The Apocalypse of Golias (Latin: Apocalypsis Goliae) is a satirical Latin poem of the 12th century, probably written in England or France. Like the Biblical Book of Apocalypse, the poem is addressed to the "Seven Churches", but manuscripts differ as to whether they are the "Seven Churches in England" or "Seven Churches in Neustria".
The Apocalypse of Golias has been ascribed by different scholars to Alan of Lille, Walter of Châtillon, Hugh Primas and Walter Map, but the evidence is against these attributions. The poem is one of a group of about the same date, all connected with the fictional "Bishop Golias", but these poems are not all by the same author.
The poet narrates a vision, a summer dream, in which Pythagoras offers to act as his guide, and gives him a quick view of the scholars and writers of the classical world from Priscian to Hippocrates. An angel then appears to introduce the main theme, a fierce criticism of pope, bishops, priests, archdeacons and deacons, who are successively likened to different animals. Monks are the worst of all, and their greed, gluttony and lust are described in colourful detail.
Bibliography
Raby, F. J. E. (1934). "The Apocalypse of Golias and other poems". A History of Secular Latin Poetry in the Middle Ages. Vol.2. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp.214–227. ISBN0-19-814325-7.
K. Strecker (1928). Die Apocalypse des Golias. Rome, Leipzig.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Bede, also known as Saint Bede, the Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable, was an English monk and an author and scholar. He was one of the greatest teachers and writers during the Early Middle Ages, and his most famous work, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, gained him the title "The Father of English History". He served at the monastery of St Peter and its companion monastery of St Paul in the Kingdom of Northumbria of the Angles.
The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events relating to first-century Christianity. The New Testament's background, the first division of the Christian Bible, is called the Old Testament, which is based primarily upon the Hebrew Bible; together they are regarded as sacred scripture by Christians.
Old English literature refers to poetry and prose written in Old English in early medieval England, from the 7th century to the decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066, a period often termed Anglo-Saxon England. The 7th-century work Cædmon's Hymn is often considered as the oldest surviving poem in English, as it appears in an 8th-century copy of Bede's text, the Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Poetry written in the mid 12th century represents some of the latest post-Norman examples of Old English. Adherence to the grammatical rules of Old English is largely inconsistent in 12th-century work, and by the 13th century the grammar and syntax of Old English had almost completely deteriorated, giving way to the much larger Middle English corpus of literature.
The goliards were a group of generally young clergy in Europe who wrote satirical Latin poetry in the 12th and 13th centuries of the Middle Ages. They were chiefly clerics who served at or had studied at the universities of France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and England, who protested against the growing contradictions within the church through song, poetry and performance. Disaffected and not called to the religious life, they often presented such protests within a structured setting associated with carnival, such as the Feast of Fools, or church liturgy.
The Book of Deer is a 10th-century Latin Gospel Book with early 12th-century additions in Latin, Old Irish and Scottish Gaelic. It contains the earliest surviving Gaelic writing from Scotland.
The Muratorian fragment, also known as the Muratorian Canon, is a copy of perhaps the oldest known list of most of the books of the New Testament. The fragment, consisting of 85 lines, is a Latin manuscript bound in a roughly 8th-century codex from the library of Columbanus's monastery at Bobbio Abbey; it contains features suggesting it is a translation from a Greek original written about 170. Other scholars suggest it might have been originally written as late as the 4th century, although this is not the consensus opinion. Both the degraded condition of the manuscript and the poor Latin in which it was written have made it difficult to translate. The beginning of the fragment is missing, and it ends abruptly. The fragment consists of all that remains of a section of a list of all the works that were accepted as canonical by the churches known to its original compiler.
2 Esdras is an apocalyptic book in some English versions of the Bible. Tradition ascribes it to Ezra, a scribe and priest of the fifth century BC, whom the book identifies with the sixth-century figure Shealtiel.
