Tom Johnson

Tom Johnson is the author of Law in Common: Legal Cultures in Late Medieval England. He teaches at York.

Take that, astrolabe: Medieval Time

Tom Johnson, 19 October 2023

How​ will we know when the world is ending? According to ‘The Pricke of Conscience’, an English poem c.1340, the apocalypse will proceed with a fortnight of terrifying signs. On the first day the sea will rise to the height of a mountain, then on the second day drain away to a trickle. There will be a hideous roaring from the ‘mast wonderful fisshes of the se’, blood...

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