1Jonathan Green, Printing and Prophecy. Prognostication and Media Change, 1450-1550 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012); Frances Courtney Kneupper, The Empire at the End of Time. Identity and Reform in Late Medieval German Prophecy (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Robin B. Barnes, Astrology and Reformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); Steven Vanden Broecke, The Limits of Influence. Pico, Louvain, and the Crisis of Renaissance Astrology, Medieval and Early Modern Science 4 (Leiden: Brill, 2003), especially 46-48, 60-63. For similar developments in Italy in the decades around 1500, see Ottavia Niccoli, Prophecy and People in Renaissance Italy, translated by Lydia G. Cochrane (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990).
2Vanden Broecke, The Limits of Influence, op. cit., 60 (for quotation); see generally 60-65, 78-80. Vanden Broecke argues, in contrast to most scholars, that Pico’s treatise should be read more as an exhortation to reform astrology than as an outright rejection of the science of the stars. For the contrasting view, see (most recently), Ovanes Akopyan, “‘Princeps aliorum’ and His Followers. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola on the ‘Astrological Tradition’ in the Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem”, Renaissance Studies 32, no 4 (2018): 547-64.
3See the brief summary of the case against Simon de Phares in Jan Veenstra, “By the Light of the Stars. Authorised History and Astrology in the Elucidaire of Simon de Phares,” in The Growth of Authority in the Medieval West. Selected Proceedings of the International Conference, Groningen, 6-9 November 1997 (Groningen: E. Forsten, 1999), 156; Jan R. Veenstra, Magic and Divination at the Courts of Burgundy and France. Text and Context of Laurens Pignon’s Contre les devineurs (1411) (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 98-101. For Paltz: Johannes von Paltz, Quaestio determinata contra triplicem errorem de Antichristi revelatione (Memmingen: [Albrecht Kunne], after August 24, 1486), fol. [14]v-[15]v [International Short Title Catalogue (hereinafter ISTC) no. ia00772000]; Kneupper, The Empire at the End of Time, op. cit., 5, n. 8; Jonathan Green, Printing and Prophecy, op. cit., 42 (also citing the example of Michael Francisci de Insulis in Cologne in 1498).
4Laura Ackerman Smoller, “Teste Albumasare cum Sibylla: Astrology and the Sibyls in Medieval Europe”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, op. cit., 41 (2010): esp. 79, 81-87. A prime example is provided by Simon de Phares’s defensive Elucidaire: Jean-Patrice Boudet, ed., Le Recueil des plus célèbres astrologues de Simon de Phares, 2 vols. (Paris: Champion, 1997, 1999).
5The first modern edition of the Latin version was that of Ernst Sackur, Sibyllinische Texte und Forschungen. Pseudomethodius, Adso und Die Tiburtinische Sibylle (Halle: Niemeyer, 1898). It is now supplanted by W. J. Aerts and G. A. A. Kortekaas, ed. and trans., Die Apokalypse des Pseudo-Methodius. Die ältesten griechischen und lateinischen Ubersetzungen; 2 vols., Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 569-70, Subsidia 97-98 (Leuven: Peeters, 1998), who give at 1:1-35 an overview of the text’s history. For an English translation, Benjamin Garstad, Apocalypse, Pseudo-Methodius, An Alexandrian World Chronicle, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, 14 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). See also Gian Luca Potestà, Le dernier messie. Prophétie et souveraineté au Moyen Âge, translated by Gérard Marino (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2018), 34 and 185, n. 8, for a synthesis of the scholarship, dating the original text to 691-692 as a response to the construction of the Dome of the Rock. However, the most recent study of the original Syriac dates it to the period between 644 and 670: Stephen J. Shoemaker, The Apocalypse of Empire. Imperial Eschatology in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 49.
6For the most comprehensive listing of pseudo-Methodius manuscripts in Latin, see Marc Laureys and Daniel Verhelst, “Pseudo-Methodius, Revelationes. Textgeschichte und kritische Edition. Ein Leuven-Groninger Forschungsprojekt,” in Werner Verbeke, D. Verhelst, Andries Welkenhuysen, eds., The Use and Abuse of Eschatology in the Middle Ages, Mediaevalia Lovaniensia, I.xv (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1988), 112-36 (detailing the four different recensions of the text and listing 196 MSS).
7James T. Palmer, The Apocalypse in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), ch. 4, 129; see also Margery B. Ogle, “Petrus Comestor, Methodius, and the Saracens,” Speculum 21, 3 (1946): 319; and Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End. Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages, Records of Western Civilization (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), 72-73.
