de ratione temporum
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
Historia
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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