The Gelasian Decree is a Latin text traditionally thought to be a decretal of the prolific Pope Gelasius I, bishop of Rome from 492 to 496. The work reached its final form in a five-chapter text written by an anonymous scholar between 519 and 553, the second chapter of which is a list of books of Scripture presented as having been made part of the biblical canon by a Council of Rome under Pope Damasus I, the bishop of Rome from 366–383. This list is known as the Damasine List. The fifth chapter of the work includes a list of distrusted and rejected works not encouraged for church use.
The name "Esdras" is found in the title of four texts attributed to, or associated with, the prophet Ezra. The naming convention of the four books of Esdras differs between church traditions; and has changed over time.
The Apocalypse of Thomas is a work from the New Testament apocrypha, apparently composed originally in Greek. It concerns the end of the world, and appears to be influenced by the Apocalypse of John, although it is written in a less mystical and cosmic manner. The Apocalypse of Thomas is the inspiration for the popular medieval millennial list Fifteen Signs before Doomsday.
The Apocalypse of Paul is a fourth-century non-canonical apocalypse and part of the New Testament apocrypha. The full original Greek version of the Apocalypse is lost, although fragmentary versions still exist. Using later versions and translations, the text has been reconstructed, notably from Latin and Syriac translations, the earliest being a seventh-century Iranian Syriac codex known as Fonds Issayi 18.
Written in Syriac in the late seventh century, the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius shaped and influenced Christian eschatological thinking in the Middle Ages. Falsely attributed to Methodius of Olympus, a fourth century Church Father, the work attempts to make sense of the Islamic conquest of the Near East.
Pierce the Ploughman's Crede is a medieval alliterative poem of 855 lines, lampooning the four orders of friars.
The Shield of the Trinity or Scutum Fidei is a traditional Christian visual symbol which expresses many aspects of the doctrine of the Trinity, summarizing the first part of the Athanasian Creed in a compact diagram. In late medieval Europe, this emblem was considered to be the heraldic arms of God.
Saint Victorinus of Pettau was an Early Christian ecclesiastical writer who flourished about 270, and who was martyred during the persecutions of Emperor Diocletian. A Bishop of Poetovio in Pannonia, Victorinus is also known as Victorinus Petavionensis or Poetovionensis. Victorinus composed commentaries on various texts within the Christians' Holy Scriptures.
2 Baruch is a Jewish pseudepigraphical text thought to have been written in the late 1st century CE or early 2nd century CE, after the destruction of the Temple in CE 70. It is attributed to the biblical figure Baruch ben Neriah and so is associated with the Old Testament, but not regarded as scripture by Jews or by most Christian groups. It is included in some editions of the Peshitta, and is part of the Bible in the Syriac Orthodox tradition. It has 87 sections (chapters).
Hugh Primas of Orléans was a Latin lyric poet of the 12th century, a scholar from Orléans who was jokingly called Primas, "the Primate", by his friends at the University of Paris. He was probably born in the 1090s and may have died about 1160. Along with his younger contemporary known as the Archpoet, he marks the opening of a new period in Latin literature.
Cædmon's Hymn is a short Old English poem attributed to Cædmon, a supposedly illiterate and unmusical cow-herder who was, according to the Northumbrian monk Bede, miraculously empowered to sing in honour of God the Creator. The poem is Cædmon's only known composition.
Frithegod, was a poet and clergyman in the mid 10th-century who served Oda of Canterbury, an Archbishop of Canterbury. As a non-native of England, he came to Canterbury and entered Oda's service as a teacher and scholar. After Oda's death he likely returned to the continent. His most influential writing was a poem on the life of Wilfrid, an 8th-century bishop and saint, named Breviloquium Vitae Wilfridi. Several manuscripts of this poem survive, as well as a few other of Frithegod's poems. He was also known for the complexity of his writings, with one historian even calling them "damnably difficult".
The canon of the New Testament is the set of books many modern Christians regard as divinely inspired and constituting the New Testament of the Christian Bible. For historical Christians, canonicalization was based on whether the material was written by the apostles or their close associates, rather than claims of divine inspiration. However, some biblical scholars with diverse disciplines now reject the claim that any texts of the Bible were written by the earliest apostles.
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