8See, e.g., Hannes Möhring, Der Weltkaiser der Endzeit: Entstehung, Wandel und Wirkung einer tausendjährigen Weissagung, Mittelalter-Forschungen, 3 (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2000); Potestà, Le dernier messie, op. cit..
9Quotation: Methodius, Revelationes divinae a sanctis angelis factae; Wolfgangus Aytinger, Tractatus super Methodium ([Augsburg]: Johann Froschauer, 1496), fol. c3v (ISTC no. im00522000).
10In addition to the version published by Froschauer, cited in n. 9, above, a second printing of the Revelationes along with Aytinger’s commentary appeared from the Memmingen press of Albrecht Kunne (ISTC no. im00523000). This latter is not dated, but is assumed to have appeared between 1496 and 1500.
11Methodius, Revelationes divinae a sanctis angelis factae; Wolfgangus Aytinger, Tractatus super Methodium, edited by Sebastian Brant (Basel: Michael Furter, 1498), ISTC no. im00524000. Further reprinted this work in 1500, 1504, 1515, and 1516.
12Friedrich Zoepfl, “Wolfgang Aytinger – Ein deutscher Zeit – und Gesinnungsgenosse Savonerolas,” Zeitschrift für deutsche Geistesgeschichte 1 (1935): 177-87.
13Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages. A Study in Joachimism (Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993; reprint of Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 352-54; Marjorie Reeves, “Joachimist Influences on the Idea of a Last World Emperor”, Traditio 17 (1961): 345-46; Robert E. Lerner, “Medieval Prophecy and Religious Dissent”, Past and Present 72 (1976): 23; Bernard McGinn, Visions, 274-76; Dietrich Kurze, “Prophecy and History. Lichtenberger’s Forecasts of Events to Come (From the Fifteenth to the Twentieth Century): Their Reception and Diffusion”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21, no 1/2 (1958): 66-67; Jonathan Green, Printing and Prophecy, op. cit., 92-94. Green, however, focuses exclusively on the woodcuts commissioned by Sebastian Brant for his edition of the work.
14Joël Élie Schnapp, Prophéties de fin du monde et peur des Turcs au xve siècle, Histoire Culturelle 4 (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2017). Schnapp’s work should be used with some caution. For example, three of the texts he studied were authored by Dominican friars; without giving any particularly good reason, Schnapp eventually begins to assume that Aytinger himself was also a Dominican and to treat him as such for the remainder of the book (e.g., p. 148). See also Jennifer Britnell, “Jean Lemaire de Belges and Prophecy”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 42 (1979): 145, 147-49, 152, 154-57; and Walther Ludwig, “Eine unbekannte Variante der Varia Carmina Sebastian Brants unde die Prophezeiungen des Ps.-Methodius”, Daphnis: Zeitschrift für mittlere deutsche Literatur 26 (1997), 277-29.
15See the characterization of such works in Kneupper, The Empire at the End of Time, op. cit..
16I follow here the definitions proposed by Richard Landes in his “Lest the Millennium Be Fulfilled: Apocalyptic Expectations and the Pattern of Western Chronography 1000-800 CE,” in Werner Verbeke, D. Verhelst, Andries Welkenhuysen, eds., The Use and Abuse of Eschatology in the Middle Ages, Mediaevalia Lovaniensia, I. xv (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1988), 205-08.
17E.g., the early fifteenth-century cardinal Pierre d’Ailly: Laura Ackerman Smoller, History, Prophecy, and the Stars. The Christian Astrology of Pierre d’Ailly, 1350-1420 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), especially 36-42 (defense of astrology), and 102-15 (astrological prediction of the advent of Antichrist).
18Stephen Gero, “The Legend of the Fourth Son of Noah,” The Harvard Theological Review 73, 1-2 (1980): 321-30. On the importance of Jonitus for the mythic history of astrology, see Smoller, “Teste Albumasare cum Sibylla”, op. cit., 79.
19Methodius, Revelationes (1496), op. cit., fol. c3v.
