IN 1996, the New York Times, one of the major newspapers in the United iStates, celebrated its centennial. By the standards of more ancient civilisations and cultures, this anniversary may seem hardly worth noting, but given the demise of so many newspapers and magazines in the last half century and the reputation of the Times as the newspaper of record, the achievement of a one-hundredth birthday was worthy of celebration. In honour of the occasion, several special feature issues were given over to a review of the Times’s coverage of the events of the last century. Most striking, however, was an issue that appeared in late September 1996 called ‘Looking Forward, Looking Back’ which afforded a variety of writers on everything from fashion, to leisure, to the culture wars, to philosophy and ‘pop’ psychology to speculate about the next hundred years of the twenty-first century.

More to the point as we consider here the meaning of ‘Medieval Futures’, i.e., what the concept of the future meant for an age long past, was the editorial comment that how we view the future very much depends upon our perceptions of the past and present. Writers, artists and, perhaps most of all, reformers of various types ‘have long deployed visions of the future as parables, offering insight into their times … [using] then as a prism through which to cast light on now’.

Any discussion, therefore, of ‘Medieval Futures’ must take into account the role of prophecy, part of the vocabulary of those who articulate a vision of the future. As prophecy has long embodied a critique of the present, it has had its own critics and sceptics, some who would see it as little more than fortune-telling or gazing into a crystal ball. Nevertheless, one cannot deny the power of prophecy as prediction, as evidenced in the long and venerable ancient traditions of astrology and of the interpretation of dreams. In the Bible, for example, did not Pharaoh believe in and act upon Joseph’s prophecy of seven fat years followed by seven lean years? (Genesis 41. 25–57.) Did not Shakespeare’s Macbeth believe and act upon the witches’ prediction that he would become Thane of Cawdor and king thereafter?