The Question of the End:
Apocalyptic Expectation in Early Medieval Europe
1000 A.D.
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| "The Last Judgment" fresco at the Camposanto, Pisa c. 1348 attrib. to Italian master Buonamico Buffalmacco |
Scriptural Starting Places:
Matthew 24:29-31 - “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other."
1 Thessalonians 4:16-18 - "For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words."
2 Peter 3:10 - "But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed."
Matthew 24:29-31 - “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other."
1 Thessalonians 4:16-18 - "For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words."
2 Peter 3:10 - "But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed."
Revelation 20:1-6 - "Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; and he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished. But after these things he must be released for a little while. And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years."
>> Eschatology is from the Greek adjective éskhatos (ἔσχᾰτος). It means "last, at the end, final." Therefore 'eschatology' means the study of the end times, the "last things." The big question with eschatology is "When will all these things be"? In the New Testament, the way that Jesus, Paul, Peter and John talk might lead the reader to expect the immanent end of all things. Yet these teachings have come to us from twenty centuries ago; so we can say, "The end has not happened yet!" Further questions on the end involve concrete statements from the NT about the rapture and the 1,000 years. Such verses have been understood in a variety of ways throughout Christian history. Toward the "middle" of the Middle Ages, when the year 1000 A.D. approached, very many people expected the return of Christ and the judgment. We'll explore that movement in our study today as we conclude our year-long look at the first 1,000 years of the history of the Church.
>>> Note that the dating system of world history as "A.D." (meaning "year of the Lord") was devised by a Christian monk active in Rome. A learned man from modern day Romania/Bulgaria, Dionysius the Humble devised the calendar around the year 525. He counted backwards to what he determined had been the birth year of Christ and based his calendar on it. The incarnation of the Word was thus the center-point of all history.
>>>> In what precedes and follows I rely heavily upon Derek Cooper's book, Twenty Questions that Shaped World Christian History.
>> Eschatology is from the Greek adjective éskhatos (ἔσχᾰτος). It means "last, at the end, final." Therefore 'eschatology' means the study of the end times, the "last things." The big question with eschatology is "When will all these things be"? In the New Testament, the way that Jesus, Paul, Peter and John talk might lead the reader to expect the immanent end of all things. Yet these teachings have come to us from twenty centuries ago; so we can say, "The end has not happened yet!" Further questions on the end involve concrete statements from the NT about the rapture and the 1,000 years. Such verses have been understood in a variety of ways throughout Christian history. Toward the "middle" of the Middle Ages, when the year 1000 A.D. approached, very many people expected the return of Christ and the judgment. We'll explore that movement in our study today as we conclude our year-long look at the first 1,000 years of the history of the Church.
>>> Note that the dating system of world history as "A.D." (meaning "year of the Lord") was devised by a Christian monk active in Rome. A learned man from modern day Romania/Bulgaria, Dionysius the Humble devised the calendar around the year 525. He counted backwards to what he determined had been the birth year of Christ and based his calendar on it. The incarnation of the Word was thus the center-point of all history.
>>>> In what precedes and follows I rely heavily upon Derek Cooper's book, Twenty Questions that Shaped World Christian History.
Around the Year 1000:
As an anonymous pastor proclaimed in Old English in a homily from 971 A.D, "We know that the end of time is not far distant, for all the signs and portents which our Lord said should occur before doomsday have occurred, except only that the accursed visitant Antichrist has not yet come into the world. It is not long until the time when that must happen for this world must necessarily end in this age that is present. In this age then must this world end and most of it has passed, that is, nine hundred and seventy-one years in this year."
Surrounding the year 1000 there were strong apocalyptic expectations in Western Europe. Based on Dionysius' dating system, 1000 A.D. marked the 1,000th year since the Incarnation and redemption of humanity. Along with the suggestive verses in Revelation, the late 10th century and early 11th century were filled with strange astronomical events and other "miracles" witnessed by large numbers of people. For example, chroniclers around the year 1000 recorded an unusually violent earthquake in Western Europe and a strange episode of blood falling upon a certain group of worshipers during a Palm Sunday service. In addition there were comets, violent battles with the Vikings and Eastern European tribes, large-scale famines, planetary alignments, and other apocalyptic phenomena.
Where writers and popular prophets differed was the exact time of completion for the 1,000 years. Would it be 1,000 years after the Incarnation or 1,000 years after the Passion (putting it at 1,033 A.D.)? Opinions differed.
Surrounding the year 1000 there were strong apocalyptic expectations in Western Europe. Based on Dionysius' dating system, 1000 A.D. marked the 1,000th year since the Incarnation and redemption of humanity. Along with the suggestive verses in Revelation, the late 10th century and early 11th century were filled with strange astronomical events and other "miracles" witnessed by large numbers of people. For example, chroniclers around the year 1000 recorded an unusually violent earthquake in Western Europe and a strange episode of blood falling upon a certain group of worshipers during a Palm Sunday service. In addition there were comets, violent battles with the Vikings and Eastern European tribes, large-scale famines, planetary alignments, and other apocalyptic phenomena.
Where writers and popular prophets differed was the exact time of completion for the 1,000 years. Would it be 1,000 years after the Incarnation or 1,000 years after the Passion (putting it at 1,033 A.D.)? Opinions differed.
While it would be overly-simplistic to argue that Christians believed the world would end at the year 1000, it is certainly accurate to state that there was a heightened apocalyptic feeling at this point in the history of the Western Church.