20These details were important to the original writer and readers of the text, in authorizing the Byzantine basileus as a final messianic emperor, but they must have puzzled many later medieval readers who, perhaps for that reason, skipped them. Michael Twomey suggests that the abbreviated second recension was preferred in England, at least, for its omission of this non-biblical history: Michael W. Twomey, “The Revelationes of Pseudo-Methodius and Scriptural Study at Salisbury in the Eleventh Century,” in Charles D. Wright, Frederick M. Biggs, and Thomas N. Hall, eds., Source of Wisdom. Old English and Early Medieval Latin Studies in Honour of Thomas D. Hill (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 375-76. See also Charlotte D’Evelyn, “The Middle English Metrical Version of the Revelations of Methodius With a Study of the Influence of Methodius in Middle English Writings,” Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 33 (1918): 135-203. On the manuscript tradition: Marc Laureys and Daniel Verhelst, “Pseudo-Methodius”, op. cit., 112-36; Aerts and Kortekaas, Die Apokalypse des Pseudo-Methodius, op. cit., 2: 19-35.
21Aytinger specifies that the Holy Land has been in Christian hands for only four periods since Christ’s passion: 1) from the destruction of the Temple in 135 to the taking of Jerusalem by the Sassanian Persian emperor Khosrow II in 614, 2) following the victory of Heraclius in 630 (until the Arab conquest of 638); 3) during the reign of Charlemagne, who, according to legend, had led a successful Crusade to Jerusalem; and 4) from the time of First Crusade (until Saladin’s capturing of the city).
22Aytinger, Tractatus (1496), op. cit., fol. f5v. In chapters two and three, Aytinger defines two limits (termini), or sets of events that must happen before the end of the fifty-six years of Ishmaelite domination: first, the Ishmaelites must subdue kingdoms of the earth (fol. d4v-d5r), and second, there will be a cessation of public sacrifice and an impoverishment of the clergy (fol. e2r), which will last for three and one-half years (fol. f5r-f5v, citing Daniel 12:11 and Revelation 12:14).
24In chapter 1, [Aytinger, Tractatus (1496), op. cit., fol. d2v], Aytinger speaks of the conversion of the Jews, but this detail is absent in his discussion of the final Roman emperor in chapter 5 (fol. h2r-h2v).
25I have consulted the following editions of Aytinger’s sources: pseudo-Vincentius Ferrerius, De fine mundi ([Nuremberg]: Conrad Zeninger, 1481), ISTC if00122000; Tractatus quidam de Turcis (Nuremberg: Conrad Zeninger, 1481), ISTC it00503000; Johannes Annius Viterbiensis, De futuris Christianorum triumphis in Saracenos, seu glossa super Apocalypsin (Leipzig : [Marcus Brandis], 1481), ISTC ia00751000; Johannes Lichtenberger, Pronosticatio in Latino (n.p.: n.p., ca. 1488), Hain 10080 (the ISTC lists this copy, from the Library of Congress’s Rosenwald Fund, as ISTC il00204000, but it does not appear to be the same book); Alfonso de Spina, Fortalitium fidei contra iudeos saracenos aliosque christiane fidei inimicos (Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1494), ISTC ia00541000; Petrus de Alliaco, Concordantia astrologiae cum theologia. Concordantia astronomie cum hystorica narratione. Et elucidarium duorum precedentium (Augsburg: Erhard Ratdolt, 1490), ISTC ia00471000; Chronik von allen Kaisern, Königen und Päpsten; Die Reformation des Kaisers Siegmund; Die Reformation des Kaisers Friedrich (Augsburg: Johann Bämler, 1476), ISTC ib00008000. Aytinger largely takes his quotations from the prophecies of Bridget of Sweden from Johannes Lichtenberger’s Pronosticatio, but in at least one instance, he mentions a prophecy I have thus far been unable to locate in Lichtenberger’s text (or in early or modern editions of the Onus mundi, a collection of Bridget’s prophetic utterances compiled by Johannes Tortsch in 1424). On the Onus mundi, see Pavlína Rychterová, “The Revelations of St Birgitta in the Holy Roman Empire,” in Maria H. Oen, ed., A Companion to Birgitta of Sweden and Her Legacy in the Later Middle Ages, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 89 (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 259-61.
26On Lichtenberger, see, especially, Dietrich Kurze, “Prophecy and History”, op. cit.; Dietrich Kurze, Johannes Lichtenberger († 1503). Eine Studie zur Geschichte der Prophetie und Astrologie, Historische Studien 379 (Lübeck and Hamburg: Matthiesen, 1960); Dietrich Kurze, “Popular Astrology and Prophecy in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries: Johannes Lichtenberger,” in Paola Zambelli, ed., “Astrologi hallucinati”. Stars and the End of the World in Luther’s Time (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1986), 177-94 (with a summary of the Pronosticatio at 183-88); Jonathan Green, Printing and Prophecy, op. cit., 39-55, 65-84; Barnes, Astrology and Reformation, op. cit., 85-89. On Annius of Viterbo’s work, see Cesare Vasoli, “Profezia e astrologia in un testo di Annio da Viterbo”, in Studi sul medioevo cristiano. Offerti a Raffaello Morghen per il 90. anniversario dell’Istituto Storico Italiano (1883-1973), 2 vol., (Rome: Nella sede dell’Istituto, 1974): 2:1027-1060. On Pierre d’Ailly’s astrology, Laura Smoller, History, Prophecy, and the Stars, op. cit.
