Imagining the End: Visions of
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| Lectura super Apocalypsim
in
, which agreed with the Calabrian in affirming a proximate contemplative (and for Olivi Franciscan) era of the reformed Church beginning about as the proper interpretation of Apocalypse , but went beyond Joachim in claiming that this spiritual era might last as long as
years. 22 (Olivi thus appears to be the first Christian 153 Wrestling with the Millennium thinker who thought that the year
would see the end of the world!) The layman Arnold of Villanova, who composed a commentary on the Apocalypse about
, also read chapter as predicting an earthly kingdom, in his case of forty-five years’ duration. 23 The widespread millenarianism of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, while never ‘carnal’ in the early Christian sense, grew increasingly terrestrial, political and chronologically millennial. While the full explanation of this shift involves many aspects of late medieval culture, the sad state of the Church, especially during the Avignon period and the Great Schism, led many to think that the only hope for reform and betterment of the Church on earth was through divine intervention at the approach of the End times. The Franciscan prophet, John of Rupescissa (
), was apparently the first person in almost a ‘real’ millennium to advance the view that the coming age of the purified Church on earth would actually extend for a full , years – a position he claimed was miraculously revealed to him in .
The views of Rupescissa and his followers were a complex mix of pre- and
post- Antichrist millenarianism which incorporated and developed many of the traditions noted above. What is most significant about these thinkers is not so much their tendency to return to a literal chronology of considerable duration, even as much as , years, but the fact that their agenda for the millennial era was no longer Joachim’s contemplative vision of a monastic utopia, but rather a religio-political millennium involving such things as: (
) restoration of the Eastern Church to union with Rome; ( ) pacification of Italy; ( ) conquest of the Holy Land; ( ) conversion of the Jews and Saracens; ( ment, etc. 25 This political, and literal, view of the millennium was encouraged by the fifteenth-century rediscovery of Lactantius, whose elegant Latinity and millenarianism was influential on a number of apocalyptic propagandists. In the period
–
millennialism flourished, especially south of the Alps and Pyrenees. Renaissance fascination with the classical myth of the returning ‘Golden Age’ (
) combined with a broad, if vague, millen- nial wave of Joachite origin to encourage many forms of hope for a final better time before the End. 26 The preaching of the Dominican friar, Girolamo Savonarola, between
and
, is the best known example of this form of millennialism. The fiery reformer identified the purified citizens of Florence as the harbingers of the new age of history, one that continued to inspire his followers for decades after his execution. 27 The sheer proliferation of prophets and treatises in late Quattrocento and early Cinquecento Italy is even more significant. 28 At the same time, the mingling of apocalyptic prophecies with astrological predictions, though not exactly a new phenomenon, reached an unprecedented pitch, both north and south of the Alps. 154 Medieval and Early Modern Periods The confluence of Renaissance millennialism and astrology made its mark on the interpretation of Apocalypse , as we can see from the case of Savonarola’s fellow Dominican, Annius of Viterbo, also known as Giovanni Nanni ( c.
–
). 29 Annius is a fascinating character. Although he eventually attained the high office of ‘Master of the Sacred Palace’ under Pope Alexander VI, he is most famous as a forger. Annius’s clever invention and judicious ‘editing’ of ancient texts, which were published in
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