Imagining the End: Visions of

moved

by a belief that the millennium of the Passion would mark the day of the Lord

,

greater than any man before could have hoped to see 

in his imagination of how

the final days would move people

, began to travel to the holy sepulchre of  the

Saviour in Jerusalem 

as Isaiah prophesied about the nations turning to Zion, in

order to be present at the mount of Olives, site of the Parousia of Jesus in power and

glory. 

First the order of  the inferior plebs, 

it being absolutely extraordinary that

the initiative for such a tremendous event should come from the bottom up

,

 

then

those of  middling estate, and after these the great men, that is kings, counts,

marcher lords and bishops, and eventually, and this was unheard of  before 

a

classic apocalyptic trope

, many women, noble and poor, undertook the journey …

and so on.

The problem with both positions is how to control them. Landes’s tech-

nique (which he calls genealogical, but perhaps archaeological would be a

better description) of  seeking to track back to the writer’s earlier opinions

from the traces which they have left in his final text is perfectly reasonable

in itself, and each of  the particular interpolations he suggests seems quite

persuasive in the context of  the patterns of  thought and usage which Landes

and so many others have found in apocalyptic works. But they are not the

only readings available. Pilgrimage might be undertaken, even on a large

scale, for reasons other than the fear of  an approaching apocalypse; and that

it involved people of  all ranks might be a classic apocalyptic trope, but is also

a topos associated with pilgrimage at all times, as well as with other occasions

on which normal social distinctions are set aside, such as the funerals of  holy

men. To describe all such occasions as 

ipso facto

 apocalyptic would be stretch-

ing the term to cover a much wider series of  phenomena than seems either

useful in itself  or compatible with Landes’s argument about the extraordinary

nature of  what was happening in his ‘millennial generation’. In short, Landes

is in some danger of  meeting the fate which overtakes all conspiracy theorists,

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Medieval Europe

of  embracing a method which is capable of  proving anything and therefore

proves nothing. The lack of  evidence only demonstrates the lengths to which

the authorities have gone to suppress it, thus vindicating both the truth and

the potency of  the theory. Landes tries to deal with this, certainly, by pointing

to cases where an unrecorded millenarianism is being argued against or

condemned by implication, but Barthélemy has no great difficulty in sug-

gesting more economical explanations, as in the case of  Abbo’s preacher, that

he was simply dramatizing his call to repentance.

On the other hand, we must not use Occam’s razor to cut the branch upon

which we sit. If  we apply the most rigorous standards of  proof  to what

everyone agrees to be fragmentary and obscure sources, do we not risk missing

much that happened, and misunderstanding much of  the rest? The question

will not be resolved so long as we pose it in these terms. If  our choice is

between what the texts demonstrably say and what they may plausibly be

held to imply there is nothing for either camp to do but reiterate its position

and its claim to methodological superiority. Neither, indeed, shows any sign

of  flagging, but the rest of  us may prefer to look for another approach. This,

I suggest, may be found by looking not just at what was said, but at what

happened, in accordance with the suggestion offered above that any hypothesis

as to whether the transformation in Western Europe was revolutionary or

evolutionary in nature, might be tested by considering whether the religious

changes which took place at the same time are amenable to the same chrono-

logy and explanation. The assumption that such a relationship is to be

expected, however, places both arguments in some danger of  circularity, or at

least imposes on both protagonists the obligation to state the order of  their

reasoning. Since Barthélemy has worked on social and institutional questions

for many years without showing much interest (as far as I know) in religion

per se, and had attacked