27Aytinger, Tractatus (1496), op. cit., fol. e5r-e5v; see Pierre d’Ailly, Concordantia astronomie cum hystorica narratione, op. cit., ch. 58, fol. d7r-d7v. See Laura Smoller, History, Prophecy, and the Stars, op. cit., 193, n. 11, for d’Ailly’s borrowing here from Telesphorus of Cosenza. Aytinger cited d’Ailly’s work improperly, as the Concordantia astrologiae cum theologia, the title of the first treatise that appears in that 1490 volume. Aytinger could have read in d’Ailly’s treatise, as well, extensive excerpts from the final portions of pseudo-Methodius, namely what d’Ailly labeled eight preambles to Antichrist (mainly, the second Ishmaelite domination and career of the last world emperor), and then pseudo-Methodius’s treatment of Antichrist and his defeat: Pierre d’Ailly, Concordantia astronomie cum hystorica narratione, op. cit., ch. 63 and 64, fol. d8v-e1r.
28The list of schisms is found in Pierre d’Ailly, Concordantia astronomie cum hystorica narratione, op. cit., fol. d7r-d7v; d’Ailly’s Antichrist discussion is at fol. d8r, and his calculation of the timing of Antichrist’s arrival is at fol. d7v.
29See especially Aytinger, Tractatus (1496), op. cit., ch. 5, fol. h1v-h2r.
30Annius of Viterbo, De futuris Christianorum triumphis, op. cit., fol. [47]r. (Signature numbers drop out in this imprint after signature b.)
31Aytinger, Tractatus (1496), op. cit., fol. f1r.
32Before he begins his outright lifting from Lichtenberger’s analysis of the conjunction, Aytinger predicts that “German Scorpionists will enter into a confederation with the king of France” by which the Church will suffer greatly and that “unheard of evils” will be seen in 1416 [sic], when the conjunction will have its greatest effects, warning that “then will begin a dangerous time in the church of Saint Peter.” Aytinger, Tractatus (1496), fol. f1r; see Aytinger, Tractatus (1498), op. cit., fol. f6v. See Lichtenberger, Pronosticatio, fol. A3r. The quoted phrases here are liftings from Lichtenberger, Pronosticatio, fol. B2v, in which he is drawing upon Bridget of Sweden, but not from Lichtenberger’s discussion of the conjunction.
33The paragraph from Lichtenberger is found in Aytinger, Tractatus (1496), op. cit., fol. f1r-f1v, corresponding to Lichtenberger, Pronosticatio, fol. A5v. Although Lichtenberger had discussed an eclipse (Pronosticatio, fol. A3r and A5v), Aytinger had not earlier alluded to one.
34There is an irony here, perhaps unknown to Aytinger, in that the astrological portions of the Pronosticatio were themselves plagiarized from the astrologer Paul of Middelburg, who published an angry rebuke in Antwerp in 1492 in which he also disparaged Lichtenberger’s “unwarranted jumbling together” of astrology and prophecy. The quoted phrase is from Kurze, “Popular Astrology”, op. cit., 191; Kurze provides (190-91) a brief summary of the quarrel between the two authors. For an excellent in depth analysis of Middelburg’s career, see Stephan Heilen, “Astrology at the Court of Urbino under Federico and Guidobaldo da Montefeltro”, in Jean-Patrice Boudet, Martine Ostorero, and Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, eds., De Frédéric II à Rodolphe II. Astrologie, divination et magie dans les cours (xiiie-xviie siècle), Micrologus Library 85 (Florence: Sismel Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2017), 336-357.
35Methodius, Revelationes (1496), op. cit., fol. a4r.
