77. Bell, A. Robert. "Muspilli: Apocalypse as Political Threat." Studies in the Literary Imagination 8, 1975: 75-104.

Bell discusses an obscure (except to specialists in medieval German literature) poetic fragment descriptive of a rather unusual apocalypse which he concludes was directed specifically at King Ludwig the German (d. 876), who had been giving away church property (under Charlemagne the church itself had been a royal holding, a fisc) to gain support in the wars over the dissolution of the Empire. The poem rails against this corruption.

The most interesting part of this article is its attribution of a great number of likely sources for this apocalyptic material.

Return to indexesReturn to Indexes