Luther and the Vaticiniums of Modernity

Abstract

In his famous essay “Pagan Prophecy in Words and Pictures in the Time of Luther”, Aby Warburg launched a call for “the History of Art and the Science of Religion to meet”. He did so on studying Martin Luther, the initiator of the Reformation, who had an extraordinary gravity and significance in early Modernity, since his life, thought Warburg, condensed many tensions and transformations of that period. This paper seeks to study prophetic predictions, images and writings about Luther in the Renaissance. Two aspects are of especial interest under this scope: on the one hand, the political iconography as a pillar in the Western construction of meaning, and, on the other hand, the collective concern about the End of Time in Luther’s epoch (manifested again in our 21^st Century present).