APOCALYPTICISM

APOCALYPTICISM. A religious outlook regarding the "last things"—hence a form of eschatology—characterized by a sense of universal crisis and by expectation of a divinely preordained triumph of good over evil, apocalypticism originated among the Jewish prophets around 200 b.c.e. It was a critical aspect of early Christianity, and became an integral though often latent element in the Judeo-Christian tradition. This outlook combines prophetic themes of warning and consolation with the quest for saving knowledge, insight into the divine plan.

The term covers a broad array of beliefs about the imminent end of the world, inevitable conflicts, disasters and tribulations, and a future millennial kingdom, or final age of perfection. Serious contemporary scholarship avoids the assumption that the sociopolitical implications of apocalypticism are inherently violent or revolutionary, noting instead that such thinking has undergirded a wide range of political positions. Yet apocalyptic conceptions were crucial both to the formation of social identities and to the broader transformation of worldviews in the early modern age.

LATE MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE ANXIETY

Medieval ecclesiastical culture generally discouraged apocalyptic expectancy by de-emphasizing historical change and highlighting the fate of individuals at death. Prophetic interests had begun to expand in the high medieval period, but the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries brought a dramatic intensification of such concerns. Upheavals brought on by famine, plague, and war, together with shifting economic conditions and the novelties of urban life, caused heightened anxiety among Europeans and evoked new forms of fear and hope. Social dislocation and suffering became grounds for outbreaks of revolutionary millenarianism, such as that of the Taborites (a group of radical Hussites) in Bohemia. But even millenarian forms of apocalypticism, which foresaw the coming of Christ's temporal rule, could function as conservative political myths by giving established powers a role in preparing for the new age.

The late-medieval apocalyptic ferment drew not only on key biblical texts such as the books of Daniel and Revelation, but also on thinkers such as the Calabrian Cistercian Joachim of Fiore (c. 1135–1202), in whose scheme the ages of the Father (Old Testament) and the Son (New Testament) would be followed by the age of the Holy Spirit, a final period of spiritual fulfillment. Among other influential prophetic sources were ancient textual clusters such as the Sibylline Oracles (collections of ancient Jewish and Christian verses, reputedly by pagan prophetesses), the visions of inspired figures such as Saint Birgitta of Sweden (1303–1373), and classical divinatory methods such as astrology, an art undergoing a powerful revival during the Renaissance. Together these traditions produced a paradoxical brew of terror and hope.

By the late fifteenth century the printing press was helping to articulate and disseminate a general expectancy, local forms of which included the hair-raising preaching of Girolamo Savonarola in Florence, the prophetically charged journeys of Columbus, and German nightmares of a bloodbath at the hands of the Turks, who were commonly seen as the satanic forces of Gog and Magog (Revelation 20: 8) sent to scourge Christendom before the Last Judgment. Despite the persistence of popular hopes for a final world-reform by a messianic emperor or an angelic pope, fearful dread often predominated. Early in the sixteenth century, for instance, astrologically inspired predictions of a second universal flood to come in 1524 sent waves of panic through central Europe.

MARTIN LUTHER AND REFORMATION EXPECTANCY

This rising expectancy posed severe threats to the established religious culture and formed a central current in the sixteenth-century Reformations, especially among those movements that regarded the papacy as the biblical Antichrist, now unmasked in the last times. Here the prophetic discoveries of Martin Luther were central. Although he by no means escaped late-medieval influences (for example, the assumption of world-historical decline since the Creation), Luther decisively rejected as unbiblical all dreams about messianic emperors, world reform, and a millennial paradise. For him the ultimate reality was a universal struggle between God and the devil that would continue until the Last Judgment. Luther and most of his sixteenth-century heirs saw the recovery of the purified gospel as evidence that the end was imminent. By discrediting many medieval beliefs and ritual practices that had dampened personal anxiety, effectively propagandizing against the newly revealed Roman Antichrist, and directing the religious imagination to scriptural promises of disaster and deliverance, Protestantism focused and intensified the apocalyptic tendencies in European culture.

