Why Study? Part 2: The Middle Ages

“He seems to me a very foolish man, and very wretched, who will not increase his understanding while he is in the world, and ever wish and long to reach that endless life where all shall be made clear.”

-King Alfred the Great of Wessex, c. 895

A college professor for whom I served twice as a teaching assistant liked to begin his medieval survey course by addressing the question, “Why study the Middle Ages?” He had two answers. First, because people in the Middle Ages were not like us today. Second, because people in the Middle Ages were like us today. These, I think, are pretty good reasons, but I would like to add one more of my own. The Middle Ages are worth studying (as opposed to other, though still perfectly valid historical subjects) because so many people think they understand the Middle Ages (even if that is to say “I don’t care about them”) when in fact their flawed knowledge not only hurts their understanding of the past but endangers their ability to function well in the present. In other words, reason three to study the Middle Ages is because you think you know all you need to about them when you actually don’t. In correcting this deficiency and studying the Middle Ages, one can live better in the 21st century. There, we have three reasons to study medieval history. Now let us unpack each of these reasons one by one.

First, people from the Middle Ages were not like today. It seems absurdly simple: of course people on a different continent speaking a different language (even English before about 1500 would be taxing at best for most Americans to understand) living mostly rural lives without the technological, scientific, political, and social resources we do would be different. To that extent, learning about the Middle Ages is an exploration into a different world, a different mentality. The simple act of investigating something that is new and strange is intellectually stimulating and provides someone with a new perspective on the world. In order to understand medieval history, one must learn a whole set of new ideas and concepts that one is unlikely to encounter in everyday life in 21st century America. Concepts like hagiography, humoral theory, dualistic religion, simony, investiture controversy, ethnogenesis, crusade, Convivencia, disputation and scholasticism, courtly love, partible inheritance vs. primogeniture, consanguinity, compurgation, and more. There are certainly many other historical periods and regions besides the European Middle Ages to provide someone with ideas that are new, interesting, and thought-provoking, but the medieval era is certainly filled with them.

Second, people from the Middle Ages were like us today. This, too, should be obvious, but it is worth considering in more detail. For all the oddities present in medieval European life, there was much that was very recognizable to us today and which can also be seen in other eras and locations. People were born, grew up, lived, worked, were educated by the standards of their time and means, loved, fought, blessed, cursed, took people to court, played games in fields, were petty toward neighbors, were giving to strangers, were bigoted, were curious, were inventive, were traditional, debated whether change or consistency was better, debated what change and consistency even meant, schemed, plotted, argued, stole, killed, donated, forgave, married, parented, cheated, seduced, partied, died, and more. The stories of medieval people are human stories. They had different ways of doing things, and their priorities and worldviews were often dissimilar from ours, but, ultimately, they acted as humans acted, how we would act in very similar circumstances. As such, learning about them is learning about ourselves. This, of course, can also apply to other peoples and times. For myself, at least, there are so many things in the European Middle Ages that still resonate directly today, like the Abrahamic religions, the conduct of politicians, the practice of education, the make-up of family life, the pursuit of love, the search for scientific knowledge, the wonder of invention, the building of communities, the warping of prejudices, the imagination of writers, the expression of artists, the propagation of myths and legends, and much more. Whatever might interest someone about our present world can be found in the Middle Ages as well.

Third, the Middle Ages were not what you think they were. Sure, when you hear “Middle Ages,” you likely think of kings and queens, knights and serfs, monks and nuns, stone castles and dirt roads, and a host of other things. Yes, those existed then, but almost none of it is what you think they were. What is a king? Well, you might say, a king is the ruler of a country. But did you know that the concept of a country, as we understand it, didn’t even exist during the Middle Ages? Think about that for a moment. One cannot say that one understands something as seemingly basic as a king if we don’t even understand the thing he is supposed to rule. And what about science? Oh, you might exclaim, they were against it, right? Wrong. When Isaac Newton in the 17th century talked about being a dwarf standing on the shoulders of giants, he meant, in part, the scientists of the Middle Ages, people who studied plants, animals, medicine, metallurgy, astronomy, optics, navigation, engineering, chemistry, and much else besides. Or how about this: how credulous were people in the Middle Ages? Ah, you might say, this I know: they were all gullible, ignorant, credulous rubes who believed anything that came their way. Again, nope! First of all, “gullible” isn’t even a word in the dictionary (go check, seriously). Second, upon what do you base the claim that they were ignorant? Think for a bit. Who told you that? When you actually learn about the Middle Ages (as well as other times), you find out just how clever (and ignorant) they really were. It is only modern prejudices that assume the old is outdated and the new is superior (some new things are, but “newness” alone does not make it so). Learning the history of the Middle Ages helps expunge many misconceptions that so many people have. Now, you might wonder, what does it matter if I don’t know the right facts about the Middle Ages: they are over, so it doesn’t matter, right? Well, two things. First: how do you know they don’t matter? (They still do.) Second: the Middle Ages are a good example of an era with modern prejudices weighed against it, and as such learning better about it does not simply help educate an individual about that time and place but also teaches them a valuable lesson about the ways in which any era or subject can be misunderstood through neglect. In short, studying the Middle Ages teaches one how most people today perpetuate bad ideas about that era, and learning that in turn helps people today practice discernment and critical thinking about other pieces of “information” from untrustworthy sources that might best be questioned rather than accepted as “common knowledge.”

There you have it, three reasons to study the Middle Ages. (1) The people were not like us, and so it is of value to study unusual people in unusual circumstances doing things in a way we would not today. (2) The people were very much like us, and studying them helps us better understand ourselves by seeing what real human beings have done and whose actions and ideas still affect us today. (3) For better or for worse, out of prejudice or nostalgia, the people of the Middle Ages are very misunderstood by people today, and if we study them, then not only will we shed the false ideas we have of them but we will practice our critical thinking skills so that we may better avoid false ideas that people peddle about our own world and era, many of which are based on these very myths about the Middle Ages.

“For the things of this world cannot be made known without a knowledge of mathematics.”

-Roger Bacon, “Opus Majus,” c. 1267

Apocalypse, Agency, and an American Katechon

“Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”

-Charles Dudley Warner

In the first century, Jesus’s disciples asked regarding apocalyptic events, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the close of the age?” (Matt. 24:3, RSV). The answer they received, and the ones that Christians shared and promoted for most of the next thousand years, had very little to do with human beings. To be sure, humans persecuted, humans were persecuted, and humans achieved or were denied salvation. But they were not responsible for the things that happened. God alone was – or, perhaps, devils, though their actions, too, were permitted by God until their ultimate destruction. Jesus advised some people to “flee” from persecution, but where to? Individually or in groups? For how long? And what were they to do after fleeing? These questions are not answered (or even asked). John of Patmos in his vision (the book of Revelation) also provides many insights into Christian apocalypticism, but Christians are nevertheless very passive players. They are victims and martyrs, always reacting to or caught up in but never responsible for the main events. The only mortals who “do” anything in Revelation are the Two Witnesses – two unnamed prophets, usually associated with Enoch and Elijah, foreordained to return to earth near the End – or evil followers of Satan. Christians are not expected to do anything but (1) resist temptation and die, (2) avoid persecution and (maybe) live, or (3) apostatize and be damned. They are never told to physically fight, proselytize, hoard material goods, live as individuals, form small-group settlements, organize large communities, advocated for a political or national cause, support a specific political or religious leader, refuse taxation, gather weapons, or, really, anything we might do today if we believed the End were upon us. In a word, Christians are not important in John’s vision of the End. But, of course they are not. Among the many ideas (most obscure) in Revelation, an important one is that God is supreme. Angels, devils, and corrupt humans are nothing compared to God. Christians, more than anyone else, need to realize that there is nothing they can or cannot do to thwart the Divine Plan. They will have no say in if, when, or how the End happens, which is reserved for God alone. So, of course it is not important what Christians do when the End begins, so long as they remain Christians.

