Apocalypse Now: Connected Histories of Eschatological Movements from Moscow to Cusco, 15th–18th Centuries 9780367532345, 9780367532352, 9781003081050

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Apocalypse Now

Eschatology played a central role in both politics and society throughout the early modern period. It inspired people to strive for social and political change, including sometimes by violent means, and prompted in return strong reactions against their religious activism. From the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, numerous apocalyptical and messianic movements came to the fore across Eurasia and North Africa, raising questions about possible interconnections. Why were eschatological movements so pervasive in early modern times? This volume provides some answers to this question by exploring the interconnected histories of confessions and religions from Moscow to Cusco. It offers a broad picture of Christian and, to a lesser extent, Jewish and Islamic eschatological movements from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, thereby bridging important and long-standing gaps in the historiography. Apocalypse Now will appeal to both researchers and students of the history of early modern religion and politics in the Christian, Jewish and Islamic worlds. By exploring connections between numerous eschatological movements, it gives a fresh insight into one of the most promising fields of European and global history. Damien Tricoire is Full Professor of Early Modern History at Trier University, Germany, and Associate Member of the Center Roland Mousnier (Sorbonne/CNRS). His research concentrates on the religious, intellectual, informational and social underpinnings of political order, projects, conflicts and revolutions in the European and colonial world from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Lionel Laborie is Assistant Professor of Early Modern History at the Institute for History, Leiden University, The Netherlands. His research concentrates on the cultural history of ideas and beliefs in early modern Europe, with a particular interest in religious dissenters, transnational networks, radicalism and tolerance in the ‘long’ eighteenth century.

Routledge Studies in Early Modern Religious Dissents and Radicalism Series editors: Federico Barbierato, Hannah Marcus, Stefano Villani and Xenia von Tippelskirch

Titles in this series address the discursive constructions of religious dissent and the practices of radical movements in the early modern world. The series transcends traditional national and confessional historiographies to examine early modern religious culture as a dynamic system that was essential in forging complex identities and encouraging dialogue among them. The editors seek manuscripts that consider questions of dissent, radicalism, dissidence, libertinism, heresy, and heterodoxy, and that examine these themes historically as socio-cultural constructions. British Protestant Missions and the Conversion of Europe, 1600–1900 Edited by Simone Maghenzani and Stefano Villani Bodies in Early Modern Religious Dissent Naked, Veiled, Vilified, Worshiped Edited by Elisabeth Fischer and Xenia von Tippelskirch Early Modern Diasporas A European History Mathilde Monge and Natalia Muchnik The History of the Jews in Early Modern Italy From the Renaissance to the Restoration Marina Caffiero Apocalypse Now Connected Histories of Eschatological Movements from Moscow to Cusco, 15th–18th Centuries Edited by Damien Tricoire and Lionel Laborie

Apocalypse Now Connected Histories of Eschatological Movements from Moscow to Cusco, 15th–18th Centuries Edited by Damien Tricoire and Lionel Laborie

First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Damien Tricoire and Lionel Laborie; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Damien Tricoire and Lionel Laborie to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-367-53234-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-53235-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-08105-0 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003081050 Typeset in Sabon by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)

Contents

Preface

vii

Introduction 1 DAMIEN TRICOIRE

PART I

Reformations

29

1 Táborite Revolutionary Apocalypticism: Mapping Influences and Divergences

31

MARTIN PJECHA

2 Heretical Eschatology and Its Impact on Radical Reformation Movements: The Flagellants of Thuringia in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, Thomas Müntzer, and the Anabaptists

60

INGRID WÜRTH

3 Terror, War and Reformation: Ivan the Terrible in the Age of Apocalypticism

86

DAMIEN TRICOIRE

PART II

Messianisms

105

4 A Messiah from the Left Side

107

MOTI BENMELECH

vi Contents

5 Millenarian News and Connected Spaces in 17th-Century Europe

120

WILLIAM O’REILLY

6 Carvajal and the Franciscans: Jewish-Christian Eschatological Expectations in a New World Setting

159

SINA RAUSCHENBACH

7 Kabbalistic Influences on “Pietistic” Millenarian Expectations: Philipp Jakob Spener’s (1635–1705) Eschatological View Between Scripture and Christian Kabbalah

181

ELISA BELLUCCI

8 Everyday Apocalypse: Russian and Jewish “Sects” at the End of the Eighteenth Century

199

AGNIESZKA ZAGANCZYK-NEUFELD

PART III

Messianic Kings

223

9 Margins of the Encubierto: The Messianic Kings’ Tradition in the Iberian World (15th–17th Centuries)

225

CLAUDIO CÉSAR RIZZUTO

10 Mirror Images: Imperial Eschatology and Interreligious Transfer in Seventeenth-Century Greek Orthodoxy

245

NIKOLAS PISSIS

11 Restorers of the Divine Law: Native American Revolts in the New World, Christianity, and the Quest for Purity in the Age of Revolution

261

CATHERINE BALLÉRIAUX, IN COLLABORATION WITH DAMIEN TRICOIRE

Index of Names282

Preface

The origin of this book is a workshop I organised in 2018 that was generously hosted by the Francke Foundations (Franckesche Stiftungen) in Halle, Germany, and funded by both the German Research Council (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) and the Research Line “Enlightenment— Religion—Knowledge” of the Land of Saxony-Anhalt (Landesforschun­ gsschwerpunkt Aufklärung—Religion—Wissen). I would like to thank these institutions most warmly, as well as Prof. Andreas Pečar, for supporting the event and the publication of the book. The book is not a conference proceedings volume, however, and it has taken a long time to put it together and bring it to completion. Lionel Laborie joined me along the way to help shape and edit the volume. We would like to thank the editors of the series Routledge Studies in Early Modern Dissents and Radicalism for their trust and their judicious advice, and the authors for their worthy contributions and readiness to revise their manuscripts, sometimes substantially. I would like to dedicate this book to Denis Crouzet, who has made decisive contributions to the study of the political relevance of early modern eschatology, and raised my interest in this subject, and indeed in religious history in the first place. Damien Tricoire, May 2022.

Introduction Damien Tricoire

In 1501, Shah Ismail I (1487–1524) conquered the Persian city of Tabris, a decisive stage in the creation of the Safavid Empire. The Safavid dynasty had a strong Sufi identity, and Ismail was said to be the Mahdi, a messianic figure fighting against evil at the end of times. At the same time, a few thousand kilometers in the west, in Italy, a Jewish prophet called Asher Lämmlein (also Lemlein or Lemmlein) of Reutlingen was announcing the imminent coming of the Messiah.1 That the end was near was also believed some years later by an Augustinian monk in central Germany, Martin Luder (1483–1546), who soon took the name “Luther” (derived from “Eleutherius,” the “freedman”). Luther came to the conclusion that not only the way of life, but also the teachings, of leading clergymen of his time were wrong. Luther became convinced that, already a century earlier, the Bohemian theologian Jan Hus (c.  1370–1415) had been right. As Hus had been sentenced to death by a church council in Constance (1415), Luther became convinced that the Roman church was not the spouse of Christ, but the kingdom of the Antichrist. In his view, not individual popes, but the papacy as an institution was the Antichrist.2 This belief became a cornerstone of Protestant theology and confessional culture. In France, a few decades later, Calvinists (“Huguenots”) accused Catholics of being followers of the Antichrist. Conversely, Catholics saw in Huguenots followers of “false prophets” seducing mankind at the end of times.3 Civil war broke out in 1562. Two years later, Tsar Ivan the Terrible of Muscovy (r.1547–1584) wrote a violent letter to Prince Andrei Kurbskii, who had just flown to Lithuania, and accused him of being a follower of the Antichrist. Ivan claimed to be obliged to punish the prince and his friends, and not to wait for Judgement Day, because he himself as a tsar would otherwise be doomed for not chastising the wicked. Shortly afterwards, Ivan the Terrible launched a campaign of repression against his subjects on an unprecedented scale, inaugurating a rule of terror.4 This accumulation of cases in which clerical and political actors claimed to be living in the last phase of history is all the more striking because one could find many more similar claims across Eurasia, North Africa, and the Americas from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The proliferation of eschatological ideas and movements may have been especially high in Europe, but eschatology was also politically relevant across the Mediterranean and Islamic DOI: 10.4324/9781003081050-1

2  Damien Tricoire worlds, as well as in European colonies overseas. Bohemia, Germany, France, England, Muscovite Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Morocco, and Persia, to name just a few polities, experienced the blossoming of religious-political reform movements that drew on the idea that the Last Days were near. Some— like the fifteenth-century Bohemian Taborites and the seventeenth-century English Fifth Monarchists—were even millenarian in that they endeavored to build God’s kingdom on earth.5 The belief that the Last Days were near was particularly present in Protestant reformations, but it was also central to some streams of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Catholicism, especially in the mendicant orders. It played a great role in Savonarola’s Florence in the late fifteenth century6 and at the court of Dom Manuel (r.1495–1521) in Portugal.7 Furthermore, it inspired Jewish messianic movements in the early sixteenth and mid seventeenth centuries, and played a major role in Jewish mysticism and kabbalah.8 As late as the eighteenth century, new evangelical movements in German territories and Britain strove to build God’s kingdom on earth. Eschatological ideas (that is, ideas about the end of times) have thus been very widespread across a huge part of the early modern world. But were all these events and movements connected? If so, how? That we ask this question is a relatively new phenomenon. Modern globalization has changed our way of looking at the past. Whereas in the second half of the twentieth century, most historians thought of world regions as relatively coherent and closed civilizations, scholars have become much more aware of the connections between them and have voiced increasing skepticism against how we define them. And while in the late twentieth century, Samuel Huntington saw religion as a source of conflict between separated civilizations, we are now deeply interested in exploring the way religious cultures are interwoven.9 This volume offers a broad picture of eschatological movements in Western and Eastern Christianity and, to a lesser extent, in Judaism and Islam, from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century. It seeks to fill some gaps in the scholarship about eschatology. The history of Latter Days expectations has seen tremendous developments in the last decades, particularly in the exploration of cross-religious and cross-confessional eschatological beliefs, opening up entirely new perspectives as a result. However, some central topics remain largely under-explored. First, our knowledge of the shared Jewish-Muslim and Christian-Muslim histories of Latter Days expectations is thin in comparison with that of Jewish-Christian history. There is still considerable work to do in order to substantiate Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s hypothesis of a shared history of millenarianism across Eurasia in the sixteenth century.10 Second, the Americas have barely been integrated into the picture. While scholars of eschatology have developed perspectives within a Eurasian framework, specialists of American native cultures have long tried to retrieve “pure” native elements and have thus neglected Christian ideas. However, not only settlers of European descent, but also American natives developed Latter Days expectations. Amerindians proved creative in their appropriation of Christian eschatology; they voiced new prophecies and started new messianic movements.11

Introduction  3 Third, Eastern Christianity has been likewise astonishingly neglected in the historiography. It is, for example, conspicuously absent from the book series entitled Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture that Richard Popkin and others edited in 2001.12 Indeed, even the history of the Latin-Christian countries with Slavic languages (e.g. Poland and the Czech lands) is neglected. For example, the pivotal role of Hussitism in the history of Western apocalypticism is barely recognized in the general scholarship of European religious history.13 There are a handful of illuminating studies on Byzantine and Armenian apocalypticism.14 But the state of the art hardly ­suffices to create an overview of apocalyptical and messianic ideas and movements in eastern Christian countries, let alone a history of transfers between churches and religions. The relative lack of studies on the mutual influences between Eastern and Western Christianities is particularly surprising because it is well known that Greek and Syriac apocalypticism deeply influenced the Western Christian scenarios of the Latter Days in the early Middle Ages. The chance of finding significant influences from the vantage point of Eastern Christianity is high. In early modern times, the borders between Western and Eastern Christianities were porous. For example, not only did hundreds of thousands of Orthodox Christians live in Poland-Lithuania, but at least 130 influential noble families converted from Orthodoxy to Calvinism in late sixteenth-century Lithuania alone.15 In Muscovy, there were reformation movements akin to Protestantism that have been barely studied from the perspective of cross-religious influence.16 In addition, a further exploration of East Christian apocalypticism would make a valuable addition to our knowledge on ChristianMuslim and Christian-Jewish transfers. This is because in south-eastern Europe and in the Middle East, large Christian and Jewish communities lived under Muslim rule, which created favorable conditions for cross-religious reception processes, as did the massive presence of Jews and Muslims under Christian rule in the Iberian Peninsula. This volume cannot fill all these gaps, but it seeks to make a valuable contribution to this scholarship by focusing mainly on lesser-known connections between Judaism and Christianity, Eastern and Western Christianities, as well as European and American Christianities.

Eschatological Movements in Judaism and Christianity (Fifteenth– Eighteenth Centuries) The history of expectations of the Last Days in early modern Europe was only a marginal topic in historiography about the early modern times until the middle of the twentieth century. Under the influence of the Enlightenment condemnation of “superstition,” historians have long felt uneasy in addressing beliefs that they considered irrational.17 Historical change in early modern Europe was assessed most often as a product of modernization and certainly not as an outcome of dubious and archaic religious beliefs.18 It is only in the second half of the twentieth century that historians have become broadly aware that expectations of the End Times had played a central political role in early modern

4  Damien Tricoire Europe.19 Since then, the new interest in eschatology has become a major contribution to the renewal of our understanding of the political and cultural histories of the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic worlds. It is in the late twentieth century that historians became aware that these three monotheistic religions were interconnected well beyond their origins and early history in the eastern Mediterranean world. The study of eschatological movements has become one of the most promising fields of global history. This scholarship has made clear that the accumulation of religious and political eschatological movements from the fourteenth through the eighteenth century was not entirely due to chance. Over the last decades, scholars have revealed unsuspected connections between these streams of ideas and movements. The study of Latter Days ideas and movements largely stemmed from scholarship about Jewish history. In the context of the Zionist movement, historians became interested in tracing messianic ideas through centuries. In particular, Gershom Scholem’s (1897–1982) oeuvre has played a critical role in the discovery of the history of messianism.20 Scholem argued already in the first half of the twentieth century that, after a more conservative medieval Judaism, messianism became a core component of Jewish history in early modern times. The event leading to the re-emergence of messianism was, in his eyes, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. Scholem and others credited the erudite Portuguese Isaac Abarbanel (1437–1508) as the “father of the messianic movements of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.” In Scholem’s view, Jewish messianism was oriented towards the restoration of Israel and thus differed greatly from the spiritually concerned Christian eschatology (which he called “mystic spirituality”). Jewish messianism, he argued, was therefore an essentially political idea that carried the hopes of many generations to see the People of God restored to their rightful place. In the late twentieth century, subsequent scholars heatedly debated Scholem’s definition and origins of Jewish messianism. Moshe Idel, for example, rejected his sharp distinction between mysticism and messianism. In Idel’s view, there were different streams of Jewish messianism, some of which were mystical and spiritual and not unlike Christian mystic movements.21 Scholars have also noted that messianism was not a product of early modern times because it had been very much present in medieval Judaism, a fact downplayed by Scholem.22 The roles played by the expulsion of the Spanish Jews, and by Abarbanel, have also been questioned.23 Modern scholars hold that, in the sixteenth century, messianism was even stronger among the Ashkenazim than the Sephardim, which does not fit to Scholem’s interpretation.24 What is more, according to recent scholarship, persecutions were unlikely to raise expectations that the End Times had come. Much more important were events that could be interpreted as signs of the imminent restoration of the kingdom of Israel. Many Jewish medieval and early modern messianic scenarios held that two messianic figures would come in the Latter Days: the “messiah ben Joseph,” of one of the ten Lost Tribes, was to come first and fight for the restoration of Israel before falling in battle; his achievements would nonetheless prepare the coming of the actual savior, the “messiah ben David.” With this scenario in

Introduction  5 mind, the defeat of Christians by nomadic peoples (like the Mongols) who possibly belonged to the Lost Tribes, or divisions among Christians (e. g. caused by the Reformation) were interpreted as the more obvious signs of a near demise of Christianity and of Israel’s subsequent redemption. By contrast, the Jewish messianic scenario had much greater difficulty rendering persecutions of Jewish communities, like the expulsion from Spain, as signs of impending redemption.25 Even if recent scholarship is skeptical about the role played by the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, many historians do believe that Jewish messianic hopes gained a special intensity around 1500. Moti Benmelech has shown that the hope of finding the Lost Tribes and gaining their help in rebuilding Israel and the Temple was especially strong between 1430 and 1530. Benmelech explains this hope in relation to the new ties forged between Italy and Ethiopia, a Christian kingdom where substantial Jewish minorities lived, and in relation to the arrival of Ashkenazim in Italy. These events raised hopes that the Ten Tribes would reappear soon.26 In the early sixteenth century, a significant messianic movement, initiated by Asher Lemlein of Reutlingen, did come to the fore among German Ashkenazim living in Italy. At the same time, Jewish eschatological imagination changed and hardly drew on beliefs in the coming of the Ten Tribes thereafter. In fact, such beliefs had nearly disappeared altogether from Jewish messianic imaginations in Germany by 1540.27 Even if historians of Judaism were the first to explore the history of early modern eschatology in depth, specialists of Christian history soon followed the same direction. In the 1950s, Christian millenarianism began to interest historians as a revolutionary ideology.28 Christopher Hill’s monograph on the Antichrist played a great role in promoting the topic, and others have explored this topic since then.29 The historiography on Iberia30 and on France have also experienced a renewal of interest in eschatological movements and thought. Denis Crouzet reinterpreted the French wars of religion as a series of conflicts prompted by eschatological expectations.31 Some historians have likewise examined Christopher Columbus’s millenarian utopias and argued that even though these utopias probably developed after his first travels to the Americas,32 millenarianism itself had constituted a driving factor in that discovery.33 This scholarship has made so much progress that it is now possible to give an overview of the history of eschatological expectations in Western Christianity. It now appears that there was a growing hope for the coming of the millennium between the years 1000 and 1600, even until the eighteenth century in the Protestant world. The abbot Joachim of Fiore (c.1130/35–1202) influenced the culture of mendicant monks, especially Franciscans. He predicted an “age of the Holy Spirit” after the defeat of the Antichrist that would be a period of peace and contemplation for the Church. Joachim made innovations that had an enormous impact on subsequent Christian apocalypticism and on Europeans’ relationships with Jews. Whereas it was usually expected beforehand that the Antichrist would be a Jew and that the Jews would constitute the followers of the Antichrist in the Latter Days, Joachim advanced the idea that the Antichrist would be a Christian (either a tyrannical secular ruler or a pope). He also held that Jews would convert to Christianity at the End Times.34

6  Damien Tricoire Another eschatological stream of the period involved prophecies concerning the “Last Emperor.” These were prophecies that stipulated that a king would establish the reign of peace and justice in the Latter Days before abdicating at the beginning of the final struggle between good and evil. These prophecies were loosely based on ancient Jewish ideas (the prophetic books of the Bible). They originated in Eastern Christianity and made their way into Western Europe. From the High Middles Ages into the seventeenth century, many earthly rulers were portrayed as the Last Emperor who would usher in a period of peace, justice and prosperity—some during their lifetimes (especially in early modern times), others after their death (especially in the Middle Ages). Sometimes, the Last Emperor was reputed to be a “hidden” ruler, who would reveal himself in order to restore peace and justice, and this line of tradition (which included the Iberian encubiertos as well the German Kaisersage) found many political uses, not least in the form of several false claimants to the role of Emperor Frederic II. Such Last Emperor prophecies were mixed with Joachim’s ideas about an Age of the Holy Spirit by spiritual Franciscans like John of Rupescissa (c.1310–1366) and other mendicant monks.35 A third source of eschatological ideas in Western Christianity was of course the New Testament (2 Peter; 2 Thessalonians. 2:6; Matthew 24; Revelation, among others). From the mid fourteenth century, many apocalypticists believed in a thousand-year-long earthly kingdom. They often identified certain popes with the Antichrist, especially by the late 1300s, as the Great Western Schism began.36 Over the next two centuries, millenarianism became increasingly political37—so much so that, by the end of the fifteenth century, the Dominican monk Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498) was able to seize power in Florence with the announced goal of turning it into a New Jerusalem. Other mendicant monks prompted the idea of reform in the Latter Days in a more measured manner. This was the case of Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros (1436– 1517), who reformed the Castilian Church in the early sixteenth century and promoted the knowledge of Aramaic so that clerics would be able to communicate with Christ when he returned in the Last Days.38 Savonarola’s and Cisneros’ cases indicate the growing influence of eschatological ideas in the decades around 1500.39 This tendency to interpret events as signs that the end is near saw a breakthrough with the Reformation. For Protestants, the Antichrist was a real figure, already present on earth. The English theologian John Wyclif (c.1330–1384), as well as the Bohemians Matthew of Janov (c.1350–1394) and Jan Hus, played a critical role in the development of this specifically Protestant “enchantment of the world” because they identified not only individual popes, but—at least in some texts—the papacy as a whole with the Antichrist.40 Arguably, the Reformation did not begin with Luther’s theses in 1517, but a century earlier with the Bohemian Reformation.41 Indeed Luther took over the idea that the papacy was the Antichrist from Hus,42 and in turn passed it over to subsequent Protestant movements.43 Through Wyclif, much of what would become subsequent Protestant theology was already formulated by the late fourteenth century. But the

Introduction  7 reformation movement he initiated, the Lollards, failed to gain support from the authorities in the middle run and went underground. The Lollards’ influence on English religious life was real, but limited. It was the Bohemian Reformation, which began in the 1410s, that became the first mass religious movement based on apocalyptical expectations. For the first time, reformminded elites gained power in a European kingdom and it may be argued that the Bohemian Reformation inaugurated the Age of the Latter Days in Latin Christianity. Hussite Bohemia also saw the rise of the first Christian movement that attributed an active role to common believers in the establishment of the millennium: the Taborites tried to create the thousand-year kingdom with violent means,44 opening the way for Thomas Müntzer (c.1489–1525) and others a century later.45 The German Peasants’ War (1524–1525), that ended in horrific massacres, contributed to a strengthening of eschatological expectations among religious radicals in Germany. While south-German Anabaptist movement introduced the community of goods under this impression, northern Germans and Dutch Anabaptists created in the 1530s the messianic “kingdom” of Münster, that tried to restore divine order by the sword. It was only around 1540, that is some years after the disaster of this millenarian experience in Münster, that Anabaptists renounced to violence and endeavored to build the divine kingdom progressively and by spiritual means. The idea that a new prophet filled by the holy spirit would come was largely abandoned. Instead Anabaptists and the communities that developed out of it like the Mennonites believed that the holy spirit acted in each true believer (an approach called “spiritualism”).46 The Lutheran eschatology of the sixteenth century was much more pessimistic than that promoted by radical Reformers. There was widespread belief that the struggle against the Antichrist had already begun, but Lutherans did not usually expect that an earthly age of triumph and peace would come. Unlike the Taborites, Müntzer or the Münster Anabaptists, Lutheranism attributed a rather passive role to Christians in the Latter Days. Pious people were expected to stand up for the true faith, not to bring about the millennium themselves.47 By contrast, some kinds of millenarianism flourished within Calvinism during the sixteenth century (following Calvin’s successor Theodore Beza), and even more so among seventeenthcentury English “Puritans” and French Huguenots.48 Millenarian or not, eschatology deeply marked the worldview of early modern Protestants. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestants not only identified the papacy with the Antichrist, but also equated Catholic rulers and the Ottoman Turks with figures from the prophetic books (Daniel 2 and 7; Ezechiel 38) and the Book of Revelation. Indeed, the Ottoman ruler was sometimes considered a “second Antichrist.” Prophecies based on the Book of Revelation flourished especially in seventeenth-century England, fueled by conflicts between Laudianists and proponents of Protestant “purity.”49 During the Reformation, Jews gained further significance in apocalyptical scenarios. Matthew of Janov, the Hussites, and subsequent Protestants, especially German Pietists, believed that Jews would convert to Christianity

8  Damien Tricoire in the Latter Days.50 For many Protestants, the Jews were potential allies and not enemies; their enemies were—as the papacy—pseudo-Christian.51 Jews, however, disappointed Protestants by refusing to convert. Luther and other reformers eventually developed strong anti-Judaic sentiments, and Taborites even massacred Jews for refusing to take over the “true” religion.52 Nonetheless, many seventeenth-century Protestant authors hoped that the Lost Tribes would soon reappear. They identified them with the Tatars, Chinese Jews, or American natives.53 In the seventeenth-century Netherlands and England, the perception of Jews—and even occasionally of Muslims—as allies became firmly established.54 Eschatological thought also influenced the way Protestants perceived themselves. Christian millenarians and Protestants did not usually believe that Old Testament prophecies announcing the restitution of Israel in the Latter Days should be taken literally. On the contrary, they tended to identify themselves with the promised Latter Day Israel.55 Some radical reformers (like the Anabaptists in Münster) identified so strongly with the ancient Jews that they introduced Old Testament legal institutions such as polygamy.56 Few went quite so far, but in many reform movements, the idea of the New Israel was very much present. Millenarianism and Latter Days expectations remained strong among Calvinists and proponents of the Radical Reformation well into the eighteenth century. Evangelical German Lutheranism (“Pietism”), especially its radical wing, and the Great Awakening in the eighteenth-century English-speaking world clearly had an eschatological dimension. God’s reign was to build on earth.57 Although especially influential in Protestantism, eschatological thinking was also common in Catholicism. Opponents of the Reformation in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries often interpreted the emergence of “heresy” itself as a sign that the End Times were near, which further motivated them to fight against the spread of Protestantism.58 Luther himself was sometimes viewed as the Antichrist.59 In addition, prophecies about the coming of the Last Emperor were still appropriated by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century authors and applied to Emperor Charles V (r.1519–1558), Francis I of France (r.1515–1547), and Dom Sebastian of Portugal (r.1557–1578), among others.60 As in the High Middle Ages, the idea of the Last Emperor was used to contest the legitimacy of the sitting ruler: in the Communeros uprising in Castille (1520–1522) and in the Germanías rebellion in Valencia (1521–1522), several men claimed to be the “hidden” Don Juan, the (deceased) son of the ‘Catholic kings’ Isabelle of Castille and Ferdinand of Aragon.61 Likewise, after his disappearance in the battle of Alcácer-Quibir (1578), some considered the Portuguese king Sebastian I to have been “hidden” and expected him to return as the Last Emperor. Sebastianism expressed hostility towards the Habsburg dynasty, which reigned in Portugal from 1581 until 1640.62 However, after the Council of Trent (1545), and especially by 1600, the Catholic Church became much more reluctant towards the idea that the Latter Days had come. Catholic authors, and above all Jesuits, usually stuck to an allegorical reading of the Revelation thereafter, and Protestantism was

Introduction  9 generally viewed as one heretical movement among many others in history, rather than as a creation of the Antichrist. By 1600, beliefs about the Last Emperor had likewise become marginal: Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639; author of The Messianic Monarchy) and the Sebastianist author Antonio Vieira (1608–1697) were condemned by the inquisition,63 and Isaac de La Peyrère (1596–1676), a Protestant (probably of Jewish origins) who was forced to convert to Catholicism, was surely far from being representative of seventeenth-century Catholic thought about the Latter Days.64 However, eschatological expectations developed anew in eighteenth-century radical Jansenism.65 While all of the above history is more or less known to historians of early modern Europe, only specialists seem to recognize that Latter Day expectations flourished in the continent’s easternmost reaches as well. Fifteenthand sixteenth-century Muscovy was also marked by apocalyptic imaginings.66 The violence exerted by Ivan the Terrible on some of his subjects and foreigners, for example, also had an apocalyptic background.67

A Shared Jewish-Christian History The histories of eschatological expectations in Judaism and Christianity present distinct features. However, they did not simply follow parallel trajectories. They sometimes intersected, and—more interestingly—were intertwined. In the second half of the twentieth century, scholars also became aware that the extent to which religious ideas were exchanged between Christians and Jews was much greater than previously assumed.68 For example, it was under the influence of Christianity that Jews developed an Antichrist-like figure, Armilus, in the early middle ages.69 It is also now established that Jewish writers reacted to the Reformation. They were clearly aware of inner-Christian controversies, even though there is little evidence that they read texts by Protestant theologians.70 They had a favorable view of some aspects of Protestantism (like Calvinist iconoclasm), but condemned others.71 By the late twentieth century, scholars began to explore intensively the cross-religious histories of apocalypticism and messianism in early modern times. Again, the lead was taken from within Jewish history and through a discussion of Scholem’s theses. In the 1980s and 1990s, Michael McKeon, Richard Popkin, Ernestine van der Wall, David Katz, and others explored the exchange of ideas between Menasseh ben Israel and Protestant—especially British and Dutch—millenarians in the mid seventeenth century.72 Interest in this chapter of Jewish-Christian intellectual and religious history has not waned since because it represents a fascinating case of peaceful exchange and collaboration across religious borders.73 In the past three decades, attention has broadened beyond a few case studies. One of the first books to explore the widespread connections between the history of Jewish and Christian expectations of the End Times was the edited volume Jewish Messianism in the Early Modern World.74 Matt Goldish has also worked to place the history of Sabbateanism (the messianic movement funded by Sabbatai Zevi in the second half of seventeenth century) in a

10  Damien Tricoire Christian-Jewish-Muslim context of blossoming prophetic enthusiasm.75 These publications and many others have shown that the reception of Jewish apocalyptical ideas was critical to Christian eschatological expectations and vice versa. They have shown that Judaism and Christianity influenced each other in at least three ways: First, apocalyptical scenarios that developed in one religion prompted the emergence of counter-scenarios in the other through a kind of reception against the grain of the beliefs of the other. Gloomy prophecies in one religion could raise the hopes of the other. Conversely, the eschatological hopes of one religious group often provoked fears among members of the other religion. In the Middle Ages, Jewish hopes for revenge in the Latter Days were well known to Christians, whose theologians conflated the Lost Tribes with a variety of enemies: the “unpure peoples,” whom Alexander the Great was said to have locked on the other side of high mountains, and Gog and Magog. This conflation gave birth to the idea of the “Red Jews” in Germany—warrior Jews who would come in the Latter Days to attack Christians.76 Although the “Red Jews” were anything but positive in Christian texts, the Lost Tribes became referred to as “Red Jews” not only in the German language, but also in Yiddish. This shows that Christian fears confirmed Jewish hopes that these warlike coreligionists would come to liberate them from the Christian yoke.77 This dynamic of fears and hopes played a critical role in the emergence of violence against Jews. According to recent scholarship, anti-Judaism and pogroms resulted largely from the fear that Jews might indeed seize power with the help of the Antichrist, Gog, and Magog. The return of the Lost Tribes was perceived among Christians as a major danger until at least the first half of the sixteenth century (and in some circles until the early seventeenth century). Until this period, actual peoples were regularly identified by both Jews and Christians with Gog, Magog, and the Lost Tribes. The extent to which the Mongol-Tatar invasion of Europe in the thirteenth century raised hopes among Jews is debated in the scholarship, but it certainly fueled Christian fears of Jewish power.78 Christian reformation movements, which shared the assumption that the Latter Days had come, could also raise hopes among Jews of the imminent coming of the messiah or (at least) of the demise of Christianity, as seen in the Jewish reactions to the fifteenth-century Bohemian Reformation. Under the influence of anti-Hussite propaganda, some German Jews believed that Hussites rejected—along with the idolatry of images—the trinity and the idea of Jesus’ divinity, and that, having discovered these religious truths, they would eventually convert to Judaism.79 In addition, some sixteenthcentury Jews like Abraham ben Eliezer Halevi (1460–1529) saw in Luther a Divine instrument sent to destroy Rome in the Latter Days. Halevi also understood the Christian Kabbalah, the renewed interest in the Old Testament, Protestant iconoclasm, and philosemitic Protestant statements as signs that Christianity would soon return to Judaism.80 Conversions provided a second way through which Christian and Jewish eschatological expectations were connected. Above all, the forced mass

Introduction  11 conversions of Jews to Christianity in fifteenth-century Spain and Portugal facilitated this connection. Matt Goldish has shown that Spanish and Portuguese conversos (whether “sincere” or “crypto-Jews”) played a great role in developing a genuine Jewish-Christian eschatological culture. They authored many innovative prophecies and influenced the Franciscan mystic alumbrado movement in a decisive way.81 An influence of Iberian converso messianism on Sabbatai Zevi (who claimed to be the Jewish messiah) in the mid seventeenth century is likewise probable because Portuguese Marranos played a critical role in the so-called Sabbatean movement he inspired.82 Third, there were also, albeit less often, cross-religious transfers of eschatological ideas prompted by more positive views of the other religion. From the fifteenth century onwards, some Christians searched for ancient Jewish knowledge reaching back to the time of Moses, or even of Adam.83 Hence the interest shown by Renaissance scholars such as Giovanni Pico de la Mirandola (1463–1494), Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522), and Guillaume Postel (1510–1581) in Kabbalah and its supposed origin in the most ancient divine revelations. These intellectuals, among others, developed a Christian Kabbalah with Christological interpretations. They used Kabbalah in apologetic ways to demonstrate the truth of Christianity, while taking over some Jewish mystic-messianistic ideas at the same time.84 For example, Guillaume Postel took over the Jewish theory of the two messiahs, and believed that the messiah ben Joseph would re-establish Israel, bring Jews and Christians together, and rule the world with the King of France.85 Christianized Kabbalah helped inspire surprising Christian messianic movements like that led by Augustin Bader (1495–1530), a tailor from Augsburg in Germany. Bader had been influenced by the Anabaptist Kabbalist Oswald Leber, who was himself inspired by Abraham ben Eliezer Halevi, the aforementioned Jerusalem Kabbalist and fervent messianist.86 Conversely, Christianity influenced Lurianic Kabbalah, a mystic school of Kabbalah founded by Isaac Luria (1534–1572).87 Jews and Christians could occasionally even think of themselves as allies. When David Reuveni, who claimed to be a prince from the Lost Tribes somewhere in Arabia or Africa, came to Europe in 1523–1524 and proposed a Christian-Jewish coalition against the Ottomans, he was well received by both Pope Clement VII (r.1523–1534) and the Portuguese king John III (r.1521–1557). As a result, in some Christian publications of that period, the Lost Tribes gained a positive image as a potential ally against Muslims.88 The proximity of thought between anti-Trinitarians and Jews prompted some inter-religious collaboration, especially in Poland-Lithuania, where Szymon Budny (1530–1593) and Marcin Czechowic (1532–1613) worked with Isaak of Troki (1533–1594).89 Some Reformation religious reformers even accepted the idea that Israel would be re-established as a Jewish kingdom in the Latter Days.90 In the seventeenth century, several Protestants and Jewish authors took over Isaac de La Peyrère’s idea of a second messiah coming for the Jews in the Latter Days. This theory enabled them to develop a friendly exchange of views and collaborations. For this reason, the Dutch millenarian Petrus

12  Damien Tricoire Serrarius (1600–1669) believed that Sabbatai Zevi was a real messiah.91 Significantly, although Christians usually considered Sabbatai Zevi an impostor, he was not perceived as an Antichrist. The idea of a Jewish Antichrist experienced a spectacular demise within a few centuries, and was even replaced by “Popery” in the Protestant imagination.92 Conversely, some Rabbis seeking the help of Christian authorities in their fight against Sabbateanism also took over the idea that Jesus was a real prophet sent by God in order to bring religion to heathens.93

Fitting Islam into the Picture Whereas it is well established that medieval and early modern Christian and Jewish eschatological expectations have a shared history, we have less evidence about the extent to which (and the ways in which) they were connected to Islamic eschatological ideas and movements. This is so even though scholars have long discussed the place and chronology of eschatological expectations in Islam. Many even consider that Islam was from its inception a messianic movement, arguing that Muhammad was preaching that the Last Days were near.94 But even if one assumes that millenarian ideas entered Islam at a later stage, it is clear that they played a critical role since at least the high Middle Ages. In the last two decades, as historians have compared Latter Day beliefs between Islam and other monotheistic religions, they have found striking similarities between Christian and Muslim End-Time scenarios.95 They have also concluded that the widespread belief among Muslims in Jesus’ Second Coming and in his Last Judgement is the sign of Christian influences on early Islam. Beliefs in the coming of the Dajjāl (an Antichrist-like figure) and in the Mahdi (a Latter-Days earthly messianic king) were probably also inspired by Christian ideas. On the basis of these influences, Muslims developed End-Time expectations comparable to the Christian ones. The Dajjāl, like the Antichrist, was conceived of as a false messiah finding followers among the Jews, and he was said to be supported by Gog and Magog. The reign of the Mongols over large parts of the Islamicate world (i.e. regions ruled by Muslims) was challenged in the thirteenth century from Anatolia through Armenia and all the way to Central Asia by men claiming to be the Mahdi. According to expectations of Shi’ite origins that also circulated among Sunni Muslims in the late Middle Ages and early modern period, the Mahdi was to come at the End Times, conquer Constantinople and Rome, reform the Muslims, and defeat the Dajjāl—a scenario which is strongly reminiscent of Christian prophecies about the Last Emperor. However, the Mahdi was not identical to the Last Emperor; some Christian prophecies expected the Last Emperor to concede Jerusalem to the Antichrist without any fight. Other Muslim texts reveal a similar scenario to that described in the Book of Revelation: they hold that Jesus would defeat the Dajjāl with the Word of God and reign over the world in peace. Sunni authors usually thought that Jesus would come after the Mahdi, while most Shi’ite texts held that the two

Introduction  13 would appear together. Even Sunni authors who rejected the idea that there would be a Mahdi other than Jesus usually believed in the coming of a Mudjaddid, a renewer of Islam and society in the Latter Days. In addition, some medieval Muslims believed in the coming of the Sufyani, a king who was expected to oppose the Last Emperor.96 One major difference between Islamic and Christian eschatologies is that the former rarely identified the Dajjāl with a concrete person or institution. In this way, the Dajjāl differed from the Christian Antichrist. By contrast, numerous rulers and religious masters were identified with the Mudjaddid and some with the Mahdi over centuries. In the Middle Ages, some Mahdi claimants succeeded in seizing power and founding new dynasties, for example the Fatimides in tenth-century Egypt and Almohades in the twelfth-century Muslim West.97 From the fifteenth century onwards, political messianism grew stronger within Islam, and Sufism flourished.98 Holy men who had reached a union with God were considered important mediators between believers and the Divinity. In the context of this mystical religiosity, rulers were often revered as saints. Azfar Moin has explored the way Safavid and Mughal rulers embodied a sacral role that made holy saviors out of them. Shah Ismail (r.1501–1524), the founder of the Safavid dynasty, was believed by his followers to be the Mahdi. The Mughal emperor Akbar (r.1556–1605), too, endorsed a messianic role. He created the “Divine religion,” an order to which all noblemen and officers were expected to enroll.99 As Sufism flourished, so did Mahdism. In the Muslim West of the fifteenth century, chiefs of the Jazulyya, a Berber tribe, led the Sufi brotherhood and united moral rigorism, holy war, and apocalyptic fervor. In the sixteenth century, they helped the Sa’adian dynasty to take power in Marrakesh and Fez, prompting an intensive engagement by the rulers of Morocco with Mahdism. Muhammad al-Shaykh (r.1544–1557) took power with the surname “alMahdi,” and Ahmad al-Mansur, the most famous ruler of the dynasty, turned Mahdism into a kind of state doctrine that legitimized much, including imperial expansion in Western Sudan. In the early seventeenth century, the rule of the Sa’adian dynasty was shaken by a coup led by Ibn Abi Mahalli (1559– 1613), another pretender to the dignity of Mahdi.100 Political messianism was also a critical part of the ideological landscape of the sixteenth-century Ottoman Empire. Sultan Selim (r.1512–1520) had eschatological pretentions, and he was described as the Mahdi of the Last Days. Even more clearly, Süleyman the Lawgiver (r.1520–1566) was supposed to introduce an age of perfect justice and peace reminiscent of the millennium. In an explicit indication that Christian and Islamic messianisms were in contact, Süleyman allowed himself to be described as the Last Emperor.101 That such a florescence of Islamic and Christian Latter-Days expectations in the early modern period was coincidental is highly unlikely. For Muslim and Christian worlds were not sharply separated, as twentieth-century historiography assumed.102 Muslim scholars, contrary to what has been written often, were deeply interested in the Christian West.103 The influence of Christianity was not limited to early Islam and there were many centuries

14  Damien Tricoire of cross-religious transfers in both directions. Cornell Fleischer has shown that the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and the HabsburgOttoman rivalry in the sixteenth century provoked controversies about who was the legitimate claimant to universal empire in the End Times.104 Similarly, mutual influences of Judaism and Islam in the Ottoman Empire are highly probable, given the coexistence of the two religious communities throughout much of the Muslim world.105 Yet to date, we still have significantly less insight into Jewish-Muslim and Christian-Muslim influences than into Jewish-Christian ones. As Christians, Jews, and Muslims coexisted in many parts of the Islamicate world in early modern times, they certainly influenced each other in situ. Even if the state of the field does not allow an overview of the many inter-religious perceptions and cross-religious transfers, some points of contact do appear clearly. First, the early influences of Christianity on Islam and the resulting similarities between the apocalyptical scenarios made similar eschatological interpretations of events possible. Both Christian and Muslim authors identified the steppe peoples—above all the Huns, Tatars, and Mongols—with Gog and Magog, and attributed an eschatological significance to their invasions.106 Second, as in the Jewish-Christian case, (forced) conversions played a critical role in the merging of eschatological traditions and the formulation of new prophecies. The Moriscos—the forcibly converted Iberian Muslims— appropriated the belief in a Latter-Days “hidden” emperor. The prophecies of Joachim of Fiore and the Franciscan millenarian John of Rupescissa were influential among them.107 Such beliefs played a central role in the outbreak of the great Morisco rebellion near Granada, usually called the War of the Alpujarras (1568–1570).108 The Moriscos believed that Iberia would be liberated with the providential aid of the “kings of the East and the West” (that is the Ottoman emperor and the French king). Likewise, in 1575, Abrahim Fatimí called his fellow Moriscos in Valencia to take up arms, claiming to be the Mahdi.109 Out of necessity, ambition or conviction, hundreds of thousands of Christians converted to Islam in early modern times, especially in North Africa and southeastern Europe.110 Muslim rulers occasionally also forced conversions, generating equally complex sets of tradition and use of prophecy. Sabbatai Zevi, the same figure at the center of much JewishChristian cross-influence in the seventeenth century, converted from Judaism to Islam following his arrival and arrest in Constantinople. The Dönmes, who followed him, kept a hybrid Jewish-Muslim identity through centuries.111 Third, some Protestants could notice theological proximities with Islam on certain points; they developed a nuanced reading of Muslim texts and sought collaboration with Muslims against Catholics and other Christians.112 This was especially the case of anti-Trinitarians, even if the influences of Islam on this theological stream may have been meager.113 Conversely, the Moroccan ruler Ahmad al-Mansur (r.1578–1603) attracted Protestants to Morocco and tried to ally with Protestant powers in order to fight against Spain.114 Fourth, Sabbateanism flourished against the backdrop of strong messianic expectations in the Mediterranean world. More precisely, the Mahdist

Introduction  15 Muhammad an-Niyazi was active in the same cities as Sabbatai Zevi. According to Matt Goldish, it is very likely that Sabbateans and an-Niyazi’s followers had close contacts. In addition, Shi’ite thought and dervish piety may have had an impact on Sabbateanism.115 Cengiz Sisman also argues that the Ottoman context was crucial in creating the Sabbatean movement. In particular, he and other scholars suggest that the Kadizadeli reform movement influenced Sabbatai Zevi. On the other hand, Sisman holds that the impact of Sabbateanism was greater among European Jews and Christians than it was among Ottoman Jews, Christians, or Muslims.116 Last, astrology and the esoteric sciences played an important role in coordinating Muslim, Jewish, and Christian eschatological expectations. In the sixteenth century, astrology was highly popular across Europe and the Islamicate world, and astrological predictions circulated across religious borders. Indeed, European astrology and the esoteric sciences were very deeply influenced by Arabic texts.117 In the sixteenth century, the border between prophecy and astrology was porous since astrology was used regularly to predict the year of the millennium. Predictions from Muslim astrologers on this topic were taken seriously by Christians and vice-versa.118 All these findings indicate that Muslim eschatological expectations were connected with Christian and Jewish ones. There is probably still much to be discovered in this fruitful new research field.

Character and Focus of the Book This volume explores hitherto unknown connections between eschatological movements both within Christianity and across religious boundaries. The first section deals with Protestant reformations, their origins, and consequences. It takes a much broader view on Reformation history than is usually done, as it does not consider that the Reformation was inaugurated by Luther and Zwingli. Instead, it opens with a chapter by Martin Pjecha on fifteenth-century Bohemian Reformation, an ensemble of religious movements that played a major role in the outbreak of eschatological and millenarian movements in Europe. The radical Hussite dissenters (so-called Táborites) were the first “revolutionaries,” if we mean by that term a community that takes upon itself the task of achieving, through violent means, an absolute annihilation of the world order in order to create a new, radically altered world. Apocalypticism was obviously a very potent source of inspiration for Táborites, but it is not at all clear why it would lead them to revolutionary action, when it had inspired no such previous action. Pjecha traces the supposed and possible influences of various streams of thought on the Táborites. Historians have previously suspected influences from virtually all extant contemporary heterodox movements, including the Waldensians, Free-Spirits, Lollards, and Joachimites. While some such arguments may be tempting, they are also problematic in various ways, and Pjecha’s chapter highlights these allures and problems. In addition, this chapter draws attention to influences from less heterodox and even orthodox, non-apocalyptic ideas that can be traced back to early Christianity, including mysticism, Christian neo-Platonism, and Augustinianism.

16  Damien Tricoire The second chapter, penned by Ingrid Würth, explores unknown connections between medieval “heresy” and radical reformation in sixteenth-century Germany, with a special emphasis on Thomas Müntzer. It focusses on a little-known medieval eschatological movement, the Flagellants, a group that practiced self-scourging, lived almost exclusively in northern Thuringia, and followed the prophecies of their founder Konrad Schmid. In comparison to the Hussite movement or the Waldensians, the Flagellants might seem less obvious candidates as a source of inspiration for sixteenth-century Protestant movements. But, as Ingrid Würth shows, there are some elements that establish a connection between the Flagellants and Thomas Müntzer, especially in their apocalyptical doctrines. Not only was the Reformation influenced by previous eschatological movements; it also prompted the rise of non-Protestant eschatological expectations. While the reactions of Catholics to the Reformation has been studied thoroughly, this is much less the case of the impact that Protestantism had on Eastern Christianity. Damien Tricoire’s chapter deals with the way the Protestant Reformation prompted the emergence of eschatological expectations in Muscovy, pointing to connections between West and East European histories largely unknown until now. More specifically, it focuses on Ivan the Terrible of Muscovy (r.1547–1584) and holds that his reign of terror is to be interpreted in the context of the European religious conflicts of the sixteenth century. The volume’s second section studies the Jewish-Christian history of messianism. Chapter 4, written by Moti Benmelech, reveals how Christian eschatology influenced Jewish messianic movements in the Mediterranean basin during the early sixteenth century. The 1520s and 1530s were a period of exceptional interest and engagement in messianism and in calculations of the end among European Jews that had strong affinity with similar phenomena in contemporary European society. Cultural, religious, and political processes in Christian societies influenced most prominent figures in sixteenth-century Jewish messianism. Benmelech discusses the role of Christian ideas in the thought and writings of Shlomo Molcho (1501–1532), one of the most intriguing figures in early modern Jewish messianism. Chapter 5, written by William O’Reilly, studies how, in the mid seventeenth century, there was a growing awareness of the emergence and impact of millenarian movements in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. O’Reilly focuses on Paul Rycaut, an English merchant in Smyrna and author of writings about the Ottoman Empire and messianic movements. Rycaut was interpreting different messianic and millenarian movements as facets of the same, in his view dangerous, phenomenon. He promoted the idea that religious passions had to be tamed, much to the benefit of commerce. His materialist ideology was a deliberate reaction against the enthusiasm of the millenarian movements, O’Reilly writes. This chapter thus enhances the role of global trade in the perception, and overcoming, of millenarianism. In the next chapter, Sina Rauschenbach deals with Jewish messianicminded figures in Spanish America and the way they shared eschatological expectations with Franciscan friars. She focuses on Luis de Carvajal the

Introduction  17 Younger (1567–1596), who is without doubt one of the most famous victims of the Mexican Inquisition. In 1595, Luis and his family were found guilty of “Judaizing” and sentenced to death. Thanks to his autobiography and letters which survived in the dossiers of his trials, scholars have been able to trace important aspects of Carvajal’s life, his religious thought, and his self-fashioning as a Jewish martyr. However, scholarship has not explored in any depth how New World Catholic culture influenced Carvajal’s messianism. Rauschenbach’s chapter analyzes the meaning of “the Americas” in Carvajal’s eschatological thought and reflects upon influences from Mexican Franciscans and Christian millenarians with whom Carvajal was in contact between 1590 and 1595. It places Carvajal’s case in the broader context of recent studies of “converso messianism.” In a chapter exploring the theology of German Pietist Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705), Elisa Bellucci shows that kabbalistic influences played a decisive role in the shaping of Pietism. While not all scholars agree that Spener, arguably the founder of Pietism, was a millenarian author, Bellucci explores how he shaped a new kind of millenarianism, which expressed hope of a spiritual betterment of the church in the Latter Days. In this sense, Pietist authors held, contrary to Luther, that humankind could contribute to erecting God’s kingdom on earth thanks to divine grace. By holding such a view, they placed themselves at the margins of Lutheran orthodoxy. Bellucci shows that this position was strongly influenced by kabbalistic ideas, which Spener considered to be useful for uncovering the meaning of Scripture. While Kabbalah is often considered a heterodox tradition that runs parallel to the “official mainstream” history of confessions and orthodoxy, it actually proves to be entangled with Lutheranism. Its influence should thus be re-evaluated, Bellucci claims. We do not know much about the history of mutual influences between Judaism and Christianity in the Russian Empire. In her exploratory article, Agnieszka Zagańczyk-Neufeld asks whether Orthodox Christian sects in early modern Russia were influenced by Judaism. In the fifteenth century, some groups were accused of “Judaizing,” and Zagańczyk-Neufeld claims that a Karaite influence on them is indeed not implausible. Founded in the eighteenth century, the Molokan movement was considered to be the heir of the Judaizers. The Molokans certainly followed parts of the Jewish law as written in the Old Testament. Another sect, the Subbotniks, was even often considered a Jewish movement, although only very few Subbotniks may have been of Jewish origin. Zagańczyk-Neufeld holds that a Karaite influence is probable insofar as Subbotniks even tried to be legally recognized as Karaites in the second half of the nineteenth century. The third section of this volume deals with the idea that in the End Times a secular ruler would come to fight against evil and restore purity. Claudio Rizzuto studies the Iberian expectations that a messianic king would come. The idea of the providential “hidden” king (encubierto) is a well-known feature of early modern Iberian religious-political culture. However, only a few scholars have studied both the Portuguese and Spanish messianic traditions together. The same can be said of the history of eschatology in Iberian

18  Damien Tricoire dominions in America. Rizzuto shows how ideas about the messianic king passed from one kingdom to the other and crossed the ocean. He holds that Portuguese, Spanish, and American contacts were critical to many episodes of the tradition of the messianic kings in the Iberian world, and shows that this tradition was partly a shared Christian-Jewish one. Next, Nikolas Pissis explores in his chapter the role of eschatology in Greek Orthodox culture and discusses the question of transfers. Since the late sixteenth century, among the Ottoman and Venetian Greeks, oracular literature announcing the near end of the Ottoman Empire in an eschatological perspective flourished. Certainly, this did not lead to the emergence of a genuine messianic or millenarian movement; it remained mainly a textual phenomenon. However, certain anti-Ottoman revolts, and practically all pertinent Greek political projects, did seek and find inspiration in eschatological imagination. As Pissis shows, these phenomena were products of complex processes of cultural transfers, on the axes of both time and space. On the time axis, transfer involved the selective reinterpretation and recontextualization of inherited and occasionally invented traditions; on the spatial axis, Greek eschatological thought reacted and responded, often explicitly, to developments in Western Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. The last chapter, written by Catherine Ballériaux and her co-author Damien Tricoire, integrates seventeenth- and eighteenth-century rebellions of Native Americans into the connected history of Christian eschatology. Drawing on the literatures from North and South America, the authors focus on the Peruvian prophet Juan Santos “Atahualpa” and on the Delaware prophet Neolin. Juan Santos styled himself as a prophet and messianic king restoring faith in its pristine purity. The Delaware prophet Neolin and his followers also struggled to restore divine laws on earth. Ballériaux and Tricoire argue that we should take the Christian character of these movements seriously, and that trying to identify genuinely native elements in them negates the agency of these American natives. Their thoughts were original contributions to Christian eschatology and participated in a much broader Atlantic, and even Eurasian-American history.

Notes 1 Rebekka Voß, Umstrittene Erlöser. Politik, Ideologie und jüdisch-christlicher Messianismus in Deutschland, 1500–1600 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011). 2 Heiko Oberman, “Hus und Luther. Der Antichrist und die zweite reformatorische Entdeckung,” in Jan Hus zwischen Zeiten, Völkern, Konfessionen, ed. Ferdinand Seibt (München: Oldenbourg, 1997), 319–46; Philip C. Almond, The Antichrist. A New Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 208–18. 3 Denis Crouzet, Les Guerriers de Dieu: La Violence au temps des troubles de religion, 2 vols. (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1990). 4 See Damien Tricoire’s chapter in this volume. 5 See Martin Pjecha’s chapter in this volume; Christopher Hill, Antichrist in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971).

Introduction  19 6 Richard Popkin, “Savonarola and Cardinal Ximines: Millenarian Thinkers and Actors at the Eve of the Reformation,” in Catholic Millenarianism: From Savonarola to the Abbé Grégoire, ed. Karl Kottman (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), 15–25. 7 See Claudio Rizzuto’s article in this volume. 8 See Moti Benmelech’s chapter in this volume. 9 Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996); Suraiya Faroqhi, The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It (London: Tauris, 2004); Molly Greene, A Shared World: Christians and Muslims in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); David Abulafia, The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean (London: Penguin Books, 2011); Daniel König, Arabic-Islamic Views of the Latin West: Tracing the Emergence of Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 10 Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Du Tage au Gange au XVIe siècle: Une conjoncture millénariste à l’échelle eurasiatique,” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 56 (2001): 51–84. 11 See the chapter by Catherine Ballériaux and Damien Tricoire in this volume. 12 Richard Popkin, Matt Goldish et al., eds., Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture, 4 vols. (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001). 13 See scholarship by Martin Pjecha. Lionel Laborie and Ariel Hessayon’s edition of prophecies contributed to fill this gap in that it includes Hussite sources: Lionel Laborie and Ariel Hessayon, eds., Early Modern Prophecies in Transnational, National, and Regional Contexts, 3 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2020). 14 Paul Magdalino, “The End Time in Byzantium,” in Endzeiten. Eschatologie in den monotheistischen Weltreligionen, eds. Felicitas Schmieder and Wolfram Brandes (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 119–34; Zaroui Pogoussian, “Jews in Armenian Apocalyptic Traditions of the 12th Century: A Fictional Community or New Encounters,” in Peoples of the Apocalypse. Eschatological Beliefs and Political Scenarios, eds. Rebekka Voß, Wolfram Brandes, and Felicitas Schmieder (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2016), 147–92. 15 Christoph Schmidt, “Calvinisten, Täufer, Orthodoxe und Juden in der litauischen Reformation,” Zeitschrift für Religions-und Geistesgeschichte 52, no. 4 (2000): 319–32, here 323. 16 Schmidt, “Calvinisten, Täufer, Orthodoxe und Juden in der litauischen Reformation,” 326–27; Robert Stupperich, “Einflüsse der Reformation auf russischem Boden im Verlauf des 16. Jahrhunderts,” Kirche im Osten 13 (1975): 334–45. 17 Natalie E. Latteri, “Jewish Apocalypticism: A Historiography,” in A Companion to the Premodern Apocalypse, ed. Michael A. Ryan (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 67–102, here 76. 18 Thomas Long, “Revising the Revelation: Early Modern Appropriations of Medieval Apocalypticism,” in A Companion to the Premodern Apocalypse, ed. Michael A. Ryan (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 378–425, here 387. 19 Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millenium (Fairlawn, NJ: Essential Books, 1957); Clark Garrett, Respectable Folly: Millenarians and the French Revolution in France and England (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1975). 20 Gershon G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, (Jerusalem: Schocken, 1941). Latteri, “Jewish Apocalypticism,” 81–86. 21 Mosheh Idel, Messianic Mystics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998). 22 Latteri, “Jewish Apocalypticism,” 87–88. 23 Eric Lawee, “The Messianism of Isaac Abarbanel, ‘Father of the Jewish Messianic Movements of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,’” in Jewish

20  Damien Tricoire Messianism in the Early Modern World, eds. Matt D. Goldish and Richard Popkin (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), 1–39; Voß, Umstrittene Erlöser, 15–18. 24 Moti Benmelech, “The Ten Tribes and Messianic Hopes in Jewish Society during the Early Modern Age,” in Peoples of the Apocalypse: Eschatological Beliefs and Political Scenarios, eds. Rebekka Voß, Wolfram Brandes, and Felicitas Schmieder (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2016), 193–209. 25 Andrew Colin Gow, The Red Jews: Antisemitism in an Apocalyptic Age, 1200– 1600 (Leiden: Brill, 1995); Tudor Parfitt, The Lost Tribes of Israel: The History of a Myth (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2002); Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, The Ten Lost Tribes: A World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Benmelech, “The Ten Tribes.” 26 Benmelech, “The Ten Tribes.” 27 Voß, Umstrittene Erlöser. 28 Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium. 29 Christopher Hill, Antichrist in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971); Horst Dieter Rauh, ed., Das Bild des Antichrist im Mittelalter: von Tyconius zum deutschen Symbolismus (Münster: Aschendorff, 1973); Bernard McGinn, “Forms of Catholic Millenarianism: A Brief Overview,” in Catholic Millenarianism: From Savonarola to the Abbé Grégoire, ed. Karl Kottman (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), 1–15. A recent synthesis: Almond, The Antichrist. 30 Luís Filipe Silvério Lima, ed., Visions, Prophecies and Divinations: Early Modern Messianism and Millenarianism in Iberian America, Spain and Portugal (Leiden: Brill, 2016). 31 Crouzet, Les Guerriers de Dieu; Denis Crouzet, Dieu en ses royaumes: Une histoire des guerres de religion (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2008). 32 Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Columbus (London: Duckworth, 1996), 153–58; Denis Crouzet, Christophe Colomb: héraut de l’apocalypse (Paris: Éditions Payot & Rivages, 2006). 33 Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Connected Histories: Notes Towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia,” Modern Asian Studies 31, no. 3 (1997): 735–62, here 749. 34 Gian Luca Potestà, “Apocalittica e politica in Gioacchino da Fiore,” in Endzeiten. Eschatologie in den monotheistischen Weltreligionen, eds. Felicitas Schmieder and Wolfram Brandes (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 231–48; Pavlína Cermanová, “Gog und Magog. Die Völker des Weltendes im Hussitismus,” in Peoples of the Apocalypse. Eschatological Beliefs and Political Scenarios, eds. Rebekka Voß, Felicitas Schmieder, and Wolfram Brandes (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2016), 239–56. 35 Paul J. Alexander, “The Diffusion of Byzantine Apocalypses in the Medieval West and the Beginnings of Joachimism,” in Prophecy and Millenarianism, ed. A. Williams (Essex: Longman, 1980), 53–106; Hannes Möhring, Der Weltkaiser der Endzeit. Entstehung, Wandel und Wirkung einer tausendjährigen Weissagung (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2000); Hannes Möhring, “Die Weissagungen über einen Kaiser Friedrich am Ende der Zeiten,” in Endzeiten. Eschatologie in den monotheistischen Weltreligionen, eds. Felicitas Schmieder and Wolfram Brandes (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 201–14; Felicitas Schmieder, “Prophetische Propaganda in der Politik des 14. Jahrhunderts: Johannes von Rupescissa,” in Endzeiten. Eschatologie in den monotheistischen Weltreligionen, eds. Felicitas Schmieder and Wolfram Brandes (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 249–60; Ingrid Würth, “Die sogenannten Falschen Friedriche als Mittel (reichs-)städtischer Politik,” in Reichszeichen. Darstellungen und Symbole des Reichs, ed. Helge Wittmann (Petersberg: Imhof, 2015), 187–218; Pavlína Cermanová, “Die Erzählung vom Antichrist und seine Funktion in der religiösen und politischen Imagination im luxemburgischen Böhmen,” in

Introduction  21 Antichrist—Konstruktionen von Feinbildern, eds. Felicitas Schmieder and Wolfram Brandes (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2010), 159–78; Voß, Umstrittene Erlöser, 153–66. 36 Nelly Ficzel, Der Papst als Antichrist. Kirchenkritik und Apokalyptik im 13. und frühen 14. Jahrhundert (Leiden: Brill, 2019). 37 McGinn, “Forms of Catholic Millenarianism,” 3–7. 38 Richard Popkin, “Savonarola and Cardinal Ximines: Millenarian Thinkers and Actors at the Eve of the Reformation,” in Catholic Millenarianism: From Savonarola to the Abbé Grégoire, ed. Karl Kottman (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), 15–25. 39 Andrew Cunningham and Ole Peter Grell, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Religion, War, Famine and Death in Reformation Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 40 Long, “Revising the Revelation,” 390–91; Ruth Kestenberg, “Hussitentum und Judentum,” Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Juden in der Cˇechoslowakischen Republik 8 (1936): 1–25; Ruth Gladstein, “Eschatological Trends in Bohemian Jewry,” in Prophecy and Millenarianism, ed. Ann Williams (Essex: Longman, 1980), 241–56. 41 Bernhard Töpfer, “Die Hussitenbewegung—die erste Revolution, die erste Reformation in der Geschichte Europas?” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 52, no. 3 (2004): 205–17. Nicholas Terpstra also seeks to broaden our perspective on Reformation history. He defines the Reformation as the search for religious purity, and identifies it as a global phenomenon with roots much older than the Protestant Reformation: Nicholas Terpstra, Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World: An Alternative History of the Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Nicholas Tepstra, ed., Reframing Reformation: Understanding Religious Difference in Early Modern Europe (Toronto: Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, 2020). 42 Oberman, “Hus und Luther.” 43 McGinn, “Forms of Catholic Millenarianism,” 9; Almond, The Antichrist, 208–18. 44 Alexander Patschovsky and František Šmahel, eds., Eschatologie und Hussitismus (Praha: Historisches Institut, 1996). See also forthcoming publications by Martin Pjecha. 45 Matthias Riedel, “Apocalyptical Violence: Thomas Müntzer,” in A Companion to the Premodern Apocalypse, ed. Michael A. Ryan (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 260–96. 46 James M. Stayer, The German Peasants’ War and Anabaptist Community of Goods (Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991); on renunciation to violence: Willem de Bakker and Gary K. Waite, “Rethinking the Murky World of the Post-Münster Dutch Anabaptist Movement, 1535–1538. A Dialogue between Willem de Bakker and Gary K. Waite,” The Mennonite Quarterly Review: A Journal Devoted to Anabaptist-Mennonite History, Thought, Life and Affairs 92 (2018): 47–91; on spiritualism see Michael Driedger and Gary K. Waite, “From ‘the Radical Reformation’ to ‘the Radical Enlightenment’? The Specter and Complexities of Spiritualism in Early Modern England, Germany, and the Low Countries,” Church History and Religious Culture 101 (2021): 135–66; on the mystic influences on the Anabaptists in southern Germany see Werner O. Packull, Mysticism and the Early South German-Austrian Anabaptist Movement, 1525–1531 (Scottdale: Herald Press, 1977). 47 Volker Leppin, “‘… mit dem künfftigen Jüngsten Tag und Gericht vom sünden schlaff auffgeweckt.’ Lutherische Apokalyptik zwischen Identitäts­ vergewisserung und Sozialdisziplinierung (1548–1618),” in Endzeiten: Eschatologie in den monotheistischen Weltreligionen, eds. Felicitas Schmieder

22  Damien Tricoire and Wolfram Brandes (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 339–50; Anja Moritz, “Endzeit als Casus confessionis,”in Endzeiten. Eschatologie in den m ­ onotheistischen Weltreligionen, eds. Felicitas Schmieder and Wolfram Brandes (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 351–62; McGinn, “Forms of Catholic Millenarianism,” 9. 48 McGinn, “Forms of Catholic Millenarianism,” 9. 49 Christopher Hill, Antichrist in Seventeenth-Century England; Andreas Pečar, Macht der Schrift. Politischer Biblizismus in Schottland und England zwischen Reformation und Bürgerkrieg (1534–1642) (München: Oldenbourg, 2011); Andreas Pečar, “Englands Heil und die Gottesfeinde Gog und Magog. Die bedrohte politische Identität Englands als ‘Protestant nation’ (1588–1640),” in Peoples of the Apocalypse: Eschatological Beliefs and Political Scenarios, eds. Rebekka Voß, Wolfram Brandes, and Felicitas Schmieder (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2016), 285–305. 50 Kestenberg, “Hussitentum und Judentum”; Arthur H. Williamson, “Latter Day Judah, Latter Day Israel: The Millienium, the Jews, and the British Future,” Pietismus und Neuzeit 14 (1988): 149–65; Arthur H. Williamson, “The Jewish Dimension of the Scottish Apocalypse: Climate, Covenant and World Renewal,” in Menasseh ben Israel and His World, eds. Yosef Kaplan, Henry Mélouchan, and Richard Popkin (Leiden: Brill, 1989), 7–30; Elisheva Carlebach, “Jews, Christians and the Endtime in Early Modern Germany,” Jewish History 14, no. 3 (2000): 331–44; Jan Wójcik, “Robert Boyle, the Conversion of the Jews, and Millennial Expectations,” in Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture, vol. 3: The Millenarian Turn: Millenarian Contexts of Science, Politics, and Everyday Anglo-American Life in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, eds. James E. Force and Richard Popkin (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), 55–66; Lutz Greisiger, “Chiliasten und ‘Judentzer.’ Eschatologie und Judenmission im protestantischen Deutschland des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts,” Kwartalnik Historii Żydów 4 (2006): 535–75. 51 Gladstein, “Eschatological Trends in Bohemian Jewry”; Jack Fruchtman, “David and Goliath: Jewish Conversion and Philo-Semitism in Late-EighteenthCentury English Millenarian Thought,” in Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture, vol. 3: The Millenarian Turn: Millenarian Contexts of Science, Politics, and Everyday Anglo-American Life in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, eds. James E. Force and Richard Popkin (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), 133–43; Stephen Snobelen, “‘The Mystery of this Restitution of all Things.’ Isaac Newton on the Return of the Jews,” in Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture, vol. 3: The Millenarian Turn: Millenarian Contexts of Science, Politics, and AngloAmerican Life in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, eds. James E. Force and Richard Popkin (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), 95–118. 52 Thomas Kaufmann, Luthers Juden (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2014); Kestenberg, “Hussitentum und Judentum,” 14–18. 53 Long, “Revising the Revelation,” 394; Brandon Marriott, Transnational Networks and Cross-Religious Exchange in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean and Atlantic Worlds: Sabbatai Sevi and the Lost Tribes of Israel (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), 19–36; Richard W. Cogley, “‘The Most Vile and Barbarous Nation of all the World’: Giles Fletcher the Elder’s The Tartars Or, Ten Tribes (ca. 1610),” Renaissance Quarterly 58 (2005): 781–814; David S. Katz, “Millenarianism, the Jews, and Biblical Criticism,” Pietismus und Neuzeit 14 (1988): 166–84; Richard Popkin, “The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Indian Theory,” in Menasseh ben Israel and His World, eds. Yosef Kaplan, Henry Méchoulan, and Richard H. Popkin (Leiden: Brill, 1989), 63–82; Tudor Parfitt, The Lost Tribes of Israel: The History of a Myth (London: Phoenix, 2003), 66–114; Ben-Dor Zvi Benite, The Ten Lost Tribes: A World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 135–67.

Introduction  23 54 Gary K. Waite, Jews and Muslims in Seventeenth-Century Discourse: From Religious Enemies to Allies and Friends (Oxon/New York: Routledge, 2019). 55 Richard Popkin, “Jewish Messianism and Christian Millenarianism,” in Culture and Politics from Puritanism to the Enlightenment, ed. Perez Zagorin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 67–89, here 70; Williamson, “Latter Day Judah, Latter Day Israel”; Avihu Zakai, “Thomas Brightman and English Apocalyptic Tradition,” in Menasseh ben Israel and His World, eds. Yosef Kaplan, Henry Mélouchan, and Richard Popkin (Leiden: Brill, 1989), 31–44. 56 Anselm Schubert, “Nova Israhelis republica. Das Täuferreich von Münster 1534/35 als wahres Israel,” in Peoples of the Apocalypse: Eschatological Beliefs and Political Scenarios, eds. Rebekka Voß, Wolfram Brandes, and Felicitas Schmieder (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2016), 271–84. 57 Harry Bracken, “Pierre Jurieu: The Politics of Prophecy,” in Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture, vol. 4: Continental Millenarians: Protestants, Catholics, Heretics, eds. John Christian Laursen and Richard Popkin (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), 85–94; James E. Force, “Introduction,” in Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture, vol. 3: The Millenarian Turn: Millenarian Contexts of Science, Politics, and Everyday Anglo-American Life in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, eds. James E. Force and Richard Popkin (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), xv–xxv; Johannes Wallmann, Der Pietismus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005), 170–74. 58 Crouzet, Les Guerriers de Dieu. 59 McGinn, “Forms of Catholic Millenarianism: A Brief Overview,” 9–10. 60 Alexandre Haran, Le Lys et le Globe: Messianisme dynastique et rêve impérial en France à l’aube des temps modernes (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2000); Voß, Umstrittene Erlöser, 153–66. 61 Mercedes García-Arenal, Messianism and Puritanical Reform: Mahdis of the Muslim West (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 310–11. 62 Francisco Moreno-Carvalho, “A Portuguese Jewish Agent of the Philips and a Sebastianist: The Strange Case of Rosales/Manuel Bocarro,” in Visions, Prophecies and Divinations: Early Modern Messianism and Millenarianism in Iberian America, Spain and Portugal, ed. Luís Filipe Silvério Lima (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 161–77; João Carlos Gonçalves Serafim, “From Politics to Prophecies: Portuguese Resistance and the Prophetic Arsenal at the Time of King Philip of Spain,” in idem, 179–94; Marcus De Martini, “In Defence of Prophecy: The Inquisitorial Proceeding of Father Antônio Vieira,” in idem, 195–214; Ana T. Valdez, “Vieira between History of the Future and Clavis Prophetarum,” in idem, 215–29. See also Claudio Rizzuto’s article in this volume. 63 McGinn, “Forms of Catholic Millenarianism,” 10. 64 Richard Popkin, “Millenarianism and Nationalism—A Case Study: Isaac de La Peyrère,” in Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture, vol. 4: Continental Millenarians: Protestants, Catholics, Heretics, eds. John Christian Laursen and Richard Popkin (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), 77–84. 65 Dale K. Van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution: From Calvin to the Civil Constitution, 1560–1791 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996), 92; Catherine Maire, ed., Les Convulsionnaires de Saint-Médard. Miracles, convulsions et prophéties à Paris au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1985). 66 Alexey Alexeev, Pod znakom kontsa vremen. Otserki russkoi religioznosti kontsa XV—nachala XVI w (Sankt Peterburg: Aleteyya, 2002). 67 Andrei L’vovich Iurganov, “Oprichnina i strashnyi sud,” Otechestvennaia Istoriia 3 (1997): 52–75. See Damien Tricoire’s chapter in this volume.

24  Damien Tricoire 68 Haim Ben-Sasson, “Jewish-Christian Disputations in the Setting of Humanism and Reformation in the German Empire,” Harvard Theological Review 59 (1966): 369–90. 69 Almond, The Antichrist, 139–142. 70 Debra Kaplan, “Sharing Conversations: A Jewish Polemic against Martin Luther,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 103 (2012): 41–63. 71 Jerome Friedman, “The Reformation in Alien Eyes: Jewish Perceptions of Christian Troubles,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 14 (1983): 23–40, here 26. 72 Michael McKeon, “Sabbatai Sevi in England,” Association for Jewish Studies Review 2 (1977): 131–69; Popkin, “Jewish Messianism and Christian Millenarianism”; Popkin, “The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Indian Theory”; Richard Popkin, “Jewish-Christian Relations in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: The Conception of the Messiah,” in Jewish History 5 (1992): 153– 77; Ernestine G. E. van der Wall, “A Precursor of Christ or a Jewish Impostor? Peter Serrarius and Jean de Labadie on the Jewish Messianic Movement around Sabbatai Sevi,” in Pietismus und Neuzeit 14 (1988): 109–24; Ernestine G. E. van der Wall, “Petrus Serrarius and Menasseh ben Israel. Christian Millenarianism and Jewish Mesianism in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam,” in Menasseh ben Israel and His World, eds. Yosef Kaplan, Henry Mélouchan, and Richard Popkin (Leiden: Brill, 1989), 164–90; Katz, “Millenarianism, the Jews, and Biblical Criticism”; Harold Fisch, “The Messianic Politics of Menasseh ben Israel,” in Menasseh ben Israel and his World, eds. Yosef Kaplan, Henry Mélouchan, and Richard Popkin (Leiden: Brill, 1989), 228–39; Rivka Schatz, “Menassah ben Israel’s Approach to Messianism in the Jewish-Christian Context,” in Menasseh ben Israel and his World, eds. Yosef Kaplan, Henry Mélouchan, and Richard Popkin (Leiden: Brill, 1989), 244–61. 73 Parfitt, The Lost Tribes of Israel, 41–90; Ariel Hessayon, “Gold Tried in the Fire”: The Prophet Theaurau, John Tany and the English Revolution (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); Benite, The Ten Lost Tribes, 169–98; Marriott, Transnational Networks and Cross-Religious Exchange in the Seventeenth-Century; Sina Rauschenbach, “Christian Readings of Menasseh ben Israel: Translation and Retranslation in the Early Modern World,” in The Jew as Legitimation: JewishGentile Relations beyond Antisemitism, ed. David J. Wertheim (Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017), 63–81. 74 Matt D. Goldish and Richard Popkin, eds., Jewish Messianism in the Early Modern World (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001). 75 Matt Goldish, The Sabbatean Prophets (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004). 76 Andrew Colin Gow, The Red Jews: Antisemitism in an Apocalyptic Age, 1200– 1600 (Leiden: Brill, 1995). 77 Voß, Umstrittene Erlöser, 92–122; Benmelech, “The Ten Tribes and Messianic Hopes in Jewish Society During the Early Modern Age.” 78 David Ruderman, “Hope against Hope: Jewish and Christian Messianic Expectations in the Late Middle Ages,” in Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, ed. David Ruderman (New York: New York University Press, 1992), 299–323; Gow, The Red Jews; Carlebach, “Jews, Christians and the Endtime”; Israel Jacob Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 267–90; Lutz Greisiger, “Die Geburt des Armilos und die Geburt des ‘Sohnes des Verderbens.’ Zeugnisse jüdisch-christlicher Auseinandersetzung um die Identifikation des Antichristen im 7. Jahrhundert,” in Antichrist—Konstruktionen von Feindbildern, eds. Felicitas Schmieder and Wolfram Brandes (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2010), 15–38; Michael Oberweis, “Jüdische Endzeiterwartungen im 13. Jahrhundert— Realität oder christliche Projektion?” in Antichrist—Konstruktionen von

Introduction  25 Feindbildern, eds. Felicitas Schmieder and Wolfram Brandes (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2010), 147–58; Rebekka Voß, “Propter seditionis hebraicae. Judenfeindliche Apokalyptik und ihre Auswirkungen auf den jüdischen Messianismus,” in Antichrist—Konstruktionen von Feindbildern, eds. Felicitas Schmieder and Wolfram Brandes (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2010), 197–218; Rebekka Voß, Wolfram Brandes and Felicitas Schmieder, “Einleitung,” in Peoples of the Apocalypse: Eschatological Beliefs and Political Scenarios, eds. Rebekka Voß, Wolfram Brandes, and Felicitas Schmieder (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2016), 1–21; Benite, The Ten Lost Tribes, 108–11. 79 Gladstein, “Eschatological Trends in Bohemian Jewry”; Israel Jacob Yuval, “Juden, Hussiten und Deutsche,” in Juden in der christlichen Umwelt während des späten Mittelalters, eds. Alfred Haverkamp and Franz-Josef Ziwes (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1992), 59–93, here 65–69. 80 Friedman, “The Reformation in Alien Eyes,” 32–33. 81 Ruderman, “Hope against Hope,” 301–2; Matt Goldish, “Patterns in Converso Messianism,” in Jewish Messianism in the Early Modern World, eds. Matt D. Goldish and Richard Popkin (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), 41–63. 82 Jacob Barnai, “Christian Messianism and the Portuguese Marranos: The Emergence of Sabbateanism in Smyrna,” Jewish History 7 (1993): 119–26; Marriott, Transnational Networks, 61–62; Cengiz Sisman, The Burden of Silence: Sabbatai Sevi and the Evolution of Ottoman-Turkish Dönmes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 72–74. 83 Rauschenbach, “Christian Readings of Menasseh ben Israel,” 63. 84 Ruderman, “Hope against Hope,” 309–10; Anselm Schubert, Täufertum und Kabbalah: Augustin Bader und die Grenzen der Radikalen Reformation (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2008), 257–76; Karl Kottman, “The Kabbalistic Messianism of Fray Luis de León,” in Catholic Millenarianism: From Savonarola to the Abbé Grégoire, ed. Karl Kottman (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), 27–43; Elliot Wolfson, “Immanuel Frommann’s Commentary on Luke and the Christianizing of Kabbalah. Some Sabbatean and Hasidic Affinities,” in Holy Dissent: Jewish and Christian Mystics in Eastern Europe, ed. Glenn Dynner (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2011), 171–221. 85 Richard Popkin, “The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Indian Theory,” 164. 86 Schubert, Täufertum und Kabbalah; Voß, Umstrittene Erlöser, 138–52. 87 Ben-Sasson, “Jewish-Christian Disputations in the Setting of Humanism and Reformation in the German Empire,” 370, 378–85. 88 Voß, Umstrittene Erlöser, 123–29; Benite, The Ten Lost Tribes, 113–23; Miriam Eliav-Feldon, “Invented Identities: Credulity in the Age of Prophecy and Exploration,” Journal of Early Modern History 3 (1999): 203–32. 89 Friedman, “The Reformation in Alien Eyes,” 28–29; Schmidt, “Calvinisten, Täufer, Orthodoxe und Juden,” 328–30. 90 Voß, Umstrittene Erlöser, 129–35. 91 McKeon, “Sabbatai Sevi in England”; Popkin, “Jewish-Christian Relations”; Popkin, “Millenarianism and Nationalism”; van der Wall, “A Precursor of Christ or a Jewish Impostor?”; van der Wall, “Petrus Serrarius and Menasseh ben Israel”; Marriott, Transnational Networks, 115–29. 92 Marriott, Transnational Networks, 199; Michael Heyd, “The ‘Jewish Quaker’: Christian Perceptions of Sabbatai Zevi as an Enthusiast,” in Hebraica veritas? Christian Hebraists and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe, eds. Allison Coudert and Jeffrey Shoulson (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 234–64. 93 Pawel Maciejko, “The Peril of Heresy, the Birth of a New Faith: The Quest for a Common Jewish-Christian Front against Frankism,” in Holy Dissent: Jewish and Christian Mystics in Eastern Europe, ed. Glenn Dynner (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2011), 223–48.

