| dc.description.abstract | This thesis sets out to describe the development in Judaism and
Christianity of apocalyptic ideas - in particular that of the Millennium,
the temporary kingdom supervised, on God's behalf, by his earthly
representative, the Messiah.
Early Christian apocalyptic differed from Jewish only in that it
set up Christ as the Messiah and expected his imminent return to
institute the Millennium. Despite official disapproval, this sense of
chiliastic immediacy never disappeared and, at the end of the eleventh
century, it was able to exercise an important influence on the First
Crusade.
Although Urban II did not preach the Crusade as an apocalyptic
movement, it became one in the writings of the chroniclers and in the
actions of the participants. In certain parts of Europe, social and
economic conditions and a decade of disasters and signs identical to
the traditional Messianic Woes had created a sense of anxiety and
disorientation among the poor which could only be resolved by participation
in an apocalyptic movement.
In the north, it was Peter the Hermit who articulated this process,
while, on the official Crusade, Peter Bartholomew, finder of the Holy
Lance, focussed the sense of election of the poor upon Raymond of Toulouse,
whom he tried unsuccessfully to force into a messianic role.
The Crusade was seen in the light of the conviction that the world
was about to end, as the fulfillment of apocalyptic prophecy, as led
and helped by God, as having apocalyptic attributes of egalitarianism
and as leading the participants to the boundaries of life and death, to
a millenarian kingdom centering on the New Jerusalem. The role of
Antichrist was projected on to the Moslems and the Crusaders saw themselves
as God's elect, marked by the sign of the Cross, for whom the Crusade was
divine litmus-test of their fitness for salvation. | en_US |