Paul in 2 Thessalonians does mention an entity known as the Katechon (τὸ κατέχον, “that which withholds”). There have been many interpretations as to what this restraining force is meant to be. Some Christians around the year 300, for example, thought it was the (at-that-time-predominantly-pagan) Roman Empire, the absence of which would trigger the End. As Roman political power began to decline, Christians redefined the Katechon when the armies of the Antichrist failed to materialized. But for the first 1,000 years of Christian history, only very rarely were Christians of any variety identified with the Katechon. In the 7th century, there was some idea that a Byzantine ruler might fit the bill, but such an argument was more interested in showing that the contemporary world’s problems couldn’t be that bad since the Katechon was still around (and would be for some time, the prophet claimed). In the 10th century, the idea was revived, and people in Latinate Europe began to wonder if the Katechon might actually be a Christian, a figure that would become known as the Last World Emperor, a person who would be the best Christian ruler ever whose abdication of his authority to Christ himself on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem would trigger the Antichrist (hitherto hidden) to make his move, thus triggering the start of the End Times. In the 11th century, more and diverse ideas of Christians having agency in if, when, and how the apocalypse would begin developed, culminating in 1099 with the military conquest of Jerusalem during the First Crusade. But the world did not end. Jesus did not return. There was no clear Last World Emperor, nor would anyone claim the title and lay down their crown in person in Jerusalem. The world continued. But so, too, did Christian speculation about what they could or should do in order to affect (and effect) the End Times.

To recount all of the things Christians have believed could trigger the start of the End Times would be endless. A short list includes:

• The formation of the Franciscan and Dominican orders in the 13th century
• Forming a military alliance with the (fabled) Christian king in the East, Prester John, to retake Jerusalem after the collapse of the Crusader States in 1291
• The forced conversion of Jews in Spain (throughout the 14th and 15th century until their expulsion en mass in 1942)
• The voyages of Christopher Columbus (who thought himself a prophet) starting in 1492, in which he was looking, in part, for the Garden of Eden, and subsequent attempts to evangelize the world expressly to trigger the apocalypse
• The Protestant Reformation (starting in 1517)
• The Puritan colonization of North America (starting in 1620)
• The English Civil War (1639/1642-1651/1653)
• The American Revolution (starting 1775)
• The foundation of the Nauvoo Temple by the Latter-Day Saints in Illinois in 1836

That is sufficient. Further examples, particularly within the 20th century, are often too depressing to speak of as things Christians have attempted in the name of enticing Jesus to return, but racism (in various forms) has often gone hand-in-hand with many of these efforts.

The point of all of this is simply to say that, since approximately the year 1000, Christians, who had previously been inclined to ask, “How will God bring about the End?” began increasingly to ask, “What should I myself do as part of the apocalyptic drama?” This question, completely divorced from the history of the early church, remains with us today. It can be seen in conspiracy theories against secret cabals, supposedly atheistic school systems, amorphous socialist plots, foreign infiltration (variously defined along racial, religious, or cultural lines), and many, many others.

The QAnon movement (some of whose members were involved in the January 6 attack on the Capitol in Washington, D.C.) is a great example of this idea. At heart, QAnon believes in a world of moral absolutism, divided very clearly between the Ultra Good and the Pure Evil (heaven and hell, in essence). There is One mortal political savior, One nation of any real value, and One providence guiding both toward higher greatness (or dismal ruin if they are not adequately supported). Here we see belief in an American Katechon – an individual whose presence preserves all goodness but whose absence unleashes all the world’s evils. This, from a secular perspective, is nonsense. From a historical Christian perspective, such ideas have existed for a long time but have very little to do with first-century Christianity aside from the façade many adherents inject into it to give it respectability among American Evangelicals. Nevertheless, there is nothing in the New Testament or the writings of the early Christians that supports the messianic ideas QAnon and related conspiracies have formed within the past few years (and especially the last few months) around the recent American election.

As has been argued by others (see, for example, Norman Cohn’s Cosmos, Chaos, and the World to Come), the idea of an “apocalypse” – of a point in time in which the good-who-suffer and the evil-who-prosper receive what they truly deserve – appeals to a human desire for a world that is sensible and just. Most want such a world to exist now while also admitting such is not the case. “Apocalypse” reassures believes that such a time will come, but they must be patient. But John of Patmos knew that waiting is excruciating. “When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne; they cried out with a loud voice, ‘O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before thou wilt judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell upon the earth?'” (Rev. 6:9-10, RSV). People want meaning, often in the form of a just world. And it is good to strive for a more just world. But when conspiracies of satanic cabals lead people to ignore science and facts, to reject reasoned expertise, to fear the Other, to shun nuance and debate for moral absolutism, to avoid national self-critique, to embrace heroic myths rather than historic reality, to promote an individual’s cult of personality above democratic processes, to demonize opponents, to ascribe nothing but political motivations to conclusions that do not support one’s own world view, and to believe one’s own actions are of apocalyptic significance in the Ultimate Battle Between Good and Evil – when that happens, participants are not promoting a more just world. They are inflicting injustice upon others. In attempting to fulfill the apocalypse and to bring about a utopian world, or to protect someone or something they believe to be a Katechon keeping back all the hordes of hell, that is, to not just talk about the weather but to do something about it, they are, in fact, rejecting an older Christian apocalyptic tradition in favor of a newer (and arguably more destructive) one.

“If the clouds are full of rain, they empty themselves on the earth; and if a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where the tree falls, there it will lie. He who observes the wind will not sow; and he who regards the clouds will not reap. As you do not know how the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything. In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand; for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good.”

-Ecclesiastes 11:2-6 (RSV)

Why Study? Part 1: History

If asked what I study, this would be my answer: “I am a historian.  My field is the Middle Ages.  My specialty is apocalypticism.”  But why do I study these things, and why should you?

This is the first of a series entitled, “Why Study ______?”  There are certainly many voices that can answer this question for any particular entry, and even I have changed my reasoning over the years.  But I hope to at least provide some of my favorite reasons for pursuing various studies in the hope that they will help inspire others to see them as enjoyable and valuable topics.  To start off, I would like to discuss why I study history.

So, why study history?  I will begin with my answer – two in fact – and then explain what I mean, albeit in a round-about manner.  First, history should be studied because it isn’t what you think it is, that is, it has very little to do with dates, names, and places.  Second, and for me the most important, because history is the best way to study everything besides history.  What does this mean?  Let’s start with the first part.

In my experience, the study of history is popularly a neglected field.  Certainly, historical topic spark interest among many people.  One might be interested in the Roman Empire, the American Revolution, the Meiji Restoration, the Second World War, the Islamic Golden Age, the Kingdom of the Zulu, the Cahokia civilization, or Caribbean piracy in the age of sail, for example.  I most definitely applaud investigating these or any other historical periods.  But I think for most Americans, interest in a historical topic and the study of history are two different things, the former popularly encouraged, the latter generally avoided.  Individual interest in history tends to be done privately, as if in spite of rather than because of formal education.  

When someone is presented in a classroom with “History,” Americans tends to see it as an exercise in memorization and regurgitation, and as such, something to be suffered through.  Dates, names, and places.  1863, Lincoln, Gettysburg.  Or, perhaps more graphically, Booth in Ford’s Theater with a pistol (like Col. Mustard in the study with the revolver).  Reduced to this level – that is, the level of the board game Clue, where being “good” at history is simply gathering the correct nouns together for the final exam – history certainly seems like it has little to offer beyond the amusing anecdote or piece of trivia.  Yet, in an odd way, this does come near the mark, albeit unintentionally.