26  Damien Tricoire 94 García-Arenal, Messianism and Puritanical Reform, 7–10. 95 Felicitas Schmieder, Wolfram Brandes, eds., Endzeiten. Eschatologie in den monotheistischen Weltreligionen (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008); Felicitas Schmieder, Wolfram Brandes, eds., Antichrist—Konstruktionen von Feindbildern (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2010); Rebekka Voß, Wolfram Brandes, and Felicitas Schmieder, eds., Peoples of the Apocalypse. Eschatological Beliefs and Political Scenarios (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2016). 96 Hannes Möhring, “Die zwei Gesichter des Sufyani, Vorläufer des Dadjdjal (Antichrist) oder Vorläufer des Mahdi?” in Antichrist—Konstruktionen von Feindbildern, eds. Felicitas Schmieder and Wolfram Brandes (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2010), 99–116; P. M. Holt, “Islamic Millenarianism and the Fulfilment of Prophecy: A Case Study,” in Prophecy and Millenarianism, ed. Ann Williams (Essex: Longman, 1980), 337–47; Wim Raven, “Ibn Sayyad as an Islamic ‘Antichrist.’ A Reappraisal of the Texts,” in Endzeiten. Eschatologie in den monotheistischen Weltreligionen, eds. Felicitias Schmieder and Wolfram Bradens (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 261–92; David Cook, “Apocalyptic Incidents during the Mongol Invasion,” in Endzeiten: Eschatologie in den monotheistischen Weltreligionen, eds. Felicitas Schmieder and Wolfram Brandes (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 294–312; Alexandra Cuffel, “Jewish Tribes and Women in the Genesis and Battle of the Dajjāl: Nu’ayim ibn Hammad al-Khuza’i al-Marwi’s Kitab al-Fitan,” in Peoples of the Apocalypse: Eschatological Beliefs and Scenarios, eds. Rebekka Voß, Wolfram Brandes, and Felicitas Schmieder (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2016), 129–46; Voß, Brandes, and Schmieder, eds., Peoples of the Apocalypse; García-Arenal, Messianism and Puritanical Reform, 13–16. 97 Möhring, “Die zwei Gesichter des Sufyani,” 105–7. 98 Gabriel Martinez-Gros, “La Seconde islamisation du monde,” in L’Histoire du monde au XVe siècle, ed. Patrick Boucheron (Paris: Fayard, 2009), 636–50, here 646–47. 99 Azfar Moin, The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012). 100 García-Arenal, Messianism and Puritanical Reform, 246–95, 325–51. 101 Cornell Fleischer, “The Lawgiver as Messiah,” in Soliman le Magnifique et son temps, ed. Gilles Veinstein (Paris: La Documentation française, 1992), 159–77. 102 Faroqhi, The Ottoman Empire and the World around It; Greene, A Shared World; Abulafia, The Great Sea. 103 König, Arabic-Islamic Views of the Latin West. 104 Cornell Fleischer, “A Mediterranean Apocalypse: Prophecies of Empire in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 61, no. 1 (2018): 18–90. 105 Goldish, The Sabbatean Prophets, 36–39. 106 Felicitas Schmieder, “Christians, Jews, Muslims and Mongols: Fitting a Foreign People into the Western Christian Apocalyptic Scenario,” Medieval Encounters 12 (2006): 274–95; Cook, “Apocalyptic Incidents during the Mongol Invasion.” 107 Gerard Wiegers, “Jean de Roquetaillade’s Prophecies among the Muslim Minorities of Medieval and Early-Modern Christian Spain: An Islamic Version of the ‘Vademecum in tribulation,’” in The Transmission and Dynamics of the Textual Sources of Islam, eds. Nicolet Boekhoff-van der Voort, Kees Versteegh, and Joas Wagemakers. (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 229–49. 108 García-Arenal, Messianism and Puritanical Reform, 296–324. 109 Marya Green-Mercado, “The Mahdi in Valencia: Messianism, Apocalypticism and Morisco Rebellions in Late Sixteenth-Century Spain,” Medieval Encounters 19 (2013): 193–220.

Introduction  27 110 Nabil Matar, Islam in Britain, 1558–1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Tobias Graf, The Sultan’s Renegades: Christian-European Converts to Islam and the Making of Ottoman Elite, 1557–1610 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 111 Sisman, The Burden. 112 Dietrich Klein, “Muslimischer Antitrinitarismus im lutherischen Rostock. Zacharias Grapius der Jüngere und die Epistola theologica des Ahmad ibn‚ Abdallah,” in Wahrnehmung des Islam zwischen Reformation und Aufklärung, eds. Dietrich Klein and Birte Platow (Paderborn: Fink, 2008), 41–60; Jae Jerkins, “Islam in the Early Modern Protestant Imagination: Religious and Political Rhetoric of English Protestant-Ottoman Relations (1528–1588),” Eras 13, no. 22 (2012). www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/ 1669504/jerkins-islam.pdf 113 Martin Mulsow, “Islam und Sozinianismus. Eine Parallelwahrnehmung der Frühen Neuzeit,” in Wahrnehmung des Islam zwischen Reformation und Aufklärung, eds. Dietrich Klein and Birte Platow (Paderborn: Fink, 2008), 27–40; Martin Mulsow, “Socinianism, Islam and the Radical Uses of Arabic Scholarship,” Al-Qantara 31, no. 2 (2010): 549–86; Martin Mulsow, “Antitrinitarians and Conversions to Islam: Adam Neuser Reads Murad b. Abdullah in Ottoman Istanbul,” in Conversion and Islam in the Early Modern Mediterranean: The Lure of the Other, ed. Claire Norton (London: Routledge, 2017), 181–93; Dietrich Klein, “Muslimischer Antitrinitarismus.” 114 García-Arenal, Messianism and Puritanical Reform. 115 Goldish, The Sabbatean Prophets, 34–40. 116 Sisman, The Burden, 13–82. 117 Liana Saif, The Arabic Influences on Early Modern Occult Philosophy (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Matthew MelvinKoushki, “Astrology, Lettrism, Geomancy: The Occult-Scientific Methods of Post-Mongol Islamicate Imperialism,” The Medieval History Journal 19 (2016): 142–50; Matthew Melvin-Koushki, “Powers of One: The Mathematicalization of the Occult Sciences in the Persianate Tradition,” Intellectual History of the Islamicate World 5 (2017): 127–99; Azfar Moin, “Cosmos and Power: A Comparative Dialogue on Astrology, Divination and Politics in Pre-Modern Eurasia,” The Medieval History Journal 19 (2016): 122–29. 118 McGinn, “Forms of Catholic Millenarianism,” 8; Möhring, “Die zwei Gesichter des Sufyani,” 99; Moin, The Millennial Sovereign, 11–12; García-Arenal, Messianism and Puritanical Reform, 293, 312–13.

Part I

Reformations

1 Táborite Revolutionary Apocalypticism Mapping Influences and Divergences1 Martin Pjecha

Background and Problems It is nothing new to suggest that any study of the phenomenon of the Hussite Revolution is simultaneously a study in apocalyptic thought. Apocalyptic symbols—especially of the Antichrist—were central in the self-identification of pre-Hussite Bohemian reformers, and continued to be so for all Hussite figures, whether moderate or radical. However, the association of apocalyptic thought with revolutionary action is one which cannot be taken for granted, especially in the medieval period. Therefore, the revolutionary apocalypticism of the most radical Hussites—the Táborites—requires explanation, and there has been no shortage of hypotheses in the historiography. Our purpose below will be to critically overview hypotheses dealing with potential “external influences” upon this curiously activist brand of apocalypticism, and we will conclude by offering an overlooked alternative. Why does this case warrant special attention? As will be discussed, the Táborite apocalyptic revolution stands out from earlier apocalyptic attitudes essentially in its evaluation of mankind in history. Eschatological thinkers generally forecast the immanent End Times based on a certain deterministic worldview which transgresses even the historical pessimism of Augustine of Hippo. In short, this preeminent Western Church Father gave no space to the concept of human progress since, for him, history is only the playground of sin. Still, politics is legitimate and necessary as a tool to mitigate sin in this life.2 Instead, the apocalyptic believer retreats from politics into a worldview which combines utter hopelessness with expectation, which we may characterize as proleptic. Here, the primary source of meaning is not found in the current, corrupted reality, but in anticipation of a higher, superior, and completely different realm of the future.3 Traditionally, apocalyptic texts provided a narrative of hope, meant to reaffirm faith in the justice promised by God against a world which was too corrupt to be improved by humans. History will inevitably continue to deteriorate into ever worse depravity, but God will eventually cut it short with an act of purgative annihilation and grant eternal reward to the steadfast. Therefore, the potential for meaningful human improvement or accomplishment in this life is virtually non-existent, and the believer is instead directed to other-worldly expectations. This means that the central message of DOI: 10.4324/9781003081050-3

32  Martin Pjecha apocalyptic prophecies was overwhelmingly consolatory rather than hortatory; they did not entreat the regular believer toward the political, let alone extraordinary or revolutionary action, but rather to patient endurance.4 This is precisely the point which makes the Táborite case unique, and what has prompted a speculative marketplace of “influences” to account for it. Although a full overview of Hussite thought is beyond our scope here, a summary treatment of its history is necessary before a deeper analysis is possible.5 Faced with the contemporary realities of the Papal Schism and cynical clerical careerism, Jan Hus (d.1415) and his circle attacked what they understood as the root of the pathetic state of Christians. This focused on general human (especially clerical) sinfulness—preoccupation with worldly comforts, goods, powers, and acclaim—which would end in eternal damnation. Borrowing explicitly from the controversial Oxford master John Wyclif (c.1330–1384) and the Bohemian reformer Matthew of Janov (c.1350–1394), the Hussites emphasized the source and cure of this corruption: it was caused by the trickery of the Antichrist, who promoted lust, greed, and selfishness as true Christian values. The only solution was to return the Church to the state of moral perfection it had adhered to in its first centuries, before the Antichristian corruption—the primitive Church of Christ and his apostles. The means to this return could not be achieved by the laws and traditions of the contemporary corrupt Church, but only by constant guidance by the “law of God” (lex dei, God’s implicit and explicit mandates) as adhered to by the primitive Church, recorded in scripture, and enforced by secular authorities.6 Hus himself was able to popularize this version of normative Christianity, based on a specific interpretation of scriptural foundations, until he was jailed and executed by the Council of Constance in 1415 as a dangerous heretic who rejected the overriding authority of the ecclesiastic hierarchy. Around this time (late 1414), Hus’s followers in Prague “re-discovered” a practice which they deemed essential to the perfection and unity of the primitive Church, and thus necessary for its return, the lay chalice—in other words, the administration of the Eucharist in both kinds (sub utraque specie, or in utraquist fashion), with both wine and bread to all Christians.7 The eventual prohibition and persecution of this practice by ecclesiastic and secular authorities made the lay chalice into the central symbol of “Hussite” identity and reform, although the movement began to splinter over other theological and political matters. During this time, the use of apocalyptic symbols had intensified and become more rigorous in Hussite discourse. In 1412, Hus’s most important colleague and co-originator of the revived utraquist communion, Jakoubek of Stříbro (d.1429), systematically identified the summus Anticristus as the Pope himself, the head of an entire mystical Antichristian body of sinners who opposed Hussite reforms.8 Subsequently, Hus’s imprisonment and execution were understood within an apocalyptic framework, according to which he was posthumously labelled a “second Elijah” by his followers.9 For them, the boundaries between the identities of the saved and the damned were becoming increasingly visible in human affairs, and thus also the allegiances in the imminent apocalyptic drama between good and evil:

Táborite Revolutionary Apocalypticism  33 clerics and hypocrites [against the law of God] are not successors of the apostles, but […] the Pope is the head, while the college of cardinals and other adherents of wickedness against Christ are the body, of the Antichrist.10 Between 1419 and 1421, the apocalyptic worldview of radical Hussite thinkers climaxed into revolutionary activity as the movement encountered more determined oppression by the Bohemian King. In Prague, this period was inaugurated by the apocalyptic preacher Jan Želivský (d.1422), who soon established himself at the head of a civic theocracy with the help of his radical followers.11 Meanwhile, in the countryside, congregations met in the open air on hilltops (the most famous was renamed Tábor)12 to commune with the prohibited lay chalice and hear the critical sermons of reformist preachers. Physical persecution and religious-political crises soon charged these groups with apocalyptic anxieties, as their pilgrims were attacked and executed regularly by Catholics. The priests of Tábor now doubled as prophets of God’s imminent, catastrophic vengeance upon the world, and called upon all Christians to flee from their sinful surroundings, abandon properties and families, and seek salvation and certain select Bohemian cities: In that time [of greatest distress], Christ gives a special command to his faithful, that they run not only from sins, but also from the midst of the wicked, offensive and insincere people, and says: flee to the mountains […] without concern for houses, properties, [or] for any material things.13 Even the best arguments of the influential and more moderate Hussite intellectuals of Prague’s university against the apocalyptic hermeneutics of Tábor’s prophets were helpless to deter the frantic evacuation of pilgrimrefugees to the places of salvific refuge.14 It is worth noting here that the attitude of the Táborite community in this early stage was mostly escapist or defensively preservative, the latter possibly due to the shift in eschatological focus from a heavenly to a worldly and chiliastic (1000-year) kingdom of Christ.15 However, a critical turning point came in February 1420, when the anticipated Parousia failed to materialize; after this point, the escapist and preservationist message of the Táborite prophets shifted toward a revolutionary one.16 Supposedly at the behest of a particularly eloquent prophet, Martin Húska (d.1421), the Táborite priests convinced their community that, as God’s representatives, it was their soteriological prerogative to annihilate the wicked with sword and flame before the promised, blissful kingdom of Christ could materialize:17 any of the faithful—also the priest, [and] however spiritual a person— is damned, who holds back his physical sword from the blood of the enemies of the law of Christ, but [rather] he should wash and sanctify his hands in their blood […] in the time of vengeance, the brothers of Tábor are […] the army sent from God through the whole world, to destroy all scandals from Christ’s kingdom, which is the church

34  Martin Pjecha militant, and to expel the wicked from the midst of the just, and to enact vengeance and [inflict] blows onto the nations of the enemies of the law of Christ and their cities, villages, and castles.18 Subsequently, the Táborites forcefully seized a fortified town in southern Bohemia as their headquarters, and began a campaign of purgative violence focusing on monks and priests, but also including laymen.19 Yet the innovation of revolutionary apocalypticism was soon also accompanied by a controversial theological one: Martin Húska and others in Tábor began to preach the pantheist theology of “Pikhartism” which, most critically, denied Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist.20 Although Húska gained a following, this novelty also divided the Táborites from within at a complex time when, surrounding the beginning of the crusades against the Hussites, circumstances demanded closer relations with the kingdom’s moderate Hussite nobles and intellectuals. Polemics between these factions eventually led to the imprisonment of Húska and the expulsion of his followers from Tábor in early 1421. Soon after their expulsion—if we accept the sparse evidence based on hostile observers—the remaining Pikharts reappeared in an extremely alienated position, both literally and theologically. Apparently, they were convinced that they lived in the perfect, prelapsarian state of Adam and Eve. They consequently gained the label “Adamites”, and their sinless state supposedly allowed them to engage in all manner of extraordinary behavior, including nudism, mass-orgies, and violent raids, until they were exterminated by Hussite forces in October 1421,21 two months after the execution of Húska himself. This brief overview of Hussite apocalypticism, including its various turning-points and innovations, suggests both the allure and the dangers which are involved in the historiographic “search for influences”. Any overview of the historiography of Táborite apocalypticism and its potential inspirations is bound to risk pitfalls and caricatures on both methodological and empirical fronts. First comes the complex issue of terminology: although we will not diverge from traditional usage in what follows, it remains relevant to note that, like most heresiological categories, that of “Hussitism” dissolves under scrutiny (that is, the core “Hussite” tenet of utraquist communion was merely an afterthought for Hus himself). Therefore, the terminology of “moderates” and “radicals” as neat subcategories (the Táborites a further subcategory of the latter)22 is ambiguous and forces the historian to take a side in the complex struggles over “orthodoxy” in and between these groups: as “radicals”, the Táborites are ipso facto a return to the “roots” (radices) of Hussitism, and simultaneously an entity displaying characteristics beyond the acceptable boundaries of Hussitism. This dual position, of prodigy and exile, is a challenge to any discussion of the Táborite community which somehow encounters its Hussite patrimony. Thus the very starting point for a discussion of intellectual influences is a construction of the historian, who must struggle against the well-known dangers of essentialization and homogenization which are inherent to any history

Táborite Revolutionary Apocalypticism  35 of influences or transfers.23 In our context, such problems recall the constructed dichotomy between orthodoxy and heterodoxies; the historiographic questions of their relationship obsessing over questions of “spread”, “decay”, or “precursors”;24 the artificial essentialization of heterodoxies by their enemies;25 and the modern semantic investments into anachronistic meta-narratives (nationalistic, materialist), among others. In addition, though any investigation on the interconnections of Táborite apocalypticism will at least implicitly bear on the ­controversial question of Hussite origins more generally, it should not devolve into an extended discussion on this issue. The problem is further exacerbated by the nature of the source base, since many of the most interesting radical Hussite (including Táborite, Pikhart, and Adamite) ideas are recorded by ­hostile observers who may have taken liberties with their accounts. Perhaps most problematically, the Hussite factions in general only very rarely and tangentially made any explicit reference to non-biblical authors or texts in their own eschatological speculations, a trend that often distinguished them from their Catholic counterparts.26 Although this lack of clear references certainly does not preclude the possibility of external influences—there are obvious reasons why some otherwise appealing ideas of certain authors or groups might go uncited, especially if their orthodoxy was in question—it certainly makes the search for them a problematic and nuanced task.

The Waldensians Despite (or perhaps because of) this lacuna regarding explicit, unambiguous extra-biblical inspirations for revolutionary apocalypticism, speculations have long flourished, especially emphasizing the suspected roles of heterodox movements and thinkers. One historically important stream of potential influence on Táborite apocalypticism may include the Waldensian movement.27 Founded by a wealthy merchant in Lyon after his conversion to voluntary poverty in the late twelfth century, Peter Waldo (d. c.1205), and his circle of followers espoused several controversial views, such as universal priesthood and a critique of clerical wealth.28 The movement was formally hereticated due to political rather than theological concerns in the early thirteenth century,29 but their alienation and Inquisitorial persecution did not quell their growth. Geographically, they spread to most European regions (including Bohemia), with concentrations in parts of France, Italy, and the Empire. Their doctrinal developments may be summarized as emphasizing lay biblical knowledge, a harsh critique of clerical wealth and immorality, and a corresponding lifestyle and doctrine which claimed to mirror what was found in scripture, stripped of most of the “nonbiblical” doctrines—along with the attention to wealth, ceremony, and hierarchy—of the contemporary Church.30 The allure of the hypothetical Waldensian influence on Hussite extremism is based especially on three points. (1) The evidence of Waldensianism in preHussite Bohemia: at least since the fourteenth century, Waldensians had been active in the kingdom, and represented the most populous heterodox movement there in the pre-Hussite period.31 (2) The similarities between Waldensians

36  Martin Pjecha and Hussites on numerous theological points. These included the rejection of papal authority and human “novelties” (indulgences, prayers for the dead, relics, etc.), iconophobia, qualified Donatism (the sinful priests’ sacramental ineffectiveness), and the centrality of poverty and Biblical preaching. Among the more radical Hussites and some Táborites the overlap may be broader, including the rejection of oaths, purgatory, capital punishment, and the Church fathers, as well as the promotion of lay and even female preaching.32 (3) A series of supposed direct links between Hussites and Waldensians, some circumstantial, some more substantiated: the German Hussite Nicholas of Dresden (d.1418?) seemed to hold consistently Waldensian views;33 the English Hussite Peter Payne (d.1455/56) directly encountered Waldensians on his journey through Germany in 1414;34 Jakoubek of Stříbro alluded to Waldensians positively in polemics against the Church;35 Jan Hus possibly encountered them in exile in the Bohemian countryside in 1412, and his popularization of reform was likened to Waldensianism by several opponents.36 Several problems with the Waldensian hypothesis have been identified, however. First, the vast majority of Bohemian Waldensians were Germanspeaking and functioned in limited numbers underground, while later Hussitism was massively and openly popular, but predominantly among Czech-speakers.37 Second, while the Hussites remained consciously engaged in the reform of the institutional Church, Waldensians seemed to set themselves apart from it as an alternative community.38 In addition, many of the points of similarity between the movements may be explained by less problematic influences, such as the doctrines of Matthew of Janov and John Wyclif, or by the more ubiquitous late-medieval preaching movement in general.39 Yet even if all these points are disputed,40 the strongest case against Waldensian influence on revolutionary Táborite apocalypticism remains that the Waldensians were not particularly eschatologically anxious nor apt to sophisticated violence. Although Waldensian speculations on the End Times certainly existed, they were uncommon41 and largely traditional.42 Thus, even the apparent links between the Waldensians and Hussite radicals fail to demonstrate influences in apocalyptic thinking: Peter Payne was no apocalyptic prophet,43 while Nicholas of Dresden can neither be called a chiliast nor a Waldensian in any meaningful way.44 Finally, though cases of Waldensian violence were not unheard of,45 even in preHussite Bohemia,46 these were haphazard episodes—property destruction or the murder of a cleric or Inquisitor—and appear as exceptions to a generally accepted theoretical tradition of pacifism, rather than a fundamental, countervailing trend striving for revolution.47

The Free Spirit Another potential influence on Táborite revolutionary apocalypticism is the mystical sect of the Free Spirit, leaving aside the additional potential of Joachite influences (see below). There is a good deal of scholarly skepticism regarding this label, noting its construction and often careless use by

Táborite Revolutionary Apocalypticism  37 Inquisitors and anti-heretical discourses.48 However, insofar as some general traits existed, Free Spirit believers emerged in the fourteenth century (with possible thirteenth-century precursors), but had no geographic core. They instead generally related to orthodox mystical thought seeking spiritual purity and believed in the possibility of human perfection (or deification) via bodily asceticism and spiritual abnegation. This was potentially supported by a pantheist or auto-theist theology. Achieving perfection may have led to antinomianism, which could include the denigration of Church sacraments, but other accusations attest to sexual libertinism (discussed below).49 The heresy was often associated with beghards and beguines, semi-religious laypeople following the vita apostolica.50 At first sight, the positive evidence and intellectual concurrences appear alluring, particularly regarding the Pikhart and Adamite sects of Tábor, and some historians have given the Free Spirit a central role in the revolution.51 The Pikhart iconoclastic attitude to the Eucharist appears to parallel the pantheism that was associated with Amalric of Bène (d. c.1207) and the origins of heterodox Western mysticism.52 Moreover, the self-deification and antinomianism of the Adamites seems to mirror the state of libertine perfection available to the Free Spirit. Additionally, historians have argued that this antinomianism had the potential to express itself in “an ideology of social revolution”.53 Remarkably, this potential seemed to be realized in a supposedly Táborite pamphlet of “the Society of the Free Spirit” (Gemain dez frein Geist) which urged its readers: “Everyone gird up his loins, brother spare not brother, father spare not son, son spare not father, neighbor spare not neighbor, so that the German heretics [i.e. non-Hussites] collect themselves and be eliminated from this world”.54 Proponents of the Free Spirit influence on the Táborites do not typically dwell on the longue durée presence of the movement in the pre-Hussite Czech lands, but rather on a curious case immediately prior to the revolution; in 1418, a small group of religious refugee families, labeled in the sources as “Picardi”, arrived in Prague seeking refuge, expelled from their homeland “for the law of God”, and the chronicler links their odd religious habits directly to later Pikhartism in Bohemia, rejecting the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.55 Despite the chronicler’s ambiguous label of “Picardi”, many modern scholars have suggested it refers to their geographic origin from Picardy, northern France, where the Free Spirit may have been active and persecuted. Others have gone further, accepting a later chronicler’s derivation of the label from a “Picardus quidam ex Gallia Belgica”, an association which may link the refugees to the homines intelligentiae of Brussels, who seemed to combine mystical perfection with a Joachite narrative of history (see below).56 Challenges to the hypothetical influence of the Free Spirit movement on Táborite revolutionary apocalypticism may be levied from various directions. Careful source criticism has revealed that the aforementioned Free Spirit pamphlet urging revolution was in fact a parody from 1412, written by antiHussite Germans years prior to the appearance of the Táborites.57 Neither the predictive quality of the text, nor its representative quality regarding contemporary Hussite opinion, can therefore be assumed.58 More radically, source

38  Martin Pjecha criticism has even led some to doubt the very existence of the Adamite sect at Tábor, which has been the prime candidate for Free Spirit influence: the appearance of the Adamites in the sources is strictly from hostile observers and the only first-hand account of them is problematic, as its author was the Hussite general responsible for their annihilation, Jan Žižka (d.1424). He describes them by reference to well-known medieval anti-heretical tropes (nudity, orgiastic sexuality, and violence), and may have had ulterior motives for demonizing the group. Even if the group existed, Žižka’s informant was likely tortured for the information he provided, and no evidence seems to link the Free Spirit to ritualized love feasts or murder.59 The debate on the historical veracity of the Adamites, however, is ongoing.60 Another critical approach challenges the supposed sources for Free Spirit influence. Locally, the only concrete references to the movement in Bohemia or the neighboring Czech lands are extremely sparse, the last reference appearing almost a century before the Adamites, while linguistic indications in the sources suggest that their followers were German rather than Czech Bohemians (as with the Waldensians). Meanwhile, the occasional reference to dissenting beghards or beguines in sources is not enough to implicate the Free Spirit.61 Scholars have also dissected the relevance of the “Picardi” refugees: the term may simply be a spelling variant for “beghard”, but even if it refers to the geographic region of Picardy, several details—their organization, familial lifestyle, doctrine, and the historical persecutions in the region—suggest that the refugees were more likely Waldensian than Free Spirit adherents.62 Finally, skepticism toward the hypothetical Free Spirit influence may be supported from observations of this loosely-associated group itself.63 Most importantly, insofar as we may isolate the mysticism of the Free Spirit as a mode of religiosity, it is above all concerned with immediate, individual perfection via the experience of a divine presence, and is therefore at tension with all collective salvific means and processes, such as Church sacraments and the theology of history.64 As a result, and despite their occasional allocation of Joachite historical theology, many or most scholars agree that the Free Spirit was not apocalyptic or millenarian, and quietist rather than revolutionary.65 As such, their potential influence on Táborite apocalypticism may be considered minor,66 though contrary opinions remain.67

Joachim of Fiore and Joachites Most authors hypothesizing a Free Spirit influence on Táborite apocalypticism simultaneously assume a deep confluence of a certain framework of ideas which belonged or were attributed to the twelfth century abbot, Joachim of Fiore (d.1202), which will be treated separately here. Indeed, Joachim’s potential influence is one which reaches up to modernity and is discussed in the intellectual history of movements as diverse as the Spiritual Franciscans, French romanticism, and National Socialism.68 Therefore, given its complexity and potential relevance to the Táborites, Joachim’s thought will be considered at greater length below. Put briefly, Joachim’s exegetical system of

Táborite Revolutionary Apocalypticism  39 scriptural “concordances” (Concordia) was original and relatively distinct from all previous or contemporary theologies of history. Joachim foresaw an imminent, progressive future age (“Third Status”) based on a Trinitarian view of time. In this “Age of the Holy Spirit”—emanating from the previous ages of the Father and the Son—mankind would live in a transmuted period of spiritual perfection and knowledge, organized not by a temporal hierarchy, but one structured according to the praise to God.69 Although Joachim himself never saw his prophecies as subversive—and in fact was even an advisor to kings and popes—his works were soon harnessed by dissenting groups (most notably the Franciscan Spirituals) who reinterpreted them according to their own views and circumstances. Most consistently, they identified Joachim’s symbol of the Age of the Holy Spirit as an immanent, blissful egalitarian order—in which the sacraments, scriptures, and (thus) institutional Church would be superseded. Figures like the Spirituals imagined themselves as the vanguard of this new order (Joachim’s viri spirituales). Meanwhile, they speculated on the identities of the dux and prophet of the Third Age, and of the apocalyptic protagonists: the final manifestation of the “serial Antichrist” (appearing consistently at the close of each historical “seal”)70 and his enemies, the angelic Pope or the last world emperor.71 The strength of the explanatory power offered by the potential Joachimist or Joachite72 influence on the Táborites is significant. Most crucially, it would explain their expectation of an imminent age of worldly bliss and the perfection of the elect, and may also provide precedents for revolutionary apocalyptic action: in the early fourteenth century, Fra Dolcino (d.1307) and the Apostolic Brethren adapted Joachite apocalyptic expectations while engaging in armed resistance,73 and in mid-century, the rebellious Cola di Rienzo (d.1354) briefly became dictator of Rome, inspired by Joachite visions of the city as the “New Jerusalem”.74 Indeed, over time, the combination of Joachite influences with revolutionary action were increasingly common75 and some historians have found it tempting to add the Táborite vision of a radically improved future state to this series of phenomena. The allure of potential Joachimist influence has not been discouraged by the apparent lack of references to Joachim in Hussite or Táborite literature.76 This fact itself would be unsurprising, given his ambiguous reputation by the fifteenth century. Instead, scholars cite the apparent, implicit usage of certain symbols or themes by the Táborites, such as Joachim’s unique intellectual contributions: his Trinitarian history (by which each subsequent age surmounts the previous), his exegetical method (by which systems of scriptural parallels allude to subsequent ages), and the symbolic imagery of the Third Age.77 One scholar has arguably discovered the usage of Joachim’s exegetical method—reading both Old and New Testaments as alluding to the future Third Age—by a supposed Táborite instructor and in a cryptic Táborite treatise.78 A tripartite schema of historical ages is clearly visible in Hussite and Táborite texts, though they do not carry Joachim’s Trinitarian names—his ages of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were adjusted79 to fit the chronological eras of the primitive Church, of the modern Church (since the Constantinian

40  Martin Pjecha Donation), and the regnum reparatum. Again, scholars are not surprised by this omission, which may have been deliberate.80 The central symbolism of the idyllic Third Age and the Holy Spirit as the consummating agent of history are arguably echoed in specific references of the radicals. For instance, in line with other Joachites who saw the sacraments as merely temporary mediators of the divine grace which would be ubiquitous in the last age,81 the Táborites apparently claimed that baptism and communion would disappear after Christ’s return, “because they will be baptized in the Holy Spirit, […] [and] nourished in the new angelic way (novo modo angelico pascentur), not in memory of the passion of Christ, but in his victory”.82 Similarly, they prophesized that in the regnum reparatum, the need for divine instruction would be surpassed and human intelligence would wither away in the face of direct instruction by God,83 an assertion which seems to closely resemble the Joachite prophecy in Super Hieremiam and even Joachim’s own in his Expositio super Apocalypsim.84 The Adamite subordination of Christ to the Holy Spirit, and their choice in renaming their leaders (Moses, Jesus, Adam), may reflect the Joachite motif of chronological supersession,85 while the Táborite status innocentiae to follow Christ’s return may also be understood according to Joachim’s Trinitarian history if we consider Martin Húska’s claim that “Christ is the Holy Spirit”.86 Some scholars have suggested that this form of collective chiliasm, finally realized in the Adamite group, ­represents a “perfection” of the Free Spirit model of individual deification.87 The tension described above—between the explanatory allure of the Joachite model and the lack of positive evidence of its usage by the Táborites—has led scholars to look to earlier periods for Joachite reception. One has been via the Bohemian “precursors” of the Hussites. In this direction, some scholars have argued a link between Joachim or Joachite authors and the Czech “Father of the Bohemian Reformation”, the preacher Milíč of Kroměříž (d.1374), evidenced by his turn to critical reform preaching after his apparent encounter with certain Joachite texts and several thematic parallels in his work, such as the dating of the magnus Antichristus and the eschatological hopes for the Papacy and the Jews.88 However, speculation regarding the reception of Joachim’s potentially most revolutionary symbol, the “Third Age”, has focused mainly on Milíč’s pupil and more immediate Hussite predecessor, Matthew of Janov, who foresaw a novus populus created according to God (secundum deum creatus) after the complete overhaul of the sinful Church.89 Another route has sought Joachite influence directly upon the main actors of the Hussite movement, with Hus himself the obvious focus in this direction. Suggested parallels have included his idea of the multiplicity of Antichrists, the expectation of future improvement, and the eschatological persecution of the faithful.90 The group of “Picardi” refugees from 1418 have also been hypothesized specifically as carriers of Joachite thought,91 but we may add that it is not unrealistic to imagine alternative or indirect methods of its reception at this time: Joachim was generally known and Joachite apocalyptic models were widely available92 and could even be accessed via the refutations of Thomas Aquinas or other completely orthodox opponents.93

Táborite Revolutionary Apocalypticism  41 Although almost no scholar who has dealt with the topic outright rejects the possibility of some kind of Joachite influence on Táborite apocalypticism,94 the obstacle to the general acceptance of this hypothesis has ultimately been the limited results of the abovementioned approaches. The hypothetical connection with Milíč is dubious, as he lacks the symbol of the Third Age and rejects the reformative roles of the emperor and monks,95 while the positive eschatological role for the Jews is hardly unique to Joachim—it is already found in the epistles of Paul (Romans 11). The Janov connection has been discredited by scholars who highlight several key differences between Joachim and Janov—notably, the disparity of their symbolic semantics, Janov’s emphasis on the Eucharist, and his populist reform agenda—and has been generally rejected.96 Nor do Joachite ideas seem to play a role in Hus’s own eschatology, despite his (at least) tangential awareness of the Calabrian abbot,97 and his apparent citation of a Joachite prophet.98 The various Táborite resemblances to Joachite thought noted above are readily explicable via the known predecessors of Hus99 and without reference to Joachim, while Hus’s use of apocalypticism was notably inspired by Wyclif in its “presentism” rather than “futurism” (see below).100 The hypothetical employment of Joachim’s exegetical methodology by Hussite radicals has also recently been doubted101 and has generally not been accepted. Another approach of research in the direction of potential Joachite influence on Hussite and Táborite eschatology has been the search for related manuscript evidence in Bohemia or of Bohemian provenance. Especially relevant here is the work of the Franciscan John of Rupescissa (c.1310–1366), since his popular prophetic text Vade mecum in tribulatione (1356) was original not only in its vision of justified (but horrific) “popular justice” inflicted by the oppressed upon the mighty,102 but also in its outright and literally millennial calculation of the peaceful era following the Antichrist’s defeat.103 Moreover, the initial survey of Bohemian Joachite texts104 is continually being expanded with additional findings in manuscripts and even art,105 meaning that Rupescissa’s Vade mecum is only chief among several Joachite texts in pre-Hussite Bohemia which elaborate the identification of apocalyptic events and figures.106 Yet it must be said that there still remain important obstacles to an enthusiastic acceptance of the hypothesis of Joachite influence on Táborite eschatology. One involves the known provenance, ownership, and use of the texts themselves. Rather than inspirations for Táborite eschatological expectations and action, most of the known Bohemian Joachite texts were created, owned, and read by anti-Hussites or (at best) moderate Hussites and/or they were created after the outburst of Táborite violence, and thus often employed post facto to explain tumultuous events and to cast the “Wycliffites” within an eschatological framework. The same is true of the early Czech translation of Rupescissa’s Vade mecum, as well as several other non-Joachite prophetic texts extant in Bohemia.107 Another challenge to the hypothesis might emphasize distinction over similarity, since certain key symbols in the eschatological narratives of Joachite authors and groups (including Rupescissa) are completely missing in Táborite

42  Martin Pjecha apocalypticism. For instance, the Táborites made no use of the prophetic Angelic Pope or Last Emperor,108 had no figure of a gifted dux or prophet (either saintly or other) to inaugurate or foresee the Third Age, and gave no role to any monastic order in eschatological events (other than negative). Although we have seen that occasional references to the Holy Spirit occurred, they do not appear as part of a clear system of chronological relations, nor does the Holy Spirit seem to supersede the emphasis which is regularly and frequently placed on Christ. Indeed, the broader Hussite Christocentric emphasis on communion seems to preclude its supersession in a future age, a position explicitly expressed by one Táborite prophet, though there seems to have been some disagreement on the issue.109 Even the Pikhart and Adamite rejection of the sacramental Eucharist was not based on an argument of its supersession in a new perfect age, but rather on a hermeneutical reinterpretation of its original foundation by Christ, combined with an attack on idolatry.110 In addition, there is always the potential objection that certain characteristics or symbols that we read as Joachite may be explained via alternative, less speculative sources. The tripartite division of history, for example, as visible in all the various radical Hussite parties, was a staple of Christian neo-Platonism long before Joachim (see below), while the vision of progressive history and a post-Antichrist period of bliss is extant in non-Joachite thinkers as well111—though literal millenarianism since Late Antiquity may have been unique to Rupescissa. Moreover, the negation of the sacramental Eucharist need not be sought from any more obscure source than the wellknown predecessor John Wyclif in his polemics on remanence.112 Finally, the explanatory power of contemporary Joachism with relevance to apocalyptic revolution may itself be called into question if the earlier cases of the Apostolic Brethren and Cola di Rienzo are examined more closely: Fra Dolcino most likely interpreted the Brethren’s violence as armed resistance meant for defensive survival rather than the actions of a revolutionary vanguard.113 Meanwhile, Cola’s 1347 “revolution” was non-violent, and it is doubtable whether his brief, Papally-supported dictatorship in late 1354 qualifies as apocalyptic or revolutionary.114 At any rate, this discussion should indicate that the hypothetical influence of Joachim and the Joachites on Táborite apocalypticism remains an open and problematic question which requires further research.

John Wyclif and the Lollards Given their extensive and well-known connections in many realms of politics, theology, and metaphysics, the best candidates to have influenced Hussite and Táborite eschatology would likely be John Wyclif and certain authors and texts from amongst his followers.115 Currently, most scholars agree that Wyclif’s worldview and reform program was a main source of inspiration for the Hussites from the beginning: the idealized symbol of the primitive Church, the discourse of its corruption, and its correction via royally guaranteed purification, were all clearly (though not exclusively) drawn from the Oxford

Táborite Revolutionary Apocalypticism  43 master, while countless other details bore his imprint.116 For our purposes, however, what is most important is Wyclif’s eschatological symbol of the “composite Antichrist” (resonating with Janov), made up of all sinners, including clerics and the papacy itself. In Wyclif’s ecclesiology of double predestination, this composite Antichrist represents the eternal category of the damned (or “foreknown”), a mirror image of the true Church (the eternal category of the elect).117 Scholars emphasizing Wyclif’s apocalypticism underscore the centrality of this symbol and also cite Wyclif’s imminent expectation of the End Times. Moreover, it is noteworthy that he clearly encouraged the physical persecution of the Antichrist by secular rulers, which would assist in the return to the state of innocence, where political and ecclesiastic hierarchies would virtually wither away and laymen would become priests themselves; unsurprisingly, some have again speculated Joachite influence here.118 We can also confirm direct communication, including the reception of apocalyptic texts, between Hussites and Wyclif’s later followers, the Lollards. A series of letters between them in 1410–1411119 demonstrate the shared interpretation of contemporary circumstances, especially via apocalyptic symbolism and discourse, and the urgent response required by the faithful. The specific authors included the vicar of Deptford, Richard Wyche, writing to Hus himself;120 Lord John Oldcastle writing to the reformist lord Voksa of Waldstein;121 and the Scottish preacher Quentin Folkhyrde writing generally to a Scottish and international public.122 Some letters clearly reached a wide audience: Wyche’s was read aloud by Hus to his congregation and, along with Folkhyrd’s, was translated into Czech.123 Their general message urged the steadfastness of the faithful in the law of God against the persecution of the Antichrist, as well as zealous resistance against him—a holy war (guerra divina)124—led by secular rulers. Especially relevant for our purposes, however, is the transmission of the only Lollard commentary on Revelation, the Opus arduum valde, which was probably written from prison in 1390 by an unknown Lollard. It emphasized the apocalyptic reading of contemporary events, clearly identified and attacked the Roman Church as the collective Antichrist, rejected the validity of the Constantinian Donation and urged free and vernacular preaching.125 Importantly, we are able to trace several of these Wycliffite and Lollard symbols in the Hussite and Táborite apocalyptic discourses. The most central is that of the composite Antichrist, comprised of the collection of the wicked and damned.126 Additionally, as with Wyclif and the Lollards, Hussites also encouraged a physical struggle with the Antichrist by secular authorities, an important contribution to the development of Táborite apocalyptic action.127 Moreover, the Opus Arduum was known in Bohemia by 1413 and was clearly used by several important Hussite figures, including Jan Želivský, Nicholas of Dresden, and Tábor’s future bishop, Nicholas of Pelhřimov (d.1459/60). The Hussite usage of the text emphasized especially the apocalyptic reading of their contemporary persecution and the importance of free, vernacular preaching in combating the Antichrist, a method they apparently supplemented with the Dominican apocalyptic tradition to accentuate the role of such preaching in the post-Antichrist period as well.128 Jakoubek

44  Martin Pjecha seems to draw on the Opus Arduum in his own Revelation commentary to dispel chiliast visions, describing the post-Antichrist seventh age as still imperfect and consisting of a mixture of the good and wicked.129 Despite their clear impact on particular Hussite opinions, however, it remains problematic to assign great weight to the influence of Wyclif and the Lollards in Táborite apocalypticism, or to cite them as clear precursors. An important reason for this is the decidedly anti-speculative and non-chiliastic core of Wyclif’s eschatology, which carried over significantly to the Lollards. The Oxford master was notoriously skeptical of chiliastic views and apocalyptic prophets, including Joachim and his followers,130 and the former’s use of apocalyptic symbols like the Antichrist—especially as adapted by Hus131—described simultaneously a timeless moral category and all those who fit into it.132 As such, we may depict Wyclif’s (and Hus’s) apocalypticism as characterized by a specific existential modality which differs from the proleptic one typical of apocalyptic thinkers, as noted above. Instead, what has been labelled as the “presentist” or “moralist” apocalypticism of Wyclif and Hus133 may simply be referred to as reformist: it finds the meaning of human existence in maximizing innerworldly participation in God’s will.134 Insofar as we can call them apocalyptic thinkers at all, Wyclif and Hus clearly saw themselves close to history’s end, and this concern informed everything else in their thought. Nevertheless, they still considered the potential defeat of the Antichrist and return to innocence as a process occurring in the present reality resulting from the collective rectification of all Christians, not precipitated by a cataclysmic moment of divine wrath in the future. In Augustinian form, the faithful Christian must struggle against Satan here and now to realize God’s will, not surrender this transformation to supernatural future agents.135 The same may be observed in the Lollards generally, including those figures known in Hussite Bohemia. As noted above, the newly arrived Lollard-cum-Hussite Peter Payne was decidedly anti-chiliastic,136 while the Lollard correspondents with the Hussites used imagery of the apocalyptic struggle to encourage certain behavior; their theory of militant resistance is thus wholly coherent with Wyclif’s reformism, not apocalyptic revolution. Moreover, although the influence of the Opus Arduum is undeniable, this is not in the direction of chiliasm: it explicitly rejects Joachite prophecy and, like the other rare works of Lollard apocalypticism, it is skeptical of eschatological dating attempts and does not look forward to a future age, but rather means to console the persecuted and exhort their alignment to God’s law.137 The short earthly paradise provided in some of its manuscripts are additions taken from the Confiteor tibi prophecy, an otherwise conservative apocalypse exposition.138 In general, therefore, it seems that the impact that Wyclif and Lollardy had on Hussite apocalypticism, while significant, still cannot neatly account for the chiliastic vision and revolutionary action of the Táborites.

Other Notable Sources Apart from the currents discussed above, research is continually uncovering links between Bohemian reformist apocalypticism and other authors and

Táborite Revolutionary Apocalypticism  45 traditions.139 We can here only hope to highlight a few of those which have not yet been mentioned above. The controversial lay theologian and physician, Arnald of Villanova (d.1311)140 is one who was seemingly influential particularly for Hussite precursors. Milíč probably used his (and Rupescissa’s) calculations of the eschaton, which ironically seem to have also influenced the calculations of Villanova’s French Dominican critic Jean Quidort (d.1306). Meanwhile, the latter’s emphasis on the relationship between the eschatological role of the Eucharist and the composite Antichrist certainly made an impression on Janov and, through him, Hussite utraquism and apocalypticism.141 Also important for Janov was the French anti-Joachite theologian William of Saint-Amour (d.1272), who warned against chiliasm and rather predicted the eschatological purgation of the elect by fire.142 Most interesting for our purposes, however, is the popularity of violent anti-mendicant texts of (or attributed to) Hildegard of Bingen (d.1179), hailed today as “the first prophet of social justice in the medieval West”.143 The pseudo-Hildegardian prophecy Insurgent gentes— originating from the circle around Saint-Amour’s faculty disputes with the mendicants in Paris in the 1250s—implicitly traced the orders’ rise and fall as recognized seducers and heretics144 and was known to and used by several Hussites and their intellectual forerunners. The same is true of a popular collection of Hildegard’s genuine prophecies, Pentachron seu speculum futurorum, which Hus and his colleagues used to criticize clerical political ambitions and to foresee a future with greatly weakened Papacy.145 Such anti-mendicant and anti-hierarchical visions were arguably inspirational or at least useful for later Táborite apocalypticism, which particularly targeted its ire against the clergy and monks146 while imagining an egalitarian future.147

The Place of Christian Platonism As we have observed, by the time of the Táborites, a variety of apocalyptic texts and discourses were available and used to interpret and guide present circumstances and actions. Nevertheless, none of the movements or thinkers described above can fully explain the Táborite combination of chiliasm and popular revolutionary action. For this, it therefore seems necessary to look outside the apocalyptic tradition towards potentially complementary inspirations. I will here suggest that one in particular, Christian neo-Platonism, can be observed in the Táborites to have supplemented a strictly apocalyptic worldview, notably by defusing its fatalism. This brief sketch will only include a couple examples to indicate the explanatory potential of the Christian Platonic tradition for activist thought. In Bohemia, neo-Platonic thought was communicated not only through Wyclif and the standard medieval channels of Augustine and PseudoDionysius,148 but also via the French school of Chartres149 and even indirectly via the infamous thinker John Scotus Eriugena (d. c.877).150 Despite its obvious role in Bohemian reform, however, neo-Platonic thought is scarcely associated with the Táborites in the historiography, largely because it is characterized

46  Martin Pjecha as elitist, apolitical, and ahistorical. For instance, the intellectualist soteriology of a figure like Eriugena, which emphasized individualistic efforts on the path toward apocatastatic eschatology (humanity’s restoration into God),151 cannot on the surface be easily reconciled with the Táborite anti-intellectual and popular activism preparing for Christ’s advent. Nevertheless, Christian Platonic ideas, found in the pre-Táborite debates on realism, ultraquism, and reform in Prague’s university, represent an essential framework within which Hussite and Táborite eschatologies may be understood as potentially revolutionary. One example is the historicization of the Platonic cosmic schema. Put briefly, the Platonic process of processio and reditus—beginning with primordial perfection, followed by corruption via creation and return via re-perfection—was roughly historicized by the early Hussites according to the periods of the primitive, the modern, and the reformed Churches. As a historical period engendering a mode of being, the modern Church represented a deviation from the eternal existential norm represented by scripture and ultimately Christ himself, a deviation expressing the alternate existential norm, Antichrist(ianity).152 Here we see translated into Christian and historical terms the neo-Platonic rupture of the physical world (mundus sensibilis) from its ideal state (mundus archetypus).153 By objectifying these moments in history, the Hussites were also able to optimistically expect a prefiguration of other-worldly bliss as an inner-worldly stage. As one Hussite explained: “[God] will administer a great peace (magna pax) with his elect before the end of the world”.154 For Hussites, such peace is never primarily understood as an absence of violence, but rather as an existential union with God. Rectification of the present deviant state would occur only by a return to the ideal state of unity with God via a primordial norm.155 This historicization of the Platonic schema is important because it provides an inner-worldly goal which ameliorates both Augustinian and apocalyptic determinism in human history. The present is a clear corruption of the original ideal, but the future promises significant improvement. Also significant is the overall optimistic anthropology of Christian Platonic thinkers. For figures like Pseudo-Dionysius, Christ’s advent allows for human participation in perfect being and cooperation with God via the theophany of the incarnation as captured in the eucharist. As the paramount sacrament, it communally deifies all believers and reunites them with the One.156 Although Hussites generally do not go as far as such authors in all respects, they do share their awe for the ubiquitous power of the eucharist to commune man with the divine and remedy his fallen state. For Hussite utraquists, the sacramental body and blood of Christ represents “the most bountiful and generous communicability of divine goodness in the community of the faithful”.157 Its worthy consumption pneumatically transforms every communicant into Christ (transformari in Cristum) and mystically transfixes and motivates his mind, will, and acts to perform the divine will.158 Such a Christian is no longer concerned with mundane concerns of family or possessions, but instead sheds his individuality for divine incorporation.159 In other words, through self-abnegation and cooperation with divine forces, any true believer is

Táborite Revolutionary Apocalypticism  47 already able to accomplish a kind of semi-deification in this life via personal effort and utraquist communion. This perfect communion orients the individual into a divine community ordered by God’s law. This is important because it challenges the traditionally pessimistic anthropology of Augustine which postpones any hope for meaningful human achievement or improvement to the next life. Moreover, it democratizes the vision of this achievement by explicitly inviting even the lowest members of society to participate. It is beyond our scope here to explain concretely the role of these Platonic adaptations, or to suggest other findings which are obviously still necessary for revolutionary thought. Nevertheless, it is generally worth recognizing here that these elements, like optimism in history, and confidence in the human capability to achieve improvement, are inalienable from any plan to enact rapid and popular political change. It is also noteworthy that, of the traditions clearly traceable in pre-Táborite Bohemia, Christian Platonism seems to furnish them most convincingly. Still, the supposed combination of neo-Platonic and apocalyptic discourses also demonstrates the explanatory limitations of the search for “influences” itself. Not only did the revolutionary action of the Táborites contradict the apolitical apocalyptic tradition to-date, but it was also certainly just as foreign to any popular political usage of Christian Platonism in the Western Middle Ages. In this respect, the originality of the Táborite revolution cannot be merely simplified to any series of past influences, since this event also irreducibly involved a decisive turn away even from that past which made them what they were.

Conclusion What then can be concluded about the “external influences” upon the specific phenomenon of Táborite activist apocalypticism? On the one hand, a good deal. As we have seen, the Bohemian reform movement up to the Táborites was embedded in the various apocalyptic traditions of Latin Christianity, and some of these clearly and specifically affected Táborite eschatological visions, while others arguably influenced their symbolic expression more generally or remain open to further debate. On the other hand, however, the examination of available apocalyptic traditions and discourses alone has been remarkably incapable of fully explaining the Táborite apocalyptic revolution, a fact owing to their essentially consolatory register. Toward this end, we have suggested the combination of historical and collective chiliastic expectations with the anti-determinism of Christian Platonic thought. A full account of the Táborite phenomenon, however, will need to appreciate not only the complexity of these influences, but also their adaptation and translation within concrete historical circumstances.

Notes 1 This study was supported by grant no. 19-28415X “From Performativity to Institutionalization: Handling Conflict in the Late Middle Ages (Strategies,

48  Martin Pjecha ̌ Agents, Communication)” from the Czech Science Foundation (GA CR). The author is employed at the Institute of Philosophy at the Czech Academy of Sciences. He would like to particularly thank Thomas C. Mercier and Matthias Riedl for their helpful insights. 2 R. A. Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St Augustine (Cambridge: CUP, 1970), 1–21. 3 Matthias Riedl, “Living in the Future—Proleptic Existence in Religion, Politics and Art,” International Political Anthropology 3, no. 2 (2010): 117–34. 4 Robert E. Lerner, “Medieval Millenarianism and Violence,” in Pace e Guerra nel basso Medioevo: Atti del XL Convegno storico internazionale (Spoleto: Fondazione Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo, 2004), 37–52; Matthias Riedl, Joachim von Fiore: Denker der vollendeten Menschheit (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2004), 29–41. 5 For a relevant overview, see Pavlína Cermanová, “The Apocalyptic Background of Hussite Radicalism,” in A Companion to the Hussites, eds. Michael Van Dussen and Pavel Soukup (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 187–218. Cf. also František Šmahel, Die Hussitische Revolution, vol. 2 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2002), 1007–157; Thomas A. Fudge, The Magnificent Ride: The First Reformation in Hussite Bohemia (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 76–122. 6 See Dušan Coufal, “Key Issues in Hussite Theology,” in A Companion to the Hussites, eds. Michael Van Dussen and Pavel Soukup (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 261–96. 7 For a theological summary, see Dušan Coufal, “Sub utraque specie: Die Theologie des Laienkelchs bei Jacobell von Mies (†1429) und den frühen Utraquisten,” Archa Verbi 14 (2017): 157–201. 8 Vlastimil Kybal, “M. Matěj z Janova a M. Jakoubek ze Stříbra: Srovnávací kapǐ ̌ tola o Antikristu,” Ceský Casopis Historický 11 (1905): 22–37; Jitka Sedláčková, “Jakoubek ze Stříbra a jeho kvestie o Antikristu” (PhD Thesis, Masaryk University, 2001). For an introduction and translation of many of the Hussite apocalyptic sources discussed below, see my “Hussite Eschatological Texts (1412–1421): Introduction and Translations,” in Early Modern Prophecies in Transnational, National and Regional Contexts, vol. 1, ed. Lionel Laborie and Ariel Hessayon (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 23–83. 9 Václav Novotný, ed., Fontes Rerum Bohemicarum, vol. 8 (Prague: Nákladem nadání Františka Palackého, 1932), 231–42. 10 Jan Hus, Tractatus Responsivus, ed. Harrison Thomson (Prague, 1927), 59: “clerici et yppocrite non sint successores apostolorum, sed […] papa sit caput, et collegium cardinalium cum ceteris adherentibus in malicia contra Christum sunt corpus Antichristi.” The author was not Hus, but Jakoubek of Stříbro. 11 Howard Kaminsky, “The Prague Insurrection of 30 July 1419,” Medievalia et Humanistica 17 (1966): 106–26; David R. Holeton, “Revelation and Revolution in Late Medieval Bohemia,” Communio Viatorum 36 (1994): 29–45. 12 In the Christian tradition, it is understood to be the location of Jesus’s transfiguration, as described in Mark 9: 2–8 (and synoptic parallels). The name, along with that of other re-named hills, is discussed in Petr Čornej, Velké Dějiny Zemí Koruny České, vol. 5 (Prague: Paseka, 2000), 205–6. See also František Šmahel, “Die Zweideutige Idee Tabors im hussitischen Böhmen,” Husitský Tábor 11 (1994): 21–27. 13 František Palacký, ed., Archiv Český Čili Staré Písemné Památky České i Morawské, vol. 6 (Prague: Královské české společnosti nauk, 1872), 41–42: “W kterémžto času [najwětčieho zamúcenie] dáwá zwastnie [!] přikázanie swým wěrným Kristus, aby utiekali netoliko z hřiechów, ale také z prostředka zlých, protiwných a neupřímných lidí a řka: utiekajte k horám […] [a] aby se neohlédali na domy, na statky, wěci tělestné.”

Táborite Revolutionary Apocalypticism  49 14 Pavel Soukup, “The Masters and the End of the World: Exegesis in the Polemics with Chiliasm,” The Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice 7 (2009): 91–114. 15 On terminology, see Matthias Riedl, “Eschatology,” in New Dictionary of the History of Ideas 2, ed. Maryanne Cline Horowitz (Detroit: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2005), 708–10. 16 Martin Pjecha, “Táborite Apocalyptic Violence and Its Intellectual Inspirations (1410–1415),” The Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice 11 (2018): 76–97, here 91. 17 From the so-called Hussite Chronicle of Lawrence of Březová, in Josef Emler, Jan Gebauer, and Jaroslav Goll, eds., Fontes Rerum Bohemicarum, vol. 5 [hereafter FRB 5] (Prague: Nakl. Musea Království českého, 1893), 329–534 here at 413–16. For an English translation, see Thomas A. Fudge, Origins of the Hussite Uprising: The Chronicle of Laurence of Březová (1414–1421) (London: Routledge, 2020). 18 FRB 5, 414: “quilibet fidelis, eciam presbiter, quantumcunque spiritualis, est maledictus, qui gladium suum corporalem prohibet a sanguine adversariorum legis Christi, sed debet manus suas lavare in eorum sanguine et sanctificare […] fratres Thaborienses isto tempore ulcionis sunt […] exercitus a deo per totum mundum missus ad tollendum omnia scandala de regno Christi, quod est ecclesia militans, et ad eiciendum malos de medio iustorum et ad faciendum vindictam et plagas in naciones adversariorum legis Christi et eorum civitates, villas et municiones.” 19 František Palacký, Jaroslav Charvát, Staří letopisové čeští (Prague: L. Mazáč, 1941), 397: “[the apocalyptic prophets] were saying that in Bohemia, only five cities would remain, and all others would be destroyed; also, that ‘you will no longer enjoy any fruit.’ Thus they preached that the people should do no work, and destroy trees, tear down buildings, churches, and monasteries. […] Also those priests preached that all sinners were to perish, [and] only the good [would] remain; and thus they cruelly murdered people without any mercy.” 20 On Martin Húska (“Loquis”) and Pikartism, see Howard Kaminsky, “The Free Spirit in the Hussite Revolution,” in Millennial Dreams in Action: Studies in Revolutionary Religious Movements, ed. Sylvia L. Thrupp (New York: Schocken Books, 1970), 166–86; František Šmahel, Dějiny Tábora I (České Budějovice: Jihočeské nakladatelství, 1988), 282–87. Cf. references in the discussion below, especially the section on “The Free Spirit”. 21 On the Adamites, see Bernard Töpfer, “Hoffnungen auf Erneuerung des paradiesischen Zustandes (status innocentiae)—ein Beitrag zur Vorgeschichte des hussitischen Adamitentums,” in Eschatologie und Hussitismus, eds. Alexander Patschovsky and František Šmahel (Prague: Historisches Inst., 1996), 169–84, and the discussion below. 22 The issue is complicated by the fact that even after the birth of the Táborite movement, some Hussite “radicals”—most notably the movement of the preacher Jan Želivský in Prague—were still formally distinguishable from it. 23 See Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmerman, “Beyond Comparison: Histoire croisée and the Challenge of Reflexivity,” History and Theory 45 (February 2006): 30–50. 24 Howard Kaminsky, “The Problematics of ‘Heresy’ and ‘The Reformation,’” in Häresie und vorzeitige Reformation im Spätmittelalter, eds. František Šmahel and Elisabeth Müller-Luckner (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1998), 1–22. 25 Cf. Alexander Patschovsky, “Was sind Ketzer? Über den geschichtlichen Ort der Häresien im Mittelalter,” in “[…] eine finstere und fast unglaubliche Geschichte?” Mediävistische Notizen zu Umberto Ecos Mönchsroman “Der Name der Rose,” ed. Max Kerner (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1987), 169–90.

50  Martin Pjecha 26 Pavlína Cermanová, “Waiting for Paradise—Waiting for Damnation. Concepts of Apocalyptic Time in Prophecies of the Hussite Period,” in Mittelalterliche Zukunftsgestaltung im Angesicht des Weltendes, ed. Felicitas Schmieder (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2015), 141–64, here 150. 27 For the historiography of the debate, see Petra Mutlová, “Die Dresdner Schule in Prag: eine waldensische ‘Connection’?,” in Friedrich Reiser und die “waldensische-hussitische Internationale” im 15. Jahrhundert, eds. Albert de Lange and Kathrin Utz Tremp (Ubstadt-Weiher: Verlag Regionalkultur, 2009), 261–76, here 270–72; Fudge, The Magnificent Ride, 37–41. 28 Euan Cameron, Waldenses: Rejections of Holy Church in Medieval Europe (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 11–17. 29 Ibid, 59. 30 Robert E. Lerner, “Historiography. A Case of Religious Counter-Culture: The German Waldensians,” The American Scholar 55, no. 2 (Spring, 1986): 234– 47. For an example of Waldensian doctrines, see Reinerius Saccho, “‘Of the Sects of Modern Heretics’ (1254),” in History of the Albigenses and Waldenses, trans. S. R. Maitland (London: Rivingtons, 1832), 407–13. For further reading, see Cameron, Waldenses; Amadeo Molnár, A Challenge to Constantinianism: The Waldensian Theology in Middle Ages (Geneva: WSCF, 1976). 31 Pavel Soukup, “Die Waldenser in Böhmen und Mähren im 14. Jahrhundert,” in Friedrich Reiser, 131–60; Cameron, Waldenses, 112–18; Lerner, “Historiography”. 32 Bernard Pez, Thesaurus anecdotorum novissimus IV, ii (Augsburg, 1723), colls. 517–19, 539, 552; Amedeo Molnár, “Ohlas Táborské konfese u románských valdenských,” Strahovská knihovna 5–6 (1970–1971), 201–8; Gordon Leff, Heresy in the Later Middle Ages: The Relation of Heterodoxy to Dissent c.1250–1450 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 690; for articles of faith of Bohemian Waldensians, see Rudolf Holinka, Sektářství v Čechách před revoluce Husitskou (Bratislava: Filosofická fakulta University Komenského, 1929), 176–79. 33 Howard Kaminsky, “Master Nicholas of Dresden: The Old Color and the New: Selected Works Contrasting the Primitive Church and the Roman Church,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 55, 1 (1965), 5–93 passim; Jana Nechutová, Místo Mikuláše z Drážďan v raném reformačním myšlení (Prague: Academia, 1967), 61–66. 34 William R. Cook, Peter Payne: Theologian and Diplomat of the Hussite Revolution (PhD Thesis, Cornell University, 1971), 369–78; František Šmahel, “Magister Peter Payne: Curriculum vitae eines englischen Nonkonformisten,” in Friedrich Reiser, 241–60, here 244–45. 35 Howard Kaminsky, A History of the Hussite Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 124–25. 36 Lucie Mazalová, Eschatologie v díle Jana Husa (Brno: Filozofická Fakulta Masarykova Univerzita, 2015), 57; Mutlová, “Die Dresdner Schule,” 273–76. 37 Alexander Patschovsky, “Ketzer und Ketzerverfolgung in Böhmen im Jahrhundert vor Hus,” Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 32 (1981): 261–72; Pavel Soukup, Reformní kazatelství a Jakoubek ze Stříbra (Prague: Filosofia, 2011), 63–67. 38 Soukup, Reformní, 61. 39 František M. Bartoš, “Vzník Táborství a Valdenští,” Jihočeský Sborník Historický 3, no. 2 (1930): 38–48; Cameron, Waldenses, 147. 40 Kaminsky, A History, 178–79. 41 Jana Nechutová, “Středověká eschatology jako víra v lepší budoucnost světa,” Revue University J. E. Purkyně v Brně 1, no. 4 (December 1968): 1–12, here 6. 42 Molnár, A Challenge, 60; Cameron, Waldenses, 146. I am not convinced by the counter-example noted by Kaminsky, A History, 353.

Táborite Revolutionary Apocalypticism  51 43 Cook, Peter Payne, 374–75. 44 Amedeo Molnár, “Eschatologická naděje české reformace,” in Od Reformace k Zítřku (Prague: Kalich, 1956), 11–87, here 35–36, though Nicholas certainly held apocalyptic beliefs; Mutlová, “Die Dresdner Schule,” 273–76. 45 Susanna K. Treesh, “The Waldensian Recourse to Violence,” Church History 55, no. 3 (September 1986): 294–306; Peter Biller, “Medieval Waldensian Abhorrence of Killing pre-c.1400,” in idem, The Waldenses, 1170–1530: Between a Religious Order and a Church (Aldershot: Routledge, 2001), 81–95. 46 S. Harrison Thomson, “Pre-Hussite Heresy in Bohemia,” The English Historical Review 48, no. 189 (January 1933): 36. 47 Cameron, Waldenses, 146–47. According to Treesh, “The Waldensian,” 299– 300, Waldensian leaders did not appear as participants or inciters of violence until the late fifteenth century. However, cf. Kaminsky, A History, 170–79; Nechutová, Místo Mikuláše, 43; Biller, “Abhorrence,” 94, n. 91. 48 Alexander Patschovsky, “Der taboritische Chiliasmus: Seine Idee, sein Bild bei den Zeitgenossen und die Interpretation der Geschichtswissenschaft,” in Häresie und vorzeitige Reformation im Spätmittelalter, eds. František Šmahel and Elisabeth Muller-Luckner (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1998), 179, n. 41; Robert E. Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1972), 120–21, 229. 49 Lerner, The Heresy, 1–4, 16, 20–25; Leff, Heresy, 308–24. However, see a critique of Leff’s account in Lerner, The Heresy, 8. 50 Ibid, 35–60. 51 For the discussion below, I refer especially to Kaminsky, “The Free Spirit”; see also Ernst Werner, “Popular Ideologies in Late Mediaeval Europe: Taborite Chiliasm and its Antecedents,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 2, no. 3 (April 1960): 344–63; Krista Feigl-Procházková, “Frei sollen sie sein, die Söhne und Töchter Gottes. Chiliastisches Gerüst, gnostisches Fundament des taboritischen Radikalismus?,” Husitský Tábor 13 (2002): 9–30. 52 Leff, Heresy, 309–11; Markéta Machovcová and Milan Machovec, Utopie blouznivců a sektářů (Prague: Československá akademie věd, 1960), 172–74. 53 Kaminsky, “The Free Spirit,” 168, n. 6, cites the Belgian homines intelligentiae group as the best non-Hussite example. On the transition from gnostic “stupor” to “outburst”, see Eric Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, vol. 4: Renaissance and Reformation (= The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 22), eds. David L. Morse and William M. Thompson (Columbia: University of Missouri, 1998), 185–90. However, Werner, “Popular Ideologies,” 357, rejects the revolutionary potential of the homines. 54 The original is edited in Theodora Büttner and Ernst Werner, Circumcellionen und Adamiten: Zwei Formen mittelalterlicher Haeresie (Berlin: AkademieVerlag, 1959), 135–40. A partial English translation appears in Werner, “Popular Ideologies,” 349. 55 FRB 5, 430–31, here 431: “Origo autem et radix huius maledicte heresis [i.e. the rejection of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist] pervenit ad Boemie regnum a quibusdam Picardis, qui anno MCCCCXVIII Pragam cum uxoribus et pueris, XL fere viri, venerunt dicentes, se fore per prelatos eorum expulsos propter legem dei. Et quoniam audissent, quod in regno Boemie maxima esset veritatis evangelice libertas, et ideo ad regnum venisse se dicebant.” 56 On the ambiguity of “Picardi”, see below. On the discussion regarding their origins and significance, see Kaminsky, A History, 353–60; idem, “The Free Spirit,” 173–74; Werner, “Popular Ideologies,” passim. 57 A summary of the debate surrounding its dating, including its protagonists, can be found in Kaminsky, A History, 86, n. 120. 58 cf. František Bartoš, “Hus a jeho strana v osvětlení nepřátelského pamfletu z r. 1412,” Reformační sborník 4 (1931): 3–8; Kaminsky, A History, 85–90. The latter tries to minimize the degree of its exaggeration, but we can neither

52  Martin Pjecha assume the tractate-author’s familiarity with contemporary Hussite opinion, nor its persuasiveness as propaganda for the king. Indeed, if he ever read the pamphlet, his subsequent pro-Hussite stance in several regards would suggest he did not find it a realistic portrayal. 59 Patschovsky, “Der taboritische Chiliasmus”, 169–95; Lerner, The Heresy, 123–4; Petr Čornej, “Ráj je na ostrově aneb proctor pro Adamity,” Táborský archiv 13 (2007): 37–47, here 41–45. 60 It is summarized in Jakub Jiří Jukl, Adamité: Historie a vyhubení husitských naháčů (Prague: Dokořán, 2014), 17–26, with additional details in Čornej, “Ráj,” 37–38, n. 3. Recently, further evidence for the historical existence of the Adamites has been noted by Pavlína Cermanová, “Biblické výklady a biblická paměť v táborském apokalyptickém myšlení,” Husitský Tábor 22 (2018): ̌ 9–33, here 31; idem, Cechy, 176. 61 Lerner, The Heresy, 106–21. 62 Lerner, The Heresy, 121–22. Patschovsky, “Der taboritische Chiliasmus,” 179– 80, sides with Lerner. 63 Patschovsky, “Der taboritische Chiliasmus,” 179, n. 41, reminds us of the “constructedness” of this association itself. See also Lerner, The Heresy, 229. 64 Matthias Riedl, “Christian Mysticism,” in New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, vol. 4, ed. Maryanne Cline Horowitz (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2005), 1546–49. 65 Leff, Heresy, 309; Lerner, The Heresy, 3, 123–24, 236–41; Patschovsky, “Der taboritische Chiliasmus,” 179, n. 41. cf. Bernard McGinn, “Apocalypticism and Mysticism: Aspects of the History of Their Interaction,” Zeitsprünge: Forschungen zur Frühen Neuzeit 3 (1999): 292–315. 66 Pavlína Cermanová, Čechy na konci věků (Prague: Argo, 2013), 174; Soukup, “The Masters and the End of the World,” here 104, n. 63. Similar conclusions have been reached regarding the potential influence of the devotio moderna, see Soukup, Reformní kazatelství, 30–31. 67 Among those already cited, we may add Petr Čornej, “Potíže s Adamity,” Marginalia historica 2 (1997): 33–63, here 37, 44. 68 Matthias Riedl, “Longing for the Third Age: Revolutionary Joachism, Communism, and National Socialism,” in A Companion to Joachim of Fiore, ed. Matthias Riedl (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 267–318. 69 Bernard McGinn, “Introduction: Joachim of Fiore in the History of Western Culture,” in A Companion to Joachim, 1–19; Brett Edward Whalen, “Joachim the Theorist of History and Society,” in idem, 88–108. 70 Whalen, “Joachim,” 93–94. 71 Gian Luca Potestà, “Radical Apocalyptic Movements in the Late Middle Ages,” in The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, vol. 2, ed. Bernard McGinn (New York: Continuum, 2000), 110–42, here 110–22; Frances Andrews, “The Influence of Joachim in the Thirteenth Century,” in A Companion to Joachim, 190–266. For the development of Joachim’s symbols by later Joachites, see Riedl, “Longing,” 273–83. 72 I follow here the distinction of Bernard McGinn, “The Abbot and the Doctors: Scholastic Reactions to the Radical Eschatology of Joachim of Fiore,” Church History 40 (1971): 35, where Joachimist refers to ideas “truly in harmony with the authentic writings and major ideas” of Joachim himself, while Joachite refers to ideas merely “influenced by the body of ideas claiming Joachim as its source.” For further discussion and literature on the issue, see Andrews, “The Influence,” 193–94, n. 12. 73 Werner, “Popular Ideologies,” 357–61; Potestà, “Radical Apocalyptic Movements,” 114–18. 74 Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), 239–41; Ronald G.