36Aytinger was selective in his reading of other sources, as well. For example, in the pseudo-Vincent Ferrer On the End of the World, another major source, Aytinger found an agreeable listing of the current failings of the clergy and the laity, which fit with the theme of his third chapter, in which he argued, based on a line from pseudo-Methodius, that a degradation of the church’s status and a cessation of public sacrifice would precede the final destruction of the Turkish empire. But Aytinger must have found pseudo-Vincent’s elaboration of a double Antichrist (an Antichristus mixtus and an Antichristus purus) difficult to reconcile with the pseudo-Methodian narrative that formed the basis of his work, a scenario that set out a biography of a single Antichrist figure largely following the narrative elements found in 2 Thessalonians. On this treatise, see now Philipp Stenzig, “Das Mirabile opusculum de fine mundi. Eine politische Prophezeiung gegen das Konzil von Konstanz (mit editorischem Anhang)”, Frühmittelalterliche Studien 49 (2016): 202-74; Philipp Stenzig, “Navis Petri non quassatur. Politische Prophetie gegen das Konzil von Konstanz”, in Susanne Ehrich and Andrea Worm, eds., Geschichte vom Ende herdenken. Endzeitentwürfe und ihre Historisierung im Mittelalter, Forum Mittelalter Studien, 15, (Regensberg: Schnell & Steiner, 2019), 301-20; as well as the older work of P. Sigismund Brettle, San Vicente Ferrer und sein literarischer Nachlass, Vorreformationsgeschichtliche Forschungen, 10 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1924), 157-67.
38That chapter is headed with the following: “The fifth chapter concerns the principle for calculating fifty-six years, understood as the eight weeks of Saint Methodius, and it is said that the last things begin from the fall of Constantinople and the Greek empire.” Aytinger, Tractatus (1496), op. cit., fol. g4v. For Aytinger’s chronology, see n. 22, above.
39Methodius, Revelationes (1496), op. cit., fol. a6r. Aytinger expounds at length upon the equivalence of eight weeks of years and fifty-six years in his marginal annotation. In reading these passages, Schnapp attempts awkwardly to situate the eight-week period within the ten-week period described in Daniel 9:24-27, a reading not supported, however, by the text of the Revelationes, by Aytinger’s commentary, or by the events described in Daniel. Schnapp, Prophéties, op. cit., 154.
40Methodius, Revelationes (1496), op. cit., fol. c3r. In a passage in at the beginning of chapter 4 of Aytinger’s commentary [Aytinger, Tractatus (1496), fol. f5v], he makes it clear that he believes the two passages both indicate a 56-year period of rule for the Ishmaelites, as he links the figure specifically to pseudo-Methodius’s prediction that “honor shall be taken from priests,” a phrase that immediately precedes the reference to the seventh week of years (the second reference) in pseudo-Methodius’s Revelationes.
41E.g., Aytinger, Tractatus (1496), op. cit., ch. 2, fol. d4v (where he makes it clear that “when the number of years of their power shall have been completed” refers to a 56-year period of Ishmaelite domination), ch. 4, fol. f5v and fol. g4r, and in ch. 5, fol. g5r.
42Walther Ludwig, in fact, simply assumes that the number 56 (8 x 7) was chosen deliberately from the first version of the Revelationes and devotes a paragraph to explaining the numerological significance of the figures seven and eight, both indicators of “fullness,” and thus, when multiplied together, a particularly apt expression of the fullness of time. Walther Ludwig, “Eine unbekannte Variante”, op. cit., 284-85.
43In the Syriac version as translated by Paul Alexander, the Ishmaelites’ term is given as ten weeks of years: Paul J. Alexander, The Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 39 (“after ten weeks of those years”) and 48 (“in that tenth week”). According to Shoemaker, however, only a single manuscript witness of the Syriac version gives a period of ten weeks of years (instead of seven) for the Ishmaelites’ rule, presumably in order “to extend the deadline” for the appearance of a not-yet-seen Last World Emperor. Shoemaker, Apocalypse of Empire, op. cit., 49 (the quoted phrase is Shoemaker’s). Both John Tolan and James Palmer cite the figure ten weeks of years as the period specified by pseudo-Methodius for the Ishmaelites’ domination: John V. Tolan, Saracens. Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 48 (citing Francisco J. Martinez’s English translation of the Syriac); Palmer, Apocalypse, op. cit., 114 (citing Alexander). For the figure of seven weeks of years in the earliest Greek and Latin versions, see Garstad, Apocalypse, op. cit., 16, 52 (Greek); 92, 124 (Latin). Garstad’s editions are based on Aerts and Kortekaas, Die Apokalypse des Pseudo-Methodius, op. cit.; the relevant passages are found at 1:98-99, 1:164-65. In their commentary (2:14), Aerts and Kortekaas assert that the Syriac text gives ten weeks of years, while the Greek and Latin versions “always” (stets) speak of seven weeks of years.