The game of Clue is not actually about memorization and regurgitation.  For those unfamiliar with it, a quick summary of the premise.  In Clue, each player is trying to discover the randomly generated perpetrator of a murder, the location of the murder, and the murder weapon used.  No one person starts with that piece of information, but as players move around the game board (a stylized mansion), they can pick up on clues, eliminating suspects and other pieces of information.  When a player thinks they have narrowed down the clues to the correct person, place, and weapon, they announce their suspicion and privately look at the correct answer (stored in the center of the board).  If they are correct, they win.  If they are wrong, they lose the game and other players continue on.  Thus success is based on using the clues one gets logically while also working quickly so that others don’t guess correctly first.  And that is the tension: speed vs. thoroughness, all revolving around logical problem solving.

This is what history is – at least, in part.  Clue is not based on memorization whatsoever (you have a sheet at all times that you can write notes on) but on investigation.  To be sure, the information gathered – the raw facts – is of vital importance.  The game is won and lost depending on if Mrs. White or Prof. Plum used a knife or a rope in the kitchen or the ballroom.  Facts matter.  But the game is not about knowing facts but about gathering and using facts.  In short, in a very simplistic way, it is about critical thinking and problem solving.  Students of history will quickly see how far short my comparison between historical study and Clue falls.  Studying history is indeed about using a wide variety of skills, and in the process of studying history, those skills get further refined.  Knowing that Lincoln gave his Gettysburg address in 1863 may not be terribly important on a day-to-day basis for most people, but understanding the sequence of events that led a man named John Wilkes Booth watch an abolitionist be hung in 1859, before the Civil War began, to plot to assassinate the president less than 6 years later is of great value.  The value is not inherent in the facts themselves – though, again, those help make up the raw materials of the study – but in the way the connecting lines are drawn, just as the fun of Clue is not in the answer but in the investigation.  In this light, the study of history is quite valuable, because it can provide and enhance skills that can be applied not to specific dates, names, and places but to any other endeavor.

The second reason to study history, as I said, is because it allows one to study everything that isn’t history.  Mathematics can be applied to many things, but not everything is math.  Biological forces inform so much of ourselves and our world, but there is little overlap between it and astrophysics, for example.  Every other fields of study has similar constraints save for history.  History is everything for all time.  Everything humans have done or thought about falls into its purview: the history of mathematics, the history of biology, of astrophysics, music, politics, fashion, art, technology, accounting practices, interior design, hygiene, cinema, board games, the internet, the Civil War, and, well, everything else.  Do you want to study the night Lincoln was assassinated?  Well, what interests you?  The life of President Lincoln, or that of Booth?  Southern reactions to the end of the war?  Mid-19th century American theater?  Or perhaps pistol manufacturing?  Medical theory and practice?  Or criminal investigations?  Or journalism after the assassination, or following Booth’s death?  To say that you want to study the history surrounding the events of April 14 and 15, 1865, is hardly helpful, for they can (and have) been examined from countless perspectives, all of some value.

And that is really why I chose to study history.  No, not because I was interested in Lincoln’s assassination (used here only as an example).  When I was still deciding in high school what field to pursue, I was at a loss.  I loved so many subjects that I felt that walking towards one meant abandoning the others.  But then I realized that history was the answer.  In it, I had the opportunity (and the unending excuse) to study everything I ever loved, because everything was fair game.  But at the same time, I knew it would be a challenge, one that I was eager to meet.  Because if the study of history meant I could study anything, it also meant that to be a good historian I would have to remain interested (at least a little) in everything.  When it came time to take the GRE (a test commonly, though now controversially, taken before entering graduate school), I was rather unusual.  Like the SATs, the GRE has two broad categories: math and verbal.  Most students pursuing graduate degrees in history (and history departments looking at the results) ignore the math component and focus all of their attention on the verbal part of the exam.  I did not, and I am pleased to say that my ranked math and verbal scores were both high and nearly identical, according to percentile.

I knew most history departments wouldn’t care that I did well in mathematics, but I did, because to me, history is a universal subject requiring universal skills.  For a historian, every skill, every interest matters because everything connects through our common humanity and experiences.  History is an opportunity to do anything with everything. There are restraints and necessities imposed on what can and can’t be done due to the specifics of the historical discipline (especially regarding sources – not a topic to discuss now), but in the end, I study history because of the freedom it gives me.  One can study the history of economics.  Or one can study the history of the Star Wars movies.  Or one can study how financial considerations affected how the Star Wars was made and how Star Wars changed the way Hollywood understood risk and reward when investing in blockbusters.  And it is all valid for the historian.

That’s why I study history: because it hones my intellectual skills far beyond mere memorization while giving me the absolute freedom (and challenge) to study anything and everything that I find interesting.  And even if I wasn’t pursuing history professionally, it doesn’t diminish the value of any of these things at all.

I hope this has helped you gain some respect for studying history.  By all means, try not to get facts about history wrong, if you can help it, but more importantly, dive into what interests you not for the anecdotes but for the thrill of investigation and analysis.  I don’t think you’ll be disappointed, whatever you wind up studying.

The Dangers of an Unchanging Foe

Like so many other things regarding End-Times speculation, apocalyptic enemies are full of paradoxes.  They are at once particular to the Final Days – such as the Antichrist or al-Dajjal – yet are also composed of perennial foes – heretics, schismatics, hypocrites, violent oppressors, non-believers, demon-influenced, etc.  Some traditions and sub-traditions emphasize some of these more than others, and the identification of serious threats often changes, though some groups (unfortunately often Jewish people) are frequent targets of accusations of satanic involvement.  Yet above and beyond merely attributing nefarious intentions to a single group across centuries, some people excited by the idea of apocalypse take the idea of a perennial threat a bit further.  To them, there are not many threats but, in fact, only one.

The idea behind an unchanging foe pairs with those who believe that those who are good, righteous, and virtuous have been isolated to a single group throughout history as well.  Righteousness, to such people, has not entailed historical change, illumination, and development but has been complete and crystal clear from the beginning.  Morality was fully developed and comprehensible 4,000 years ago, and nothing since has added to it, and nothing must in any way be taken away from it.  This is an extreme view even among the Abrahamic faiths, since Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religious thinkers recognize historical change and in-time revelation.  But if such be the case, that a single, obvious, unchanging morality has always existed, then immorality must be equally timeless and comprehensible.  And if there has always been a group of divinely blessed individuals abiding by the eternal moral code, according to such belief, it only makes sense that all the evil throughout time shares not only the same moral failings endemic to humanity but an organized will hell-bent on opposing divine goodness.

Certainly Satan has frequently been invoked in these speculations as the demonic mastermind behind human evil.  But this is not what I mean.  I mean, and so do those who frequently espouse such ideas, a very human threat.

Since even before the Protestant Reformation, the pope has been called an (or the) Antichrist.  After Martin Luther in the 16th century helped establish the many Protestant churches, the entirety of Catholicism came to be seen as in league with Satan (of course, Catholics would say similar things about Protestants).  But accusations of wickedness and heresy were not new.  By definition, no Christian heresy could trace its origin before Pentecost, though one might be accused of having Jewish or pagan influence.  But in the mid-19th century, a new argument emerged.  What if the Catholic Church were older than Jesus Christ and had its origin not in Judaism but in satanic paganism?  That is what Alexander Hislop, a Scottish minister, argued in his work, “The Two Babylons: Papal Worship Proved to be the Worship of Nimrod and His Wife” (1853).  Hislop wrote that Nimrod, the king in Genesis responsible for building the tower of Babel in mockery of God, founded a pagan religion that survives to the present day.  Its deities, ceremonies, festivals, organization, goals, methods, and (especially, despite the anachronism) anti-Christian beliefs were preserved after the fall of Babel in many pagan cultures.  A core part of its followers, however, were always aware of its origins and held an immortal hatred for “true” godliness.  After Christ came and departed once more, this “Babylonian” religion first tried to destroy Christianity.  When that failed, it instead became Christianity in the form of the pope of Rome and the Catholic Church.  For over a thousand years, the Church was actually an anti-Christian organization.  Any opposition to the hierarchical church before 1517 was not based on historical pressures particular to the time and place they occurred but rather the elect of God, hidden among the ungodly, trying to break free.  Though that finally happened with Martin Luther, the Catholic/Babylonian Church continued to exist.  Why?  Because it is the Babylon spoken of in Revelation 17, that is, the ultimate foe for Christians at the End of Time.  Thus, according to Hislop, a secret war has been waged by Babylon for thousands of years against God.  Though many are ignorant of the true purpose of Babylon, its leaders are not.  Its form has altered, but its essence has been unchanging since the Beginning and will remain so until the End.