Táborite Revolutionary Apocalypticism  53 Musto, Apocalypse in Rome: Cola di Rienzo and the Politics of the New Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). 75 Matthias Riedl, “Apocalyptic Violence and Revolutionary Action: Thomas Müntzer’s Sermon to the Princes,” in A Companion to the Premodern Apocalypse, ed. Michael A. Ryan (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 260–96, here 271–72; idem, “Longing,” 287–94. 76 Pavlína Cermanová, “Jiná Apokalypsa: Prorocké texty v husitsví,” in Husitské re-formace: Proměna kulturního kódu v 15. století, eds. Pavlína Cermanová and Pavel Soukup (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2019), 144–72, here 147– 48, has noticed a possible, rare exception which may be found in Prague, National Library of the Czech Republic, sign. VIII D 15, which contains a collection of anonymous prophecies, including a short legend regarding Joachim’s revelation (inc. Abbas Joachym secundum unam hystoriam). Therein, he is met by an angel after climbing a high mountain for a hermitage to abandon the world. Idiosyncratically, rather than water, the anonymous author has the angel offer Joachim a drink of wine from a chalice. After drinking his fill, Joachim returns it with some wine remaining, to the disappointment of the angel: “O fatue, si totum bibisses, totum scivisses” (VIII D 15, fol. 26v). The peculiar inclusion of this Hussite symbol into the legend (as well as other Hussite material in the manuscript) may allow us to speculate about its Hussite provenance. 77 McGinn, “Introduction,” 5–9. 78 Kaminsky, A History, 351–52. 79 This adjustment, and the resulting negative view of the contemporary Church, was a common feature amongst many Franciscan Spirituals. See Riedl, “Longing,” 281. 80 Werner, “Popular Ideologies,” 350; Ruth Kestenberg-Gladstein, “The ‘Third Reich’: A fifteenth century polemic against Joachism, and its background,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauli Institutes 18 (1955): 245–95, here 254–55; McGinn, Visions, 267, n. 29; Kaminsky, A History, 352. 81 Brett Edward Whalen, Dominion of God: Christendom and Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 183, 185. Joachim’s own position on the sacraments in the Third Age were more nuanced, see Riedl, Joachim von Fiore, 323; Herbert Grundmann, “Lex und Sacramentum bei Joachim von Fiore,” in Lex et Sacramentum im Mittelalter, ed. Paul Wilpert (Berlin, 1969), 31–48. 82 FRB 5, 416: “Nec tunc erit opus baptismate fluminis, quia in spiritu sancto baptisabuntur, nec ibi erit sancte eukaristie sensibile sacramentum, quia novo modo angelico pascentur, non in memoriam passionis Christi, sed eius victorie.” 83 FRB 5, 467: “Item quod in regno reparato ecclesie militantis sol humane intelligencie non lucebit hominibus, hoc est, quod non docebit unusquisque proximum suum, sed omnes erunt docibiles dei.” 84 Joachim of Fiore, Scriptum super Hieremiam Prophetam (Venice, 1516), 42rb: “Omnes erunt dei docibiles, quia celestis patria velut terra erit repleta scientia domini.” The revolutionary potential is captured by the prophecy “et cathedre doctorum carnalium subvertentur.” Joachim’s original is from Joachim of Fiore, Expositio in Apocalypsim (Venice, 1527), 86rb: “non docebit ultra vir proximum suum […] Sed quia iam nuda erunt et aperta misteria, nec labor erit doctoribus illis in docendo, nec perfectis discipulis in retinendo, quia erunt homines docibiles Dei.” I thank Matthias Riedl for these insights. 85 Čornej, “Potíže,” 45. The record of the Adamites’ supposed doctrine reads: “Item, they called the Lord Jesus Christ a brother of theirs, but a mistrustful one because he died, and they say that the Holy Spirit can never die, and the son of God should be from the Holy Spirit” [Item pána Ježíše Krista bratrem svým jsú nazývali, ale nedověřilým, protože jest umřel, a praviec, že duch svatý nikdy neumře a z ducha svatého má býti syn boží]. See FRB 5, 518.

54  Martin Pjecha 86 Cermanová, “Biblické výklady,” Husitský Tábor 22 (2018): 9–33, here 13. 87 Kaminsky, “The Free Spirit,” 168; idem, A History, 356; Werner, “Popular Ideologies,” 349–50. 88 Cermanová, Čechy, 50–51, 73–74; Vilém Herold, “Philosophische Grundlagen der Eschatologie im Hussitismus,” in Ende und Vollendung: Eschatologische Perspektiven im Mittelalter, eds. Jan A. Aersten and Martin Pickavé (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2002), 735–44, here 736–37; Molnár, “Eschatologická naděje,” 15; Nechutová, “Středověká,” 8. 89 Matthias de Janov, Regulae Veteris et Novi Testamenti, vol. 4, ed. Vlastimil Kybal (Venice: Sumptibus Librariae Universitatis Wagnerianae, 1913), 179: “Ego tamen pro nunc credo magis primum istorum, id est quod iam iamque surget novus populus secundum novum hominem formatus, qui secundum deum creatus est, ex quo novi clerici et novi sacerdotes provenient et assumentur, qui omnes odient avariciam et gloriam huius vite, ad conversacionem celestem festinando”; Christo Gandev, “Joachimistské myšlenky v díle Matěje z Janova ‘Regulae Veteris et Novi Testamenti,’” Časopis českého musea 111 (1937): 1–28. 90 František J. Holeček, “Istis ultimis temporibus […] Husovo drama jako problem relativizace církevní authority v eschatologickém modelu církve? Podnět k diskusi,” Theologická reflexe 4.1 (1998): 54–76, here 74–75, cited in Mazalova, Eschatologie, 53; Ivana Dolejšová, “Eschatological Elements in Hus’s Understanding of Orthopraxis,” The Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice 4 (2002): 127–41, here 137–41. On Jakoubek, see Cermanová, “Gog and Magog: Using Concepts of Apocalyptic Enemies in the Hussite Era,” in Peoples of the Apocalypse: Eschatological Beliefs and Political Scenarios, eds. Wolfram Brandes, Felicitas Schmieder, and Rebekka Voß (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 239–56, here 254. 91 Kaminsky, “Free Spirit”. 92 Cermanová, Čechy, 177–78. 93 Sven Grosse, “Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and the Critiques of Joachimist Topics from the Fourth Lateran Council to Dante,” in A Companion to Joachim, 144–89, esp. 159–73. 94 An exception is Josef Macek, Tábor v husitském revolučnim hnutí, vol. 2 (Prague: Československá akademie věd, 1955), 130, cited in Werner, “Popular Ideologies,” 350. 95 Mazalová, Eschatologie, 54–55. 96 Jana Nechutová, “Gioacchino da Fiore ed i principi della riforma boema,” Sborník prací filosofické fakulty Brněnské university E 14 (1969): 229–33; Howard Kaminsky, “On the Sources of Matthew of Janov’s Doctrine,” in Czechoslovakia Past and Present, ed. Miloslav Rechcigl (The Hague: Mouton, 1968), 1175–83, here 1178–80; Bernard Töpfer, “Chiliastische Elemente in der Eschatologie des Matthias von Janov,” in Ost und West in der Geschichte des Denkens und der Kulturellen Beziehungen, eds. W. Steinitz, P. N. Berkov, B. Suchodolski, and J. Dolanský (Berlin: AkademieVerlag, 1966), 59–70, here 69–70; Cermanová, Čechy, 158–59; František Šmahel, Die Hussitische Revolution, vol. 1 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2002), 491–92. 97 Hus defends the reading of Joachim’s books, and those of other heterodox thinkers, against ecclesiastic censorship: “non liber suus [Ioachim] conburi nec veritas libro eius inserta quomodolibet reprobari.” See Jan Hus, De libris hereticorum legendis, in Magistri Iohannis Hus Opera omnia XXII, ed. Jaroslav Eršil (Prague: Academia, 1966), 34; Vít Hlinka, “Husův odkaz na Jáchyma z Fiore,” Theologica 5, no. 1 (2015): 41–66, here 41–42. 98 The reference was to Giacomo Palladini of Teramo. See František J. Holeček, “M. Jan Hus a proroctví Giacoma Palladiniho z Terama,” in Nový Mars

Táborite Revolutionary Apocalypticism  55 Moravicus, eds. Bronislav Chocholáč, Libor Jan, and Tomáš Knoz (Brno: Matice Moravská, 1999), 111–18. 99 Mazalová, Eschatologie, 53–54. The theme of multiple Antichrists is already scriptural, cf. 1 John 2:18. 100 Jana Nechutová, “Hus a eschatologie,” Sborník prací filosofické fakulty brněnské university E 13 (1968): 179–88, here 185–87; Pavlína Cermanová, “Nebiblická proroctví v husitství,” in Jan Hus: Życie, myśl, dziedzictwo, eds. Paweł Kras and Martin Nodl (Warsaw: Instytut Historii PAN, 2017), 237–57, here 237–38; idem, “Využití apokalyptických figure v díle Jana Husa,” Husitský Tábor: Supplementum 4 (2015): 23–40, here 39; Hlinka, “Husův odkaz,” 60–66. 101 Soukup, “The Masters,” 102–5; Riedl, “Longing,” 286. 102 Lerner, “Medieval Millenarianism,” 48–49. 103 Robert E. Lerner, “Refreshment of the Saints: The Time after Antichrist as a Station for Earthly Progress in Medieval Thought,” Traditio 32 (1976): 97–144, here 132. 104 The preliminary survey was that of Kurt-Victor Selge, “Handschriften Joachims von Fiore in Böhmen,” in Eschatologie und Hussitismus (= Historica, Series Nova, Supplementum 1), eds. Alexander Patschovsky and František Šmahel, 53–60 (Prague: Historický Ústav, 1996). 105 David Morris, “A Census of Known Super Prophetas Manuscripts,” Oliviana 4 (2012) [online, accessed 17 July 2019: http://journals.openedition.org/oliviana/530]; Pavlína Cermanová, “The Long Life of the Joachimite Prophecy Concerning Bohemia,” in “Ioachim posuit verba ista”: Gli pseudoepigrafi di Gioacchino da Fiore dei secoli XIII e XIV (= Opere di Gioacchino da Fiore: testi e strumenti 27), eds. Gian Luca Potestà and Marco Rainini, 159–69 (Rome: Viella, 2016); idem, “Gog and Magog,” 244–48. 106 Robert E. Lerner, “‘Popular Justice’: Rupescissa in Hussite Bohemia,” in Eschatologie und Hussitismus, 39–52; Cermanová, “The Long Life”. 107 Pavlína Cermanová, “Geschichte der Läuterung: Prophetische Literatur als Trost und Waffe katholischer Hussitengegner,” Bohemia 58 (2018): 1–18, here 16; idem, “Waiting”; idem, “The Long Life,” 162–67; idem, “Nebiblická proroctví,” 244–56. On Vade mecum in particular, see Lerner, “‘Popular Justice,’” 45–49, and most recently, Pavlína Rychterová and Robert E. Lerner, “The Presence of the Vade mecum in Bohemia,” in John of Rupescissa: Vade mecum in Tribulatione. Translated into Medieval Vernaculars, eds. Robert E. Lerner and Pavlína Rychterová, (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2019), 389–91. Nevertheless, an interesting parallel is found in an anonymous, radical postil of 1415: “pauperes mundo […] assurgunt cum Christo ad vindictam contra adoratores ydolorum, precincti gladiis verbi Dei, et ultimo comminuent istum vitulum, specialiter sacerdotum,” see František Bartoš, “Dvě husitské postily ze Stříbra,” Theologia evangelica 2, no. 1 (1948): 70–79, here 72. 108 See Bernard McGinn, “Angel Pope and Papal Antichrist,” in idem, Apocalypticism in the Western Tradition (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1994), 155–73, and idem, “‘Pastor Angelicus’: Apocalyptic myth and political hope in the fourteenth century,” in ibid., 221–51. 109 The chronicler Lawrence of Březová notes that the disappearance of communion followed “quia novo modo angelico pascentur, non in memoriam passionis Christi, sed eius victorie,” see note 82 above. The Táborite prophet who explicitly rejects the disappearance of the sacrament accepts its transformed meaning in the future: “Iam enim non facient hoc [i.e. the Eucharist] ad memoriam passionis Christi, ut facere consueverant, sed ob memoriam victorie Christi”. Still, his frustration reveals dissent on the matter: “Quomodo ergo quis posset dicere, quod non erunt sacramenta?” See František M. Bartoš, “Do

56  Martin Pjecha čtyř pražských artykulů: Z myšlenkových i ústavních zápasů let 1415–1420,” Sborník příspěvků k dějinám města Prahy 5 (1932): 481–591, here 591. 110 Cf. Konstantin Höfler, ed., Geschichtsschreiber der husitischen Bewegung in Böhmen, vol. 2 (Vienna: Kaiserlich-Königlichen Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1865), 824–30; A. Frinta, ed., “Vyznání víry dobré a svaté paměti Petra Kányše,” Jihočeský sborník Historický 1 (1928): 6–12; FRB 5, 495 note g; McGinn, Visions, 268–69. 111 Lerner, “Refreshment,” 120. 112 Jana Nechutová, “Viklef a Táborské pikartství,” Sborník prací filozofické fakulty brněnské university E 31 (1986): 167–76; Marcela K. Perett, “A Neglected Eucharistic Controversy: The Afterlife of John Wyclif’s Eucharistic Thought in Bohemia in the Early Fifteenth Century,” Church History 84, no. 1 (March 2015): 64–89. 113 Potestà, “Radical Apocalyptic Movements,” 114; McGinn, Visions, 227, and 228, where Dolcino indicates that he “flees and hides from the face of his persecutors” until they are destroyed by the emperor. 114 Musto, Apocalypse in Rome, esp. 130–42, 308–47. 115 For the textual transmission, see Anne Hudson, “From Oxford to Prague: the writings of John Wyclif and his English followers in Bohemia,” Slavonic and East European Review 75 (1997): 642–57. 116 The literature is far too vast to discuss here. Good summaries in English include František Šmahel, “‘Doctor evangelicus super omnes evangelistas’: Wyclif’s Fortune in Hussite Bohemia,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 43 (1970): 16–34; Vilém Herold, “How Wyclifite was the Bohemian Reformation?,” The Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice 2 (1998): 25–37; Kaminsky, A History, 23–35. 117 Bernard McGinn, Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1994), 182–83; Alexander Patschovsky, “‘Antichrist’ bei Wyclif,” in Eschatologie und Hussitismus, 83–98. 118 Michael Wilks, “Wyclif and the Great Persecution,” Studies in Church History Subsidia 10 (1994): 39–63; idem, “Wyclif and the Wheel of Time,” Studies in Church History 33 (1997): 177–93; Penn R. Szittya, The Antifraternal Tradition in Medieval Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 167–72; Curtis V. Bostick, The Antichrist and the Lollards: Apocalypticism in Late Medieval and Reformation England (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 56–75; Howard Kaminsky, “Wyclifism as Ideology of Revolution,” Church History 32, no. 1 (March 1963): 57–74, here 68–70. The link to Joachim is emphasized by Wilks. 119 For more detail, see Michael Van Dussen, From England to Bohemia: Heresy and Communication in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 65–67. 120 Václav Novotný, ed., M. Jana Husi Korespondence a Dokumenty (Prague: Komise pro vydávání pramenů náboženského hnutí českého, 1920), 75–79, trans. Herbert B. Workman, The Letters of John Hus (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1904), 32–34. 121 Novotný, Korespondence, 73–75. 122 Jan Sedlák, M. Jan Hus (Prague: Dědictví s. Prokopa, 1915), 182*–88*. 123 The translation of Wyche’s is in Novotný, Korespondence, 79–81. Matthew Spinka, “Paul Kravař and the Lollard-Hussite Relations,” Church History 25, no. 1 (March 1956): 16–26, here 18, suggests Folkhyrde’s letters had a considerable effect in popular and elite circles. Their Czech versions are in Sedlák, M. Jan Hus, 189*–96*. 124 Sedlák, M. Jan Hus, 183*–84*: “ego, Quintinus Folkhyrde, servus dei pauperrimus, in defectu horum temporalium dominorum et pro timore, quem habeo eterne dampnacionis, que michi poterit evenire, nisi faciam quod in me est ad

Táborite Revolutionary Apocalypticism  57 emendacionem horum malorum et in remissionem omnium peccatorum meorum palam moveo guerram diviniam super istos dei inimicos et eorum cunctos auxiliatores.” 125 Romolo Cegna, Christoph Galle, and Wolf-Friedrich Schäufele, Opus arduum valde: A Wycliffite Commentary on the Book of Revelation (Leiden: Brill, 2021); Anne Hudson, “A Neglected Wycliffite Text,” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 29, no. 3 (July 1978): 257–79; Romolo Cegna, “Ecclesia Primitiva: Dall’Opus arduum valde a Nicolaus de Drazna (de Rosa Nigra),” Archa Verbi 9 (2012): 64–85, here 72–74. Ibid, 75–76 rejects the Lollard authorship and suggests instead “the last of the Spirituals” (Ultimo degli Spirituali). 126 For instance, Hus adopts it in his De Ecclesia, see Patschovsky, “‘Antichrist,’” 97; we have seen Jakoubek’s employment of the corporate Antichrist (note 6 above), though he may have taken the idea instead from Janov, see Kybal, “M. Matěj z Janova”; for a Táborite usage, see Bartoš, “Do čtyř,” 583. 127 For instance, Jakoubek in Jindřich Marek, “Traktátek De Bellis a pojetí tělesného boje v postilách Jakoubka ze Stříbra,” Studia Historica Brunensia 62, no. 1 (2015): 267–94, here 288–94; Hus in František Palacký, ed., Documenta Mag. Joannis Hus (Prague: Sumptibus Friderici Tempsky, 1869), 124–26; popularly in Zdeněk Nejedlý, Počatky Husitského Zpěvu (Prague: Král. Česká společnost náuk, 1907), 499–500, translated by Thomas A. Fudge, The Crusades against Heretics in Bohemia (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 43–44: “O God, let the lion [i.e. King Václav] rise up,/Tear to pieces the mischief of the clergy/Promote the Law of Christ/Let Hus teach you how.” 128 Pavlína Cermanová, “Constructing the Apocalypse: Connections between English and Bohemian Apocalyptic Thinking,” in Europe after Wyclif, eds. J. Patrick Hornbeck II and Michael Van Dussen, 66–88 (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017); Cegna et al., Opus arduum, 54–59, and Cegna, “Ecclesia Primitiva,” also add Hus and the German Hussite Friedrich Eppinge to the list of the Opus’s readers. 129 Cermanová, Čechy, 165–66; Jakoubek ze Stříbra, Výklad na Zjevenie sv. Jana I, ed. František Šimek (Prague: Nákladem komise pro vydávání pramenů náboženského hnutí českého ve XIV. a XV. století, 1932), 304–5: “As St. Jerome notes, after the Antichrist the wicked hypocrites, staying hidden, will still be among the good. […] And there will also be bodily peace for the faithful, and thus they will be free to preach God’s word and receive his holy body and blood. Yet the wicked hypocrites will still be mixed among them.” [A jakož sv. Jeronym dotýká, že po Antikristovi ještě zlí pokrytci tajiece se přídržeti se budau dobrých. […] A bude také věrným pokoj na těle a tehdy věrní budau mieti svobodu kázati slovo Páně, přijímati tělo jeho a krev svatú. Budau však k nim přimíšeni zlí pokrytcí.] 130 Cermanová, “Nebiblická,” 244–45, n. 19; Patschovsky, “‘Antichrist,’” 92–93; Potestà, “Radical,” 122–23. 131 Nechutová, “Hus a eschatologie”; Molnár, “Eschatologická naděje,” 21; Cermanová, Čechy, 58. 132 Patschovsky, “‘Antichrist,’” 96. 133 See note 100 above. 134 A similar phenomenon is described as metalepsis, see Eric Voegelin, Anamnesis, trans. and ed. Gerhart Niemeyer (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978), 149–52. 135 Riedl, Joachim von Fiore, 106–9. 136 See note 43 above. 137 Anne Hudson, “Lollardy and Eschatology,” in Eschatologie und Hussitismus, 99–113.

58  Martin Pjecha ̌ 138 Cermanová, “Constructing,” 76–78; idem, Cechy, 157. Robert E. Lerner, “Millennialism,” in Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, 326–60, at 354, notes the lack of a “millenarian component” in Lollardy. 139 See the cited works of Pavlína Cermanová, especially Čechy na konci věků. 140 I leave aside the question of Villanova’s potential Joachite characterization. McGinn, Visions, 222, doubts it, but cf. also Gian Luca Potestà, “Arnaldo di Vilanova collezionista, propagandista e interprete del profetismo pseudogioachimita,” in “Ioachim posuit,” 237–55. 141 Cermanová, “Waiting,” 146–50; idem, Čechy, 52; Lerner, “Refreshment,” 129–30. 142 Cermanová, Čechy, 157–58. 143 Lerner, “Millennialism,” 341. 144 For discussion and a critical insular edition, see Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Magda Hayton, and Kenna Olsen, “Pseudo-Hildegardian Prophecy and Antimendicant Propaganda in Late Medieval England: An Edition of the Most Popular Insular Text of ‘Insurgent gentes’,” in Prophecy, Apocalypse, and the Day of Doom, ed. Nigel Morgan (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2004), 160–94. An English translation is available in John Foxe, The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe III, ed. Stephen Reed Cattley (London: R.B. Seeley and W. Burnside, 1837), 87–88. 145 Cermanová, “Waiting,” 156; Szittya, Antifraternal, 220; Cermanová, “Nebiblická,” passim. On the Pentachron, see Charles Michael Czarski, “The Prophecies of St. Hildegard of Bingen” (PhD Thesis, University of Kentucky 1983), 180–88 For Hus’s use of the text, see John Hus, “On Simony,” in Advocates of Reform: From Wyclif to Erasmus, ed. Matthew Spinka, 196–278, at 220 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006): “Read the chronicle and observe that whenever popes have waged wars, their temporal power steadily decreased. As Saint Hildegarde prophesied that the pope’s rule shall so dwindle that hardly his episcopal biretta shall be left on his head. Whether or not that shall come to pass, thou, O Lord Christ, well knowest!” 146 František Šmahel, “The Hussite critique of the clergy’s civil dominion,” in Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, eds. Peter A. Dykema and Heiko A. Oberman (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 83–90; Olivier Marin, L’Archevêque, le maître et le dévot: Genèses du mouvement réformateur pragois (Paris, 2005), 310–24. The anti-mendicant opinion probably came from Wyclif, see Szittya, Antifraternal, 152–82 passim. For Hus’s more moderate view, see Jan Zdichynec, “Pohled vybraných církevních reformátorů 15. a 16. Století na mnišské sliby,” in Jdi svou cestou a nech lidi mluvit: variety sociálních a kulturních dějin, ed. Oldřich Chládek, Tomáš Petráček, Jan Síč, and Veronika Stachurová Kucrová, (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2018), 129–51, here 132–33. 147 Bartoš, “Do čtyř,” 591: “Universi filii ecclesie erunt docti a domino et erunt omnes docibiles dei. [Jer. 31:34]”; FRB 5, 415: “Item in adventu Christi isto secundo ante diem iudicii cessabunt reges et principes ac omnes ecclesiarum prelati, nec erit in regno sic reparato tributum et exactor, quia filii dei calcabunt colla regum et omnia regna sub celo dabuntur eis Sapiencie VIIo. Et sic electi non ulterius pacientur persecucionem, sed reddent retribucionem.” 148 David E. Luscombe, “Denis the Pseudo-Areopagite and Central Europe in the Later Middle Ages,” in Société et Église : textes et discussions dans les universités d’Europe centrale pendant le moyen âge tardif, ed. Sophie Włodek (Turnhout: Brepols 1995), 45–64, here 50–56; Jana Nechutová, “K charakteru eucharistie v české reformaci,” Sborník prací filosofické fakulty Brněnské university B 18 (1971): 31–44. 149 Vilém Herold, “The University of Paris and the Foundations of the Bohemian Reformation,” The Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice 3 (2000): 15–24; idem, “Platonic Ideas and ‘Hussite’ Philosophy,” The Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice 1 (1996): 13–17; Edouard Jeauneau, “Plato apud Bohemos,” Mediaeval Studies 41 (1979): 161–214.

Táborite Revolutionary Apocalypticism  59 150 Stanislaus Sousedík, “M. Hieronymi Pragensis ex Iohanne Scoto Eriugena excerpta,” Listy Filologické 98 (1975): 4–7; Zénon Kaluza, “Le Chancelier Gerson et Jérôme de Prague,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age 51 (1984): 81–126, at 116–26; Herold, “Philosophische Grundlagen,” 743–44. 151 Dermot Moran, The Philosophy of John Scottus Eriugena: A Study of Idealism in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989), 135–38; Bernard McGinn, “Eriugena Confronts the End: Reflections on Johannes Scottus’s Place in Carolingian Eschatology,” in History and Eschatology in John Scottus Eriugena and His Time, eds. James McEvoy and Michael Dunne (Leuven: University Press, 2002), 3–29. 152 Introduced by Janov, see McGinn, Antichrist, 183. 153 Vilém Herold, “Die Philosophie des Hussitismus: zur Rolle der Ideenlehre Platons,” in Verdrängter Humanismus — Verzögerte Aufklärung, eds. Michael Benedikt, Reinhold Knoll, and Josef Rupitz (Klausen-Leopoldsdorf : Verlag Leben, 1996), 101–18, here 117. 154 František M. Bartoš, “Betlemská kázání Jakoubka ze Stříbra z let 1415-6,” Theologická příloha Křesťanské revue 20 (1953): 53–65, 114–22, at 118; cf. Rudolf Holinka, “Nová betlemská postila M. Jakoubka ze Stříbra,” Věstník české akademie věd a umění 60.1 (1951): 1–27, at 26: “Beatudine veniente evacuabitur principatus etc., scilicet in hoc mundo …. Sic potestas Antichristi et cleri mali, que a deo est permissa bonis in salutem et malis in dampnacionem, evacuabitur.” 155 Helena Krmíčková, “Cupio a te, o pater, edoceri (M. Matthias de Janov et M. Iacobellus de Misa),” in Studie a texty k počátkům kalicha v čechách, ed. Idem, 86–119, at 103–4 (Brno: Masarykova Univerzita, 1997). Pjecha, “Táborite Apocalyptic Violence,” 85–89. 156 Eric Justin David Perl, “Symbol, Sacrament, and Hierarchy in Saint Dionysios the Areopagite,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 39.3–4 (1994): 311–56, esp. 331–44. Cf. Migne, MPG 3, EH, 423CD: “cum unumquodque sacramentum divisas quoque vitas nostras ad uniformem colligat deificationem, atque deiformi dissitorum coagmentatione cum illo uno communicet uniatque.” Hussites agree with Pseudo-Dionysius, that the eucharist fulfills all other sacraments. Cf. Kaminsky, A History, 135 n. 129. 157 Prague, National Library of the Czech Republic, sign. X H 10, fol. 111r: “predicta institucio Christi [i.e. the full eucharist-MP] est largissima et liberalissima communicabilitas divine bonitatis in communitate fidelium sine accepcione personarum.” Cf. Pavel Spunar, Repertorium Auctorum Bohemorum Provectum Idearum post Universitatem Pragensem conditam illustrans vol. 1 (Wrocław: Polska Akademia Nauk, 1985), 216–17, no. 567. ̌ 158 Josef Dobiáš, “Dva rukopisy z počátku 15. století,” Casopis Historický 1 (1881): 52–64, at 60–62, for instance 62: “that solemn sacrament makes it so that man is not moved by his will (aby nehybal wedle wuole swe), or the corporeal will, […] Also the human mind (mysl), once led to lowly matters by fleshly movement, will be turned spiritually to [Christ’s] mandates by the powers of this sacrament, and will begin to move in Christ’s will.” Cf. Helena Krmíčková, “Jakoubkova kvestie Quia heu in templis a její vztah k Regulím,” Sborník prací filozofické fakulty Brněnské Univerzity C 41 (1994): 15–34, at 17–18. 159 Cf. František M. Bartoš, “Dvě studie o husitských postilách,” Rozpravy Československé Akademie Věd 65 (1955): 1–93, at 15: “[servi dei-MP] sunt, qui se ipsos abnegant et suam voluntatem abiciunt et Deo se subiciunt et humiliant, qui mundum, divicias, gloriam mundi, agros, possessiones, patrem, matrem et omnia abiciunt, eciam qui mente sua se subiciunt omni divine disposicioni et permissioni et in nullo volunt Deo contraire […] O benedicta confidencia, que vincit mundum et vanitatem mundi!”.

2 Heretical Eschatology and Its Impact on Radical Reformation Movements The Flagellants of Thuringia in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, Thomas Müntzer, and the Anabaptists Ingrid Würth On 21 October 1493, several men and their families from Stolberg, a small town in the Harz Mountains in Central Germany, were arrested and sent to prison on charges of heresy. They had been reported by their fellow citizen Hanns Wedigen, and two of the accused, Heinrich Kentzeler and Rosentayl, died in prison in the same year. They must at least have confessed and abjured their errors, since they passed “as pious Christians” in the almanac of the Stolberg town council.1 Although there is no further information about those heretics and their beliefs, it is likely that they had been among the last members of the Flagellant movement.2 It is unknown what became of the Flagellants themselves after 1493, but within three decades after their presumably last appearance, radical Reformation thought pullulated in the same area—and it is unlikely to be a coincidence. Some historians have even suggested that Thomas Müntzer’s father was among the culprits of 1493, and that in the basement of Müntzer’s parental home, Flagellant rituals took place.3 The general coincidence of time and place regarding these re­formational movements has been discovered before by several scholars, especially by Claus-Peter Clasen, but also by Siegfried Hoyer, Hans-Jürgen Goertz, and lately Kat Hill.4 But a thorough analysis of the connections between late medieval heresies and radical branches of the Reformation, apart from the “surviving” movements of the Waldensians and the Hussites, is still lacking.5 Academic research about late medieval heresies, on the one hand, and Reformation studies, on the other hand, remain largely separate. Furthermore, they are burdened with the prejudicial distinction between heresy and orthodoxy, regarding both the pre-Reformation Roman Church and the Protestant confessions. Some years ago, Howard Kaminsky suggested to cross the border between medieval and Reformation studies by treating both medieval heresies and Protestant movements as “modalities of a Christian religious culture common to Alteuropa and including Catholic ‘orthodoxy’ as one other modality.”6 This is an enticing thought that is worth considering and I will try to deploy Kaminsky’s model to my example by examining the Thuringian Flagellants’ apocalypticism, their “bloodthirsty chiliasm,” as labelled by Clasen,7 and by comparing it with the ideas DOI: 10.4324/9781003081050-4

Heretical Eschatology and Impact on Reformation Movements  61 of Thomas Müntzer and the Anabaptists, thereby highlighting connections between one dissenting religious movement and another. First of all, I will explore the texts about Flagellant beliefs in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (all of which derive from inquisitorial trials), identify their apocalyptic elements, and connect them with apocalyptical traditions. Special attention will be given to the Flagellant leader and prophet Konrad Schmid and his position in the apocalyptical setting of his followers. Second, I will examine the eschatological awareness of the movement, the connection between the Flagellants’ doubts about the Roman Church, their conviction of being the true believers, and the way they prepared themselves for the Last Judgement. At this point, it is possible to make a comparison between their ideas and statements by Thomas Müntzer, as well as with eschatological topics of the Thuringian Anabaptists known from the writings of their Lutheran persecutors. What was the point of evoking eschatological scenarios for the Flagellants, Müntzer’s followers, and the Anabaptists? Are there common motifs in the use of apocalyptical narratives across the transition from the late Middle Ages to the Reformation, especially among dissenting minorities? And, more generally, is it possible to level out the barrier between late medieval heresies and Protestant movements and just talk about different “modalities of a Christian religious culture,” as Kaminsky suggests?

Konrad Schmid’s Vision of the End Times The Flagellant sect in Thuringia apparently was inspired to a large extent by the teachings of one person, Konrad Schmid (d.1368), whose name—although largely forgotten today—was still popular among German Reformers and their adversaries in the sixteenth century. In a doggerel poem that had been added to the transcript of the proceedings of an inquisitorial trial in Halberstadt, he was matched with other “great seducers of mankind”: Muhammad, the Talmud, John Wyclif, Jan Hus, and the Hussite king George of Poděbrady.8 The Franciscan pamphleteer Augustine of Alveldt depicted his enemy Martin Luther as a disciple of Schmid, relating to Luther’s origin from Eisleben, the neighboring town of the well-known Flagellant hotspot Sangerhausen. Luther reacted to these charges in the dedication letter of the Kirchenpostille, asking whether it was Konrad Schmid or the “grey sparrow”—Luther’s nickname for Augustine of Alveldt—who was the worse heretic.9 Despite his fame in sixteenth-century Central Germany, we know almost nothing about Schmid. His name is connected with the so-called Prophecia, a text that allegedly contained original statements of the leader of the Flagellants in German, annotated in Latin by an orthodox author. The manuscript of the Prophecia also includes Articuli heresis flagellatorum, a compilation of heretical doctrines for the use of inquisitors.10 Both sources must have been written in an inquisitorial context, but both have been revised rigorously. The Prophecia, for example, starts with the announcement, in German, that “this is the prophecy spoken by Konrad Schmid, defrauding all the world,” thus tampering with the author’s intention to let the German parts sound like Schmid’s own words.11 The texts themselves do not reveal the

62  Ingrid Würth place where the presumed inquisitorial trial could have taken place. However, they give us some hints about the time of Konrad Schmid’s debut as a preacher: The Articuli pronounce that “now it is the 15th year [after the Flagellant processions], and he started to preach,” dating Schmid’s first sermon to the year 1364.12 And in the Prophecia, Schmid himself is reported to have said that “John the Evangelist saw a beast arise from the depth of sea in the east, 1362 or 1363 years ago.”13 Putting aside all academic considerations about the author of the Revelation and its origin, this statement also points to the 1360s as Schmid’s main period of activity. Still we do not have any information about his place or date of birth, and we cannot even be sure about his death, since apart from the Prophecia and the Articuli there are no sources about a condemnation of Schmid. In the sixteenth century, the historian Cyriacus Spangenberg from Nordhausen counted Schmid among the culprits of an inquisitorial trial in Sangerhausen in 1414, but without providing any evidence.14 Whereas our knowledge about Schmid must necessarily remain rudimentary, we can receive a rather detailed impression of the topics of his preaching—as far as transmitted by members of the church authority.15 As the name implies, the Flagellants practiced self-scourging, an ascetic exercise with a long tradition that had been made popular by the Flagellant processions in reaction to the Black Death in the years 1348/49. There is no evidence that these mid-fourteenth-century processions had a more radical or bloodthirsty character, nor that they last for a longer time period in Thuringia than elsewhere. Even after Pope Clement VI banished them in October 1349, the practice of self-flagellation persisted for example in Strasbourg and in several towns of the diocese of Cologne until the late 1350s.16 Thuringia was thus no exception. Castigation as a method to mitigate heavenly wrath had not lost its attraction in Germany around 1360, even if the Holy See did not approve of laymen practicing the ritual in public. When, in the 1360s, Konrad Schmid taught his followers in the Prophecia to “think about the passion of Christ more intensely than before”17 and thus alluded to self-flagellation, his teaching ran in open doors.18 This short passage notwithstanding, surprisingly enough, the Prophecia does not contain any explicit appeal to self-flagellation at all; only the Articuli make a clear connection to the Flagellants of 1348/49 and state that the members of the sect had to practice self-scourging every Friday at the hour of death of the Messiah.19 But while the sources are scarce about the teachings about, and the practice of, self-flagellation, the Prophecia is full of details about the End Times. It prophesizes precisely when the apocalypse would take place. The apocalyptical scenario it describes contains several elements well known from other eschatological settings. Schmid refers to the Sibyl’s prophecy, but in a very unusual way: The Sibyl has spoken: Dear children, before the end comes, there will appear several signs, and when the end is near, everyone will sit down and claim that nobody can know what God our father is up to do. But those who are acting in this way belie the prophet.

Heretical Eschatology and Impact on Reformation Movements  63 The Latin annotator used the opportunity to mention several dates of the Judgement Day that Schmid had predicted, “on the day of Saint Vitus or Saint Bartholomew or Saint Lucy or Saint Matthew, one of these days in the year 1369.” According to the annotator, after none of these dates had proven right, the followers of Schmid who—in anticipation of the end of the world—had sold all their belongings had to live in great poverty.20 It is impossible to identify the very Sibyl to whose authority Schmid is appealing,21 but there is one strand of tradition of the Tiburtine Sibyl literature in German that had been very popular in the mid fourteenth century.22 A special feature of every prophecy of the Tiburtina consists in the names, or rather the initial letters, of the rulers that would precede the final emperor. In the German version, “an A that will kill another A, and H will lose his life …. L and F will fight over the Roman Empire for seven years, but L will overcome in the end and rule the land.”23 Thankfully, the Sibyl herself unravels the mystery of the initials and thus offers an indication for the text’s date of origin: King Albert I (r.1298–1308) defeated his predecessor King Adolf (r.1292–1298) at the Battle of Göllheim. Henry VII (r.1308–1313) died shortly after his coronation as emperor in Buonconvento near Siena. Louis IV “the Bavarian” (1286–1347) and his cousin Frederick “the Fair” were both elected kings in 1314 and competed for the kingdom until 1322—for seven years—until Louis won the Battle of Mühldorf. After the death of Louis IV, “there will be only one more emperor on earth, called Charles.”24 By mentioning the last ruler, Charles IV (r.1346– 1378), the prophecy can be dated to a terminus post quem of 1347, after the death of Louis IV, or perhaps of 1355, the year of Charles’s coronation as emperor. In the eyes of the Sibyl, the end of the world should occur in 1361— our terminus ante quem.25 Apart from that chronological coincidence, Konrad Schmid’s stub about the Sibyllic prophecy does not give evidence that the German Tiburtina was a source of inspiration for him. Are the “several signs” appearing before the end in the Prophecia equivalent to the line of rulers described by the Sibyl? A closer look at the preserved manuscripts of this prophecy helps answer the question of whether Schmid could have known or even used it as model. All of the manuscripts were written in the early fifteenth century, two of them in the Thuringian dialect.26 Thus the Tiburtina could have been circulating in Thuringia in the second half of the fourteenth century, but the evidence is too scanty to connect Schmid’s Prophecia explicitly to the German Sibyllic prophecy. Schmid could have picked up his loose pieces in any old part of the vast Sibyllic tradition.27 The Latin comment of the Prophecia does not offer any interpretation of the Sybillic issue, but dwells sneeringly on the multiple doomsdays predicted by Konrad Schmid.28 The annotator not only derides the Flagellants for naively believing in the words of their master and disposing of their possessions, he also provides palpable evidence that Schmid’s teachings were blasphemous: While talking about the Last Judgement in general could not be condemned by the church authorities, forecasting a definite day of the apocalypse meant contradicting the Holy Scripture. When asked

64  Ingrid Würth about the date of his Parousia, Christ reprehended his disciples: “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.”29 By announcing several doomsdays in series, Konrad Schmid not only proved to be repeatedly erroneous, but also heretical.30 The next apocalyptical phenomenon mentioned by the Prophecia is the appearance of the Foolish Virgins. They will come before the end and walk in the air, looking rather desperate and leading the way for the people. They symbolize the five human senses. Afterwards, the sun will lose its brightness, and then the end will be imminent.31 Both the Virgins and the darkening of the sun are very common elements in medieval eschatological texts. The Parable of the Ten Virgins in the Gospel of Matthew 25:1–13 is used to describe the coming of Christ for the Judgement Day. He is the groom who leads the Wise Virgins—that is, the good Christians who are well prepared—to the festival room, meaning the kingdom of heaven. The interpretation of the Foolish Virgins who forsake the groom, as the five senses can deceive a person and misguide them, was not at all an idea of Konrad Schmid but frequently used in exegetical texts since Origen.32 Again, there is a Thuringian link to the tradition of the Ten Virgins too. We have several manuscripts of a mystery play about this topic,33 and we even have evidence of the disastrous outcome of one performance. The chronicle of the Abbey of Saint Peter in Erfurt reports that in 1321 the Dominican friars of Eisenach and their pupils brought to stage a play about the Ten Virgins, and their most prominent spectator was Landgrave Frederick I of Thuringia. When he perceived that even the Virgin Mary and many saints plied in vain for the Foolish Virgins, he became furious and desperate. After a few days, he suffered a stroke that confined him to his bed until his death, at least three and a half years later.34 Indeed, the play very much emphasized the terrible fate of the Foolish Virgins and elaborated their lament when they were denied salvation and dragged to hell by Satan and his demons.35 Even if we cannot be sure that the landgrave’s illness was an immediate result of the play, the story shows us the strong reactions of a medieval audience to those shocking scenarios of doom. It is rather likely that Konrad Schmid and his followers and listeners were familiar with the play of the Ten Virgins and perhaps also with the lamentable end of Frederick I.36 Alluding to the Foolish Virgins must have had a striking effect on the people, reminding them in a very impressive way of the imminent apocalypse. To illustrate his image of the end, Schmid evoked another very popular apocalyptical element, the extinction of the sun. It happens at the opening of the sixth seal in Revelation 6:12 and is a constituent part of Sibyllic prophecies too.37 The Latin annotator of the Prophecia did not make any remarks about either the virgins or the sun losing its brightness. It seems that those figures could not be interpreted as heretical, even by the most resentful persecutors of the Flagellants. While it is rather easy to locate the provenance of the various topoi used by Konrad Schmid to embellish his eschatological visions, it is more difficult to determine his own position in this scenario. Of course he is

Heretical Eschatology and Impact on Reformation Movements  65 introduced by the Latin annotator as the speaker of the Prophecia, as the prophet and the leading figure of the Flagellants who declared himself the head of Christianity and his followers the true believers.38 But in the text some people are mentioned who could also be identified with Schmid: for example, the Pilterim (pilgrim), translated in the Latin comments as magister, who encouraged and exhorted the members of the movement.39 In the German parts, the Pilterim and Schmid are presented as two distinct individuals. The annotator, however, does not differentiate between Schmid and the Pilterim. But the passage enabling us to better understand Schmid’s role could be his short but enigmatic remark about the “King of Thuringia.” Again, Schmid acts as a third-person narrator and even resorts to a higher authority: in his view, the biblical leader Joshua reported about a campaign of a “King of Thuringia” in his account of all the campaigns of the Margraves of Meißen. This assertion is puzzling. The Latin text comments on this sentence, saying that Schmid called himself “King of Thuringia” and Emperor Frederick.40 However, it is anything but clear what the German part of the text—perhaps an original statement of Schmid—refers to. How could Joshua, the leader of the Israelite tribe after the death of Moses and no prophet at all, know and talk of a “King of Thuringia” or of the campaigns of the Margraves of Meißen? In the Middle Ages, Joshua was known as a successful commander and one of the Nine Worthies (the personifications of chivalry),41 but there is no tradition—by any stretch of the imagination—of Joshua as a prophet of the military feats of late medieval rulers. We can only speculate about the identity of this Thuringian king. Could he be one of the landgraves? Did the Prophecia refer to Landgrave Frederick I, who through his mother Margaret had been a grandson of Emperor Frederick II, and therefore had good prospects to succeed the last Hohenstaufen pretender, Conradin, after 1268?42 Or was the king in question a ruler of the Thuringian empire that was defeated by the Franks in 531? Thuringian sources of the fourteenth century related the glorious deeds of those ancient Thuringians and they certainly are full of the history of Frederick I.43 The hope that a local ruler might once become king or even emperor of the Holy Roman Empire may have been alive in Thuringia in the second half of the fourteenth century, but Schmid’s vague sentence does not offer any reliable indication of a particular tradition.44 What is even more important, he himself did not claim to be this “King of Thuringia.” This attribution was made by the Latin annotator and, by adding that Schmid insisted on being considered the Emperor Frederick, he established ties to the German Kaisersage—the German version of the Hidden One myth.45 The idea that a last great human ruler would consume the world and initiate the end of times had been circulating since antiquity.46 After his death, Emperor Frederick II became the leading character of a revival of apocalyptical legends, in a negative as well as a positive sense. While his enemies saw him as the Antichrist prophesied in some writings attributed

66  Ingrid Würth to Joachim of Fiore, his followers idolized him as the Last Emperor, who in one version had not died but would live on (in secret) until he could accomplish his task of putting worldly affairs in order and preparing mankind for Judgement Day; or, in another version, whose task would be fulfilled by his successor. The assumption that Frederick was still alive, inspired by the particular circumstance that he had spent his last days rather isolated in Castelfiorentino and that only very few had witnessed his death, produced, on the one hand, the German Kaisersage, the myth of an emperor sitting and waiting somewhere until a more propitious time should come.47 On the other hand, it inspired several individuals to usurp Frederick’s identity, returning to reclaim his imperial crown. Of these, the most prominent was perhaps Dietrich Holzschuh, who managed to maintain his pretense for about two years, but who was eventually sentenced to death by King Rudolf in July 1285.48 On the whole, the Last Emperor personified by Frederick II was a mighty eschatological figure. By implying that Konrad Schmid had called himself “King of Thuringia” and Emperor Frederick, the writer of the Latin comments of the Prophecia insinuated that Schmid had ascribed an eschatological function to himself. The problem is that we lack any sources for the Kaisersage in Thuringia in the fourteenth century—the first testimony of the famous Kyffhäuser legend dates only back to 1421, when Johannes Rothe mentioned Emperor Frederick living until the end of times and wandering about the decayed castles on Kyffhäuser Mountain, sometimes appearing and talking to people.49 Of course, Kyffhäuser Mountain is almost within eyesight of Sangerhausen, one of the supposed places of Schmid’s activity. But it is quite unlikely that already in the 1360s the Kaisersage was attached to this mountain, because no one would have believed that Frederick was strolling through castles in decay—at this time, the castles on the Kyffhäuser were still in use as economic and military places, as they were until the first decades of the fifteenth century.50 One last thread in the netting around the “King of Thuringia” and Emperor Frederick is the emperor’s grandson Frederick I, Margrave of Meißen and Landgrave of Thuringia. His fate could have inspired the appearance of the Foolish Virgins in the Prophecia, and he was indeed the focal point of political hopes of the Hohenstaufen party in Germany and Italy after the beheading of Conradin in Naples in 1268. He became also the subject of eschatological prophecies, as one of the above-mentioned successors of Frederick who were assigned to accomplish the task of the Last Emperor.51 But all those texts were written in the 1260s and lost their purpose after the establishment of the Angevin kings of Sicily and the decision of Frederick to concentrate on his dominions in Central Germany.52 We cannot be sure that the remembrance of the landgrave as a Hohenstaufen pretender and longed-for “Frederick III,” that is, the third emperor called Frederick, was still thriving in Thuringia in the second half of the fourteenth century. Again, all the hints of the Prophecia are nothing more than intangible and enigmatic adumbrations.53

Heretical Eschatology and Impact on Reformation Movements  67

Fifteenth-Century Flagellant Apocalypticism If Konrad Schmid’s presumed words in the Prophecia leave us with only a blurry impression of his person and his teachings, the documents from the persecutions of his followers in the fifteenth century make much more precise statements about his eschatological ideas. About fifty years after Schmid’s public preaching in the 1360s, the Dominican inquisitor Heinrich Schoenvelt started to search for Flagellants in various towns and villages of Northern Thuringia and the adjacent territories.54 He found and condemned several members of the movement in Winkel (near Allstedt), Sangerhausen, Querfurt, Erfurt, and Thamsbrück in the spring and summer of 1414, “and many others,” as remarked in a manuscript of the applied Articuli.55 Beyond that, we have evidence of persecutions in Mühlhausen/Thüringen (1420), in Nordhausen and Stolberg (1446), in Göttingen (1453), Sondershausen, again Sangerhausen, Heringen, and Aschersleben (1454), Walkenried (1465), Hoym (1481) and, at last, Stolberg once more (1493).56 Even if we are not able to know the proper dimensions of the heresy or to get an exact number of the people involved, we may say with some certainty that Flagellantism was a rather widespread and persistent phenomenon in Central Germany in the fifteenth century. We can get insights into the beliefs of the Flagellants and their ideas of the Apocalypse from the Articuli used in the inquisitorial trials because they present a neat and tidy list of all the errors of the culprits. These documents provide critical information, even if we have to be careful because they were written by the persecutors and not by the Flagellants themselves. We have also to bear in mind that the Flagellants’ conceptions may have varied over time and from place to place. For an interpretation of the eschatological belief of the Flagellants, we can moreover only rely on a single source, the Articuli of 1414.57 The Flagellants, as presented in the year 1414, saw themselves as the heirs and perfecters of the Flagellant processions that were banned by the pope in 1348/49. They still practiced self-scourging, they were persuaded to be the true believers, and, much more radically than in the 1360s, they openly criticized the clergy, the sacraments, and the sacramentals of the Roman Church, especially the Eucharist.58 But the most significant development concerned the person of Konrad Schmid. In the eyes of his followers, he was now considered the first prophet of the Flagellants in Thuringia and an impersonation of Enoch, one of the two witnesses against the Antichrist. In the end, there would be not one Last Judgement, but about seven or eight different trials. And the last trial on the last day would not be held by Christ but by Konrad Schmid, flagellatorum heresiarcha.59 After all, the prophet himself had become part of the prophecy. The scenario of Flagellant eschatology used various components from tradition. Revelation 11:3–8 reports the fate of the two witnesses who, amongst others, would have the power to turn water into blood and, after their ministry, would be devoured by the beast from the bottomless pit. The Articuli also volunteer a candidate for the other witness, Elias, a man who had been burned at the stake in Erfurt 48 years earlier, that is in 1366; and they specify

68  Ingrid Würth the role of the Antichrist: he is embodied by the prelates and the priests who persecuted the Flagellants.60 The names of the two witnesses, Enoch and Elias, are mentioned not in the Revelation of John, but in the non-canonical Revelation of Peter.61 Although this identification was apocryphal, it was common in medieval tradition.62 According to the Old Testament, Enoch and Elias did not die but were received in heaven and could be sent again during the last days, a mechanism meticulously explained in the Articuli. All human souls had been created at the beginning of times and kept in paradise. Whenever a child is growing in his mother’s womb, an angel is sent to insert the soul. And when Konrad Schmid and the executed of Erfurt were about to be born, the angel brought the souls of Enoch and Elias from paradise.63 The theory of metempsychosis is not at all genuinely Flagellant, but a gnostic idea, advanced among others by Origen and condemned already at a synod at Constantinople in 543.64 It also seems to seize the Catharist thought that the soul is divine and incarcerated in the human body.65 While the identification of the two witnesses against the Antichrist with Enoch and Elias could not be challenged by an orthodox medieval author, any other element of the Flagellant eschatology reported by the Articuli of 1414 was “heretic.” To link Elias with a convicted and burned heretic, to identify the Roman Church with the Antichrist, and to divulge a definitely wrong theory about the creation and the nature of the human soul was sufficient for damnation. But the cult of Konrad Schmid all the more demonstrated the heretical quality of the movement. We still cannot be sure about the fate of the Flagellant leader—the Articuli do not claim that he was condemned and executed as a heretic like his fellow witness “Elias.” But to depict him as the substitute judge for Christ himself in the Last Judgement must have been perceived as sheer blasphemy. In the Prophecia, Schmid kept mostly to traditional concepts when he unfolded his apocalyptic vision, and all the problematic issues remained very ambiguous and elusive. In 1414, the conception that the culprits had of the end of days seems to be clear: it drew components from the Christian tradition, but quickly veered toward undeniable heresy with a strong focus on Konrad Schmid as heresiarch. We have to consider, however, that what seems to be a compact Flagellant ideology may be rather a mixture of Flagellant ideas with assumptions and prejudices of their persecutors. The inquisitors were especially trained to ask specific questions; they were familiar with all the various religious deviances since the first ecumenical councils; and the accused were often ready to admit all sorts of beliefs. In his bull Ad exstirpanda, Pope Innocent IV had allowed the use of torture against heretics during an inquisitorial trial, so we must expect the Flagellants to have been tortured even if the sources do not talk about it.66 It is difficult to determine whether the rather sophisticated thought of metempsychosis had been a genuine part of Flagellantism in 1414 or whether it was introduced to them only by Heinrich Schoenvelt, a very experienced and accurate inquisitor.67 Likewise, we do not know whether their esteem for Konrad Schmid had indeed led them to see him as an Alter Christus in the Last Judgement. Yet perhaps it is not even important to draw a

Heretical Eschatology and Impact on Reformation Movements  69 distinction between what the Flagellants believed and what their persecutors accused them of believing—as Grundmann suggests, we can accept the Articuli as a collaborative work.68

The True and the False Church An important factor of the apocalyptical concepts of the Prophecia and of the Articuli of 1414 is that the Last Judgement was expected to come imminently. The Flagellants were convinced that they were already living at the end of times, that they were the chosen people, and that the Roman Church was depraved.69 Schmid created a very idiosyncratic and enigmatic system of ideas in which he called his followers the “children of princes,” protected by the angel Trona, who would intercede for them at the Last Judgement.70 When talking about the aberrations of the Church, Schmid made an explicit allusion to the Book of Revelation. In his version, the beast from the depth of the sea that John the Evangelist had seen 1,362 years earlier had seven heads with seven horns, seven crowns, and seven lampstands with seven lights. The beast had enlightened, defeated, and devoured all the world and now perambulated on the earth like a roaring lion. All faithful had to be attentive not to fall prey to the terrible beast.71 As we can easily see, Schmid combined different elements from the Book of Revelation and other biblical sources: the great dragon (Revelation 12:3–4), the beast from the sea (Revelation 13:1–5), and the seven lampstands (Revelation 1:12). The roaring lion derives from the 1 Peter 5:8. Except for the lampstands, all these figures are traditionally interpreted as symbols of Satan or the Antichrist.72 The reference to the year 1362 suggests that Schmid declared all human history since the Nativity a creation of the devil or of the Antichrist. With this teaching, he surely did not mean to vilify Christ himself, but rather the Roman Church or the papacy as his earthly representatives. According to his scenario, the Flagellants were identified with the persecuted, rightful Christians, the 144,000 to be redeemed at the end of times (Revelation 14:1–5). There are more paragraphs of the Prophecia suggesting that the Flagellants were the chosen people. The Pilterim, for example, told them that they would soon be raptured from the earth because they suffered persecution. As long as they stayed on earth, the world was cherished, but once they departed it, it would be afflicted by a great plague and disgrace. The Pilterim encouraged them not to doubt their faith but to be confident that the rules they observed were most agreeable to God.73 The rejection of the Roman Church by the Flagellants mirrors their belief in their election. But apart from the quite obvious reference to the apocalyptical beast, the anticlerical content of the Prophecia is vague or well concealed. When Schmid appeals to his followers to obey only “the one who has no master above him,” he is ostensibly referring to the commandment “to serve God alone” that appears in the Gospel of Matthew. When Christ was tempted by Satan in the desert to be endowed with all the kingdoms on earth, he responded: “Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve” (Matthew 4:10). The annotator, however,

70  Ingrid Würth interpreted these words by Schmid as a rejection of all political and spiritual rule, of papal and imperial authority.74 And later on, the Flagellant leader alluded to the importance of the Eucharist to enter the heavenly kingdom, citing the Gospel of John 6:54 and construing an answer to this demand by adding a sentence from 1 Corinthians 11:27–29: “For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.” For an impartial observer, the Prophecia contributed to the pervasive reverence to the Eucharist in the late Middle Ages that prevented many faithful from receiving the sacrament because they feared to be undeserving.75 But the Latin comment informs us that in this paragraph Schmid denied even the priests the dignity to consume the Body of Christ.76 The Articuli that accompany the Prophecia give a much clearer impression of the anticlerical dimension of Schmid’s teaching. According to this text, Schmid claimed that baptism, as every other ritual of the clergy, was made void by the meanness and wickedness of the priests and needed to be replaced by self-flagellation. The Eucharist is even impossible since no priest is able to perform the transubstantiation because of his wickedness. Extreme unction, church funerals, and indulgences are likewise all vain. No one should buy a Holy Mass from the priests or fast; it is enough to perform self-scourging for salvation.77 This catalogue, of course, was written by a member of the clergy who knew very well what the Flagellants had to believe to undermine the spiritual and economical fundament of the medieval church. But if we take seriously the Flagellant idea of being the chosen people who would be sanctified in the imminent Last Judgement, their impulse to set themselves apart from the religious mainstream is essential. Whether they really had such detailed opinions, as the Articuli want us to believe, is impossible to verify. The Flagellants in the days of Konrad Schmid not only had the strong opinion that the end was very near, but they also expected it on several specific dates in 1369. The annotator revealed the presumed dates when commenting about the Sibyl and he spitefully noticed the distress of Schmid’s followers when the predicted doomsdays did not happen.78 We cannot be sure what became of the movement after 1369. Perhaps its members started to doubt their prophet and left him. From other sources—a canonical expertise about the Flagellants and a letter by Pope Gregory XI—however, we can draw the conclusion that they still existed in 1372.79 Thereafter, we have reports about it for the fifteenth century. Therefore, if there was any downfall of the movement, it must have been quite brief. There is no trace of the Flagellants renouncing Konrad Schmid in the Articuli of 1414, quite the contrary. The Flagellant leader had become a crucial figure in the eyes of his followers, even if we regard with suspicion the information about him presiding over the Last Judgement. The Articuli show furthermore that the Flagellants remained convinced that they were living at the end of times, as the paragraphs about the Antichrist and the two witnesses reveal. Schmid’s error about the doomsdays apparently did not affect his credibility in general, and some parts of the Flagellant beliefs were now brought into sharper focus, especially the rejection of the Roman Church and the sacraments. The

Heretical Eschatology and Impact on Reformation Movements  71 Articuli of 1414 enumerate at length the erroneous opinions of the movement about church buildings (“accumulations of stones, public houses of sinners and dens of thieves”), holy water (“sparks from hell”), liturgical chant (“not more divine than dogs barking”), baptism, reconciliation, confirmation, marriage, holy orders, and the sacrament to the sick—all of which the Flagellants deemed unnecessary. The Flagellants’ arguments against the Eucharist were particularly vilified in detail: Christ is not present in the Eucharist and, if he were, his body would have been eaten up long ago even if he were as big as a mountain. As Christ forbade Mary Magdalene to touch him after his resurrection, so he would not tolerate being touched by human hands in the Eucharist. If Christ were in the altar bread, the priests were far worse than Judas Ischariot, who sold his Messiah for thirty pieces of silver, since for the clergy the host is worth only a penny. All in all, in the eyes of the Flagellants, the Eucharist was a ku­ckuck sacerdotum, the flim-flam of the priests. The only efficient holy act was flagellation and, according to them, the skin with the fresh marks of flagellation should be “the festive dress” for the wedding feast of the King of Heavens. Nobody can be redeemed other than by joining the movement.80 The firm belief in being the true Christians, the scorching criticism against the Roman Church, and the expectation of the near end pervade all sources about the Flagellants of the fifteenth century.81 While all of them stem from an inquisitorial context and not every word may come from the Flagellants, we get an overall impression of a community with a solid set of eschatological ideas— and thus not so dissimilar from the eschatology of sixteenth-century radical reform movements, like those of Thomas Müntzer and the Anabaptists.

Müntzer’s Fight Against the Antichrist We can get insights into Müntzer’s apocalyptical ideas from his own writings. In a letter to Nikolaus Hausmann, the parson of the church of St. Mary in Zwickau, in 1521, he ended with the following words: We are already living in the time of Antichrist, as Mt. 24 told us: “When the Lord let preach the gospel of the kingdom all over the world you will see the abomination of desolation.” But the reprobate will not believe, as they did not believe in the time of Noah. He who calls the pope the Antichrist is wrong. He is only the true herald of Antichrist. But the fourth wild beast will rule all the world and its reign will be greater than all others.82 With the Gospel of Matthew and the reference to the prophet Daniel in the form of the fourth beast (Daniel 7:19–24), Müntzer chose biblical elements to express his conviction that he lived at the end of times. Martin Luther had only recently identified the Antichrist with the papacy in his answer to his bull of excommunication in 1520, Adversum execrabilem Antichristi bullam.83 Müntzer presented a more general view: in his eyes, the pope was

72  Ingrid Würth only a part of the fourth kingdom, that of the Antichrist. Müntzer had also the secular authorities in mind when he defined the enemy.84 His perception of the end of times was closely connected to the distinction he made between the elect and the damned, as stated in the Prague Manifest in November 1521. God would soon separate the wheat from the chaff and assign his rule on earth to his chosen ones.85 Thus the preaching and the conversion of as many men and women as possible became more urgent from day to day, and the chasm to those who refused to see the real state of the world opened up wider than ever. For Müntzer, the damned were the clergy and the chosen ones were the laymen, and especially the poor people. He believed that he himself had to take care of the execution of God’s will, even at the risk of his life.86 In the so-called “Sermon before the Princes” about the Book of Daniel, chapter 2, in July 1524, Müntzer gave a cohesive sketch of his apocalyptical views: time was running out, and a stone—the Holy Spirit—was to fall from the mountain Jesus Christ and destroy the last kingdom on earth.87 Nobody can escape the Last Judgement and only those who already have received the Spirit by listening to Thomas Müntzer’s preaching would be redeemed. If the rulers of this world were not willing to side with the rightful, they would lose their sword, which would then be given to the people.88 This theory enabled Müntzer to criticize the mighty and legitimate the subversion of political order, a stance that permeates all his writings until his death in 1525. In his letters, he repeatedly admonished the princes (e.g. Frederick III, Elector of Saxony, and Albert VII, Count of Mansfeld—his main adversaries) always referring to the Book of Daniel: “And when the times are changing, the sword will be taken away [from the noblemen] and given to the fervent people to destroy the unholy.”89—“You should realize that God has given the power to the community and come to us and give account of your faith …. If not, we will not care for your hypocrisy and fight against you as the archenemy of Christendom.”90 The belief of being chosen was not limited to an inner elitist feeling but extended to outward action. The sword was not only figurative. Müntzer referred to real weapons that had to be used against those who wanted to prevent the coming of the heavenly kingdom.91 This radical approach, perhaps a reflection of Hussite (or rather Taborite) ideas, which Müntzer had become familiar with during his stay in Bohemia in 1521,92 separated him from Luther and other Reformers whose positions he denounced as “Lutheran groats” and “Wittenberg soup” and “Martinian farmers’ filth.”93 Müntzer did not hesitate to get involved with rebellious groups and in fact inspired military alliances such as the Eternal Alliance of God (Ewiger Bund Gottes) at Mühlhausen in Thuringia. His eschatological vision, however, was not the main reason of upheaval, but rather an accompanying factor. Events had to be enforced and precipitated because of the imminent end of days, but the change was applied to the here and now to improve the social conditions of the present age.94

Heretical Eschatology and Impact on Reformation Movements  73

Anabaptist Apocalypticism in Thuringia after Müntzer After the defeat of the peasants at Frankenhausen (1525), Müntzer and Heinrich Pfeiffer, a former Cistercian and radical Protestant preacher in Mühlhausen, were executed.95 But their legacy was, amongst others, carried on by Hans Hut and later by the Thuringian Anabaptists. Hut had been in Mühlhausen and was a member of the Eternal Alliance, and he put Müntzer and Pfeiffer forth as the two witnesses killed by the Antichrist. He also calculated that the day of the Last Judgement would come on Pentecost 1528, the three and one-half years after the Battle of Frankenhausen being equivalent to the three and one-half days that the witnesses—Müntzer and Pfeiffer—laid unburied on the streets (Revelation 11:9). Hut had to leave Thuringia already in 1525. He moved to southern Germany, was re-baptized, and died in Augsburg in 1527.96 Anabaptism flourished in Thuringia until the end of the 1530s, and we have several sources about eschatological ideas among their ranks. The problem is that, again, we have to deal with hostile sources and must take the same precautions as with the sources on Flagellants.97 Protestant theologians readily adopted the role of inquisitors when it came to look into the transgressions of minorities.98 Notwithstanding, these sources bear testimony to a still vibrant belief of living in the last days of the world and the longing to be part of the elect. The Anabaptist preacher Jörg von Passau, a disciple of Hans Hut, affirmed that the names of the initiated would be deleted from the book of the dead and added to the book of the living, thus referring to the book of life in Revelation 3:5.99 Other elements reported by Anabaptists during trials may have had an eschatological meaning too. Thomas Spiegel of Ostheim marked Mühlhausen as one of the towns where he and his brethren should flee to await the formation of the City of God.100 Mühlhausen could appear as a kind of Second or New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:2) to the Thuringian Anabaptists, just like Münster to Jan van Leiden and his followers, or Prague to Müntzer, or Strasbourg to the Anabaptist preacher Melchior Hofmann.101 At any rate, declaring Mühlhausen one of the shelters of the Anabaptists was a reminiscence of the Peasant War of 1525 and of Thomas Müntzer. The Thuringian culprits also referred to apocalyptical numbers. Hans Römer, likewise a former member of the Eternal Alliance, wanted to conquer Erfurt in 1527/28 to set in motion the last vengeance of the rightful against the godless. He planned to light seven fires in the city, thus borrowing from the Book of Revelation one of the many uses of the number seven.102 Similarly, Dionysius Mansfeld, a cobbler who was re-baptized in Eisleben in 1527, talked about the 144,000 elect (Revelation 14:1).103 According to the Thuringian Anabaptist preachers, seven plagues, an earthquake, and a sharp wind were to occur and kill many people, as warning signals of the immediate apocalypse.104

74  Ingrid Würth

A Connected History? No doubt, eschatology was a common and continuous element of religious thinking in Central Germany from the late fourteenth century until the first half of the sixteenth century. But apart from that general finding, do we have more concrete reasons to suspect a link between the Flagellants, on the one hand, and Müntzer and the Anabaptists, on the other hand? In a more comprehensive way, the comparison of medieval heresies and Protestant movements in the sixteenth century is addressed by Howard Kaminsky in his article “Problematics of ‘Heresy’ and ‘The Reformation,’” in which he prefers to consider (like Grundmann) what have been labelled “heresies” to be “religious movements.” So re-labelled, he takes these movements seriously and portrays them as subcultures or alternative cultures, with the peculiarity that the medieval “establishment,” that is Church authorities, were not capable of tolerating much pluralism as such, and had to decide whether to integrate new religious thought—such as the Franciscan movement of the thirteenth century—or to call it heresy and prosecute it.105 In a second step, Kaminsky reflects about giving up the separation between the Middle Ages and the early modern period by referring to the idea of “Alteuropa” (Old Europe), according to Burckhardt’s model of an epoch running from the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries. Such a move downsizes the Reformation to “simply a new religious development within the continuity of Western European Christian civilization.”106 Kaminsky starts by summarizing the traditional assumption that Luther satisfied a common religious need that was unanswered by the decadent Roman Church, before considering the opposite view according to which the late medieval Church was widely accepted by the population and was even on the way to reforming itself. His conclusion is that the Reformation “can be understood as nothing more than a function of historical development within the longue durée of Alteuropa …, just one more manifestation of the same movement towards individual piety and religious experience that we find among the medieval ‘heretics.’”107 Kaminsky holds that we should speak of heresies, Protestantism, and the Catholic Church as “modalities of a Christian religious culture.”108 However, when speaking of medieval heresies, Kaminsky mostly has in mind the Hussite and Lollard movements. It has long been shown that these movements were similar to the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, and indeed Czech historiography commonly uses the term “Bohemian Reformation” to designate Hussitism. The question thus arises: does Kaminsky’s view on religious history actually fit all medieval “heresies”? Some major differences between Hussitism and sixteenth-century Reformation, on the one hand, and many medieval heterodox movements, on the other hand, are obvious. Hussitism and Lutheranism soon gained political support. They were inspired by university scholars expressing their theological ideas in treatises. Many medieval heresies, however, were underground movements led by lesser-known and marginal figures. To us they are only represented through the eyes of their persecutors, mediated by inquisitorial documents. As we have

Heretical Eschatology and Impact on Reformation Movements  75 seen, this was the case of the Flagellants and the Waldensians, while Müntzer was more similar to the Protestant Reformers. He was able to use the modern methods of printing to spread his ideas and had, at least in the beginning, the opportunity to write to princes and was supported by the town council of Allstedt.109 In the Middle Ages, deviant theologians who were confronted with the accusation of heresy—for example, Abelard or the Franciscan spirituals in conflict with the pope about Evangelical poverty—were able to defend themselves on a completely different level from the Waldensians or Flagellants. Thanks to that, we know their ideas from their own writings. Generally speaking, even if it was possible to ignore the existence of a popular heresy in a medieval community—as for example the Strasbourg council did with the Waldensians for some time—whenever a new movement was brought to light, it had to be immediately banned and persecuted.110 By contrast, some of the “hérésies savantes” had very influential supporters, like Emperor Louis IV, who harbored the Franciscan spirituals at his Munich court.111 We may thus have to distinguish between “hérésies savantes” and “hérésies populaires.”112 To be sure, Kaminsky does mention these points, but does not explore these major differences, and his account of religious history may convey too harmonious an image of medieval and sixteenth-century societies.113 Nonetheless, there are also arguments in favor of seeing the Waldensians, the Flagellants, and at least the radical Reformation as parts of the same story. If we take a look at the eschatological contents of all three of our examples—Flagellants, Anabaptists, and Müntzer—we can find motifs they all shared: the fear of the Antichrist and the appearance of the two witnesses of the Apocalypse. To depict the end of the world, Konrad Schmid referred to the Sibyllic prophecies and the parable of the Foolish Virgins from the Gospel of Matthew; and to strengthen his position as prophet, he presumably reminded his followers in a very shrouded way of the Kaisersage. Müntzer preferred the Book of Daniel to illustrate his vision of the imminent end while the Anabaptist protocols refer mostly to the Book of Revelation—the book of the living, the New Jerusalem, and apocalyptical numbers. None of these elements can be considered religiously deviant: not only were quotations from the Holy Scripture clearly acceptable, but the allusions to the Sibyl were also within the bounds of Roman orthodoxy, and not even the Kaisersage could provide a valid reason for a verdict of heresy. There was a continuing feeling of living in the last days of the earth among several religious groups in Central Germany since the fourteenth century. This awareness was used to enforce the sense of belonging among the members of these groups and the segregation of the chosen ones within them from the depraved outside. My formulation “was used” implies that this tactic was applied on purpose by one or more individuals, and indeed we can identify key figures who promoted apocalyptical thoughts to their followers: Schmid and Müntzer. It is hard to compare them because we know so much about Müntzer and almost nothing about Schmid. But it appears clearly enough that both fashioned themselves as new prophets.

76  Ingrid Würth Müntzer presented himself as “a new Daniel” in the “Sermon before the Princes”; Schmid was labeled as prophet and the new head of Christendom in the Prophecia.114 Both were commissioned by their followers with the roles of one of the two witnesses against the Antichrist after their death: Schmid in the Articuli of 1414, Müntzer by Hans Hut in 1525. But there is still one major issue that distinguishes the radical Reformation in the sixteenth century from the late medieval Flagellant movement: We have no evidence of political actions, let alone of a violent upheaval on behalf of Konrad Schmid’s followers. There are no signs of a “rhetorical massacre”—Riedl’s labeling of the last part of the “Sermon to the Princes”—in the Prophecia.115 The rejection of worldly authorities in the text is only marginal,116 and even Martin Erbstößer, who was one of the most important scholars of late medieval religious movements in the German Democratic Republic, had to admit that “the situation of classes at this time had not acuminated enough to enforce enhancements of the heretic ideology [of the Flagellants],” that is, class struggle.117 Their behavior was in all respects medieval: They did not appear publicly but took cover, acted like “normal” Christians, and performed their religion in private.118 Reform movements since the Hussites openly demanded a universal reform of the whole Church and were able to achieve an accepted position to some extent. They were supported by princes who increasingly challenged the authority of the Roman Church and the Emperor—ultimately leading to the Protestation at Speyer in 1529 and the acceptance of violence to defend their faith. 119 The Flagellants had to do without any assistance, but nonetheless their principles managed to attract people until the end of the fifteenth century, a most striking achievement. The fear of the imminent Last Judgement must have been strong enough to put up with the unpleasant form of penitence that was the signature element of the movement. As sources are scarce, it is impossible to answer the question of whether some former Flagellants or members of traditionally Flagellant families, like those persecuted in 1493 in Stolberg, became followers of Thomas Müntzer and/or Anabaptists in the first half of the sixteenth century. Moreover, there is no evidence of a direct impact of Flagellant beliefs on the ideas of Müntzer or the Anabaptists.120 Müntzer does not refer to Schmid in his writings, although his contemporaries Luther and Augustine of Alveldt did. But considering that the Flagellants, Müntzer, and the Anabaptists shared the same geographical area within the chronological scope of only about three decades, we may assume the latter knew of the former. Schmid created for his followers a very peculiar eschatological scenario that persisted for and evolved over one hundred years. He seems to be a prefiguration of Müntzer, a prophet who inspired his believers, a dissenting minority, to stand together against the mainstream Church by depicting the imminent day of judgement. We can identify eschatology as an important element of the identity of several anticlerical movements across the border of Reformation. It is hard to believe that Müntzer re-invented the wheel. To return to Kaminsky’s remarks for the last time, deviant religious movements of the Middle Ages have not only paved the way for the Reformation,121 and it is indeed required to accept them all as Christian

Heretical Eschatology and Impact on Reformation Movements  77 “modalities.” But if we consider not just the “hérésies savantes” but also the “hérésies populaires,” there appear at some points more differences than Kaminsky is ready to admit. However, there is one real continuity between the late medieval heresy, Thomas Müntzer, and the Anabaptists: their eschatological beliefs. The overall picture of the near end of the world did not change much; it is only that the drive for public acknowledgment and action—and ultimately violent riots—developed after 1500 with a greater chance of getting political support and with a wider audience thanks to the new printing medium. It all added up to the overwhelming impression that the menace of the Last Judgement and the need to repent and to convert Christianity became more urgent day by day.

Notes 1 […] als frome christenluthe im christglouben, Eduard Jacobs, “Das Stolbergische Ratsjahrbuch mit Ausführungen über Spiele und Gebräuche, den Bauernkrieg und Luther Anwesenheit in Stolberg,” Zeitschrift des Harz-Vereins für Geschichte und Altertumskunde 17 (1884): 146–206, here 158. 2 Ingrid Würth, Geißler in Thüringen. Die Entstehung einer spätmittelalterlichen Häresie (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2012), 410–11. 3 Siegfried Bräuer, Thomas Müntzer von Stolberg. Neue Forschungen zur Biographie und zum familiären Umfeld (Mühlhausen/Thür.: Thomas-MüntzerGesellschaft, 2003), 27–29; Bräuer himself refutes those theories. 4 Claus-Peter Clasen, “Medieval Heresy in the Reformation,” Church History 32 (1963): 392–414; Siegfried Hoyer, “Spätmittelalterliche Häresien und Reformation im thüringisch-sächsischen Raum,” in Häresie und Gesellschaft im Mittelalter: dem Wirken Ernst Werners gewidmet, ed. Heinz Stiller (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1987), 53–59; Hans-Jürgen Goertz, Radikalität der Reformation. Aufsätze und Abhandlungen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007); Kat Hill, Baptism, Brotherhood, and Belief in Reformation Germany. Anabaptism and Lutheranism, 1525–1585 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 131. 5 Although the anthology of František Šmahel, Häresie und vorzeitige Reformation im Spätmittelalter (München: R. Oldenbourg, 1998), offers an approach to the problem, it concentrates very much on the Hussite movement. Amedeo Molnár, historian, theologian and expert of the Waldensian and Hussite movement as well as of the history of the Unity of the Brethren, coined the expression “first reformation” for the efforts to revive the Roman Church since the twelfth century: Amedeo Molnár, “Der Hussitismus als christliche Reformbewegung,” in Bohemia Sacra. Das Christentum in Böhmen, 973–1973, ed. Ferdinand Seibt (Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1974), 92–109. His important propositions concerning the eschatological elements of those movements are summarized in a short article, “Endzeit und Reformation,” Heidelberger Jahrbücher 9 (1965): 73–80. For the Waldensians, see Euan Cameron, Waldenses: Rejections of Holy Church in Medieval Europe (Oxford/Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000), 209–84. 6 Howard Kaminsky, “The Problematics of ‘Heresy’ and ‘The Reformation,’” in Häresie und vorzeitige Reformation, ed. František Šmahel (München: R. Oldenbourg, 1998), 1–22, here 21. 7 Clasen, “Medieval Heresies in the Reformation,” 408. 8 Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, Ms 767, fol. 2v; for a transcription of the poem and the proceedings see Würth, Geißler in Thüringen, 156, 481–84.