Millenarian hopes, though marginalized, did not disappear from the early Reformation scene. Many Anabaptists and other radicals held views that were at least quasi-millenarian, and chiliasm, the belief in a literal thousand-year rule of Christ on earth (Revelation 20), gained scattered adherents. But such beliefs tended to be fluid; it is often difficult to pin down the apocalyptic conceptions of radical leaders such as Thomas Müntzer (c. 1488–1525) or Melchior Hoffmann (c. 1500–1543). Again, no necessary link can be found between millenarian hopes and the radicalism of such violent episodes as the German Peasants' War (1524–1525) or the Anabaptist rising at Münster (1534–1535). What distinguished radicals such as Müntzer was mainly their conviction that God's people had an active and immediate role to play in fulfilling the divine plan. This sort of apocalyptic preaching was regarded as threatening to political and ecclesiastical establishments throughout the early modern age.

LATE REFORMATION VARIATIONS

In the late Reformation era (c. 1560–1620), evangelicals in Germany and elsewhere sought to bolster their prophetic faith and sense of confessional identity through strident end-time preaching, searching far and wide for evidence to complement biblical prophecies of the nearing judgment. Apocalyptic expectancy thus propelled inquiry into such realms as historical chronology, natural wonders, and celestial observation. While some evangelical leaders continued to stress the necessary obscurity of all prophetic details, an increasingly eclectic apocalypticism fed rapidly on itself and formed a basic context for the pansophic striving of that era, the quest for universal insight, for a magical key to the secrets of creation.

Early Reformed Protestants proved more hesitant to engage in apocalyptic reckoning, partly because of John Calvin's (1509–1564) pronounced reserve in such matters. Yet Calvinism would prove fertile ground for the revival of millenarianism from the late sixteenth century on. Their confidence in God's promises to the elect led Calvinist thinkers to seize on biblical passages suggesting a final spiritual triumph before the close of time. On the continent, scholars such as Johann Heinrich Alsted (1588–1638) could combine this brand of prophetic confidence with expansive pedagogical ambitions to form visions of a breathtakingly transformed human future. But it was in England that Calvinist millenarianism would have its most pervasive influence. Here, Elizabethan images of England as an elect nation gained urgency in the political conflicts of the seventeenth century, which seemed in many eyes the final struggle against the Antichrist. The Civil War and Interregnum of the 1640s and 1650s brought to full boil the Puritan dream of a godly society, which exploded into various radical movements, from those of the Quakers, Levellers, and Diggers to Fifth Monarchists, all sharing the sense that a final spiritual outpouring was underway.

Among Catholics, the sacred and social realms remained integrated in ways alien to Protestantism; hence, the impulse to direct fears and hopes toward the historical horizon remained relatively muted. In addition, clerical authorities worked to restrict the spread of popular apocalyptic expectancy. Still, Catholic Europe was affected by the general unease brought on by the rapid changes of the Reformation era. The French Wars of Religion spurred a strain of Catholic apocalyptic preaching against the rise of satanic heresy. Medieval traditions such as hope for a messianic emperor retained currency, as did various forms of Joachimist belief in a final time of earthly perfection. Major religious orders such as the Jesuits and the Franciscans continued to harbor visions of millennial triumph that renewed or reinforced a sense of mission in Catholic Europe, against Protestant heretics, and in the New World.

PROGRESSIVE FAITH AND SKEPTICAL DESPAIR

Especially in northern Europe, tense waverings between hope and terror characterized the early to mid-seventeenth century, when fearfully violent persecution of witches could accompany dreams of the conversion of the Jews and a return to Edenic peace. Yet at the same time, inherited outlooks were evolving in new directions. On one hand, the apocalyptically inspired quest for insight into the patterns of nature and history, seasoned with millennial hope, could spawn highly sanguine visions of human progress. The rise of Baconian science, for example, needs to be regarded in this light, as do early moves to institutionalize the investigation of nature by groups such as the Royal Society in England (founded 1660). Modern notions about the ongoing amelioration of the human condition through the mastery of nature can thus be traced at least partly to Christian faith in a divine plan for collective spiritual fulfillment.