Absolutely nothing in Hislop’s theory is historically accurate, so I will not trouble disproving it here.  Nevertheless, Hislop’s ideas (both regarding Catholicism in particular and conspiracies in general) have endured.  An older, equally absurd, yet still persistent and harmful conspiracy involves Jews as secretly in constant, universal contact, plotting various crimes.  In both the distant past and more recently, accused groups have included members of the Masonic Lodge, pagans, witches, communists, Knights Templars, and the always ambiguous Illuminati.  In popular culture, Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code has made the Priory of Zion, the powerful but secretive keepers of the knowledge of Jesus and Mary Magdalene’s child, a similar type of organization.  For the Ubisoft game series Assassin’s Creed, the Knights Templar (historically formed in the 12th century but, in-game, dating back far longer) fill the role of eternally nefarious secret organization.  The Templars are opposed by the equally undying and virtuous secret order of Assassins.  And in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins (2005), Ra’s al Ghul reveals to the hero, “The League of Shadows has been a check against human corruption for thousands of years. We sacked Rome, loaded trade ships with plague rats, burned London to the ground. Every time a civilization reaches the pinnacle of its decadence, we return to restore the balance.”  One-world-governments frequently play into such conspiracies, both expressly fictional and those repeated in earnest.  Though Hislop was merely peddling religious bigotry, it is easy to see why he gained fame for it: conspiracy makes entertaining stories by weaving historical events together into a larger pattern of absolute good against absolute evil.

Of course, that is the problem.  When something is obviously a story, it can be fun.  But when a real life group is cast as an eternal enemy, a foe that has remained true to its secretive and evil plans – plans that are antithetical to any sense of morality and goodness – for hundreds if not thousands of years, terrible things happen.  The salacious anti-Semitic hoax known as “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” (1903) was used to grave effect against Jewish peoples in the 20th century and still finds advocates of its lies to this day.  But perhaps you think that conspiracies like that are quickly spotted these days and easily dismissed?  Sadly, that is not true.

On the political stage, since his declaration of candidacy for president in 2015 to the present, Donald Trump has cultivated the myth of an eternal, unchanging enemy.  In these efforts, he has found many targets: Mexicans, Muslims, the European Union, Democrats, journalists, socialists, the “deep-state,” and a host of others.  Don’t be confused: he does not simply target these groups as enemies but as “eternal” enemies.  Trump frequently gives way to exaggeration (when not outright lies), especially superlatives.  But he also tends to dilate the length of a grievance.  Note how he uses “always” or any reference to “for a long time now.”  He uses such words and phrases frequently when talking about his enemies.  He does not place (even valid) grievances in an historical context but into a vague perpetuity.

The Orwellian line, “We have always been at war with Eastasia,” (or, “We have always been at war with Eurasia”) is apt.  This line is often quoted to mean one is to think a former ally is now an enemy because the state says so.  The “always” is unconsciously thought to mean “you were mistaken if you believed we had been allies last week.”  But “always” is also very vague.  This bit of propaganda from Orwell’s 1984 does not give any details.  Why should it?  Details are harmful to propaganda.  It does not say, “We have been at war with Eastasia since we were attacked on such-and-such a date.”  Eastasia is not a new enemy with historical reasons for enmity with Oceania (us).  It is a perpetual enemy – until it becomes an ally, in which case it has always been one, while Eurasia has always been the enemy.  Saying what caused the war or when would only lead to thinking, which would interfere with obedience.

Trump’s vague language about grievances is in perfect lock-step with ideas regarding an eternal, unchanging foe.  It is no surprise that he also casts these foes (whomever they happen to be) as the worst of all possible enemies, whose very existence threatens the life of this country.  Eternal, unchanging foes are inherently powerful and apocalyptic.  Any violence against them is justified.  Any accommodation with them is treason.  Their defeat must happen, or else all is lost.  When they are defeated, a great evil will pass from this world.  What could be more apocalyptic?

And of how much evil has such thinking been the cause?

Heresy and Apocalypse: Then and Now

“A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, reject.”  -Titus 3:10

In Orléans, France, 998 years ago, heresy became punishable by death for the first time in Europe for more than half a millennium.  For centuries after 1022, people accused of heresy would continue to be persecuted and subjected to capital punishment.  But just because heretics had not be executed for hundreds of years before 1022 does not mean authorities, both religious and secular, had not thought of heresy in that time.  This was especially the case within apocalyptic and eschatological literature.

I suspect most people have heard of the so-called Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse mentioned in the 6th chapter of Revelation.  While they are usually seen as destroyers today, they have been interpreted in many ways for the last 2,000 years, including eras of history.  In fact, the first who rides a white horse was seen in many commentaries from the early Middle Ages as Jesus Christ himself.  The other three – one a red, black, and pale green horse, respectively – were seen as perennial threats to Christianity: bloody red persecutors, false brethren whose black actions harm their fellow Christians, and heretics who abide with death, often portrayed as sickly, pale green.  These early medieval commentaries, however, did not think Revelation applied only to the End Times but to all Christian times.  Nevertheless, heresy, like violence and hypocrisy, was a tool of Satan that would be used by both antichrists throughout history and the Antichrist at the End of Time.

As such, the search for and condemnation of heretics often went hand in hand with apocalyptic excitement.  When writing about the heretics executed in 1022 at Orléans, the chronicler Rudolphus Glaber saw the event as one of many that presaged the apocalypse.  Heretics were the primary servants of the Satan, a sign that he had been released after a thousand years of captivity (due to Christ’s earthly mission), and important allies for the Antichrist when he revealed himself to the world.  As such, when some were burned in Orléans, Glaber was glad to see that “the follow of these wicked madmen had been rooted out” (Glaber, Histories, 3:31, Blum trans.).

Not all those who looked on the fires in Orléans with approval expected to see the Antichrist in their lifetimes, but they certainly thought they saw the power of Satan and a foretaste of hell for the damned.  To them, what burned were not humans exactly.  Not anymore.  They were carriers of a malignant disease who were unwilling to accept a cure that could only be administered to a willing patient.  If the disease of heresy spread, which could damn those who contracted it, it could bring eternal harm to an entire region.  This is precisely the kind of language used in the Middle Ages when speaking of heretics.  But as scholars have shown, language of disease was and has since been used to dehumanize victims of oppression and violence.  Humans deserve support and sympathy, even if they have sinned.  But vectors for disease are a public health threat.  A sinner may atone for their sins over time and emerge a paragon for others to follow, but an unrepentant heretic who infects the minds of Christians with damnable beliefs will do nothing but harm.  It was for the common good, therefore, that heretics be burned, or so it was thought.

Such dehumanizing and apocalyptic fears surrounding “heretics” are not limited (nor were they universal) to the Middle Ages.  Disease-language continues to be used for minority and at-risk populations whose very existence is seen by the majority and powerful to destructive of society as they conceive it.  The implicit (and sometimes explicit) suggestion that society will tumble to ruin in an apocalyptic cataclysm “sooner or later” because of them reinforces the same idea that calling them vectors of social diseases does.  It makes it easier to justify the unjustifiable, to undertake violence against a few for the supposed good of all.