78  Ingrid Würth 9 Augustin Alveldt, Super apostolica sede, Leipzig: Melchior Lotther 1520, http://data.onb.ac.at/rep/10764B73 (2020–05–18); cf. Augustin Alveldt, “Ein gar fruchtbares und nützliches Büchlein von dem päpstlichen Stuhl und von St. Peter,” in Flugschriften gegen die Reformation (1515–1524), ed. Adolf Laube and Ulman Weiß (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997), 72–90, here 77; “Ein Sermon, darin er sich über die Schmähungen Martin Luthers beklagt,” in ibid., 88, 93, 104; D. Martin Luthers Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimarer Ausgabe), vol. 10/I/1, ed. Walther Köhler (Weimar: Böhlau, 1910), 6–7; cf. Renate Riemeck, Die spätmittelalterlichen Flagellanten Thüringens und die deutsche Geisslerbewegung (Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des deutschen Ketzertums) (Ph.D. dissertation, Universität Jena, 1943), 44–45. 10 Weimar, Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek, Fol. 20, fol. 316ra-319va; for transcriptions see Würth, Geißler in Thüringen, 439–58. 11 Prophecia, 439. 12 Prophecia, 458. 13 Prophecia, 442. 14 M. Cyriaci Spangenberg, “Chronick der Stadt Sangerhausen,” in Christian Gottlieb Buder, Nützliche Sammlung verschiedener meistens ungedruckter Schrifften, ed. Christian Gottlieb Buder (Frankfurt/Leipzig : Cuno, 1735), 335. Despite other indications, we cannot establish a sound connection between Schmid and Sangerhausen, nor is the claim that Schmid was sentenced to death by Walter Kerlingen in Nordhausen in 1369 reliable, Hermann Haupt, “Schmid, Konrad,” in ADB 31 (1890), 683; Riemeck, Spätmittelalterliche Flagellanten, 42; Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium. Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (London: Pimlico, 2004), 144 (wrongly dating the persecution of Nordhausen to the year 1368). Martin Erbstößer, Sozialreligiöse Strömungen im späten Mittelalter. Geißler, Freigeister und Waldenser im 14. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1970), 76, offers the unconvincing alternative that Schmid had died from natural causes at the same time. 15 About the problem of inquisitorial sources and their critical assessment, see Herbert Grundmann, “Ketzerverhöre des Spätmittelalters als quellenkritisches Problem,” DA 21 (1965): 1–65. 16 Schannat, Concilia Germaniae 4, 471, 485. 17 Prophecia, 440. 18 For a thorough study of the processions of 1348/49 see Würth, Geißler in Thüringen, 23–156. 19 Würth, Geißler in Thüringen, 195–96, 458. 20 Prophecia, 450–51. 21 About the Ancient Greek and Latin Sibyllic texts and their medieval tradition, see Sibyllinische Weissagungen. Griechisch-deutsch, ed. Alfons Kurfess and Jörg-Dieter Gauger (Düsseldorf/Zurich: Artemis & Winkler, 2002); Ernst Sackur: Sibyllinische Texte und Forschungen. Pseudomethodius, Adso und die Tiburtinische Sibylle (Halle: Niemeyer, 1898); Oswald Holder-Egger, “Italienische Prophetieen des 13. Jahrhunderts I-III,” NA 15 (1890): 141–75; NA 30 (1905): 321–86; NA 33 (1908): 95–188; Bernard McGinn, “Teste David cum Sibylla: The Significance of the Sibylline Tradition in the Middle Ages,” in Women of the Medieval World: Essays in Honor of John Hine Mundy, ed. Julius Kirshner and Suzanne Fonay Wemple (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 7–35. 22 About the different texts see Ingeborg Neske, Die spätmittelalterliche deutsche Sibyllenweissagung. Untersuchung und Edition (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1985), 5–14; Hannes Möhring, Der Weltkaiser der Endzeit. Entstehung, Wandel und Wirkung einer tausendjährigen Weissagung (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2000), 253–60. 23 Neske, Deutsche Sibyllenweissagung, 268.

Heretical Eschatology and Impact on Reformation Movements  79 24 Neske, Deutsche Sibyllenweissagung, 269. 25 Neske, Deutsche Sibyllenweissagung, 266–67; cf. ibid., 41–43, and Möhring, Weltkaiser, 255. 26 Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Codex 723, from southern Thuringia; Gotha, Forschungsbibliothek, Chart. B 1581, from eastern Thuringia, cf. Neske, Deutsche Sibyllenweissagung, 58–62, 135. 27 Gottfried Zedler, “Die Sibyllenweissagung. Eine in Thüringen entstandene Dichtung aus dem Jahre 1361,” Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 61 (1936): 279–82, on the contrary, assumes that the author of the Sibyllic Propheca must have been a Flagellant from Thuringia, without any further evidence; cf. Neske, Sibyllenweissagung, 44, 47. 28 Prophecia, 450–51. 29 Acts 1:7. 30 Cf. Peter Dinzelbacher, Die letzten Dinge. Himmel, Hölle, Fegefeuer im Mittelalter (Freiburg/Br.: Herder, 1999), 156–57; the sentence was fixed in canonic law only at the Fifth Council of the Lateran 1512–1517, Dekrete der ökumenischen Konzilien, vol. 2: Konzilien des Mittelalters, ed. Josef Wohlgemut (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2000), 637. 31 Prophecia, 451. 32 Cf. Regine Körkel-Hinkfoth, Die Parabel von den klugen und törichten Jungfrauen (Mt. 25:1–13) in der bildenden Kunst und im geistlichen Schauspiel (Frankfurt/M.: Lang, 1994), 20–26. 33 Hansjürgen Linke, “‘Thüringische Zehnjungfrauenspiele’,” in VL2 9 (1995), cols. 915–18; cf. Das Eisenacher Zehnjungfrauenspiel, ed. Karin Schneider (Berlin: Schmidt, 1964), 8–9; Körkel-Hinkfoth, Parabel, 124–25. 34 Cronica S. Petri moderna, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger (MGH SS rer. Germ. [42]) (Hannover/Leipzig: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1899), 351. 35 Eisenacher Zehnjungfrauenspiel, ed. Schneider, 40–50; cf. Körkel-Hinkfoth, Parabel, 126. 36 Apart from the account of the Cronica S. Petri, the oldest manuscripts of the play unfortunately date to the end of the fourteenth century and there are no hints about the places where the play was staged in the fourteenth century, Linke, “Thüringische Zehnjungfrauenspiele,” col. 917. 37 Sibyllinische Weissagungen, ed. Kurfess-Gauger, 184; Holder-Egger, “Italienische Prophetieen I,” 173. 38 Explicitly in Prophecia, 450: “[…] quod dicunt quod fides christiana tantummodo sted in ipso scilicet Conrado Fabro et suis imitatoribus et quod ipse sit caput christianitatis.” 39 Prophecia, 443–44. 40 Prophecia, 448. 41 A. Paul, “Josue,” in LCI 2 (1970), cols. 436–42; about the Nine Worthies in general, see Johan Huizinga, Herbst des Mittelalters. Studien über Lebens- und Geistesformen des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts in Frankreich und in den Niederlanden, 10th ed., ed. Kurt Köster (Stuttgart: A. Kroener, 1969), 91; Andrey Egorov, “Charismatic Rulers in Civic Guise: Images of the Nine Worthies in Northern European Town Halls of the 14th–16th Centuries,” in Faces of Charisma: Image, Text, Object in Byzantium and the Medieval West, ed. Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak and Martha Dana Rust (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2018), 205–39, about the popularity of the Nine Worthies in medieval towns since the 1330s and their depiction as knights. Konrad Schmid could have been familiar with the figure of Joshua in military costume. 42 For a short abstract about the last members of the Hohenstaufen family especially in southern Italy and Sicily, see Salvatore Tramontana, Il mezzogiorno medievale. Normanni, svevi, angioini, aragonesi nei secoli XI–XV (Rome: Carocci, 2015), 78–87.

80  Ingrid Würth 43 Liber cronicorum sive annalis Erfordensis, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger (MGH SS rer. Germ. [42]) (Hannover/Leipzig, Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1899), 728–29, 746; Cronica S. Petri Erfordensis, 335–36; for the remembrance of the Thuringian kingship in Thuringia, see Mathias Kälble, Ethnogenese und Herzogtum Thüringen im Frankenreich (6.-9. Jahrhundert): Die Frühzeit der Thüringer. Archäologie, Sprache, Geschichte, ed. Helmut Castritius, Dieter Geuenich, and Matthias Werner (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2009), 329–413. 44 About Frederick I and his “dream of being Emperor,” cf. Otto Dobenecker, “Ein Kaisertraum des Hauses Wettin,” in Festschrift Armin Tille zum 60. Geburtstag, überreicht von Freunden und Mitarbeitern (Weimar: Böhlau, 1930), 17–38; Möhring, Weltkaiser, 244. 45 See Chapter 9 by Claudio César Rizzuto in this volume. 46 Hans-Martin Schaller, “Endzeit-Erwartungen und Antichrist-Vorstellungen in der Politik des 13. Jahrunderts,” in Stauferzeit. Ausgewählte Aufsätze (MGH Schriften 38) (Hannover: Hahn, 1993), 27; Bernhard Töpfer, Das kommende Reich des Friedens. Zur Entwicklung chiliastischer Zukunftshoffnungen im Hochmittelalter (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1964), 15–18; cf. Möhring, Weltkaiser, 17–53. 47 About the different strands of tradition, see Herbert Grundmann, “Federico e Gioacchino da Fiore,” in Ausgewählte Aufsätze, vol. 2: Joachim von Fiore (MGH Schriften 25, 2) (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1977), 221–23; Marjory Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages. A Study in Joachimism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 309–19; Hubert Houben, Kaiser Friedrich II (1194–1250). Herrscher, Mensch und Mythos (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2008), 179–86; Schaller, “Endzeit-Erwartungen,” 36–52; Möhring, Weltkaiser, 217– 42; Töpfer, Reich des Friedens, 161–67. With a focus on the texts of the fifteenth century, see Frances Courtney Kneupper, German Identity and Spiritual Reform at the End of Time: Eschatological Prophecy in Late Medieval Germany (Ph.D. dissertation, Evanston/Ill: Northwestern University, 2011), 176–90. 48 Ingrid Würth, “Die sogenannten Falschen Friedriche als Mittel (Reichs-) städtischer Politik,” in Reichszeichen. Darstellungen und Symbole des Reichs in Reichsstädten, ed. Helge Wittmann (Petersberg: M. Imhof, 2015), 187–217. 49 Düringische Chronik des Johann Rothe, ed. Rochus v. Liliencron (Jena, Friedrich Frommann, 1859), 426; for the date of origin see Stefan Tebruck, “Art. Rothe, Johannes,” in NDB 22 (2005), 118–19. About the different legends of rulers and mountains, cf. Möhring, Weltkaiser, 223–27. 50 Michael Gockel, Die deutschen Königspfalzen, vol. 2: Thüringen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 619. 51 The so-called Adhortatio ad Henricum illustrem landgravium Thuringiae et marchionem Misniae, ed. Johann Hermann Schmincke, Leiden 1745, written by Petrus de Prece, the prothonotary of Conradin, to induce Henry “the Illustrious,” Frederick’s grandfather, to send his grandson to Italy; cf. Rudolf M. Kloos, “Petrus de Prece und Konradin,” QFIAB 34 (1954): 88–108; and idem, “Ein Brief des Petrus de Prece zum Tode Friedrichs II.,” in Stupor mundi. Zur Geschichte Friedrichs II. von Hohenstaufen, ed. Gunther Wolf (Darmstadt: s.n., 1966), 525–49. And in the Cronica Minor Minoritae Erphordensis, Continuatio I. Minoritae Erhordensis a. 1266–1272, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger (MGH SS rer. Germ. [42]) (Hannover/Leipzig [no press?], 1899), 679, the chronicle of the Friars Minor of Erfurt, there is a prophecy ascribed to Joachim of Fiore about an offspring of the imperial family from the east—Frederick I—who would defeat Charles of Anjou and conquer Italy; cf. Möhring, Weltkaiser, 242–43; Dobenecker, “Kaisertraum,” 19–24; Töpfer, Reich des Friedens, 168–70; Schaller, “Endzeit-Erwartungen,” 45–46.

Heretical Eschatology and Impact on Reformation Movements  81 52 About the difficult situation in Thuringia until 1308 and Frederick’s fight against his own father Albrecht, see Hans Patze, “Politische Geschichte im hohen und späten Mittelalter,” in Geschichte Thüringens, ed. Hans Patze and Walter Schlesinger, vol. 2,1 (Köln/Wien: Böhlau, 1974), 49–67. 53 Contrary to Riemeck, Spätmittelalterliche Flagellanten, 32–34, and Erbstößer, Sozialreligiöse Strömungen, 77, who rated the integration of the Kaisersage in the Prophecia as demonstration of Schmid’s “supernatural abilities”; Cohn, Pursuit of the Millenium, 142–43, whose short outline of this context is full of unsustainable assumptions. 54 About Schoenvelt, cf. Alexander Patschovsky, “Zeugnisse des Inquisitors Hinrich Schoenvelt in einer Nicolaus-Eymericus-Handschrift,” in Vera Lex Historiae. Studien zu mittelalterlichen Quellen, FS Dietrich Kurze, ed. Stuart Jenks, Jügen Sarnowsky, and Marie-Luise Laudage (Köln/Weimar/Wien: Böhlau, 1993), 247–75. 55 Halle, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, Yc 2°2, fol. 104va; for a transcription of the Articuli of 1414, see Würth, Geißler in Thüringen, 467–71. 56 For a survey, see Siegfried Hoyer, “Die thüringische Kryptoflagellantenbewegung im 15. Jahrhundert,” Jahrbuch für Regionalgeschichte 2 (1967): 153–58; see the map in Würth, Geißler in Thüringen, 379. The following explanations at length, ibid., 315–412. 57 The text of the Articuli of 1454 in Würth, Geißler in Thüringen, 479–81; for a survey of their persecution cf. Richard Kieckhefer, Repression of Heresy in Medieval Germany (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979), 96–99. 58 Articuli 1414, 468–70. 59 Articuli 1414, 470. 60 Articuli 1414, 470; about the person of “Elias,” perhaps one of Konrad Schmid’s followers, see Ernst Günther Förstemann, Die christlichen Geißlergesellschaften (Halle, Rengersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1828), 168–69; Riemeck, Spätmittelalterliche Flagellanten, 38–40; Richard Kieckhefer, “Radical Tendencies in the Flagellant Movement of the Mid-Fourteenth Century,” The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 4 (1974): 157–76, here 173. 61 Neutestamentliche Apokryphen in deutscher Übersetzung, 6th ed., vol. 2, ed. Wilhelm Schneemelcher (Tübingen: Mohr, 1997), 562–78, here 567. 62 Elisabeth Lucchesi Palli, “Enoch und Elias,” in LCI 1 (1968), col. 645; Maria Magdalena Witte, Elias und Henoch als Exempel, typologische Figuren und apokalyptische Zeugen. Zu Verbindungen von Literatur und Theologie im Mittelalter (Frankfurt/M./Bern/New York: Lang, 1987), 180–96. 63 Articuli 1414, 470. 64 Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, ed. Heinrich Denzinger and Adolf Schönmetzer, 36th ed. (Freiburg/Br.: Herder, 1976), 149, 156 (Council of Braga 563). 65 Arno Borst, Die Katharer, 7th ed. (Freiburg/Br.: Herder, 1991), 113–14. 66 Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima, ed. Johannes Dominicus Mansi (Paris 1903) vol. 23, cols. 569–75. In the documents about other trials against Flagellants we have clear evidence of torture: the accused of Nordhausen (1446) were interrogated twice, since all testimonies under torture had to be confirmed afterwards, Susanne Lepsius, Vom Zweifeln zur Überzeugung: Der Zeugenbeweis im gelehrten Recht ausgehend von der Abhandlung des Bartolus von Sassoferrato (Frankfurt/M.: Klostermann, 2003), 14; see the text of the Nordhausen documents in Würth, Geißler in Thüringen, 471–78. The account book of Stolberg includes some details about the trial against Flagellants in 1454 and mentions the costs of the lighting during the torture, Ernst Günther Förstemann, “Wie man im 15ten Jahrhundert Kirchenraub und Ketzerei bestrafte,” Neue Mittheilungen aus dem Gebiet historisch-antiquarischer Forschungen 7 (1845): 99–100; cf. Würth, in ibid., 396–97.

82  Ingrid Würth 67 Schoenvelt even bequeathed us an inquisitorial manual, apparently from his own hand, in which he collected the Directorium inquisitorum of Nicolas Eymerich, different papal decisions about heresy, and documents from his own work, Patschovsky, “Hinrich Schoenvelt,” 249–53. 68 Grundmann, “Ketzerverhöre,” 402. 69 Prophecia, 441, 450. 70 Prophecia, 441–42; for a detailed interpretation of the Prophecia, see here and below Würth, Geißler in Thüringen, 172–278. 71 Prophecia, 442–43. 72 Richard Bauckham, The Climax of Prophecy: Studies on the Book of Revelation (Edinburgh: Clark, 1993), 384–407; Heinrich Kraft, Die Offenbarung des Johannes (Handbuch zum Neuen Testament 16a) (Tübingen: Mohr, 1974), 174–78; Heinz Giesen, Die Offenbarung des Johannes (Regensburger Neues Testament) (Regensburg: Pustet, 1997), 302–5; James L. Resseguie, Revelation Unsealed: A Narrative Critical Approach to John’s Apocalypse (Leiden/Boston/ Köln: Brill, 1998), 122–27. The verse 1 Peter 5:8 reads as follows: “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” 73 Prophecia, 443–44. 74 Prophecia, 441. 75 Cf. Arnold Angenendt, Geschichte der Religiosität im Mittelalter (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1997), 509–12. 76 Prophecia, 449. 77 Articuli, 456–58. 78 Prophecia, 451. 79 Utrum flagellatores, Wrocław, Biblioteka Uniwersytecka I Q 72m, fol. 142r-146r; Würth, Geißler in Thüringen, 280–91, 458–66; cf. Erbstößer, Sozialreligiöse Strömungen, 26–30; Cohn, Pursuit of the Millennium, 136–37; Kieckhefer, “Radical Tendencies,” 168–69. For the letter of Gregory XI, see Annales ecclesiastici denuo et accurate excusi, vol. 26 (1356–1396), ed. Cesare Baronio, Odoricus Raynaldus, and Jacob Laderchius (Bar-le-Duc/Paris/ Freiburg/Üechtl: Ex Typis Consociationis Sancti Pauli, 1880), 215; cf. Förstemann, Geißlergesellschaften, 161; Kieckhefer, Repression, 82, 142. 80 Articuli 1414, 468–69; the remark about Christ being as big as a mountain is already mentioned by a heretic interrogated in Bohemia in 1337, cf. Robert Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1972), 107. 81 E.g. another set of Articuli from 1454, see Würth, Geißler in Thüringen, 479–81. 82 Thomas Müntzer, Briefwechsel (Thomas-Müntzer-Ausgabe, Kritische Gesamtausgabe 2), ed. Siegfried Bräuer and Manfred Kobuch (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2010), 94 (my translation). 83 Printed in Basel in 1520, http://mdz-nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:12bsb10204150-0 (2020–04–11). 84 Cf. Hans-Jürgen Goertz, Thomas Müntzer. Revolutionär am Ende der Zeiten (München: C. H. Beck, 2015), 226–27. 85 “Prager Sendbrief Fassung B,” in Thomas Müntzer, Schriften, Manuskripte und Notizen (Thomas-Müntzer-Ausgabe, Kritische Gesamtausgabe 1), ed. Armin Kohnle, Eike Wolgast, et al. (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2017), 426–27. 86 “Prager Sendbrief Fassung A,” ed. Kohnle and Wolgast, 417; Fassung B, ibid., 427; cf. Goertz, Thomas Müntzer, 227–28; Peter Matheson, “Thomas Müntzer and John Knox: Radical and Magisterial Reformers?,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 68 (2017): 529–44, 530, 538. 87 Auslegung des zweiten Kapitels des Buches Daniel (sog. Fürstenpredigt), ed. Kohnle and Wolgast, 304.

Heretical Eschatology and Impact on Reformation Movements  83 88 Auslegung des zweiten Kapitels des Buches Daniel, ed. Kohnle and Wolgast, 319; cf. Goertz, Thomas Müntzer, 228, and Cohn, Pursuit of the Millennium, 238–39. A recent approach to the Fürstenpredigt is offered by Matthias Riedl, “Apocalyptic Violence and Revolutionary Action: Thomas Müntzer’s Sermon to the Princes,” in A Companion to the Premodern Apocalypse, ed. Michael A. Ryan (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2016), 260–96. 89 “Vnd wen sich das wirt vorwenden, so wirt das swert yhn genommen werden vnd wirt dem ynbrunstigen volke gegeben werden czum vntergange der gotlosen, Danielis 7,” Thomas Müntzer an Kurfürst Friedrich den Weisen, Allstedt, 4. Oktober 1523, Briefwechsel, ed. Bräuer and Kobuch, 205. 90 “Wiltu erkennen, Danielis 7, wie Gott die gewalt der gemeyne gegeben hat vnd fur vns erscheynen vnd deynen glauben berechen …. Wo aber nicht, werden wyr vns an deyne lame, schale fratzen nichts keren vnd widder dich fechten, wie widder eynen ertzfeynd des Christenglaubens,” Thomas Müntzer an Graf Albrecht von Mansfeld, Frankenhausen, 12. Mai 1525, Briefwechsel, ed. Bräuer and Kobuch, 465. 91 Auslegung des zweiten Kapitels des Buches Daniel, ed. Kohnle and Wolgast, 316–18; cf. Goertz, Thomas Müntzer, 228–29. 92 Goertz, Thomas Müntzer, 78–94. 93 “Hastu ynn deyner lutherischen gruotz vnd ynn deyner Wittembergischen suppen nicht muegen funden, as Ezechiel an seynem 37. capitel weyssagt? Auch hastu ynn deynem Martinischen bawrendreck nicht muogen schmecken, wie der selbige prophet weyter sagt am 39. vnderschied …,” Thomas Müntzer an Graf Albrecht von Mansfeld, Frankenhausen, 12. Mai 1525, Briefwechsel, ed. Bräuer and Kobuch, 464. 94 Goertz, Thomas Müntzer, 229–30; idem, Radikalität der Reformation, 105– 13, against Cohn, Pursuit of the Millennium, 251: “Müntzer was a prophet obsessed by eschatological phantasies which he attempted to translate into reality by exploiting social discontent.” 95 Goertz, Thomas Müntzer, 215–17; about Pfeiffer, see Günther Vogler, “Heinrich Pfeiffer,” in NDB 20 (2001), 319–20. 96 Goertz, Radikalität, 113–15; cf. Gottfried Seebaß, “Hans Hut,” in Radikale Reformatoren. 21 biographische Skizzen von Thomas Müntzer bis Paracelsus, ed. Hans-Jürgen Goertz (München: C. H. Beck, 1978), 44–50; for a thorough study of Hans Hut, see Gottfried Seebaß, Müntzers Erbe. Werk, Leben und Theologie des Hans Hut (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2002), about his trial in Augsburg, ibid., 121–56. 97 For an overview, see Kat Hill, Baptism, Brotherhood, and Belief in Reformation Germany. Anabaptism and Lutheranism, 1525–1585 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 19–25; the problem of the sources is also mentioned by Gerhard Zschäbitz, Zur Mitteldeutschen Wiedertäuferbewegung nach dem Großen Bauernkrieg (Berlin: Rütten & Loening, 1958), 143. 98 Even very famous Reformers like Melanchthon, who assisted with the trial of the Anabaptists imprisoned at Leuchtenburg Castle near Kahla, took this role seriously. Cf. Paul Wappler, ed., Die Täuferbewegung in Thüringen von 1526– 1584 (Jena: Fischer, 1913), 406–7. 99 Quellen zur Geschichte der Wiedertäufer, vol. 2: Markgraftum Brandenburg (Bayern I), ed. Karl Schornbaum (Leipzig: Heinsius, 1934), 116; cf. Hill, Baptism, 90. 100 Wappler, Täuferbewegung, 231. The other town was Mühlhausen in “Schweintzer [land] gelegen”; that is, Mulhouse in Alsace. The connection between the two towns, apart from their identical names, cannot be traced. It is not impossible that the entry of both Mühlhausens is due to the interrogator, considering the trial context of the source.

84  Ingrid Würth 101 Hill, Baptism, 91–92; for the Anabaptists in Münster cf. Claus Bernet, “Gebaute Apokalypse”. Die Utopie des Himmlischen Jerusalem in der Frühen Neuzeit (Mainz: Von Zabern, 2007), 91–116. 102 Wappler, Täuferbewegung, 363; cf. Zschäbitz, Mitteldeutsche Wiedertäuferbewegung, 69; Ulman Weiß, Die frommen Bürger von Erfurt. Die Stadt und ihre Kirche im Spätmittelalter und in der Reformationszeit (Weimar: Böhlau, 1988), 222–25; cf. Goertz, Radikalität, 116–17; Hill, Baptism, 93. 103 Wappler, Täuferbewegung, 260. 104 Wappler, Täuferbewegung, 289, 255–56; cf. Hill, Baptism, 93–94. 105 Kaminsky, “Problematics,” 12–14. 106 Kaminsky, “Problematics,” 15–16. 107 Kaminsky, “Problematics,” 19. 108 Kaminsky, “Problematics,” 21. 109 For example in his conflict with Luther; see Goertz, Thomas Müntzer, 159–79; about the Anabaptist publications, especially of Menno Simons, see Robert W. Scribner, “Heterodoxie, Literalität und Buchdruck in der frühen Reformation,” in Religion und Kultur in Deutschland 1400–1800 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002), 265–89; for the connection between Reformation and letterpress in Germany, see Andrew Pettigree and Matthew Hall, “Buchdruck und Reformation—Eine Neubetrachtung,” in Bücher, Drucker, Bibliotheken in Mitteldeutschland. Neue Forschungen zur Kommunikations- und Mediengeschichte um 1500, ed. Enno Bünz (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2006), 345–49; Goertz, Thomas Müntzer, 111–31. 110 For the Strasbourg example, see Ingrid Würth, “Reichsstadt und Häresie im Spätmittelalter,” in Reichsstadt im Religionskonflikt. 4. Tagung des Mühlhäuser Arbeitskreises für Reichsstadtgeschichte, Mühlhausen, 8. bis 10. Februar 2016, ed. Thomas Lau and Helge Wittmann (Petersberg: Imhof, 2017), 79–85. 111 Michael Menzel, Die Zeit der Entwürfe 1273–1347 (Stuttgart: Klett Cotta, 2012), 175; for an actual study of the court of Louis IV, see Mirjam Eisenzimmer, “Der herrscherliche Hof als Nachrichten- und Kommunikationszentrum,” in Ludwig der Bayer (1314–1347). Reich und Herrschaft im Wandel, ed. Hubertus Seibert (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2014), 331–59, about the Franciscans: ibid., 354. A survey of the intellectual level of the court is given by Karl Bosl, “Der geistige Widerstand am Hofe Ludwigs des Bayern gegen die Kurie,” in Die Welt zur Zeit des Konstanzer Konzils. Reichenau-Vorträge im Herbst 1964, ed. Theodor Mayer (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 1965), 99–118. 112 Herbert Grundmann, “Hérésies savantes et hérésies populaires au Moyen Âge,” in Hérésies et sociétés dans l’Europe pré-industrielle, 11e–18e siècles, ed. Jacques Le Goff (Paris: Mouton, 1963), 209–81; Gordon Leff, “Hérésie savante et hérésie populaire dans le bas Moyen Age,” in ibid., 219–27. 113 Leff, “Hérésie,” 14, 19. 114 Auslegung des zweiten Kapitels des Buches Daniel, ed. Kohnle and Wolgast, 316; cf. Goertz, Thomas Müntzer, 145. Prophecia, 450. 115 Riedl, “Apocalyptic Violence,” 263, 287–90. 116 Prophecia, 441. 117 Erbstößer, Sozialreligiöse Strömungen, 81. 118 Ibid. For an insight into the day-to-day life of the sect, the family ties, and the connections to other Flagellant communities, see the trial of Nordhausen 1446, Würth, Geißler in Thüringen, 358–81. About the necessary secrecy of medieval heretics, see Alexander Patschovsky, “Was sind Ketzer? Über den geschichtlichen Ort der Häresien im Mittelalter,” in “… eine finstere und fast unglaubliche Geschichte?” Mediävistische Notizen zu Umberto Ecos Mönchsroman ‘Der Name der Rose,’ ed. Max Kerner (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1987), 183.

Heretical Eschatology and Impact on Reformation Movements  85 119 Heinrich Lutz, Das Ringen um deutsche Einheit und kirchliche Erneuerung. Von Maximilian I. bis zum Westfälischen Frieden, 1490–1648 (Frankfurt/M./ Berlin: Ullstein, 1983), 245–52; Armin Kohnle, Reichstag und Reformation. Kaiserliche und ständische Religionspolitik von den Anfängen der Causa Lutheri bis zum Nürnberger Religionsfrieden (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2001), 365–75. 120 Clasen, “Medieval Heresies,” 408–11, must admit so, but still insists: “Thomas Müntzer was born in the very area where the flagellants had flourished most. Surely there was a continuity, if not of ideas, at least one of mentality.” 121 Kaminsky, “Problematics,” 15.

3 Terror, War and Reformation Ivan the Terrible in the Age of Apocalypticism Damien Tricoire

Introduction In the second half of the sixteenth century, France and Muscovy experienced simultaneous waves of violence. In 1562, the French Wars of Religion broke out; two years later, in 1564, Ivan IV, Grand Prince of Moscow and Tsar (contemporaries used above all the former title), began to persecute his opponents. Recent scholarship suggests that expectations of the Latter Days may have played a crucial role not only in the French Wars of Religion, as Denis Crouzet has shown, but also in the case of Ivan “the Terrible’s” rule of terror.1 A comparison with other European countries and with the regions dominated by Muslims offers sufficient ground to speak of a Eurasian Age of Latter-Day expectations. But which connections can we identify between groups of different confessions and religions? While in cases like those of the Iberian conversos, interreligious connections can be identified rather easily, this endeavor is much more uncertain about Muscovite Russia. Could Ivan’s rule of terror and other simultaneous outbursts of religious violence elsewhere in Europe be more than just a coincidence? Answering these questions means taking a position in two larger debates. First, scholars have been discussing the extent to which and how Muscovy was connected to the rest of the world. In the 1970s, Fernand Braudel regarded Muscovy as an isolated place, separated from Europe by deep forests and swamps.2 Another classical view claims that Muscovy was, above all, part of the Orthodox world. Russian political ideology was in this view influenced by Byzantium, as indicated by the belief that Moscow was the Third Rome.3 This view has been contested, however, as it has been claimed that while the coronation ceremony of the Tsars indeed contained some Byzantine elements—but not only—the idea of the Third Rome was not a dominant feature of Muscovite political ideology.4 A third, more recent view, consists in underlining the Mongol influence on Muscovite Russia. Donald Ostrowski, the most prominent exponent of this theory, holds that Muscovite political culture was much more a product of the steppe world than of Byzantine influences.5 A last approach to Muscovite history highlights connections to Central and Western Europe. Accordingly, sixteenth-century Muscovite religious and intellectual history was much DOI: 10.4324/9781003081050-5

Terror, War and Reformation  87 more influenced by Central Europe via Novgorod and Lithuania than by Greek culture. Indeed, at the end of the fifteenth century, Latin had become the most important foreign language, so much so that Greek literature had first to be translated into Latin in order to be read.6 The second major debate concerns the interpretation of Ivan the Terrible’s reign, and especially of his rule of terror. For many decades, the question of whether his policy was rational has divided historians. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century liberal-minded historians tended to see Ivan IV’s political violence as a manifestation of mental illness, especially of his alleged paranoia. This thesis has been formulated most prominently by Richard Hellie, who considered it impossible to identify any rational pattern in the persecutions ordered by the tsar.7 By contrast, historians striving to rehabilitate Ivan’s reign consider that violence was necessary in order to build a strong state. For example, Sergey Platonov held in the 1920s that Ivan, by persecuting boyars, had broken the power of the aristocracy and spared Russia the sad fate of Poland-Lithuania, which its neighbors divided among themselves in the late eighteenth century.8 This thesis was intensely discussed in the second half of the twentieth century. According to Aleksandr Zimin, the boyar aristocracy had already largely lost power; Ivan’s rule of terror aimed at destroying only the last remnants of feudal fragmentation.9 Ruslan Skrynnikov held that Ivan’s repression was directed against some aristocratic clans that had retained a strong sense of corporate identity and autonomy. The Grand Prince wanted to impose absolutism and relied on part of the lower nobility to achieve a centralization of power.10 In the late twentieth century, a consensus emerged that Ivan had not intended to break the power of the aristocracy as such, nor create a new social order. Many of the Grand Prince’s abiders belonged to some of the greatest Russian lineages.11 If the Tsar’s authority was not fundamentally threatened by feudal structures, however, it remains more urgent than ever to explain why Ivan was so violent. No consensus has emerged on this question over the past decades. In the 1960s, Michael Cherniavsky held that Ivan was a “Renaissance prince,” that is a ruler typical of a Machiavellian epoch of secularized thought unbothered by ethical considerations,12 but this thesis fails to convince given that Ivan’s violence was so peculiar for a monarch. For example, historians agree that the Saint Bartholomew’s massacre in France in 1572, which is otherwise often compared to Ivan’s massacres, was not ordered by the French monarch Charles IX.13 In the late twentieth century, Ostrowski argued that massacres were common in the world of the steppe and suggested that Ivan IV was only mimicking the violent political practices of the Tatar hordes, that is nomadic Muslim peoples speaking Turkish languages, when killing his subjects. From this perspective, the Christian ideas and symbols referred to by Ivan are irrelevant to any understanding of his rule, even though he used a heavily Biblical language in his writings. If this were true, Islamic political culture would be more relevant to Ivan’s reign than the European one.14 Ostrowski has not been the only historian to claim that Ivan’s violent policy was unconnected to the religious ideas he famously expressed in his writings.

88  Damien Tricoire Indeed, in the second half of the twentieth century, the place of religion in Muscovite culture was questioned fundamentally by Edward Keenan, who held that laymen were virtually uninfluenced by religious ideas in Muscovite Russia. This thesis was rather staggering considering that mentions of God are as present in Muscovite texts written by laymen as in Central and Western European sources. Ivan’s own writings are themselves full of references to the Holy Scripture and writings of the Church Fathers. To uphold his thesis, Keenan went as far as declaring that such famous sources like the Grand Prince’s letters to Prince Kurbskii were apocrypha—a thesis that has been refuted since.15 What is more, still in the second half of the twentieth century, Ivan the Terrible was often portrayed as a blasphemous tsar who “deliberately flaunted the religious standards”—he was, some scholars claimed, the king of a violent “carnival” or minstrel (skomorokhi) culture supposedly antithetical to Christianity. According to this interpretation, Ivan’s use of Christian symbols was parodical and not the expression of a sincere religiosity.16 As a result of both Keenan’s views and the thesis that Ivan was merely parodying Christian symbols, historians believing that religion pervaded the culture not only of churchmen, but also of laymen, and especially of the tsar, were left on the defensive in the late twentieth century. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, they have been somewhat vindicated as growing evidence has confirmed the centrality of religion in the lives and thought of laymen. Historians have shown that religious ideas pervaded not only the epistles of churchmen and chronicles, but also administrative records and letters.17 The wars against Kazan or in Livonia were interpreted primarily through religious lenses, that is as wars against “pagans” (Muslims) and “heretics” (Protestants).18 In the past three decades, religion has even emerged in the historiography as a major factor to explain Ivan’s policies. In the 1990s, Priscilla Hunt presented Ivan’s “blasphemies and atrocities” as deriving “from the official ideology of sacred kingship.”19 She argued that the idea of divine wisdom was central to such “mythology” through a somewhat obscure interpretation of religious icons, whose connection to Ivan’s rule of terror is anything but evident, and concluded that Ivan IV saw himself as a “Holy Fool.”20 At the same time, she claimed that “on a subconscious level, Ivan’s personal mythology was a compensatory response to extreme paranoia,” and followed thus the image of a mentally ill ruler.21 Arguably more convincing because they follow more closely Ivan’s own writings are studies by Alexander Dvorkin and Stefan Plaggenborg, who have reconstructed the way the tsar perceived himself and the world. Dvorkin holds that Ivan was influenced by Byzantine theocratic tradition; he struggled to impose divine justice and to purify his tsardom, influenced by eschatological ideas like those expressed in the Third Rome and New Israel tropes.22 Plaggenborg places a similar emphasis on Ivan’s conception of justice as a godly mission and his strongly hierarchical worldview through which he saw himself as God’s representative on earth.23 From this, we can conclude that Ivan, far from parodying religious language and symbols, sincerely strove to imitate God in his severe justice.

Terror, War and Reformation  89 Other scholars have emphasized the role of religion in explaining Ivan’s rule of terror. Sergei Bogatyrev and Andrei Yurganov have drawn attention to apocalyptical symbols used by Ivan and his entourage.24 Their scholarship helps to better understand Ivan IV’s use of violence: it indicates that eschatological expectations may have been much more critical to Ivan’s conceptions of his political action than Plaggenborg and Dvorkin acknowledge. This chapter concurs with Bogatyrev’s and Yurganov’s theses. It argues that it was Ivan’s perception of Protestantism, and thus of the Livonians and of the war in Livonia, that gave a new impetus to the already widespread New Israel imagination. Whenever Ivan was confronted with internal resistance to his war policy, he was prompted to embrace violence. This choice was a rational one based on his worldview. Ivan was not insane: he did not invent opponents and enemies, but instead interpreted real political resistance within an eschatological framework. For these reasons, this chapter argues that, at least within European Christianity, simultaneous outbursts of religious violence may not have been entirely coincidental. Indeed, there was a common factor behind the Saint Bartholomew Day’s and the Novgorod massacres: the spread of Protestantism, a movement that was itself based on eschatological expectations.

Muscovy in the Age of Christian Religious Reforms Ivan IV refers to Christian religious texts, and above all to the Bible, to justify why he punishes his subjects so severely. In order to explain Ivan’s terror policy, we have thus to begin by exploring the sixteenth-century Christian religious context. This may seem self-evident, but as some scholars see in Muscovite religious discourses above all the expression of a clerical culture, it is not obvious. In the case of Ivan IV, we do have texts penned by himself, and they are all deeply influenced by the Bible and other Christian texts: among others, his long letters to Prince Ivan Kurbskii and his answer to the Protestant preacher Jan Rokyta. Ivan the Terrible shared with clerics a deeply Biblical and patristic culture. In order to interpret Ivan’s writings, we have to pay close attention to the multiple religious dynamics in sixteenth-century Muscovy. These were largely connected to wider European religious change. In Muscovy, there were strong latter-days expectations, fueled by two factors. First, since the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, Muscovy had seen itself as the only true believing monarchy left. This situation suggested the idea that Muscovy had a special role to play in the End Times, which famously prompted the monk Filofei of Pskov to claim that Muscovy was the Third Rome. Muscovy was presented frequently as the New Israel of the Latter Days.25 Between the late fifteenth and the second half of the sixteenth century, the court elite increasingly enhanced the sacrality of the Muscovite monarchy by multiple means like rituals (among others the coronation), the writing of chronicles, and the painting of frescos in the palace chambers.26

90  Damien Tricoire Second, the close contacts between Muscovy, Lithuania, and Livonia led to the appropriation of religious ideas from central Europe. Muscovy and Lithuania largely shared the same language, as half of the ancient Rus’ was in Lithuania (among other major towns Kiev, the ancient capital city of the Rus’). Many people regularly crossed the border. There were also many Germans from the Baltic region and beyond living in Muscovy. Tver’ and Novgorod were especially involved in the Baltic trade. This helped central European religious reform movements to take root in Muscovy. Around 1500, the Archbishop of Novgorod, Gennadii, sought to punish a new religious group known as “Judaizers” by their opponents, and who are only known through polemical and inquisitional sources. Although the evidence is thin, it appears that they were not influenced by Judaism, as the term suggests, but rather by some movement related to the Bohemian reformation.27 Furthermore, in the first half of the sixteenth century, there were Russian preachers clearly influenced by the Protestant reformation.28 Reform endeavors are supplementary evidence that Muscovy was not a world apart from Central and Western Europe. At least from the mid sixteenth century onward, some reform-minded churchmen criticized ­ monastic wealth.29 A major intellectual figure in Muscovy was Maxim the Greek (born Michael Trivolis, Μιχαήλ Τριβώλης), a native of Arta in Greece who had studied in Italy and worked with Pico della Mirandola. Maxim was invited to Muscovy by Vassili III, Ivan’s father, in order to improve the translations of texts used in liturgy.30 Some historians claim that he had become a Dominican monk while in Florence under Savonarola’s influence.31 Writings by Erasmus of Rotterdam were also translated into Russian by his Muscovite entourage.32 Maxim was influential because he was linked to the dominant court faction in the 1550s, that of the favorite Adashev and the protopope Sil’vestr.33 Prince Andrei Kurbskii, a great noble who belonged to this court faction, writes very favorably about Maxim, whom he even presents as a kind of prophet giving messages to him and to Adashev that they should pass on to the Tsar. Kurbskii accused Maxim’s enemies of only seeking wealth and of advising Ivan IV to get rid of his holy councilors and to govern alone.34 The Adashev/Sil’vestr/Maxim group advocated war against Muslims. In the 1550s, they participated in the campaign against Kazan, which they interpreted as a crusade. They presented the conquest of Kazan as proof of Muscovy’s divine election and promoted a policy of brutal conversion of Muslims thereafter.35 There are some hints that this court faction was influenced by latter-days interpretation patterns. In his famous letter to Ivan written in 1564, Kurbskii calls Muscovy “Israel.” The Adashev/Sil’vestr faction is in Kurbskii’s terminology the “strong in Israel” (silnye vo Izraili), while their enemies are “followers of the Antichrist.”36 Kurbskii describes thus the political situation in Muscovy as an eschatological fight between those who seek to restore Israel and those who are seduced by the Antichrist. Kurbskii was not an isolated case in this recourse to prophetic and apocalyptic motifs. Official art also used eschatological topoi in the 1550s. For

Terror, War and Reformation  91 example, a big icon was placed right in front of the throne in the Moscow Kremlin’s main church: it represented the Muscovite host led by its patron saints and leaving Babylon in flames to join the New Jerusalem, where Christ and his mother were waiting to greet them. There is thus evidence that the court elite presented warfare against Muslims as a contribution to the eschatological fight.37 There is no source from the 1550s suggesting that Ivan IV believed himself to be king of the New Israel or to live in the Latter Days. However, he already perceived Muscovy as deeply corrupted and wallowing in sin. The Grand Prince propagated the idea that reform was urgent if Muscovy wanted to avoid God’s wrath and destruction, particularly in the letter by which he convened a Church council in 1551. He describes at length the tragic events of his youth (like the death of his parents in 1533 and 1538 respectively, and the fire of Moscow in 1547) and feared that they were divine punishments for having provoked God’s anger: May I not suffer like those who have provoked [God’s] anger and have not repented of their misdeeds […] Sodom and Gomorrah were burned down in order to punish adultery […] Numerous kingdoms vanished without a trace because of fornication and sodomy […]. We should fear very much to experience such a fate.38 Accordingly, it was because he wanted to avoid this fate that Ivan called the prelates together in an assembly that later became famous as “The Hundred Chapters Council” (Stoglav). The Grand Prince urged the gathered clerics to unify the liturgy, to discipline the clergy, and to impose divine laws on the population. Adultery, sodomy, or the breaking of fast during Lent were to be punished more harshly than before. Dance, gambling, and astrology were to be forbidden.39

Latter-Days Expectations and the War against “Heretics” Why did Ivan resort to terror around the middle of the 1560s? We have a source he penned in 1564 that is of very much help to understand this: his long answer to the already mentioned letter by Prince Kurbskii. In 1564, Kurbskii fled to Lithuania and entered the service of the Polish king because he feared for his life. That year, Ivan had begun to persecute the most influential members of the Adashev/Silvestr’ court faction who had now fallen into disgrace. As we have seen, Kurbskii wrote his letter in order to accuse Ivan of being a tyrant seeking to destroy the “strong in Israel” under the influence of the “Antichrist.” In his unusually long and detailed answer, Ivan justified violence against these self-proclaimed “Israelites.” The Grand Prince asserts at the beginning of his letter that God has created kings in order to serve Him. Kurbskii is, on the contrary, a rebel against God, and serves the enemies of Christ, that is the Poles and Lithuanians.40 Ivan draws a very negative picture of present-day Muscovy: he describes its desolate state quoting from Isaiah’s

92  Damien Tricoire depiction of Jerusalem before the divine punishment and its renewal under the messiah. According to the Grand Prince, it is necessary to punish all the rebels against God, or else the Almighty will destroy Israel (an idea that was already present in his letter to the bishops and monastery elders in 1551). After the punishment, “Zion” will be restored. With a modified quote of Isaiah 1:24–26, Ivan justifies terror: Therefore saith the Lord, the Lord of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel: “O woe unto the strong in Israel! My wrath will not cease against mine adversaries, and I will avenge me of mine enemies. And I will turn my hand upon thee, and burn thee into purity and I will destroy the unbelievers, and I will remove the transgressors from thee and all the proud will I humble. And I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counsellors as at the beginning; and afterwards thou shalt be called the city of righteousness, the mother of cities, the faithful Zion.”41 Ivan tells Kurbskii that the executed noblemen were in fact traitors. Those who do not respect divine laws will suffer divine punishment not only after the Day of Judgement, but already on earth.42 This unique source gives us also information on the reason of the conflict between Ivan and his fellow councilors. Ivan writes that the members of the court faction to which Kurbskii belonged (“Kurbskii’s friends”) “persecuted” their sovereign because they opposed the war “against the Germans” (that is the war in Livonia).43 He reproaches them for having protected the “Germans.” Without them, “all Germany would have been under the Orthodox faith in that very year.”44 But instead of supporting this holy project, the Adashev/Silvestr’ court faction incited the “Lithuanian and gothic pagans” (that is the Swedes) to take up arms against the right believers.45 These accusations show that the bone of contention was the war policy, which is corroborated by other sources. Whereas the group led by Adashev and Silvestr’ advocated a war against Muslims, Ivan chose in the late 1550s to wage war on the German-speaking Livonian Protestants instead. This may have caused the disgrace of Adashev in 1561, and the rise of the new favorite Basmanov.46 The Tsar’s fight against Protestants made perfect sense based on his belief that he was living in the Latter Days: attacking the “Germans” meant fighting rebels against God. This at least is suggested by a remarkable episode. In 1570, the Grand Prince invited Jan Rokyta, a Bohemian Brother who accompanied a Polish embassy, to explain his faith. This was the occasion of a public rebuttal of heresy by the Tsar himself. His answer to Rokyta is a first-hand document to understand Ivan’s perception of the Reformation. It shows that he made a clear distinction between Catholicism and Protestantism (but not between Protestant denominations). A critical factor was that Protestants were, in his view, iconoclasts. As he makes clear, Rokyta and his colleagues, like all “Lutherans” (a term Ivan used indiscriminately for all Protestants) are “false prophets,”“servants of the Antichrist,” or “Antichrists”

Terror, War and Reformation  93 themselves.47 These terms show clearly that Ivan interpreted the Reformation as an eschatological phenomenon, as a sign that the Latter Days had come. The Antichrist story implied a final fight between good and evil, and indeed in his answer to Rokyta the Grand Prince presented himself as inspired by the Holy Spirit and as a warrior against the devil.48 Taking these ideas in consideration, as well as the idea that Muscovy should be turned into a New Israel in the Latter Days, it becomes clear why Ivan considered terror a perfectly legitimate means. Everyone who was against the war on the Antichrist could, and indeed should, be wiped out. Ivan IV was not alone in presenting the war in Livonia as a religious war. Official symbols displayed during the war asserted the religious character of the conflict, and presented the campaigns against the “Germans” as an eschatological fight. As Bogatyrev has shown, the Livonian War gave new impulse to iconographic representations of sacred violence, probably under the inspiration of Western sources. This was especially true of the so-called Great Banner commissioned in 1559/60 by the Grand Prince for his military campaign. Like contemporary images of the Catholic League in France, this banner represented the sword coming from Christ’s mouth (Revelation 19:15) and other elements taken from the book of Revelation focusing on the destruction of God’s enemies in the final struggle.49 Archbishop Pimin of Novgorod, in a letter to the tsar in early 1563, distinguished between the “Latins” (that is the Catholics) and the “most impure” and “pagan” German “heretics” and “iconoclasts,” against whom the Grand Prince, as a new King David and Emperor Constantine, has the duty to fight. God helps his “anointed one” in this struggle against His enemies because “the day of their doom” is near, Pimin writes.50 A few years later, Metropolitan Filipp— the head of the Muscovite church—claimed that the tsar waged war in Livonia because “the pagan Germans have fallen into many different sects, and have been above all seduced by Lutheranism, and they have destroyed the holy churches, blasphemed against the holy and venerable icons ….”51 This interpretation was taken over in official chronicles like to so-called Book of Degrees (Stepennaya kniga), which crafted a providential history of Muscovite princes.52 News about miracles proving the wrongs of the German heretics helped legitimize the conquest of Livonian cities, and icons miraculously saved from Livonian “iconoclasts” were held in high esteem by Ivan and his entourage.53 In light of this holy war and eschatological struggle, violence against confessional enemies could therefore be legitimized. The war in Livonia was a very brutal one, and not only civilians in Livonia, but also numerous war prisoners and foreigners living in Muscovy were massacred.54 This was presented as a just, divine punishment for their heresy. For Ivan, the “German” towns of Livonia were not foreign cities erring religiously: they were Russian cities (they had belonged to the old Rus’) having fallen from the true faith. After Narva or Polotsk were taken by Ivan’s troops, a special emphasis was placed on the restoration of Orthodox piety and churches.55 In this view, massacres were a deserved punishment, not gratuitous violence.

94  Damien Tricoire

The Fight Against the Antichrist and Terror Against Muscovite Subjects Was violence against Orthodox Muscovites connected to this interpretation of the war in Livonia? It is notoriously hard to reconstruct the reasons for Ivan to persecute a certain person or a certain group. Russian sources do not give much information on that point, and it is necessary to collect clues from texts written by Germans in Ivan’s service.56 We have enough hints, however, to assert that in many cases the killings were directly linked to the war in Livonia, a fact that scholarship has strangely downplayed and even largely overlooked. Ivan’s use of terror was first a reaction against widespread critique of his war policy, and was fueled thereafter by reactions to the terror policy itself. In the following paragraphs, I will concentrate on events having unleashed persecutions, above all against male members of the elite. Although this was in almost all these cases followed by persecutions against some of their relatives (also female), their clients, and their serfs, I will not touch upon the details of the killings because my goal here is to give insights into the causes of violence, not its scope. The tsar’s first victims were directly linked to the Adashev/Sil’vestr court faction who criticized the offensive in Livonia in the late 1550s as an attack against fellow Christians that diverted the tsar from the godly task of conquering Muslim territories. The immediate cause for the disgrace of Adashev and Sil’vestr was the truce they imposed in 1560, at a time when the Muscovites were militarily successful in Livonia. In the eyes of Adashev and Sil’vestr, the Grand Prince should proceed to attack the Crimean khanate. They failed, however, to convince him. The Zakharin-Yur’ev clan seized the opportunity and convinced Ivan to depart from his councilors and to resume the war in Livonia. In 1562, however, opposition to the war in Livonia was still strong, as evidenced by a letter from 27 November by Metropolitan Makarii and several boyars to the King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. These influential members of the Muscovite elite expressed their hostility to the war in Livonia and their wish for peace with Lithuania. According to them, Christian blood should not be spilled.57 In March 1563, when the Lithuanian host took back Polotsk, Ivan ordered the arrest of the generals who had led the campaign, and charged them with treason. It is precisely at this moment that Ivan began to persecute people linked to Adashev and to eliminate largely his former favorite’s clan. The tsar’s next victims were members of the families of nobles who joined the Grand Duke of Lithuania in 1563–64, including Vladimir Semenovich Zabolotskii. Further military defeats unleashed more persecutions. In early 1564, the Muscovite army was defeated near Ula and Orsha. Ivan claimed that traitors had communicated the battle order to the enemy, which is indeed possible. The Obolenskii clan was accused and several of its leading members (the princes Repnin-Obolenbskii and Kashin-Obolenskii, as well as Prince Dmitrii Fedorovich Ovchinin Telepnev-Obolenskii) were arrested.58 All these arrests and murders prompted Prince Andrei Kurbskii and Prince

Terror, War and Reformation  95 Iurii I. Gorenskii-Obolenskii to flee to Lithuania in spring 1564. Vladimir Vasil’evich Morozov, a friend of Kurbskii, was consequently accused of corresponding with the traitor.59 It can thus hardly be said that there was “no pattern in the disgraces and executions of 1560–1564.”60 The list of the victims and the circumstances of their imprisonment and death confirm that violence was—in Ivan’s eyes—an answer to the lack of loyalty demonstrated in the war in Livonia, as he himself asserted in his famous letter to Kurbskii. In spring 1564, boyars and Metropolitan Afanasii protested against the massacre of the Obolenskii clan. This protest by a leading churchman enticed the tsar to renounce violent repression, at least temporarily.61 However, six months later, after the death of his favorite Yurev and the rise of a new favorite, Basmanov (in late 1564), Ivan resorted to terror again. Basmanov was a fervent advocate of the war in Livonia and an enemy of the Obolenskii clan.62 In the following months, Ivan exiled many members of the Suzdal nobility, that is the princely families Rostovskii, Iaroslavskii, Shuiskii, and Starodubskii.63 These had supported Silvestr’ and Adashev, and/or were close to the Kurbskii and the Obolenskii clans. Ivan accused them of not being bellicose enough against the “Germans,” as German soldier Albert Schlichting, who served Ivan’s Italian physician as a translator, notes on Prince Semen Vasil’evich Lobanov-Rostovskii: This prince had been clement towards war prisoners and had not treated them cruelly nor brutally. For this reason, he was accused to prepare his flight to the court of the King of Poland with the help of the commander of Polotsk.64 While it is hard to verify the soundness of this allegation, such a charge was at least plausible since several members of the elite endeavored to leave Muscovy for Poland-Lithuania. According to Schlichting, in March 1565, Prince Petr Ivanovich Gorenskii-Obolenskii was arrested because he was planning to join his brother, who had already managed to escape to the court of the King of Poland.65 In 1566, Ivan temporarily adopted a more conciliatory approach. As he needed to mobilize resources for the war, he convened an “Assembly of the Land” (Zemskii Sobor) in the summer. The delegates approved of the war, but some 300 condemned the violence against Muscovite nobles. This prompted Ivan to resort again to repression. The tsar imprisoned all of the protesters.66 In the following year, according to several sources, a conjuration was formed with the aim of overthrowing Ivan and putting his cousin Vladimir Andreevich of Staritsa on the throne. Ivan Petrovich FedorovChelyadin, one of the highest dignitaries of the court and a governor of Livonia and Polotsk, is said to have been the mastermind of this conspiracy.67 According to the German mercenary Heinrich von Staden, Chelyadin was German-friendly.68 In this context, Ivan seems to have feared genuinely for his life: he planned to flee to England or to retire to a monastery. But instead, he chose to violently repress Vladimir Andreevich of Staritsa’s supporters, which led to the execution of about 3,200 people between 1568

96  Damien Tricoire and 1570, among them Fedorov-Chelyadin. Prince Vladimir Andreevic of Staritsa tried to save his life by giving a list of the conspirators, but Ivan did not spare him either.69 Metropolitan Filipp was a client of FedorovChelyadin, and protested publicly in churches against these wide-scale persecutions. He retired into a monastery, but refused to abdicate. He was assassinated in 1569 when he refused to give his benediction to Ivan’s elite troop, the oprichniki, who were on their way to punish Novgorod.70 At the same time, massive violence was deployed on the war front. In 1567, villages near Polotsk were destroyed based on accusations that they had helped Lithuanian spies.71 Two years later, after Lithuanians took Izborsk, Ivan ordered the massacre of the Muscovite commander, two other nobles, and hundreds of war prisoners.72 Later in the same year, Ivan launched his famous military expedition against Novgorod, usually considered as the culmination of his terror policy, and indeed as “an extreme example of […] arbitrariness and cruelty.”73 The tsar accused Novgorod of plotting to defect to the King of Poland.74 On the way to this former republic, his troops massacred many inhabitants in Tver’ who “had married and become friends with foreigners.”75 Novgorod was plundered in January 1570 and its elites largely massacred, as well as a part of the population.76 Archbishop Pimin, the very same one who had approved of the war against the “heretical” and “iconoclast” Germans in 1563, was made a prisoner. Narva was plundered too.77 The following assassinations were all directly connected to the Novgorod affair, which also led to the notorious mass execution on Red Square on July 25, 1570, where among others the foreign minister Viskovatyi lost his life.78 This overview shows that Ivan’s violence was not blind. There was a clear pattern: as far as we can reconstruct the immediate context, virtually all arrests, executions, assassinations, and massacres were linked directly or indirectly to resistance to the war in Livonia, (fears of) defections in this war, or protests against the persecution of opponents to the war. As this war was often interpreted as an eschatological struggle against the Antichrist, violence against anyone opposing it could be legitimized. The Tsar first disgraced opponents to the war against Livonia, and then executed noblemen and “punished” towns suspected of being favorable to the “Germans” or the Polish king. Terror was an instrument in a war against the followers of the Antichrist. This use of terror was not the sign of paranoia. The war of Livonia was really unpopular among a significant part of the Muscovite elite, and some nobles and churchmen indeed had a parallel diplomacy. The Great Duke of Lithuania tried actively to gain Muscovite nobles to his cause and many nobles did defect. There were indeed “traitors” and Lithuanian spies in Muscovite Russia, and it is probable that they benefited from local help.79 The existence of the conjuration of 1567 is confirmed by several sources independent from each other. To be sure, scholars have expressed doubts that Novgorod was really planning to hand over itself to the King of Poland. These historians underline among other things that no trace of this planned surrender can be found in Polish-Lithuanian documents. They concede that according to a chronicle from the early seventeenth century, a letter from Novgorod to the

Terror, War and Reformation  97 King of Poland was intercepted by Ivan’s men, which may have been in the Grand Prince’s eyes a proof of Novgorod’s treachery. But they think that this letter was a Lithuanian forgery written to discredit the former republic in the tsar’s eyes. In this view, Novgorod was thus victim of a paranoid tsar, ready to believe Lithuanian lies. These scholars give no evidence to support this assertion, however, while we have a reliable source showing that the letter in question indeed existed and was written in Novgorod. Furthermore, Novgorod may have appeared treacherous in Ivan’s eyes because it was giving shelter to the fugitive boyar V. D. Danilov. Since Archbishop Pimin was his relative, the repression against this churchman fits well to the pattern described above.80

The Oprichnina and the Creation of the Latter-Days Zion There are other pieces of evidence showing that the Grand Prince’s foreign and domestic policies were influenced deeply by eschatological ideas. Only eschatological expectations can make sense of a number of strange phenomena. The Tsar’s violence was exceptional not only because of its extent, but also because of its symbolic value. Ivan’s ritualized violence has been described sometimes mistakenly in historiography as an expression of sadism, but those familiar with Denis Crouzet’s studies on the French wars of religion will recognize some patterns. In France as well as in Muscovy, violence was a means to reveal the corruption of the killed individuals and anticipate their punishment in hell. Ivan’s killing techniques were very diverse: he had people killed by hanging, beating, stabbing, shooting, piercing, chopping, quartering, impaling, burning, freezing, and drowning (perhaps his favorite method). Russian historian Andrey Yurganov sees in these methods an anticipation of punishments in hell—a plausible interpretation in light of Ivan’s own writings. In any case, it is clear that the Grand Prince often avoided regular justice and Christian burial. He occasionally even forced his victims to commit suicide, a taboo in Christianity. The corpses were often left on the street, given to animals, or thrown into water.81 Ivan IV used often carnival-like means to humiliate the people he claimed to be traitors. Metropolitan Philipp was beaten with brooms during mass. Ivan ordered Archbishop Pimin of Novgorod to be dressed in a fool’s dress, and he gave him a mare as a wife. Fedorov-Chelyadin, who was accused of having led the conspiracy against Ivan, was dressed like a tsar, and had to wear the tsar’s insignia. This use of laughter as a political weapon has been interpreted in historiography as incompatible with the idea of a Christian ruler.82 For sure, Ivan was not a typical Christian ruler, but these theatrical humiliations did fit very well to his denunciation of hypocrisy and treachery. Staging was for Ivan a way to show the reality behind the masks: he claimed that Archbishop Pimin was in reality not a holy man, but a fool, and he showed that Fedorov-Chelyadin had vied for power. Ivan IV did not create a carnival-like world turned upside down, but rather denounced by symbolic means that the world was in many ways turned upside down. This was clearly not incompatible with a religious interpretation of his duty.

98  Damien Tricoire Other strange phenomena make sense when we take into consideration religious ideas, and especially eschatological expectations. In 1565, one year after his letter to Kurbskii, the Grand Prince divided Muscovy into two halves: he took numerous provinces out of the jurisdiction of the old boyar council and put it under the jurisdiction of a new boyar Duma. These territories formed the so-called oprichnina (which means appanage). Noblemen of the oprichnina were called oprichniki. Ivan’s aim in creating the oprichnina was to establish a new order and a new elite, composed of noblemen faithful to him and pronouncing a special oath. In the new order of the oprichnina, the Grand Prince had full liberty to choose his councilors, to reward and to punish them. This was not the case in the normal political order because in practice the Muscovite monarchy was far from being “absolute.” Like other crowned heads in Europe, before the creation of the oprichnina, the Grand Prince had to negotiate with aristocratic clans, to accept the mediation of Church prelates, and to pardon aristocrats after frondes.83 As we have seen, he was even forced by a powerful court faction to conclude a truce in Livonia in 1560. By contrast, thanks to the oprichniki, he was now free to punish those he viewed as “traitors.” The oprichnina was an alternative political order: the oprichniki were to be a group apart, living according to different rules and identifiable at first sight. Hierarchy between them strictly followed the ranks inherited by birth, at least in theory.84 The oprichniki and the tsar himself dressed exclusively in black, like monks, which was most unusual. Taube and Kruse, Livonians in Ivan’s service, claim that the tsar and his oprichniki formed a kind of “strange religious order”: their “monastery” was a palace of the Grand Prince in Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda. In this “monastery,” the Grand Prince was the “abbot.”85 Schlichting confirms that Ivan IV and the oprichniki observed a monk-like prayer rhythm, and called each other “brothers.”86 Even more strangely, oprichniki carried around brooms, and attached severed dog heads on their horses. As a contemporary source suggests, the broom may have been a symbol of their mission to purify Muscovy, and the dog head of their mission to punish the sinful.87 These symbols, as well as the monastic-like way of life of the oprichniki are unique phenomena in Russian and even European history. This has prompted historians to ask whether we should consider them as part of a carnival-like parodic play staged by Ivan IV. Indeed, the Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda is not to be confused with a real monastery. The oprichniki wore costly furs under their black robe, and they did not live in an ascetic way. Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda was a place where Ivan had his opponents tortured, which contrasts with the peace of monasteries. Ivan had also probably a very negative opinion of the monks living in his realm.88 He surely did not want to reproduce exactly monastic models. On the other hand, he and his men did follow a burdensome everyday rhythm full of prayers and constraints. The oprichniki were to be a group apart from the normal Muscovites, indeed segregated from the rest of the country, presented as corrupt. Such a will to separate a group of chosen ones

Terror, War and Reformation  99 from the allegedly sinful rest of the population is typical of many radical eschatological movements of sixteenth-century Europe, like the Anabaptists of Münster.89 That the oprichniki formed a group of chosen ones of the Latter Days is further suggested by the description of the new palace that the Tsar had built for them in Moscow. The Tsar and the oprichniki moved out of the Kremlin—the regular see of political and ecclesiastical hierarchy— into a new ensemble of buildings, the shape of which was inspired by the description of the New Temple revealed by an angel to Ezekiel in a prophetic vision. Ezekiel’s book might also provide a key to understand why Ivan divided his realm into two parts: this might be leant upon the division between consecrated and unconsecrated land mentioned in this book.90 There is thus good reason to think that the oprichniki were meant to be some kind of chosen ones in the End Times, living in fraternity, fighting for God, purifying the world, and creating the latter-days Zion.

Conclusion Eschatological topoi were very common in the sixteenth-century Muscovite culture. As Muscovy considered itself the only right-believing monarchy left in the world, it was commonly expected that this polity had a providential role to play in history: it was considered to be the New Israel of the Latter Days. This widely accepted scenario, inspired by the Old Testament prophecies, was mixed with a second one: the propagation of heresy through the influence of the Antichrist at the end of times. These two eschatological ideas proved an explosive mixture under Ivan IV. The Grand Prince’s use of terror was linked to the belief that he was living in the Latter Days and had to fight evil and turn Muscovy into a New Israel if he wanted to avoid divine punishment. The tsar interpreted political events through these lenses and took radical measures to fight the forces of evil that tried to prevent him from bringing “heretics” back into the womb of the Church. The resulting rule of terror was not the expression of mental illness, but a rational choice reflecting his worldview. That the killing began more or less simultaneously with the outbreak of the French Wars of Religion and culminated two years before the Saint Bartholomew Massacre is, of course, due partly to chance—but not entirely. A fundamental reason for the simultaneity of these events was that both Ivan the Terrible and French Catholics reacted to the spread of the Reformation. The rise of Protestantism thus connects Western and Eastern Europe, and Russian history is very much part of the European Age of Apocalypticism and Millenarianism.

Notes 1 Andrei Yurganov, “Oprichnina i strashnyi sud,” Otechestvennaya Istoriya 3 (1997): 52–75. 2 Fernand Braudel, Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme, XVe–XVIIIe siècle, vol. 3: Le temps du monde (Paris: Armand Colin, 1979), 17.

100  Damien Tricoire 3 Dimitri Obolensky, The Byzantine Commonwealth. Eastern Europe, 500– 1453 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971). 4 Peter Nitsche, “Translatio imperii? Beobachtungen zum historischen Selbstverständnis im Moskauer Zartum um die Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 35, no. 3 (1987): 321–38; Joel Raba, “Moscow—the Third Rome or the New Israel?” in Beiträge zur 7. internationalen Konferenz zur Geschichte des Kiever und des Moskauer Reichs, ed. Hans-Joachim Torke. Special issue, Forschungen zur osteuropäischen Geschichte, 50 (1995): 297–307; Daniel B. Rowland, “Moscow—the Third Rome or the New Israel?” The Russian Review 55, no. 4 (1996): 591–614. 5 Donald Ostrowski, Muscovy and the Mongols: Cross-Cultural Influences on the Steppe Frontier; 1304–1589 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 6 Joseph Wieczynski, “Archbishop Gennadius and the West: The Impact of Catholic Ideas upon the Church of Novgorod,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 6 (1972): 374–89; Elke Wimmer, Novgorod—ein Tor zum Westen? Die Übersetzungstätigkeit am Hofe des Novgoroder Erzbischofs Gennadij in ihrem historischen Kontext (um 1500) (Hamburg: Kovač, 2005); Robert Stupperich, “Einflüsse der Reformation auf russischem Boden im Verlauf des 16. Jahrhunderts,” Kirche im Osten, 18 (1975): 334–45; Jack Haney, From Italy to Muscovy: The Life and Works of Maxim the Greek (München: Fink, 1973). 7 Richard Hellie, “What Happened? How Did He Get Away with It? Ivan Groznyi’s Paranoia and the Problem of Institutional Restraints,” Russian History 14, no. 1 (1987): 199–224. Criticizes this thesis: Charles Halperin, “Ivan’s Insanity,” Russian History 34, no. 1–4 (2007): 207–18. 8 Sergei F. Platonov, Ivan Groznyi: 1530–1584 (Peterburg: Brokgauz-Efron, 1923). 9 Aleksandr A. Zimin, Oprichnina Ivana Groznogo (Moskva: Mysl’, 1964). 10 Ruslan Skrynnikov, Iwan der Schreckliche und seine Zeit (München: Beck, 1992), esp. 105. 11 Andrei Pavlov and Maureen Perrie, Ivan the Terrible (London: Pearson/ Longman, 2003), 121–22. 12 Michael Cherniavsky, “Ivan the Terrible as Renaissance Prince,” Slavic Review 27, no. 2 (1968): 195–211. 13 There are many interpretations of these events, but nobody asserts that the monarchy wanted the massacre of thousands of Parisian Protestants: Denis Crouzet, Les Guerriers de Dieu: La violence au temps des troubles de religion (vers 1525–vers 1610) (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1990), vol. 2: 14–143; JeanLouis Bourgeon, L’assassinat de Coligny (Genève: Droz, 1992); Jean-Louis Bourgeon, Charles IX devant la Saint-Barthélémy (Genève: Droz, 1995). 14 Ostrowski, Muscovy and the Mongols, esp. 187–97. 15 Niels Rossing, and Birgit Rønne, Apocryphal—Not Apocryphal? A Critical Analysis of the Discussion Concerning the Correspondence between Tsar Ivan IV Groznyj and Prince Andrei Kurbskii (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1980); Edward Keenan, “Apocryphal—Not Apocryphal—Apocryphal!” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 16, no. 1 (1982): 95–112. 16 Priscilla Hunt, “Ivan IV’s Personal Mythology of Kingship,” Slavic Review 52, no. 4 (1993): 769–70; A. M. Panchenko and S. Likhachev, “Smekhovoi mir” drevnei Rusi (Leningrad: Nauka, 1976), 39–42 (in German: A. M. Panchenko and S. Likhachev, Die Lachwelt des Alten Russlands (München: Fink, 1991), 29–39); David Khunchukashvili, “Die Masken der Macht Ivans IV. Die verkehrte Welt der Opricnina und der darauf folgenden Zeit im Spiegel der Vorstellung vom christlichen Zarentum,” in Die autokratische Herrschaft im Moskauer Reich in der Zeit der Wirren, 1598–1613, eds. Dittmar Dahlmann and Diana Ordubadi (Bonn: Bonn University Press, 2019), 121–153.

Terror, War and Reformation  101 17 Sergei Bogatyrev, “Battle for Divine Wisdom: The Rhetoric of Ivan IV’s Campaign against Polotsk,” in The Military and Society in Russia: 1450–1917, ed. Eric Lohr and Marshall Poe (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 325–63. 18 Jaroslaw Pelenski, Russia and Kazan: Conquest and Imperial Ideology (1438–1560) (The Hague: Mouton, 1974); Reinhard Frötschner, “Der Livländische Krieg (1558–82/83)—ein Glaubenskrieg des Moskauer Zartums? Der Krieg im Spiegel der zeitgenössischen offiziellen Moskauer Historiographie,” in Der Krieg im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit: Gründe, Begründungen, Bilder, Bräuche, Recht, ed. Horst Brunner (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1999), 373– 94; Anti Selart, “Das Wunder von Narva am 11. Mai 1558: Zur Geschichte der russischen Polemik gegen die Reformation im 16. Jahrhundert,” Forschungen zur Baltischen Geschichte, 4 (2009): 40–57. 19 Hunt, “Ivan’s personal mythology,” 770. 20 Ibid., 791. 21 Ibid., 770–71. 22 Alexander Dvorkin, Ivan the Terrible as a Religious Type: A Study of the Background, Genesis and Development of the Theocratic Idea of the First Russian Tsar and his Attempts to Establish ‘Free Autocracy’ in Russia (Erlangen: University, 1992). 23 Stefan Plaggenborg, Pravda: Gerechtigkeit, Herrschaft und sakrale Ordnung in Altrussland (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2018), 153–205. 24 Sergei Bogatyrev, “The Heavenly Host and the Sword of Truth: Apocalyptic Imagery in Ivan IV’s Muscovy,” in The New Muscovite Cultural History, eds. Valerie Kivelson et al. (Bloomington: Slavica Publishers, 2009), 77–90; Yurganov, “Oprichnina.” 25 Nina Sinitsyna, Tretii Rim. Istoki i Evolutsia russkoi srednevekovoi kontsepsii (Moskva: Indrik, 1998); David Khunchukashvili, “Die heiligen Städte als eschatologische Legitimationssymbole der Zarenmacht unter den Rjurikiden”in Die “Alleinherrschaft” der russischen Zaren in der Zeit der Wirren in transkultureller Perspektive, eds. Diana Ordubadi and Dittmar Dahlmann (Bonn: Bonn University Press, 2021), 129–58. 26 David B. Miller, “Creating Legitimacy: Ritual, Ideology, and Power in Sixteenth-Century Russia,” Russian History 21, no. 3 (1994): 289–315; David B. Miller, “Official History under Ivan Groznyj,” Russian History 14, no. 1 (1987): 333–60; David B. Miller, “The Viskovatyi Affair of 1553–54: Official Art, the Emergence of Autocracy, and the Disintegration of Medieval Russian Culture,” Russian History 8, no. 3 (1981): 293–332; Sergei Bogatyrev, “Reinventing the Russian Monarchy in the 1550s: Ivan the Terrible, the Dynasty, and the Church,” Slavonic and East European Review 85, no. 2 (2007): 271–93; Charles J. Halperin, “Metropolitan Makarii and Muscovite Court Politics during the Reign of Ivan IV,” The Russian Review 73, no. 3 (2014): 447–64; Michael Flier, “Golden Hall Iconography and the Makarian Initiative,” in The New Moscovite History: A Collection in Honor of Daniel B. Rowland, ed. Valerie Kivelson, Karen Petrone, Nancy Shields Kollmann, and Michael S. Flier (Bloomington: Slavica Publisher, 2009), 63–75. 27 Joseph L. Wieczynski, “Hermetism and Cabalism in the Heresy of the Judaizers,” Renaissance Quarterly 28, no. 1 (1975): 17–28; Donald Ostrowski, “Unresolved Evidentiary Issues Concerning Rus ‘Heretics,” in Seeing Muscovy Anew: Politics, Institutions, Culture; Essays in Honor of Nancy Shields Kollmann, eds. Michael S. Flier et al. (Bloomington, Indiana: Slavica, 2017), 123–42. 28 Stupperich, “Einflüsse der Reformation auf russischem Boden,” 334–45. 29 This debate is traditionally presented as a debate between “possessors” (those accepting that monasteries can legitimately possess villages) and “non-possessors” (their enemies). The non-possessors allegedly advocated the secularization

102  Damien Tricoire of the land belonging to the Church. By contrast, Ostrowski has claimed that this whole controversy was largely a later invention. According to him, nobody pleaded for a secularization of Church goods. But even if there may have been no party pleading for secularization, at least until the 1550s, the sources Ostrowski comments upon show that there was debate within the Muscovite Church about the extent of monastic wealth: Donald Ostrowski, “Church Polemics and Monastic Land Acquisition in Sixteenth-Century Muscovy,” Slavonic and East European Review 64, no. 3 (1986): 357–79; Donald Ostrowski, “Loving Silence and Avoiding Pleasant Conversation: The Political Views of Nil Sorskii,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 19, no. 19 (1995): 476–96; Donald Ostrowski, “The ‘Letter Concerning Enmities’ as a Polemical Source for Monastic Relations of the Mid-Sixteenth Century,” Russian History 39, nos. 1–2 (2012): 77–105. 30 Haney, From Italy to Muscovy. 31 A. I. Ivanov, “K voprosu o nestyazhatel’skikh vzglyadakh Maksima Greka,” Vizantiyskiy vremennik, 29 (1969): 136–38; David M. Goldfrank, “L’Utopisme dans la Russie d’Ivan le Terrible: Une interprétation de la pensée russe au seizième siècle,” Revue des études slaves 56, no. 4 (1984): 591–98, here 593. 32 N. V. Revunenkova, “Erasme en Russie,” Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis/Dutch Review of Church History 71, no. 2 (1991): 129–56. 33 Kurbskii uses the term “Chosen Council” (izbrannaya rada) to designate this group. Scholars have discussed whether this “council” was an institution, a party, or a “non-political” group. Grobovsky favors the later thesis, but it is hard to understand how a group at court, and an influential one indeed, could be apolitical: Antonij Grobovsky, The ‘Chosen Council’ of Ivan IV: A Reinterpretation (Brooklyn: Gaus, 1969), esp. 11–139. 34 Andrei Kurbskii, Knyazya A. M. Kurbskogo Istoriya o Velikom Knyaz Moskovskom: Izdanie Imperatorkoi arkheograficheskoi kommissii (Sankt Peterburg: M. A. Aleksandrov, 1913), 47–55 (English translation: Andrei Kurbskii, Prince A. M. Kurbsky’s History of Ivan IV, ed. and transl. J. L. I. Fennell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 77, 82, 245). 35 Norbert Angermann, Studien zur Livlandpolitik Ivan Groznyjs (Marburg: J.G. Herder-Inst., 1972), 84–96; Jaroslav Pelenski, Russia and Kazan. 36 Russian-English edition: J. L. I. Fennell, ed. and transl., The Correspondence between Prince A. M. Kurbsky and Tsar Ivan IV of Russia, 1564–1579 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955), 2–5. 37 Rowland, “Moscow—the Third Rome,” 607; Bogatyrev, “The Heavenly Host.” 38 D. E. Kozhaichikova, ed., Stoglav (Sankt Peterburg: Imperatorskaya akademiya nauk, 1863), 28. French translation: E. Duchesne, ed., Le Stoglav ou Les cent chapitres. Receuil des décisions de l’assemblée ecclésiastique de 1551 (Paris: É. Champion, 1920), 12. 39 Kozhaichikova, ed., Stoglav. See also Jack Edward Kollmann, “The Stoglav Council and the Parish Priest,” Russian History 7, no. 1/2 (1980): 65–91. 40 Fennell, ed., Correspondence, 12–15. 41 Ibid., 52–53. 42 Ibid., Correspondence, 122–25. 43 Ibid., 96–99, 118–19. 44 Ibid., Correspondence, 121. 45 Ibid., Correspondence, 121. 46 Angermann, Studien zur Livlandpolitik, 71–106. Schlichting speaks of a conflict between the Grand Prince and “men of ancient and distinguished lineage” because “they frequently urged him […] to cease thirsting for Christian blood, wage unjust and unauthorized wars […]. They declared that if he desired to wage an honourable and principled war he should direct his energies and forces against the foes of the Cross, the Tatars and the Turks […].”: Albert

Terror, War and Reformation  103 Schlichting, “Brief Account of the Character and Brutal Rule of Valil’evich, Tyrant of Muscovy,” ed. and transl. H. Graham, Canadian-American Slavic Studies 9, no. 2 (1975): 204–67, here 214. 47 Valerie A. Tumins, ed., Tsar Ivan IV’s Reply to Jan Rokyta (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), 296, 314, 317, 319, 334. On Ivan and Rokyta: Audrey V. Ivanov, “Reformation and the Muscovite Czar: Anti-Protestant Polemic in the Writings of Ivan the Terrible,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 40, no. 4 (2009): 1109–29; Olga Chumicheva, “Ivan der Schreckliche und Jan Rokyta: Der Zusammenstoß zweier Kulturen,” Historisches Jahrbuch 124 (2004): 77–96. 48 Valerie A. Tumins, ed., Tsar Ivan IV’s Reply to Jan Rokyta. 49 Bogatyrev, “Heavenly Host,” esp. 81–83. Kollman’s assertion that apocalyptic thinking may not have played a major role in Ivan’s terror policy because visual representations of the apocalypse were “hardly violent” does not seem justified: Nancy Kollmann, Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 319. 50 Frötschner, “Der Livländische Krieg,” 376–81. 51 As cited in Frötschner, “Der Livländische Krieg,” 384. 52 Frötschner, “Der Livländische Krieg,” 387. 53 Anti Selart, “Das Wunder,” 40–57. 54 Schlichting, “Brief Account,” 224, 241–43, 256–58, 270; Heinrich von Staden, Aufzeichnungen über den Moskauer Staat, ed. Fritz Epstein (Hamburg: Friederichsen, 1930), 24, 38; [Johann Taube and Eilert Kruse], Erschreckliche/ greuliche und unerhorte Tyranney Iwan Wasilowitz/des regierenden Großfürsten in Muscow/so er vorruckter Zar gegen seinen Blutsverwanten Freunden/Underfürsten / Baioraren und seinem Landtvolck unmenschlicher weise/wider Gott und Recht erbermlich geübt […] (n.p., 1582) (unpaginated). 55 Anti Selart, “Das Wunder.” 56 A discussion of the reliability of these sources: Valerie A. Kivelson, “How Bad was Ivan the Terrible? The Oprichnik Oath and Satanic Spells in Foreigners’ Accounts,” in Seeing Muscovy Anew, 67–84, esp. 68–71. 57 Frötschner, “Der Livländische Krieg,” 383. 58 Schlichting, “Brief Account,” 214–17. 59 Ibid., 246. 60 Grobovsky, Chosen Council, 103–4. 61 Schlichting, “Brief Account,” 217. 62 Schlichting, “Brief Account,” 216–17. 63 Ibid., 220–21. 64 Ibid., 220–21. 65 Ibid., 245–46. 66 Ibid., 248–49; Skrynnikov, Iwan der Schreckliche und seine Zeit, 124. 67 Schlichting, “Brief Account,” 222–24, 271–72. 68 Staden, Aufzeichnungen, 22–23. On the devastation of Chelyadin’s estates: Staden, Aufzeichnungen, 25. 69 Ibid., 25–28, 34–35, 39. See also Taube and Kruse (unpaginated). 70 Staden, Aufzeichnungen, 35. According to Staden, Filipp war part of the conjuration (see 26–28). See also Taube and Kruse (unpaginated). 71 Inge Auerbach, “Ivan Groznyj: Spione und Verräter im Moskauer Rußland und Großfürstentum Litauen,” Russian History 14, no. 1/4 (1987): 5–35, here 18. 72 Schlichting, “Brief Account,” 250–51; Staden, Aufzeichnungen, 44–45; Auerbach, “Ivan Groznyj,” 21. 73 Robert O. Crummey, “New Wine in Old Bottles? Ivan IV and Novgorod,” Russian History 14, no. 1 (1987): 61–76, here 63. 74 Taube and Kruse (unpaginated). 75 Staden, Aufzeichnungen, 35–36.

