This volume contains nineteen essays, sixteen in French, and three in English, that offer theological and philosophical analyses of the end times, focusing on the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries. Each chapter examines a particular thinker or thinkers. The medieval apocalyptic writers as described here tend not to dwell on themes of imminent destruction and damnation. Even the oeuvre of Dante, as Bruno Pinchard observes, is less apocalyptic than one might think. Pinchard instead emphasizes Beatrice's role as a redemptive figure. Maimonides, as Géraldine Roux shows, was thoroughly anti-apocalyptic; Jewish prophecies about the Last Days had already been fulfilled in historical time. For these medieval writers, the Last Days were mainly about salvation, to be approached with confidence, not dread. Typical is Philippe Vallin's discussion of Thomas Aquinas, whose Summa contra Gentiles provides a detailed, highly technical vocabulary to describe the soul's natural tendency to ascend toward God.

The chapters on Renaissance and Early Modern eschatology, by contrast, are characterized by literal, predictive approaches. Oliver Ribordy, for instance, describes how the Renaissance theologian and geographer Pierre d'Ailly developed models in which the six ages of history overlapped with a six-fold conception of human virtue and the planetary spheres – in addition to constructing a horoscope for Christ – all to provide eschatological context for the ongoing Papal Schism. The astrological speculation characteristic of d'Ailly is more generally prevalent in these chapters. Wolfgang Aytinger, as Laura Ackerman Smoller shows, combined astrology with the medieval prophecies of Pseudo-Methodius in order to date to 1510 the advent of the Last World Emperor, who would triumph over the Ottoman Turks. Like astrology, Islam is widespread in these chapters, too, though the writers examined here seem divided as to whether Antichrist would be an Ottoman Emperor or a Roman Pope.

This is a stimulating book, but it is not an easy one. The contributors bring different elaborate technical vocabularies to their work. Few readers will be comfortable with its combination of scholasticism, Renaissance philosophy, exegesis, and astrology. It is, however, well worth the challenge.