Heresy accusations, however, are different than other attacks aimed at minorities in this regard: the heretic is someone who might under different circumstances be seen as an insider rather than an outsider.  Immigrants, different ethnic groups, followers of another religion: all of these are seen by oppressive groups as outsiders who might disrupt “our” society.  Heretics, on the other hand, were part of “our” society until their voiced an opinion in a manner that was perceived as threatening to the overriding authorities.  In more just societies, they would simply be said to have differing opinions.  But to more oppressive powers, these “traitors” should not voice dissent but instead support those who rule and their neighbors who do the same.  This dissent, more than any other perceived threat from without, can be the cause of intense fear and recriminations.  A shared enemy is one thing, but for the paranoid powers, an ally voicing opposition is the stuff of apocalyptic doom.  Or at least, presenting such dissent as apocalyptic is useful.

Yet for those who voice dissent, for the “heretic,” overturning society is seldom a founding goal.  As Malcolm Lambert showed years ago, “Reform and heresy are twins” (Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, p. 390).  What he means by this is that both heretical and reform movements spring from a common desire to see something wrong in society be changed for the better.  Movements that express themselves and act in a way that find approval come to be called reforms, but those that receive disapproval are condemned as heresies.  Sometimes the only things that differ between a reform and a heresy are its relationship to power – not its means, not its goals, and not its rhetoric.

Heresy, therefore, can be another word for an attempted reform that has drawn the ire of those in power.  And as history shows, that ire, when combined with language that dehumanizes and implies societal collapse, leads to violence.

“In reality, bias against ‘heretics’ is felt today just as it used to be. Many give way to it as much as their forefathers used to do. Only, they have turned it against political adversaries. Those are the only ones with whom they refuse to mix. Sectarianism has only changed its object and taken other forms, because the vital interest has shifted. Should we dare to say that this shifting is progress?”  -Henri de Lubac, Paradoxes of Faith (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), pp. 226-227

Doing History vs. Knowing History

“For the things of this world cannot be made known without a knowledge of mathematics.”  -Roger Bacon, Opus Major, c. 1267

“On the whole, however, the conclusions I have drawn from the proofs quoted may, I believe, safely be relied on.”  -Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, c. 400 B.C.E.

All academic subjects have their negative (and therefore misleading) stereotypes.  For history, this usually means thinking of it as merely a collection of facts – dates, names, places – to memorize for the sake of a test.  But history is not a purely knowledge-based discipline.  All those who practice it know this, but it might be instructive to explain what I mean.

Let us briefly compare history to something quite different: mathematics.  Having an interest in one does not preclude a person from the other, though these two subjects are not usually spoken of in the same breath like one might do with, say, physics and chemistry.  Math can be a very abstract field.  Sure, you can have five apples and remove three apples to leave only two apples remaining (5-3=2).  But when you get into algebra, trigonometry, and calculus, equations become rather bizarre.  Take for example the following:

Summations, quadratic equations, Cartesian coordinates, integrals, probabilities, irrational numbers, imaginary numbers, the list goes on.  Sometimes there are real-world analogues for everything in an equation, but such comforts disappear very quickly.  (Note: “i” is the symbol for the imaginary number that signifies the square root of “-1”.  You will never ask to buy “i” apples from the store, but “i” is still an important and useful concept in mathematics.)  Thus, mathematics can very easily get into abstract concepts, removed from anything as tangible as seen in simple arithmetic.

History, on the other hand, even for those who never paid attention in high school, is quite “real.”  People who lived at some point in time at certain places and accomplished specific things.  Certainly the past is intangible (one can’t “touch” July 4, 1776, or relive the American Civil War), but the effects can be solid as the Statue of Liberty (dedicated 1886) or as participatory as universal male adult suffrage (after passage of the 15th Amendment, 1870).  People live with the effects of history, the good and the bad, every day.  The odd thing, however, is that, despite how abstract math is and how real history can be, when we study these subjects in school, we tend to think of them quite differently.

Both school children and adults speak of these subjects in unusual but consistent ways.  People tend to say, “I (don’t) know history” but “I can(‘t) do math.”  (Maybe you’ll also hear, “I’m (not) good at ____” applied to either history or math, though I suspect more the latter.)  Why the difference, and what does it mean?  Simply put, most people think history is something binary: you either know it or you don’t.  When was the Declaration of Independence sign?  Who was the first African American to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947?  Where was the first atomic bomb test done?  Dates, names, and places.  Facts.

Compare these to math questions, such as this: x²+10x=39, solve for x.  This question is fundamentally different than those others about the Declaration of Independence, baseball, and atomic bombs.  Why?  Because, despite the fact that there is only one right answer to both the math and history questions, the math question is a problem that can be solved.  One studies for a math test not by memorizing numbers but by learning the relationship between symbols so that, when given a seemingly random combination of numbers and symbols, you can rearrange them until they make sense.  For the history questions above, however, there is nothing to figure out.  You either knows the name Jackie Robinson or not.  That is why people talk about knowing history but doing math.  As a result, many people tend to think a historian is someone who simply knows a lot of names and dates while a mathematician is someone who has mastered the ability to make sense out of complex symbols.  One is passive, the other active.  One “knows,” the other “does.”

But as any historian can tell you, separating history as something you “know” from math as something you “do” is rather ridiculous.  Historians are not people who simply know a lot of things that happened.  For them, history is something one does.  Historians certainly “know” a lot about their particular specialty (medieval history, American, gender, Asian, military, economic, etc.), but that is not all they are capable of.  In learning their field, they have gained skills and perspectives in producing interpretations of the information that they work with.  That is, historians certainly know a lot of names and dates, just like a mathematician knows many numbers.  But in the course of study, historians also develop critical thinking skills used to analyze, criticize, and interpret information.  In other words, historians, like mathematicians, look at information that might confuse or mislead other people and see it as symbols that can be rearranged in order to make sense out of.  Knowing when the 15th Amendment was passed or who was the first modern African American major league baseball player is unimportant and meaningless trivia until they are connected by a historian (or anyone) doing history.  Why did it take less time to codify African Americans’ right to vote following the Civil War than it did to accept them playing alongside white Americans in baseball?  Why did women have to wait 50 years after the 15th Amendment for the 19th Amendment?  (How) did Jackie Robinson playing baseball and worries about the nuclear Cold War influence ratification of the 24th Amendment, passed in 1964, nearly a hundred years after the 15th Amendment?  To answer these questions in any meaningful way takes more than knowing history.  It takes the ability to do history.

If you pick up a historian from one specialty (ex. 20th century American military history) and place them in another (ex. 16th century European religious history), they will know very few of the details, if any.  I and nearly all the historians I know have had to teach well outside of their comfort zone.  But while they may not know all the details and nuances of a particular time, place, and subject, they will be able to latch onto important ways that a society functions, how it expressed itself, how it chose to deal with problems, how it portrayed itself, and how it has since been remembered.  This, too, is not because they know more history but because they can do history.  Because history is not about know the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier, or that the first atomic test happened at Trinity, New Mexico.  Mathematics isn’t about know off the top of your head that in the equation x²+10x=39, x=3.  Instead, mathematics is about knowing what to do when presented with any combination of symbols and numbers in order to create meaning.  Likewise, history is about knowing how to make sense out of a near infinite combination of names, dates, places, and events found in texts (as well as artifacts left behind) in order to create meaning through interpretation.

And the wonderful thing about history that makes it different than mathematics?  You can have more than one right answer!  The “rightness” is not merely a function of the data but how you use it.  And even the wrong conclusions, when arrived at through hard work and thoughtfulness, can yield great results.