104  Damien Tricoire 76 Controversial views on the extent of the massacres and destructions in Novgorod, see Hugh Graham, “How Do We Know What We Know about Ivan the Terrible? (A Paradigm),” Russian History 14, no. 1/4 (1987): 179–98. 77 On the punitive expedition against Novgorod and other northwestern cities, see Schlichting, “Brief Account,” 232–38; Staden, Aufzeichnungen, 37–39. 78 Staden, Aufzeichnungen, 40; Schlichting, “Brief Account,” 259–65; Taube and Kruse (unpaginated). On Viskovatii see also: Schlichting, “Brief Account,” 272. 79 Auerbach, “Ivan Groznyj”; Skrynnikov, Iwan der Schreckliche und seine Zeit, 93–104. 80 Crummey, “New Wine,” esp. 64–76; Auerbach, “Ivan Groznyj.” 81 Yurganov, “Oprichnina,” esp. 2–6; On the killing techniques, see esp. Schlichting, Staden, and Taube and Kruse. 82 Khunchukashvili, “Masken.” 83 Nancy Shields Kollmann, Kinship and Politics: The Making of the Muscovite Political System, 1345–1547 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987). 84 Staden, Aufzeichnungen, 21. 85 Taube and Kruse (unpaginated). 86 Schlichting, “Brief Account,” 232. 87 Staden, Aufzeichnungen, 21; Taube and Kruse (unpaginated); Charles J. Halperin, “Did Ivan IV’s Oprichniki Carry Dogs’ Heads on Their Horses?” Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 46, no. 1 (2012): 40–67. 88 Khunchukashvili, “Masken.” 89 Anselm Schubert, “Nova Israhelis republica. Das Täuferreich von Münster 1534/35 als wahres Israel,” in Peoples of the Apocalypse. Eschatological Beliefs and Political Scenarios, eds. Rebekka Voß, Wolfram Brandes, and Felicitas Schmieder (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 271–84. 90 Yurganov, “Oprichnina,” 14–18; I. N. Danilevsky, “Semantika oprichnogo dvortsa i smysl oprichniny: k voprosu o sisteme dokazatelstv v istorichestkoi rekonstruktsii, Vestnik Tomskogo gosudarstvennogo Universiteta,” Istoriia 48 (2017): 29–37. On the oprichnina palace: Schlichting, “Brief Account,” 218; Staden, Aufzeichnungen, 43–44, 72–74.

Part II

Messianisms

4 A Messiah from the Left Side Moti Benmelech

There is no doubt that Christian influences affected the development of early modern Jewish messianism. Indeed, scholars from Zvi Graetz1 and David Kahana2 to Yossef Haim Yerushalmi,3 Yoseph Kaplan,4 Yaakov Barnai5 and Matt Goldish6 noticed these influences, highlighting the Iberian conversos as the channel through which Christian ideas penetrated seventeenth-­century Jewish messianism, especially the Sabbatean Movement.7 Raised and educated as Christians, and encountering their Jewish roots only at adulthood, the conversos absorbed and internalized the essential ideas of Christian theology, ritual and messianism. These ideas remained, consciously or unconsciously, part of their cultural and religious world even as they left behind the Iberian Peninsula and the Christian faith, beginning to live openly as Jews. For conversos who joined normative communities, their Christian background and superficial acquaintance with Jewish sources and practices caused, at times, tensions and even conflicts. The tragic fate of Uriel Da Costa is a clear example: Da Costa was a Portuguese converso who criticized rabbinic exegetics and practices that seemed to him detached from the original meaning of the biblical text; this led to his excommunication and eventual suicide.8 On the contrary, their Christian background and internalization of Christian messianic notions helped conversos integrate within Jewish messianic movements. Five of the world kings that Sabbatai Zevi appointed were conversos; and Avraham Michael Cardozo, a prominent Sabbatean theologian and harbinger was himself a Portuguese converso, and his writings contain clear Christian influences.9 These hints of Christian messianism discernible in seventeenth-­century Jewish messianism are therefore the odds and ends of the conversos’ Christian past. In the following pages, I would like to discuss the prominent Christian influences in the thought and writings of an earlier messianic figure, Shlomo Molcho (1501–1532). Molcho was a messianic protagonist during the early 1530s10 and constitutes one of the most intriguing figures in early modern Jewish messianism. I will argue that Molcho’s messianic thought was not only influenced by Christian ideas but that it was also shaped to encounter them, thereby creating a new kind of messianic concept: “Counter-­Messianism”. DOI: 10.4324/9781003081050-7

108  Moti Benmelech

Shlomo Molcho, His Life and Education Shlomo Molcho was born in Portugal in 1501, four years after the forced conversion of Portuguese Jews, to converted parents. He was raised as a Christian and educated in Christian institutes.11 In contemporary Portuguese sources he is referred to as Doctor, a title he earned, in all likelihood, at the University of Coimbra, the only academic institute active in sixteenth-­century Portugal.12 Yet, unlike his seventeenth-­century messianic successors, Molcho also received a thorough Jewish education and acquired knowledge of various Jewish sources in his youth in Portugal, even before he fled the country in 1526 and began to live openly as a Jew. He also had a deep grounding in Kabbalah and other fields of Jewish literature and practice.13 Indeed, only two and a half years after fleeing Portugal and settling in northern Italy, he was invited by members of the Thessaloniki Yeshiva, one of the most distinguished centers of Jewish learning at that time, to share his knowledge with them, and moved there. By the end of that year (Elul 5289, September 1529) he had also published a book of kabbalistic sermons in Thessaloniki, the conclusion of which reads: “For more than two years now I have been able to write in a book what your eyes see now and much more, but I was hiding and disguising my words due to the difficult times.”14 He therefore evidently had completed the book two years earlier, in 1527, less than one year after leaving Portugal! Upon his return to Italy in late 1529, after staying in Thessaloniki for almost a year, Molcho became a popular preacher, and his sermons were attended by “men and women and children, Jews and Christians.”15 Contemporary sources describe this extraordinary phenomenon, a preacher who grew up among the Gentiles and yet so erudite, as “unheard of and unexplained,”16 suggesting that Molcho was accompanied by an Angel or a heavenly spirit (Magid) from whom he had acquired his wisdom.17 This kind of knowledge and erudition could not have been attained in the short time that passed between Molcho’s departure from Portugal and the publication of his book. Therefore, he clearly gained most, if not all, this knowledge as a converso in Portugal. Indeed, in the early sixteenth century this was eminently possible: at the outset of that century the new Christians in Portugal enjoyed relative tolerance and tranquility, the result of a royal decree from 30 May 1497, that prohibited any inquiries into their religious conduct for the next 20 years.18 In addition, because Portuguese Jews were forcibly converted en masse, the converso community included religious scholars and other learned persons capable of imparting this knowledge to the next generation.19 Evidently, by the time Molcho left Portugal in 1526 and became involved in messianic activity and attempts to calculate the End Times, he possessed a deep grounding in Jewish learning and Jewish sources, from rabbinic literature to contemporary Kabbalah.

A Messiah from the Left Side  109

Christian Influences on Molcho’s Messianic Thought and Writings Molcho’s kabbalistic-­messianic writings are peppered with Christian ideas and motifs. These include his notion that Jewish laws and practices, and even the text of the Pentateuch, would undergo significant changes and modifications after the arrival of the Messiah (which recalls the Paulinian opposition to the ritual laws of Judaism); 20 his allegorical interpretation of the book of Job (an interpretation that Gershom Scholem describes as “Christian typological allegories [introduced] into Jewish homilies”);21 his description of the patriarchs as standing at the gates of heaven to welcome those arriving (a position reserved in Christian tradition for Petrus);22 as well as his unique identification of the people of Israel and the Angel Michael (the guarding angel of Israel) with the unicorn (which in medieval Christian symbolism represented Jesus).23 Yet, in all these examples, as in many others, the Christian influences are only marginal, even anecdotal, and they do not appear as an essential part of Molcho’s messianic concept. References to some of these Christian motifs can be found also in contemporary and earlier Jewish sources and therefore were not necessarily perceived as bearing a Christian meaning.24 Unlike these marginal examples of Christian influence, which can be explained easily as residues of his Christian past, or which are congruent with his Jewish education, two core assumptions in Molcho’s messianic thought are based on fundamental Christian ideas: the notion of Original Sin as a crucial factor in human consciousness, practice and history; and a messianic interpretation of Isaiah 53, the chapter that, according to the Christian exegetics, describes God’s servant, the Messiah, as atoning for the sins of his people through his miseries and suffering. Because of Molcho’s extensive and elaborate knowledge of Jewish sources, the discernible use of prominent Christian elements in his messianic doctrine is certainly not an unintentional residue of his Christian past but, rather, a conscious choice. From this perspective, Molcho’s decision to build a Jewish messianic structure on a Christian infrastructure is especially surprising because his messianic concept entails a deep anti-­Christian posture and an acute anticipation of the coming destruction of Edom (that is, Christianity), an event that he saw as the epitome of his messianic vocation. In this sense, Molcho is clearly an adherent of the “revengeful redemption” approach, which views revenge as the cornerstone of the messianic process.25 Furthermore, he regarded himself as “Messiah son of Joseph,” the “Warrior Messiah,” whose mission was to destroy Rome, the core of Christianity, as the first step in the messianic process.26 In light of all of these factors, why, then, did he construct a Jewish messianic theory on Christian foundations?

Molcho’s Use of Christian Sources To a‫ ׅ‬nswer this question, we must analyze how Molcho integrated these Christian structures into his messianic concept. Arguably, Molcho processed

110  Moti Benmelech and redesigned these ideas so that they would accord with his messianic concepts, thus creating new notions, albeit based on Christian foundations. The doctrine of “original sin,” the belief that humanity has been in a state of sin since the Fall of Man from innocence and obedience to guilt and transgression, is one of the foundations of Christian theology.27 It is also one of the pillars of Molcho’s messianic concept. According to his exposition, God originally planned to give the Pentateuch in full to Adam immediately after creation, to teach him all its secrets and grant him the abilities to create worlds and to resurrect the dead, thus making him almost equal to God Himself. Because of the nature of the powers hidden within the letters and words of the Pentateuch, God first sought to verify that Adam would not use them detrimentally and therefore subjected him to a test. After Adam failed the test and ate the fruit of the forbidden tree of knowledge, God changed His plan and decided to reveal to Adam only a single, very limited, less powerful, and therefore harmless, version of the Pentateuch, narrowing it to the narrative story that exists today and keeping its secrets hidden. The core purpose of the messianic revolution, according to Molcho, is neither the political nor religious redemption of the people of Israel, although these are essential byproducts of it. Rather, it is the complete revelation of the Pentateuch as God initially intended to reveal it: a sequence of letters that creates God’s various names, which can be read in innumerous combinations and used for diverse magical and other purposes.28 Indeed, Molcho gave the original sin new content, significantly different from its Christian meaning. Although he adopted the Christian doctrine regarding liberation from original sin by the Messiah as an essential part of the messianic redemption, and the notion that death itself is an outcome of the original sin, his interpretation of the sin diverges significantly from that of Christian theologians. Likewise, it also differs from later Jewish references to the sin, which emphasize its sexual character and suggest that the episode of the golden calf was a repetition of the tendency of choosing carnal benefits over spiritual ones.29 Molcho transferred the implications of the sin from mankind, as in the Christian interpretation, to the Pentateuch. The consequence of the sin is not that men became sinners, making them a massa damnata, but rather the reduction of the Pentateuch and its content to a limited narrative. He agrees that prior to the original sin mankind was meant to be immortal,30 yet he emphasizes the spiritual and intellectual innovations that will be revealed in the messianic era rather than the physical ones (that is, immortality). This is clear from his words: And you should know that the Torah (the Pentateuch) is greeting us with good news: that in the time of the redemption we will return to our original state of knowledge and perception, as in the days of old, and as in former years, before Man sinned.31

A Messiah from the Left Side  111 Molcho emphasizes the intellectual qualities of “knowledge and perception” rather than the physical ones—eternal life—as signifying the messianic era. Molcho also explicitly denies the (Jewish) notion that the sin of the golden calf was a repetition of the original sin, “because God pardoned and forgave them for making the (golden) calf and gave them the second set of Tablets of Stone and desired that they will receive the Torah and know its glorious secrets.”32 A second explicit Christian notion employed by Molcho is the image of the suffering messiah, which is based on Isaiah 53. Here too he manipulates the Christian interpretation, fitting it to his messianic theme. The image of the suffering messiah is based on the character of “God’s servant” in Isaiah 53: He hath no form nor comeliness and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. This wretchedness is explained in the following verse: But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.33 From the second century onward, Christian commentators suggested that these verses prophesied Jesus’s crucifixion and death, confirming that he was indeed the Messiah.34 Due to the central role that this chapter plays in Christian apology and theology, a Jewish counter-­exegesis developed, suggesting that the term “God’s servant” does not refer to the messiah, but rather to the people of Israel. As such, the prophecy proves that all the calamities suffered by the Jewish people throughout the duration of the exile are part of the divine plan, not evidence that God had abandoned them. This counter-­interpretation achieved two aims: it rejected the image of Jesus as the hero of these verses and gave new meaning to the suffering and miseries of the exiled Jewish people as a fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy.35 But, as with original sin, here too Molcho preferred the Christian interpretation of the messiah and likewise developed the concept in his own, unique manner. Molcho argues that originally there was no need for two messianic figures—“Messiah son of David” and “Messiah son of Joseph”— because “Messiah son of David” alone could have redeemed the people of Israel. The need for a second messiah, “Messiah son of Joseph,” was a result of Israel’s sins: it is his role to make them repent and prepare them for the coming of “Messiah son of David.” The “Messiah son of Joseph” will die doing this, making his death, obliquely, a result of the sins of Israel and, in that sense, he indeed “was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities.” Further, Molcho unequivocally emphasizes that the

112  Moti Benmelech death of “Messiah son of Joseph” will not atone for the sins of the evildoers and the wicked ones, but rather that “every man shall be put to death for his own sin.” This reflects an explicitly anti-­Christian stance. In both cases— of original sin and the messiah as Isaiah’s God servant—Molcho deliberately employs essential Christian ideas, endowing them with new context and meaning. I will now return to the question that was raised earlier: why did Molcho deliberately choose to construct his messianic concept—which was aimed at normative Jews, not conversos, and written in Hebrew—on such explicitly Christian foundations, despite his deep familiarity with Jewish sources and learning? I will argue that this construction is an expression of another substantial idea that recurs throughout Molcho’s writings: the alien gentile origin of both messiahs. “Messiah son of David” will be a descendent of Ruth the Moabite, King David’s great-­grandmother, and “Messiah son of Joseph” will be a descendent of the Egyptian Ossnat, Joseph’s wife. As he explained in one of his sermons, which has survived in manuscript form: Ephraim took from the share of his mother, who is Ossnat the daughter of Potty Fera, who is from the left side, which is governed by Samael (the archangel of evil and death) from whom the snake was descended […] and it was essential that he would take from Samael’s power from the power of gevurah (severity), because this power is needed for wars and for cruelty, and for that he needed to take a little from the left side.36 Molcho emphasizes that the gentile roots of both messiahs are not accidental but rather essential. In order to accomplish the messianic revolution, both messiahs must possess power drawn from the left side, from the evil forces, a kind of vaccine that will enable them to tackle and overcome the evil forces. I suggest, therefore, that Molcho saw his use of Christian models as power from the left side.

Molcho and Paul Another prominent element in Molcho’s biography, one that cannot be ignored in a discussion of Christian influences on his thinking and on his messianic activity, is his conversion to Judaism. Molcho’s only reference to his Christian past appears in a single sentence in one of his letters: “And I grew up among the gentiles.” However, in the introduction to an unpublished manuscript of a book that he prepared for publication, he exposes a unique bond between his Christian past and his messianic role: Those who walk an innocent path, and those who repent from the way of the wicked—who are the righteous and the penitents—it is

A Messiah from the Left Side  113 not wretched in the eyes of the blessed one, not the prayer of the righteous and not the repentance of the penitents, but rather it is important in His eyes. Because these two are those who bring the glory (kavod) to the throne, but moreover there is a special quality to the penitents. And that is what those of blessed memory said: “Great is repentance, for it reaches up to the Throne of Glory” [Babylonian Talmud tr. Yoma 86a], meaning that it has the power to reach the Throne of Glory, since due to the repentance, the glory reaches to the throne […] and the reason that those of blessed memory said, “In the place where penitents stand even the wholly righteous cannot stand” [Babylonian Talmud tr. Brachot 34b], is because the righteous one sustains the world as it is, but the wicked even more, because after the glory rose up from the throne and left it, which causes destruction in the world, when he (the wicked one) repents, he brings the glory back to the throne and builds what had been ruined because of his wicked deeds, therefore he is doing two things: he is building that which was ruined and afterwards sustaining it.37 Here Molcho argues that the penitents, who through their repentance repair the world, possess an advantage over the righteous who have never sinned; those who have never corrupted anything, have never had the opportunity to repair anything. One can easily identify here an echo of Molcho’s past as a Christian, a sinner, and the advantages of that past offered in preparing him for his messianic role. Yet Molcho’s conversion to Judaism itself also bears remarkable resemblance to that of probably the most important and famous Jewish convert to Christianity: Paul the Apostle, the epitome of conversion to Christianity.38 On his way from Jerusalem to Damascus, Paul had a vision and suffered physical harm (he was blinded). He was later cured by Hanaia, a Christian believer from Damascus. Molcho’s experience was similar, although in his case everything happened in a vision, not in reality. Molcho’s conversion was preceded by a series of puzzling visions that culminated with a full and coherent vision directly following his circumcision (which he carried out himself). In this vision Molcho was taken on a journey to a “ruined house among the houses of Jerusalem,” located “between Mt. Zion and Jerusalem and Safed and Damascus.” The reference to Damascus in this context is significant. Indeed, unlike Jerusalem and Safed, which played an essential role in sixteenth-­century Jewish “messianic geography,” we find no such references to Damascus, and it is not mentioned by any other messianic writer. During this visionary journey, Molcho was mortally wounded by a cannonball and almost died, only to be miraculously healed by a heavenly figure. Furthermore, Molcho’s attribution of his vast knowledge of Jewish lore to a heavenly source is very close to Paul’s account of how he received the Christian belief:

114  Moti Benmelech Paul

Molcho

But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.a

With God’s help I am confident that I can answer and satisfy any questioner with answers […] that are not found in any book but were revealed to me in a divine manner. And I never learned anything from a mortal teacher.b

Molcho later explains the reasons for his departure from Portugal, which also echo Paul: But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood.c

But the truth that I am telling here, before the creator of heaven and earth and your excellency, is that neither was I circumcised nor did I travel by the order of flesh and blood.d

Galatians 1:11–12. Quoted from Benmelech, Shlomo Molcho, 373. c Galatians 1:15–16. d Quoted from Benmelech, Shlomo Molcho, 371. a

b

Molcho thus both imitates Paul in his conversion and confronts him with circumcision, using Pauline vocabulary. Paul was severely critical of (physical) circumcision, declaring that “circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter.”39 Molcho argues the complete opposite: “And the purpose of these visions was to order me to circumcise,” and therefore only after I was signed with my creator’s seal, I saw great and marvelous things, and great secrets were revealed to me and I was taught the mysteries of the Kabbalah wisdom and great calculations of the sephirot and treasures of wisdom and my heart was enlightened with God’s lore and the light of the two great lights.40 For anyone who wished to gain God’s true wisdom, Molcho insisted that the carnal circumcision was indispensable. Another indication of the affinity that Molcho’s messianic mission as Messiah son of Joseph, the warrior messiah, shared with Paul is that it was directed outwards—to the nations that he is supposed to demolish—rather than inwards towards Jewish society. Indeed, Molcho’s messianic mission culminated in his meeting with Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor at Regensburg on August 1532, and his second vision opened with the declaration: “I came to teach you what will happen to the nations within which you dwell.”41 This resembles Paul’s approach, in terms of preaching and in religious scope, which moved from his Jewish contemporaries to focus on the other nations.42

Counter-Messianism Molcho appears in his own writings as an “Anti-­Paul,” someone able to witness messianic visions, to bear great wisdom, and to lead the messianic

A Messiah from the Left Side  115 process only after and because he was circumcised. Furthermore, his mission is to spread the messianic promise among the nations. Yet, in contrast to Paul, his mission will accordingly lead to the destruction of the nations and the resurrection of Israel. Christian views and sources therefore exerted a significant influence on Shlomo Molcho’s religious and messianic concepts. And yet, in his use of these sources he consistently inverts them, contradicting their original meaning. Again, we should ask: why this construction, turning fundamental Christian ideas to new use in Jewish contexts? Molcho was not engaged in a polemic or a confrontation; he was not trying to deconstruct the Christian arguments. We will call Molcho’s efforts at creating a new Jewish messianic notion, counter-­messianism. Molcho’s strategy is not quite the same as that described by Amos Funkenstein as constituting “counter-­history”: “the systematic exploitation of the adversary’s most trusted sources against their grain …. Their aim is the distortion of the adversary’s self-­image, of his identity, through the deconstruction of his memory.”43 Counter-­ messianism, unlike counter-history, involves recognition and approval of the raw materials of Christian messianism. It does not seek to distort these elements and present Christian messianism grotesquely; it transcribes those elements and uses them for its own interests and purposes. Thus, it legitimizes the Christian elements and recognizes their value.44 In that sense, Molcho’s counter-­messianism is part of a broader tendency in an early modern interfaith discourse between Christianity and Judaism, characterized by the readiness to accept and approve the tools, paradigms and exegesis of the opponent religion. Another interesting example of this kind of dialogue in the messianic realm is found in the library of the most successful Jewish messianic harbinger of the early cinquecento, Asher Lemlein of Reutlingen (fl. 1500–1509), whose influence spread from Frankfurt to Prague and throughout northern Italy and the Venetian terra ferma and also contained magical and astral Christian compositions; indeed, Lemlein was admired by Jews and non-­ Jews alike.45 Nor was Molcho among the last voices in this dialogue: Roni Weinstein recently highlighted similar attitudes in the Safed Kabbalah in the second half of the sixteenth century.46 A more complex example appears in Alonso de Espina’s notorious Fortalitium Fidei, which dates from the late 1450s and constitutes one of the bitterest anti-­Jewish polemical works of that century.47 In the fourth chapter, De Espina quotes a prophecy, which he attributes to Joachim of Fiore, that identifies Islam as a goat and Christianity as a lamb, “The goat is Muhammad and the lamb is Jesus, son of the virgin,” and mentions black birds as representing Islam.48 The fear, or, as in Molcho’s case the hope, that Islam would annihilate Christian Europe was a fertile ground for many prophecies of redemption and calls for repentance in fifteenth-­and early sixteenth-­century Europe. However, the identification of Muhammad, and Islam in general, with the goat appears also in the Jewish Sefer Ha-­Meshiv (The Book of the Responding Angel), the creation of a messianic

116  Moti Benmelech magico-­Kabbalistic circle that was active in Spain from the 1460s–1470s. That circle significantly influenced Shlomo Molcho,49 and some of its motifs, like black birds, in the messianic context, explicitly appear in Molcho’s first vision.50 Although the presence of these details in Molcho’s work are marginal, their co-­occurence in several works proves that they constituted part of the eschatological discourse in fifteenth-­century Spain between the Christian and Jewish communities. Messianic discourse usually intensified the tension, hostility and conflict between Jews and Christians. But in a case like Molcho’s, we also detect a path of mutual recognition and legitimation of the other’s messianism. Indeed, this messianic concept did not become dominant in later Jewish messianism, but the idea of “original sin” reappears in Jewish compositions penned in Italy during the second half of the sixteenth century, probably drawing on Molcho’s use of the term.51

Notes 1 Heinrich Graetz, History of the Jews, vol. 5 (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1956), 120. 2 David Kahana, Toldot Ha-­Mequbalim, Ha-­Shabtaim Ve-­Ha-­Khassidim, vol. 1 (Odessa: Moriya, 1913), 59. 3 Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), 303–13. 4 Yosef Kaplan, “The Attitude of the Sephardi Leadership in Amsterdam to the Sabbatean Movement 1665–1671,” in idem, An Alternative Path to Modernity. The Sephardi Diaspora in Western Europe, (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 211–33. 5 Jacob Barnai, “Christian Messianism and the Portuguese Marranos: The Emergence of Sabbateanism in Smyrna,” Jewish History 7 (1993): 119–26. 6 Matt Goldish, “Patterns in Converso Messianism,” in Jewish Messianism in the Early Modern World, eds. Matt Goldish and Richard H. Popkin (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), 41–63. See also his book: The Sabbatean Prophets (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004). 7 Except for Graetz and Kahana, who identified Christian influences on early modern Jewish messianism, but did not relate them to the conversos. Scholem, on the other hand, saw the Sabbatean movement as a purely religious phenomenon rooted in the Lurianic Kabbalah and the expulsion from Spain, and thus denied any external influences (either social or religious) on it. On this attitude, see Gershom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Jerusalem: Schocken, 1941) 242; see also Silvia Berti, “A World Apart? Gershom Scholem and Contemporary Reading of 17th-Century Jewish-­Christian Relations,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 3 (1996): 212–24. Brandon Marriott pointed recently to other channels of Christian (mainly Protestant) connection and influence on the Sabbatean Movement, see Brandon Marriott, Transnational Networks and Cross-­ Religious Exchange in the Seventeenth-­ Century Mediterranean and Atlantic Worlds: Sabbatai Sevi and the Lost Tribes of Israel (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015). 8 On his criticism, see Herman P. Salomon and Isaac S.D. Sassoon, eds., Examination of Pharisaic Traditions (Leiden: Brill, 1993). Avraham Geiger, ed., Ma’amar Magen Ve-­Zina (Breslau: Hirsch Sulzbach, 1855). See also Yosef Kaplan, “The Social Patterns of the Herem,” in idem, An Alternative Path to Modernity, 108–42.

A Messiah from the Left Side  117 9 See Gershom Scholem, “Igeret Avraham Michael Cardozo Le-­Dayaney Izmir,” Zion 19 (1953): 1–22. See also Yosef Kaplan, From Christianity to Judaism; The Story of Isaac Orobio de Castro (Oxford: Littman, 1989), 212–13. On early modern messianic advocators who crossed religious boundaries, see Matt Goldish, “Could Early Modern Messianic Movements Cross Religious Boundaries?,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 61 (2018): 124–46. 10 For more details see my recent biography: Moti Benmelech, Shlomo Molcho— Hayav U-­Moto Shel Mashiach Ben Yosef (Jerusalem: Machon Ben-­Zvi, 2017). 11 Molcho circumcised himself only at the age of twenty-four. His parents’ decision not to circumcise their son, although they were promised that no inquiries would be held into their religious practices points to the family’s high level of assimilation into Portuguese Christian society. Indeed, in one of his autobiographical letters, Molcho expresses feelings of disconnect and alienation toward his parents. 12 Benmelech, Shlomo Molcho, 128–29. I use the name University of Coimbra even though the university was located in Lisbon and moved to Coimbra only in 1537. 13 On Molcho’s deep acquaintance with Jewish learning, see Moti Benmelech, “Anussei Portugal Be-­Reshit Ha-­Mea Ha-­16 Le-­Or Megilat Setarim Le-­Rabbi Avraham ben Eliezer Ha-­Levi,” Zion 73 (2008): 297–323. 14 Drashot Shlomo Molcho (Sefer Ha-­Mefo’ar) (Salonica, 1529), 35v. 15 Bodleian Library, Oxford (United Kingdom) [hereafter BL], Ms Reggio 24, 6r. This sermon, given in Mantua in spring 1531, was published by Moshe Idel, “Drasha Lo Yedu’a shel Shlomo Molcho,” in Galut Achar Gola, eds. Aharon Mirsky, Avraham Grossman, and Yosef Kaplan (Jerusalem: Machon Ben-­Zvi, 1988), 431–33. Molcho’s sermons in Ancona in early 1530, and probably also those he gave in Urbino, were also attended by Christians. 16 Gedaliah ibn Yahya, Shalshelet Ha-­Qabalah (Jerusalem: Ha-­Dorot Ha-­Rishonim Ve-­Korotam, 1962), 103. 17 BL, Ms. Hunt. 551, 162v. See also ibid., 103 f.4. On Molcho’s preaching, see Moti Benmelech, “Drashot Ve-­Samchut,” in Doresh Tov Le-­Amo, eds. Nachem Ilan, Carmi Horowitz, and Kimi Kaplan (Jerusalem: Shazar, 2012), 67–87. 18 On this decree, see Alexandre Herculano, History of the Origin and Establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal (New York: Ktav, 1972), 256. Maria José Pimenta Ferro Tavares, “Expulsion or Integration? The Portuguese Jewish Problem,” in Crisis and Creativity in the Sephardic World, ed. Benjamin Gampel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 95–103 (here 102). 19 Concerning the unique character of Portuguese conversos and the differences between them and the Spanish conversos in terms of Jewish identity and commitment to Jewish law and practices, see Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court, 5–11. See also his “Prolegomenon,” to Herculano, History, 44–46. Regarding the diversity of beliefs and opinions among the Portuguese conversos, see Benmelech, “Anussei Portugal,” 23–25; Isaia Tishbi, Meshikhiyut Be-­Dor Gerushei Sfarad U-­Portugal (Jerusalem: Shazar, 1985). 20 Sefer Ha-­Mefo’ar, 18r–18v. 21 Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 309, n. 292. 22 Film no. 76338–76342 in the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts in the National Library of Israel, 42r (the manuscript is currently held by a private collector). On this manuscript, see Shlomo Zucker, “Sefer ‘Shir Chadash’ Ktavim Achronim shel Shlomo Molcho,” Mehqerey Yerushalayim BeMachshevet Yisrael 20–21 (2007): 541–69 (Gerschom Scholem Memorial volume) and see my criticism—Benmelech, Shlomo Molcho, 383–89. 23 Ibid., 58v. on the unicorn in Christian symbolism, see Joachim Schaper, “The Unicorn in the Messianic Imagery of the Greek Bible,” Journal of Theological Studies 45 (1994): 117–36; Yona Dureau, “The Metamorphosis of Signifier vs. an Iconic Signified: The Unicorn—A Case Study,” Semiotica 128 (2000): 35–68.

118  Moti Benmelech 24 Concerning the transformations that would occur in the Torah and in ritual law in the messianic period, see Gershom Scholem, On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism (New York: Schocken, 1965), 66–86; and, more recently, Roni Weinstein, Shavru Et Ha-­Kelim (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 2011), 242– 53 on the influence of the Kabbalah on the perception of the ritual law in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. About the Patriarch Abraham as keeper of the heavenly gates, see Bereshit Rabba 48, 8 (Theodor-­Albeck addition, Berlin, 1936), 483, Babylonian Talmud tr. Eiruvin, 19a. On Jewish allegorical exegesis of Job, see Shaul Liberman, “Massoret Kabbala Be-­Divrei Ha-­Geonim?,” in Sefer Ha-­ Yovel—Kovetz Torani Mada’i Mugash Le-­ Dr. Menashe Binyamin Levin, ed. Yehuda Leib Fishman (Jerusalem: Mosad HaRav Kook, 1940), 105–8. Concerning unicorns in Jewish sources from early modern Italy, see David B. Ruderman, “Unicorns, Great Beasts and the Marvelous Variety of Things in Nature in the Thought of Abraham b. Hananiah Yagel,” in Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century, ed. Isadore Twersky and Bernard Septimus (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 343–64. On unicorns in eighteenth-­century Polish synagogues, see Elliot Horowitz, “Odd Couples: The Eagle and the Hare, the Lion and the Unicorn,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 11 (2004): 243–58. 25 On the “revengeful redemption,” see Israel Jacob Yuval, Two Nations in your Womb. Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 92–134. Yuval refers there to the Ashkenazi notion of revengeful redemption. 26 On Molcho as “Messiah son of Joseph,” see Benmelech, Shlomo Molcho, 197–203. 27 This idea appears already in Paul’s epistle to the Romans and 1 Corinthians and it was further elaborated by the Church Fathers, particularly Augustine. However, the exact nature of the human condition after the Fall and its sinfulness are vague. For a thorough discussion, see Samuel S. Cohon, “Original Sin,” Hebrew Union College Annual 21 (1948): 275–330. On early modern Jewish attitudes to original sin, see Alan Cooper, “A Medieval Jewish Version of Original Sin: Ephraim of Luntshits on Leviticus 12,” Harvard Theological Review 97 (2004): 445–59. 28 Molcho reveals these ideas in the first part (the first Kuntres) of Sefer Ha-­ Mefo’ar. See Benmelech, Shlomo Molcho, 187–90. Concerning the notion of the Pentateuch as a series of letters that create God’s names and the sources and formation of this tradition, see Gershom Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, 32–78; Moshe Idel, Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretations (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 321–40. On the place of this concept in the thought and writings of Nachmanides, see Haviva Pedaya, HaRamban (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2003), 173–78. 29 See Cooper, “A Medieval Jewish Version of Original Sin.” 30 See, for example, Sefer Ha-­Mefo’ar, 10r. 31 Ibid., 8r. 32 Ibid., 10r. 33 Isaiah 53: 2–6. 34 An apologetic approach to the crucifixion appears already in Paul’s epistle to the Philippians (see Philippians 2:6–11). On the formation of this commentary, see Donald Juel, Messianic Exegesis: Christological Interpretations of the Old Testament in Early Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), 129–31. On the theological difficulties that the crucifixion created, see Martin Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977). Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Origen were the first to interpret Isaiah 53 in that context, and they were later followed by Augustin, Nicholas of Lyra, and others. See the collection of articles dedicated to this subject: Bernd Janowski and Peter Stuhlmacher, eds., The Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 in Jewish and Christian Sources (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 2004).

A Messiah from the Left Side  119 35 Joel E. Rembaum, “The Development of a Jewish Exegetical Tradition Regarding Isaiah 53,” The Harvard Theological Review 75 (1982): 289–311. 36 Meir Benayahu, “Ma’amar Al Ha-­Geula Le-­Rabbi Shlomo Molcho,” Asufot 9 (1995): 348–49. Regarding the alien origin of the Messiah son of David, see Russian State Library, Moscow (Russia), Ms. Guenzburg 302/41, 247v. 37 See above note 22, 1v. 38 Paul’s conversion is described in Acts 9:1–22. 39 Romans 2:29. 40 Quoted from Benmelech, Shlomo Molcho, 370. 41 Ibid., 374. 42 It is worth mentioning that Paul was the earliest teacher of the doctrine of original sin that Molcho used as a foundation of his messianic thought, as was demonstrated above. See Romans 5:12–21. 43 Amos Funkenstein, Perceptions of Jewish History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 36; see also pp. 169–201 and idem, “Anti-­Jewish Propaganda: Pagan, Medieval and Modern,” Jerusalem Quarterly 19 (1981): 56–72. 44 Counter-­messianism is close to David Biale’s interpretation of counter-­history, see David Biale, “Counter-­History and Jewish Polemics against Christianity: The Sefer Toldot Yeshu and the Sefer Zerubavel,” Jewish Social Studies 6 (1999): 130–45. 45 Saverio Campanini, “A Neglected Source Concerning Asher Lemmlein and Parida da Ceresara: Agostini Giustiniani,” EAJS 2 (2008): 89–110. 46 Weinstein, Shavru et Ha-­Kelim, 478–540. 47 On this book and its author’s attitude to Islam see Alisa Meyuhas-­Ginio, “‘The Fortress of Faith’—At the End of the West: Alonso de Espina and Fortalitium Fidei,” in Contra Iudaeos. Ancient and Medieval Polemics Between Christians and Jews, eds. Guy Stroumsa and Ora Limor (Tübingen: Mohr, 1996), 215–37. Ana Echeverria, The Fortress of Faith. The Attitude Towards Muslims in Fifteenth Century Spain (Leiden: Brill, 1999). 48 Alonso de Espina, Fortalitium fidei contra iudeos saracenos aliosque christiane fidei inimicos (Nüremberg: A. Koberger, 1485), 268iv r, ger. 49 Benmelech, Shlomo Molcho, 207–13. 50 Black birds appeared in Molcho’s first vision, ibid., 371. 51 On the concept of original sin in the writings and sermons of other sixteenth-­ century Italian rabbis (Rabbi Morechai Dato and Rabbi Judah Muscato) following Molcho, see Yoram Yacobson, “Ha-­Geula Ha-­Achrona Be-­Aspaklaria Shel Adam Ha-­Rishon Kefi Hachmei Italia Be-­Tkufat Ha-­Renesans,” Daat 11 (1983): 67–89.

5 Millenarian News and Connected Spaces in 17th-Century Europe William O’Reilly

Introduction The year 1666 was a year of expectation, after much upheaval and woe.1 In his poem of the same name, the English poet and playwright John Dryden (1631–1700) proclaimed 1666 to be the Annus mirabilis, the miraculous year, the same year in which a London pamphlet told of Jews being gathered together by a prophet, returning to Jerusalem to reclaim the land of Israel.2 In the decades before this miraculous year, England had experienced regicide, the Cromwellian Protectorate, and a Republic; and the efforts of Fifth Monarchy Men to undermine the restoration of Charles II, whom they identified as the last monarch before the coming of Christ. The Fifth Monarchy Men were supported in their millenarian expectations by less radical and less antimonarchical sects such as the Quakers and Seekers. Even among the more mainstream forms of English Christianity—the duelling Presbyterian and Episcopalian forces of the Established Church and the significant population of recusant Catholics—there was an expectation that Christ’s return was imminent.3 Apocalyptic prophecy drew significantly on a historicist understanding of the book of Revelation in particular, integrating the meaning of its major prophecies with contemporary events. In seventeenth-century England, few were more influential in this regard than Joseph Mede and his study Clavis Apocalyptica (1627).4 Mede’s interpretation of the Books of Daniel and Revelation, and his work on “time, times, and a half” (Daniel 12: 6–7) and the 1,260 days of the Antichrist’s reign, exerted a profound influence on the circle of Samuel Hartlib and on the view that London as the New Jerusalem was the centre from which divine rule would spread.5 In Annus mirabilis Dryden sought to reassure his fellow Englishmen of the wisdom of the restoration of the monarchy and the defeat of the millenarians, comparing the comets which lit the skies over Europe in late 1664 to two candles, held by the angels to light England and England’s king along the path ahead: “Angels drew wide the curtains of the skies, /And Heav’n, as if there wanted lights above, /For tapers made two glaring comets rise”.6 The poem concludes on an optimistic note, despite the desolation it described, with an emphasis on London’s future as a great seaport, trading far and wide from DOI: 10.4324/9781003081050-8

Millenarian News and Connected Spaces in 17th-Century Europe  121 America to the Mediterranean and Asia, interacting with all the countries which were once its enemies. In many ways, John Dryden’s life and work stand for the events which encompass the Age of Apocalypticism and the uncertainty of the seventeenth century. Leaving his studies at Cambridge, Dryden found employment during the Protectorate with John Thurloe, Oliver Cromwell’s Secretary of State, standing proud with the Puritan poets Andrew Marvell and John Milton at Cromwell’s funeral in 1658, and later publishing his “Heroic Stanzas” as a eulogy on Cromwell’s death.7 Yet in the change from Republic to Monarchy in the 1660s, Dryden refashioned as a loyal monarchist, becoming Poet Laureate in 1668 and a champion of London and England as a centre of trade and a divinely-chosen empire. He decried the age of apocalypticism proclaimed by the supporters of millenarianism and he advanced an alternative, loyalist order as a way to recover from the tumult wrought in the age of messianic expectation.8 The world which lay ahead, in the later seventeenth century, was one dominated by maritime trade and commerce and the rise of a new economic order buttressed by a nascent international legal system, an increase in commerce and communication in a new age of print and manufacturing. The new age, shaped as much by the quarrel of the value of the old in the age of a perceived new world order, afforded greater opportunities for individuals and states alike. At a time of ascendant maritime trade and exploration, state-sponsored agents of empirical and material change witnessed, endorsed, and rejected, in varying measure, the cognitive alternatives to the established order offered by the proponents of esoteric and metaphysical change. By the end of the seventeenth century, millenarianism would evolve to become “secularized philosophical rationalism”, finding expression in the writing of Spinoza and others.9 In this context the confluence of commerce, diplomacy, and millenarianism came to influence economic and political thought, especially in the English world, at the end of the seventeenth century and thereafter. The connection between economy and millenarianism has focussed predominantly on a changing economic order as the origin of the movement; yet the connection is clearer when one looks to the outcome of each millennial movement. Writing on millenarianism, on its rise, its popularity and its decline allowed, most especially in England, for a veiled commentary on Restoration society. Drawing on examples of millenarian movements abroad, it was possible to offer a critique of absolutism, of intolerance, and of the danger of monarchy exceeding its given authority. Decades before the baron de Montesquieu published his Lettres persanes (1721), the English author Paul Rycaut drew on his scholarly and empirical knowledge of events in the Ottoman empire to reflect on the future of England in an age of restored monarchy.

Millenarianism as Veiled Critique of Government This chapter proposes that in the seventeenth century, news of millenarian events interacted with the energies of trade, commerce, and exploration, and

122  William O’Reilly helped to shape thoughts on the government of England, in particular, in an age of political and commercial transformation. Growing overseas trade led merchants to interact with political authority in new ways, creating entangled networks built on communication, commerce, and trade, connecting an emerging global world.10 This transformation would have felt new, exciting, and disorienting, which explains why those considering millenarianism at this time gave as much, or more, attention to overseas events in their drive to understand how all world events were connected and influenced each other.11 Writing on millenarianism abroad, whether in the Persian or Ottoman empire, English authors—most especially the diplomat Sir Paul Rycaut (1629–1700)—were afforded an opportunity to offer veiled advice to the restored king on how to rule “an England that was in process of inventing constitutional monarchy, searching for a way to retain the majesty of kingship while limiting royal sovereignty”.12 Reporting on millenarianism in the Ottoman empire, of “civil revolutions” in states not “supported with Reason and with Religion”, Rycaut could speak to his fellow countrymen about factionalism and religious dissent, about the rule of law and popular politics, about civil war and sedition—all by way of analogy. Only when reminding that throwing “off her [England’s] obedience and Civil Rights […] deflowred and prophaned by impious and unhallowed hands” resulting in the “overthrow of Common-wealths, and the violent death of great Ministers of State”, did he speak directly to the parallel with England. “None can more experimentally preach this Doctrine [of devotion to the monarchy] to the World than England”.13 Writing on millenarianism allowed individuals like Rycaut to remind of the lessons of the past and of the need for reasoned and just rule, where England’s interests found best expression in commercial, diplomatic, economic, and political success, at home and abroad. Rycaut’s commentary embodied an interesting paradox: thanks to the symmetry between conditions in the Ottoman Empire and England, Rycaut could use his writing on the former to make a comment about English political life. However, in using the Ottoman Empire as a cipher in this manner, he reinforced the existing notion of the Ottoman Empire as a cultural and political other. What started as a similarity in conditions in the two states ended up feeding into a narrative which reinforced their differences. In exploring this thesis, this chapter considers three millenarian movements—in the Safavid empire, in England and the English world, and in the Ottoman empire—to consider how the age of apocalypticism, first, afforded periods of state-led reform which prioritized the interests of both political centralization and ethno-religious monopolization at the expense of religious and ethnic minorities in the state; and second, created opportunities for commercial interests to fill the vacuum left by politico-religious unease with the promise of commercial success and peace. The three movements considered, in England and the English overseas world, in Persia, and in the Ottoman Mediterranean, are distinct and distinctive in some features, while sharing other characteristics which highlight a contemporary growing awareness of global events. All three movements had their origins in a

Millenarian News and Connected Spaces in 17th-Century Europe  123 revived interest in religious awakening, particularly in contexts of messianism and apocalypticism. All three movements, in turn, sought to bring about an end to the political order of the day and to establish, or re-establish, godly government.14 All three movements drew, for their core support, on mercantile, monied, and well-connected individuals; people who focussed their attention on one self-proclaimed leader who exhibited signs of divine inspiration and/or, divine illumination. The movements were radical, were led by individuals who exhibited narcissistic traits, led to strong bonds of shared destiny amongst their respective followers, and aroused first the suspicion and then the ire of their rulers. All three movements failed in their ambition to transform the world. Yet each movement in its own distinct way elicited a local response which was analogous to the response of authorities in each of the three polities. Each movement led to a greater scrutiny being exercised over religious divergence and to a debate about religious pluralism and the challenges it would bring for trade, commerce, and society. Each movement led to debate about the right of Jews to reside in the state, and under what terms and conditions. And each movement heeded the views of mercantile and commercial interests ushering in a new rational, materialist ideology which was contrary to the metaphysical enthusiasms of the millenarian moment. As shall be seen, writers like Paul Rycaut alighted upon commerce as an antidote to the metaphysical, presaging changes which appear even clearer in the eighteenth century about commerce as an outlet for the “passions”.15 Most significantly, by the time the third of these movements took place, all three movements were being seen as related, and lessons learned from the experience and reporting of domestic and foreign millenarian movements were being sketched to assure the avoidance of similar disruptions in the future. Millenarian movements in the seventeenth century attracted unprecedented levels of interest across Europe and beyond, with correspondence networks between the Middle East and Europe reporting events and spreading conspiracies in a way previously not seen.16 Certain authors on millenarian events in the seventeenth century were more influential and even efficient in spreading news than were the distribution mechanisms for published newspapers and broadsides, yet the notion of the spread of news as a paradigm of modernization continues to influence scholarship in this field.17 This growth in print, in the circulation of ideas and in the rise of contact between court, commercial, and intellectual elites, prompted a recalibration of standards of knowledge production and a growing tension between the understanding and value of empirical knowledge over metaphysical knowledge. The visionary, transcendentalist, and speculative was increasingly relegated to the realm of the private as documentable and observational knowledge was privileged. Astrology, astronomy, symbology, challenges to eschatology, Kabbalistic beliefs, and Gnosticism were all harnessed to serve these movements, in different measure and to differing effect; similar astrological interpretations in different places and times helps to explain how these movements came into existence.18 It was in the 1640s and 1650s that

124  William O’Reilly the concept of “public interest” began to be naturalized and rendered rational, “particularly as a means to knit together a new concept of the body politic within Interregnum England and post-Westphalian Central Europe”.19 Taking place within broader debates about the “reason of state” and the foundation, conservation, and advancement of empire, new ways to conceptualize change in knowledge emerged; a distinction between “knowledge” and “interests” where new “global” knowledge was mediated by transnational actors, including diplomats and merchants.20 Millenarian movements were tectonic tension points, rupturing certainty and opening tensions about the established order of things. These tensions were bridged and repaired by the emergence of authoritative voices whose critiques of millenarianism and most especially of millenarian leaders helped to marginalize its significance in many forums, exoticizing it and thereby diminishing it. Travelogues which moved away from choreographies were penned by merchant-diplomats including Sir Thomas Roe and Sir Paul Rycaut, carrying the imprimatur of the court and the sanction of leading trade companies.21 Wherever they were located, diplomats wrote regular reports about their host state based on their own observations, news acquired by trading items of political importance and statements from informants who were cultivated through special favours and bribery. These dispatches, which were sent to their home governments, were similar to merchant letters in many regards. They were handwritten, usually only a few pages, sent regularly and contained news that was considered reliable.22 Experts, whose knowledge resulted from a fusion of academic study, empirical inquiry, and commercial interest, offered new, rational reflections on subjects including culture and language, religion and customs, and imperial trade and commerce. In the writing of their accounts of life in India, Persia, and the Ottoman empire, they sought to compare and contrast social, cultural, and political practices, all the while with an eye to how England could benefit from a knowledge of courtly and commercial practice overseas. One core site of interest for writers like Rycaut was religion, not least because, away from England, he and other Englishmen encountered religious diversity. Afforded an opportunity available to few in the seventeenth century— to travel into non-Protestant lands with royal warrant, authorized to act in the interest of king, country, and company—Rycaut’s published work captured the widest possible readership across all sections of society, at home and abroad, securing acceptance as authoritative and correct. This blend of familial status, scholarly training, empirical knowledge, royal imprimatur, diplomatic experience, academic endorsement, commercial advantage, and imperial insight bestowed on Rycaut the status of exceptional reviewer of contemporary events. His reflections on religious disquietism in a tumultuous century served to underscore the need for

Millenarian News and Connected Spaces in 17th-Century Europe  125 political quietism and the primacy of trade, which would advantage England at home and abroad. Like his predecessor Thomas Roe (1581–1644), who as early as 1616 had recommended to the directors of the East India Company that profits would be achieved through peaceful trading and the avoidance of violence, Paul Rycaut dedicated his professional life to the pursuit of English trade and the maintenance of peace at home and abroad.23 Unlike some of his contemporaries and Puritan millenarians who saw the readmission of the Jews to England as hastening the kingdom of Christ, Rycaut, who attended Cromwell’s discussion on the readmission of the Jews on 18 December 1655, saw the economic advantage in religious pluralism.24 While he did not agree with the millenarian-inspired motivation for readmission of the Jews, he saw the societal and trade benefits which would accrue from the presence in the kingdom of a well-connected minority. Thereafter, from his time at Smyrna to his involvement with negotiations for the Treaty of Karlowitz (1699), Rycaut sought to remind that English responses to the challenges of millenarianism—dismissing the rants of the “Quaker Jesus” James Nayler, overthrowing the Protectorate and restoring the monarchy, and pushing religious separatists to its colonies in the Americas—all aided in creating a context for England’s ascent as a global power.25 Millenarianism, whether in theory and practice as encountered in his studies, or in the England of his early years, or in the Ottoman Empire of his later life, punctuated his reflections on “both the adverse effects of excessive absolutism and the dangers of rebellion against legitimate authority”.26 Rycaut, therefore, engaged with millenarianism much as he engaged with the entire Ottoman empire—“the central instance of cultural otherness” for Europeans27—as a “negative ideal […] that England should strive not to emulate”.28 His critiques of millenarianism in the Ottoman empire always placed the past experience, and the future threat, of millenarianism in England to the fore.29 His writing on millenarianism was therefore not reportage; it was a “description of observable reality that both concealed and conveyed other (usually political) ideas” and was veiled advice to his king and to interested parties in England.30 And presenting his critique of English millenarianism in a comparative way, as a history of a foreign land, relating it to events in the Ottoman empire, he avoided censorship and displayed his exceptional knowledge of events at home and abroad.31 For these reasons, it is important to place discussions of seventeenthcentury millenarianism in a broader intellectual context which witnessed attempts to reinstate a deliberate intellectual exclusivity, in readings of the natural and the supernatural, in reaction to the acute crisis of authority brought about by the novelty of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Religion was reformed, scholarship reorganized and courts were reappointed, allowing agents in the service of the court to dispense power and shine the light of authority onto the people who stood for this new state knowledge—frequently factors of trade and commerce and of the “new philosophy”.32 What arose from these changes was an interaction between

126  William O’Reilly social ascendancy and mobility through knowledge in the context of an appeal for new institutions to control knowledge. This aids our understanding of the origins of the “Scientific Revolution”, which when seen from this perspective is just one episode in the constellation of expert status, political power, scholarly ego, and epistemology. By the end of the sixteenth century, many were struggling with the unexpected detection of laws in nature, leading to theological questions and conclusions and marking a definitive change between humanist knowledge and what comes after it. Functionally, by the end of the century, scholars were aware that they needed to behave differently; while trying to be commentators in an Aristotelian manner, information was being received so quickly that it needed to be brought into a new relation; to collect, sort, and form judgements in a new way.33 This study also calls for a connected history of early modern millenarianism in the context of European expansion, which would encompass the Safavid realm, Mughal India, the Ottoman Empire, Europe, and European America—where the Transylvanian-born Kabbalist Johannes Kelpius and his followers awaited the millennium in 1694.34 The Portuguese Culto do Divino Espírito Santo, for instance, crossed the Atlantic and emerged as a new form of trans-Atlantic millenarianism, merging Euro-American and African traditions. And Judeocentric millenarianism also played an important part in the development of British imperialist ideology.35

Rycaut the Englishman at Smyrna To help explore this view of how news of millenarianism was engaged with and deployed in the seventeenth century, it is useful to turn to an examination of the English scholar, merchant, and company man Sir Paul Rycaut (1629–1700). Born in England to a Huguenot father, Paul Rycaut matriculated in 1646 at Cambridge, joining Trinity College. Later in 1651 he traveled to Madrid and enrolled at Alcalá de Henares, where he translated a number of works into English.36 In 1652, back in London, he was admitted to Gray’s Inn to study law and in 1655, Rycaut joined Robert Blake’s fleet in Italy for a punitive expedition against the privateers of Tunis. On 18 December he attended the public conference in Whitehall on the resettlement of the Jews in England and left the principal surviving account of Oliver Cromwell’s speech in favor of the proposition.37 Keen to travel, Rycaut soon found himself based at Smyrna (Izmir), one of the most dynamic and vibrant cities in the Mediterranean at that time, with a population of some 80,000 inhabitants: Turks and Ottoman subjects from across the empire, including Greeks, Armenians, Jews, and perhaps 1,000 foreign residents, too.38 The city in the 1660s was teaming with languages, religions, and cultures; there were 13 mosques, seven synagogues, three Roman Catholic Churches, two Greek Orthodox, and two Armenian, with English, Dutch, and Genoese consular chapels.39 “Ethnic diversity was one of the most distinctive features of dynamic European cities in the early modern era” and English merchants and diplomats based in the city, and especially

Millenarian News and Connected Spaces in 17th-Century Europe  127 those connected with the Levant Company like the governor Sir Andrew Riccard, enjoyed a unique opportunity to live and work with Jews, Muslims, and members of other Christian denominations.40 They learned to speak and read other languages; Riccard, for instance, presented the English factory with the six volumes of the Polyglot Bible “as foundation of a better library”. This was the community that Rycaut joined; he would grow to become an important person in the city, prized by his fellow Englishmen and by others alike.41 It was serendipity that allowed Rycaut to become consul to the Levant Company at Smyrna in 1661. As his knowledge of the Turkish language improved, he took over much of the business of the embassy. In August 1663, he was dispatched to the Ottoman regencies of Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers, from where he continued to London, rewarded by the restored king Charles II for his service. Rycaut travelled to Constantinople in March 1664, and in April 1665 was sent to seek redress for the English factory at Aleppo over a customs dispute from the grand vizier, Fazil Ahmad Köprülü, then encamped with the Ottoman army at Belgrade. He accompanied the Ottoman forces on their homeward march. At that time, Smyrna was a rapidly growing entrepôt with sixty or seventy resident Levant Company factors or apprentices. Writing in 1700, the French traveller Joseph Pitton de Tournefort claimed that “Symrna is the finest Port at which one can enter into the Levant, […] the Rendezvous of Merchants from the four Parts of the World. […] The English [are] numerous, and their trade flourishing […] the whole Trade is carried on by the Interposition of Jews”.42 Rycaut wrote that “the great Influence which the flourishing Estate of […] Trade hath on the common Good of England, nourished in me a secret pride and satisfaction in that Employment” and his term of office with the Levant Company coincided with a golden age for English trade; a period of political stability under the Köprülü regime and the harmony prevailing in the English factory aided in this boom.43 Rycaut was known as a “sober man with great authority, much thought of by his nation, esteemed by Turks and strangers, and well versed in all languages and the Levantine and Eastern trade”.44 The Smyrna in which Paul Rycaut found himself in the 1660s was a city of Muslims, Jews, and Christians; of Kabbalists and conversos; with news of events in India, Persia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas all washing up on the waves of commerce, trade, and travel. The Englishman at Smyrna lived and worked in as global a context as one can conceive at this time, and this marketplace of ideas enabled Rycaut to reflect on the events which were rippling across Jewish Europe in the years before and at the time of his arrival in Smyrna, and after—Sabbatian millenarianism—which would lead to him writing an account of the Ottoman empire and of the origins of the Sabbatean messianic movement.45 Rycaut was uniquely positioned, in place, time, and scholarship, to consider how recent events in Persia, England, and now the Ottoman Empire were connected and how these seemingly diverse spaces were connected in their responses to the deluge of news from across Europe and Asia concerning millenarianism and messianism.

128  William O’Reilly

Paul Rycaut and Millenarianism Studies of early modern millenarian and messianic movements have achieved real success in undertaking close readings of these various movements as case studies in unilateral action, yet there have been few calls to consider early modern millenarian movements in a connected way and as part of a broader understanding of early modern change.46 The role played by Sir Paul Rycaut, trained and interested in the scholarship on millenarianism and the “new philosophy” in fusing political, commercial, and religious concerns about millenarian movements to serve contemporary interests, helps us to move away from a study of the Christian Fifth Monarchy and the Judaic Sabbatean movements as heretical and to focus instead on how news, information, and “new philosophy” circulated and connected sites as seemingly unconnected as Cambridge and Smyrna, informing early modern Abrahamic millenarian movements in a connective way.47 It is possible, for instance, that Christian millenarian ideas circulated in Smyrna and influenced Sabbatai Zevi’s father, and perhaps even the young Zevi himself, sparking a Jewish millenarian movement; Quakers, after all, sought to spread their ideas amongst “[p]ersons Illiterat, and of meane Understandings”.48 Smyrna was a marketplace of millenarian ideas where Muslim-Judeo-Christian encounters and debate facilitated, and perhaps enabled, a syncretism in ideas. Many English merchant-scholars—and especially graduates of Cambridge and Oxford—like Paul Rycaut spent time in the Levant Company factory there and they certainly discussed events in England and elsewhere.49 The trade links between England and the Mediterranean facilitated the exchange of millenarian ideas, stretching outwards into the Atlantic world and Asia. From the Atlantic to the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, trades companies’ factories facilitated the movement of ideas from person to person, hopscotching from hub to hub and spreading news of millenarian events. Connecting “small-scale” studies with global transformations in the seventeenth century and beyond, one can see how two men who never met— Paul Rycaut and Sabbatai Zevi—were nevertheless connected by the spaces they occupied and by global millenarianism, by sixteenth-century texts and by reports on the Nuqtavi and Fifth Monarchy movements they read or heard about, by a Mediterranean which enabled their acquisitive actions and did not limit them, and by the interests and actions of trades companies then on the apex of commercial ascendancy. The transmission of news and the spread of information, by word of mouth and increasingly in print, enabled communication and reportage at a speed not previously known.50

Early Modern Millenarian Movements Across the Abrahamic religions in the early modern period we see the occurrence of many millenarian movements, but key amongst them was the emergence of the Nuqtavi movement in Safavid Iran, the Fifth Monarchy movement in the British Atlantic world, and the Sabbatean movement

Millenarian News and Connected Spaces in 17th-Century Europe  129 amongst Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire and Europe.51 Paul Rycaut was aware of the efforts by the Safavid Shah to stamp out millenarian-inspired reactionary politics in Persia; he had lived through the Cromwellian period and the actions of millenarians in England; and he was now a contemporary witness to events occurring in the Ottoman Empire. The growth in commerce, communication, and trade was central in the creation of an environment conducive to the growth, in parallel, of these millenarian movements and yet each movement remained distinct in large part due to the varieties of individuals involved and the steps they took to further their millenarian beliefs. The connection between the movements in Persia, England, and the Ottoman Empire of which Rycaut was aware can be categorized in at least three possible ways. First, they all shared a similar sense of crisis, precipitated in great part by population recovery after the tumult of the Black Death, by rising urbanization in parts of Europe, and by the far-reaching effects of European expansion into Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Resulting and concomitant challenges over resources, access to the land and the city, the strengthening of bonds of control over the citizenry, and the development of a European-led maritime economic system based on enslavement produced “ideologies of ‘rectification and transformation’”.52 Conflict, both structural and real, recast the meaning of crisis, moving the particular experience into the realm of the general explanatory—the exceptional events which tormented everyday life were part of a process of global change, which for contemporaries was understood as being of such cataclysmic import that it surely heralded the End Times. “Crisis, whether conquest, plague, social disruption or religious innovation was likely to produce such a millenarian movement.”53 The desire for conquest and emulative rivalry became necessary scholarly virtues once knowledge was staged as a territory awaiting conquest.54 And just as political and social crisis could lead to the appearance of a millenarian movement, millenarian movements could result in periods of political and social stability—conservatism triumphing over revolution and the restoration of the old order and the victory, frequently, of commerce over disruption. Individual-level grievances can and did interact with macro-level factors to have an impact on millenarian protest. Mechanisms at both the individual and contextual level were interrelated, opening political opportunities for protest among those who feel they have been most deprived in the current crisis of belief and rule.

The Nuqtavi Sūfi Millenarian Movement in Persia In the Persian world, millenarian “extremism” had appeared in the fifteenth century in the form of Turkmen Qizilbash worship of Ṣuf̄ ī leaders.55 But it was the doctrine of Nuqtavi, emerging from the writings of Mahmud Pasikhani (d.1427) as an offshoot of the Ḥurūffiayya sect of Islam, which caused the greatest challenge to the Safavid state.56 Pasikhani believed that history was cyclical and revelation continuous and Nuqtavi cosmology, as it

130  William O’Reilly developed, divided 16,000 years of the history of mankind into two cycles, each of 8,000 years: the first to be dominated by the Arabs, the second by a period of Iranian rule; and each period would bring forth eight prophets.57 In the 1500s, the movement expanded in Persia and attracted the interest of urban elites and craftspeople, spreading further still into the Ottoman empire, and Nuqtavi adherents shared both a commitment to mysticism and to a critique of the Sultan.58 In the Islamic lunar calendar, the end of the first millennium was rapidly approaching (1591–1592 C.E.) and this sense of millenarian expectation helped the movement grow. Nuqtavi millennialism in Persia was critical of the Shah, and adherents believed in a prophecy which proposed that Shah ʿAbbās (996–1038/1588–1629 C.E.) would be replaced by a member of the movement. The popularity of this belief led Shah ʿAbbās in the late sixteenth century to dabble in the movement, in much the same way as his contemporary emperor Rudolf II was cultivating interest in alchemy, the occult, and religious pluralism in Prague.59 Shah ʿAbbās had been guided on the tenets of the movement by a trusted artisan working at court, Ustad Yufusi Tarkishduz, who believed the Shah’s interest in the Nuqtavi movement was sincere and held him to be a “full trustee”. He thus disclosed to the Shah the claims and secrets of the movement. At an auspicious moment, as predicted by his court astrologer, when in 1593 a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter would surely lead to the death of the nonNuqtavi-adhering sovereign, Shah ʿAbbās stood aside in favor of Tarkishduz whom ʿAbbās himself crowned as shah. For three days, ʿAbbās awaited the passing of the auspicious astrological event, before reclaiming the throne on the fourth day, executing the Nuqtavi  ‘Shah’ Tarkishduz and commencing on a persecution of the adherents of the millenarian movement.60 As a movement, the Nuqtavi variety of messianic millenarianism was not one singular phenomenon, but rather a collective one which included religious devotees, scholars and artisans, urban and rural followers, as well as court officials, political reformers, and political conservatives and people from the full spectrum of social and ethnic backgrounds.61 The collapse of the movement helped Shah ʿAbbās’s to commence upon a period of recovery in trade and commerce, across the entire Persian Gulf space. Under his rule, the Persian world became a commercial enclave between the West and the East. Internal dissent, as had manifested in the Nuqtavi movement, was punished and renewed focus was turned, in a new wave of national union, toward the conquering of Hormuz with the help of the English, whose interest in the region was further underpinned with the publication of the Sherley brothers’ account of Persia in 1607.62 The conquest of the Portuguese enclaves in the Persian Gulf had already begun, and Shah ʿAbbās built on his subjugation of the Nuqtavi millenarian movement to focus on reform and on the strengthening of internal cohesion. Economic recovery, and a growth in interest in events in other realms, drew Shah ʿAbbās’s Safavid empire into more sustained contact with England, while the collapse of Nuqtavi millenarianism in Persia helped create an opportunity for English mercantile activity which would continue throughout the century.63

Millenarian News and Connected Spaces in 17th-Century Europe  131 It was the rousing words in 1640 of one of England’s most experienced diplomats, Sir Thomas Roe, to the English Parliament which first encapsulated this interaction of trade, commerce, and religious upheaval, in the interest of English economic growth. Roe advanced a series of reforms to improve England’s global competitiveness and he argued the case for religious pluralism.64 Roe was driven “by a zeal for country and religion” and he called—almost 50 years before John Locke’s Epistola de tolerantia (1689)—for a form of qualified religious toleration, because toleration was, he argued, good for business.65 Having spent time in India where his role had been to build up English prestige and increase the volume and security of trade, Roe noted that the Mughal emperor did not interfere with the spiritual lives of his subjects, nor with their “tender consciences”, and encouraged England to do the same, in the service of commerce.66 The comparison he drew was clear: extremism, religious radicalism, and state intolerance had weakened the Safavid state and created an opportunity in the time of imperial recovery for English trade to flourish in the region, just as the Nuqtavi millenarian refugees who fled Persia and moved to Shah Jahangir’s Mughal empire had helped to make India thrive and succeed.67 Roe’s remarks are critical of both millenarianism and of the particular persecution of millenarians in the Safavid realm and he cautioned England—two years into the War of the Three Kingdoms and two years away from the outbreak of Civil War—to learn from his observations on radical religion and the impact on the rule of law.68 As a leading diplomat who secured the support of English merchants at home and abroad, Roe “raised the reputation of England to new levels” and his “great actions” were recalled in diplomatic circles long after his death.69 Roe’s service in India, in Persia, and in Europe meant that he was held to have “extensive experience of the workings of the eastern mind”, and some of the negotiations he had undertaken in India had given him firsthand knowledge of Middle Eastern trade.70 Roe’s record and reputation as a diplomat and successful supporter of trade and commerce, most especially in Mughal India, made him the role model for all who sought to engage with the Ottoman and Safavid empires, including Paul Rycaut.

The Fifth Monarchy Millenarian Movement in England and the English World In England, the War of the Three Kingdoms and the English Civil War, occurring just decades after the apogee of the Nuqtavi millenarian ­ movement in Persia, was a time of religious and political upheaval that anticipated the return of the Kingdom of Christ. The Fifth Monarchists, whose movement gained thousands of followers, held that the execution in 1649 of king Charles I was the awaited act which now cleared the way for the reign of Jesus Christ.71 The Fifth Monarchists were not supporters of Oliver Cromwell’s regime and despite their subsequent efforts to recast the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 as a step on the path towards the reign of King Jesus failed to secure the support of either Charles II or his

132  William O’Reilly brother the Duke of York and they were persecuted.72 Like the Nuqtavi movement, the Fifth Monarchy movement was not a single, united movement, and the period of persecution made this even clearer: some members advocated violence to attain their objectives, while others were pacifist. It was never a broadly popular movement—it attracted the literate, keen to keep pace with the newest pamphlets circulated on the millennium, and it was more urban than rural in popularity. Nonetheless, Fifth Monarchy millenarianism was influential in England with its highpoint in the 1650s. What united all adherents was the belief that the end days were near at hand and there was a real need to prepare for it, to turn the stones over and make the ground ready for the messiah’s return. Fifth Monarchy ideas were appropriated and reshaped as they transcended class barriers, and as with Quakers and some other Protestant groups, these radical movements afforded women and men the opportunity to claim to be Christ or, like Mary, to be carrying the Messiah.73 And not unlike other Protestant religious movements, and most especially in the English North American colonies, there was a reliance on what has been called “secondary leadership” in the propagation of the movement, where local enthusiasts took up the key ideas of leading figures as advocated in word and print, helping to further disseminate the message in a local context.74 Popular Puritan preachers, military leaders and local sheriffs, merchants and craftsmen all helped to keep the movement alive, much like occured in the dissemination of the Nuqtavi message. With the end of the Cromwellian republic and the collapse of the Fifth Monarchy millenarian movement, the social, political, and economic lives of English people in an age of restoration were reshaped; the “humble majority” grew more involved in the life and politics of the state. Guiding debate and cautioning against excess in the rule of law in this age of ascendant maritime empire were authors like Paul Rycaut, whose work helped to extend and perpetuate the debate about religion, religious toleration, and the new commercial order in English life at the dawn of the eighteenth century.75

The Millenarian Movement of Sabbatai Zevi in the Ottoman Empire and Europe In the decade of regicide in England, a revelation would take place in the Ottoman empire which encapsulated and resonated with the millenarian movements in Persia and England. The millenarian movement prompted by the actions of Sabbatai Zevi of Smyrna (Izmir) (Zvi, Zwi, Sebi, Sevi, 1626– 1676) is held to have begun in 1648, when Zevi had his first messianic visions, but it was nearly 20 years before Zevi and the Sabbatean movement he prompted came to Europe-wide attention. Zevi was born into an Ashkenazi family in Ottoman Smyrna in 1626, the second of three sons, on an auspicious date, the anniversary of the destruction of the Second Temple which in rabbinic tradition was also the date of the birth of the messiah. Zevi’s father served as a broker to an English trade factory at Smyrna and was also the representative of the Levant Company there. Some authors have argued that

Millenarian News and Connected Spaces in 17th-Century Europe  133 there was a small Quaker community at Smyrna, and that Zevi’s father was in their employ, but Brandon Marriott has convincingly shown that there is no clear evidence for these claims.76 It has also been suggested that Zevi may have been influenced by news from England of the “Quaker Jesus” James Nayler in 1656, but this, too, is unclear; if news of Nayler did reach Smyrna, it is likely that it did little more than add to the general messianically charged atmosphere of the mid 1660s.77 Nonetheless, it is correct that Zevi’s father was in regular contact with English people in Smyrna and must have frequently heard of the millenarian expectations in England and being inclined to believe them, likely communicating them to his son, whom he almost deified because of his piety and kabbalistic wisdom. The young Zevi devoted his time to Talmudic studies and was a talented and dedicated student, receiving the title of hakham after six years’ study and while still an adolescent, moving to the study of kabbala from the age of eighteen (1644–1648). He was much influenced by the teaching of Rabbi Isaac Luria and in 1648—the year of the great massacre of Jews in Eastern Poland—Zevi first revealed himself to be “the savior of Israel the messiah, the son of David”.78 Expelled from Smyrna in 1648 or 1649, he and a small number of followers fled first to Salonika, then spent some time in Constantinople, before returning to Smyrna in 1654, then on to Egypt and Jerusalem where he spent a year building up a community of followers. Encouraged by the young and charismatic rabbi Abraham Nathan ben Elisha Hayyim Ashkenazi—who had had a vision of Zevi as the messiah— Sabbatai Zevi proclaimed himself the new messiah on 31 May 1665. He would become the most prominent of the modern Jewish pseudo-messiahs. Through a series of acts which set him at odds with Jewish law, he won over to his movement many thousands of followers in the Ottoman Empire.79 Zevi announced that the Last End as noted by Isaiah was at hand and that he and his followers would free the Holy Land from Ottoman rule, heralding the start of the new age. His fame extended to Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands where the messianic movement was ardently promulgated, and the Jews of Amsterdam and Hamburg received confirmation of the extraordinary events in Smyrna from trustworthy Christian correspondents. Fantastic reports were widely spread: “in the north of Scotland a ship had appeared with silken sails and ropes, manned by sailors who spoke Hebrew. The flag bore the inscription ‘The Twelve Tribes of Israel’”.80 The German savant Heinrich Oldenburg wrote to Baruch Spinoza: Here there is a rumour on everyone’s lips that the Israelites will return to their native land after more than two thousand years away from it. Few here believe this, though many—Christians who think it would herald the second coming of Christ—desire it. […] Until this news is reported by trustworthy men from Constantinople, to whom this matter is of the greatest concern, I can’t trust it. But I’m eager to know what the Jews in Amsterdam have heard about this matter, and how they are affected by this report. If it is true, it seems likely to lead to a world-wide crisis.81

134  William O’Reilly Supported by his prophet, now known as Nathan Ashkenazi of Gaza, Zevi set out for Constantinople, where it was believed he would take back the Holy Land from “the Great Turk”. Once in the city, Zevi was brought before Sultan Mehmed IV and presented with an ultimatum to convert to Islam or face execution. Choosing to apostasize, Zevi and many followers publicly converted to Islam while privately, it was held, they continued to follow Jewish law and custom, giving rise to the Dönmeh community which exists to this day.82 Rabbi Nathan Ashkenazi, meanwhile, much like his contemporary Fifth Monarchists in England after the restoration of Charles II, sought to rework Zevi’s teaching to explain away his apostasy, and Nathan continued to preach Zevi’s message and to keep Sabbateanism alive. News of Zevi and his Sabbatean movement spread across Europe like wildfire, and reports—accurate and wildly inaccurate, including reports of Zevi’s torture and execution—were printed in London, Amsterdam, Augsburg, Danzig (Gdańsk), and elsewhere, in English, German, Polish, and later Russian.83 Rumours about his arrest reached the printing houses in northern Europe along with reports of his purported execution (which never took place). Even the prestigious Oprechte Haerlemse Courant, on 4 May 1666, printed such a report, noting that Christians, too, had been won over to Zevi’s movement.84 Vivid engravings of Zevi’s supposed torture and that of his followers captured the imagination of readers across the continent and led to Sir Paul Rycaut writing an account of the movement and of Zevi’s actions, compared with other millenarian movements.85 The Sabbatean movement has typically been analysed as a form of Kabbalistic mysticism. However, the movement also coincided with the heyday of the Kadizadelis, a rigorously anti-mystical group of Muslim preachers. The collapse of Sabbatai Zevi’s movement, which attracted rabbis like Samuel Primo, Judah Sharaf of Livorno, and David Yishaki and also “the poorest Jews in the city, including ‘fishermen, venders of eggs and poultry, oarsmen in the port, and servants, and more of this sort of noblemen, even the richest’”, was entangled with the reforms of the Köprülü grand viziers, who patronized the Kadizadelis.86 In Egypt, fiscal reform was accompanied by the murder of the fervently Sabbatean Jewish community leader and the abolition of his office. Thus, a re-reading of the Sabbatai Zevi affair in light of the Köprülü reforms and Kadizadeli rigor reveals it as a product of intense religious and political ferment within the Ottoman Empire, and within Egypt in particular.87 These sweeping reforms, which removed non-Muslims from Istanbul in an action which began after the great fire of 1660, led to a movement of religious purification which lasted for many decades and which coincided with Ottoman advances into the Balkans and Central Europe.88 Much like the reforms of Shah ʿAbbās after the Nuktavi movement, and the Restoration monarchy in England after 1660, sweeping social, political, and economic reforms accompanied the end of Sabbatai Zevi’s movement in the Ottoman empire (Figure 5.1).