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| Fleury Abbey, founded in 640, is in north-central France. It is an important and celebrated monastery. |
Major Voices:
Adso of Montier-en-Der (c. 910-992): abbot of a monastery in the Northeast of France. His most famous work is a book on the Antichrist where he points out that many Antichrists have already come, such as Emperor Nero and others, but that a final Antichrist will rise up and carry out horrible persecution of the Church. He surmised that the End would be near when the kingdoms that Rome had subdued would rise up against Rome and against the Papacy. "[The] time has not yet come, because, though we see the Roman empire destroyed in great part, nevertheless as long as the kings of the Franks who hold the empire by right shall last, the dignity of the Roman empire will not totally perish, because it will endure in the kings." Adso went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in preparation for the end.
Abbo of Fleury (c. 945-1004): monk of Fleury Abbey who recorded an interesting memory that gives us a window into popular apocalypticism at this time: "When I was a young man I heard a sermon about the End of the world preached before the people in the cathedral of Paris. According to this, as soon as the number of a thousand years was completed, the Antichrist would come and the Last Judgment would follow in a brief time. I opposed this sermon..."
Wulfstan of York (?-1023): monk and archbishop of York in Northern England. In five sermons on the End Times Wulfstan guessed that the end was near because the world was growing worse with each passing day. "A thousand years and more have now passed since Christ was among men in human form, and now Satan's bonds are greatly loosened and Antichrist's time is very close, and therefore things are in the world ever the weaker the longer it goes on."
Ralph Glaber (985-1047): monk active near Dijon, France. His most important work is a five volume work called Histories in which he offers a literal interpretation of Revelation. Here he connects a 10th century heretic named Vilgardus with the release of the devil from prison at the end of 1,000 years. Glaber also notes many interesting events from around 1000 A.D. which anticipated the last age. Among other signs Glaber notes Halley's Comet: "[This] clearly portends some wondrous and awe-inspiring event in the world shortly after."
Wulfstan of York (?-1023): monk and archbishop of York in Northern England. In five sermons on the End Times Wulfstan guessed that the end was near because the world was growing worse with each passing day. "A thousand years and more have now passed since Christ was among men in human form, and now Satan's bonds are greatly loosened and Antichrist's time is very close, and therefore things are in the world ever the weaker the longer it goes on."
Ralph Glaber (985-1047): monk active near Dijon, France. His most important work is a five volume work called Histories in which he offers a literal interpretation of Revelation. Here he connects a 10th century heretic named Vilgardus with the release of the devil from prison at the end of 1,000 years. Glaber also notes many interesting events from around 1000 A.D. which anticipated the last age. Among other signs Glaber notes Halley's Comet: "[This] clearly portends some wondrous and awe-inspiring event in the world shortly after."
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| Title page of a work by Abbo of Fleury. Note the name "Abbo" written across the monk's neck. The date is c. 970. |
Significance Today:
Our Lord teaches, "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by His own authority" (Acts 1:7), yet since the earliest times of the Church, indeed, since the time of the Twelve, disciples have wished to know the exact date of the End.
In the Early Church, prominent writers such as Augustine and Jerome believed Revelation was a heavily symbolic text with figurative numbers and provocative, non-literal imagery. This has not always been the opinion. Other ancient Fathers such as Hippolytus and Tertullian had different views that would resonate more with modern day Dispensationalists than most Catholics or Lutherans.
Around the year 1000 there were several monastic authors who looked around at the numerous terrestrial and heavenly "signs" and decided that the end was imminently near. Of course ten centuries have now passed, and we have historical hindsight to see that worse things have happened since that time! Tsunamis, famines, wars, genocides, and pandemics have plagued the world, and more Christians were slain in the 20th century alone than in all previous centuries put together.
It is important for us as Christians to live in the tension of the "End Times" with the understanding that, since the Ascension, every age has eagerly expected to see the face of Christ as Judge and Victor. As disasters and wars take place, the Church catches glimpses of the End. Just as there are many Antichrists, there are many 'signs' and 'wonders' of the End. Indeed, the world is groaning under the weight of sin and is ready for the transfiguration of all things. The Church's mission is to prepare all of creation to meet her Author: the Messiah Jesus.
In the Early Church, prominent writers such as Augustine and Jerome believed Revelation was a heavily symbolic text with figurative numbers and provocative, non-literal imagery. This has not always been the opinion. Other ancient Fathers such as Hippolytus and Tertullian had different views that would resonate more with modern day Dispensationalists than most Catholics or Lutherans.
Around the year 1000 there were several monastic authors who looked around at the numerous terrestrial and heavenly "signs" and decided that the end was imminently near. Of course ten centuries have now passed, and we have historical hindsight to see that worse things have happened since that time! Tsunamis, famines, wars, genocides, and pandemics have plagued the world, and more Christians were slain in the 20th century alone than in all previous centuries put together.
It is important for us as Christians to live in the tension of the "End Times" with the understanding that, since the Ascension, every age has eagerly expected to see the face of Christ as Judge and Victor. As disasters and wars take place, the Church catches glimpses of the End. Just as there are many Antichrists, there are many 'signs' and 'wonders' of the End. Indeed, the world is groaning under the weight of sin and is ready for the transfiguration of all things. The Church's mission is to prepare all of creation to meet her Author: the Messiah Jesus.
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