People who know a lot of names, dates, and places are not historians.  People who interpret these things are historians.

Now go on.  Do some history!

Do Not Open Until Doomsday

“Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my life and honor to the Night’s Watch, for this night and all the nights to come.”

-Oath of the Night’s Watch, Game of Thrones, G. R. R. Martin

The life and deeds of Alexander the Great, king of Macedon and conqueror of the Persian Empire, inspired myths and fanciful imaginings long after his death in 323 BCE.  Among these was the legends of the Gates of Alexander.  Though not begun by Christian authors, the legend eventually became popular among Christians interests in political and especially apocalyptic prophecies.

According to the story, while campaigning in the East, Alexander came upon a coalition of particularly savage and powerful armies.  Rather than fight them, he ordered that in a mountain pass a wall be built, made of iron with magic worked into the structure itself, with a gate that could not be opened – at least, not until the appointed time.  The peoples on the other side, according to Jewish, Christian, and Muslim authors, were the prophetic and mysteriously powerful armies of Gog and Magog.  It was said that the gates, often thought to lie in the Caucasus Mountains, would be broken at the start of the End Times.  The fierce and bloodthirsty armies would pour out of their prison to ravage the civilized lands, terrorizing all good and holy peoples.  Fanciful historians throughout time have attempts to give historical identities to these hordes, from the Scythians to the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.  Whoever they were, their emergence would mean that the End had finally come.

The fact that the identity of Gog and Magog changed throughout the life of this apocalyptic legend is important.  As people tried to place recognizable features and names to the mysterious Gog and Magog, they revealed what they considered to be things or peoples they considered suspect, reprehensible, or enemies waiting for a chance to slaughter without mercy.  They projected their biases across Alexander’s Gates, painting the hordes beyond to resemble those they hated and distrusted in the world around them.  This habit is not unique to the Alexander legend.

Emperor Hadrian erected a wall across northern England in the 2nd century to establish the limit of Roman military power.  While it remained fortified, though there was violence between Romans and locals (the same was true wherever Rome had an armed border), there was also the peaceful movement of people and trade.  It was a semipermeable barrier.  Hadrian’s Wall might have been seen as the end of the Roman Empire’s political authority, but it was not the edge of the world – those who lived on it did not expect to fall off if they crossed it.  Despite this historical reality, the myth of Hadrian’s Wall as a boundary between the civilized and the barbaric, order and chaos, peace and war, or life and death, has remained a popular idea.  Movies like The Last Legion (2007), Centurion (2010), The Eagle (2011), and King Arthur (2004) use Hadrian’s Wall in this very manner.  Even when some peoples on the other side are presented in a more sympathetic light, the lands north of the wall are still shown as threatening for any Rome to enter.  The Great Wall of China has been used in similar ways.

In art, prophecy, and popular culture, these walls must stand – or else!  But “or else” what?  Or else death and destruction, the ruining of a proud, noble culture?  Roman legions left off manning Hadrian’s Wall because of tax problems and internal issues back on continental Europe.  Their wall fell because they abandoned it; it was not overwhelmed by “barbarians.”  China’s Great Wall has been reworked and expanded many times over the centuries to keep out the nomadic steppe peoples.  But when the Mongols came in, they made China the center of the largest empire the world has even seen.  These are the historical realities, and they clash with our expectations of what happens when a wall is breached.  Why is that?  Because, for a variety of historical, cultural, or psychological reasons, when we see walls, we have the propensity to imagine they are protecting us from something.  The great the wall, the greater the danger, or so we assume.

The best example of a wall in popular culture today is the Wall in HBO’s Game of Thrones.  It is a 600-foot-tall wall of ice, stretching from sea to sea, blocking off the northern barbaric peoples from the civilized southerners (an image G. R. R. Martin lifted and exaggerated from ideas surrounding Hadrian’s Wall).  The oath that the Night’s Watch (the defenders of the) take dehumanizes those on the other side.  “I am the watcher on the walls.  I am the shield that guards the realms of men.”  Are not their enemies also men?  Martin’s books and the TV series is good enough later on to (somewhat) humanize the “Free Folk” north of the Wall.  Ultimately, though these people are raiders and live lives antithetical to the rigid hierarchies of their southern neighbors, these people are not apocalyptic enemies destined to bring complete ruin to Westeros (though some guarding the Wall have thought so).  They are people, and Martin loves making villains sympathetic while tainting heroes.

And yet there is a 600-foot wall.  There must be a great evil on the other side.  And indeed there is.  An army of the dead, raised by ancient, cursed souls, are waiting on the other side.  They are bringing nothing but death.  They will fight, they will kill, and the world will end.  With this enormous edifice taking a central role in the setting, we the reader and viewer expect something equally powerful and existentially threatening to match our half-formed mental image of evil that can only be stopped (but not killed) if imprisoned in a far-distant land behind such a wall.

To put it another way: where there is a wall, we will imagine it protects us from a danger whose power is in proportion not to the reality behind it but to its size in our cultural identity.  As the wall stands, we will gradually develop reasons to resent those on the other side of it.  Certainly, reasons will be given why such a wall was built to begin with, but the founding motivations, good or bad, will vanish as the years pass.  Whatever the original builders had in mind, only one fact will remain: there is a permanent wall separating us from them.  Sooner or later, this will lead to only one conclusion: “The wall exists because those on the other side are evil.  They are barbarians.  They are the bringers of death and destruction.  They are chaos while we are order.  If the wall ever falls, all will be lost.”

In the human mind, such walls are signs of a rotting edifice, hiding, not protecting, those who build them.  For even if the motivations be pure, the end is dehumanization.  The greater the wall, the more those on the other side will be seen as harbingers of the apocalypse, as enemies of humanity, even though they, too, are only human.  And yet the gates will stay barred, with a sign above them reading, “Do not open until Doomsday.”

“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.”

-“Mending Wall,” Robert Frost

Defining the Apocalypse

Death: When next we meet, the hour will strike for you and your friends.
Block: And you will reveal your secrets?
Death: I have no secrets.
Block: So you know nothing?
Death: I am unknowing.

—The Seventh Seal, 1957, dir. Ingmar Bergman

Last October, I gave a lecture to a medieval history class about apocalyptic beliefs.  I opened the class the same way I have similar ones.  I asked, “What does ‘apocalypse’ mean?”  (My advisor starts his apocalypse course in a similar way, and I have adapted his approach.)  The answer, even from some of the non-traditional adult students, was typical.  They defined it as a disaster, the end of all things, human extinction, the end of the world, and so forth.  I think the vast majority of people would give the same answers.  They are all right in terms of popular culture, but quite wrong when discussing the apocalypse until relatively recently.

“Apocalypse,” derived from Greek, means “to unveil” or “to reveal.”  That is why the last book of the New Testament is called variously The Apocalypse or The Revelation of St. John of Patmos—it is the vision “revealed” to him of future events.  There is a long series of changes in the history of the word, but it isn’t too hard to understand that, over the course of 2,000 years, the word for the knowledge John received became a shorthand for the book he wrote, which in turn came to denote its frightening contents.  While “apocalypse” will almost universally be used today to mean something horrible of global significance, it is important to not forget its use and meaning in days long past.