Millenarian News and Connected Spaces in 17th-Century Europe  135

Figure 5.1 [JOHANN FRIEDRICH CORVINUS], Anabaptisticum et Enthusiasticum Pantheon Und Geistliches Rüst-Hausz Wider die alten Quacker, und neuen Frey-Geister, Welche die Kirche Gottes zeithero verunruhiget, und bestürmet, auch treue Lehrer und Prediger Göttlichen Worts, verachtet, verleumbdet, geästert und verfolget haben …, [Köthen und Frankfurt] 1701–1702. The publication included this very interesting print of Sabbatai Zevi. © Bayerische Staatsbibliothek

136  William O’Reilly

Rycaut, Millenarian News, and Connected Spaces—Cambridge, London, Smyrna, and Beyond It was this world of empire and trade and of struggle between millenarianism and anti-millenarianism in which Paul Rycaut found himself and which he sought to navigate as a scholar, a diplomat, and a writer on the connected history of events as he saw them. Rycaut was at the intersection of a number of socially exclusive circles: he drew on his contacts from Cambridge, and his “grand title of Levant Merchant”89 granted him access to the most “elite” of the merchant companies, a company which tended to attract very rich merchants from the higher echelons of society, with a membership of no more than 400 at its peak in the 1670s.90 The business cycle of the Levant trade was relatively long, and therefore requiring the investment of large quantities of capital for a matter of years before one could expect a return. Since the trade centred on high-value fabrics, factors needed to keep abreast of changing tastes in London, which again required some social capital. London both received and produced global knowledge, working “with a specific density of interactive processes [to] spawn a distinct culture of creativity”.91 As Rycaut’s career demonstrates, because of the close intertwining of trade and politics in the Ottoman Empire, a position with the Levant Company could be a steppingstone to a diplomatic career, which also attracted the involvement of higher-status individuals. “The Levant Company had glamour, prestige, and a reputation for profitability.”92 In this heady time of restoration and of maritime and commercial growth, Rycaut returned to Smyrna in 1667 and remained until 1678. He would become the chronicler of his time in the Ottoman empire, first publishing his Narrative of the Success of the Voyage of the Right Honourable Heneage Finch, Earl of Winchelsea, anonymously in London in 1661, followed by The Capitulations and Articles of Peace between the Majestie of the King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland &c. and the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, printed at Smyrna by a Jewish printer there, and later published at Constantinople in 1663. The Capitulations was the first work to appear in English in the Ottoman Empire and it was dedicated to the Levant Company. Rycaut’s major work was The Present State of the Ottoman Empire, a three-part analysis of Ottoman government and society, which dealt with a wide range of topics: the first part discussed, among others, the constitution, the education of the ruling classes, the principal offices, and the relationship between the central government and the outlying provinces; the second part dealt with religion and morality; and the third, with Ottoman military might. The Present State was published in 1666, Dryden’s Annus mirabilis, although for Rycaut it did not seem so miraculous, as the Great Fire of London burned most copies of his study. The Present State was sufficiently important to have Rycaut elected to the Royal Society in December 1666 and translations of the study followed quickly, becoming a best-seller in English, French, Dutch, German, Italian, and Polish.93 The range and accuracy of the information presented by Rycaut made him the expert on

Millenarian News and Connected Spaces in 17th-Century Europe  137 Ottoman affairs and his advice was sought by policymakers and scholars alike, shaping perceptions of the Ottomans for decades and centuries into the future. As Rycaut wrote, it was intended to “supply them with discourse and admiration, than as a matter worthy the consideration, or concernment of our Kings or our Governors”.94 Significantly, Paul Rycaut’s next publication after The Present State was an account of Sabbatai Zevi and the Sabbatean movement, which had swept through the Ottoman Empire in 1666. History of the Three Late, Famous Impostors was published in 1669 under his friend John Evelyn’s name and was quickly reprinted in English, German, French, and other languages; Rycaut later published the text again under his own name.95 The History of the Three Late, Famous Impostors is a text in four sections and seeks to bring together the stories of Padre Ottomano, Mahomed Bei and Sabbatai Zevi in a sequential critical examination of the originals, development, and end result of their respective missions to convince that they were the messiah.96 The chapter on Zevi takes up almost half the text and is both extremely detailed on the manner of Sabbatai Zevi’s emergence as a figure of interest, and related to the stories of the two earlier “pretenders”, showing how their stories laid the foundation for Zevi’s relatively more successful presentation. John Evelyn’s “Dedicatory” to the Three Late, Famous Impostors sets out that it is an “Illustrious Person” (Henry Howard [1628– 1684], 6th Duke of Norfolk), who had informed of the stories of Ottomano and Mahomed Bei, and “an Eye-witness […] a Person, who has already gratified the Publique with the Fruit of many rare and excellent Observations”, that is Rycault himself, who has reported the story of Zevi: THESE ensuing Discourses intitle their Original to the noble industry, and affection to Truth of an Illustrious Person; and to the great and worthy Ingenuity of a Persian stranger, lately amongst us, from whose mouth I have received the two following first Narrations, and from whom I have been abundantly satisfied, that the Particulars are of undoubted Verity. For the Third and Last, which concerns the Story of that Impudent Iew, it will need little Analogy; since it proceeds not onely from an Eye-witness, but from the hand of a Person, who has already gratified the Publique with the Fruit of many rare and excellent Observations, and which becomes due to your Lordship upon a just claim; so as your Lordship having been so pleas’d with the first Relation, cannot be less with the following, though I should never have presum’d to be their deferent in this unpolish’d dress, had I not receiv’d some assurances of your pardon.97 As Evelyn sets out in the “Dedicatory”, these “very strange” stories would not be of interest “were there no other Interest in it than the vanity of the Persons, who assume to themselves the Titles”; what is important, is that “the cause of this obstinate War and Quarrel ’twixt the Turk and the Venetian was grounded onely upon the taking of Sultan Osmon and his Mother (pretended

138  William O’Reilly Son and Wife of Sultan Ibrahim) by the Gallies of Malta”. The warfare between the Venetian Republic and the Ottomans was a direct result of the false imposter; the disruption in trade which resulted merits attention to these stories, which are “worthy the Notice of Inquisitive men”, because “the Eyes and Thoughts of all Europe are intent upon the success of Candia”.98 The merits of History of the Three Late, Famous Impostors are further elaborated upon in the introductory remarks, “To The Reader”. Evelyn lauds Rycaut as a “dextrous Person”, useful to “Christian Monarchs” because he can Discover such Cheates as frequently appearing under the Disguise of Distressed Princes, Merchants, &c. are, to truth, but Spies, and bold Impostors, and whom otherwise ’tis almost impossible to detect; not to suggest the many other good Offices, as to the Eastern Commerce and Affaires, they might be useful in. Of note is that at the close of the discussion of Sabbatai Zevi, there follows an account of the exile of the Jews from the Persian Empire, The History of the Final Extirpation and Exilement of the Jewes out of the Empire of Persia.99 As Evelyn explains earlier in the volume, You have at the end of the last Impostor an Account of the Jews Exile out of that Vast Empire of Persia, happening but the other day; which, together with the miscarriage of their late Messiah (the Twenty-Fifth Pretender to it as I am credibly inform’d, it stands in their own Records) might, one would think, at last open the Eyes, and turne the hearts of that obstinate and miserable People: But whil’st the Time not yet Accomplish’d, I could wish our modern Enthusiasts, and other prodigious Sects amongst us, who Dreame of the like Carnal Expectations, and a Temporal Monarchy, might seriously weigh how nearly their Characters approach the Style and Design of these Deluded Wretches, least they fall into the same Condemnation, and the Snare of the Devil.100 The purpose of this account of religious toleration, of the part played by the Jewish community in Persia in the development of trade in the empire, was to highlight the importance of supporting those who chose to work for the betterment of the state, as long as they respected local practice and did not disadvantage the “natural subjects” of the country. As Evelyn wrote, In the Reign of the famous Abas, Sophy of Persia, and Grand-Father to the present Emperour, the Nation being low, and somewhat exhausted of Inhabitants, it entered into the Minde of the Prince (a Wise and Prudent Man, and one who exceedingly studied the Benefit of his Subjects) to seek some expedient for the Revival and Improvement of Trade, and by all manner of Priviledges and Immunities to encourage other contiguous Nations to Negotiate and Trade amongst them; And this Project he fortified with so many Immunites; and used them so well

Millenarian News and Connected Spaces in 17th-Century Europe  139 who came, that repairing from all Partes to his Countrey, in a short time the whole Kingdome was filled with Multitudes of the most Industrious People and Strangers that any may bordered on him. It happened, that amongst those who came, innumerable Flocks of Jewes ran thither from all their Dispersions in the East; attracted by the Gaine, which they universally make where ever they set footing, by their innate Craft, Sacred Avarice, and the excessive Extortions which they continually Practice. And it was not many years but by this means, that they so impoverished the rest, and especially the Natural Subjects of Persia, that the Clamor of it reached to the Eares of the Enperour; and indeed it was Intollerable, for even his own Exchequer began to be sensible of it, as well as his Peoples Purses, and Estates, which they had almost Devoured.101 Toleration and the encouragement of trade and industry through the settling of foreigners “attracted by the Gaine”, would benefit any state just as it had in Persia in the time of Shah ʿAbbās’s grandfather; but to tolerate the “excessive Extortions” which a community of religious extremists might promote “was Intollerable” and would lead to that community’s exile. The History of the Three Late, Famous Impostors was an exhortation to minority religious communities to be attentive to the privilege of toleration, just as it was a warning to the political, diplomatic, and mercantile communities of the need to avoid the error of indulging religious zealots. Why did a scholar, diplomat, merchant, and frequent traveller like Rycaut write a history of the messianic movement led by a Jew from Smyrna, Sabbatai Zevi, reflecting on millenarianism in a comparative context? It is quite clear that Rycaut’s knowledge of messianic expectation and of millenarianism was much more informed than just his knowledge of the Nuqtavi movement, the Fifth Monarchy men, and the Sabbatarian movement. His own studies, most especially first at Trinity College, Cambridge, and his subsequent gathering of experiences on his travels and his contacts with merchants and scholars in the Ottoman and Safavid empires, as well as from North America and across Europe, placed him in a perhaps unique position as a commentator on global millenarianism in the seventeenth century. It is true that Rycaut lived in an age when interest in Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian led to renewed interest in Judaism, most especially, and in Islam; early modern Hebraism also led to a type of philosemitic Puritanism with figures in the interregnum like William Gouge, Samuel Hartlib, John Dury, John Selden, and Henry Jessey learning Hebrew, seeking Jewish interlocutors and studied Jewish books of jurisprudence, ethics, and mysticism. The belief in the apocalyptic year of 1666 was so dominant that Menasseh ben Israel, rabbi of Amsterdam and leader of the campaign to have Jews readmitted to England, did not hesitate to use it as a motive for his plea for the readmission of the Jews into England, remarking “the opinions of many Christians and mine do concur herein, that we both believe that the restoring time of our Nation into their native country is very near at hand”. Like Dury, Hartlib and other Protestant Hebraists, Rycaut attended these debates regarding the readmission of the Jews into England.102

140  William O’Reilly Like the English millenarians of the period, some European Jews were engaged in messianic expectation and alongside the coming of the messiah hoped that the Lost Tribes would emerge from their seclusion and concealment and return of the land of Israel.103 Other European Jews anticipated that the coming of the messiah might resolve the fundamental sticking point between Jews and Christians: the ultimacy of the incarnation.104 The refocussing of attention towards a millenarian future, and the concern to reduce religion to morality allowed figures like Jean Bodin and Baruch Spinoza to occupy an irenic space between Judaism and Christianity.105 The rise of Sabbateanism and the popularity of the Quaker James Nayler who in 1656 had recreated Christ’s Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem in Bristol, further opened the door to a millenarian future of Judeo-Christian irenicism.106 New popular print, and especially broadsheets, popularized these figures across the continent and made their diverse actions comparable in the minds of many contemporaries. The authors of apocalyptic literature engaged in a cultural struggle, engaging with and disrupting the “everyday metaphors of power, turn[ing] to history to reveal the contingency of present reality”. It was this intellectual context that informed and formed Paul Rycaut, as a scholar, as a merchant, as a servant of the state involved in debates ranging in subject from Ottoman trade to the readmission of the Jews to England. Already as a student at Cambridge, Rycaut was almost certainly familiar with Paul Grebner’s late sixteenth-century prophetic text, Sericum Mundi Filum, reading a rare copy of the manuscript in his college library.107 Grebner was born in the mid sixteenth century, most likely in Lüneburg, where he came under the patronage of Duke Joachim Friedrich of Brandenburg at Magdeburg. It was to Joachim Friedrich that he dedicated the manuscript collection of his prophecies, in May 1574, arranged as a sequence of “Europeische Seidenfaden” (European silk threads) woven, he described, into apocalyptic banners which were “swept [and blown] by the Atlantic winds”. Grebner claims to have received his visions in 1573 and his Atlantic-blown banners proclaimed universal change, announcing that “prospects are ripe for a silvery, golden, well celebrated and everlasting Age”.108 Grebner visited England in 1582 and presented Queen Elizabeth with a “fair” manuscript in Latin, “describing therein the future historie of Europe”; this manuscript copy was deposited in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, where Rycaut read and worked. Grebner’s prophecy was said to have foretold how Gustavus Adolphus (1594–1632) would invade the Holy Roman Empire and perish in battle, and it further revealed the demise of a “Northern King” named Charles. Grebner’s text was to have a great impact on seventeenth-century millenarianism in England, predicting that “The Lyon having the Rose shall utterly destroy the Pope; so that after there shall be never any Popes.”109 The novelty of Grebner’s text lay in its power by ascription and association, not just with Queen Elizabeth but with other European royal houses and with some of the leading figures of the day.110 Central to his ideas were the building of the New Jerusalem which many Fifth Monarchists held to

Millenarian News and Connected Spaces in 17th-Century Europe  141 be London, the rise of the fifth empire, and on the future dispensation. Grebner expanded his “Banners” and after meeting with the British emissary Sir Thomas Bodley, and the Huguenot Pierre Ségur-Pardaillon, in Hamburg in August 1586, Grebner translated his visions into Latin.111 This millenarian exposition was further popularized by Helisaeus Roeslin (1544–1616).112 In 1579, Grebner spread his millenarian ideas in his work Speculum et Harmonia mundi, a manuscript text in folio, which built on his earlier Bedencken und Censur über Pauli Grebneri Apparitiones oder göttliche Erscheinungen Sericum Mundi filum. Johannes Bureus, tutor and advisor to Gustavus Adolphus and widely read “prophet” of the early seventeenth century, drew heavily on Grebner’s text and in March 1625 called for the new church of redemption in the coming fifth empire to be called “Philadelphia”.113 Back in England, Grebner’s visions were reemployed after the execution of Charles I in 1649, when concern arose about the mythical return of “Carlox Rex, the second Charles”. Grebner’s prophecy was now used by Fifth Monarchy Men in their anti-royalist propaganda; it was translated and published in 1650.114 Grebner’s text provides the long-sought link between English Protestant diplomacy and German apocalypticists; his popularity grew and his influence on Rycaut and on so many others of his age was significant.115 Greber’s prophecies were used in a propagandistic manner by Sir Thomas Roe, who employed Grebner’s ideas to signal English support for the Swedish cause in Northern Europe. Roe had, before coming to northern Germany, been King James’s envoy to the Mughal court, residing at Agra in 1616–1619, where he served the interests of the new Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies—later the East India Company.116 Roe, as we read above, was also well versed in the events surrounding the millenarian Nuqtavi movement.117 While in India, Roe succeeded in winning a concession for the establishment of a East India Company factory at Surat, before in 1621 being appointed the English ambassador to the Sublime Porte, arriving in Constantinople in December and remaining there for seven years. At Constantinople, he promoted the interests of the English Levant Company and worked with several Company and Cambridge men, including Thomas Howard, first earl of Norfolk. It is certainly the case that the Company, in its earliest days, was associated with militant Protestantism and that reforming interests and company success were intertwined.118 The Company factor at Smyrna with whom Roe dealt was Sabbatai Zevi’s father, charged amongst other tasks with sourcing manuscripts for English scholars and acting as a factor for English trade and commerce in the city and beyond. It was Zevi’s father who sourced many of the manuscripts which Roe presented to the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and which became the core corpus of works used by English scholars for the study of Arabic and Hebrew.119 Roe would later serve as ambassador to the Holy Roman Empire, and his work on India, Persia, and Turkey was of real significance for scholars and merchant adventurers in the seventeenth century and after (Figure 5.2).120

142  William O’Reilly

Figure 5.2 Paul Grebners Prophecy concerning these times written in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, Anno 1582 / taken out of the original copy from Trinity Colledge in Cambridge with a paraphrase thereupon by a person of honour, London, 1680. © Bayerische Staatsbibliothek

Millenarian News and Connected Spaces in 17th-Century Europe  143

Conclusion: Millenarianism as Process, as Veiled Advice, and as “Cognitive Alternative” Considering the small spaces of millenarian and messianic eruption in the context of an ever-more connected world, we see a world of commerce, trade, and scholarship which was bound together by a desire to know of events and to compare and contrast them, leading to veiled advice for proper government. Commerce was central to a new rational, materialist ideology which was a deliberate reaction against the metaphysical enthusiasms of the millenarian moment; Rycaut alighted upon commerce in particular as an antidote to the metaphysical. The early modern political idea of the advancement of empire rested as much on an advancement of knowledge as it did on a taming of the passions, both of which were intricately connected; for Rycaut the “harnessing” of religious disquiet in the service of power and empire (“potentia & imperium”, as Francis Bacon put it) was both aided by, and advanced, knowledge and served in the advancement of empire.121 The passions and the “emotions entered into the battle being waged between aristocratic political economy, represented by the judgment of avarice and defense of profligacy, and the market, represented by the defense of interest”.122 Travellers, diplomats, early economic writers, and “uncommonly cosmopolitan individuals” alike drew on models and comparisons, rather than the direct observation of economic facts, to understand human motivation.123 What made the seventeenth century “remarkable was not so much the triumph of a rational, self-explanatory, and certain perspicuity, but the ingenious instrumentalization of doubt, desire, and probabilism”.124 By the time of Zevi’s death in 1676, Paul Rycaut was not only an investor and “influencer” in the Turkey Company and the Levant Company and an investor in the New England Companies in America; he was also recognized as an expert on Ottoman affairs, as a leading political and diplomatic advisor of his age, and he was lauded as a writer and scholar whose knowledge ranged from ancient and modern theories of millenarianism to works on philosemitic Puritanism to trade and commerce. Rycaut connected events in India and Persia, drawing on the writing of his fellow English emissary Thomas Roe amongst others, with his own knowledge of millenarianism in England, the Ottoman and Persian empires, and America. And by the time of his own death in 1700 an elaborated study of the Ottoman empire as written by him was republished.125 Rycaut’s “secret pride and satisfaction” in promoting trade and commerce “for the common Good of England” pushed him to form an ambitious world view, relating messianic expectation and millenarianism with the contact-collision-relationship dynamic wrought in maritime trade and commerce. In this way, Rycaut’s History of the Three Late, Famous Impostors can be seen as a type of world history, allowing him the opportunity to offer veiled advice on the government of England at a time of recovery from domestic tumult and millenarian activity. As the Nuqtavi movement declined and led to a resurgent Safavid empire which looked to international trade, so too did the Fifth Monarchy

144  William O’Reilly movement and the Sabbataian movement in the English and Ottoman trade empires. Reflections on millenarianism, in the style of Rycaut’s History of the Three Late, Famous Impostors, highlighted how news in print, circulated by traders and travellers frequently in the employ of trades companies, enabled politics and commerce to succeed over rumor and the popularity of “imposters”.126 Rycaut in his work showed that millenarianism was a popular, not unique, phenomenon and as such, was modish and false. Underscoring his qualifications as a well-connected and knowledgeable commentator on these events, he reminded—much in the style of Thomas Roe before him—that the sensationalism of millenarianism was fleeting, and that well-tempered and veracious trade and commerce could bind, not divide people. The “new philosophy” was as important in enabling trade and commerce in the late seventeenth century as it was in supporting the structures of new science and reason in other forums. As more and more interested parties were impacted upon, or at least believed they had become impacted upon, by global trade, they turned to the state either to help them exploit new opportunities, or to protect established interests. The role of global trade and consumer taste in driving a shift from companies to national structures has been noted for a much later period by Maxine Berg; yet the trade company debate of the 1690s suggests this process began much earlier than the mid eighteenth century, and demonstrates the complex relationship between global trade, private interests, and the moral consensus around employment.127 In this way, building close relationships between mercantile elites, diplomats, and state actors, often across geographic distance, allowed news of millenarian movements to spread and in turn helped to define millenarianism as a process. Millenarianism-as-process—much like political communication in the seventeenth century which “made England’s Atlantic work”—was the cumulative effect of several decades of “private and public pleading, lobbying, treating and coalition building by companies and their agents to draw the state into service”.128 In the process, the agents of millenarianism become limited to those who benefit from and exploit new global interactions: prosperous trading companies and intrepid settlers; a consequence of emerging and developing globalization, rather than a moral response to it. Millenarianism-as-process is also compatible with the theory of state development so often referenced for the long eighteenth century: the fiscal-military state, wherein the right to suppress dissent is valid in the protection of state interests just as much as it is in the protection of the state itself. If “imperial, mercantilist, and other barriers shaped and limited its [globalisation’s] extent”, millenarianism-as-process drew all citizens interested in a peaceable kingdom into the debate and extended to them an agency which was neither elite nor regressive.129 Assessments of the connection between economy and millenarianism have frequently focussed on a changing economic order as the origin of the movement; yet the connection is clearer when one looks to the outcome of each millenarian movement. It is correct that the impact of encounter with the New World on the epistemic

Millenarian News and Connected Spaces in 17th-Century Europe  145 order of the three world religions of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism was felt in the westward expansion of one of these religions and the expansion of another, at least territorially, to the east and west. But more, by the end of the three millenarian movements it led to a period of relative peace between these members of these religious communities—most especially in Europe and from the end of the seventeenth century. A lack of persecution is not, of course, the same as toleration, but varying forms of “state-centred control” first used to suppress internal dissent enabled a resurgent or nascent coalescence of state interests to monopolize power, through the clear delineation of religious affiliation and loyalty and religious exclusion and disloyalty. These findings suggest that the interaction of the contextual and individual levels should continue to be explored in future studies to further clarify the mechanisms underlying millenarianism. An interesting, and perhaps useful path for future research on the emergence and development of millenarian movements, is to be found in a four-factor exploration of millenarian movements which has arisen from recent studies in the rise of “extremism”, where an analysis of “radical” movements would appear to find historic resonance in the millenarian movements here under consideration.130 Focussing on (1) cultural aspects of identity and identity crises in initiating radicalism; (2) on the role played by relative deprivation; (3) on personal characteristics such as narcissistic and sensation-seeking traits in the character types of the individuals who lead these movements; (4) and on an apparent lack of empathy towards the effects of these leaders’ actions on their followers, scholars have attempted to understand how news of a movement in one space can be used to inform and critique events in another. When the political world in which one lives appears beyond challenge, an appeal to existential change, to the divine and to a perceived righteousness which justifies radical action, cut then a congruency between millenarianism and a new reality appears possible, indeed obvious to those who believe. News from one space can, and frequently is, used to guide precautionary action in another, serving as a deterrent for the perceived excesses of the former. Theorists of extremism frequently point to cultural identity crises as a source of radical belief, and the capacity to allow comparison of one’s own reality against other realities, including idealized ones, can and frequently does lead to a generalized sense of frustration and dissatisfaction and, occasionally, to a crisis of cultural identity which can lead to protest, revolt, and violence. In the twenty-first century, the capacity to compare realities has been aided by a proliferation of technology and the expansion of the internet and social media platforms across the world. Different cultural worlds are now accessible to a greater number of people than ever before, with growing exposure to idealized representations of others, and ways of life, that are removed from reality. The gap between versions of how life is in other places, how it could, or even should be, and the actuality of daily lives can

146  William O’Reilly feed into these localized resentments and frustrations.131 It is now seen how “cognitive alternatives” based on an imagination of the future and future lives aids significantly in presenting the corrupt and controlling regime in which one lives as a sign of the need for change. Imagining how life could be, in contrast to how it is on an everyday experiential level, leads to frustration, eventually reaching a tipping point and ending in mass protest and frequently violence. Today, scholars attribute to the power of globalization the means by which people compare their circumstances and outcomes to others in ways not possible before the technologically interconnected world of the twenty-first century. Yet these self-same factors were at play across the seventeenth century and resulted in very similar outcomes; the velocity of interconnectedness was similar, even if the speed was not. We ought therefore to turn our attention to the role of globalization in connecting spaces and in enabling knowledge of comparable movements to spread from one area to another. We should also place real emphasis on the people who compare who with whom, those who set the terms by which social realities and subjective feelings, regardless of objective standards, are represented and positioned. In the twenty-first century, these roles of relative arbitration may be filled by social media and media organizations. In the seventeenth century, it was authors of empirical studies with veiled lessons, such as Paul Rycaut, who generated a framework within which others could assess the various processes of radical social change which resulted, in time and place, in millenarian uprisings. For this reason, methodological pluralism and transdisciplinary research can offer a generative framework to help understand how news of millenarian movements connected spaces in Europe, Asia, and beyond in the seventeenth century.

Notes 1 Very earliest versions of this paper were presented at the Colonalization & Globalization c. 1500–1800 Conference (Moore Institute, NUI Galway) and The Well-Connected Domains: Ottoman History in a Transcultural Perspective Conference (Istanbul). I am grateful to audiences at both conferences, and particularly to Joyce Chaplin, Pascal Firges, Tobias Graf, and to the late İ. Metin Kunt for helpful comments on the conference papers; and to Jonathan Dixon and Jake Dyble for their helpful comments on this draft. 2 John Dryden, “Annus Mirabilis: The Year of Wonders, 1666. An Historical Poem,” in The Poetical Works of John Dryden: With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes, ed. George Gillfillan (Edinburgh: William P. Nimmo, 1855), 35–86; Mareschalck Lira, and Shabbethai Tzevi, A Brief Relation of Several Remarkable Passages of the Jevves in Their Journey out of Persia and Tartaria towards Jerusalem. Relating How the Persians Were Strucken with Blindness When They Attempted to Rifle the House of the Jews, and Spoyl Their Goods. As Also, How the Caspian Mountains Became a Plain; and the Rivers Were Dryed up before Them. As It Was Delivered in a Letter /Written by Dom. Mareschalck Lira from Vienna, to the Elector Palatine: Very Lately Sent into England by a Worthy Man T (London, 1666). 3 Bernard Capp, The Fifth Monarchy Men: A Study in Seventeenth-Century English Millenarianism (London: Faber and Faber, 1972).

Millenarian News and Connected Spaces in 17th-Century Europe  147 4 Warren Johnston, Revelation Restored: The Apocalypse in Later Seventeenth Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 23–66, 33–34, 37–40. 5 Johnston, Revelation Restored, 37–39; John Coffey, Politics, Religion and the British Revolutions. The Mind of Samuel Rutherford (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 237–38. 6 Dryden, “Annus Mirabilis.”, 35–86. Indeed, news of religious transformation at the time may have influenced many writers; see Jeffrey Shoulson, “Did the False Jewish Messiah Sabbatai Sevi inspire John Milton’s ‘Paradise Regained’?” The Tablet (1 August 2013). 7 Paul Hammond, “Dryden’s Employment by Cromwell’s Government,” Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 8, no. 1 (1981): 130–36. 8 Thomas H. Fujimura, “Dryden’s Changing Political Views,” Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1600–1700 10, 2 (1986): 93–104; David Alff, “‘Annus Mirabilis’ at the End of Stuart Monarchy: Repacking a Year of Wonders in 1688,” Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1600– 1700 35, 2 (2011): 21–36. 9 Andrew Fix, Prophecy and Reason: The Dutch Collegiants in the Early Enlightenment (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 193–95. 10 “[to study the complex history of sixteenth century political millenarianism not on a local, but indeed on a far wider, and perhaps even global, scale.” S. Subrahmanyam, “Turning the stones over: Sixteenth-century millenarianism from the Tagus to the Ganges,” The Indian Economic & Social History Review 40, no. 2 (2003): 129–61, 161. See also Mònica Colominas Aparicio and Gerard Wiegers, “A Moor of Granada: Prophecies as political instruments in the entangled histories of Spain, Portugal, and the Middle East (16th–18th centuries),” Hamsa: Journal of Judaic and Islamic Studies, 6 (2019–April 2020): 1–14; Luís Filipe Silvério Lima, “Prophetical Hopes: New World Experiences and Imperial Expectations: Menasseh Ben Israel, Antônio Vieira, Fifth-monarchy Men, and the Millenarian Connections in the Seventeenth Century Atlantic,” Anais de História de Além-Mar 17 (2016): 359–408. Sebouh David Aslanian, From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean, the Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa (California: University of California Press, 2014), Chapter 7; Philip D. Curtin, Cross Cultural Trade in World History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 11 Julian Hoppit, “The Context and Contours of British Economic Literature, 1660–1760,” The Historical Journal 49, no. 1 (2006): 79–110, has drawn attention to growing English interest in global economic events at this time, in the late seventeenth century. 12 Linda T. Darling, “Ottoman Politics through British Eyes: Paul Rycaut’s ‘The Present State of the Ottoman Empire’,” Journal of World History 5, no. 1 (Spring, 1994): 71–97, 91. 13 Paul Rycaut, John Starkey, and Henry Brome, The Present State of the Ottoman Empire: Containing the Maxims of the Turkish Politie, the Most Material Points of the Mahometan Religion, Their Sects and Heresies, Their Convents and Religious Votaries. Their Military Discipline, with an Exact Computation of Their Forces Both by Land and Sea. Illustrated with Divers Pieces of Sculpture, Representing the Variety of Habits amongst the Turks. In Three Books /by Paul Rycaut Esq; Secretary to His Excellency the Earl of Winchilsea, Embassador Extraordinary for His Majesty Charles the Second, &c. to Sultan Mahomet Han the Fourth, Emperour of the Turks (London: John Starkey and Henry Brome, 1668): Introduction, 24; Darling, “Ottoman Politics through British Eyes,” 71–97, 91.

148  William O’Reilly 14 See, for instance, Christopher Durston, Cromwell’s Major-Generals: Godly Government during the English Revolution (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001). 15 Vera Keller, Knowledge and the Public Interest, 1575–1725 (New York, NY: University of Oregon, 2015), 3–8. See also: Albert Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before its Triumph (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 20; Martin Mulsow, Prekäres Wissen: Eine andere Ideengeschichte der Frühen Neuzeit (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2012). 16 Ingrid Maier and Daniel C. Waugh, “‘The Blowing of the Messiah’s Trumpet’: Reports about Sabbatai Sevi and Jewish Unrest in 1665–67,” in The Dissemination of News and the Emergence of Contemporaneity in Early Modern Europe, ed. Brendan Dooley (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010), 137–52, 141–42; Anni Sternisko, Aleksandra Cichocka, and Jay J Van Bavel, “The Dark Side of Social Movements: Social Identity, Non-conformity, and the Lure of Conspiracy Theories,” Current Opinion in Psychology 35 (2020): 1–6. 17 Maier and Waugh, ‘The Blowing of the Messiah’s Trumpet’, 138–39. 18 On eschatology and apocalyptic historiography, see Ryan Thomas Kelly, Reformed and Reforming: John Owen on the Kingdom of Christ, unpublished PhD dissertation (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 2015), esp. Chapter 5, ‘The Coming of the Kingdom: Eschatology and its Political-Ecclesiastical Significance’, 179–246. 19 Keller, Knowledge and the Public Interest, 29. 20 Arndt Brendecke, The Empirical Empire (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2016), 281–89; Cornell Zwierlein, Imperial Unknowns: The French and British in the Mediterranean, 1650–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), passim. 21 The most widely read histories of the Ottoman Empire in England before the end of the seventeenth century were Richard Knolles, Laurence Johnson, and Adam Islip, The Generall Historie of the Turkes, from the First Beginning of That Nation to the Rising of the Othoman Familie: With All the Notable Expeditions of the Christian Princes against Them. Together with the Lives and Conquests of the Othoman Kings and Emperours Faithfullie Collected out of The- Best Histories, Both Auntient and Moderne, and Digested into One Continuat Historie Vntill This Present Yeare 1603 (London: Adam Islip, 1603) and Paul Rycaut, The Present State of the Ottoman: Introduction. On the place of seventeenth-century English print in the emergence of an ‘oriental’ view of the Ottoman Empire, see Daniel O’Quinn, Engaging the Ottoman Empire. Vexed Mediations, 1690–1815 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), 48–50, 57–60, 65–72. 22 Marriott, Transnational Networks, 16. 23 George Winius and Marcus P. M. Vink, The Merchant-Warrior Pacified. The VOC (The Dutch East India Co.) and Its Changing Political Economy in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991), where Roe’s advice to the VOC is given on the page before the book title. See also M. A. P. Meilink-Roelofsz, Asian Trade and European Influence in the Indonesian Archipelago between 1500 and about 1630 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), 196; Søren Mentz, The English Gentleman Merchant at Work: Madras and the City of London (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, University of Copenhagen, 2005), 36. 24 Sonia P. Anderson, An English Consul in Turkey: Paul Rycaut at Smyrna, 1667–1678 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 46. 25 O’Quinn, Engaging the Ottoman Empire, 86. 26 Darling, “Ottoman Politics through British Eyes,” 71–97, 91. 27 Jonathan Haynes, The Humanist as Traveller: George Sandy’s Relation of a Journey Begun An. Dom. 1610 (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1986), 13.

Millenarian News and Connected Spaces in 17th-Century Europe  149 28 Darling, “Ottoman Politics through British Eyes,” 91. 29 Colin J. Heywood, “Sir Paul Rycaut, A Seventeenth-Century Observer of the Ottoman State: Notes for a Study,” in English and Continental Views of the Ottoman Empire, 1500–1800, eds. E. Kural Shaw and C. J. Heywood (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1972), 33–59, 54. 30 Darling, “Ottoman Politics through British Eyes,” 91. 31 Christopher Hill, “Political Discourse in Early Seventeenth Century England,” in A Nation of Change and Novelty: Radical Politics, Religion and Literature in Seventeenth Century England, idem (New York: Routledge, Chapman & Hall, 1990), 42–43; idem, The Century of Revolution, 1603–1714 (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1961), 248. 32 Pamela H. Smith, “Science and Taste: Painting, Passions, and the New Philosophy in Seventeenth-Century Leiden,” Isis 90, no. 3 (1999): 421–61. 33 Folke Gernert, Fictionalizing Heterodoxy: Various Uses of Knowledge in the Spanish World from the Archpriest of Hita to Mateo Alemán (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), 38–39. 34 See, inter alia, Elizabeth Bouldin, “In Search of ‘Fellow Pilgrims’: Radical Protestants and Transconfessional Exchanges in Europe and the British Atlantic, c.1670–1730.” Church History 83, no. 3 (September 2014): 590–617; Elizabeth W. Fisher, “‘Prophesies and revelations’: German Cabbalists in Early Pennsylvania,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 109, no. 3 (July 1985): 299–333. 35 Neusa de Fátima Mariano, “Entrada dos Palmitos: aspectos pagāos na Festa do Divino Espírito Santo em Mogi das Cruzes,” Revista do Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros, 70 (2018): 231–48; Nabil Matar, Islam in Britain 1558–1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 167–83. 36 Sonia Anderson, An English Consul in Turkey (New York: The Clarendon Press, 1989), 20, 22. 37 Alexander van den Haven, “Predestination and Toleration: The Dutch Republic’s Single Judicial Persecution of Jews in Theological Context,” Renaissance Quarterly 71, no. 1 (2018): 165–205. 38 Anderson, An English Consul, 3. 39 Anderson, An English Consul, 7. 40 Peter Clark, European Cities and Towns 400–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 162. Simon Schama, Belonging: The Story of the Jews 1492–1900 (London: Bodley Head, 2017), excellently captures this dynamic diversity in the city. 41 Anderson, An English Consul, 16, 49. 42 M. Tournefort, A Voyage into the Levant (London: D. Midwinter, 1712), 3: 333–36. 43 Paul Rycaut, The History of the Turkish Empire from the Year 1640, to the Year 1677 … (London: J.M., 1679), ‘The Epistle Dedicatory to the King’: ii. 44 Anderson, An English Consul, 26, 94. 45 “Sabbatian millenarianism” is used to refer not just to the rise of Sabbateanism, but more broadly to the movement which encompassed Nathan Shapira, who had found common ground with Protestant millenarians; and Nathan of Gaza, who helped to spread the new messianic movement. See, inter alia, Avi Elqayam, Moshe ben Gideon Abudiente, and Shelomoh Avayu, Ha-Masaʻle-ḳets hayamin [Sabbatean Millenarianism in the Seventeenth Century: A Study of Moshe Abudiente’s Fin de los Dias] (Los Angeles: Hotsaʼat Keruv, 2014); Adam Teller, “The Wars in Eastern Europe, the Jews of Jerusalem, and the Rise of Sabbateanism: The Shaping of the Jewish World in the Mid-Seventeenth Century,” Jewish History 33 (2020): 377–402, esp. 391–95; Cengiz Sisman, The Burden of Silence: Sabbatai Sevi and the Evolution of the OttomanTurkish Dönmes (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 61.

150  William O’Reilly 46 Subrahmanyam, “Turning the Stones Over”; Brandon Marriott, Transatlantic Networks is the first to seriously consider connections between the events in the Atlantic and Mediterranean worlds. 47 On the wider context for this change, see Meric Casaubon, Generall Learning: A Seventeenth-century Treatise on the Formation of the General Scholar by Meric Casaubon, ed. Richard Serjeantson (Cambridge: RTM Publications, 1999). 48 In the words of the Quaker John Brown; Stephen Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 233. 49 Marriott, Transatlantic Networks: Chapter 2, “New Monarchs of Grand Imposters? James Nayler and Sabbatai Sevi (1656–1666),” 37–62, seeks to disprove the possible role of possible Quakers at Smyrna as conduits for information about English millenarian movements. Yet it is sure that Rycaut spent time at Smyrna and elsewhere in the region and that he was well read, and very well informed, in messianic expectation. Included in those university graduates are Isaac Barrow (1630–1677), a key figure in the “new philosophy” and a member of Trinity College, Cambridge, who was English consul in Symrna in 1656; Eleazor Duncon (1597/8–1660), Cambridge graduate and chaplain to the Levant Company in 1652; William Ford (1559–1616), fellow of Trinity College Cambridge and chaplain to the Levant Company until 1614, and many others. J. B. Pearson, A Biographical Sketch of the Chaplains to the Levant Company, Maintained at Constantinople, Aleppo and Smyrna, 1611– 1706 (Cambridge: Deighton, Bell & Co, 1883). 50 See, for instance, Jetteke van Wuk, “The Rise and Fall of Shabbatai Zevi as Reflected in Contemporary Press Reports,” Studia Rosenthaliana 33 (1999): 7–27. 51 Brandon Marriott, “The Rebirth of Hope in a Time of Upheaval: An Analysis of Early-modern Millennial Movements across the Abrahamic Tradition,” World History Bulletin 23, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 1–26. 52 Subrahmanyam, “Turning the Stones Over,” 129–61, 159–60; Jack A. Goldstone, Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 444–50. 53 Capp, The Fifth Monarchy Men, 16. 54 Keller, Knowledge and the Public Interest, 15; on emulation in conquest and in commerce, see Sophus Reinert, Translating Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 29–33. 55 I. Melikoff, “Le problème Kizilbaš,” Turcica 6 (1975): 58–65; Saïd Amir Arjomand, “Religious Extremism (Ghuluw), Ṣūfism and Sunnism in Safavid Iran: 1501–1722,” in Sociology of Shi’ite Islam, ed. Saïd Amir Arjomand (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 330–60, 331–37. 56 Karim Najafi Barzegar, “The Nuqṭavī Movement and the Question of Its Exodus during the Ṣafavid Period (Sixteenth Century AD): A Historical Survey,” Indian Historical Review 40, 1 (2013): 41–66; Charles Melville, “New Light on Shah ‘ʿAbbās and the Construction of Isfahan,” Muqarnas 33 (2016): 155–76. 57 Kathryn Babayan, “From Qizilbash Islam to Imamite Shi’ism,” Iranian Studies 27, 1/4 (1994): 135–61, 148, 152. 58 Michael Reinhard Heß, “Qualified ‘Heterodoxy’ in a Seventeenth-Century Hurūfi mukaddime,” Orientalia Suecana 60 (2011): 151–62; Said Arjomand, “Religious Extremism, Sufism and Sunnism in Safavid Iran: 1501–1722,” Journal of Asian History 15, no. 1 (1981): 1–35; Kioumars Ghereghlou, “Chronicling a Dynasty on the Make: New Light on the Early Safavids in Hayātī Tabrīzī’s Tārīkh (961/1554),” Journal of the American Oriental Society 137, no. 4 (2017): 805–32.

Millenarian News and Connected Spaces in 17th-Century Europe  151 59 R. J. W. Evans, Rudolf II and His World: A Study in Intellectual History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973). 60 Babayan, “From Qizilbash Islam to Imamite Shi’ism,” 152, 155–56. On the place of Saturn in Sabbateanism, see Moshe Idel, “Saturn and Sabbatai Tzevi: A New Approach to Sabbateanism,” in Toward the Millennium, ed. P. Schaefer and M. C. Cohen (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 185–99. 61 Farhad Daftary, Mediaeval Ismaili History and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 291; Kathryn Babayan, Mystics, Monarchs, and Messiahs: Cultural Landscapes of Early Modern Iran (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 100–2. 62 Joan-Pau Rubies, “Political Rationality and Cultural Distance in the European Embassies to Shah ʿAbbās,” Journal of Early Modern History 20 (2016): 1–39, 39; Anthony Nixon, The Three English Brothers: Sir Thomas Sherley, His Travels, with His Three Years Imprisonment in Turkie: His Ingargement by His Majesties Letters to the Great Turke: and Lastly, His Safe Returne into England This Present Year, 1607: Sir Anthony Sherley, His Embassage to the Christian Princes: Master Robert Sherley, His Wars against the Turkes, with His Marriage to the Emperour of Persia His Niece (London: John Hodgets, 1607). 63 Daniel Ben Razzari, “The Gulfe of Persia devours all”: English Merchants in Safavid Persia, 1616–1650. Unpublished PhD dissertation (University of California, Riverside, 2016), esp. Chapter 2: 90–94. 64 Sir Thomas Roe, Sir Thomas Roe: his speech in Parliament wherein he sheweth the cause of the decay of coyne and trade in this land, especially of merchants trade, and also propoundeth a vvay to the House, how they may be increased. [https://archive. org/details/SirThomasRoeHISSPEECHIINPARLIAMENT.] See also: Michael J. Brown, Itinerant Ambassador: The Life of Sir Thomas Roe (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1970). 65 Rupali Mishra, “Diplomacy at the Edge: Split Interests in the Roe Embassy to the Mughal Court,” Journal of British Studies 53 (January 2014): 5–28, here 26. 66 Brown, Itinerant Ambassador, 121. See also: Rita Banerjee, “Thomas Roe and the Two Courts of Emperor Jahangir and King James,” Études anglaises, 2017/2 (Vol. 70): 147–66. 67 Amir Ahmad, “The Safavid Rulers and the Nuqtawi Movement,” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 64 (2003): 1238–47; Barzegar, “The Nuqtavi Movement,” 41–66. 68 Nandini Das, Sir Thomas Roe: Eyewitness to a Changing World (Hakluyt Society Annual Lecture 2017, London: Hakluyt Society, 2018), 2–3. 69 Brown, Itinerant Ambassador, 164–65. 70 Brown, Itinerant Ambassador, 119. 71 In a broad literature on the Fifth Monarchy, the work of Bernard Capp remains particularly important; see, Capp, The Fifth Monarchy Men; Richard Popkin, “The Fifth Monarchy Redux,” in Monarchisms in the Age of Enlightenment: Liberty, Patriotism, and the Common Good, eds. Hans W. Blom, John Christian Laursen, Luisa Simonutti, and Hans W. Blom (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 162–74. 72 Bernard S. Capp, “‘A Door of Hope Re-opened.’ The Fifth Monarchy, King Charles and King Jesus’,” Journal of Religious History 32, no. 1 (March 2008): 16–30. 73 Marriott, “The Rebirth of Hope,” 3; Capp, The Fifth Monarchy, 42. 74 David Farr, Major-General Thomas Harrison: Millenarianism, Fifth Monarchism and the English Revolution 1616–1660 (Milton Park, Oxon: Taylor & Francis, 2014) esp. Chapter 6 (“1646–1660: Harrison the Millenarian”), 103–38; Michael Adas, Prophets of Rebellion: Millenarian Protest Movements against the European Colonial Order (Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 1979), 131–33.

152  William O’Reilly 75 The literature on this subject is vast; see, inter alia, Brodie Waddell, God, Duty and Community in English Economic Life, 1660–1720 (Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2012); Stephen B. Baxter, ed., England’s Rise to Greatness, 1660–1763 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); William O’Reilly, “Strangers Come to Devour the Land: Changing Views of Foreign Migrants in Early Eighteenth Century England,” Journal of Early Modern History 21, no. 3 (2016): 153–87. 76 Marriott, Transatlantic Networks, esp. Chapter 2. 77 Marriott, Transatlantic Networks, Chapter 2; for challenges to Marriott’s theses on Quakers and on Nayler, see Matt Goldish, Review of ‘Transatlantic Networks …’, Renaissance Quarterly 70, no. 1 (2017): 365–67; for contemporary accounts which compared Nayler and Zevi as religious impostors, see Opisanie Nowego króla Żyd. Sabetha Sebi, ktoórego początek, starość, osoba, uczynki i cuda [...] (1666); Michał Galas, “Sabbatianism in the SeventeenthCentury Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: A Review of the Sources,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 16–17 (2001): li–lxiii. 78 Pinchas Giller, “Between Poland and Jerusalem: Kabbalistic Prayer in Early Modernity,” Modern Judaism 24, no. 3 (October 2004): 226–50. 79 John Freely, The Lost Messiah: In Search of the Mystical Rabbi Sabbatai Sevi (New York: Overlook Press, 2001), 9, 17, 31; Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1973), 130–31. 80 Heinrich Graetz, History of the Jews, 5 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1985), 141. This unsupported claim is to be found in many subsequent publications on Zevi. 81 Jonathan Bennett, ed., Correspondence. Baruch Spinoza (2017), 52–53, ‘Let­ ter from Oldenburg, 8.xii. 1665’. Accessed at https://www.earlymoderntexts. com/assets/pdfs/spinoza1661.pdf. My italics. 82 Sisman, The Burden of Silence. 83 See, inter alia, M. McKeon, “Sabbatai Sevi in England,” Newsletter Association for Jewish Studies Review 1 (1976): 140; M. Vilensky, “Four English Pamphlets on the Sabbataian Movement, Published in 1665–1666,” Zion 17 (1952): 160–64; Stefano Villani, “Between Information and Proselytism: Seventeenthcentury Italian Texts on Sabbatai Zevi, their Various Editions and their Circulation, in Print and manuscript,” DAAT. A Journal of Jewish Philosophy & Kabbalah 82 (2016): 87–104. 84 For the reports in the Opregte Haerlemse Courant, see J. Meijer, ‘Soo wort men van dromen wacker.’ Nederlandse bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van Sabbatai Tswi, drie eeuwen na diens optreden 1666–1966 (Haarlem, 1967). 85 [Paul Rycaut] John Evelyn and Charles Hardy, The History of the Three Late, Famous Impostors, Viz. Padre Ottomano, Mahomed Bei and Sabatai Sevi: The One, Pretended Son and Heir to the Late Grand Signior, the Other, a Prince of the Ottoman Family, but in Truth, a Valachian Counterfeit, and the Last, the Suppos’d Messiah of the Jews, in the Year of the True Messiah, 1666: With a Brief Account of the Ground and Occasion of the Present War between the Turk and the Venetian: Together with the Cause of the Final Extirpation, Destruction and Exile of the Jews out of the Empire of Persia (London, In the Savoy: Henry Herringman, 1669). The copy of the Three Late, Famous Imposters referenced in this study is the British Library copy EVE A 25, which was held by John Evelyn (‘Catalogi Evelyni inscriptus Meliora Retinete’) and contains marginalia throughout, including at A2, verso, where a note in the margin, opposite text which speaks of the source of information for the account, reads “‘*Paule Rycot, afterwards Editor of the Turkish history etc.”. On the ‘media hype’ supporting Zevi and the Sabbatean movement, see Ingrid Maier and Winfried Schumacher, “Ein Medien-Hype im 17. Jahrhundert? Fünf

Millenarian News and Connected Spaces in 17th-Century Europe  153 illustrierte Drucke aus dem Jahre 1666 über die angebliche Hinrichtung von Sabbatai Zwi,” Quærendo 39 (2009): 133–67; Ernestine G. E. van der Wall, “A Precursor of Christ or a Jewish Impostor? Petrus Serrarius and Jean de Labadie on the Jewish Messianic Movement around Sabbatai Sevi,” Pietismus und Neuzeit 14 (2008): 109–24. On Rycaut as the author of the Impostors, see Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626–1676 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 432, note 235. 86 Freely, The Lost Messiah, 42–43, 82–83; Gilles Veinstein, “Sabbatai Zevi, the ‘False Messiah’, and Islam,” 197–99, in Jews and Muslims in the Ottoman Empire, by Gilles Veinstein, 171–202; Abdelwahab Meddeb and Benjamin Stora, eds., A History of Jewish-Muslim Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013); Gershom Scholem, “Primo, Samuel,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, 2nd ed., 16 (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), 527–28; Joseph Abrahams, The Messianic Imperative (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, 2007), 78–80. 87 Jane Hathaway, “The Grand Vizier and the False Messiah: The Sabbatai Sevi Controversy and the Ottoman Reform in Egypt,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 117, no. 4 (October.–December 1997): 665–71, 671; Madeline C. Zilfi, The Politics of Piety: The Ottoman Ulema in the Postclassical Age, 1600–1800 (Minneapolis and Chicago: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1988), 153–56. 88 Marc David Baer, “The Great Fire of 1660 and the Islamization of Christian and Jewish Space in Istanbul,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 36, no. 2 (May 2004): 159–81. 89 Ralph Davies, Aleppo and Devonshire Square: English Traders in the Levant in the Eighteenth Century (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1967), 52. 90 “The Levant merchants recruited into their own circle, as their apprentices, partners, or factors in the Levant, men acceptable to themselves; men coming from families that were well-to-do though not necessarily wealthy, and for preference relatives of themselves or of close business connections.” Ralph Davies, Aleppo and Devonshire Square: English Traders in the Levant in the Eighteenth Century (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1967), 64, 61. 91 Johannes Feichtinger, “Introduction: Interaction, Circulation and the Transgression of Cultural Difference in the History of Knowledge-making,” in How to Write the Global History of Knowledge-Making: Interaction, Circulation and the Transgression of Cultural Difference, eds. Johannes Feichtinger, Anil Bhatti, and Cornelia Hülmbauer (Cham: Springer, 2020), 3. 92 “It offered both the institutionalized structure of a regulated Company, and a measure of independence for young men who were not salaried but acted as self-employed commission agents for London principals. It had always been popular with, and welcomed, the gentry, whose expatriate younger sons crowded into the factories in Turkey.” Richard Grassby, The English Gentleman in Trade: The Life and Works of Sir Dudley North, 1641–1691 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 23, cited in: Maria Fusaro, Political Economies of Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean: The Decline of Venice and the Rise of England 1450-1700 (Cambridge University Press, 2015), 186. 93 “Scientific institutes, such as the Royal Society in England, similarly established vast intellectual networks. Henry Oldenburg, the society’s secretary, employed the mercantile and diplomatic networks as well as connections that he built himself to collect information from distant lands for dissemination among the academic members of the society. Oldenburg, for instance, sent his letter to Persia through Sir Richard Riccard, the chairman of the East India and Levant Companies, and he asked John Finch, the English consul in Florence, to find out about the latest scientific ventures of the Italian intellectuals.” Marriott, Transnational Networks, 16.

154  William O’Reilly 94 Anderson, An English Consul, 40. 95 [Paul Rycaut] John Evelyn, The History of the Three [...] Impostors. 96 The 1669 edition is organized in the following way: [1] TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE HENRY, Lord ARLINGTON, &c. Principal SECRETARY of STATE. [2] To the READER. [3] ERRATA. [4] THE HISTORY OF PADRE OTTOMANO, The first Impostor. (pp. 1–20). [5] THE STORY OF MAHOMED BEI, Who calls Himself Ioannes Michael Cigala; Being at the Writing hereof in the COURT of ENGLAND; Where this Second Impostor was first DELATED. (pp. 21–40). [6] Some Passages out of his Book animadverted. (p. 38–40). [7] THE HISTORY OF SABATAI SEVI, The Pretended Messiah of the Iewes, In the Year of our Lord, 1666. The Third Impostor (pp. 41–111). [8] THE HISTORY Of the Late FINAL EXTIRPATION And EXILEMENT of the IEWES Out of the EMPIRE OF PERSIA. (pp. 113–26). 97 [Paul Rycaut] John Evelyn, The History of the Three [...] Impostors, Dedicatory. EVE A 25 (British Library) noted in the marginalia [A2], ‘Illustrious person’: marginalia reads: ‘Hon: Howard Duke of Norfolk who brought the Persian to me.’ [A2 verso], ‘from the hand of a Person’: marginalia reads ‘*Paule Rycot, afterwards Editor of the Turkish history etc.’ In ‘To The Reader’, Rycaut is further described as one of a group of “Persons of no mean Parts, Ingenuity and Candor; well acquainted with the Eastern Countreys and Affaires, and that have themselves been wit∣nesses of most of these Transasti∣ons.” Henry Howard’s embassy to Constantinople in 1664–1665 was recounted in John Burbury [Norfolk, Henry Howard], A Relation of a Journey of the Right Honourable My Lord Henry Howard: From London to Vienna and Thence to Constantinople; in the Company of His Excellency Count Lesley, Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece, Councellour of State to His Imperial Majesty, &c. And an Extraordinary Ambassadour from Leopoldus Emperour of Germany to the Grand Signior, Sultan Mohomet Hau the Fourth. London: Printed for T. Collins and I. Ford, at the Middle-Temple Gate, and S. Hickman at the Rose in St. Pauls Churchyard, 1671. 98 [Paul Rycaut] John Evelyn, The History of the Three [...] Impostors, Dedicatory. 99 [Paul Rycaut] John Evelyn, The History of the Three [...] Impostors, 113. 100 [Paul Rycaut] John Evelyn, The History of the Three [...] Impostors, To The Reader. 101 [Paul Rycaut] John Evelyn, The History of the Three [...] Impostors, 114–15. 102 Richard Popkin, “Christian Jews and Jewish Christians in the Seventeenth Century,” in Jewish Christians and Christian Jews, ed. Richard Popkin (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994), 57–72; David S. Katz, “Jewish Sabbath and Christian Sunday in Early Modern England,” in Jewish Christians and Christian Jews, ed. Gordon Weiner and Richard Popkin (Dordrecht: Kluwer: 1994), 119–30; Katz, “Menasseh ben Israel’s Christian Connection in England,” 117– 38; Katz, “Philo-semitism,” 216–20; David S. Katz, “English Redemption and Jewish Readmission in 1656,” Journal of Jewish Studies, 34 (1983): 73–91; Richard H. Popkin, “Christian Interest and Concerns about Sabbatai Zevi,” in Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture, ed. Matt Goldish and Richard Popkin, “I: Jewish Messianism in the Early Modern World” (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), 91–107; David S. Katz, “Popkin and the Jews,” in The Legacies of Richard Popkin, ed. Jeremy Popkin (Dordrecht: Springer: 2008), 213–28; Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 112. 103 “News of Sabbatai’s messiahship was accompanied by rumours that the Lost Tribes had surfaced from their hidden dwelling, which were disseminated widely in printed pamphlets, gazettes and avvisi in Italian, Dutch and English, as well as moved across the Atlantic along Puritan channels in handwritten letters. Unlike the discovery of a single tribe located in the jungle in 1648, the stories in 1665 told of the appearance of mysterious armies of ancient Israelites

Millenarian News and Connected Spaces in 17th-Century Europe  155 in Persia, the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, and even the British Isles.” Marriott, Transnational Networks, 34–35. 104 John Dury, An Information Concerning the Present State of the Jewish Nation in Europe (London, 1658), 17; Richard H. Popkin, “Rabbi Nathan Shapira’s Visit to Amsterdam in 1657,” in Dutch Jewish History: Proceedings of the Symposium on the History of the Jews in the Netherlands, eds. Jozeph Michman and Tirtsah Levie (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press: 1984), 185–205. 105 Richard H. Popkin, “Could Spinoza have known Bodin’s Colloquium Heptaplomares?” Philosophia 16 (1986): 307–14. 106 Popkin, “Christian Interest and Concerns about Sabbatai Zevi,” 91–107; Popkin, “The Third Force,” 125, 364; Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, 461–591; Leo Damrosch, The Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus: James Nayler and the Puritan Crackdown on the Free Spirit (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 115–322. 107 Paul Grebner, Een wonderlijcke prophecije van die Nederlanden […] verkondigende van vele wonderlijcke dingen die welcke nu […] tot opt iaer M. seshondert en̄ ses, sich toe dragen en̄ geschieden sal. By Paulus Secondus (Peeter Gevaerts, Netherlands, 1599); Paul Grebner, The prophecie of Paulus Grebnerus concerning these times (London, 1649); Paul Grebner, A brief description of the future history of Europe, from Anno 1650 to An. 1710: Treating principally of those grand and famous mutations yet expected in the world, as, the ruine of the Popish hierarchy, the final annihilation of the Turkish Empire, the conversion of the eastern and western Jews, and their restauration to their ancient inheritance in the Holy Land, and the Fifth Monarchie of the universall reign of the Gospel of Christ upon Earth. With principal passages upon every of these, out of that famous manuscript of Paul Grebner, extant in Trinity-Colledge Library in Cambridge (London, 1650); William Lilly, Monarchy or no monarchy in England: Grebner, his prophecy concerning Charles, son of Charles, his greatnesse, victories, conquests: The Northern Lyon, or Lyon of the North, and chicken of the eagle discovered who they are, of what nation: English, Latin, Saxon, Scotish and Welch prophecies concerning England in particular, and all Evrope in generall: Passages upon the life and death of the late King Charles: enigmaticall types of the future state and condition of England for many years to come (London, 1651); Abraham Cowley, The visions and prophecies concerning England, Scotland, and Ireland, of Ezekiel Grebner, son of Obadiah Grebner, son of Paul Grebner, who presented the famous book of prophecies to Queen Elisabeth (London, 1660). 108 Bernard Capp, “Healing the Nation: Royalist Visionaries, Cromwell, and the Restoration of Charles II,” The Seventeenth Century 34, no. 4 (2019): 493– 512, here 105. 109 For an excellent contextual consideration of Grebner’s thesis in the context of Elizabethan England, see Talia Pollock, Political Prophecy in Elizabethan England (unpublished MA dissertation, Victoria University of Wellington, 2013), 45–65. See also Leslie A. Coote, Prophecy and Public Affairs in Later Medieval England (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2000), 13–15 and Chapter 2, ‘The Second Arthur: The King as Hero, c.1135–1307’. 110 Jürgen Beyer, “A harmincéves háború idejének három prófétája és kortárs megítélésük,” trans. Levente Juhász, in A harmincéves háború prófétái és chiliasztái, vol. 1: Tanulmányok, ed. Levente Juhász and Noémi Viskolcz [Fiatal Filológusok Füzetei korai újkor 4, 1] (Szeged: JATEPress, 2003), 7–44; Jürgen Beyer, “Prolific Prophets and Theological Debates about Prophets during the Thirty Years’ War,” in Lay Prophets in Lutheran Europe (c.1550–1700) ed. Beyer (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 155–200, here 162; Susanna Åkerman, “The Myth of the Lion of the North and its Origins in Paul Grebner’s Visions,” in Cultura baltica. Literary Culture Around the Baltic 1600–1700, ed. Bo Andersson and

156  William O’Reilly Richard E. Schade (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 1996), 23–43; Carlos Gilly, “The ‘Midnight Lion,’ the ‘Eagle’ and the ‘Antichrist.’ Political, religious and chiliastic propaganda in the pamphlets, illustrated broadsheets and ballads of the Thirty Years War,” Nederlands archief voor kerkgeschiedenis 80 (2000): 46–77. 111 Rupert Taylor, The Political Prophecy in England (New York: Columbia University Press, 1911), 124; Richard Buckham, Tudor Apocalypse: Sixteenth Century Apocalypticism, Millenarianism, and the English Reformation: From John Bale to John Foxe and Thomas Brightman (Oxford: The Sutton Courtenay Press, 1971). 112 Susanna Åkerman, Rose Cross Over the Baltic: The Spread of Rosicrucianism in Northern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 104. 113 Åkerman, Rose Cross Over the Baltic, 139. The death of Rudolph II in 1612 caused many to look to England and James for leadership of the European Protestant cause. James’s flirtations, and those of his sons, with Catholicism, however, meant that Protestant hopes refocused on Northern Europe, and particularly on Denmark and Sweden. Leonine ideas had been developing for some time. The notion of a Northern Lion had been applied to the case of Saxony and Scotland by 1573 in Grebner’s Sericum Mundi Filum. John Dee had added his ideas to the body of text on the subject in 1562; and all had drawn on the ninth-century ideas on the great conjunctions by the astronomer of the Sabéan sect, Abu Ma’shar al-Balki. On the development of these ideas amongst Quakers and Philadelphians, see: Jane Lead, A Message to the Philadelphian Society (1696), 8–9; Nils Thune, The Behmenists and the Philadelphians: A Contribution to the Study of English Mysticism in the 17th and 18th Centuries (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1948), 65–66; Ariel Hessayon, “Jacob Boehme and the early Quakers,” The Journal of the Friends Historical Society 60, no. 3 (2005): 191–223. 114 Andrew Crome, “Constructing the Political Prophet in 1640s England,” The Seventeenth Century 26, no. 2 (2011): 279–98; Harry Rusche, “Prophecies and Propaganda, 1641 to 1651,” The English Historical Review 84, no. 333 (1969): 752–70. 115 Grebner’s text was used, in part, by factions favoring a marriage of James of Scotland with Anne of Denmark, forging an anti-Spanish union among Protestant powers; in his Sericum Mundi Filum, Grebner colourfully suggests a northern political alliance led by the Dane. Andrew Cunningham and Ole Peter Grell, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 71; Ariel Hessayon, ‘God Tried in the Fire’. The Prophet TheaurauJohn Tany and the English Revolution (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 228–29. 116 On Roe, see Thomas Roe and William Foster, The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to India, 1615–19: As Narrated in His Journal and Correspondence (New and rev. ed. London: Oxford University Press, 1926); Brown, Itinerant Ambassador; Michael Strachan, Sir Thomas Roe 1581–1644. A Life (Salisbury, Wiltshire: Russell, 1989); Mehreen M-Chida-RaZevi, “The Perception of Reception: The Importance of Sir Thomas Roe at the Mughal Court of Jahangir,” Journal of World History 25, no. 2/3 (June/September 2014): 263–84. 117 Karim Najafi Barzegar, “The Nuqtavi Movement and the Question of Its Exodus during the Safavid Period (sixteenth century AD): A Historical Survey,” Indian Historical Review 40, no. 1 (2013): 41–66, here 41. 118 “It has frequently been argued that militant Protestantism was common amongst Levant Company members in London.” Maria Fusaro, Political Economies of Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean: The Decline of Venice and the Rise of England 1450–1700 (Cambridge University Press, 2015), 154.

Millenarian News and Connected Spaces in 17th-Century Europe  157 119 Nabil Matar, “The 2018 Josephine Waters Bennet Lecture: The Protestant Reformation through Arab Eyes, 1517–1698,” Renaissance Quarterly 72 (2019): 771–815. 120 Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to the Court of the Great Mogul, 1615–1619, as narrated in his journal and correspondence, edited, with an introduction by William Foster, for the Hakluyt Society (London, 1899). 121 Keller, Knowledge and the Public Interest, 3, 8, 10 (the term ‘harnessing’ is used at 13); Francis Bacon, Opera Francisci Baronis de Verulamio, Vice-comitis Sancti Albani: Tomus primus: qui continet De dignitate & augmentis scientiarum, libros IX (London: Haviland, 1623), 59. “In the advancement of epistemic empire, [Bacon] utilized human passions rather than eradicate[d] them”: Keller, Knowledge and the Public Interest, 15. 122 Laurence Fontaine, “Prodigality, Avarice and Anger: Passions and Emotions at the Heart of the Encounter between Aristocratic Economy and Market Economy,” European Journal of Sociology/Archives européennes de Sociologie 59, no. 1 (2018): 39–61, 58–59. 123 “Uncommonly cosmopolitan individuals (UCIs)” is Jan de Vries very useful term of art; see Jan de Vries, “Playing with Scales: The Global and the Micro, the Macro and the Nano,” Past & Present 242, no. 14 (November 2019): 23–36, 28; Lars Magnusson, Mercantilism: The Shaping of an Economic Language (New York: Routledge, 1994), esp. “Seventeenth Century Discussions,” 94–115. 124 Keller, Knowledge and the Public Interest, 10; Mulsow, Prekäres Wissen, esp. “Prekäre Momente in der Wissensbourgeoisie,” 52–57. 125 Paul Rycaut, The History of the Turks: Beginning with the Year 1679. Being a Full Relation of the Last Troubles in Hungary, with the Sieges of Vienna, and Buda […] Until […] 1699 […] (London: Robert Clavell and Abel Roper, 1700). 126 [Paul Rycaut] Evelyn, The History of the Three [...] Impostors. 127 Maxine Berg, “In Pursuit of Luxury, Global History and the British Consumer Goods in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present 182 (2004): 137–41. 128 Nuala Zahedieh, “Making Mercantilism Work: London Merchants and the Atlantic Trade in the Seventeenth Century,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 9 (1999), 143–58; Alison Gilbert Olson, Making the Empire Work: London and American Interest Groups 1690–1790 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992); Trevor Burnard, “Making a Whig Empire Work: Transnational Politics and the Imperial Economy in Britain and British America,” The William and Mary Quarterly 69 (2012): 51–56; Philip J. Stern, “Companies: Monopoly, Sovereignty, and the East Indies,” in Mercantilism Reimagined, Political Economy in Early Modern Britain and Its Empire, ed. Stern and Carl Wennerlind (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 177-195. 129 Robert S. DuPlessis, The Material Atlantic: Clothing, Commerce, and Colonization in the Atlantic World, 1650–1800 (Cambridge: : Cambridge University Press, 2016), 15–16; ibid, Chapter 2; See also Giorgio Riello, Cotton: The Fabric That Made the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), esp. 120–24; On the importance of states in global history see John L. Brooke and Julia C. Strauss, “Conclusion,” in State Formations: Global Histories and Cultures of Statehood, eds. John L. Brooke, Julia C. Strauss, and Greg Anderson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 345–60. 130 Khouwaga Yusoufzai and Franziska Emmerling, “Explaining Violent Radicalization in Western Muslims: A Four Factor Model,” Journal of Terrorism Research 8, no. 1 (February 2017): 68–80; Maria T. Grasso and Marco Giugni, “Protest Participation and Economic Crisis: The Conditioning Role of Political Opportunities,” European Journal of Political Research 55

158  William O’Reilly (2016): 663–80, here 663; B. Wagoner, F. M. Moghaddam, and J. Valsiner, eds., The Psychology of Radical Social Change: From Rage to Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). The part played by relative deprivation theory in cult movements was explored by David Friend Aberle, “Note On Relative Deprivation Theory as Applied to Millenarian and Other Cult Movements,” in Reader in Comparative Religion, eds. Lessa, William A., Vogt, Evon Zartman (New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1965), but subsequent studies have sought to add nuance to the importance of political and protest participation in explaining the phenomenon; see, for instance, Stephen A. Kent, “Relative Deprivation and Resource Mobilization: A Study of Early Quakerism,” The British Journal of Sociology 33, no. 4 (December, 1982): 529–44. See also the excellent Séamus A. Power, Thomas Madsen, and Thomas A. Morton, “Relative Deprivation and Revolt: Current and Future Directions,” Current Opinion in Psychology 35 (2020): 119–24. 131 Power, Madsen, and Morton, “Relative Deprivation and Revolt,” 120.

6 Carvajal and the Franciscans Jewish-Christian Eschatological Expectations in a New World Setting Sina Rauschenbach1

You see, […] the Christians believe that the Messiah has been here once and will one day return; the Jews maintain that the Messiah has yet to come. Over this, there has been endless hatred and bloodshed. Why? Why can’t everybody simply wait and see? If the Messiah comes saying, “Hello, it’s nice to see you again,” then the Jews will have to concede. If, on the other hand, he comes saying, “How do you do?,” then the entire Christian world will have to apologise to the Jews. Until that time, why not just live and let live?2 What Amos Oz remembered as one of the most powerful statements made by his grandmother is as impressive as it is self-evident. Eschatological entanglements are by no means a product of modern serenity; they were always part of Jewish-Christian encounters. Among the most prominent examples are entanglements between Jewish messianism and Christian millenarianism in seventeenth-century Amsterdam and London.3 Christians waiting for the millennium (i.e. the physical return of Jesus and his thousand-year reign on earth) shared their hopes and anxieties with Jews. Jews expecting the immediate coming of the Messiah supported Christians in disclosing hidden meanings of biblical texts and provided access to lost parts of hebraica veritas.4 The exchange succeeded as long as Jews and Christians limited their discussions to the end of times and their present condition in the here and now. As soon as they started to inquire into the essence of the Messiah or his future reign on earth, their communication continued into well-known forms of Jewish-Christian polemics. Entanglements between Jewish messianism and Christian millenarianism beyond seventeenth-century Amsterdam and London have been less studied. And yet, scholars in Italian and Iberian Jewish history have long insisted that we need to consider earlier centuries and different geographies to understand the full range of Jewish-Christian exchanges. In a path-breaking essay, David Ruderman has discussed reciprocal influences between Jewish and Christian eschatological expectations in a number of “contact situations” in sixteenth-century Italy.5 Eleazar Gutwirth has used documents from the Spanish Inquisition to reconstruct Jewish-Christian discussions before the expulsions of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula.6 In his sources, DOI: 10.4324/9781003081050-9

160  Sina Rauschenbach too, Jews and Christians shared expectations and disappointments. In fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Iberia, mass conversions created a significant and influential group of conversos who became important intermediaries. According to Gutwirth, intersections between Jews and Christians went so far that Jews could share Christian views of a spiritual Messiah while (New) Christians could express their messianic expectation in terms of a (Jewish) hope for a political coming and an earthly triumph of the Savior. Some Jews admitted that Jesus might have been the real Messiah whereas some (New) Christians—even if they did not “judaize”—doubted the messiahship of Jesus. According to Gutwirth and Ruderman, all these positions were independent of religious loyalties and the identification with Judaism and/or Christianity of the respective persons. Research on spiritual encounters between conversos and Franciscan friars has been limited mostly to the Iberian Peninsula.7 Even though conversos who managed to leave the Iberian Peninsula and settle in the “New World” are taken into consideration in important studies on converso values and converso religions,8 there is no special attention paid to the translation of their expectation into the non-European context and the imaginative geography of “America” in their thought.9 This is all the more surprising since similar studies on early Christian conquerors and missionaries abound.10 In the following, I suggest that the special experience of crypto-Jews and Christian missionaries in the early Americas contributed to a different and hitherto unexplored space of interreligious encounters and dis-encounters. Based on our knowledge that religious ideas experience similar moments of transculturation as do other forms of knowledge and thought,11 I explore the “triangulation” of Jewish, Christian, and colonial (anti-colonial resp.) eschatological thought in early American “contact zones” and “contact situations.”12 To make my point, I will use the famous example of Luis de Carvajal el Mozo, a Portuguese crypto-Jew who joined his uncle on an expedition to “pacify” the Chichimecas in modern-day Northeastern Mexico. Carvajal and parts of his family were finally condemned and executed for being “dogmatizing Jews” in the city of Mexico on 8 December 1596. Based on Carvajal’s memoirs, letters, and last will, I will explore how Carvajal’s messianism was shaped by his American experience and how his imaginaries reflected his own situation and ambivalence as both an agent and a victim of Iberian colonialism.13 I will focus on Carvajal’s encounter with the first Franciscans at the imperial college of Tlatelolco and explore how Carvajal adopted (or mimicked) the ambiguities vis-à-vis the Iberian colonial system that the friars around him experienced. In the first section, I introduce the reader to Luis de Carvajal’s life and thought. In the second section, I examine Carvajal’s last will and his eschatological expectations. In the third and fourth sections, I combine my findings with some of the eschatological perspectives of the early Mexican Franciscans while paying special attention to the importance of the American continent and its religious meanings. In the fifth section, I conclude with an assessment of how Carvajal’s imaginaries oscillated between

Carvajal and the Franciscans  161 Jewish, Christian, and colonial (anti-colonial resp.) perspectives and why his example helps us to think in terms of a transdisciplinary approach to the study of Jewish-Christian eschatological encounters in contact zones beyond the European continent.