44E.g., P. Rainer Rudolf, “Des pseudo-Methodius Revelationes (Fassung B) und ihre deutsche Übersetzung in der Brüsslerer Handschrift Eghenvelders”, Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 95, 1 (1976): 83 (based on 10th, 13th, and 16th century exemplars); Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Latin 3768 (ca. 1200-1400), fol. 102r-102v (“usque ad numerum annorum illorum”).
45Otto Prinz, “Eine frühe abendländische Aktualisierung der lateinischen Übersetzung des Pseudo-Methodius,” Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 41 (1985): 11. Prinz’s edition of the second version here is based on a set of manuscripts dating from the tenth through the twelfth centuries (p. 4).
46I am hoping to examine all of the manuscripts of pseudo-Methodius in order to thoroughly track this discrepancy.
47Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Latin 1655, fol. 49r (with marginal notation at the line where the figure is given) and 51v.
48Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Codices Salernitani, IX, 23, fol. 83r, 89v.
49I cite from Patrologia Latina. The Full Text Database (Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey, 1996–…), 198, Historia scholastica, ch. 49 [!], col. 1097. Luis Vázquez de Parga argues that pseudo-Methodius’s treatise came to Spain through the vehicle of the Historia Scholastica. Luis Vázquez de Parga, “Algunas notas sobre el Pseudo Metodio y España”, Habis 2 (1971): 153-56. On Petrus Comestor’s use of pseudo-Methodius, see Mark J. Clark, The Making of the Historia Scholastica, 1150-1200 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2015), 134-39.
50Vincent Foster Hopper, Medieval Number Symbolism. Its Sources, Meaning, and Influence on Thought and Expression, Columbia University Studies in English and Comparative Literature, 132 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1938; repr. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2000), 95, 106, 115 (7 as expression of completeness), 101 (8 as indicating “eternity after mutability”); Augustine, De sermone Domini in monte, 1:2, par. 10 (there are eight beatitudes; the eighth represents “comsummatum perfectum”), Library of Latin Texts – Series A, http://clt.brepolis.net/LLTA/pages/TextSearch.aspx?key=PAUG_0274_%20 (access restricted – accessed on December 2021). I am grateful to Marcia Esteves Agostinho for pointing this passage out to me. See also Ludwig, “Eine unbekannte Variante”, op. cit., 284-85.
51Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 521, fol. 50r, pointing to the passage “where he [Petrus Comestor] treats of the flight of Hagar and the origin of Ishmael,” that is to say, to the chapter in which Petrus cites pseudo-Methodius on the duration of the Ishmaelites’ rule. (This MS presents the second, shorter version of the text.)
52Cited in Schnapp, Prophéties, op. cit., 86; see Tractatus quidam de Turcis, fol. 30v, with a marginal annotation specifying that the reign of the Ishmaelites “will be concluded after eight weeks of years.” The same figure appears in two additional German incunables: ([Nuremberg]: Anton Koberger?, ca. 1477), ISTC no. it00502000, fol. 93v; and (Nuremberg: Conrad Zeninger, 1481), fol. b2v-b3r (citing Petrus Comestor) and b8v (citing Methodius). This latter edition is perhaps the one known by Aytinger. For Aytinger’s borrowings from the Tractatus quidam de Turcis, see Schnapp, Prophéties, op. cit., 145, 160, 257-60, 283-85, 336-38, 349.
53Huntington Library, MS HM 83, fol. 9v; on which, see Chet Van Duzer and Ilya Dines, Apocalyptic Cartography. Thematic Maps and the End of the World in a Fifteenth-Century Manuscript (Leiden: Brill, 2016).
54In their 1988 inventory of pseudo-Methodius manuscripts, Marc Laureys and Daniel Verhelst identified four codices with copies of the original, long version in Munich, and it is certainly possible (assuming that the manuscripts are still in or near their original homes) that Aytinger could have traveled the forty-something miles from his home to Munich in order to view or make a copy of the Revelations. The authors also list some two dozen MSS of the first recension extant in German-speaking lands today. Laureys and Verhelst, “Pseudo-Methodius”, op. cit., 115, 114-19.
55Bonaventura, De triplici via; Methodius, Revelationes, op. cit.; Bonaventura, De praeparatione ad missam (Cologne: Ulrich Zell, ca. 1475), ISTC no. ib00970000. A comparison of the two editions side by side suggests that Zell’s edition was not Aytinger’s base text, however. See Laura Ackerman Smoller, “Reading the End in Late Medieval Augsburg: Wolfgang Aytinger’s Commentary on the Revelationes of Pseudo-Methodius.” For Visions of the End: Medieval and Renaissance Apocalyptic Cultures, ed. Jay Rubenstein and Robert Bast, (Proceedings of the Marco Symposium, March 5-7, 2021, University of Tennessee) (Turnhout: Brepols, in preparation).