As scholars have discussed (but especially Norman Cohn in his book, Cosmos, Chaos, and the World to Come: The Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith), the concept of linear cosmic time is relatively knew and was an innovation from cyclical cosmic time.  In other words, long before the Abrahamic faiths, people in the Near East tended to believe in gods of order that were part of an endless struggle with the forces of chaos.  Victory was always temporary, and renewal was a typical motif for these ancient religions.  When monotheism began to develop with the Hebrews and Zoroastrians roughly 3000 years ago (though the timing is quite debatable), the traditional view of the cosmos began to change.  These people believed in one God who was not only all powerful, the maker of heaven and earth (which might also be subject to ultimate destruction), but was also a moral judge, a being who cared not just for maintaining a static cosmic order by any means necessary but one who wanted things done according to a code of right behavior.  These two ideas came together in trying to solve the problem of evil: why do bad things happen to good people and not only to bad people?  The answer for previous peoples had been: if you suffer evil, you must have deserved it somehow.  The new answer, however, was tied closely to a monotheistic god’s absolute power, his role as moral judge, and the belief in a finite amount of time to human history (that is, linear time leading to a conclusion rather than cyclical time continuing forever).  This new answer was: if bad things happen to a good person now, in the world to come after this life, God will provide the perfect judgment for eternity that is lacking in this present life, even if we don’t know or can’t understand it yet.  In other words, the mystery of why good people suffer will remain hidden until a later day when God will reveal the truth, and we will understand his ultimate purposes.  Since that answer was formulated many centuries ago, there have been people who have claimed to have received special revelations about what is hidden behind the veil that separates human knowledge from divine knowledge.  John of Patmos, the author of the last book in the New Testament, is one such person, though there are many others.  Because “apocalyptic” knowledge of the future was closely tied in with awaiting the just reward for good people who had suffered and the righteous punishment of the wicked who had prospered, many apocalypses tended to speak of violence before humanity would received complete divine understanding, but apocalypses certainly did not require such horrors.  Nevertheless, it is John’s vision of dragons, beasts, the four horsemen, two-faced leaders, plagues, global disasters, and wars on earth and in heaven that most people in the United States think of when they consider “apocalypse” in a religious sense.  Modern secular apocalypses owe much to John as well, even when spiritual matters are the least of their concerns.

The shift in meaning for “apocalypse” carrying the sense of an “unveiling” to one of death and destruction, as I said, is a long one.  I think, however, that world events in the first half of the 20th century greatly helped to encourage the more recent definition.  Art also played a large part.  The 1957 Ingmar Bergman classic, The Seventh Seal, is a prime example, coming at about the time when the old definition of “apocalypse” ceased to have much meaning for the general public.  The story of The Seventh Seal follows a knight named Bloch, his cynical squire, and companions they meet along the way.  The story takes place during the Black Death, a time in the 14th century when 1/3 of people in Europe (not to mention huge numbers in Asia and North Africa) died of the bubonic plague.  Bloch, returning home after many years away, sees the widespread death around him.  He does not fear death as such (he even plays a friendly game of chess with a personified Death in order to buy himself time to get home).  No, what troubles Bloch is not death but the silence of God.  It was Hamlet’s “undiscovered country, from whose bourn no travel returns,” that gave him pause.  Block refused to believe like his squire that nothing but oblivion awaited us after death, but he lacked any evidence to refute him.  At one point, Bloch speaks to a young woman (condemned to be burned as a witch) to see if he could have a word with Satan.  Surely he must know something about God!  But the devil does not come.  Even Bloch’s banter with Death over chess gives witness to the knight’s hope that he will be able to peak behind the veil and gain some assurance that there is a divine plan and what it might be.  When Death says he cannot answer Bloch’s questions, he explains that it is not because he as Death has secrets to keep or because he knows nothing.  Rather, he says, death is the antithesis of knowledge.  “I am unknowing.”

The story of The Seventh Seal highlights (though I will not say “caused”) the change in modern culture when “apocalypse” lost its old meaning of “to reveal” and took on the now ubiquitous sense of death and mass destruction.  The Seventh Seal is certainly an apocalyptic movie.  Indeed, the title is a reference to a art in John’s book.  But it is apocalyptic in both senses of the world.  It is a story about a man wanting to received a revelation, but one that he is never given in life.  It is also the story of the Black Death, when millions were dying and one might have thought the Last Days were at hand.  I think most people, if they saw The Seventh Seal and then were asked to explain if, how, and why it was “apocalyptic,” would answer, “Because of all the death from the plague.  But it wasn’t really an apocalypse, I guess, because the world didn’t end.”  But I think someone with an understanding of the older meaning of the word would see the movie as apocalyptic because of Bloch’s agonizing search for meaning.  I have not studied this aspect of the film’s production, but I strongly suspect that is the sense Bergman would have favored.

Over the last half century or so, as society has moved away from believing wholeheartedly in divinely ordained universal truths—thus reducing the drive for revelation in most people’s lives—while becoming ever more aware of potential world-ending events, it makes sense that “apocalypse” has transformed its meaning.  Death is easier to imagine than the unimaginable knowledge of God.  We—even those among us of faith—have largely consigned ourselves to the belief that there will be no new revelation in this life.  Like our ancestors thousands of years ago, puzzling over the problem of evil, we can only say that Heaven remains silent, at least for now.

“And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.”

—Revelation 8:1, KJV

There is an Apocalypse at the End of this Story

“Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret! Why didn’t you tell the world!?” -Dr. Strangelove, or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

Many stories in literature, film, and video games deal with events to prevent the End of the World (in whatever form it might take) or to deal with the aftermath of a devastated planet. Examples of the first include the Pern series, The Fifth Element, and entries in the Legend of Zelda or Final Fantasy franchises. Examples of the other includes The Road, 28 Days Later, and The Last of Us. Preventing the End from coming allows (not exclusively) for stories of the unambiguous struggle between good and evil, life over death, and freedom of will over the cold hand of fate. Coping with a post-apocalyptic world gives storytellers the chance to question what humanity’s true nature is in the face of calamity, whether morality can or should transcend social circumstances, and what there is in pre-apocalyptic society which is best left in the charred ruins of ground zero. Both of these approaches to apocalyptic storytelling deserves discussion, and they might receive treatment in later posts, but for the moment I would like to examine the tale which ends with an apocalyptic event.

While apocalypse-based stories come in many diverse forms and thus have a variety of tones and morals, those which end with an apocalyptic event tend, in my opinion, to have far more of a political or satirical aspect to them than most of their kindred tales in the genre. Why end a story with the bombs exploding, the comet crashing, or the gates to hell opening? Why do the heroes fail to save humanity? The solution lies in interrogating two things: who the heroes or protagonists are and whether humanity is worth saving. If the protagonists are not heroic (at least in a traditional sense) and if humanity is seen as too flawed or their preservation comes at too high a price, then the human race will likely suffer an apocalyptic fate.

Let us take a look at two examples briefly. First, the Cold War dark comedy Dr. Strangelove. This 1964 movie tells the story of a psychotic Air Force general who orders his nuclear bombers to drop their payload on the Soviet Union and the desperate attempts of inept of deranged politicians, scientists, and generals to prevent a radioactive doomsday. They do not succeed in this. As the movie ends, so, too, does our world. But why is this? In one sense, those directly responsible for the end of the world, the bomber crew who unwittingly follow unauthorized orders and trigger a chain reaction that will irradiate the earth for 100 years, are quite heroic. They do their duty as if their country was counting on them and accomplish their mission to the best of their abilities. As the movie’s US president sadly boasts to his Soviet counterpart, “It’s initiative!” They have a strong dose of the everyman in them, particularly the pilot. Those in the leadership, however, are the ones who make a mess of things. Aside from a secretary, we never see a regular civilian. We are only presented with soldiers, politicians, and scientists involved with classified information. Humanity certainly is worth saving, but they are absent. The bomber crew is heroic, but they are inadvertently the instruments of doom. Who are our protagonists? The world’s leaders, but they are not heroes. And so the end comes.

