The Uses of the Future in Early Modern Europe

Andrea Brady, Emily Butterworth

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781138878433
• eBook ISBN: 9781135191955
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Is modernity synonymous with progress? Did the Renaissance really break with the cyclical, agrarian time of the Middle Ages, inaugurating a new concept of irreversible time in a secular culture defined by development? How does methodology affect scholarly responses to the idea of the future in the past? This collection of interdisciplinary essays from the fields of literary criticism, cultural studies, politics and intellectual history offers new answers to these commonplace questions. They explore elite and popular culture, women and men's experiences, and the encounter between East and West, providing a comparative view on the range of personal, political and social practices with which early modern people planned for, imagined, manipulated or even rejected the future. Examining poetry, architecture, colonial exploration, technology, drama, satire, wills, childbirth and deathbed rituals, humanism, religious radicalism and republicanism, this collection provides new readings of canonical early modern texts and insights into popular culture.

With a foreword by Peter Burke.

1
In Pursuit of the Millennia

Robert Crowley’s Changing Concept of Apocalypticism

A. Wade Razzi

On the eve of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, John Bromyard, the chancellor of Cambridge University, delivered a sermon in which he warned the wealthy that the Day of Judgment would be a day of retribution for the poor. According to Norman Cohn in The Pursuit of the Millennium,a groundbreaking study of the development of millenarianism in medieval Western Europe, Bromyard was an anti-Wycliffite, and his goal in delivering the sermon was far from revolutionary, but his topic was ripe for use by those who wanted wholesale societal change. Cohn’s analysis of the speech is useful in understanding the nexus of millenarianism and reform in later periods: ‘All that was required in order to turn such a prophecy into revolutionary propaganda of the most explosive kind was to bring the day of judgment nearer—to show it not as happening in some remote indefinite future but as already at hand’ (202). ‘The day of judgment’, ‘the apocalypse’ and ‘the thousand-year reign of Christ and the saints’, as well as the coming of all manner of minor ‘saints’, were concepts frequently deployed throughout the late Middle Ages and early Reformation as the impetus for a number of reform and utopian movements. This rhetoric was ready-made for use by reformers and willingly accepted by large sections of the population, especially the poorest members of society.

The apocalypse, as the telos of Christian belief, represents an ever-present form of futurity in this period. However, what is most fascinating about this particular branch of medieval and early modern futurity is that whereas there are certain similarities between the various millenarian movements, they took many forms, were used to advocate all sorts of ideas from utopian communism to free love, and were often the product of immediate and local concerns.

The writings of Robert Crowley, the sixteenth-century English poet and reformer, provide a useful example of this interplay between reform, mil-lenarianism and contemporary political concerns. The first phase of Crowley’s career as a writer occurred during the short but tempestuous reign of Edward VI. Between 1547 and 1551 Crowley published a large number of poems and pamphlets advocating religious and political reform, in some cases coming very close to proposing an egalitarian redistribution of wealth, a common feature of many millenarian movements. These works were produced in close succession: ten major works appeared in six years, as well as the first metrical translation of the Psalter (1549) and the first printed edition of William Langland’s Piers Plowman (1550), a work often associated with the millenarian movement that was part of the Peasant’s Revolt. Because of the short span of time in which they were published, they are often interpreted as representing a uniform body of ideas. But these works actually demonstrate an evolution in Crowley’s thinking, especially with regard to his attitude towards millenarianism. The early works from the first part of Edward’s reign suggest that the millennium will begin only after significant religious and social reform has occurred, essentially as a prerequisite for Christ’s return. After the rebellions of 1549, and most especially after the fall of the Duke of Somerset, the apocalyptic elements of Crowley’s writing are more pronounced, and he sees the coming of the millennium as a time of punishment for the wicked and as a means for the godly to escape the iniquity of the world. The last works from this phase of Crowley’s career are those written after the accession to power of John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland, who replaced the Duke of Somerset as the head of the Privy Council and as the de facto ruler of England. Dudley stopped the implementation of Somerset’s policies, and Crowley’s writings in this period indicate that he has all but abandoned hope for religious and social reform, and now sees the coming of the millennium only in terms of punishment for those who have opposed reform and continued to abuse the poor of England.

PROPHECY, MILLENARIANISM AND REFORM

Millenarianism represents one variant of the Christian belief in the ‘last times’ or the end of the world. In its most basic form, it is a belief that the Second Coming of Christ would lead to the establishment of his thousand-year reign over a kingdom of Christian martyrs that would precede the final resurrection of the dead. For Christians, the idea of the millennium is rooted in the authority of the Book of Revelation (20.4–6), but it is built on an earlier Jewish tradition dating back to the eighth century BCE that foretold of the founding of a new Eden. There are several different strains of this apocalyptic belief, but two common features are the reestablishment of an ideally ordered world, paradise regained and the arrival of a spiritual leader who ushers in the new Eden. For Jews this leader is the messiah; for later Christians it is Christ returned. Whereas the basic idea of a superhuman leader ushering in a paradisiacal age is common, over the centuries there have been myriad variations on other details. Even in Christian belief the messianic leader was not always Christ; in some cases the prophecy foretells the return of a particular secular leader, Charlemagne or the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, for example. Different periods and social classes have envisioned the new Eden in different ways. The poor often saw the advent of Christ’s return as a means of escaping poverty, a vision which in Cohn’s words frequently ‘became transfused with phantasies of a world reborn into innocence through a final, apocalyptic massacre’ (16).