Luis de Carvajal el Mozo and Sixteenth-Century Iberian Crypto-Judaism When Luis de Carvajal was sentenced to death in a spectacular auto-da-fé in Mexico City on 8 December 1596, he shared the fate of numerous other converso victims of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Iberian Inquisitions.14 Born into a New Christian family in the Castilian town of Benavente in 1567,15 Carvajal was raised and educated in a Catholic Iberian tradition. During his lifetime, there were no open Jewish communities on the Iberian Peninsula. In 1492 and 1498, Jews had been expelled from Castile, Aragón, and Navarra. In 1497, Jews in Portuguese lands had been forced to accept baptism and become Christians. Since the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitional officers eagerly controlled the religious beliefs and traditions of those whom they suspected of “judaizing.” Statutes of “purity of blood” (limpieza de sangre) officially sanctioned the difference between “Old” and “New Christians” and stigmatized even those whose families had decided wholeheartedly to abjure Judaism. Theoretically, statutes of “purity of blood” also prevented converts and their descendants from crossing the Spanish Atlantic and settling in the New World. But total control was impossible, and we know of important converso communities in the early viceroyalties of New Spain, Peru, and Granada. Yet practicing Judaism was like playing with fire, and many conversos who managed to leave the Iberian Peninsula preferred to cross the Mediterranean and settle in Northern Africa, Northern Italy, or the Ottoman Empire where open Jewish communities existed even before the inauguration of the first Sephardic communities in Northern Europe and no Inquisitions threatened their lives and properties. At a certain point, Luis de Carvajal’s parents also considered immigrating to Italy. But they changed their decision when Luis de Carvajal y Cueva, Carvajal’s uncle and a devout Catholic, was awarded a royal privilege to conquer and govern the kingdom of Nuevo Leon.16 Hoping that the powerful and privileged uncle would be able to protect them, the family decided to join him and settle in the Americas. Part of their hope was likely also based on the fact that American Inquisitional tribunals faced a great number of obstacles and never worked as “efficiently” as their Iberian counterparts.17 For a few years, the family seemed to be safe. In 1588, however, Luis de Carvajal y Cueva fell from royal grace and, after a short time, the first denunciations against his relatives reached the Inquisition. Faced with compelling evidence of their crypto-Jewish observances, young Luis de Carvajal, his mother, and two of his sisters had no choice but to confess and regret their “error.” In

162  Sina Rauschenbach 1590, they were sentenced to house arrest, “re-conciliation” with the Catholic Church, and forced labor. In 1595, parts of the family were once again arrested. This time there was no hope for mercy. Following Inquisitional rules, “relapsed judaizers” (relapsos) were condemned to death. On 8 December 1596, Luis de Carvajal, his mother, and two sisters were hanged and burned at the stake. Carvajal’s dead father was exhumed and burned. Two brothers escaped the inferno with their flight to Italy. Two other sisters, whose lives were spared in 1596, were sentenced and executed in 1601. References to stories similar to the ones of young Carvajal and his family abound in the archives of the Iberian Inquisitions. And yet Carvajal’s life has always attracted special attention. It has been told in a number of biographies,18 historical novels,19 films,20 theater plays,21 and operas,22 because Carvajal left a series of uncommon documents that survived in the files of his trials. Contrary to other crypto-Jews who avoided leaving compromising testimonies as long as they were still free, Carvajal was daring enough to pen his memoirs between his first and his second trials. These memoirs, which re-conceptualize his conversion from Christianity to Judaism in light of famous narratives from Augustin to San Ignacio de Loyola, have been interpreted recently as a counter-narrative to his Vida, the biographical sketch that he was obliged to deliver during his first trial.23 In addition, during his second trial, Carvajal smuggled several letters addressed to his imprisoned mother and sisters.24 Finally, Carvajal left a religious will before his judgment and execution in 1596.25 In each of these documents, Carvajal draws a fascinating picture of his Jewishness. His accounts perfectly fit into recent works on crypto-Jewish religious traditions and literatures. But Carvajal also draws our attention to aspects that have not yet been studied thoroughly. One of these aspects concerns his eschatological expectations and imaginative geography of the early Americas. I suggest interpreting both in the context of the Mexican Franciscans among whom Carvajal lived and worked between 1590 and 1595.

Luis de Carvajal’s Last Will Scholars have long disagreed about how much knowledge of Judaism in general, and rabbinical Judaism in particular, crypto-Jews actually had. It has always been known that Iberian crypto-Jews used Christian polemical writings or Edicts of Faith (Inquisitional pamphlets published to encourage people to denounce themselves or their neighbor “Judaizers”) in order to gather information about what Jews did and what they were to do. More recent is the observation that conversos were involved constantly in trade partnerships (and probably also religious exchange) with openly practicing Jews in Italy, the Ottoman Empire, Northern Africa, and later in Amsterdam, Hamburg, and London.26 Generally, the Jewishness of conversos was shaped by very personal experiences: It comprised elementary commandments, fasting periods, and Jewish festivals (especially those that had a personal meaning for converso biographies);27 it was an ambivalent

Carvajal and the Franciscans  163 mixture of anti-Christian polemics and hybrid Jewish-Christian constructions;28 and it was shaped by special converso categories, as we know from Matt Goldish’s important work.29 Luis de Carvajal’s last will is a wonderful source to illustrate the aforementioned points in one single example.30 It consists of ten articles that are formulated in an anti-Christian fashion and can be linked with pivotal moments in Carvajal’s life. In the first article, Carvajal stresses the almightiness and truth of the Jewish God and contrasts it with the power of Satan, which he identifies with Christianity.31 In the second article, he emphasizes the unity and oneness of the Jewish God against the Trinity, which is another synonym for Christianity.32 In the third article, he defends the eternity of the Torah against Christian claims that the “Old Covenant” ceased to exist and that the Law has been substituted by the Gospel. This topic was the subject of a debate between Carvajal and his older brother who had opted for a life as a Dominican friar and radically distanced himself from his Jewish roots.33 In the fourth article, Carvajal confirms his rejection of idolatry which he continuously links to Catholic worship and processions.34 In the sixth article (the fifth is missing), he compares the “sacrament of circumcision” to the sacrament of baptism, reminding us of the dramatic story of his and his brother’s circumcision after their arrival in the Americas.35 Generally, Carvajal relies on Old Testament sources to prove his arguments. Sometimes, he uses experience as a source of information or refers to rabbinical authorities about whom he learned from Christian Biblical commentaries.36 Carvajal’s eschatological expectations are to be found in the last three articles of his will. In the seventh article, Carvajal refuses the Christian argument that the Messiah has already come and expresses his conviction that all peoples will eventually convert to Judaism. He connects this conviction to Tobit 13:3 (“Bear witness to him, Israelites, in the presence of the nations, because he has scattered you among them”), and what he considers to be a “Great Commission of Judaism.”37 In the eighth article, Carvajal discusses Daniel 2 and 7 as well as the question of the four monarchies in world history. The tenth article (the ninth is again missing) is about Antiochus Epiphanes whom Carvajal interprets as a metaphor for the Spanish and Portuguese kings responsible for the forced conversions and expulsions of Iberian Jews in 1492 and 1498. According to Daniel, four monarchies would determine the course of world history. These monarchies were symbolized by the famous statue that the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar saw in a dream. Its limbs consisted of four metals—gold, silver, copper, and iron. In the same way the statue was destroyed, Daniel prophesized, the four monarchies would perish one by one, and they would finally give way to a fifth monarchy that would be universal and enduring. In Daniel 7:1–14, the four beasts were similarly interpreted as the four monarchies. The ruler, who, after the destruction of the last beast, would descend from heaven “like a son of man,” would be the Messiah. In Christian exegetical literature, there was no dispute that the four monarchies in Daniel 2 and 7 represented the empires of the Assyrians (or

164  Sina Rauschenbach Babylonians), the Medes (or Persians), the Greeks, and the Romans.38 Christian scholars also agreed that the fifth monarchy represented the Kingdom of the Messiah. But interpretations differed with regard to the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth monarchy.39 While Catholic theologians generally dated the beginning of the fifth monarchy to the time of the establishment of the Church and thus to an event in the past, Protestant theologians tended to assume that the monarchy of the Romans continued into the Holy Roman Empire and represented the Catholic world of their time. They interpreted the fifth monarchy as a monarchy to be erected in the future. Finally, Christian millenarians connected Daniel to the Book of Revelation and expected a second coming of Jesus together with his thousand-year reign on earth. Their expectations—as we have seen— were often connected with Jewish messianic expectations and opened up short-time opportunities for new encounters and exchange. While the Catholic Church and major sixteenth-century Protestant reformers like Luther and Calvin condemned millenarianism as a heresy and agreed in rejecting the idea of a physical return of Jesus, millenarianism flourished in parts of the “Radical Reformation” and found its way into a variety of individual expectations and prophecies. Carvajal, like other Jewish exegetes before and after him, adhered to the idea that the fourth monarchy continued into his own times and expected the fifth monarchy to be established with the coming of the Messiah. At the same time, his vision was informed by both Christian and anti-Christian perspectives. On the one hand, he interpreted the iron and clay feet of Nebuchadnezzar’s statue as the Christian rulers of Europe, who had lost their original (i.e. Catholic) unity and were now torn in fights and wars of destruction. On the other hand, he identified the “blasphemous remarks” of the little horn in Daniel 7—and hence the voice of Satan in his final war against the messianic redeemer—with a series of Catholic beliefs, namely the Trinity, the Incarnation, and Transubstantiation: That God is subject to passion, though He has no passion. Though God is one, […] that He is three and that the Law of God is dead. […] that the infinite became finite, the eternal temporal, that cause is effect, that the Lord is a servant and that God is a man, [all of] which is of course impossible as well as contrary to what our Lord teaches in His most holy Law.40 Carvajal’s argument is neither original nor special. It is part of a long tradition of Jewish philosophical polemics since the Middle Ages.41 Remarkable, however, is the role that Carvajal attributes to conversos within the process of salvation. In the tenth article of his will, he writes: These [i.e. the Iberian kings] have ever been the root [of the tree] whose branches of Inquisitions and persecutions, have spread over the people of God, our Lord, and His holy Law. [And they have also been

Carvajal and the Franciscans  165 responsible for the death of] the blessed martyrs—the faithful and true Jews who have died out of allegiance to this Law. The princes have persecuted them without cause, calling them Judaizing heretics [and] unjustly [so], for the practice of Judaism is not heresy: it is the fulfillment of the will of God our Lord ….42 I shall come back to Carvajal’s statement that “the practice of Judaism is not heresy,” but “the fulfillment of the will of God our Lord,” in the fourth section of this essay. At this point, it is important to note that Carvajal’s religious statement in the tenth article is not about Jews but about cryptoJews: only crypto-Jews were persecuted by the Inquisition. Generally, there are different apocalyptic scenarios in Carvajal’s last will, moving from east to west and from an impersonal to a personal perspective: the seventh article is about Jerusalem and the return of the Jews to Eretz Israel. But Carvajal’s mention of Eretz Israel is clearly an exception and pales before his various references to heavenly Jerusalem in his letters.43 The eighth article is about Europe and European rulers enrolled in wars and auto-destruction. But Europe is also far away and none of its places matches Carvajal’s description.44 Only in the tenth article does Carvajal create an apocalyptic scenario that is highly emotional. This scenario touches upon his own life and experience: it is centered in New Spain, and Carvajal is one of its main protagonists. A missionary for conversos and an “eternal slave of the last Adam” (esclavo perpetuo del último ADAN)—as he calls himself alluding to Joachim of Fiore, his three ages of the world, and the final union of Christians and Jews in a transformed world45—Carvajal actively contributes to accelerating the end of times and he does so from an American perspective. At this juncture he is in line with and mimics the first Franciscan friars in the New World.

America, the Last Days, and the Franciscan Friars Among the first Franciscan friars in the New World, millenarian expectations were not only of prime importance,46 they were also a point of distinction regarding other missionary orders. Literary scholar Ralph Bauer writes: In comparison with the ethnographic literature of these other groups [i.e. Dominicans, Augustinians, lay clergy, and Jesuits], the Franciscan texts distinguished themselves by radical primitivism, messianic militancy, apocalyptic reformism, and medieval mysticism that had informed the ideology of Iberian expansionism since the fifteenth century.47 Like Carvajal, millenarian Franciscans based their expectations on the four monarchies in Daniel and the three ages of the world in Joachim of Fiore.48 According to them, the “virgin” Americas were destined to serve as a platform for social experiment and were suitable for setting up a new order that would be free from European corruption. This order was essential for

166  Sina Rauschenbach bringing about the Second Coming of Christ. In the early Franciscan imagination, a central role was awarded to the Christianized indigenous population. First, the “discovery” and evangelization of indigenous peoples in the New World was welcomed as a compensation for Catholic losses in European countries after the Reformation. Second, converts among Native Americans were expected to revive the role of the first Christians, living in apostolic poverty and pursuing original Christian perfection under the rule of their Franciscan tutors. In 1524, 12 Franciscan “apostles” reached Veracruz and inaugurated the first Christian mission to the Americas. A few years later, an imperial college was set up in Tlatelolco to instruct Nahua elites and prepare them for religious and administrative duties.49 One of the most important protagonists of the early Franciscan utopia was Toribio de Benavente, who would later adopt the indigenous name of Motolinía.50 In his Historia de los indios de la nueva España (“History of the Indians in New Spain”), written sometime after 1536, but not published until 1858, Motolinía expressed his hope that Charles V, ruler of the universal Iberian monarchy and Holy Roman Emperor, would pave the way for a new age and the establishment of the fifth monarchy on the American continent.51 However, Motolinía’s utopian project quickly clashed with the power interests of conquerors, colonial officers, and church representatives. As early as the second half of the sixteenth century, a new generation of Franciscan friars arose, who seemed to reflect more disillusions than ideals. For this generation, New Spain no longer signified the blossoming vineyard of the Lord but the wrecked hope of their predecessors. In his Historia eclesiástica indiana, written in 1596 and first published in 1870, Gerónimo de Mendieta52 describes an apocalyptic scenario in which greedy Spaniards rampaged originally idyllic landscapes and innocent indios re-experienced the earliest persecutions of Biblical Israel: not only the fruits of Christianity and the vine branches of its temporary blossoming have almost completely disappeared, but the vines themselves are diseased […] and the vineyard has turned into a waste land, into forest or swamp, similar to Mount Sion and the holy city of Jerusalem when Judah Maccabee and his companions found them desecrated by the heathens. And covered with ashes they tore their garments, kneeled down to the earth and burst into tears in the same way we should burst into tears with good reason.53 As a consequence of their disappointment, Mendieta and others after him pursued new utopian visions devoid of Spaniards and Spanish influences. According to them, the fifth monarchy was to be erected by those whose ancestors had been Spaniards but who had been born and grown up in the Americas. Their visions would later be interpreted as an early form of Creole thought.54 They can also be interpreted as early examples for Creole messianism, a phenomenon that has been described by Mariano Delgado.55 Even though none of the friars in Tlatelolco was Creole, they represented an

Carvajal and the Franciscans  167 American perspective that David A. Brading has tellingly traced in the writings of Juan de Torquemada, guardian of Tlatelolco after 1604 and author of the important Veinte y un libros de rituales y monarquía indiana (1615). Regarding Torquemada, Brading writes: Himself a peninsular Spaniard, brought to Mexico as a child, Torquemada expressed a colonial rather than a Creole outlook. In his persistent criticism of the imperial historians, Francisco López de Gómara and Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, he emphasized the local, American nature of his sources and perspective. It was precisely this Mexican quality which gave his work authority.56 Considering that Torquemada merged the information of the various manuscripts of his predecessors into one comprehensive chronicle and that his vision (oscillating between the optimism of a Motolinía and the pessimism of a Mendieta) was certainly representative of the different voices among the Franciscans in times of Carvajal, we can safely assume that Brading’s illuminating comment fits the general ambience at Tlatelolco.57

Carvajal, the Franciscans, and Early American Imaginaries Carvajal’s ways crossed with those of Mexican Franciscans at various points of his life, and the encounters occurred in unusual settings and manners. During his first trial, Carvajal shared a prison cell with a Franciscan friar who was supposed to spy on Carvajal for the Inquisition. However, by the end of his trial, Carvajal had been successful in proselytizing and his cellmate ended as a Jewish martyr.58 Another encounter occurred after Carvajal’s first conviction and “reconciliation” with the Catholic Church. After several weeks of forced labor in the local hospital (hospital), Carvajal spent the longest part of his punishment in Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, the imperial college founded in 1533 and dedicated to the education of indigenous elites. In Tlatelolco, Carvajal gave Latin instruction to Nahua students. Obviously, he had used his expeditions with his uncle to familiarize himself with indigenous languages.59 Unfortunately, we do not know details about the rather uncommon exchange between the condemned “judaizer” and his indigenous pupils, but the encounter is certainly significant in terms of Carvajal’s importance as a letrado. Obviously, lettered people were so rare among the early American settlers that they needed to be integrated into the colonial system even if their religious righteousness was doubtful.60 In any case, Carvajal began working at Tlatelolco just after the death of Bernardino de Sahagún, who had administrated the college between 1572 and 1590.61 After the Council of Trent, strategies to provide indigenous pupils educational tools in their own languages and prepare them for religious duties had come under attack. In the middle of the century, after a blossoming beginning, Tlatelolco entered a state of decline that was accelerated by plagues, floods, financial

168  Sina Rauschenbach difficulties, administrative shortcomings, and the death of the supportive viceroy, Luis de Velasco, in 1564.62 In the 1570s, the curriculum taught at Tlatelolco was limited to Latin and Rhetoric. In the 1580s, the boarding school closed its doors. In 1595, the once important college “was reduced to a small elementary institution for students from the town of Tlatelolco.”63 In addition to teaching, Carvajal served as the secretary, scribe, and associate of Pedro de Oroz, the Franciscan principal of the college,64 and was therefore allowed access to the library and the books of the monastery.65 It would be surprising if Carvajal had not been a close observer of the millenarian expectations and disappointment of the Franciscans during his years in Tlatelolco. But my suggestion goes even further. A close reading of Carvajal’s writings reveals that his exchange of ideas with Oroz and others was not only antagonistic, but that it was based on common assumptions and thoughts. One important link has to do with the question of imaginative geographies. For Carvajal and his American interlocutors, Europe was the place of the fourth monarchy. According to Carvajal, Europe was geographically far away, torn by controversies, devastated, and godforsaken. New Spain, on the contrary, was directly touched by God’s hand. It was paradise and hell, virgin land and wilderness, utopia and dystopia. Sometimes “pilgrims” heading for New Spain experienced divine wonders, visions, and rescues.66 Sometimes they found themselves in “Purgatory” (el Purgatorio),67 in a “war zone” (tierra de guerra),68 and in a “desolate exile, full of mosquitos and with burning heat” (desconsolado destierro poblado de muchos mosquitos y calor).69 Colonial differences, hopes and anxieties translated into “topographies of desire,” finding their “natural” expression in American landscapes, clime and living conditions.70 In general, New Spain was full of apocalyptic signs and inversions: wolves (Inquisitors and hangmen) slaughtered tame lambs (victims of religious fanaticism and Inquisitional fury).71 Heretics turned out to be the actually true devout, while the devout turned out to be heretics, as we could read in Carvajal’s will.72 The true Christ emerged as the Antichrist, and the true Antichrist emerged as the Christ.73 We have seen that Gerónimo de Mendieta described America in a similar manner as a land of salvation and damnation: a vineyard of the lord that had turned into a waste land, a paradise that had become hell. This similarity is even more important since Mendieta lived and worked in Tlatelolco around the same years Carvajal did. According to Mendieta “the beast of greed” (la bestia de la avaricia) had infested the people, and the Spanish conquerors had devoured their victims like wolves. European pilgrims who had first come to “civilize” “virgin” landscapes and peoples had imported nothing but destruction and devastation. Like Carvajal, Mendieta referred to Antiochus Epiphanes, using the persecution of the Jews as a symbol of Spanish violence and fury and, like Carvajal, Mendieta dressed his mourning into the mourning of Jeremiah who complained that God: [H]ad left [His chosen people] without protection and that He had allowed that the fence that was meant to protect his vineyard fell and

Carvajal and the Franciscans  169 was destroyed so that the wild pig and boar and other beasts of wilderness devastated the vineyard. In this context he [i.e. Jeremiah] used the wild animals of the desert and the beasts of the field to designate the unbelievers or those who were foreign to Israel, their enemies and hindrances, especially in times of King Antiochus.74 According to Torquemada, the first Franciscans had gone to New Spain to turn the American Babylon into a New Jerusalem and take its native population out of Egypt. However, Satan had frustrated their missionary efforts and their pupils had continued to adhere to indigenous elements in their Christian belief and practice.75 Just like the Americas were described in terms of paradise and hell, so paradise and hell were described in terms of the early Americas, their natural inhabitants, and their resources. In the letters of Carvajal, this is most visible in a passage where the young man praises the “abundance of joy that awaits us (la hartura del gozo que nos espera)” in terms of a paradise of “tortillas made of wheat flour, the size of shields (tortillas de flor de harina tamañas como rodelas).”76 Franciscans such as Bernardino de Sahagún made similar use of indigenous food to translate the Christian message to their indigenous pupils.77 As we have already seen, Carvajal also mimics Franciscan anxieties about Satan but, unlike Torquemada, he identifies satanic influence in Christian, not in indigenous beliefs and practices.78 Even earlier, in his memoirs, Carvajal uses early Christian representations of martyrdom only to translate them into an American landscape and symbolism. In one of the most terrifying sections of his memoirs, Carvajal remembers how the wardens, during his first trial, took his mother to be tortured. In a vision that came over him and relieved him from anxiety and pain, he saw a man, sent to him by God: In his hands he carried a large and beautiful yam (una grande and hermosisima batata). He showed it to Joseph and said, “Look! What a handsome and beautiful fruit!” To this Joseph replied, “Indeed.” He gave it to Joseph to smell. Joseph blessed the Lord, creator of all, and said to the man, “Indeed, it smells good, indeed.” The man then cut the yam in two and said to him, “Now it smells better.” The man then gave Joseph the interpretation. He said, “Before being imprisoned and racked with torture, your mother was whole and she smelled sweet; she was a fruit of sweet savor before the Lord. But now, when she is cut with torture, she exudes the superior fragrance of patience before the Lord.” With this Joseph awoke and was consoled.79 Carvajal’s vision is clearly based on a Catholic understanding of the Last Supper and the Eucharist (John 6:32–35). During the Eucharist, the communion bread is transubstantiated into the flesh of Christ. The bread is broken to remind the believer of Christ’s suffering and atonement for the sin of mankind. Following the connection between the Eucharist and

170  Sina Rauschenbach martyrdom, Christian martyrs have been compared to the “the bread of God.”80 Carvajal adopted this comparison, but substituted the bread by “a big and beautiful sweet potato.” In addition, he used the potato to emphasize the beautiful smell of his mother’s broken body, reminding the reader of her sanctity and anticipating her relocation in paradise.81 Obviously, Carvajal’s expectations differed in important aspects from those of his Franciscan contemporaries: whereas Franciscans such as Mendieta complained about violent aggressions against their indigenous protégées, Carvajal mourned the persecution and annihilation of his fellow conversos.82 Whereas Franciscans such as Mendieta blamed Iberian conquerors for destroying their utopian dream, Carvajal identified brutality and devastation with the Inquisition. However, and in spite of the aforementioned differences, there were also remarkable similarities, and these similarities were connected to American experiences, immediate expectations, and apocalyptic visions before the end of times: Carvajal and the Franciscans shared the idea that the end of times was immediate; they linked their visions, hopes, and anxieties to American landscapes and peoples; and they highlighted their respective contribution to accelerating the end and bringing about the messianic future. Entanglements between Carvajal and the friars in Tlatelolco are still far from being explored, and we would need to retrieve documents from the lost archive of the imperial college to understand more accurately what happened in the years between 1590 and 1595. But the example is helpful as a test case for further inquiries, and it raises important questions about Jewish-Christian eschatological encounters in the early Americas, the transculturation of ideas and the mimicry of expectations.

Conclusion Historians of sixteenth-century Spain have long stressed that spiritual Franciscans played a major role in Jewish-Christian relationships and eschatological exchange. For one thing, the Franciscan Order included an outstanding number of conversos whose messianic expectations influenced the Franciscans’ millenarian tendencies. For another, Joachimite writings, distributed by Franciscans on the Iberian Peninsula, also seemed to spread beyond Christianity and influenced Jewish messianic expectations and thought. Given the Iberian links and interactions, it is not surprising that similar phenomena continued among the early “pilgrims” and “apostles” in the Americas.83 Concerning Luis de Carvajal, Miriam Bodian has argued convincingly that his biblical approach to Judaism was not only caused by his lack of rabbinical sources, but also by influences of alumbrados, protoProtestant Catholic reformers—often from among Franciscans—who had a strong influence in sixteenth-century Western Castile and Estremadura.84 My example testifies to contact situations in early modern Mexico, and it helps to explain why forced encounters—such as the one in Tlatelolco— between crypto-Jews, indigenous people, and Franciscans could result in some sort of transfer. In this transfer, as in the European cases discussed by

Carvajal and the Franciscans  171 Gutwirth and Ruderman, classical typologies were mixed while religious loyalties remained constant. And yet, in the eschatological encounter between Carvajal and the early Mexican Franciscans, “European” expectations were not only “transported” into the Americas, they were also changed and transformed. In the American frontier situation, a different aspect of encounter and dis-encounter was added to “classical” scripts: Jewish and Christian expectations were triangulated with Spanish imperial thought, anti-Spanish resistance, and American topographies of desire and anxiety. In the case of Carvajal, agency and victimhood, colonialism and anticolonialism mingled into a bizarre, but well-known unity. On the one hand, Carvajal reproduced European perceptions of American geographies and described American landscapes, climates and people as rough, “uncivilized,” and threatening. On the other hand, he repeated and/or mimicked Franciscan imaginaries that were themselves born out of colonial/anti-colonial ambivalence. According to these imaginaries, the Spanish dominions represented the fourth monarchy and the pinnacle of earthly downfall and corruption. America in turn served as a liminal space between violence and peace, blindness and truth, hell and paradise, old and new.85 Carvajal’s disappointment culminated in his final letters to his family members. In these letters, America was once and for all separated from Europe. Instead, it was directly connected to paradise86 and the conversos in the Americas were the harbingers of truth and the spiritual reign of peace in the future. Carvajal himself progressively identified with the messianic Savior and partly even mimicked Jesus Christ (while simultaneously rejecting him) to substantiate his claim.87 Scholars in Latin American Studies have repeatedly emphasized the ambivalence of the first Franciscan friars, as expressed between their support for the colonial enterprise and their rejection of colonial violence. They have also drawn our attention to Franciscan strategies of accommodation and rejection in their struggle with indigenous cultures and religions. Others have called for a new study of Franciscan millenarianism in the context of New World hybridity and transculturation.88 I would like to add that converts and cryptoJews in the early Americas need also be taken into consideration. Conversely, Jewish messianism in the early Americas cannot be studied independently of the colonial and anti-colonial experience respectively, nor of the eschatological expectation of their non-Jewish surroundings. In the same way that Christian expectations migrated and mutated when missionaries left Europe and moved to colonies, so too did Jewish expectations when crypto-Jewish converts moved to the New World. Exploring Jewish-Franciscan encounters in early modern New Spain will not only provide us additional insights into the fascinating world and thought of Carvajal and his family, it will also be helpful to pave the way for the discovery and exploration of contact zones that have been neglected. Unfortunately, Latin American Studies and Jewish Studies have often been and continue to be disconnected. The examples of Carvajal and the Mexican Franciscans show that there are good reasons to bridge disciplinary gaps. In terms of an entangled history of eschatological thought, the encounter between Jewish messianism and Christian

172  Sina Rauschenbach millenarianism in early modern Mexico helps us to understand that the often neglected factor of colonial experience plays an important role in the exchange of religious cultures and thought, and it proves that contact situations in Europe and its colonies gave rise to a plethora of transcultural phenomena that are still awaiting scholarly exploration.

Notes 1 Earlier versions of this chapter have been presented and discussed at several conferences and colloquia in Europe and the Americas over the last years. I would like to thank Malachi Haim Hacohen and John Martin at Duke University, Eva Haverkamp at the LMU Munich, Susannah Heschel at Dartmouth College, Carsten Schapkow at the University of Oklahoma, and José da Silva Horta and José Alberto Tavim at the University of Lisbon, for their invitations, as well as the participants of the respective conferences and colloquia for illuminating discussions and suggestions. My special thanks go to Damien Tricoire for including me into the speakers of his wonderful conference in Halle and the editors of this volume for inviting me to contribute to it. 2 Amos Oz quoting his grandmother, in idem, “Rabbi Jesus,” The Guardian, 21 March 2000, accessed 30 March 2020, www.theguardian.com/books/2000/ mar/21/society. 3 Richard H. Popkin, ed., Millenarianism and Messianism in English Literature and Thought (1650–1800) (Leiden: Brill, 1988); idem, “Jewish Messianism and Christian Millenarianism,” in Culture and Politics: From Puritanism to the Enlightenment, ed. Perez Zagorin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 67–90. For Menasseh ben Israel and Christian millenarianism, see Sina Rauschenbach, Judaism for Christians: Menasseh ben Israel (Lanham: Lexington, 2019 [2012]); Ernestine G. van der Wall, “Petrus Serrarius and Menasseh ben Israel: Christian Millenarianism and Jewish Messianism in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam,” in Menasseh ben Israel and His World, eds. Yosef Kaplan, Henry Méchoulan, and Jeremy Popkin (Leiden: Brill, 1989), 164–90. 4 See, e.g., Allison Coudert and Jeffrey S. Shoulson, eds., Hebraica Veritas? Christian Hebraists and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). 5 David B. Ruderman, “Hope against Hope: Jewish and Christian Messianic Expectations in the Late Middle Ages,” in Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, ed. David B. Ruderman (New York: New York University Press, 1992), 299–323, 304. Among the “contact situations” that Ruderman distinguishes, the “discovery” of the Americas is of prime importance. Ruderman himself relies on Mary Louise Pratt’s concept of “contact zones.” See her Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992). 6 Eleazar Gutwirth, “Jewish and Christian Messianism in XVth Century Spain,” in The Expulsion of the Jews and Their Emigration to the Southern Low Countries (15th–16th C.), ed. Luc Dequeker and Werner Verbeke (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1998), 1–22. 7 Goldish, “Patterns in Converso Messianism,” 49–54. See also Alastair Hamilton, Heresy and Mysticism in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co, 1992). 8 See e.g. David M. Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit: The Religion of Crypto-Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996); and Yirmiyahu Yovel, The Other Within: The Marranos. Split Identity and Emerging Modernity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).

Carvajal and the Franciscans  173 9 For the term “imaginative geography,” see, e.g., Edward Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2001 [1978]). According to Said, “imaginative geographies” precede experience and contribute to the construction of geographical (and cultural) unities according to the subject’s power, interest, and imagination. For “imaginative geographies” in the wider context of postcolonial geographies, see Joanne P. Sharp, Geographies of Postcolonialism (London: Sage Publications, 2009), esp. 15–18. 10 “Classical” studies on (Franciscan) millenarianism and the early Americas include Georges Baudot, Utopie et histoire au Mexique: Les premiers chroniqueurs de la civilisation mexicaine (1520–1569) (Toulouse: Privat, 1976); Alain Milhou, Colón y su mentalidad mesianica en el ambiente franciscanista español (Valladolid: Casa Museo de Colón, 1983); and Beatriz Pastor Bodmer, El Jardin y el Peregrino: Ensayos sobre el pensamiento utópico latinoamericano, 1492– 1695 (Amsterdam: Rodopi 1996). For a concise summary, see Luis Weckmann, “Las esperanzas milenaristas de los franciscanos de la Nueva España,” Historia Mexicana 32, no. 1 (1982): 89–105. For a recent comparison between Franciscan millenarianism in New Spain and Puritan millenarianism in New England, see Ralph Bauer, “Millennium’s Darker Side: The Missionary Utopias of Franciscan New Spain and Puritan New England,” in Finding Colonial Americas: Essays Honoring J. A. Leo Lemay, ed. Carla Mulford and David S. Shields (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2001), 33–49. 11 The concept of “transculturation” (transculturación) goes back to Fernando Ortiz, Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1987 [1940]). Contrary to concepts of “acculturation” (aculturación), “deculturation” (deculturación), “inculturation” (inculturación), etc., “transculturation” is based on the assumption that cultural transfer is a “synthesis” (síntesis) of all of them, with gains and losses on each side (93). Mary Louise Pratt has elaborated on Ortiz’ concept for her own work on “contact zones.” See note 5. For one of many examples regarding the study of religious transculturation in the Atlantic world, see Fernando Cervantes, The Devil in the New World: The Impact of Diabolism in New Spain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994). 12 I borrow the term “triangulation” from Sarah Phillips Casteel. Based on recent research in Postcolonial Studies and Memory Studies, Casteel discusses the triangulation of Caribbean memories between Sepharad, slavery, and the Holocaust. See, e.g., Sarah Phillips Casteel, “Triangulating Memory: Sephardism in Caribbean Literature,” in The Sephardic Atlantic: Colonial Histories and Postcolonial Concepts, ed. Sina Rauschenbach and Jonathan Schorsch (Cham: Springer, 2018), 277–98. 13 For a recent collection of essays on colonial Jews and their difficult position as both agents and victims of colonialism, see Rauschenbach and Schorsch, eds., The Sephardic Atlantic. For Carvajal’s “traumatic experience as a subaltern colonial subject caught between Christianity and Judaism,” (28), see Lúcia Helena Costigan, Through Cracks in the Wall: Modern Inquisitions and New Christian Letrados in the Iberian Atlantic World (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 28. 14 For two recent studies, see Costigan, Cracks, esp. 25–77, and Ronnie Perelis, Narratives from the Sephardic Atlantic: Blood and Faith (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017), 31–51 and 52–73. On Carvajal’s crypto-Jewish networks, see Eva Alexandra Uchmany, La vida entre el judaísmo y el cristianismo en la Nueva España (1580–1606) (México: Archivo General de la Nación, 1992). 15 For a recent study of the larger Carvajal-Santamaría family, see Roger Louis Martínez Dávila, Creating Conversos: The Carvajal-Santa María Family in Early Modern Spain (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2018). Interestingly, Martínez Dávila detects remote family members in the Iberian

174  Sina Rauschenbach Inquisitions and deduces that they might have deleted records to obscure the converso background (252–55). 16 For the uncle, see Samuel Temkin, Luis de Carvajal: The Origins of Nuevo Reino de León (Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 2011); and Stanley Hordes, To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), esp. 72–103. Four young Luis and his uncle, see Perelis, “Blood and Spirit: Paternity, Fraternity and Religious Self-Fashioning in Luis de Carvajal’s Spiritual Autobiography,” Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe 23, no. 1 (2012): 77–98, here 81–85. To add to the perception that (only) women were of prime importance for the maintenance of crypto-Jewish life, Perelis focuses also on (male) networks outside the house. 17 For a recent study of the Mexican Inquisition, see John F. Chuchiak IV, The Inquisition in New Spain, 1536–1820: A Documentary History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012). For classical studies, see Solange Alberro, Inquisición y Sociedad en México, 1571–1700 (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1988); Richard Greenleaf, The Mexican Inquisition of the Sixteenth Century (Albuquerque: The University of New Mexico Press, 1969); and Seymour B. Liebman, The Jews in New Spain: Faith, Flame and the Inquisition (Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1974). 18 Martin A. Cohen, The Martyr: The Story of a Secret Jew and the Mexican Inquisition in the Sixteenth Century (Albuquerque: The University of New Mexico Press, 2001 [1973]). Earlier studies, in addition to the ones quoted in this essay, are Boleslao Lewin, Mártires y conquistadores judíos en la América Hispánica (Buenos Aires: Edición Candelabro, 1954), 33–115; and Vicente Riva Palacio, Manuel Payno, Juan A. Mateos, y Rafael Martínez de la Torre, El libro rojo, vol. 1 (México: A. Pola, 1905), esp. 264–316. 19 Ana Lanyon, Fire and Song: The Story of Luis de Carvajal and the Mexican Inquisition (Crow’s Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2011). 20 Artur Ripstein, dir., “El Santo Oficio” (México, 1973). 21 Jacobo Kaufmann, Carvajal: El Testamento de Joseph Lumbroso (Buenos Aires: Corregidores, 1994). 22 Osias Wilenski and Jacobo Kaufmann, “Carvajal: El Testamento de Joseph Lumbroso” (2009). There is also a song cycle by Osias Wilenski based on the poems by Carvajal that was part of a musical project that I initiated and that was inaugurated together with a lecture featuring a translation of a selection of Carvajal’s texts in Potsdam and Constance in 2015. For the partition, see Osias Wilenski, Poemas y cartas de Carvajal: Ein Liederzyklus für Tenor, Flöte, Harfe, Klavier, Violoncello (2014) mit Texten von Luis de Carvajal dem Jüngeren (1596), ed. Sina Rauschenbach and Katharina Hanstedt, together with Tanja Zakrzewski, Karin Czaja and Enrique Corredera Nilsson (Hamburg: Canticus-Verlag, 2018). For an earlier opera based on the subject of Carvajal, see Myron Fink, “The Conquistador,” first staged in San Diego in 1997. 23 Perelis, Narratives, 33. Beyond Augustine and Ignacio, Perelis also draws our attention to similarities between Carvajal’s memoirs and Teresa de Avila’s Libro de Vida. Ibid., 29. 24 One of the few scholars to focus on the women of the Carvajal family is Dagmar Bechtloff. See her Don Luis und die Frauen Carvajal: Atlantische Welten in der Frühen Neuzeit (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012). Bechtloff analyzes the family story in the context of recent research on frontier societies, transatlantic networks, and individual hopes and disillusions (14). 25 For the first publication of these documents, see Luis González Obregón et al., eds., Procesos de Luis de Carvajal (El Mozo) (México: Estados Unidos Mexicanos, Secretaría de Gobernación, 1935). Afterwards, the Spanish texts were again published—albeit in slightly different versions—by Alfonso Toro, La familia Carvajal, 2 vols. (México: Ed. Patria, 1944). For a shortened English

Carvajal and the Franciscans  175 translation of Carvajal’s memoirs, letters, and last will, see Seymour Liebman, ed., The Enlightened: The Writings of Luis de Carvajal el Mozo (Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1967). See also Martin A. Cohen, “The Letters and Last Will and Testament of Luis de Carvajal, The Younger,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 55, no. 4 (1966): 451–520; and idem, “The Autobiography of Luis de Carvajal, The Younger,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 55, no. 3 (1966): 277–318. 26 See, e.g., Jessica Roitman, The Same but Different? Inter-Cultural Trade and the Sephardim, 1595–1640 (Leiden: Brill, 2011); and Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert, A Nation upon the Ocean Sea: Portugal’s Atlantic Diaspora and the Crisis of the Spanish Empire, 1492–1640 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 27 The best example is the importance of Purim in converso circles with the celebration of Esther as the first crypto-Jew in world history. See, e.g., Miriam Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999 [1997]), 10. 28 For a good survey, see David M. Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit: The Religion of Crypto-Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996). For the special case of Carvajal, see Martin Cohen, “The Religion of Luis Rodríguez Carvajal: Glimpses into the Passion of a Mexican Judaizer,” American Jewish Archives 20 (1968): 33–62. 29 Matt D. Goldish, “Patterns in Converso Messianism,” in Jewish Messianism in the Early Modern World (= Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture 1), ed. Matt D. Goldish and Richard H. Popkin (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), 41–63. 30 González Obregón, Procesos, 412–18. For English translations (even though partly shortened), see Cohen, “The Letters and Last Will and Testament,” and Liebman, The Enlightened, 123–33. 31 González Obregón, Procesos, 412–13. 32 For the Trinity in Carvajal’s memoirs, see González Obregón, Procesos, 463. 33 See González Obregón, Procesos, 472–73. 34 For Carvajal’s memoirs and the identification of Catholic worship with idolatry, see González Obregón, Procesos, 471–72. 35 See González Obregón, Procesos, 465 and 470. Carvajal’s interpretation of circumcision as a sacrament is part of his Christian past and converso religiosity. In addition, Carvajal describes his circumcision in terms of “a strong weapon against luxury and a helpful tool for chastity” (armadura fuerte contra la luxuria y ayuda a la castidad). This could be part of a Franciscan influence at the moment when Carvajal authors his memoirs. Generally, however, Carvajal’s life was not much inspired by Franciscan ideals of poverty and chastity. See, e.g., Karen Rebecca Dollinger, “In the Shadow of the Mexican Inquisition: Theological Discourse in the Writings of Luis de Carvajal and in Sor Juana’s Crisis de un Sermón” (PhD Thesis, Ohio State University, 2002), 81–83, who comments on the baroque imagination of riches and festivity in Carvajal’s depiction of paradise. 36 For an important example, see Carvajal’s reference to Maimonides’ iqqarim, in González Obregón, Procesos, 481–82. Carvajal speaks about “los santos treze articulos y fundamtos. [sic] de nuestra fee y religion cosa no sabida y oidas en las tierras de captiverio” (482), and reminds his readers that he knows the iqqarim from Hieronymus Oleaster. For Carvajal’s source, see Jerónimo de Azambuja [=Hieronymus Oleaster], Com[m]entaria in Mosi Pentateuchum, iuxta M. Sanctis Pagnini Lucensis eiusdem Ordinis [Praedicatorij] interpretationem (Antwerp, 1569 [1556]), “In caput. VI. Deuterono.,” 251v. Neither Oleaster nor Carvajal mention Maimonides. Oleaster speaks about “13 principles of faith which they [the Jews] call fundaments” (13. articulos fidei quos tredecim vocant [Iehudaei] fundamenta).

176  Sina Rauschenbach 37 For the Great Commission of Christianity, see Matthew 28:18–20. 38 For recent surveys, see Mariano Delgado, Klaus Koch, and Edgar Marsch, eds., Tausendjähriges Reich und Neue Welt: Zwei Jahrtausende Geschichte und Utopie in der Rezeption des Danielbuches (Freiburg Schweiz: Universitätsverlag, 2003); and Katharina Bracht and David S. du Toit, eds., Die Geschichte der DanielAuslegung im Judentum, Christentum und Islam: Studien zur Kommentierung des Danielbuches in Literatur und Kunst (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007). 39 See Arno Seifert, Der Rückzug der biblischen Prophetie von der neueren Geschichte: Studien zur Geschichte der Reichstheologie des frühneuzeitlichen deutschen Protestantismus (Cologne: Böhlau, 1990), 28–37 and 49–64. 40 González Obregón, Procesos, 415–16. The translation is from Cohen, “The Letters,” 516. 41 For an important survey, see Daniel Lasker, Jewish Philosophical Polemics against Christianity in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2007 [1977]). 42 González Obregón, Procesos, 416. The translation is from Cohen, “The Letters,” 517–18. 43 See note 86. 44 In a similar way, Carvajal refers to his hometown as “benabente villa de europa.” González Obregón, Procesos, 463. Spain or the Iberian Peninsula are not mentioned. 45 According to Toro, Carvajal’s will is signed: “Fecho en el purgatorio, en el quinto mes del año de nuestra creación, cinco mil y trescientos y cincuenta y siete—Y esclavo perpetuo del último ADAN.—Joseph Lumbroso.” Toro, La familia Carvajal, vol. 2, 242. In González Obregón’s edition, the reference is missing. For Joachim of Fiore and the Jews, see Robert E. Lerner, The Feast of Saint Abraham: Medieval Millenarians and the Jews (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). Regarding Joachim’s millenarianism, Lerner comments: “The striking concept here is not the final conversion of the Jews, an article of Christian belief ever since Paul’s proclamation that ‘all Israel shall be saved.’ What is novel is the proposition that at the end of time the world will be transformed in a mutually beneficial union of Christians and Jews” (24). Afterwards Lerner elaborates on the impact of Joachim’s thought on Franciscan friars such as Francesc Eiximenis, among others. 46 For two classical studies, see Georges Baudot, Utopie et histoire au Mexique: Les premiers chroniqueurs de la civilisation mexicaine (1520–1569) (Toulouse: Privat, 1976); and John Leddy Phelan, The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World: A Study of the Writings of Gerónimo de Mendieta, 1525–1604 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1956). For a concise summary of many of the following arguments, see Pastor Bodmer, El Jardin y el Peregrino, 109–35. 47 Bauer, “Millennium’s Darker Side,” 35. 48 Baudot, Utopie et histoire, esp. 76–90. See also note 45 on Joachim, the Jews, and medieval Franciscan millenarianism. 49 Mario A. Benítez, Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco: The First Secondary School in America (Morrisville: lulu.com, 2008), esp. 87–88. For additional studies, see Miguel Mathes, Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco: La primera biblioteca académica de las Américas (México: Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 1982); Baudot, Utopie et histoire, esp. 103–13 (with the indication of earlier studies of importance); and Juana Ramírez Herrera, “El primer colegio de América: Santa Cruz de Santiago Tlatelolco” (Thesis Maestra Normalista, Guadalajara: Escuela Normal Nueva Galicia, 1959). Mathes calls Tlatelolco a “Centro de investigación etnográfica y linguística” (29). Arencibia Rodríguez emphasizes the importance of the college in the history of translations, and considers its role to be “in many ways reminiscent of the one played in Europe by the famous Toledo

Carvajal and the Franciscans  177 School founded by Bishop Ramon in Alfonso el Sabio’s time.” Lourdes Arencibia Rodríguez, “The Imperial College of Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco: The First School of Translators and Interpreters in Sixteenth-Century Spanish America,” in Charting the Future of Translation History, ed. Georges L. Bastin and Paul F. Bandia (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2006), 263–75, esp. 263. 50 On Motolinía, see Baudot, Utopie et histoire. For more recent studies with detailed bibliographies, see also Rolando Carrasco Monsalve, El proceso de formación textual en las crónicas franciscanas de Nueva España, Siglo XVI (Pittsburgh: Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, 2016), esp. 121–73; and Stephanie Righetti-Templer, Der spanische Franciscanismo in der Neuen Welt: Eine Untersuchung zum Transfer der franziskanischen Theologie im 16. Jahrhundert nach Lateinamerika anhand der Werke von Fray Toribio de Benavente Motolinía (Berlin: LIT, 2019). 51 Elsa Cecilia Frost, “Milenarismo franciscano en México y el profeta Daniel,” Historia Mexicana 26, no. 1 (1976): 3–28, esp. 15. 52 On Mendieta, see Carrasco Monsalve, El proceso, 175–274; and Phelan, The Millennial Kingdom. 53 “no solo los fructos de su cristiandad y los pámpanos de la temporal prosperidad se han desparecido cuasi del todo, mas aun las mismas cepas […] están ya enfermas […] y la viña vuelta un eriazo, bosque ó matorral, á la manera que Júdas Macabeo y sus compañeros hallaron al monte Sion y santa ciudad de Jerusalem profanada de los gentiles, y cubiertos de ceniza, rompiendo sus vestiduras y postrados sobre la tierra hicieron gran llanto sobre ella, como nosotros (segun razon) lo deberiamos hacer.” Gerónimo de Mendieta, Historia ecclesiástica indiana, ed. Joaquín García Icazbalceta (México: Antigua Librería, 1870), 559–60. The translation is mine. 54 See David A. Brading, The Origins of Mexican Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 4–9. For a similar reference to proto-Creole thought—albeit in the context of a Dominican friar in colonial Peru—see Georges Bataillon, “La herejía de Fray Francisco de la Cruz,” in: Miscellanea de estudios dedicados a Fernando Ortiz, vol. 1 (Habana: Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País, 1955), 133–46. Bataillon speaks about a “proceso de criollización de los frailes” (145). 55 On the change from Iberian messianism to Creole messianism, see Mariano Delgado, Die Metamorphosen des Messianismus in den iberischen Kulturen: eine religionsgeschichtliche Studie (Immensee: Neue Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft, 1994). 56 Brading, Origins, 8. 57 Only the question whether Torquemada’s title Monarquía indiana gives expression to Franciscan millenarian expectations has been subject to discussion. See Frost, “Milenarismo franciscano,” 22–26. 58 For the episode in Carvaja’s memoirs, see González Obregón, Procesos, 478– 79. For a recent study of Carvajal and the conversion of Fray Francisco Ruiz de Luna, see Perelis, “Blood and Spirit,” 86–89. 59 Costigan, Cracks, 34. Generally, our knowledge about Jewish-indigenous encounters in the colonial Americas is very limited and definitely needs to be improved. 60 Costigan, Cracks, 34. One page later, Costigan speaks about the “duality of Carvajal’s social position as a letrado of Jewish origin” (35). 61 Benítez, Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, 98. On Sahagún and Tlatelolco, see Arencibia Rodríguez, “The Imperial College,” and Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other, trans. Richard Howard (London: Harper & Row, 1983 [1982]), 219–41. 62 Benítez, Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, 109 and 111. 63 Ibid., 110.

178  Sina Rauschenbach 64 Ronnie Perelis, Narratives from the Sephardic Atlantic: Blood and Faith (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017), 48–51; and idem, “Blood and Spirit,” 89–93. Perelis introduces Oroz as “a Christian father figure who enables Luis’s Jewish rebirth.” Ibid., 89. Unfortunately, our information about Pedro de Oroz’ thought is limited. For a reconstruction of some of his writings, see The Oroz Codex: The Oroz Relación, or the Description of the Holy Gospel Province in New Spain, and the Lives of the Founders and other Noteworthy Men of Said Province, trans. and ed. Angélico Chávez (Washington: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1972). For the earliest biography of Oroz, see Juan de Torquemada, Veinte y un libros rituales y monarquía indiana, vol. 3 (Sevilla, 1615), XX, XXVIII, 646–52. 65 For the library and its holdings, see Mathes, Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, esp. 46–77; for a survey, see Benítez, Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, 101–4. 66 For Carvajal’s self-fashioning as a pilgrim (peregrino), see Costigan, Cracks, 47 and 74; and Perelis, Narratives, 27–28. 67 González Obregón, Procesos, 418. 68 González Obregón, Procesos, 468. 69 González Obregón, Procesos, 464. Carvajal’s apocalyptic description reminds the reader of the third and fourth biblical plagues in Exodus 8:13. A similar translation of the biblical plagues into American landscapes is to be found in the Franciscan imaginaries in Tlatelolco. See, e.g., Toribio de Motolinía, Memoriales: Manuscrito de la colección del Señor Don Joaquín García Icazbalceta, ed. Luis García Pimentel (México: En Casa del Editor, 1903), 22–23, https://cd.dgb.uanl.mx/handle/201504211/13029; and Pastor Bodmer, El Jardin y el Peregrino, 113–15. 70 For the importance of emotions in the construction of imaginative geographies, see Derek Gregory, “Imaginative Geographies,” Progress in Human Geography 19, no. 4 (1999): 447–85. In fact, Gregory reproaches Said for not considering emotions sufficiently in his Orientalism. Gregory himself speaks of “topographies of desire” (456). For the “naturalization of difference,” see also Sharp, Geographies of Postcolonialism, 20–21 and 56. 71 “Consuelate, consuelate dize el Sr., que yo lo librare de los lobos y lo pondre en dulces pastos con la oveja de su madre.” Carvajal to Leonor and Isabel, 22 May 1595, in González Obregón, Procesos, here 499–502, 501. In his memoirs, too, Carvajal speaks about his mother as “the tame lamb” (la mansa cordera) and opposes her to the inhuman nature of the Inquisitors and torturers. González Obregón, Procesos, 477. 72 See note 42. 73 “que el Antecristo que llaman los cristianos, es el Mesías que ha de venir, […] y […] que Jesucristo es el Antecristo.” Toro, La familia Carvajal, vol. 2, 158. 74 “que lo habia desamparado, y permitido que la albarrada con que estaba cercada aquella su viña se hubiese caido y destruido, á cuya causa el jabalí ó puerco montés salido de la selva, y cualquier otra bestia fiera la pacian y tenian asolada, entendiendo por fieras del desierto y bestias del campo á los infieles ó extraños del pueblo israelítico, que le eran enemigos y molestos, especialmente en tiempos del rey Antioco […].” Mendieta, Historia ecclesiástica indiana, 557. The translation is mine. 75 See David Brading, “Psychomachia Indiana: Angels, Devils and Holy Images in New Spain,” in Angels, Demons and the New World, ed. Fernando Cervantes and Andrew Redden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 249–73, esp. 251. On similar interpretations in Olmos and Mendieta, see Pastor Bodmer, El Jardin y el Peregrino, 131–33; and Cervantes, The Devil in the New World, esp. 12–17. According to Cervantes, Olmos reproached his idolatrous pupils of being “active devil-worshippers, members of a counter-church set up by a devil anxious to be honored like God. With this purpose Satan had set up

Carvajal and the Franciscans  179 his own church as a mimetic version of the Catholic Church.” Ibid., 25. Bauer, “Millennium’s Darker Side,” 35, even speaks about a Franciscan “obsession” with Satan. 76 Carvajal to Leonor and Isabel, 22 May 1595, in González Obregón, Procesos, here 499–502, 502. Later, the confusion between tortillas and bread during the Eucharist became one of the crimes that the Mexican Inquisition condemned. For an eighteenth-century example, see Gerardo Lara Cisneros, “El Cristo Viejo de Xichú, un caso de christianismo indígena y represión eclesiástica,” in Inquisición Novohispana, vol. 3, ed. Noemi Quezada, Martha Eugenía Rodríguez, and Marcela Suárez (México: UNAM, 2000), 337–46, esp. 344; and idem, “La Domesticación del Cristianismo en la Sierra Gorda, Nueva España, Siglo XVIII,” in Evangelization and Cultural Conflict in Colonial Mexico, ed. Robert H. Jackson (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), 158–94, esp. 185. 77 See e.g. Bernardino de Sahagún, Psalmodia Christiana (Christian Psalmody), trans. Arthur J. O. Anderson (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1993). A verse of the Second Psalm reads: “With sacred words our Lord Jesus Christ made tortillas and wine His body [and] his blood, the riches of the soul” (171). A verse of the Third Psalm repeats: “A great miracle was wrought when through the sacred words tortillas became sacred flesh and wine became sacred blood” (173). 78 See notes 31 and 40. 79 González Obregón, Procesos, 477–78. The translation is from Cohen, “The Autobiography,” 297–98. 80 Enrico Mazza, The Celebration of the Eucharist: The Origin of the Rite and the Development of Its Interpretation (Collegeville, MA: The Liturgical Press, 1999 [1996]), esp. 134–37. The author refers to the martyrdom of Polycarp (c.69–c.156), whose body was baked like bread. He comments: “Since martyrdom is an imitation of the passion of Christ and since the Eucharist too is an imitation of the passion, it follows that there should be a special connection between the Eucharist and martyrdom. Both belong to the same order of things, with martyrdom imitating the passion of Christ in a fully real way and the Eucharist imitating it in a rite which in turn is connected with the fulfillment of figures.” Ibid., 135. I am thankful to my Potsdam colleague Johann Ev. Hafner who helped me to clarify this issue. 81 For an illuminating survey on the odor of medieval martyrs, see Ariel Guiance, “En olor de santidad: La caracterización y alcance de los aromas en la hagiografía hispana medieval,” Edad Media: Revista Histórica 10 (2009): 131–61. For an interreligious perspective with further bibliographical details, see Suzanne Evans, “The Scent of a Martyr,” Numen 49, no. 2 (2002): 193–211. 82 See note 42. Generally, Carvajal’s attitude toward the indigenous population was more that of his colonizing uncle than that of the Franciscans in Tlatelolco, even though Carvajal was prepared enough to accept a distinction between the “uncivilized” Chichimecas he had encountered in his youth and the “civilized” Nahuas at Tlatelolco. On the “wild” (salvajes) and “uncivilized” (barbaros) Chichimecas, see, e.g., González Obregón, Procesos, 466 and 468. 83 For a prominent example in sixteenth-century Nuevo León, see Gregorio López, who was not only a Catholic mystic, but who was also suspected of being a Lutheran and a crypto-Jew. Among López’ contacts was Luis de Carvajal. See Martin A. Cohen, “Don Gregorio López: Friend of the Secret Jew; A Contribution to the Study of Religious Life in Early Colonial Mexico,” Hebrew Union College Annual 38 (1967): 259–84; Álvaro Huerga, Historia de los Alumbrados, vol. 3 (Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 1986), 559–90; and Perelis, Narratives, 42–43.

180  Sina Rauschenbach 84 Miriam Bodian, Dying in the Law of Moses: Crypto-Jewish Martyrdom in the Iberian World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 47–78. Alumbrados were mystics who themselves often came from the ranks of the Franciscans and were regularly suspected of being “judaizers” because of their unorthodox thinking. For a classical study of the alumbrados, see Hamilton, Heresy and Mysticism. For Latin America, see Huerga, Historia de los alumbrados, vol. 3. Interestingly, Huerga emphasizes differences between the millenarianism of the Mexican Franciscans and the Mexican alumbrados, inspired by Gregorio López (784). See note 83. 85 Brading summarizes this ambivalence in terms of an “Augustinian dualism” in the Franciscan interpretation of the Americas. See Brading, Origins, 8–9. 86 Especially Carvajal’s letters are full of references to his and his family’s travel to paradise and the heavenly Jerusalem. Often, travel to paradise is opposed to travel (back) to Europe. For one out of many examples, see Carvajal to Leonor and Isabel, 22 May 1595, in González Obregón, Procesos, 500–2, esp. 501. Costigan comments on the shift of the meaning of “Jerusalem” in Carvajal’s letters. See Costigan, Cracks, 74. 87 Again, Carvajal’s letters are full of allusions to his identification with a hybrid Jewish-Christian messianic Savior. For an important example, see Carvajal to Isabel, 26 May 1595, in González Obregón, Procesos, 505–6. In this letter, Carvajal describes how, in one of his dreams, he (“Joseph”) walked on the waters of the sea with only his feet getting wet (506). 88 Bauer relies on the Franciscan example to argue “that the evolution of (proto) nationalist historical narratives in the New World must be seen not only in terms of a transplantation of European millenarian traditions into a colonial setting, but also in terms of an emergence of comparative ethnology on the colonial ‘boundary’ productive of ‘hybrid’ colonial identities and inscribed in a larger history of European imperialism in the transatlantic world.” Bauer, “Millenium’s Darker Side,” 35.

7 Kabbalistic Influences on “Pietistic” Millenarian Expectations Philipp Jakob Spener’s (1635–1705) Eschatological View Between Scripture and Christian Kabbalah Elisa Bellucci A 1675 preface to a new edition of Johann Arndt’s Evangelienpostille, published as an autonomous treatise under the title Pia Desideria the following year, thematized the expectation of a perfection of the church before the End Times.1 The author was the Lutheran theologian Philipp Jakob Spener (1635– 1705), who is considered by scholars to have been the founder of German Pietism.2 Although not the only issue discussed in Pia Desideria, the eschatological position presented is notable, for both Luther and the confessional writings of the Lutheran orthodoxy had rejected any kind of standpoint that asserted a betterment of the world before its end, and had thus condemned chiliastic teachings. Lutheran orthodoxy’s rebuttal of millenarianism was not a refusal of eschatological expectations as such: the beginning of the Reformation was characterized by the feeling that the End Times were approaching, that Christ would soon come, and that the Last Judgment would follow. Luther saw his epoch as the last one before God’s Last Judgment. In particular, the “disastrous situation” of the Church and its perversion by papacy, which he viewed as the Antichrist, were for Luther clear signs that history was writing its last chapter.3 But all of these positions were not equal to an acceptance of the possibility that man could contribute to erect on earth the kingdom of God. Lutheran authors rejected millenarianism for several reasons. First, following the principle of sola scriptura, they required that this doctrine should have a strong basis in the Bible. The only passage that could support such an idea, however, was Revelation 20, which announced a 1,000-year kingdom. But it was not usually considered prophetic; according to most interpreters, this kingdom had already occurred.4 Second, the authenticity of the last book of the Scripture was being questioned in the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. Erasmus of Rotterdam, Carlstadt, and Luther doubted that John was the author of Revelation. At least in the 1520s, Luther considered this book apocryphal, claiming that the text lacked the prophetic representation of the Old Testament and doctrinal delineation.5 The question about the authenticity of the book also implied a question of its canonical order. Luther, who deemed this book obscure, preferred not to express a definitive judgment on it.6 A third controversial point that prevented Lutheran theologians from supporting millenarian ideas is the fact that, in Luther’s time, such ideas were associated with the followers of Thomas DOI: 10.4324/9781003081050-10

182  Elisa Bellucci Müntzer, whose movement was condemned as fanatic in article 17 of Confessio Augustana, which also rejected millenarian expectations and universalist positions involving the restoration of all beings.7 Indeed, the condemnation of millenarian ideas was a shared position among Protestant authors—Article 41 of the 42 Articles of the Church of England rejected chiliastic ideas, as did Article 26 of Confessio Helvetica Posterior—so that an influence from these confessional texts on Spener should be excluded.8 In evoking an expectation that the church might be renewed before the End Times, Spener was thus veering away from orthodoxy. Scholars, however, are generally reluctant in defining the eschatological position of Spener as chiliastic. Krauter-Dierolf—who has devoted a monograph to Spener’s eschatology—remarks on the fact that Spener always refused to label his standpoint as chiliastic, and that he was consistent lifelong in this position.9 To determine whether Spener’s position can be labeled as chiliastic or not is not the main concern of this article. But despite his consistent disavowal of “chiliasm” as such, it cannot pass unnoticed that it was not just some of his own ideas that seem chiliastic. Spener also resolutely defended chiliastic ideas in discussion with some Hamburg theologians in the 1690s. The main features of Spener’s eschatological view will be, therefore, analyzed, trying to track down the sources of his millenarian ideas. Previous scholars indeed, despite thorough analysis, have not reached any firm conclusions on this point.

Spener’s Eschatological View Notwithstanding condemnations of chiliasm by Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican Church authorities, the seventeenth century saw the flourishing of several works that focused on the upcoming millenarian Kingdom of Christ or, at least, on the expectation of a betterment of the church and a golden age.10 As this volume and numerous articles on specific authors and millenarian movements show, such positions not only were widespread in different territories, but they were also connected and mutually influenced each other. Among the most prominent sixteenth- and seventeenth-century millenarians were Thomas Brightman (1562–1607), Joseph Mede (1586– 1638), Henry More (1614–1687), the Fifth Monarchy Men (1650s), and the Philadelphian Society (late seventeenth century) in England; Johann Heinrich Alsted (1588–1633), Jean de Labadie (1610–1674), and Petrus Serrarius (1600–1669) in the Netherlands; the Moravian Johann Amos Comenius (1592–1670); Paracelsus (1493–1541), Valentin Weigel (1533– 1589), Johann Valentin Andreae (1586–1654) and the Rosicrucians, Jacob Boehme (1575–1624), and the Kabbalists of Sulzbach (second half of the seventeenth century) in Germany. Considering the broad appeal of chiliastic ideas, millenarianism could not but be seriously discussed in Lutheran orthodox milieus, although in a largely negative way.11 When Spener expressed his hope of a renewal of the church before the End Times in Pia Desideria, the topic was, therefore, not new.12 Before

Kabbalistic Influences on “Pietistic” Millenarian Expectations  183 discussing whether Spener’s standpoint was influenced by some of the above-mentioned authors, his position, which developed along the years, needs to be better outlined. Pia Desideria is based on the premise of the corruption of the Evangelical Church, due not only to the external persecution of the Roman Catholic Church, but also to the Lutheran Church itself. According to Spener, Christianity had aligned itself with worldly values and theologians had based their teaching not on Scripture, but, rather, on scholastic theology, the sole purpose of which was to dispute. This prevented believers from getting to the core of Christianity, that is the praxis pietatis. Spener contrasts the contemporary depraved situation of the Lutheran Church with the perspective of its future renewal, which he formulates through the expression “Hoffnung kunfftiger besseren Zeiten” (“hope of better times in the future”).13 But Spener refrained from quoting any biblical passage to corroborate his views; he refused to label his position as “chiliastic” and to make any direct or indirect reference to Revelation 20, the classical passage usually used to justify chiliasm.14 Instead, he identified some events contributing to this renewal of the church: the conversion of the Jews, as promised in Romans 11: 25–26, and the fall of Babylon as described in Revelation 18–19, whereby Babylon is clearly identified with the papacy in Rome, a perspective borrowed from Luther. When these two events happen, Spener writes, there will be no more doubt that the church will be blessed with a more glorious condition.15 This more glorious condition is characterized as a spiritual renewal, but what this situation precisely entails is, however, not specified in detail. The position presented in Pia Desideria is Spener’s first and last public statement on his eschatological position until the beginning of the 1690s. In the meantime, he had continued discussing this issue in his correspondence, especially with the theologian Johann Wilhelm Petersen (1649–1727). Nevertheless, he consistently rejected the position of other contemporary authors who were labelled as “chiliastic,” such as, for example, the Sulzbach Kabbalist Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (1636–1689). Then, in the 1690s, when a chiliastic controversy broke out in Lüneburg, Celle, and Hamburg, after Petersen (the then superintendent of Lüneburg) became suspected of millenarianism, Spener was also required to explain his position.16 He did so by publishing several treatises. Partly in contrast to what Krauter-Dierolf has claimed, a progressive change towards chiliasm can be charted out, in my opinion, during these years.17 It would still be problematic to define Spener’s position through the term “chiliasm,” for he always refused to label his position in this way and he rejected the notion of the first resurrection of the martyrs, a point usually associated with chiliasm. On the other hand, he advocated freedom of thought for those chiliastic positions that were not rejected in Confessio Augustana 17; the Confessio, indeed, rejected only the expectation of a second coming of Christ on Earth and an earthly kingdom.18 In Erfordertes Bedencken (1690), Spener distinguishes between different kinds of chiliasm. In addition to chiliasmus crassus (the wait for an earthly kingdom rejected in Confessio Augustana 17) and subtilis (the

184  Elisa Bellucci chiliastic position of the Church Fathers), Spener acknowledges a chiliasmus subtilissimus.19 This last notion embraces those positions that forecast a betterment of the church, the conversion of the Jews, and the fall of Babylon, while also entailing the expectation of a 1,000-year kingdom based on Revelation 20. In this text, Spener’s personal standpoint remains, however, circumspect and is represented by Jerome’s words here quoted: Although we do not follow this position [scil. the chiliastic position supported by several church fathers], we cannot condemn it, since several theologians and martyrs supported it, each of them in his way; the entire judgment on this issue is reserved to God.20 In Die Freyheit der Glaübigen (1691), the defense of millenarianism is made more explicit. Spener comments that at least one kind of chiliasm, that is, the one based on Revelation 20, expresses a divine truth.21 This kind of chiliasm would be different from the chiliasmus crassus condemned in Confessio Augustana 17, and it would be neither against the main Articles of Faith nor would it undermine them. For this reason—Spener continues— those who support it must not be excluded from the Christian brotherhood. In Behauptung der Hoffnung künfftiger besserer Zeiten (1693), Spener explains that Revelation 20 clearly means a future Kingdom where Christ will reign with his saints, even though some particulars remain obscure to him. It remains unclear how the beast will be imprisoned, or how heathens will be persecuted. Moreover, Spener is undecided whether the expression “one-thousand years” should be understood literally or whether this indicated just a long period of time, and how the resurrection would be. (He thought the resurrection would not be just spiritual, but, on the other hand, he deemed it not possible to assert with certainty that it would be a corporeal resurrection.)22 Although he does not quite embrace chiliasm, and even though he had previously taken the distance from certain chiliastic positions, such as that of Knorr von Rosenroth, Spener’s treatises show a compliant position and a progressive defense in favor of it. Why did Spener advocate freedom of thought on chiliastic expectations? In my view, the answer to this issue is strictly linked to the debates around Petersen’s millenarianism that developed in those very same years, so that Spener’s defense of chiliastic positions and authors can be meant as a defense of his friend Petersen. This article is not the right place to delve further into that issue.23 Here, we want to turn to the 1670s, the very beginning of Spener’s “eschatological turn,” to figure out whether it is possible to identify specific authors and texts that have influenced the formulation of Spener’s eschatology. As described above, Spener’s position seems to be inconsistent; he first took the distance from some kinds of chiliastic positions, but then advocated freedom of thought on this theological issue. To analyze the sources that influenced Spener’s eschatology can be helpful to better define his position concerning millenarianism.

Kabbalistic Influences on “Pietistic” Millenarian Expectations  185

Spener’s Millenarianism and Christian Kabbalah Although Spener’s position on the eschatological destiny of the church remains vague in its details, he eventually claimed to support it on the basis of Revelation 20. But could non-biblical sources have shaped Spener’s standpoint? His published treatises do not offer any insight into this issue, but Spener’s correspondence contains several clues. Spener’s letters have been analyzed by several scholars, among whom are Johannes Wallmann and Heike Krauter-Dierolf.24 As stated above, Pia Desideria contains Spener’s first public statement on his “hope for better times in the church.” As Wallmann explains, Spener had not always held even this belief. At least until the early 1670s, he followed, in fact, the Lutheran belief that Judgment Day was imminent.25 Spener subsequently lamented the generally bad situation of the church, yet without addressing the issue of its future condition, as some other letters to Johanna Eleonora Petersen (née von und zu Merlau) (1644–1724) testify.26 His position first evolved around 1674 when, in another letter to Johanna Eleonora, Spener wrote about the Jubilee Year, the realization of God’s promises, and the beginning of a new “Spring,” without further explaining what he meant by these.27 What caused this change? Is it possible to individuate specific authors or texts that influenced this position? Although Wallmann did not reach a clear and definitive conclusion, his research shows, for instance, that neither Joachim of Fiore (c.1135–1202) nor Jean de Labadie (1610–1674) played a decisive role in this turn. Joachim of Fiore represented a turning point in medieval eschatological ideas, as well as a starting point for several millenarian positions in the following centuries.28 Spener was acquainted with this tradition since the 1660s, even though it seems that in those years he had not yet read Joachim of Fiore’s works and he does not make any mention of him in the following letters.29 The work of the Calabrian abbot thus cannot have been decisive in Spener’s eschatological turn. As for Labadie—who is often linked to the birth of Pietism—Spener had met him personally and listened to several of his sermons during his sojourns in Geneva in 1660 and 1661, but Labadie had not yet written his millenarian work Le Héraut du Grand Roy Jesus at this time. Labadie’s work was eventually published in 1667, but as of 1676 Spener had not read it.30 He wrote in a letter in that year that he had only recently learned about Labadie’s chiliastic positions, and that he had thought during his stay in Geneva that Labadie was, in fact, an opponent of chiliasm.31 Even though Wallmann does not come to any definitive conclusion on the sources of Spener’s “hope for better times,” he indicates some other texts which the theologian had been acquainted with, among others the Eigentliche Erklärung über die Gesichter der Offenbarung S. Johannis (1670), published by the Sulzbacher Kabbalist Christian Knorr von Rosenroth under the pseudonym Peganius, and a manuscript of the English millenarian Joseph Mede (1586–1638), Clavis apocalyptica (1627).32 Based on Spener’s correspondence, Krauter-Dierolf’s recent work on Spener’s eschatology adds some other treatises which the theologian only

186  Elisa Bellucci partly considered in positive light. For example, while he appreciated a comment on the apocalypse by the Reformed minister Antoine Grélot (d.1678), he was critical of Matthias Hofmann’s (1615–1667) Chronotaxy Apocalyptica (1668), as well as Paul Egard’s (1578/79–1655) Posaune der Göttlichen Gnade und Liechtes (1623).33 Despite their thorough analyses, Wallmann and Krauter-Dierolf do not reach any firm conclusion on what authors or texts could have influenced Spener’s eschatological position in Pia Desideria. Nevertheless, I think that at least some clear points emerge from Spener’s correspondence. Spener expresses his hope for a renewal of the church for the first time in the letter to Johanna Eleonora written in December 1674. Yet again, at the beginning of the following year, he addresses this issue in a letter to Elias Veiel, director of the Gymnasium in Ulm and a personal friend since their studies in Strasbourg. In this letter, Spener mentions Knorr von Rosenroth’s Eigentliche Erklärung, a treatise that contains an exegesis of the last book of the Bible according to the Kabbalistic tradition.34 Spener commented that this book contains “non pauca solida,” not just a few solid points.35 In another letter to Veiel written few months later, Spener indicated that he had sent him a copy of this book and remarked again that it was necessary to distinguish its valid points from those that he deemed unacceptable.36 This position is reiterated the same year in a letter to Johann Ludwig about some commentaries on the Apocalypse, where Spener points out another text authored by the Reformed preacher Antoine Grélot.37 Grélot’s voluminous comment on the Apocalypse remained unpublished, only the Prodromus was printed in 1675.38 Spener’s first reference to this text appears in a letter to Jacob Thomasius in 1676. Grélot’s comment on the Apocalypse is mentioned by Spener on several occasions in the following years. In a letter to Johann Melchior Stenger, he explains that this text elegantly (elegantissime) depicts prophecies and symbols of the Apocalypse by the means of Judaic, Talmudic, and Kabbalistic tradition, showing true tenets about the expectation of the Kingdom of the Messiah among Jews.39 Writing about the difficulties in understanding apocalyptical symbols about a month later, Spener praises Grélot’s text for clarifying several apocalyptical mysteries.40 Spener’s appreciation for this book also seems evident in light of the fact that, every time he mentions it, he remarks that it was not yet possible to find an editor for it, because of the considerable length of the manuscript.41 From the letters quoted above, it is not possible to prove that these texts, that is Eigentliche Erklärung and that of Grélot, played a decisive role in effecting a change in Spener’s eschatological perspective. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that he repeatedly quoted them since the very beginning of his eschatological turn. The importance of these texts is also highlighted by the fact that, as Spener himself acknowledged, he was also acquainted with several other commentaries on the Apocalypse. He claimed to have devoted much time to the study of these commentaries already during his studies in Strasbourg, reading through at least fifty or sixty texts.42 Moreover, when he quotes other treatises, such as the above-mentioned Matthias Hoffmann’s

Kabbalistic Influences on “Pietistic” Millenarian Expectations  187 Chronotaxis Apocalyptica (1668), or Paul Egard’s Posaune der Göttlichen Gnade und Liechts (1623), he criticizes them for not being substantiated enough.43 Similarly, he rejected the chiliastic positions of both Reformed and Arminian authors.44 On the contrary, he constantly recommends the reading of Knorr von Rosenroth—together with the works of the English millenarian Jospeh Mede, whom he identifies as the source of Eigentliche Erklärung—and of Grélot’s texts, which he considers reliable. Spener’s letter to Hinckelmann, dated October 12, 1678, expresses this particularly eloquently: Do you know the small treatise on the Apocalypse written by Peganius [i.e. Knorr von Rosenroth], which is in great measure influenced by Joseph Mede, and which contains many well-grounded points? There is also a manuscript commentary by Grélot, an author who recently died and who was a Reformed preacher; he could not find any editor. It contains a lot of erudition, and it explains apocalyptical figures with remarkable finesse, drawing from Jewish texts. He shows that it is possible to find all [these topics] also in the Talmud and in the Judaic writings, and that there are several truths in the books of these poor people [i.e. the Jews], even though they make false use of them.45 Spener’s correspondence thus shows that the works of Knorr von Rosenroth and Grélot bore a strong influence, and Spener always expressed his admiration for these authors, even though he refuted their chiliastic positions later on. But what did draw Spener’s attention to these texts in the first place? The Frankfurt lawyer Johann Jakob Schütz (1640–1690), who is considered the other founder of German Pietism, may have played a critical role here.46 Already Wallmann has assumed that he played an important role in ­determining Spener’s eschatological turn; a supposition that was later confirmed by Andreas Deppermann.47 The latter’s monograph on Schütz’s correspondence shows not only that the Frankfurt lawyer was strongly interested in millenarianism, but also that it was precisely his position that influenced Spener’s initial eschatological shift in the 1670s. Schütz’s letters indicate that he, like Spener, was acquainted with several millenarian works. For example, in a letter dated 1671, he tried to dissuade his cousin Georg Friedrich Wagner, councilor of the city of Essling, from spending money on Johann Amos Comenius’s (1592–1670) Lux in Tenebris (1657). It was a rare and expensive book, and Schütz had borrowed it from a friend—most likely from Spener himself, who owned this work but, who, at that time, did not show particular interest in it.48 Schütz’s correspondence also mentions other works and authors, such as Grélot’s manuscript, for which he sought an editor in Frankfurt; the Dutch preacher Johannes Rothe and Quirinus Kuhlmann, whose interpretation of prophecies he rejected.49 In a letter of his own to Johanna Eleonora Petersen, dated 1672, Schütz responds to her question about the correct interpretation of Revelation 20. Schütz does not quote directly from Knorr von Rosenroth’s Eigentliche Erklärung, but Deppermann demonstrates this text’s influence on Schütz’s answer through

188  Elisa Bellucci several parallels.50 Specifically, Schütz responds that the 1,000-year Kingdom of Christ does not contradict Revelation 20. He also writes that Revelation 19 thematizes Christ’s Kingdom on earth, which, while not visible, will be recognized by everyone. Moreover, he explains that several other events are entailed in Revelation 20. Among them are the imprisonment of the beast so that the kingdom will be unchallenged and in peace for 1,000 years; and the corporeal resurrection of the martyrs as laid out in 1 Corinthians 15:23 and 1 Thessalonians 4:16. About this last point, he explains that the resurrected will have a heavenly body, for which reason they would be not visible on earth, although they could appear in the same way as Christ appeared to the apostles after the resurrection, and, in this way, help the conversion of the Jews. Other points contained in Revelation 20, he notes, are the sovereignty on earth of those who would not resurrect with the martyrs but who, nevertheless, have never adored the beast (that is the Devil), and the universal resurrection at the end of the millennium. There is other evidence that Knorr von Rosenroth influenced Schütz. Schütz personally encountered Knorr von Rosenroth when he traveled to Sulzbach in February 1673 after his father, Jakob Schütz (1587–1654), who was former chancellor of the count palatine of Sulzbach from 1623–1628, had left him an inheritance to collect.51 Between 1673 and 1674 Schütz received 230 copies of Knorr von Rosenroth’s commentary on the Apocalypse, which he sold or distributed among his friends. Most likely, Spener also received a copy of the treatise in 1674, which he first mentions at the very beginning of the following year.52 Schütz’s contact with other personages and ideas attached to the Sulzbach court were also influential. The contact between Schütz and von Rosenroth, for example, was mediated by another figure who had been active at the Sulzbach court, and had connections to Kabbalism—the natural philosopher Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont (1614–1698/99). Schütz had corresponded with him since 1672 and also subsequently met him.53 Furthermore, the Sulzbach court was one of the most important centers for Christian Kabbalism during the seventeenth century.54 It was led by the Catholic Count Palatine Christian Augustus (1622–1708), who encouraged ecumenism, irenic endeavors, and confessional reunion. In this sense, the Kabbalistic tradition promoted by van Helmont and by von Rosenroth was seen as an instrument to foster ecumenism not only among Christians, but also between Christians and Jews, because Jews were regarded as potential Christians.55 To that end, the Sulzbach Kabbalists considered the Hebrew language contained in the Kabbalah key to uncovering the mysteries of the New Testament because this type of Hebrew contained the Adamic language. Adamic language was also deemed to lay behind the structure of the Greek of the New Testament, distinguishing it from the classical Greek of Hesiod or Homer. According to von Rosenroth, the New Testament Greek had been influenced directly by the Judaic culture of Early Antiquity. Also according to von Rosenroth and van Helmont, the Kabbalah would have the ultimate scope to reveal the real meaning of the Bible thanks to the Adamic language

Kabbalistic Influences on “Pietistic” Millenarian Expectations  189 contained within it.56 In this, they shared a concern with others at Sulzbach. As Allison Coudert remarks, a central problem with which the Kabbalists of Sulzbach struggled was that of the correct interpretation of the sacred text: If Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Moslems agree in accepting the Hebrew Bible as the revealed word of God, why do they disagree so fundamentally and murderously about its meaning? For van Helmont the only possible explanation was that the text had been corrupted and people no longer understood it.57 In this sense, the Kabbalah became a tool to recover the real meaning of the Scripture, and to convert the Jews by showing them the truth about Jesus Christ through their own tradition. As von Rosenroth asserts in his introduction to a Kabbalistic treatise authored by van Helmont: In fact, don’t you think that this society [a society for the study of the Hebrew language] would benefit those still unenlightened and wretched Jews? Could one hope that the veil of Moses, which covers their faces, might be partly if not completely lifted for their benefit so that it would be possible for that blindness, which comes from the side of Israel, to be healed to some extent? […] If, then, such a society were to unearth such remarkable monuments of genuine Jewish antiquity, which were not discovered today or yesterday but were already handed down many thousands of years earlier, how useful would this be for the entire community of letters.58 The Sulzbach Kabbalists not only influenced Schütz, as Deppermann’s research clearly describes, but also Spener. Mirroring Knorr von Rosenroth’s words, Spener also remarked on the usefulness of the Kabbalah to uncover the mysteries of the Scripture: If we further penetrate the Kabbalistic mysteries—a practice not uncommon among Christians—we will maybe discover that these can have several useful aspects. Anyway, it is clear to me that if we restore the true old Judaic philosophy, no reading will be more suitable for a theologian ... and also: Several people think that its [Knorr von Rosenroth’s Kabbala Denudata] study is promising, and I cannot be totally in disagreement with them, since experts have taught me, that the philosophy of the old Jews is concealed in this difficult [text], a philosophy which cannot fail to be good for literature or sacred studies, if it is uncovered.59 Spener reports that he has been convinced that knowledge of Hebrew is key to penetrating the secrets of the Scripture, for it contains the “Philosophia prisca Hebraerorum,” a kind of wisdom obscured by Aristotelian

190  Elisa Bellucci philosophy and by the “trifles” of Scholasticism.60 Spener’s positive assessment on the millenarian treatises of Knorr von Rosenroth and Grélot was thus based on the fact that they offer an explanation of Revelation 20 on the basis of Judaic philosophy, which shows Jews the “truth” of their messianic expectation, that is the coming of Christ’s Kingdom. In this way, the Christian Kabbalah could be an instrument to convert the Jews through their own sources—one of the “useful aspects” noted above. Theologically, such a conversion of the Jews, he thought, could be regarded as a premise for the beginning of the Kingdom promised in Revelation 20. The study of the Kabbalah later disappointed Spener.61 Nevertheless, from his 1670s correspondence, it is possible to conclude that Grélot’s manuscript on the Apocalypse and Knorr von Rosenroth’s Eigentliche Erklärung über die Gesichter der Offenbarung S. Johannis were not only known to him—as Wallmann and Krauter-Dierolf have pointed out—but also that these texts played a decisive role in shaping his eschatological turn.