56Methodius, Revelationes (ca. 1475), op. cit., fol. 23v and 32v.
57Methodius, Göttliche Offenbarungen von den heiligen Engeln geschehen (Memmingen: [Albrecht Kunne], 1497), ISTC no. im00526000, fol. a[=b]1r and c3r. Kunne, who some time between 1496 and 1500 would publish his own Latin version of Aytinger’s pseudo-Methodius edition and commentary, may well have encountered the figure of eight weeks through Aytinger’s original 1496 imprint. In Kunne’s Latin edition, the number “eight weeks” appears as in the 1496 original and without further comment. Aytinger, Tractatus ([Memmingen]: [Albrecht Kunne], between 1496 and 1499), ISTC no. im00523000, fol. a5v (and “septimo ebdomatico tempore,” as in the 1496 edition, at b5r).
58Aytinger, Tractatus (1496), op. cit., fol. g1v.
59Fulcher of Chartres, The Deeds of the Franks, bk. 1, ch. 17, translated in Patrick Geary, ed., Readings in Medieval History (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2003), 414-15.
60Aytinger, Tractatus (1496), op. cit., fol. g5r. I’m afraid we must include this “Nerseus” among the many “pseudos” alleged in Aytinger’s commentary, as there is no record of any patriarch by that name in late sixth- or seventh-century Antioch. Aytinger would, however, have found pseudo-Nurseus’s prophecy in his copy of Annius of Viterbo’s Future Triumph. Annius of Viterbo, De futuris triumphis, op. cit., c2v-c3r. The only other appearance of this prophecy that I know of occurs in the world chronicle of the Flemish canon Theodoricus Pauli (1416-93), which exists in a single manuscript. See Jan M.F. Van Reeth, “Les patriarches d’Orient de l’Hégire aux Croisades selon la chronique universelle de Dirk Frankensz. Pauwels (Theodoricus Pauli),” in Antoon Schoors, ed., Philohistôr. Miscellanea in honorem Caroli Laga septuagenarii (Leuven: Departement Oriëntalistied: Peeters, 1994), 535-36. See also Schnapp, Prophéties, op. cit., 235 (citing Van Reeth).
61Aytinger, Tractatus (1496), op. cit., fol. h2v-h3r. The source for the prophecy regarding the emperor named “P” is Lichtenberger; it is not at all clear whence the triangular stone prophecy arises.
62Aytinger, Tractatus (1496), op. cit., fol. h3r.
63Aytinger, Tractatus (1496), op. cit., fol. h3r.
64Marjorie Reeves, “Joachimist Influences”, op. cit., 346; Marjorie Reeves, Influence, op. cit., 353. Echoing Reeves, see also Bernard McGinn, “Forms of Catholic Millenarianism. A Brief Overview”, in Karl A. Kottman, ed., Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture, 4 vol., II. Catholic Millenarianism. From Savonarola to the Abbé Grégoire, Archives internationales d’histoire des idées, 173-176 (Dordrecht and Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001), 8. But see Schnapp, Prophéties, op. cit., 340-41, who sees Aytinger as preferring to his keep options open regarding the identity of the coming emperor.
65Marjorie Reeves, Influence, op. cit., 350.
66Lichtenberger, Pronosticatio II, ch. 16, quoted in Marjorie Reeves, Influence, op. cit., 350-51.
67Marjorie Reeves noticed the addition and speculated that the lines here, which she knew from no other text, had been added by Aytinger. Marjorie Reeves, Influence, op. cit., 353, n. 1, echoing Marjorie Reeves, “Joachimist Influences”, op. cit., 346, n. 94.
68As Reeves noted, these lines are certainly not found in Lichtenberger’s Pronosticatio and have not been traced to any previous texts: Marjorie Reeves, “Joachimist Influences”, op. cit., 346; Marjorie Reeves, Influence, op. cit., 353. Schnapp, Prophéties, op. cit., 153, wants to equate the Cumean Sibyl quoted by Lichtenberger and Aytinger with the Tiburtine Sibyl, but this text does not appear in the widely-circulated Tiburtine Sibyl prophecy.
69Aytinger, Tractatus (1496), op. cit., fol. e1r.
