ABSTRACT
Several twelfth-century thinkers explicated the End Times with acutely Augustinian historical sensibility. In this chapter, the author examines what he calls the ‘reform eschatology’ of Hugh Elton of Saint Victor and Anselm of Havelberg, canons educated in the second quarter of the twelfth century. He suggests that despite the impression created by his use of concordances between Old Testament, Revelation, and the present, another reformer Gerhoh of Reichersberg also engaged with Augustinian conceptualisations of eschatological redemption to formulate visions of the End. Both Anselm and Hugh of Saint Victor seem to have been influenced by contemporary speculation on the sacraments that had the same Augustinian foundations. In Hugh and Anselm’s visions of history, institutions and practices were important. Like Anselm he saw faith as the church’s defense against secular novelties, in the case politics. However, politics had also produced a new situation: the incursion of the Apocalypse within earthly time.
