At 02:54 PM 12/20/2000 EST, [log in to unmask] wrote:
>In a message dated 12/20/00 2:01:17 PM Eastern Standard
Time, [log in to unmask]
>writes:
>
>> >But for a good popular book on millenial expectations,
see Norman
>> >Cohen, The Pursuit of the Millenium. He taught
history, I believe at SUNY.
>>
>> he's english. he is the pathbreaker in looking at
popular millennial movts
>> in the MA, but missed 1000 entirely. no mention of
either the apostolic
>> heresies of the day, nor of the pilgrimages and the
peace of god.
>>
>I've heard him speak and so far as I know he's American
(sure sounded like
>another New Yawker). I don't believe he's the same Norman
Cohen who wrote
>about the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (and who
might be English).
>
>On popular millennial movements, Gombrich was writing
about them long ago.
>
>pat
>
>
Having nothing substantive to say on the topic of Jews and
Christians, I thought I would just interject a word or two
about Norman Cohn (not Cohen). He is English (born in
London), and is a member of the British Academy (for which
birth in the British Isles is a prerequisite, I believe).
Most of his academic career was spent at the University of
Sussex, where he is now professor emeritus. His main works
are: _The Pursuit of the Millenium_, which covers millenial
movements basically from the time of the First Crusade
until just after the Reformation; _Europe's Inner Demons_,
which is about witchcraft hysteria; _Cosmos, Chaos, and the
World to Come_, which is a study of the ancient roots of
apocalyptic thought; and _Warrant for Genocide_, which, as
Pat Sloan points out, is about the "Protocols of the Elders
of Zion."
_The Pursuit of the Millenium_ is, as Richard Landes says,
a pathbreaking work, and it is still worth reading today
for the wealth of information it contains. (It was
originaly published in 1957.) The book should be read with
care, however, as Cohn attributes all cases of medieval
millenialism to economic and social dislocation. More
recent studies suggest that this is too monocausal
interpretation of some very complex events. As Bernard
McGinn writes in _Visions of the End_: "Norman Cohn's _The
Pursuit of the Millennium_ was a seminal work in directing
attention to the importance of the apocalyptic-millenarian
component in Western history, but its interpretive model
was too one-sided to be convincing." Nonetheless, it's a
well-written and fascinating book.
Stephen A. Allen
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