70See Larry Silver, Marketing Maximilian. The Visual Ideology of a Holy Roman Emperor (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 117; and Robert Bast, “The Messianic Kingship of Augustin Bader. Prophecy, Politics and Anti-Habsburg Polemics in the German Reformation”, in Mayte Green-Mercado, ed., “Speaking the End Times. Prophecy and Messianism in Early Modern Eurasia”, special issue, Journal of Social and Economic History of the Orient 61, no 1-2 (Spring 2018): 147-171. My thanks to Bob Bast for sharing this work with me before its publication, as well as for a number of enlightening conversations about eschatology in Aytinger’s Augsburg.
71Aytinger, Tractatus (1498), op. cit., fol. [i 5]v.
72See Marjorie Reeves, Influence, op. cit., 352-54; Ludwig, “Eine unbekannte Variante”, op. cit., 283, 291-97; as well as the works by Silver and Bast cited above in n. 71. Brant did not shrink from including Aytinger’s prophecy about the ruler named “P,” however.
73Basel: Michael Furter, 1515; Basel: Michael Furter, 1516.
74Michael Hey Stawicki, editor and translator, Prorocthwo Methodiusza s. biskupa miast tyrskich […], ktori […] wydal wiele pisma potrzebnego, a zwlaszcza o stworzeniu swiata, poczawszy od Adama az do dnia sadnego (Krakow: Mateusz Siebeneicher, [ca. 1562-1580]); for a modern edition, Jerzy Kroczak, ed., Proroctwo Pseudo-Metodiusza z Wykladem Wolfganga Aytingera (Wroclaw: Oficyna Wydawnicza Atut-Wroclawskie Wydawnictwo Oswiatowe, 2013). I owe heartfelt thanks to Jerzy Kroczak for several emails in response to my questions and to Ania Michas for putting me in touch with Kroczak and for her translations from the Polish.
75Jennifer Britnell, “Jean Lemaire de Belges”, op. cit., 152 (specifically citing “commentator eiusdem Methodii martiris”), et passim.
76While modern scholars have focused upon the treatise’s anti-Islamic slant and its endorsement of an imperial eschatology, it is less clear that all medieval readers took those messages as the text’s primary ones. Recent scholars have begun to address specific aspects of the text’s reception and to challenge the notion that pseudo-Methodius was read exclusively as a piece of apocalyptic, anti-Islamic, political propaganda. E.g., Twomey, “The Revelationes of Pseudo-Methodius”, op. cit.; Luis Vázquez de Parga, “Algunas notas sobre el Pseudo Metodio y España”, op. cit, 143-64, both of whom stress the treatise’s appeal as a supplement to Old Testament history. Similarly, James T. Palmer has concluded that early readers of the first, long version had little interest in the author’s anti-Islamic screed, although he also notes that a second, shorter recension of the Revelations was updated to increase the identification of the Ishmaelites with contemporary Muslims. Palmer, Apocalypse, op. cit., ch. 4, esp. 119-29. But see Richard Matthew Pollard, who, while acknowledging that the first recension (the Latin translation by Peter the Monk) is much harsher towards the Ishmaelites than is the Greek version from which it was translated, points out that the second, abridged version softens that rhetoric, even while identifying the Ishmaelites explicitly with the “Saracens.” Pollard, “One Other on Another. Petrus Monachus’s Revelationes and Islam”, in Meredith Cohen and Justine Firnhaber-Baker, eds., Difference and Identity in Francia and Medieval France (Franham, UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 25-42, esp. 25-35. And see George A. A. Kortekaas, whose analysis of one of the four earliest MSS of the first recension concludes that the copyist’s interests were clearly apocalyptic: Kortekaas, “The Transmission of the Text of Pseudo-Methodius in Cod. Paris lat. 13348,” Revue d’histoire des textes 18 (1988): 63-79. John V. Tolan similarly views the work as an apocalyptic response to the Muslims: Tolan, Saracens, op. cit., 46-50, 77. Still, no one has attempted a systematic study of the reception of the Latin pseudo-Methodius throughout the Middle Ages, along the lines of Anke Holdenried’s excellent analysis of the reception of another much-cited apocalyptic classic, the Tiburtine Sibyl: Anke Holdenried, The Sibyl and Her Scribes. Manuscripts and Interpretation of the Latin Sibylla Tiburtina c. 1050-1500, Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West (Aldershot, UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006). I note with pleasure that Lorenzo di Tommaso is compiling an updated list of manuscripts of Latin and vernacular versions of the Revelationes as part of his preparation of a critical edition of the same.