On the other hand, apocalyptic fears of divine wrath, of human helplessness in the face of inevitable disasters, suffering, and death, were at least one major source for the practical skepticism and agnosticism that grew increasingly evident in the seventeenth century. Among evangelicals, the revelation of the true gospel had from the start meant not only a positive awakening, but also profound disillusionment in regard to humanly invented myths, along with heightened critical awareness and distilled strains of anxiety. With spreading wars, economic dislocations, witch hunts, and general confusion, many Protestants who had felt the nearness of Christ's return, but who were repeatedly and forcefully reminded of their own incapacity to understand or influence God's plan, retreated from the pursuit of apocalyptic insight and turned toward lives of simple practicality. One dramatic mid-seventeenth-century example is offered by the Dutch Collegiants, radical Protestant millenarians whose fervent hopes were consistently disappointed, and who came to accept human reasoning as a necessary if provisional guide during whatever time remained before the divinely wrought transformation of the world.

NATURAL LAW AND PROPHETIC SCIENCE

Apocalyptic hope and despair thus led toward the awkward Enlightenment juxtaposition of progressive faith and skeptical reason. But outwardly at least, the later seventeenth century witnessed a waning of expectancy. Among European elites, the main thrust of intellectual inquiry shifted away from time and history to the seemingly more concrete realm of nature and her timeless patterns, a trend that suited the prevailing desire for order and stability in all aspects of life. Ultimately more significant than the new heliocentric cosmology was the spreading belief in universal, ahistorical laws that were potentially within reason's full grasp. The sort of rational religion proposed by Lord Herbert of Cherbury (c. 1583–1648), which dismissed as superstitious virtually all belief in historical revelation or prophecy, was spreading far and fast by 1700. Moreover, time's terrors seemed to fade in this age of boundless potential wealth and new methods of insurance.

Yet even as apocalyptic expectancy became less visible and its popular expressions came to be denounced as "enthusiasm," European thinkers continued to speculate in ways that revealed their deep hopes and fears. Especially among educated Protestants, scripturally based calculations of the closeness of the Last Judgment or the advent of an earthly millennium remained a serious preoccupation. Indeed these reckonings were commonly pursued as a quasi-scientific enterprise—a rational effort to uncover the divinely determined laws of universal history. Isaac Newton (1642–1727) was among those who devoted energies to the careful analysis of biblical prophecy, calculating likely dates for the destruction of Christ's enemies and the realization of the millennium.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY MOVEMENTS

Apocalyptic conceptions continued to serve diverse political interests, including those of conservative Anglican bishops, of urbanites who spurned the established churches for "Philadelphian" societies promoting a final worldwide blossoming of love, and of the radical "Camisards" who carried on a guerrilla war against the French monarchy in the years after 1700. In the 1730s a movement of prophetic opposition to the worldliness of the French church was led by the Jansenist "Convulsionaries," who saw themselves as witnesses to the final spiritual outpouring foreseen by the prophet Joel. Yet similar themes would be adopted by the Jansenists' most consistent enemies, the Jesuits, after their suppression by Pope Clement XIV (reigned 1769–1774) in 1773.

If in France millenarian prophecies were often deployed in opposition to established power, in Germany they more commonly cast existing authorities in a positive light, as instruments in God's work to complete the movement of history. German Pietist leaders such as Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705) anticipated the fall of the papacy, the conversion of the Jews, and a worldwide reign of peace before the Last Judgment. Pietist thinkers tended more and more toward a progressive outlook verging on nonapocalyptic historical meliorism. Meanwhile, in England the great popular movement of Methodism was driven by widely shared convictions of Christ's imminent advent; the same mood of expectancy leaped the ocean to help fuel a Great Awakening in the New World.

