From the Brink of the Apocalypse

Confronting Famine, War, Plague, and Death in the Later Middle Ages

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by John Aberth

Routledge

Due/Published October 2001, 288 pages, paper

ISBN 0415927161

New in paper (F01)

The late middle ages were marked by unprecedented chaos. At no other time in history did so much misery-war, famine, plague, and death-converge in such a short span of time. It is no wonder that late medieval men and women believed that the Apocalypse was upon them. It is this situation, and the resulting attitudes and beliefs of medieval peoples, that Aberth exploreshere. Taking his thematic cues from the biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Aberth describes this period of unrivaled strife and takes to task the conventional notion that the later middle ages represented a period of cultural decline, presenting a more complex understanding of the late medieval period.