- Note - The following brief extract is
from a book by Charles Mackay entitled "Extraordinary Popular Delusions
And The Madness Of Crowds" published 1841. The book is available online
at: http://www.litrix.com/madraven/madne006.htm
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- MODERN PROPHECIES
(By Charles Mackay)
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- As epidemic terror of the end of the
world has several times spread over the nations. The most remarkable was
that which seized Christendom about the middle of the tenth century. Numbers
of fanatics appeared in France, Germany, and Italy at that time, preaching
that the thousand years prophesied in the Apocalypse as the term of the
world's duration, were about to expire, and that the Son of Man would appear
in the clouds to judge the godly and the ungodly. The delusion appears
to have been discouraged by the church, but it nevertheless spread rapidly
among the people. [See Gibbon and Voltaire for further notice of this subject.]
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- The scene of the last judgment was expected
to be at Jerusalem. In the year 999, the number of pilgrims proceeding
eastward, to await the coming of the Lord in that city, was so great that
they were compared to a desolating army. Most of them sold their goods
and possessions before they quitted Europe, and lived upon the proceeds
in the Holy Land.
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- Buildings of every sort were suffered
to fall into ruins. It was thought useless to repair them, when the end
of the world was so near. Many noble edifices were deliberately pulled
down. Even churches, usually so well maintained, shared the general neglect.
Knights, citizens, and serfs, travelled eastwards in company, taking with
them their wives and children, singing psalms as they went, and looking
with fearful eyes upon the sky, which they expected each minute to open,
to let the Son of God descend in his glory.
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- During the thousandth year the number
of pilgrims increased. Most of them were smitten with terror as with a
plague. Every phenomenon of nature filled them with alarm. A thunder-storm
sent them all upon their knees in mid-march. It was the opinion that thunder
was the voice of God, announcing the day of judgment. Numbers expected
the earth to open, and give up its dead at the sound. Every meteor in the
sky seen at Jerusalem brought the whole Christian population into the streets
to weep and pray. The pilgrims on the road were in the same alarm:
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- Lorsque, pendant la nuit, un globe de
lumiere S'echappa quelquefois de la voute des cieux, Et traca dans sa chute
un long sillon de feux, La troupe suspendit sa marche solitaire. [Charlemagne.
Pomme Epique, par Lucien Buonaparte.]
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- Fanatic preachers kept up the flame of
terror. Every shooting star furnished occasion for a sermon, in which the
sublimity of the approaching judgment was the principal topic.
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