The Politics of Time: Epistemic Shifts and the Reception History of the Four Kingdoms Schema
Brennan Breed
The articulation of time into discrete, meaningful periods is a powerful po-litical act. This essay surveys the use biblical four kingdoms schema as time-structuring device at moments socio-political rupture in Euro-pean history. In wake dissolution Western Roman Empire, provided theological and intellectual ground-ing for wide variety claims to temporal sovereignty, both universal local, demonstrated by Eusebius, Paulus Orosius, Cassiodorus Isidore Seville. mediaeval period, seen Hereford map world, allowed scholars produce new theories divine sovereignty that legitimated specific secular authorities means unified geographic-chronological progression power. transition Early Modern forms measuring con-ceptualizing well theo-political organization, par-ticularly Protestant circles, found expression shifting interpretive tra-jectories schema. shift witnessed Conrad Dasypodius’s astronomical clock Strasbourg, concurrent pseudony-mous apocalyptic prophesies Wilhelm Friess, revolutionary rhet-oric Thomas Müntzer.
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