Millennium Fever: False Christs

In Brief

What with the nations rising against nations, famines, pestilences, earthquakes in diverse places and all these days, it only seems natural that we should start hearing about some good old false prophets: witness David Koresh and Heaven’s Gate. Indeed, sites abound on the Internet proclaiming the gory details of the imminent coming of Christ. But before this week's rapture index compels you to run off and buy your Rapture Survival Kit, History House advises keeping a clear head about such things. Nuts like this have been around a long time.

Party On

You might also be interested in: Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie (4/5) The year is 1300, and the village of Montaillou in the south of France is full of heretics. One brave man, Jacques Fournier, Bishop of Pamiers, embarks on a brave Inquisition to get rid of them. For years, he interviews everyone in the village and keeps meticulous notes. The everyday gossip, scandal and concerns of the common medieval man are documented here in a detail unsurpassed in any other primary source. In this book, French Historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie studies these documents and presents an incredible portrait of everyday life: "love and marriage, gestures and emotions, conversations and gossip, clans and factions, crime and violence, concepts of time and space, attitudes to the past, animals, magic and folklore, death and beliefs about the other world." An astounding book sitting on the border between history and anthropology. And as expected, the French have been fall-down funny for centuries. Read more at Amazon.com Medieval Lepers Leprosy in the Middle Ages was a convenient excuse for screwing over your neighbor. Christ's Brother goes to China Whoring leader of the Taiping Rebellion think's he's Jesus The Yellow Cross: The Story of the Last Cathars by Rene Weis (3/5) It is one of the great ironies of history that our best record of everyday medieval life comes to us courtesy of an attempt by the Catholic church to erase a particular heresy from the earth. Those feisty Catholics did get away with what would today be called genocide -- there are no Albigensian heretics anymore. But the staff of the Inquisition kept an astonishingly complete record of the proceedings, and it is from these that Rene Weiss puts together a surprisingly comprehensive picture of life in France in the fourteenth century. After some initial academic posturing (100 pages), you can settle down to a really fascinating read. Highly recommended. Read more at Amazon.com

...nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places... Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. -Christ, in the Gospel of St. Matthew 24:7, 23-24, KJV

What with the nations rising against nations, famines, pestilences, earthquakes in diverse places and all these days, it only seems natural that we should start hearing about some good old false prophets: witness David Koresh and Heaven's Gate. Indeed, sites abound on the Internet proclaiming the gory details of the imminent coming of Christ. But before this week's rapture index compels you to run off and buy your Rapture Survival Kit, History House advises keeping a clear head about such things. After all, it's been nearly two thousand years since Jesus proclaimed to his audience of disciples "verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled",[1] speaking of the end of the world. Suffice to say, more than a few generations have passed, and everything seems alright. Even the Catholic Church, that stalwart believer in never recanting,[2] grew tired of waiting for the next Kingdom described here and in the Revelation of St. John[3] by the third century AD. In the fifth century the Church started propounding its new eschatology, where the coming Kingdom of God was all in the mind and soul, rather than in time and space.[4] In the tradition of the best authoritarian regimes, they then busily suppressed popular millenarian works with such success that most were not recovered for more than a millenium. But as anyone who watches cable TV knows, the notion that Christ's Kingdom on Earth is just around the corner has been alive and well in the people ever since. As usually happens, the first ones to market are the most successful: David Koresh was, to put it charitably, a rank amateur compared to some of the false prophets in the early history of the Church.

As the sixth century was coming to a close, the great historian St. Gregory wrote of a wandering preacher who established himself as a messiah in the year 591 AD. In his masterpiece investigation of Millenium fever throughout the ages, The Pursuit of the Millenium, Norman Cohn tells the story.

A man of Bourges, having gone into a forest, found himself suddenly surrounded by a swarm of flies; as a result of which he went out of his mind for two years. Later he made his way to the province of Arles, where he became a hermit, clad in animal skins and wholly dedicated to prayer. When he emerged from this ascetic training, he claimed to possess supernatural gifts of healing and prophecy. Further wanderings took him to the district of Gevaudon, in the Cevennes, where he set himself up as Christ, with a woman whom he called Mary as his companion. People flocked to him with their sick, who were cured by his touch. He also foretold future events, prophesying sickness or other misfortunes for most of those who visited him, but salvation for a few.[5]

Some flies, eh? While the 3,000 followers St. Gregory accords this figure must be taken with a grain of salt, as all medieval statistics must be, it is safe to assume that his merry tribe was greater in number and happiness than the sorry bunch confined near Waco, Texas. Nay, more than happy. In fact, "he organized his followers in an armed band, which he led through the countryside, waylaying and robbing the travelers they met on the way."[6] In fact, he distributed all the loot to the poor and needy, that category including, no doubt, many of his own followers. Bishops and inhabitants of local towns were threatened with death unless they worshipped him. You gotta respect a guy with an army who says he's Jesus.

A man of even greater vision succeeded this anonymous Christ: the legendary Tanchelm of Antwerp. We needn't deign to adding Belgian jokes to this story to spice it up. Historical sources disagree on some of the details of his life, but a few things are generally agreed upon. By 1110 or so, he had given up an ambassadorial career in the service of a local Count, and through freelance preaching had built himself a following, as Cohn describes it, "blindly devoted... which regarded itself as the only true church; and he reigned over them like a messianic king."[7] Blindly devoted isn't the half of it. Like the unfortunate disciples of Koresh, these folks were just plain brainwashed! Two contemporary sources describe activities too novel to be deemed fabrications; again, we quote Cohen.

... both state that Tanchelm distributed his bath-water among his followers, some of whom drank it as a substitute for the Eucharist, while others treated it as a holy relic. One is reminded of Aldebert [yet another false Christ of the eighth century], who distributed his nail-parings and hair-clippings amongst his followers.[8]

And on the night which he bathed, our lord took water, sat in it, and gave it to all to drink, saying this filth is the new covenant in my.... And you thought yuppies who buy water in plastic bottles were gullible.

Further Reading

The interested reader may wish to refer to the flagellants who appear in our Day in the Life of a Peasant; these people were yet another manifestation of the religious and social upheavals that created the 'false Christs' detailed here. An anti-millennial perspective? Check out The End is Not Near.

Footnotes

1. Matthew 24:34, KJV
2. cf. Pope John Paul II's belated admission in 1997 that evolution may be 'more than just a theory'
3. Not actually written by St. John
4. See St. Augustine's The City of God
5. Cohn, 41
6. ibid., 41
7. ibid., 50
8. ibid., 50

Bibliography

1. Norman Cohn. The Pursuit of the Millenium. Oxford University Press, 1970.

 
Discuss this article in our forums