Beginning in the eleventh century, millenarianism became fused with large-scale social reform among the poor, especially in areas of overpopulation or rapid social change (Cohn 53). For the poor, any substantive social or political change could very easily translate into starvation or death. In these situations the poor, with little else to hope for, readily accepted false messiahs. Sometimes charismatic friars or monks emerged as saviours, and the poor were willing to go along with them; sometimes the acceptance of messianic leaders may simply have been a kind of wish fulfilment: nothing less than a messiah would be able to alter circumstances for the poor. The basic teachings of Christianity could very easily be interpreted to encourage these beliefs; the meek would after all inherit the earth, and whereas Christian teaching did warn against false messiahs, it was difficult for the uneducated to discern the difference between a ‘genuine’ messiah and false one.

The Crusades and the social and political upheaval that followed them produced a number of false messiahs embraced by the poor of Europe, including at least two men claiming to be reincarnations of Frederick II in the 1280s alone (Cohn 113–26). The massive changes that came after the Black Death also led to the emergence of several messianic movements, and by the 1380s Europeans began to envision the reestablishment of a lost communal and egalitarian golden age as a part of the formation of the millennial kingdom. The idea of an egalitarian community with all property held in common appears in both pagan tradition, as evidenced by Ovid’s myth of the Golden Age, and in Christian belief as described in the Acts of the Apostles (2.44–5 and 4.32–7), which details the collectivism of the early Christians. But after the arrival of the Black Death, people ceased to see this egalitarianism as simply a regrettably lost past and began to see it as part of the coming kingdom of Christ. The plague was interpreted as a form of divine punishment for the wickedness of society, and the poor began to look favourably upon the ascetics and flagellants that emerged in its wake. Anger and resentment were turned towards the wealthy and especially the wealthy clergy, and as a result the egalitarian strain within millenarianism became more pronounced.

The relationship between these ideas and the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, specifically to what extent those taking part actually believed in egalitarianism, is complicated, but certainly some participants at least saw the revolt as a chance to establish laws more sympathetic to the poor. The often-quoted rhyme, ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?’ is frequently associated with the followers of John Wycliffe. John Ball preached a sermon on the eve of the revolt about the egalitarian nature of Eden, and William Langland’s Piers Plowman claimed that preachers were sermonizing that all goods should be held in common (Cohn 201). But Wycliffe added another aspect to the eschatological discourse in England, one that became especially important to the first generation of Protestants: the belief that the pope was an Antichrist (Firth 7). These ideas also surfaced during periods of upheaval in Bohemia, with the followers of John Hus (himself a follower of Wycliffe’s teachings) and in parts of the Holy Roman Empire in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.

The turmoil caused by the Reformation led to a resurfacing of millenarian and apocalyptic ideas in Germany and later in England. Thomas Muntzer preached a form of egalitarian millenarianism in Germany in the 1520s, and by 1530 Martin Luther, although he did not agree with Muntzer, had come to accept Wycliffe’s view of the pope as Antichrist and began to see the Reformation as the final period before Christ’s return (Cohn 240–41, Firth 12). The introduction of many of these ideas into England was aided by two English exiles, William Tyndale and John Bale. Tyndale accepted the Wycliffite belief that the pope was an Antichrist in The Parable of Wicked Mammon (1528), but he did not ‘expect the climax of history in the near future’ (Firth 25). John Bale also saw the Catholic Church and the pope as Antichrist, and one of his most famous works, The Image of Both Churches (published in three parts between 1541 and 1547), was an extensive discussion of the Book of Revelation and the increasing influence of Antichrist in the Roman Church. In addition to Wycliffe’s views, Bale was significantly influenced by the writings of Joachim of Fiore, the twelfth-century Italian mystic who saw history as divided into three periods, the last of which would end with the Last Judgment. Bale combined Joachim’s periodization and the seven seals discussed in the Book of Revelation 5–8 in a theory of history as divided into seven periods, the sixth of which was the Reformation. Although he believed human history had entered its penultimate phase, Bale, like Tyndale, did not see the return of Christ as imminent and was reluctant to make any predictions regarding the Second Coming (Firth 41–6).

There were, then, several competing and intertwined apocalyptic traditions. Some saw in the Roman Church the Beast of Revelation; some believed the Reformation had made the break with the Beast, and thus foretold the Second Coming (whether imminent or further off); and some hoped that the break with Rome was the beginning of a series of events that would usher in an egalitarian state that would itself be the precursor or the result of Christ’s return. This range of interpretation was predictable, given the variety of beliefs in the early Protestant community, but in addition to confessional differences, local and national concerns had an impact. The violence associated with Muntzer helped to taint his beliefs in both Germany and England, where ‘Anabaptism’ (a name given to Muntzer’s beliefs due to his rejection of infant baptism) became shorthand for radicalism...

Table of contents

• Routledge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture
• Contents
• Figures
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1 In Pursuit of the Millennia
• 2 Montaigne’s Forays into the Undiscovered Country
• 3 ‘My Promise Sent Unto Myself’
• 4 Turkish Futures
• 5 ‘Provide for the Future, and Times Succeeding’
• 6 France Antarctique and France Equinoctiale
• 7 Planning Ahead
• 8 The Future Now
• 9 Prophetic Architecture
• 10 Astrology, Ritual and Revolution in the Works of Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639)
• 11 Mocking the Future in French Renaissance Mock-Prognostications
• 12 ‘Meteorologies and Extravagant Speculations’
• Contributors
• Index