By the second half of the eighteenth century, Christian postmillennialism (expectation of Christ's personal return only after an age of spiritual purity) had become closely intertwined with Enlightenment optimism. In the schemes of learned figures such as Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, historical progress was ongoing and inevitable. But expectations marked by a more pronounced sense of imminence and urgency, while often kept out of public view, remained pervasive. Moreover, with the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, the entire storehouse of late medieval and early modern apocalyptic imagery was reopened and thoroughly ransacked in efforts to make sense of a manifestly world-historical upheaval. For revolutionary supporters, these events would mark nothing less than the advent of a new historical dispensation, a millennium of reason and freedom.

Throughout the early modern period, both elites and common folk were influenced by visions of current crisis and future resolution. Such concepts had no consistent sociopolitical implications, but they did function centrally in the formation of various confessional, national, and missionary identities. Apocalyptic outlooks inspired Europeans to intense efforts to understand their experiences in relation to a universal scheme. The modern myth of progress as well as modern skepticism and agnosticism had central roots in apocalyptic perceptions. In no sense a fringe phenomenon, apocalyptic expectancy was a crucial element of early modern European life and thought.

See also Anabaptism ; Calvin, John ; Calvinism ; Camisard Revolt ; Enlightenment ; Jansenism ; Jesuits ; Luther, Martin ; Lutheranism ; Methodism ; Pietism ; Reformation, Protestant ; Revolutions, Age of ; Witchcraft.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

The primary sources for early modern apocalypticism are so numerous and varied that any brief listing would be highly arbitrary. For titles by particular authors or on a specific aspect of the theme, the bibliographies of relevant secondary works should be consulted.

Secondary Sources

Cohn, Norman. The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Messianism in Medieval and Reformation Europe and its Bearing on Modern Totalitarian Movements. 2nd ed. New York, 1961. A classic, still engaging and valuable despite its largely discredited approach.

Fanlo, Jean-Raymond, and André Tournon, eds. Formes du Millenarisme en Europe à l'aube des temps modernes. Paris, 2001. Reflects important trends in recent research, but also the regrettable tendency to focus exclusively on millenarian forms of apocalypticism.

Firth, Katharine. The Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain 1530–1645. Oxford and New York, 1979. Among the best overall treatments of the British scene in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Fix, Andrew C. Prophecy and Reason: The Dutch Collegiants in the Early Enlightenment. Princeton, 1991. A pathbreaking study of connections between apocalyptic disillusionment and rationalism.

Historische Kommission zur Erforschung des Pietismus. Chiliasmus in Deutschland und England im 17. Jahrhundert. Pietismus und Neuzeit, 14. Edited by Martin Brecht et al. Göttingen, 1988. Includes helpful essays, several in English.

McGinn, Bernard et al., eds. The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism. Vol. 2, Apocalypticism in Western History and Culture. New York and London, 1998. Includes excellent bibliographies.

Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture. 4 vols. Dordrecht and London, 2001. Rich collections of scholarly articles.

Oberman, Heiko A. Luther: Man between God and the Devil. New Haven and London, 1989. Indispensable on Luther's apocalyptic worldview.

Patrides, C. A., and Joseph Wittreich, eds. The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature: Patterns, Antecedents, and Repercussions. Ithaca, N.Y., 1984.

Scholem, Gershom. Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626–1676. Translated by R. J. Werblowsky. Princeton, 1973. Exhaustive study of the central episode in early modern Jewish apocalypticism.

Tuveson, Ernest Lee. Millennium and Utopia: A Study in the Background of the Idea of Progress. Berkeley, 1949. Somewhat dated, but still useful for its central argument that the modern idea of progress derived from Christian millenarianism.

Webster, Charles. The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine, and Reform 1626–1660. New York, 1976. Demonstrates the fundamental importance of millenarianism for the emergence of the new science.

Robin B. Barnes