varying contexts. This dissertation studies the circulation of a book known as Apocalypsis Nova ( new revelation ), a prophetic-theological text attributed to a Franciscan friar in 1502. Through an exhaustive analysis of the surviving manuscript copies, as well as of the uses and readings of this text from a wide array of archival sources, I argue the existence of a prophetic discursive mode which during the early modern period became a powerful tool for negotiating, challenging and developing alternative models of political, religious and symbolic order. As a result of this, projects of global magnitude such as Church reform and imperial legitimation were mobilised through prophetic discourse and revelation in the Early Modern period.