Imagining the End: Visions of
Yüklə 4,01 Mb. Pdf görüntüsü
|
| Antiquitates
, sought
to show up the Greeks by linking the Etruscans and other races of Western Europe to the most antique and imaginary Near Eastern sources. Paradoxically, the forger was so clever in arguing for his ‘authentic’ texts that he set the standards for much sixteenth-century critical editing. 30 Annius was also an original exegete of the Apocalypse, as his De futuris Christianorum triumphis in Saracenos (also known as the Glosa sive Expositio in Apocalypsim ), shows. This popular text, first published in
at Genoa, went through seven more printings before , not least because its encouraging message of proximate victory over the dreaded Turk was welcome all over Europe. In order to grasp Annius’s originality as a millenarian exegete, it is helpful to take a brief look at the kinds of Apocalypse exegesis available at the end of the fifteenth century. Early modern commentators on the Apocalypse were heirs to a rich tradition, which, for the sake of convenience, can be described as having three main lines, though these were often intermingled. 31 The first was the Tyconian–Augustinian interpretation, which read the Apocalypse synchronistically and predictively , but excluded any future millennium. This view – always the dominant one – was synchronistic in the sense that it interpreted the symbols of the Apocalypse as moral messages about the warfare between good and evil in every age of the Church. 32 Nevertheless, Augustine and his followers never denied that some of the events foretold in the book – though certainly not the millennium – would really take place at the end of time (see De civitate Dei
. ), so the Apocalypse did have a predictive element. Joachim of Fiore introduced a second mode of reading the Apocalypse, one which also saw in the book’s symbols a spiritual message for every age of the Church (and thus had a
element), but which insisted primarily on a
approach that saw in the Apocalypse both a detailed account of past history and an accurate prophecy of a dawning better age – the non-carnal, non-literal, but real and earthly millennium of the ‘third age of the Holy Spirit’ (
). In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries a new interpretation emerged, the linear historicist approach popularized by Nicholas of Lyra (d. ). Accord- ing to this view, the Apocalypse was a literal account of the events of the past history of the Church, but (at least for Lyra) it could not be used to predict the future, especially an earthly millennium. 33
155 Wrestling with the Millennium How Catholic exegetes of the early modern era utilized and transformed this rich tradition and its three strands is a complex story, many chapters of which are only partly known. 34 Annius’s De futuris Christianorum triumphis , with its combination of astrology and a literal reading of the Apocalypse as a guidebook to the past and future of the Church, shows what the inventive exegete could do with this inherited amalgam. 35 Annius divided his work into three treatises. 36 In the first (ff. Avr–BVv), following the lead of Nicholas of Lyra, he provides a linear and literal reading of the first fifteen chapters of the Apocalypse as an account of the history of the Church down to his own day. The seven seals (Apocalypse : – , ) speak of seven great early persecutions, while the seven trumpets ( : – , ) are seven heresies, of which Islam is the last and worst. The fundamental brunt of his argument in this section is that Muhammad is the Antichrist. Even though the founder of Islam has died, he lives on in his persecuting religio , just as Christ does in Christianity. 37 The second treatise (ff. BVr–FIIv) treats contemporary history from the time of the capture of Constantinople in
to the end of the world. In this section Annius departs from Lyra by accepting both the pessimistic and the optimistic aspects of Apocalypse – in literal fashion. The seven bowls of plagues of Apocalypse signify the persecutions and trials that the Turkish followers of Muhammad have been allowed to inflict on Eastern Christians for their heresies and schism from Rome. Chapter , with its picture of the punishment of Babylon, signifies the present time when the Turk is persecuting Western Europe (Annius was writing in the aftermath of the sack and slaughter at Otranto in early ),
38 In commenting on this chapter, Annius introduces a scholastic discussion of the full temporal power of the papacy that was later to arouse Luther’s ire when he read the Dominican’s popular work. 39 Apocalypse – , according to the Dominican, prophesy the imminent ‘first victory’ of the Latins, when the pope will establish a new emperor at Constantinople who will defeat the Turks and eventually regain Egypt and Arabia, capturing the ‘bones of the accursed Muhammed’. Chapter is to
be taken literally as announcing the coming , years of the triumph of the Church on earth. Here, Annius, joining John’s Apocalypse and Lactantius, says that there must be two universal resurrections: The first resurrection is of the whole church to universal union under the one pastor Christ. In it the church arises from the death of faith and the misery of error and Saracen oppression to the union of all the churches and victory against the beast and the false prophet. This chapter and Lactantius both speak of this ... The second resurrection will be that of bodies. 40
156 Medieval and Early Modern Periods The ancient chiliasts, Annius concludes, were wrong to think that Apocalypse : dealt with a bodily resurrection, but they were correct in holding to a literal , years of peace before Gog and Magog, the remnants of Islam, will return to attack the Church (see Apocalypse : – ). Thus, Annius’s exegesis of Apocalypse is a new millennial reworking of the literalism of Nicholas of Lyra. Finally, in the third part of his book (ff. FIIIr–FVIIr) he confirms this reading by an ‘Astronomical Judgment’ ( Yüklə 4,01 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
|