THOSE LAST DAYS... REFLECTIONS UPON AN APOCALYPTICAL TEXT FROM 18TH CENTURY TRANSYLVANIA
THOSE LAST DAYS... REFLECTIONS UPON AN APOCALYPTICAL TEXT FROM 18TH CENTURY TRANSYLVANIA

Summary/Abstract: There is large evidence concerning a dynamic circulation of apocryphal literature in eighteenth-century Transylvania. These texts are characterised above all by a variety of types of writings and of themes. The End is recurrently approached in its immediate meaning of death as well as from an eschatological point of view. The latter is also the major theme of an unpublished text, part of a miscellany, copied most likely in north-western Transylvania in 1761 and entitled: Istoriia pentru naşterea lui Antihrist şi pentru perirea lui şi pentru judeţul lui Hristos. Therefore, this study intends an analysis of its content, integrated within the wider discussion about apocalyptical literature through an evaluation of the whole manuscript. Its investigation is justified by the fact that sources of this kind can unveil specific expectations to which all copyists’ efforts are put forth, while marginalia might offer information about their reception as a cultural product. Nonetheless the image of Antichrist and the story of its future coming are topics insufficiently researched by Romanian scholars concerning Apocrypha. Which are the narrative sequences of this text? What other writings, canonical or not, are similar in their contents? What particular elements can be identified? Which are the other texts this manuscript miscellany consists of and how do they assemble to create a unitary discourse? All these are questions that lead to preliminary observations regarding this unpublished source and to which I will try to answer in the present paper.

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