Next, let us turn to another Cold War movie about atomic destruction, though perhaps not an expected one: Beneath the Planet of the Apes. This is direct sequel to the original Planet of the Apes, both starring Charlton Heston. Most people are aware of the ending to the first movie which reveals the story of an ape-ruled planet actually takes place on a post-apocalyptic Earth. The ending to the sequel, however, is also noteworthy in its own regard. In the ruins of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, a single atomic bomb still exists, one with the power to destroy the whole planet, bearing the extremely eschatological name “Alpha and Omega,” or “the beginning and the end.” It is worshipped by the mutated descendants of humanity. Taylor (Heston’s character). Tries to prevent the weapon from being triggered when an army of apes arrives to kill the remaining humans. But when Taylor is injured and asks for help from Dr. Zaius (the ape antagonist from the first film), he is spurned. With his dying breath, Taylor activates the bomb, destroying the apes, the humans, and all life on earth. In this act, Taylor repudiates both the humans and the apes. Both are incurably wicked in his eyes. Humans nearly destroyed the earth once; apes seem little better, and they all too prone to the same errors of pride and aggression. He is not heroic in a traditional sense, but that is because both humans and simians are not worth saving. He damns them all in deed, just as he had damned in words the humans responsible for the previous nuclear holocaust at the end of the first movie.

In both of these examples, overt yet non-specific criticisms are being leveled at their audiences and contemporary society. In the first case, doom might come about through incompetence and paranoia among the leadership, despite whatever ideological positions are supposedly at stake. Perhaps the ideologies themselves are driving the leaders to such lunacy.  In the other case, the movie seems to say that any people with the will to use such horrible weapons deserves to be destroyed by them. Perhaps these messages could have been portrayed without complete destruction, and many stories do end with a sense of relief at having narrowly escaped a fate that humanity might well have earned. But by letting the button be pressed, the storyteller gives the unmistakable impression that these things might actually happen, that someone might go too far – a sense harder to achieve when there is a happy ending. Even in stories that have ridiculous means of destroying the world (like Cabin in the Woods), when the world is allowed to die, the audience must ask themselves, “Should it have been saved, could it have been, or is destruction inevitable and, perhaps, appropriate?” By asking these questions, one hopes nihilism does not conquer but rather a desire to become a people both worthy and capable of overcoming absolute destruction.

“In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe lies a medium-sized star, and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead.” -Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970)

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Human Hubris, and Doubts about Our Self-Sufficiency

“The spirits I have summoned I cannot now banish.” –Goethe

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is known to most due to the musical short in Disney’s Fantasia starring Mickey Mouse. The story has an older pedigree, however, dating back 2000 years, though it was a poem by Goethe 200 years ago that established the primary form we know today. For those unfamiliar with the tale, it can be told briefly as follows.

Once there was a sorcerer of great power who had a young apprentice. Despite wanting to learn how to perform all the magic of his master, the sorcerer gave his pupil few lessons in casting spells. Instead of casting great spells, the apprentice spent his days and night sweeping floors and fetching water, tasks he thought beneath him not to mention pointless since he knew his master capable of performing all of these things through magic with hardly any effort.

One day the sorcerer retired from his enchantments to rest while leaving his apprentice to finish bringing in the buckets of water to put in the enormous caldron. The apprentice, however, had a different plan. As soon as his master had left, the young man, who had been peaking at the sorcerer’s book when he wasn’t looking and listening closely to his incantations, decided it was time to show how powerful a wizard he could be. He cast an enchantment on a broom, bringing it to life, and commanded it to do his chores for him of fetching water. The spell worked and soon the caldron was full. The apprentice was very pleased with himself.

Unfortunately, the enchanted broom continued pouring water into the now overflowing caldron, causing the sorcerer’s chamber to be damaged. The apprentice tried to stop the animated broom but realized he had not learned the counter-spell which would have stopped it. Desperate to stop the broom before the room was flooded (and thinking he could still hide the fact he had been performing magic against his master’s will), the young man took up a nearby ax and struck the broom, splitting it down the middle. The apprentice sighed in relief, but his ease was short-lived. Suddenly, both halves of the broom stood back up and began carrying water even faster than before. The apprentice was at a loss, knowing there was nothing he could do and fearing how this disaster would end, if it ever could. But just as the room was becoming floored, the sorcerer returned. The apprentice cried out in fear and hope for his master’s rescue. The old wizard quickly perceived what had happened. With a single word, the enchanted broom halves froze and fell over, lifeless once again. The sorcerer surveyed the destruction caused by the water and his apprentice’s rash folly. The apprentice, ashamed for his presumption, returned to his chores.

This tale is not specifically apocalyptic in any sense of the word. Nevertheless, the general plot does a good job of outlining a type of apocalyptic narrative. Seen in eschatological terms, the Sorcerer’s Apprentice is an example of human hubris resulting in our (near) total destruction which can only be prevented by the intervention of the Divine or some other wise and powerful force which takes pity on mankind. If the apprentice represents humanity as a whole, then the lesson is we will cause our own destruction. This will not be through willful violence but because our misplaced pride in our own abilities. Examples of apocalyptic stories with this theme include Forbidden Planet, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and many others. Most of these modern stories use scientific advances rather than magical spells, yet the misuse of poorly understood power to make life easier is the same in either case.

The presence of the sorcerer at the beginning and end of this story is, I believe, very important for the stories endurance in the Western world. Though the original version came from pagan Rome (where the sorcerer was simply an educated Egyptian mystic and the apprentice a young friend of his), the form that Goethe and Disney adopted buzzes Christian overtones. The relationship between the two characters is very exact with multiple dichotomies: master and pupil, old and young, wise and foolish, restrained and impulsive, powerful and weak with the illusion of power, and so forth. It takes little effort to see these characters as potentially representing divinity and humanity. The fact that the sorcerer leaves but ultimately returns to save his apprentice when all hope is lost can be taken as the Christian conception of God’s return, either to rescue an individual from sin or Christ’s return during the End Times.

Curiously, there is no villain in this story. The enchanted, unstoppable broom is a threat to the apprentice, but it does wish harm on anyone though its actions, which are merely the results of the apprentice’s deem, will cause devastation. If there is no real villain, then how can this be seen as a Christian apocalyptic scenario? Where is the devil, the foe of mankind? The answer, however, is that, while much of Christian eschatology is often framed as a pitched battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil, that is not always the way it has been conceived. In many ways, the end of the world in the New Testament is not even a fight at all. Though John of Patmos speaks of wars in heaven and on earth in Revelation, Jesus in the Gospels speak of harvest time. In these cases, evil is not a foe but a weed. It poses no real threat as an armed enemy might, and someday the master or harvester will simply come to remove the evil and pitch it into the fire to be consumed.

This is the type of eschatology on display in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Sin (or ignorance) are and have been part of humanity’s character, which has caused them to make terrible mistakes. Like Adam whose downfall came from a tree (what else is a broom made of if not wood?), the apprentice thought that he could be like his master, like a god. His rash actions soon caused a flood, much like what befell Adam’s descendants. The apprentice was doomed because he did not know the right word to end the spell; for Christians, mankind is doomed without the Word to save them. But whether one tells the story in religious or secular terms, the message is that of a cautionary tale. We all want to run, but it is necessary to walk first. If we trip and fall in our excitement, hopefully there will be someone to pick us back up. If there is not then caution is all the more necessary because we may not be able to stand back up on our own.

For the text of Goethe’s poem, in German and English: http://germanstories.vcu.edu/goethe/zauber_dual.html

I encourage you to rewatch Disney’s Fantasia with the above in mind.

One final note. This post comes shortly after the theatrical release of the Avengers: Age of Ultron. I briefly cited that movie above as embodying themes of human hubris and impatience. The movie itself references Disney’s Pinocchio multiple times, but for those who have seen or will see it, I challenge you to decide whether the movie actually owes more of its inspiration to the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Pinocchio is about a wooden boy brought to life, though not because of his creator’s powers. The broom is also a piece of wood brought to life, but the apprentice stole this ability from another. Watch the film. Is Ultron Pinocchio turned evil or the broom simply doing what it was told?