Imagining the End: Visions of
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so as to diminish its susceptibility to apocalyptic interpretation. 52 Whether or not this nervousness was justified in either case, it is in itself suggestive at least of some distancing in social relations between the privileged and the unprivileged. It contrasts markedly with the image projected in the reports of the Peace Councils, of Church and People joyously united in resistance to the wicked milites –
a contrast which is significant in itself, even if, as Barthélemy suspects, that was only image-making. However gradual the social changes which underlay this new suspicion and insecurity may have been, its articulation suggests that we have reached a point where churchmen are becoming conscious that they cannot appeal to popular esteem and support as confidently as once they had. In that case, their fear of heresy must be taken to reflect unease about reactions, actual or potential, to the collection of tithes, the increasing pressure for acceptance of the sacraments and services of the Church, especially the cult of the dead, and the cost of building that mantle of churches of which Radulfus Glaber was so proud, and we admire so much. Richard Landes uncovered a striking example of the last when he showed how Ademar of Chabannes had been at pains in revising 146 Medieval and Early Modern Periods his
to decouple the disastrous collapse at the dedication of the splendidly rebuilt basilica of St Martial at Limoges in
, when fifty people were trampled to death, from his statement that ‘heretics appeared in Aqui- taine’ at that time. 53 Nervousness about millenarianism presumably indicates a more generalized anxiety about the possibility of social revolt, which is also occasionally hinted at in other ways. 54 It seems likely enough that in the years around and
people were preaching that the end of the world was nigh. They usually are. There is no reason to suppose that Landes is very far wrong in thinking that they said the kinds of things that would be suggested by the Christian heritage of apocalyptic vocabulary and expectations. How much it mattered is quite another question. Certainly, it is neither necessary nor even plausible to invoke it as an explanation of the harnessing of religious sentiments in the expression of grievance or resistance to the arrogance of power. Whether Radulphus Glaber thought so or not, it was not at all extraordinary to find bottom-up initiatives in religious matters throughout the tenth, eleventh and early twelfth centuries. This is the period when modern research, exploiting the insights of anthropology, has detected a great variety of devices by which people at the mercy of the powerful sought to rally public opinion in their support – by no means always ineffectually – including the humiliation of relics, the pronouncing of elaborate and spectacular maledictions, the enact- ment of rituals of self-abasement and humiliation by those begging pardon and favour of the mighty. 55 It is the period when the people of Western Europe made it a habit to acclaim the miracles performed not only at tombs, but by living saints whom, by proclaiming as such, they invested with the qualities and prerogatives of lordship, sometimes to the embarrassment of those who created the record. 56 Conversely, it had been the habit of bishops and princes, when they had the capacity to assert themselves, to condemn the leaders of the communities which they had it in mind to tame as pagans, idolaters, magicians, rain-makers – and heretics – since the time of the conversions, and would remain so for a long time to come. 57 In this perspective the holy man, the worker of miracles in vita , was primarily the spokesman and articu- lator of a very ancient form of power, that which mobilized the sentiment and values of the community at large to confront its divisions and, where necessary, to bring pressure to bear against its disturbers and oppressors. It is, in short, quite wrong to imagine that passive acquiescence was the habitual posture of the ordinary people of Western Europe in matters either secular or religious – not, of course, that they perceived a chasm between the two. They were, like the animal in the French zoo, dangerous, and when attacked would defend themselves; their readiness to do so does not require any special explanation. Barthélemy is right to insist against the protagonists
147 Medieval Europe of ‘feudal anarchy’ around the millennium that we are too easily gulled by the pretensions of rulers and their apologists into accepting at face value the importance of governmental institutions, whether in strength or weakness, and overlooking the self-balancing and self-limiting mechanisms represented by the interests, solidarities and customary sanctions which enabled the community to ‘live in conflict’, 58 as Patrick Geary and Stephen D. White have described so well. 59 But if the self-assertion of the community through religious channels and forms of expression was a very ancient form of power, it was also one which was under threat. By the last decades of the twelfth century it had been decisively and permanently marginalized, most directly through the sustained attack on ‘heresy’ and ‘superstition’ in the name of ‘reason’ and true religion which modern historiography associates with the reform of the Church in the eleventh century and the emergence of the modern state in the twelfth. 60 The movements and sentiments described by Cohn were in large part respon- sive to this marginalization. The first shots in the battle whose sound is still audible to us, though it was joined over smaller issues, are those assertions that heretics were active among the people which first surface in the early years of the eleventh century. Those who feel or express social anxiety are not necessarily, or even probably, the most acute or dispassionate judges of its causes, and collective action by the ruled at their own initiative is always alarming to the rulers, whatever its ostensible nature or objective. They naturally tend to explain opposition to their outlooks and institutions as resulting from the operation of malign forces which must be sternly sup- pressed – the influence of heretics or subversives, maybe, or travellers from distant lands, or noxious substances. Or even, the approach of the millennium.
148 8 Wrestling with the Millennium: Early Modern Catholic Exegesis of Apocalypse 20 Bernard McGinn The approach of the third millennium of the Christian calendar sparked renewed interest in the history of apocalyptic and millenarian ideas over the past
, years. 1 While some ancient Jewish authors of apocalypses and related literature had looked forward to a period of peace and plenty during the era of the coming messiah, 2 the specification of a , -year time of earthly felicity begins with a brief text in the Christian apocalypse ascribed to John and written probably at the end of the first century . 3 The twentieth chapter of this work speaks of the time after the defeat of the beast and the false prophet (Apocalypse ), when the Devil will be bound for , years in the pit (Apocalypse :
– ), and the saints who died for their faith will come back to life in the ‘first resurrection and reign with Christ for a thousand years’ (vv. –
). This passage (vv. – ) has been one of the most contested in the history of the interpretation of this much-contested book. Is it to be taken literally, or figuratively? Is the ,
years an actual millennium of time, or a symbolic number? Will this reign really be on earth? Many volumes have been written about the history of the millennium and millennial expectations in general. The story is so rich that some important chapters have been neglected. It is one of those that I wish to pursue here. The revival of hope in an earthly millennium (if not always one of a precise ,
years) in Protestant Christianity of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is familiar to students of apocalypticism. 4 Roman Catholic polemics against Protestantism, and especially Catholic opposition to Protestant readings of the Apocalypse, have led many to suppose that early modern Catholic interpreters and thinkers avoided all millennial expectations. This was not the case. In the period leading up to the outbreak of the Reformation, as well as during the first century of the quarrel that split Western Christendom,
149 Wrestling with the Millennium Catholics adopted a number of attitudes towards Apocalypse and to the possibility of a coming better era on earth. Many of these were explicitly millennial, either in the hope for a chronologically unspecified better age to come, or else even in the belief in a literal , years. It would take more than a single chapter to study all aspects of Catholic millennialism in the century-and-a-half between c.
and
. My concentration here will be on exegetical treatments, that is, on those authors who advanced their millen- nialism within the context of commentaries on the last book of the Bible. Although these learned and often ponderous tomes do not tell the whole story of Catholic millennialism during this time, Jean-Robert Armogathe has justly noted: ‘It is these works that set the boundaries and suggested the lines of interpretation that were popularized by intermediaries.’ 5 A survey of how early modern Catholic exegetes read chapter , as well as some related texts of John’s Apocalypse, can provide a prism to view a fascinating and overlooked chapter of the history of millenarianism. In order to understand what these exegetes did with the millennium of Apocalypse , it is necessary to look back, if only briefly, at the thousand years of interpretation previous to them to see how it shaped the options open to these early modern readers. As with so much in the history of Western Christianity, we will begin with Augustine of Hippo. In his
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