- Barnes, Robin Bruce. Prophecy and Gnosis: Apocalypticism in the Wake of the Lutheran Reformation. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988.
- Leppin, Volker. Antichrist und Jüngster Tag: das Profil apokalyptischer Flugschriftenpublizistik im deutschen Luthertum 1548-1618. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1999.
- Mentgen, Gerd. Astrologie und Öffentlichkeit im Mittelalter. Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 2005.
- Talkenberger, Heike. Sintflut: Prophetie und Zeitgeschehen in Texten und Holzschnitten astrologischer Flugschriften, 1488-1528. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1990.
- Niccoli, Ottavia. Prophecy and People in Renaissance Italy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.
- Lerner, Robert. The Powers of Prophecy: The Cedar of Lebanon Vision from the Mongol Onslaught to the Dawn of the Enlightenment. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.
Leppin, Mentgen, and Talkenberger all share Publizistik as an area of primary interest. Mentgen and Talkenberger deal with the earlier period (Mentgen actually starts in the 11th century), while Barnes and Leppin are both looking at Lutheran apocalypticism after 1550. Leppin takes pains to distance his work from Barnes, but I think unnecessarily; both books are valuable and complement each other. Leppin has the strongest theological focus, while Barnes, Mentgen, and Talkenberger are historians. Mentgen does an especially nice job refereeing earlier scholarly debates. In addition to a similar chronological and thematic focus, what all these books share is that they work closely with many primary sources. Their appendices and footnotes are invaluable sources for further research.
One consequence is that I spend more time arguing with these books than with most others, but not because the books are bad - they're not, they're fantastic works of scholarship. And that makes them worth arguing with.
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