Le dernier messie. Prophétie et souveraineté au Moyen Age

[Autom. eng. transl.] The Second Epistle to the Thessalonians announces the coming of a mysterious figure intended to hinder the imminent outburst of fury of the Son of perdition. In the East, in the seventh century, the Pauline prediction is referred to the last and most powerful "kings of the Greeks and Romans". Later, in the West, new messianic figures mark their imprint the prophetic expectations: the "king of the Franks", the angelic pastor, the second Charlemagne and finally the people of the cities. This book studies the most widely spread prophecies, apocalypses and medieval sibyls. These obscure and allusive texts reveal themselves as subtle instruments of political-religious propaganda: at the end of time, they project historically contemporary struggles for power and, in a powerful symbolic language, they recreate the concept of sovereignty peculiar to an era.