The years ad 1000 and 1033 represent the climax of the sabbatical millennium. Unlike the two previous climactic dates, these could not be avoided. No other year in Western historiography receives as much attention from historians and computists alike. Much like Byzantium in 6000 am I (ad 500), there was a wide range of apocalyptic behaviour, from the hierarchical to the egalitarian. The split is most obvious in the difference between the eastern and western Frankish kingdoms—Germany and France, respectively.
In Germany, where a powerful imperial dynasty dominated the political and cultural scene, the young and passionate emperor Otto III deployed apocalyptic symbols and undertook projects from above such as the “Bamberg Apocalypse” (an illuminated manuscript copy of the book of Revelation), the renovatio imperii romani (Latin: “renewal of the Roman Empire”), and the conversion of eastern European paganism. He also attempted to demonstrate imperial millennialism by visiting Charlemagne’s tomb on Pentecost of 1000 and through his alliance with Pope Sylvester II.
The Angel with the Millstone, manuscript illumination from the Bamberg Apocalypse, c. 1000–20; in the Bamberg State Library, Germany (MS. Bbil. 140, fol. 46R).Courtesy of the Staatsbibliothek Bamberg, Ger.
In France the Capetian dynasty replaced the Carolingian line in 987 under unfortunate circumstances (civil war and treason), and, where various regions were in social upheaval, the initiatives came from below. A variety of movements—the Peace of God, relic cults and pilgrimages, penitential processions, apostolic communities and popular heresies, and the rise of popular charismatic preachers—occurred at the local and regional levels. In particular, the Peace of God movement represented the first major popular expression of millennialism that was not only approved but encouraged by the clerical and lay elite. Despite the differences between France and Germany, historians of the early 11th century use unusually optimistic language to describe a “new dawn” or a vast renewal for both regions—just the kind of revitalization that apocalyptic moments often produce.
When the final drama did not come in 1000, the evidence suggests that many millennialists “redated” to 1033. This gave the entire generation between 1000 and 1033 an apocalyptic tenor. In the year 1009 (400 ah), al-Ḥākim, the messianic caliph of Cairo, destroyed the Holy Sepulchre and forced Christians to convert to his Ismāʿīlī Shīʿite Islam. When the news came to France, the region most influenced by apocalyptic expectations erupted in a wave of anti-Jewish violence. By 1022 concern over the spread of heresy was so great among the French clergy that heretics were executed for the first time in European history. Finally, with the advent of 1033, France experienced a second climactic wave of peace assemblies and pilgrimages to Jerusalem. The Cluniac historian Radulfus Glaber described the vast assembled masses at these peace councils as shouting “Peace! Peace! Peace!” and believing that they had formed a covenant with God.
Of course, the years 1000 and 1033 passed without the arrival of the Parousia, but, rather than disappearing, apocalyptic expectations in western Europe underwent profound transformation. Instead of the passive expectation of the earlier period, the Peace of God movement and related movements at the turn of the millennium (ad) introduced a new and more creative millennialism, partly spurred by the remarkable innovation of the peace councils: the cooperation of the aristocratic elite (bishops and counts, abbots and kings) in a popular millennial movement. With its social covenantism, the Peace of God was the first successful postmillennial movement, meaning that for the first time adherents believed that the dramatic improvement of the world could come about not only as a result of Jesus’ appearance but through the work of good people. This notion of a new spirit spreading to all people and of the appearance of the new millennial age would lie at the heart of the most enduring and powerful wave of millennial thinking in the High Middle Ages.
While popular "messiahs" continued to appear, the period after the year 1000 was characterized by vaster movements, often approved by ecclesiastical authorities. The First Crusade revived the popular enthusiasm for both the peace and pilgrimage movements of 1033 in new and more aggressive forms: from peace in Christendom to war against the infidel, from penitential pilgrimage to armed Crusade. Peter the Hermit, whose miracles aroused much popular adulation, represented most aptly this new attitude. In an earlier age he would have been killed or imprisoned; in the late 11th century he managed to win approval from the church hiearchy for his millennial enthusiasm. Over time, however, some of these popular movements developed a militantly hostile attitude toward ecclesiastical authority, intellectuals, the wealthy, Jews, and others, thus engendering the most violent and revolutionary elements of millennialism.
Millennial hopes and ambitions reached new levels as a result of the work of Joachim of Fiore. The first officially approved theologian to reject Augustine and return to a notion of a future millennium, he postulated that there were three great ages of history: (1) that of the Law, (2) that of the Gospel, and (3) that of the Holy Spirit. His eschatology revitalized medieval millennialism, and, soon after his death at the beginning of the 13th century, prophecies attributed to him were linked to current events and were believed to predict imminent apocalypse.
The Hundred Years’ War, the Black Death, and other 14th-century catastrophes further fueled the desire for final divine intervention. In 1356 the Franciscan John of Roquetaillade (Rupescissa) prophesied that plagues, a revolt by the poor, and the appearance of Antichrists in Rome and Jerusalem would be followed in 1367 by the ascendence of a reforming pope, the election of a king of France as the Holy Roman emperor, and the onset of a millennial reign of peace and prosperity.
Popular, often revolutionary millennialism continued in the 14th century as well. The Jacquerie in France in 1358 may have been inspired by apocalyptic prophecies. The thousands of peasants, or Pastoureaux (“Shepherds”), who swept through the French countryside in 1251 emerged again in 1320, believing they could bring about the Parousia by freeing the Holy Land.
In the late medieval period, after the Black Death had changed the social dynamic by creating a restricted supply of labour that gave commoners an economic advantage, the aristocracy responded by instituting authoritarian labour laws and wage restrictions. This resulted in a new urban proletariat, often inspired by apocalyptic preachers such as John Ball, who led the English Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Other millennial groups appeared on the fringes of Latin Christendom, forming powerful and enduring countercultures such as the Hussites in 15th-century Bohemia, whose violent Taborite wing of true believers was intent on bringing about the millennial kingdom at any cost.
The presence and strength of popular and revolutionary millennialism are difficult to assess, however, because of the paucity of contemporary sources (limited to hostile clerics and later spokespersons eager to downplay the movement’s origins). As a result, modern historical analyses tend to emphasize the political, or “imperial,” millennialism that is more prevalent in the sources.
Chronology offers one neglected source of evidence for understanding the extent of millennialism in the Middle Ages. There would have been no need in the 5900s am I (ad 400s) or again in the 5900s am II (ad 700s) to change the chronology if 6000 were not a date to be reckoned with. The historiographical convention that the centuries after Augustine had no significant millennial impulses fails to explain why the chronologies shifted with such regularity in the final century before the millennial date. In fact, competition between conservative nonapocalyptic calculations and the apocalyptic calculations of messianic preachers continued throughout the Middle Ages. At the beginning of the 14th century, Arnold of Villanova identified a date some 70 years in the future as the millennial moment, which the pope must have found far more favourable than the more immediate prophecies of Fra Dolcino, a member of the Apostolic Brethren who preached the imminent fall of the religious and political order. Similarly, given how threatening even pro-imperial millennialism could be to the status quo, the prominence of conservative millennialism in medieval thought may testify to the ineradicable nature of the appeal of apocalyptic thought to the populace at large, rather than to some calm and measured conservatism. In short, millennial beliefs and aspirations are among the most profound and versatile of medieval ideologies of social change.