Conclusion By showing the influence of the Christian Kabbalah on Philipp Jakob Spener and in his Frankfurter “pietistic” circles, the present article makes two arguments for the history of eschatological expectations. First, it shows that Spener’s position was not an isolated case in the landscape of eschatological views in the seventeenth century. The theologian was acquainted with several chiliastic treatises that circulated at his time; he engaged himself with their contents, and was particularly influenced by those treatises which borrowed Kabbalistic influences.62 Even though condemned in the confessional writings of the three confessions—Lutheran, Anglican, and Reformed—millenarian expectations saw a revival throughout the seventeenth century. Millenarian treatises circulated through Europe, and the authors influenced each other, yet supporting different positions—there were very nearly as many positions as authors. Second, it shows the impact of the Kabbalah. Often considered a heterodox tradition which ran parallel to the “official mainstream” history of confessions and orthodoxy, it was in fact entangled with orthodox views and practices. Its influence should thus be re-evaluated, reassessing, in this way, the sometimes too categorical division between orthodox and fanatic, conformist and separatist, conservative and radical. The influence of the Kabbalah on Spener’s eschatology—a tradition from which he took the distance later on—shows that these categories abstract from the historical development of Spener’s ideas and from the different traditions underlying them.

Notes 1 On the text, see Kurt Aland, ed., Die Werke Philipp Jakob Speners. Studienausgabe. Band I: Die Grundschriften. Teil I (Basel: Brunnen, 1996); Beate Köster, ed., Philipp Jakob Spener. Pia Desideria. Deutsche-Lateinische Studienausgabe (Gießen: Brunnen, 2005).

Kabbalistic Influences on “Pietistic” Millenarian Expectations  191 2 On the author, see Johannes Wallmann, Philipp Jakob Spener und die Anfänge des Pietismus (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1986). The definition, features, borders, and influences of Pietism are an ongoing debate in scholarship. For a general introduction to this topic, see Martin Brecht, ed., Geschichte des Pietismus, 4 vols. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993–2004); Johannes Wallmann, Der Pietismus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005); Douglas Shantz, An Introduction to German Pietism (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2013); Jonathan Strom, Hartmut Lehmann, and James van Horn Melton, eds., Pietism in Germany and North America 1680–1820 (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2009); Roberto Osculati, Vero cristianesimo. Teologia e società moderna nel pietismo luterano (Roma: Laterza, 1990); Anne Lagny, ed., Les piétismes à l’âge classique (Villeneuve-d’Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2001). 3 On Luther’s eschatology, see Jane E. Strohl, “Luther’s Eschatology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology, ed. Robert Kolb, Irene Dingel, and L’Ubomir Batka (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 353–62; Ulrich Gäbler, “Geschichte, Gegenwart, Zukunft,” in Geschichte des Pietismus, vol. 4, ed. Martin Brecht, Klaus Deppermann, and Ulrich Gäbler (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), 19–20; on the wait for Judgment Day and the end of the world in Luther’s time, see Johannes Schilling, “Der liebe Jüngste Tag. Endzeiterwartungen um 1500,” in Jahrhundertwenden. Endzeit- und Zukunftsvorstellungen vom 15. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Manfred Jakubowski-Tiessen, Hartmut Lehmann, Johannes Schillig, and Reinhart Staats (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999), 15–26. See also Gottfried Seebaß, “Apokalyptik/Apokalypsen,” TRE 3 (1978): 189–289, here 280–81. 4 See Otto Böcher, Georg Günter Blum, Robert Konrad, and Richard Bauckham, “Chiliasmus,” TRE 7 (1981): 723–45, here 738. 5 See Friedemann Stengel, Sola scriptura im Kontext. Behauptung und Bestreitung des reformatorischen Schriftprinzips (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2016), 121–22; Friedrich Lücke, Versuch einer vollständigen Einleitung in die Offenbarung des Johannes oder Allgemeine Untersuchungen über die apokalyptische Litteratur überhaupt und die Apokalypse des Johannes insbesondere (Bonn: Weber, 1852), 493–94. 6 The biblical canon was a set of texts which a certain confession regarded as authoritative for establishing its doctrine. At Luther’s time, the canonicity of the last book of the Bible was a debated issue, for it was not sure that Apostle John was its author. The issue on the canonicity of Revelation continued to be debated in the following century. Seventeenth-century Lutheran theology agreed with Balduinus’s position that the Book of Revelation should not be considered apocryphal; its content, however, always had to be referred to and proved on the basis of other canonical passages. Towards the mid sixteenthcentury, Johann Gerhard disapproved the distinction between canonical and apocryphal books and spoke about libros canonicos primi ordinis and secondi ordinis. The latter were those books whose authorship remained controversial. At the same time, he defended the authenticity of Revelation, attributing its authorship to the Apostle John. Gerhard’s position influenced Lutheran orthodoxy between the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century, to the extent that several other theologians no longer doubted the authenticity of the last book of the Bible. See Lücke, Versuch einer vollständigen, 888–911. 7 On Müntzer’s alleged apocalyptical positions and Luther’s criticisms, see Hans-Jürgen Goertz, “Apokalyptik in Thüringen. Thomas MüntzerBauernkrieg—Täufer,” in Radikalität der Reformation. Aufsätze und Abhandlungen, ed. Hans-Jürgen Goertz (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 97–118; Friedmann Stengel, “Omnia sunt communia. Gütergemeinschaft

192  Elisa Bellucci bei Thomas Müntzer?,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 102 (2011): 133– 74, here 169; Stengel, Sola scriptura im Kontext, 77–81. 8 See Böcher, Blum, Konrad, and Bauckham, “Chiliasmus,” TRE 7 (1981): 738. On Luther’s relationship to and criticisms of Thomas Müntzer, see Stengel, Sola scriptura im Kontext, 77–81. 9 See Heike Krauter-Dierolf, Die Eschatologie Philipp Jakob Speners (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005). 10 A general overview on this topic in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is missing; it is, instead, possible to find several articles or books chapters on single authors and movements, which I have sought to summarize and bring together in my dissertation. See Elisa Bellucci, “Johann Wilhelm and Johanna Eleonora Petersen’s Eschatology in Context” (PhD. diss., Martin-LutherUniversity Halle-Wittenberg, 2020), c.2, § 1.4. 11 Johannes Wallmann offers a good overview on the debates about this issue among Lutheran theologians in the seventeenth century. Although some authors dealt with chiliasm to criticize it, it is noteworthy that their interpretations appeared in the editions of the Luther Bible after 1620, meaning that the controversy around Revelation 20 was broadly known and gave readers the possibility of encountering the notion of the millennium. See Johannes Wallmann, Theologie und Frömmigkeit im Zeitalter des Barock (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995), 105–23. Distinguishing between different kinds of chiliasm (e.g. chiliasmus crassus and chiliasmus subtilis), these authors also prepared the ground for further discussions on chiliasm at the end of the seventeenth century, for example, between Philipp Jakob Spener, his friend Johann Wilhelm Petersen, and other Lutheran theologians. 12 On Spener’s eschatological position, see Krauter-Dierolf, Die Eschatologie Philipp Jakob Speners. See also Heike Krauter-Dierolf, “Hoffnung künftiger besserer Zeiten. Die Eschatologie Philipp Jacob Speners im Horizont der zeitgenössischen lutherischen Theologie,” in Geschichtsbewusstsein und Zukunftserwartung in Pietismus und Erweckungsbewegung, ed. Wolfgang Breul and Carsten Schnurr (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 56–68. 13 On these expressions, see Köster, Pia Desideria, 88: “Sehen wir die heilige Schrifft an/ so haben wir nicht zu zweifflen/ daß Gott noch einigen bessern zustand seiner Kirchen hier auff Erden versprochen habe,” and 90: “Erfolgen nun diese beyde stücke/ so sihe ich nicht/ wie gezweiffelt werden könne/ daß nicht die gesamte wahre kirche werde in einen viel seligern und herrlichern stande gesetzt werden/ als sie ist.” 14 Even though Spener never mentioned Revelation 20 in the first years as the scriptural basis for his “hopes of better times,” he mentions the Apocalypse in a letter, when writing about the future better condition of the church. See An [Elias Veiel] (Frankfurt am Main, Anfang 1675), in Philipp Jakob Spener. Briefe aus der Frankfurter Zeit. 1666–1686, vol. 2, ed. Johannes Wallmann (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992–1919), 5–12, here 10: “Si vero Apocalypsin intueor, in aliquam spem erigor.” 15 See Köster, Pia Desideria, 88. 16 On the millenarian debates around Johann Wilhelm Petersen, see Markus Matthias, Johann Wilhelm und Johanna Eleonora Petersen: Eine Biographie bis zur Amtsenthebung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993) for the debates until 1692; Bellucci, “Johann Wilhelm and Johanna Eleonora Petersen’s Eschatology” for the following years; see also Stefan Luft, Leben und Schreiben für den Pietismus. Der Kampf des pietistischen Ehepaares Johanna Eleonora und Johann Wilhelm Petersen gegen die lutherische Orthodoxie (Herzberg: Bautz, 1994). This debate is also partly mentioned in Krauter-Dierolf, Die Eschatologie Philipp Jakob Speners, 121–44.

Kabbalistic Influences on “Pietistic” Millenarian Expectations  193 17 According to Krauter-Dierolf, Spener’s position on a better future condition of the church did not undergo any substantial change and it cannot be labeled “chiliastic” in any way. See Krauter-Dierolf, Die Eschatologie Philipp Jakob Speners, 336. 18 On this article, see Irene Dingel, Die Bekenntnisschriften der EvangelischLutherischen Kirche (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 113. 19 On these distinctions see note 11. 20 See Philipp Jacob Spener, Erfordertes Theologisches Bedencken über den von einigen des E. Hamburgischen Ministerii publicirten Neuen Religions-Eid (Ploen: Tobias Schmidt, 1690), Die Dritte Frage (not paginated); reprint in Erich Beyreuther and Dietrch Blaufuß, eds., Philipp Jakob Spener. Schriften, vol. 5 (Hildesheim et al.: Georg Olms Verlag, 2005), 97–132. The quotation of Jerome is taken from In Hieremiam, IV, 15, 3. 21 See Philipp Jakob Spener, Die Freyheit der Glaübigen, von dem Ansehen der Menschen in Glaubens-Sachen / In gründlicher beantwortung der so genanndten Abgenöthigten Schutz-Schrifft/ Welche im Namen Des Evangelischen hamburgischen Ministerii Von Herrn D. Johann Friederich Meyern/ außgefertiget worden/ Gerettet von Philipp Jacob Spenern/ D. (Franckfurt am Mäyn: Zunners 1691); reprint in Beyreuther and Blaufuß, eds., Philipp Jakob Spener, vol. 5, 133–260. 22 See Philipp Jakob Spener, Behauptung Der Hoffnung künfftiger Besserer Zeiten/ In Rettung Des ins gemein gegen dieselbe unrecht angeführten Spruchs Luc. XIIX, v. 8. Doch wan[n] des menschen Sohn kommen wird/ meynest du/ daß Er auch werde glauben finden auff erden? (Frankfurt am Mayn: Zunner, 1693), 175–83. 23 On this issue see Bellucci, “Johann Wilhelm and Johanna Eleonora Petersen’s Eschatology in Context,” especially the conclusion. 24 See Wallmann, Philipp Jakob Spener, 324–54; Krauter-Dierolf, Die Eschatologie Philipp Jakob Speners. 25 See Wallmann, Philipp Jakob Spener, 328–29. Wallmann quotes a sermon dated 1666 and a letter dated 1667 where Spener clearly states that it is not possible to hope for a better condition of the church. 26 For the letters, see Philipp Jakob Spener. Briefe aus der Frankfurter Zeit. 1666–1686, vol. 1, ed. Wallmann. Wallmann concludes that “es ist kaum denkbar, daß Spener eine Hoffnung besserer Zeiten, wenn er sie bereits hatte, ihr gegenüber gänzlich verschwiegen hätte,” see Wallmann, Philipp Jakob Spener, 329. Johanna Eleonora von und zu Merlau (1644–1724) was a noblewoman from an impoverished family; she worked as lady-in-waiting in different houses and, after becoming acquainted with Spener, started a correspondence with him, eventually moving to Frankfurt am Main, where Spener resided. In 1680 she married Johann Wilhelm Petersen, with whom she shared millenarian and universalist positions. On Johanna Eleonora, see Ruth Albrecht, Johanna Eleonora Petersen. Theologische Schrifstellerin des frühen Pietismus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005). 27 See An [Johanna Eleonora von Merlau in Wiesenburg] (Frankfurt am Main, Dezember 1674), in Philipp Jakob Spener. Briefe aus der Frankfurter Zeit. 1666–1686, vol. 1, ed. Wallmann, 856–60. Johanna Eleonora later married Johann Wilhelm Petersen, whom she met in Spener’s Frankfurter circles. Together with her husband, she became one of the main supporters of chiliastic and universalist ideas. On the Petersens’ eschatology, see Bellucci, “Johann Wilhelm and Johanna Eleonora Petersen’s Eschatology in Context.” 28 On the influence of Joachim of Fiore’s speculations on millenarian expectations in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see Jean Delumeau, Angst im Abendland, Die Geschichte kollektiver Ängste im Europa des 14. bis 18. Jahrhunderts, trans. Monika Hübner, Gabriele Konder, and Martina RotersBuruck, (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1985), 309–57.

194  Elisa Bellucci 29 Spener states that he could not read Joachim’s work in a letter to Forstner dated 1665. See Wallmann, Philipp Jakob Spener, 179. 30 The influences of Labadie on Spener and on the birth of Pietism are important for the birth of the conventicles or collegia pietatis, but not for eschatology, see Wallmann, Philipp Jakob Spener, 144–50; Shantz, An Introduction to German Pietism, 55; Fred Van Lieburg,“The Dutch Factor in German Pietism,”in A Companion to German Pietism. 1660–1800, ed. Douglas H. Shantz (Leiden/Boston, MA: Brill, 2015), 50–80; Reginald Ward, Early Evangelicalism: A Global Intellectual History, 1670–1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 28. 31 See Wallmann, Philipp Jakob Spener, 352. The letter is An Johann Melchior Stenger (Frankfurt a.M., 10 August 1676), in Philipp Jakob Spener. Briefe aus der Frankfurter Zeit. 1666–1686, vol. 2, ed. Wallmann, 439–53, here 446–47. 32 See Wallmann, Philipp Jakob Spener, 344–48. 33 See Krauter-Dierolf, Die Eschatologie Philipp Jakob Speners, 73–74. 34 On this text, see Rosmarie Zeller, “Wissenschaft und Chiliasmus: Heterodoxe Strömungen am Hof von Sulzbach. Wissenschaft und Chiliasmus bei Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont and Henry More,” in Heterodoxie in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Hartmut Laufhütte and Michael Titzmann (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2006), 291–307. 35 See An [Elias Veiel] (Frankfurt a.M., Anfang 1675), in Philipp Jakob Spener. Briefe aus der Frankfurter Zeit. 1666–1686, vol. 2, ed. Wallmann, 5–12, here 11: “Scripsit in Apocalypsin quidam, qui sub Peganii vocabulo latere voluit, anonimos; in libello illo non pauca solida, ut etiam optarem autorem habere cognitum; multo magis vero opto, ut aliquis rerum harum satis gnarus examinandum sumeret scriptum Chiliasmo, quem eo modo, ut tolerari nequeat, tuetur, expuncto et confirmatis reliquis, quae firmius cohaerent.” 36 See An Elias Veiel in Ulm (Frankfurt a.M., 16 April 1675), in Philipp Jakob Spener. Briefe aus der Frankfurter Zeit. 1666–1686, vol. 2, ed. Wallmann, 46–51, here 49: “Peganium a Goerlino, credo, quod iam acceperis vel in via tamen erit. Optarim virum, qui in his valeat, libello illi examinando vacare et relictis, quae calculum merentur, reliqua, in quibus promittit, quae expectanda non sunt, refellere.” 37 See An [Johann Ludwig Hartmann in Rothenburg o.T.] (Schwalbach a.d. Aar, 9 Juli 1675), in Philipp Jakob Spener: Briefe aus der Frankfurter Zeit. 1666– 1686, vol. 2, ed. Wallmann, 89–96, here 92: “Scripsit anonymus quidam (Peganii enim vocabulum ascitum esse nemo non videt) perbrevem commentarium in Apocalypsin dignum, qui legatur a doctis. Sed Chiliasmum aperte profitetur. Unde optarim ab aliquo, qui tamen Hercule illo viribus non sit inferior, scriptum examinari et a vili separari pretiosum.” 38 The title of the Prodromus published (i.e. the introductive part) is Prodromus in D. Ioannis Apocalypsin (Leiden: Th. Hoorn, 1675). 39 See An Johann Melchior Stenger (Frankfurt a.M., 10 August 1676), in Philipp Jakob Spener: Briefe aus der Frankfurter Zeit. 1666–1686, vol. 2, ed. Wallmann, 439–53, here 442: “Superioribus nundinis in hac civitate fuit manuscriptus commentarius cuiusdam Reformati Pastoris, hominis eruditissimi, Ant. Crellotii, qui, quod nullum commentatorem apocalypticum tentasse memini, praestit: cum sancta illa vaticinia eorumque symbola ex Iudaicis, Talmudicis atque Cabbalisticis scriptis elegantissime illustraverit et, qui hypothesin suae religionis hominibus frequenter usitatam de regno Christi glorioso in his terris sequitur, ostenderit pleraque, quae Iudaei de suo Messia fabulosa prodant, aliquid veritatis habere et ex veris maiorum traditionibus detecta, nisi quod caeci primum eius adventum expectent, qui alia ratione et alio adventus genere venturus expectari debeat.” 40 See An [Adam Tribbechov] (Frankfurt a.M., 21 September 1676), in Philipp Jakob Spener. Briefe aus der Frankfurter Zeit. 1666–1686, vol. 2, ed. Wallmann,

Kabbalistic Influences on “Pietistic” Millenarian Expectations  195 475–77, here 476: “Superioribus adhuc nundinis in hac urbe quaerebatur editor Commentarii Apocalyptici satis prolixi cuiusdam Reformati Ant. Crelotii, qui quidem, quod in illa Religione non insolens, chiliasticas tuetur sententias, in aliis tamen enodandis Apocalypseos mysteriis plurimorum superasse videtur solertiam. Adhibitis ille Iudaeorum, Thalmudicorum, etiam Cabbalistarum scripsit non ubique obviis, multa symbola Apocalyptica, quae valde alias videntur obscura, ita illustravit, ut mirari subeat in lutosis illis fluentis tantum superasse auri, quod non in Iudaeorum fabellis, cum de adventu sui Messiae plurima somniant, ut absurdissima deridemus, aliquid haberi veri, sed a gente excoecata nunc non intelligi et a maioribus iam detorta esse, cum hi a patribus accepta mala fide conservarent.” 41 In addition to the letters quoted above, see also An [Adam Tribbechov] (Frankfurt a.M., 21 September 1677), in Philipp Jakob Spener. Briefe aus der Frankfurter Zeit. 1666–1686, vol. 3, ed. Wallmann, 322–25, here 323; An [Adam Tribbechov in Gotha] (Frankfurt a.M., 4 September 1678), in Philipp Jakob Spener. Briefe aus der Frankfurter Zeit. 1666–1686, vol. 3, ed. Wallmann, 881–84, here 881. 42 See An [Abraham Hinckelmann] (Frankfurt a,M., 12 Oktober 1678), in Philipp Jakob Spener. Briefe aus der Frankfurter Zeit. 1666–1686, vol. 3, ed. Wallmann, 975–85, here 983. On Spener’s study of Apocalypse commentaries in the years 1663–1664, see Wallmann, Philipp Jakob Spener, 175–80. 43 For Hoffmann see An Johann Melchior Stenger (Frankfurt a.M., 10 August 1676), in Philipp Jakob Spener. Briefe aus der Frankfurter Zeit. 1666–1686, vol. 2, ed. Wallmann, 439–53, here 442; although he finds in Hoffmann’s book “quae mihi placerent,” he criticizes it because of the calculation he makes, and states that it is not a grounded explanation. For Egard see An Johann Wilhelm Petersen (Frankfurt a.M., 13 Februar 1677), in Philipp Jakob Spener. Briefe aus der Frankfurter Zeit. 1666–1686, vol. 3, ed. Wallmann, 39–49, here 45. About this text he states that the explanation is arbitrary and does not conform to the original text. 44 See An [Adam Tribbechov in Gotha] (Frankfurt a.M., 21 September 1677), in Philipp Jakob Spener. Briefe aus der Frankfurter Zeit. 1666–1686, vol. 3, ed. Wallmann, 322–25, here 323. He does not specify who these authors are. 45 See An [Abraham Hinckelmann in Lübeck] (Frankfurt a.M., 12 Oktober 1678), in Philipp Jakob Spener. Briefe aus der Frankfurter Zeit. 1666–1686, vol. 3, ed. Wallmann, 975–85, here 984–85: “Ist ihnen Peganii tractätlein in apocalypsin bekant, welches zimlich theils aus Josepho Medo genommen, aber sehr viel solides in sich fasset? Hier ist auch ein MS. commentarius eines neulich verstorbenen autoris Grelotii, gewesenen Reformirten Predigers, so zimlich groß, und also sich noch kein verleger darzu finden wollen. Es ist grosse erudition darinnen, und erklährt er die figuras apocalypticas mit einer sonderbahren dexteritaet selbst aus den Jüdischen schrifften. Und zeigt, wie fast alles auch in dem Talmud und des Jüdischen büchern dergleichen zufinden, daß diese arme leute wol viele warheiten in ihren büchern haben, aber gantz unrecht applicirt und verkehrt. Stante sententia de regno Christi in his terris glorioso, welches so viele Engelländer und andere Reformirten vor sich hat, so gehet gedachter commentarius sehr kräftig, daß daraus den Jüden gewiesen werden möchte, sie erwarteten nicht vergebens des Meßiä, aber eben dessen, welches erste zukunfft sie vorhin verachtet haben.” Translation mine. See the same position also in An [Adam Tribbechov in Gotha] (Frankfurt a.M., 4 September 1678), in Philipp Jakob Spener. Briefe aus der Frankfurter Zeit. 1666–1686, vol. 3, ed. Wallmann, 881–84, here 881: “Quae de Chiliasmo scire me volebas, beneficio imputo. Et non ingratum erit, si de illo argumento plura commentari velles. Certe digna res est pia meditatione et, ut in timore DOMINI tota expendatur sedulo, sine acerbitate et praecipiti iudicio. Qui vobis autores ad manus sint, nescio.

196  Elisa Bellucci Peganius non omino indignus est, qui legatur. Helmontium illo tegi nomine plures arbitrari, et erat, qui diceret, quod suo nomine alicui libellum dederit. Alii, qui Virum interius norunt, tantum ei studiorum esse non existimant. Habet vero sua pleraque, quod in prefatione fatetur, ex Josepho Medo, qui lectu eo dignor. Crellotius non invenit adhuc editorem, cum moles sit maior. Seidenbecheri vidi scriptum Latinum, cui historia eius et mors adiecta erat, nec non aliud eiusdem Germanico Idiomate, sed sub nomine Warmud Freyburger. Mori copia non est, unde quibus ducatur sententiis, ignoro, tantum audivi ab aliquo laudari, quod in doctrina spirituum non pauca singularia et solida praestiterit, sed plane nihil eius legi.” On the influences of Joseph Mede on Knorr von Rosenroth’s Eigentliche Erklärung, see An Elias Veiel in Ulm (Frankfurt a.M., 16 April 1675), in Philipp Jakob Spener. Briefe aus der Frankfurter Zeit. 1666–1686, vol. 2, ed. Wallmann, 46–51, here 49: “Ex Ios. Medo, cuius ad manus mihi sunt scripta, quod pleraque petierit, fatetur ipse,” An [Adam Tribbechov] (Frankfurt a.M., 21 September 1677), in Philipp Jakob Spener. Briefe aus der Frankfurter Zeit. 1666–1686, vol. 2, ed. Wallmann, 322–25, here 324: “Ex eo [scil. Jospeh Mede] pleraque sua habet, [qui] sub nomine Peganii latet et mihi nondum innotuit.” 46 On Schütz and his contribution in shaping Pietism, see Andreas Deppermann, Johann Jakob Schütz und die Anfänge des Pietismus (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002). 47 See Deppermann, Johann Jakob Schütz, 126–41. 48 See Deppermann, Johann Jakob Schütz, 126–28. On Comenius’s millenarianism, see Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, “Apocalyptic Political Concepts: Comenius’ Collection of Prophecies Lux in Tenebris,” in Studien zu Comenius und zur Comeniusrezeption in Deutschland, ed. Petr Zemek, Beneš Jiři, and Beate Motel (Uherský Brod: Muzeum J. A. Komenského, 2008), 132–52; Dieter Groh, Göttliche Weltökonomie: Perspektiven der Wissenschaftlichen Revolution vom 15. bis zum 17. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2010), 533–53. 49 See Deppermann, Johann Jakob Schütz, 134–40. On Johannes Rothe (1628– 1702), see Hans Schneider, “Rothe, Johannes,” RGG, 7 (2004): 646; on Quirinus Kuhlmann (1651–1689), see Johannes Wallmann, “Kuhlmann, Quirinus,” RGG 4 (2001): 1796–97. 50 See Schütz an Johanna Eleonora von Merlau nach Wiesenburg (20.12.1672), quoted in Deppermann, Johann Jakob Schütz, 128–29. For an introduction to Knorr von Rosenroth’s Eigentliche Erklährung, see Italo Michele Battafarano, “‘Denn wenn Gott brüllet/ wer wolte nicht weissagen.’ Christian Knorrs von Rosenroth Deutung der Weltgeschichte als Heilgeschichte im ApokalypseKommentar (1670),” in Morgen-Glantz. Zeitschift der Christian Knorr von Rosenroth-Gesellschaft, vol. 15, ed. Italo Michele Battafarano (Bern et al.: Peter Lang, 2005), 13–26. 51 On the relationship between Johann Jakob Schütz and Sulzbach, and on the important role that he played in spreading some Kabbalistic texts produced here see, in addition to Deppermann’s monograph, Volker Wappmann, “Johann Jakob Schütz, Christian Knorr von Rosenroth und die Anfänge des Pietismus,” in Morgen-Glantz. Zeitschrift der Christian Knorr von RosenrothGesellschaft, vol. 15, ed. Italo Michele Battafarano (Bern et al.: Peter Lang, 2005), 299–309. Also Wappmann indicates Eigentliche Erklärung as the text which decisively influenced not only Schütz’s millenarian position but also Spener’s. 52 See Deppermann, Johann Jakob Schütz, 133. 53 On the life and thought of Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont, see Allison Coudert, The Impact of the Kabbalah in the Seventeenth Century: The Life and Thought of Francis Mercury van Helmont (1614–1698) (Leiden: Brill, 1999).

Kabbalistic Influences on “Pietistic” Millenarian Expectations  197 54 On the Sulzbach court, see Manfred Finke, “Toleranz und ‘discrete’ Frömmigkeit nach 1650. Pfalzgraf Christian August von Sulzbach und Landgraf Ernst von Hessen-Rheinfels,” in Frömmigkeit in der Frühen Neuzeit. Studien zur religiösen Literatur des 17. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland, ed. Dieter Breuer (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1984), 193–212. 55 The Kabbalah was a kind of Jewish mystic interpretation of the Talmud developed by some rabbis in Provence and Spain from the twelfth century. It first attracted the attention of Christian authors in the fifteenth century through the publication of Pico della Mirandola’s 900 Theses. In this text, the Kabbalah was considered a part of the philosophia perennis (the perennial philosophy), the primordial or Adamic wisdom understood to have been imparted directly by God to Moses, conveyed through the Scripture and, successively, passed down to several other—also heathen—traditions. On the notion of philosophia perennis, see Friedemann Stengel, “Reformation, Renaissance and Hermeticism: Contexts and Interfaces of the Early Reformation Movement,” Reformation & Renaissance Review 20 (2018): 1–31, particularly 3–6; Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, Philosophia Perennis: Historical Outlines of Western Spirituality in Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Thought (Dordrecht: Springer, 2004), 27–36 and 409–12. On Pico’s 900 Theses, see Syncretism in the West, trans. and ed. by S.A. Farmer, (Tempe, AZ: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1998); On the history of Christian Kabbalah, see Otto Betz, “Kabbalah,” TRE 17 (1988): 487–509; Friedemann Stengel, “Kabbalah, Christianity,” EBR 14 (2017): 1184–87; Joseph Dan, “Kabbala,” RGG 4 (2001): 725–27; Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, Geschichte der christlichen Kabbala, 4 vols. (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 2012– 2015). On the Judaic Kabbalah, see Gershom Scholem, “Kabbalah,” in Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 10 (2007), 489–653. 56 See Schmidt-Biggemann, Geschichte der christlichen Kabbala, vol. 3, 19–31. 57 See The Alphabet of Nature by F.M. van Helmont, trans. and ed. Allison Coudert and Taylor Corse (Leiden: Brill, 2007), XVI. 58 The Alphabet of Nature, trans. and ed. Coudert and Corse, 25–27. See also Schmidt-Biggemann, Geschichte der christlichen Kabbala, vols. 3, 22, and 100; Rosmarie Zeller, “Böhme-Rezeption am Hof von Christian August von PfalzSulzbach,” in Offenbarung und Episteme. Zur europäische Wirkung Jacob Böhmes im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Wilhelm Kühlmann and Friedrich Vollhardt (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012), 125–41. 59 An Gottlieb Spitzel in Augsburg (Frankfurt a.M., 24 März 1677), in Philipp Jakob Spener. Briefe aus der Frankfurter Zeit. 1666–1686, vol. 3, ed. Wallmann, 64–74, here 66: “Unde si Cabbalistica arcana magis penetraremus, quam inter Christianos fieri solet, forte inventuri essemus, quae plurimum usum praestarent. Id autem mihi perspectum videtur indubiae veritatis, si veram Iudaeorum veterum Philosophiam ex sepulcro revocare possemus, non aliam aptiorem fore Theologo sacros scriptores lecturo.” An Johann Matthäus Faber in Heilbronn (Frankfurt a.M., 25 März 1678), in Philipp Jakob Spener. Briefe aus der Frankfurter Zeit. 1666–1686, vol. 3, ed. Wallmann, 648–51, here 650: “Kabbalam denudatam, quam protulere nundinae superiores, haud dubie vidisti. De eo studio multi iam magna promittunt, quibus non omnino refragari possum, quando periti eius me docuere, in abstruso illo Philosophiam veterum Iudaeorum latere, quae, si produceretur, non posset illud sine maximo commodo rei literariae quin et sacrae fieri.” Translations mine See also An [Adam Tribbechov in Gotha] (Frankfurt a.M., 4 September 1678), in Philipp Jakob Spener. Briefe aus der Frankfurter Zeit. 1666–1686, vol. 3, ed. Wallmann, 881–84, here 884: “De Cabbala, nisi fallor, nuper etiam scripsi, me eius esse ignarum, id vero ab aliis habeo, Philosophiam, quae Iudaeorum fuit, in ea superesse.”

198  Elisa Bellucci 60 See An [einen Unbekannten] (Frankfurt a.M., Juni 1677), in Philipp Jakob Spener. Briefe aus der Frankfurter Zeit. 1666–1686, vol. 3, ed. Wallmann, 216–17. On the importance of the Jewish philosophy to penetrate God’s mysteries, and the fact that the Aristotelian philosophy had corrupted theology, also see An Gottlieb Spizel in Augsburg (Frankfurt a.M., 24 März 1677), in Philipp Jakob Spener. Briefe aus der Frankfurter Zeit. 1666–1686, vol. 3, ed. Wallmann, 64–74, here 65–66. 61 See Spener’s preface to Balthasar Köpke, Sapientia Dei, In Mysterio Crucis Christi Abscondita: Die wahre Theologia Mystica Oder Ascetica, Aller Gläubigen A. und N. Test.; Aus I. Corinth. II. v. 6. 7. Entgegen gesetzet Der falschen aus der Heydnischen Philosophia Platonis und seiner Nachfolger / In zwey Theil abgefasset Durch Balthasar Köpken […] Nebst Hrn. D. Phil. Jacob Speners Vorrede (Halle: Wäysen-Haus, 1700), Vorrede, § 6: “Gleichwie als die Kabbala denudata heraus kommen solte/ und man hoffnung gemacht/ man werde darinn einiges der philosophie der alten hebreer finden/ ich verlangen darnach getragen/ und als der erste theil gedruckt/ solchen lesen wollen/ wie ich aber nicht allein sahe/ daß die sache mehrere zeit und nachsinnen erfordern würde/ als mir meine andere verrichtungen zugaben und bald merckte/ daß die hoffnung nicht erfüllet seye/ legte das buch wiederum hin/ daß auch den andern theil/ der darnach heraus kam/ mir nicht anschaffte.” On Spener’s later abandon of the Kabbalah, also see Wallmann, Philipp Jakob Spener, 157. 62 As above stated, Spener devoted much time to the study of commentaries on the Apocalypse already during his studies in Strasbourg, reading through at least fifty or sixty texts, see An [Abraham Hinckelmann] (Frankfurt a.M., 4 September 1678), in Philipp Jakob Spener. Briefe aus der Frankfurter Zeit. 1666–1686, ed. Wallmann, vol. 3, 975–85. A further source to better analyze Spener’s study of commentaries on the Apocalypse could be a document preserved in the archive of the Studienzentrum August Hermann Francke in Halle under the signature HBFSt H 11. The document is a catalogue of manuscript notes on one hundred commentaries on the Apocalypse. The document is attributed to Spener; the manuscript notes are, anyway, almost surely not of Spener. The document could be a copy of an original by Spener, like the copies of his letters also preserved in the archives. It would be, however, necessary to better investigate the origin of the document before using it as source for Spener’s eschatology.

8 Everyday Apocalypse Russian and Jewish “Sects” at the End of the Eighteenth Century Agnieszka Zaganczyk-Neufeld

In the second half of the eighteenth century, several dissenting religious communities, who in the sources are subsumed under the umbrella term “sects,”1 spread across the regions of modern-day Latvia and Belarus; via western Ukraine, the Crimea, the region around Voronezh, and further down the Volga; and from Tsaritsyn (today Volgograd) via Saratov and as far as Samara. This area, which after the partitions of Poland at the end of the eighteenth century was incorporated almost completely into the Russian Empire,2 “has acted for centuries as a vibrant meeting ground of different variants of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and paganism.”3 These territories can be regarded as a fertile ground for the development of heterodox religious beliefs and practices, as the anti-state, anti-clerical, anti-Church, and eschatological attitudes of many of their inhabitants were frequently observed. Scholars assume that religious identities were fluid and hybrid in this region, and that there were ties between Orthodox Christianity and Judaism. However, as a result of the separation of East European studies from Jewish studies as well as of the comparatively limited scope of historical research on early modern Eastern Europe, little work has been done on this subject. This chapter aims to contribute to this important area of research by examining the trans-religious practices of four dissenting communities: the Judaizers, the Karaites, the Molokans, and the Subbotniks. It argues, contrary to the prevailing view in Russia, that multifaceted contacts Jews and Orthodox Christians took place in this broad border zone.

Orthodoxy and Judaism Before the Fifteenth Century In 988 Vladimir the Great (c.960–1015) converted to Christianity. A Greek preacher is said to have shown him an image of the Last Judgement shortly beforehand and to have warned him: he who adopts Christianity will resurrect after death and will live eternally; he who, on the other hand, opts for a different faith will be burned at the end of time.4 If this legend is to be believed, eschatological fear was Vladimir’s main motivation for Christianizing the Rus’. From the beginning, Christian thought among the Rus’ was looking toward the end of time. The apocalyptic literature, inspired by traditions of the DOI: 10.4324/9781003081050-11

200  Agnieszka Zaganczyk-Neufeld prophets of ancient Jewry, provided a linear, teleological understanding of human history, according to which each respective existence in this life was only a transitory stage on the path of salvation. The first Christians likely hoped for Christ to return during their lifetime. That this expectation was not fulfilled, however, led to a decline of literal interpretations of the apocalyptic literature.5 The delay of Parousia—as Albert Schweitzer stated—resulted in “religion being de-eschatologized.”6 At the Council of Ephesus (431) millenarianism was condemned as a heresy. However, this did not prevent countless Christians from attempting to calculate a reliable date for the end of the world.7 Both Russian piety and Russian Church history are particularly influenced by apocalyptic literature, not least because of the impact of Byzantine apocalyptic literature which was a reservoir of ancient Oriental, early Christian, and early Jewish traditions.8 Apocrypha, scholarship contends, circulated far more in Russia than the biblical canon itself, which was not translated in its entirety until the end of the fifteenth century and set for the first time in the sixteenth century.9 In this context, the Old Testament played only a minor role.10 This was also true for some parts of the New Testament: “While seen as canonical …, the Revelation is the only New Testament book not publicly read in the services of the Orthodox Church.”11 The idea of the Antichrist, however, was clearly enriched with elements of Jewish apocalyptic literature, and became more common in Russian popular religiosity from the Middle Ages onwards.12 After the fall of Byzantium in 1453 the self-perception of Russia as the New Israel intensified and “went hand in hand with the denial of the original Israel.”13 The Russian Church doctrine incorporated the Jewish eschatological heritage by stating that, after the Rus’ had been baptized, the kingdom of God was transferred from the Jews to the “Russian lands.”14 In the middle of the seventeenth century, the Patriarch of the Russian Church, Nikon, ordered that there be established “an exact replica of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem” to transfer the capital of Christianity south of Moscow.15 Of course, the symbolical annexation of “Jerusalem” did not only occur in Russian Orthodoxy. In the Book of Revelation, the New Jerusalem is no longer identified with a city and a particular place on earth, but “is portrayed as descending from heaven,”16 which has often been interpreted as an allegory for the Church. The fall of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, and the defeat of the Bar Kokhba revolt against Rome in 135 CE were interpreted by the early Christians as an evidence of divine punishment against the Jews, who had lost their status as chosen people. Shortly after that, Christian apologist Justin Martyr wrote an anti-Jewish polemical dialogue featuring a fictional Jew named Trypho to demonstrate that Christians, not Jews, were the true Israel: “‘Do you mean to say,’ asked Trypho, ‘that you are Israel, and that God says all this about you?’” Justin answered: “As Christ is called Israel and Jacob, so we, hewn out of the side of Christ, are the true people of Israel.”17 However, there were still powerful anxieties about Jewish influences on Christianity. Already in antiquity, Christian polemicists attacked “Judaizing Christians,” who “were ‘playing a Jewish game’ by living like Jews and

Everyday Apocalypse  201 adhering to certain Jewish practices and dangerously blurring the boundaries between Christianity and Judaism.”18 Striving for the “true belief” and the “true Church,” Christian theologians were obliged to stay alert.

The Novgorod and Other Early Judaizers The borders between Judaism and Christianity in Russia were still subject to controversy many centuries later. In fifteenth-century Novgorod, a group of mostly clerics19 with access to a new genre of literature in Russia was criticized for leaning towards Judaism after “a number of historical, philosophical, scientific, and Biblical texts […] were translated from Hebrew into East Slavic (Ruthenian).”20 Scholars assume that the translators were Lithuanian Jews who had appropriate language skills.21 Among these texts was “Shestokryl” (The Six Wings), a work by Immanuel ben Jacob Bonfil written in the fourteenth century, with astronomical tables that were not in line with the chronological calculations of the Orthodox Church. Both in Byzantium and in Russia the dates for Easter were calculated only until the year 1492. The Byzantine calendar, which was also used in Russia, referred to the year of the creation of the world. Accordingly, Jesus was born in the year 5508 and the end of the world was expected for the year 7000 (that is 1492). Whereas other established Churches rejected such calculations, Orthodoxy allowed for concrete statements, which provided targets for criticism.22 At the end of the fifteenth century, Archbishop Gennady of Novgorod (1484–1504) acquired a copy of these texts criticized for leaning towards Judaism and, according to his testimony, “identified a heresy in it. […] After all, this has been made to blind the Christians. They want to tell us: the years of the Christian calendar are coming to an end, however ours are going to last.”23 This was the starting point for the encounter of the Russian clerics with a group who was to become notorious as the sect of the Judaizers. Like many dissenting communities, it was their enemies who gave them their name. In his correspondence from the late 1480s, Archbishop Gennady used the phrase “heretics philosophizing in the Jewish way” (eretiki zhidov’skaya mudr’stvuyushchie).24 In his book Prosvetitel’ of 1504, the monk Joseph of Volokolamsk called the members of the group he attacked “Judaizing heretics” (zhidovstvuyushchie eretiki).25 The hitherto rarely used term “Judaizers” was from then on a consistent element of the Church’s anti-heretic polemics.26 In this context, it must be taken into account that, in addition to neutral words for Jews (iudey and every), Russian also contains zhid—which appears in the previous two citations—and which was (and is) negatively connoted.27 A dictionary of Old Russian defines “Judaizing” (zhidovstvovat’) both as “following Jewry” and as the “followers of the heresy of the Judaizers” and, in this respect, refers to Prosvetitel’.28 The Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary distinguishes zhidovstvuyushchie—the fifteenth-century Novgorod heretics29—from the iudeystvuyushchie—Judaizers who appeared in the eighteenth century.30

202  Agnieszka Zaganczyk-Neufeld The fifteenth-century Judaizers were accused of not only questioning the official doctrine of the Orthodox Church, but also of having attempted to imitate Jewish religious rituals and to spread them among Orthodox believers. According to Iosif these heretics: (1) denied the Virgin birth, the Resurrection of Christ and the Trinity; (2) did not accept the sacred authority of any books which speak of the Holy Trinity, but rather held to the Law of Moses; (3) refused to recognize Christ as the Son of God according to the Scriptures; (4) blasphemed against icons; (5) claimed that the writings of the Church Fathers were flawed, since their predictions that the world would end in the year 7000 had failed; (6) denied the truth of the Scriptures and all sacred writings, and (7) condemned the monastic way of life.31 It is doubtful, however, that the Judaizers in Novgorod followed Jewish forms of worship.32 Rather, research leans towards the thesis that the Judaizers were not provided with any particular kinds of rituals, dogmas, nor communal relationships but that they had veered away from Orthodoxy in a sectarian way. Their interest in Jewry had been purely of a literaryhistorical nature.33 They had little or nothing to do with ethnic Jews or Jewry,34 and indeed extensive contact would have been difficult: In the Grand Duchy of Moscow there were no resident Jews, even though by the end of the fifteenth century some were staying there for a short time because Jews had been banned from Lithuania.35 There was an important center of Jewish life on the Crimea, but it is difficult to tell, due to the scarcity of sources, whether there were any contacts with the Duchy of Moscow.36 The only documented connection between these heretics and Jews or Jewry was therefore through the so-called “literature of the Judaizers,” that is translations from Hebrew.37 Furthermore, there is a general consensus that the Judaizers were not a homogeneous group but several circles of people who can thus hardly be called a sect.38

“Judaizers” as a Continuous or Invented Tradition? For the study of Jewish-Orthodox connections in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it is hardly necessary to know whether the fifteenth-century communities had any direct contacts with Jews. In any case, it appears clearly that the emergence of “Judaizers” had an impact on the development of anti-Semitism. For some scholars, the conflict between Russian Orthodoxy and the Judaizers marked the beginning of Russian anti-Semitism.39 Others, however, referring to the same material, emphasize that there had been no traditional Orthodox anti-Semitism prior to the eighteenth century.40 Regardless of the possible continuity of “Judaizer” Orthodox communities from the fifteenth century, their relations with Jewish communities, or Russian anti-Semitism—it is clear that a kind of religious anti-Judaism did develop in Russian culture. It developed, too, as a reaction to a perceived Jewish influence—with or without immediate contacts between Jews and members of the Orthodoxy—on Russians.41

Everyday Apocalypse  203 Judaizers provoked the “first serious involvement of the Russian Orthodox Church with Jews and Judaism,”42 and prompted the writing of anti-heretic literature, most of all Prosvetitel’. Thereby, a discursive figure of the Judaizers was construed which emphasized most of all their otherness. Especially in the second half of the nineteenth century, the negative perception of the Judaizers was reinforced. In the first historical work about the history of the Orthodox Church in Russia, the Metropolitan of Moscow, Makarii, wrote: “It was not simply heresy, but a total denial of the Christian faith and an acceptance of the Jewish faith.”43 By the late nineteenth century, “the term Judaizers was applied to all those who advocated free thought (vol’nodumtsy) in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.”44 As mentioned above, Russia was not different in this respect from other Christian countries. Christians celebrating holy days according to the Old Testament (particularly the Sabbath) were denounced as Judaizing heretics almost everywhere across Europe.45 The term “Judaizing” was levelled at numerous practices “ranging from the occasional use of Jewish charms for curing illness to regular observance of Jewish festivals and purity laws,” and these practices were certainly the crucial “factor in generating Christian anti-Judaism.”46 The types of perceived Jewish influence varied between the influence “through literature” and “through persons,” but both of them “drove Jews into an affiliation with dissenters.”47

The Karaites48 When speaking of Jewish influence on Orthodox Christianity in Russia, we often implicitly mean influence by Rabbinic Jewry. This, however, ignores the variety of religious communities in the area discussed here. In Prosvetitel’, Joseph of Volokolamsk talks about a Jew called Skhariia (Zacharia) who, he says, came to Novgorod in 1470/1471, together with the Grand Prince of Kiev, Mikhail Olelkovich. He was said to have been very educated and an internationally connected member of the “Jewish sect of the Karaites” which had allegedly maintained networks in Europe and the Middle East, and had been active since the twelfth century, including in the Crimea. According to Prosvetitel’, already in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Karaites had spread anti-Trinitarian doctrines in Russia very successfully.49 Skhariia had allegedly brought some books translated from Hebrew to Novgorod, where he made an impression upon the locals and eventually converted two priests to the Jewish faith.50 There has been a lively debate in recent scholarship on whether Skhariia the Jew ever existed or whether he was a fictitious character made up by Joseph of Volokolamsk to provide more illustrious evidence for the Judaizing activities of his protagonists.51 It also raises the question of whether it was not Jews from Lithuania, but instead the Karaites from the Crimea and Kiev, who had crucially influenced the Judaizers—and, if so, with what the consequences?

204  Agnieszka Zaganczyk-Neufeld The thesis of Karaite influence was adopted by Russian scholars in the nineteenth century52 and found its way into Western research thereafter,53 but most subsequent scholars have treated the thesis with skepticism.54 Meanwhile, research on the Karaites has confirmed their presence in the Crimea since the thirteenth century, although there is no agreement about how exactly they came to the region and whether they formed a majority among the Crimean Jews. There is evidence, however, that from the fourteenth century onward they settled in several cities in Galicia, Volhynia, and Lithuania.55 From the eighth century onward, the Karaites had developed as a religious opposition to Rabbinic Jewry in Iraq, later also in Egypt, Israel, North Africa, and the Byzantine Empire. They did not recognize the Rabbinic interpretation of the (Jewish) Bible. Moreover, in Eastern Europe they did not speak Yiddish but the Karaite language, which is a branch of the Turkic languages. Their religious practices and everyday customs were also clearly different from those of Rabbinic Jewry; they had a reputation of being educated and literate; and, in the early seventeenth century, they were called the “Protestants of Jewry.”56 Until the Russian annexation of Crimea in 1783, the Karaites were actively trading with the Ottoman Empire, and most of them were living in commercial cities. From the seventeenth century onward, the Karaites in Crimea were given several privileges, such as the right to self-administration and tax exemptions.57 They also maintained contacts with the Karaites in Lithuania.58 After the Russian annexation of the Crimea and the partitions of PolandLithuania, Russia had about half a million new subjects of Jewish origin. “For the Karaims, who had enjoyed a quite favourable position in Poland and the Turkish Empire, their submersion into the Jewish masses would have implied a radical step backwards.”59 They decided to support the Russian conquest and, in 1795, turned towards Empress Catherine the Great (r.1762–1796) with the request to legally settle their differences with the Rabbinic Jews. They emphasized that they were pursuing an independent Mosaic denomination that had maintained God’s true law. Also, they argued, their predecessors had not taken part in the crucifixion of Christ.60 The empress was convinced and, as a consequence, they were exempted from the double taxation the rest of the Jewish population was subject to, they were entitled to purchase real estate, and they were later exempted from military conscription.61 In 1837, the “religious administration of the Karaites” was recognized as a separate religious community, and in 1863 they were granted the same legal status as Christian subjects.62 The question remains: Is there any evidence of an impact of the Karaites on Judaizers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries? Until now, scholars have proved unable to answer these questions with certainty. However, an essential insight in the case of Karaites is that the liberal part of Russian historians and ethnologists in the second half of the nineteenth century “discovered” them when they sought to establish a new view on Russian Judaizers contrary to the official narrative of the Russian Orthodox Church.63 In their interpretation, Judaism was not negatively connoted, but

Everyday Apocalypse  205 represented a respectable combination of religion, literacy, knowledge of the Bible, independence, and rationality.64 Moshe Taube emphasized that these authors “desired to present to the non-Jewish readership an attractive picture of Judaism, as a culture which combines faith with rationality, openness and progress.”65 This new perception of the Judaizers was based upon hardly any new empirical research. It was rather influenced by a positive view on religious heterodoxy. The Russian researchers of the second half of the nineteenth century observed the new Christian Orthodox sects, like Molokans and Subbotniks, and found several analogies to Judaism and Judaizers. As these historians were often anticlerical and interpreted any kind of protest against the Church as reasonable and rational, they projected their conception of rational Judaism onto the Judaizers. They believed that they had also found this rational Judaism in the Karaite communities and therefore connected both groups to each other. But were there real influences of “rational” Jews, Karaites or Judaizers on eighteenth-century Russian sects? The Molokans The main “members” of the first “sect of Judaizers” were executed in the wake of a Church synod in Moscow in 1504, but others rose in their place. It has been reported that several villages of Judaizers existed in Trans-Caucasia in the 1500s.66 Another region where Jews or Judaizers were fleeing to in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the broad territory of Red Ruthenia and Podolia under Polish rule. The Polish historian Mateusz Mieses (1885– 1945) wrote: “Even in the seventeenth century Jews from Moscow arrived, who in every sense looked like Jews, but one could not trust them and one could not believe they are real ethnic Jews.”67 Some of them migrated to Lithuania or Volhynia and married Jewish women.68 One of them was Feodosii Kosoy, who had fled from Russia in the middle of the sixteenth century and “spread his ideas along the Lithuanian-Muscovite border.”69 It is assumed that Russian Judaizers met Polish or even Western European antiTrinitarians on the run and propagated a kind of eschatological Protestantism in Ukraine,70 even though James Billington overstated this development: The search for a more rational and universal form of faith appears to have attracted considerable interest in cosmopolitan western Russia, where a syncretic, unitarian offshoot of the Protestant Reformation had to be anathemized by a special Church council of 1553–1554. […] It seems reasonable to assume that this movement like that of the Judaizers continued to have sympathizers after official condemnation; and that the rapid subsequent flowering of anti-trinitarian Socinianism in Poland continued to attract attention in western Russia.71 In any case, there was a religious ferment among the Orthodox in Russia’s central, western, and southwestern territories in the seventeenth and

206  Agnieszka Zaganczyk-Neufeld eighteenth centuries. In the second half of the nineteenth century, a functionary of the Russian Ministry of the Interior, Fedor F. Livanov, wrote a comprehensive study about Russian sects. He started by saying that the region along the rivers Volga and Bolshoy Irgiz was inhabited by several religious communities: Tatars, Jews, Old Believers,72 Lutherans, Mennonites, and Muslims. Villages, he said, were far away from each other, but were all located along a route (sirotskaya doroga) that had been used by pilgrims to monasteries of Old Believers on the Irgiz, but also by refugee sectarians and criminals. In the second half of the eighteenth century, this region had not been covered by the Orthodox Church and thus there had been only very few clerics there. The inhabitants, Livanov said, were under the influence of the eschatological ideas of the Old Believers and were convinced that Russian Orthodoxy was led by the Antichrist. Furthermore, the doctrines of the Judaizers, he reported, were common. In several villages around Samara, Saratov, and Tambov, numerous Judaizers had been discovered in the second half of the eighteenth century. “Judaizing missionaries” had been travelling through the region. “The number of Judaizers in Russia is enormous,” Livanov concluded.73 The territorial annexations and new settlement policies of Catherine the Great in the 1760s played an additional role in migration movements towards Western and Southwestern Russia. Catherine recognized “many empty places without settlement” in her empire, which had to be populated, among others with Russian sectarians from Poland-Lithuania.74 It was not a coincidence that the archival documents mentioned first Russian sects, like Molokans, near Tambov in the middle of the eighteenth century. The peasant Semen Uklein is regarded as the founder of this new religious community, whose members called themselves “spiritual Christians” and who were called Molokane by others. The origin of the word “Molokane” is not clearly established. It is commonly assumed that the Molokans (lit. milk drinkers) drank milk (moloko) during Orthodox fasting periods in which it was strictly forbidden.75 Uklein preached in the streets of many neighboring villages and cities, attracted attention from the local authorities, and was arrested. But he did not receive a hard punishment. He had simply to exercise Orthodox rituals for six weeks. Uklein settled in a small village near Saratov thereafter and converted about 5,000 people to his faith, including some local priests.76 The doctrine of the Molokan faith was not theologically complex. Uklein rejected all sacraments, the Church as an institution, and the Orthodox hierarchy. According to Livanov, the only source of faith and of the rules of everyday life was the Bible. The members of the community consumed no alcohol and no pork. Local authorities and their Orthodox neighbors regarded Molokans as hard-working, diligent, proper, and literate people. As Livanov noted, unlike in many Orthodox families, there was no alleged domestic violence in Molokan houses. Molokans rejected the state jurisdiction as well and solved their internal conflicts among themselves.77 However, Molokans were able to protect their own interests also in state courts. Among the most important founding myths of the Molokans is a

Everyday Apocalypse  207 petition said to have been sent to Tsar Alexander I (r.1801–1825) by three Molokans in 1805—ten years after the Karaites’ petition. In it, they emphasized that since “times of old” they had been living as a “secret sect of the True Faith of Spiritual Christians,” called Molokan by the people. They complained about persecution by Orthodox clergymen and asked the Tsar to “liberate them from the slavery of Orthodox religion.”78 In all founding stories written by Molokans themselves, we find the information that, therefore, the Tsar issued a decree on 22 July 1805 that granted them freedom of faith. The information about the alleged petition was not printed until 1905, after Tsar Nikolas II’s (r.1894–1917) edict of tolerance, which authorized almost all dissident religious communities in Russia to publish their own newspapers. In the first edition of their newspaper Dukhovnyi Khristianin, the Molokans printed the petition. However, they claimed to follow the Tsar’s ukaz (order) of 1805, supposedly entitled “On Religious Freedom,” which has never been found, neither in the Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire nor in the collection of the Ministry of the Interior’s rulings on sects.79 Thus the probability that such an ukaz ever existed is very low. The Molokans’ belief in an edict of 1805, however, follows a common pattern among Russia’s historic sects. Alexandr L’vov discovered other cases of sectarians believing to have been granted permission by the Tsar to practice their religion, although such permissions could not be found. According to L’vov, the peasants had a tendency of interpreting actions by the Tsar as endorsement, whereas in case of persecutions they rather believed local administrations or local priests to be responsible, who by this way supposedly violated both state and Christian laws. Accordingly, in the second half of the eighteenth century, some relief decrees or settlement permissions for sectarians were passed, which the latter understood as edicts of religious tolerance.80 If queried, the Ministry of the Interior always answered that neither Christian sects nor people who had abjured Christianity were allowed to practice freely their religion.81 However, the Molokans’ way of arguing in the alleged petition is interesting. They strongly refer to their faith as having existed since “times of old.” They contended that their early forefathers had been Molokans. “This tradition was rooted in a basic Muscovite acceptance of diversity, whereby each people had its own natural faith (prirodnaia vera),”82 and that nobody should be prevented from practicing his religion. This tenet was the basis of the Russian state’s toleration towards “alien denominations”—a term which itself was possibly “a holdover from an earlier age, when Russia had not yet expanded far beyond its Orthodox core, and when many nonOrthodox believers in Russia […] were indeed foreigners.”83 The free exercise of religion in Russia was only possible if the religious community could prove their distinctiveness from the Orthodox Russians. As it was illegal for ethnic Russians to split away from Orthodoxy, justifying their right to exist was a huge dilemma for all Russian sects. The Molokans decided to look at the old, true religion and laws of the Jews that had been given directly by God himself. In the above-mentioned study, Livanov gave examples of several beliefs that the Molokans, in his

208  Agnieszka Zaganczyk-Neufeld opinion, had adopted from the Judaizers: the belief, that Jesus, while the Son of God, would not play any role on Judgement Day; the rejection of church buildings, icons, and the institution of monasticism; and, finally, their acceptance of “rationalist” elements.84 In the documents of the Ministry of the Interior, too, the Molokans were tightly connected to the Judaizers. In 1816 the Russian government asked all eparchies to submit information about the numbers of sectarians. Most of the subsequent reports informed about Judaizers and Molokans, although there is evidence that other sects also existed at that time in Russia’s western and southwestern regions.85 Could this have resulted from the fact that, in the ecclesiastical language, the term “sects” still referred most of all to Judaizers? Did Molokans make a particularly negative impression on the authorities, whereas other sects were able to successfully hide? Or were these reports in line with actual figures, particularly in southwest Russia? These questions cannot be definitely answered. However, it cannot be ruled out that Molokans were influenced by Judaism. Russian journals from the nineteenth century frequently address JewishMolokan connections, many of them dating back to the second half of the eighteenth century. For example, a Jewish family was said to have immigrated to a village in the Astrakhan Governorate, where Molokans were already living. As the head of this family could read and write, he helped with writing down reports on births, deaths, and marriages of the Molokans, and delivered them to the local priest. Based on these reports, investigations against the Molokans were started. The article in which this story is reported does not tell of conflict between Jews and Molokans. Instead, the author reported that there were a growing number of villagers who had started gathering for prayer on Friday evenings, and that the number of circumcisions also had increased.86 Furthermore, almost all the inhabitants of the village of Dubovka, in the Saratov Governorate, were said to have become Judaizers.87 Such a step was not without danger because, the author of the article wrote, the authorities were convinced that Judaizers were proselytizing members of the Orthodox Church.88 Converting from Orthodoxy to the Judaizers’ faith was a crime, and the state considered as its duty to protect members of the Orthodox Church from such influences.89 A frequent punishment was taking the children of Judaizers (but also of other sectarians) and giving them to Orthodox families.90 Uklein is said to have been quite familiar with the dangers of forming a sect. When founding his religious community, he supposedly met a certain Semen Dalmatov, who was the head of a community of Judaizers in the neighboring village. Thus, Uklein encountered an already strong religious movement. Many followers of Uklein allegedly were former followers of Dalmatov. This could explain why some Molokans did not eat pork, prayed on Saturdays instead of Sundays, or had their sons circumcised. Uklein was said to have tolerated, but to have neither encouraged nor banned these practices.91 The sources give a picture of a dispute within the early Molokan community over the practicing of Jewish rituals that led to the split into several groups, one of which were the Subbotniks.

Everyday Apocalypse  209

The Subbotniks According to a report by the Archbishop of Voronezh, Subbotniks had emerged in 1796, under the influence of “natural Jews” (prirodnye zhidy) who were living among Christians.92 A not further defined group of Subbotniks are probably authors of a petition by an unknown Don Cossack from the year 1797, in which he announced that he had “adopted Mosaic law” and requested to be allowed to freely practice his religion. Unfortunately, we do not know the answer.93 Mateusz Mieses reported on a government decision from 1797 to allow the Subbotniks not to work on Saturdays, but he provided no evidence for it and no source document establishing it has been found since.94 In the nineteenth century, some historians considered the Subbotniks more or less an immediate successor movement of the Judaizers of the fifteenth century.95 An interesting interpretation can be found by Abraham Harkavy (1835–1919) who believed that the Subbotniks were “true Jews” who, under pressure from the Russian government, became russified and forced to hide their Jewishness.96 For the authorities, the biggest problem was initially the question of whether this religious community was Jewish or indeed Russian. A staff member of the Ministry of the Interior wrote about the Subbotniks in 1806 that they were neither Orthodox sectarians nor that they could be treated as natural (prirodnye) Jews or another non-Christian people. He explained his logic: sectarians are different from Christians only by a few rituals; and non-Christian people have inherited their religion from their forefathers, which in Russian religious policy formed the basis of tolerating them.97 Nevertheless, they were categorized as a sect, and “by not recognizing the Subbotniks as ‘Jews’ but rather as ‘sectarians’, the Subbotniks were placed in a much more restrictive religious category and were barred […] from receiving many of the benefits that Jews did.”98 In 1825 the status of the Subbotniks was settled legally. The state asserted that it could not tolerate them because it had the task of protecting Orthodoxy and Orthodox believers. Men fit for military service were to be drafted, and other Subbotniks were to be deported to Siberia. From the districts where Subbotniks were living, as well as from neighboring districts, all Jews were to be deported without exception. However, these measures did not apply to Subbotniks living in the District of Aleksandrov in the Caucasus because they were said to be entitled to live there. Otherwise, the authorities were informed to always call the Subbotniks “a Jewish sect” and to emphasize that they were “true Jews,” because (for the people) the name Subbotnik sounded neither dangerous nor reprehensible. Fear of them needed to be created because the sect wanted to entice people to Jewry.99 However, in the official language there was still no terminological clarity concerning the Subbotniks. In the law of 1825, they were called a “Jewish sect” and also “Judaizers.” Livanov also observed that the authorities called Russian Judaizers Subbotniks, but the people called them Molokans.100 These terminological problems resulted from the unclear identity of the

210  Agnieszka Zaganczyk-Neufeld Subbotniks. Some observers believed Subbotniks identified themselves with ethnic Jews,101 but others emphasized that they had only adopted certain rituals, such as ceremonious prayers on Saturdays and circumcision, and that they exclusively followed the Old Testament.102 A crucial element of this confusion was the fact that the Subbotniks spoke Russian, had Russian names, and “were living like Russians.”103 Russian ethnographers wondered sometimes why Russians—without any kind of force—could become Subbotniks. For some researchers from the nineteenth century this idea was so absurd that they concluded that it was impossible that Subbotniks were Russians; they thought that the Subbotniks were not even Christians, but Jews who had kept their religion while losing their language and nationality (natsional’nost’).104 The author Nikolay Leskov wrote that Subbotniks were probably Jews “who had defected from orthodox Judaism but had not yet reached orthodox Christianity.”105 And contrary to the earlier seventeenth century reporting on Molokans, many nineteenth-century treatises on Russian sects do not even mention Subbotniks. After 1907 the Ministry of the Interior listed two sects: Old Believers and “rationalists” (the Molokans among them); as a third category, as “Judaizers or Subbotniks” (“zhidovstvuyushchie ili subbotniki”).106 When asked with whom they identified, Subbotniks did not give clear answers. In most cases—when explaining their motivation for conversion— they stated that humans had been given Moses’s law immediately by God himself and therefore that one should obey it.107 Also, they said, one should speak the “Jewish language” because it was God’s language.108 According to Subbotniks, their faith was older than Christianity, and the New Testament was unnecessary because the Old Testament came directly from God and could not be changed.109 Official documents accused the Subbotniks of having converted to Judaism without having a clue about what they actually believed in,110 and there is evidence of disagreements within Subbotnik families over their own identity. Aleksandr L’vov told about a letter he had received from the daughter of a Subbotnik reporting that her father had sometimes called himself a Molokan and sometimes a Subbotnik, “but [that the rest of the family] didn’t take him seriously because we thought that such a nationality does not exist.”111 In the older literature from the nineteenth century, we frequently find remarks that, under the influence of the Crimean Karaites, some Subbotniks had converted to karaimstvo112 or understood themselves as successors of the Karaites.113 Mikhail Kizilov found more detailed evidence for this. In a manuscript he discovered, probably written by the botanist Christian von Steven (1781–1863), there was a description of how, at the end of the eighteenth century, Subbotniks had been trying to contact the Karaites. There had been Judaizing peasants in the Caucasus who had definitely also received advice from Jews concerning religious issues. Under this influence, they had started celebrating the Sabbath, having their sons circumcised, and refusing military service. A letter from the Subbotniks to Karaites in the Crimea reveals that they called themselves “merchants and citizens of the City of Aleksandrovo

Everyday Apocalypse  211 adhering to the Jewish faith.” The Subbotniks, the letter indicates, wanted to emigrate to the Crimea to live together with the Karaites. However, as this was not possible, they asked to receive written instructions about the correct ways of living according to the Jewish faith. Unfortunately, it is not clear if they ever received an answer.114 Obviously, this was not the first time the Subbotniks tried to make such contacts. As Barry Dov Walfish and Mikhail Kizilov claim: “From about the second half of the 19th century, Subbotniks started calling themselves ‘Karaimy’ and made several attempts (until 1917 mostly unsuccessful) to be accepted into the Karaite community as proselytes.”115 In official documents written by priests, bishops, or ministry officials about Russian sects such connections become hardly visible. The authorities and the Orthodox Church tended towards keeping “Russians” strictly separate from “Jews.” The Subbotniks were thereby systematically equated or confused with the Molokans. However, petitions were also written conjointly by Molokans and Subbotniks, as they obviously referred to the same issues.116 But it may be that in the long run the Molokans were disturbed by the danger of being confused with the Subbotniks. In one of their first uncensored journals, they wrote long articles about why it was important for Molokans to worship on Saturdays rather than Sundays.117 On the other hand, they emphasized that there was true freedom of conscience among them. Some, they wrote, did believe in the return of the Messiah, while others did not. Some recognized Jesus as the son of God, others did not believe in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, but all of them were “our brothers in the name of love,” which ranked higher than any belief.118

Connected History of Everyday Apocalypse119 In the 1820s, the Jesuit missionary Bonaventura Mayer travelled through Eastern Europe. He had been sent “to teach the Jews in foreign parts of the world.”120 In Russia, Mayer discovered five “Jewish” sects: “Chassidäer,” Karaites, the “middle class or the opponents; the working people; and the Chabad.”121 Even if this classification looks somewhat strange, it makes obvious that Jewish life in Western Russia unfolded in different religious communities. Even after Mayer’s trip, Russian sects (who split from the Russian Orthodox Church) have remained better known to historical research than Jewish ones.122 And, notwithstanding the Jesuit’s own interest in Russian Judaism, the religious ferment in both Christian and Jewish communities has almost never been studied together. Yet there is every reason to suppose that in the region described in this chapter there were contacts over the centuries between many religious dissenters from Judaism, the Orthodox, and probably also the Catholic Church. My research findings suggest that there were not only contacts between intellectuals, but also between believers of varied social backgrounds, inhabitants of neighboring places, pilgrims, migrants, and refugees, who had observed each other and compared their beliefs. This phenomenon raises the question of why people were continuously searching for a “better” religion? It is often claimed that they were forced

212  Agnieszka Zaganczyk-Neufeld into exile by state persecutions, but we should not forget that in pre-modern Russia, as well as in pre-modern Poland-Lithuania, religious persecutions remained rare in comparison with the projects to nationalize religions in the nineteenth century. The pre-modern authorities needed loyal, rather than homogeneous subjects. The reason for the religious ferment should be sought in a shared perception of the purpose of human existence, which was formulated in religious terms at this time, whether from a Jewish or Orthodox perspective. The protagonists of this chapter were living in a large border zone, where neither the state administration nor constant religious services existed. It was a highlight to meet a literate preacher in the village, who could read and explain the Bible, and advise one on how to be redeemed. It is not surprising that many people saw no fundamental difference between Christian and Jewish preachers, for all of them read the Bible. Religious dissenters frequently emphasized that they had been seeking above all true, original religion and an immediate connection with God. When they founded new religious communities with their own rituals and rules, they did so not to change or improve established churches, doctrines, or the state in any way, but to improve their own position in the kingdom of God, which they expected sooner or later. They evaded social control by priests or rabbis, as well as by local authorities, because they understood them all as signs of the power of the Antichrist.123 The state and religious authorities mediated between men and God, and—in the eyes of sectarians—this mediation relied on books and rituals that had been altered over time; these alterations made the books and rituals untrustworthy because they no longer came directly from God. All these clerical mediators were seen to care only about outer forms of worship and not about the internal feelings of believers seeking a simple, understandable, and true-to-life belief offering the prospects of a direct connection with God. This quest was an eschatological one. They took the book of Revelation seriously, even though they did not discuss when the end of the world would come. They only believed that it was to come, and that one must be prepared. Fears of the end of the world did not necessarily take extreme forms of expression like the Old Believers’ self-immolations at the end of the seventeenth century.124 J. Eugene Clay identifies six different options by which “the true Christian might contend against the evil that had befallen the Russian Church: (1) social revolt, (2) mass suicide, (3) martyrdom, (4) flight, (5) psychological withdrawal, and (6) accommodation.”125 The eschatological expectations of the Judaizers in the late fifteenth century did not lead to mass panic, but to a sober reading of the various ways of understanding eschatological issues. Similarly, no form of religious enthusiasm was observed among the Molokans and the Subbotniks, only a strict reading of the Bible and polemics on true religion, as in early Christianity. For many Western authors, these eschatological expectations were connected to the influence of German Pietism. August von Haxthausen reported having found a translation of Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling’s mystical

Everyday Apocalypse  213 writings in Molokan houses. Passages mentioning the 1,000-year-long kingdom of peace had been of particular interest to the Molokans, Haxthausen wrote. They applied these passages to themselves, for they believed themselves to be the chosen ones who would then rule together with Christ.126 The fact that Western authors argued for a crucial influence of Protestantism or Pietism on the Molokans could be explained by the fact that they were familiar with Protestant revivalism much more than with the Russian Judaizing movement. However, both sources of influence may have occurred. No doubt, the religious movements described here were millenarian.127 These were not militant, ecstatic millenarianisms, but “long-term millenarianism” with a different concept of time. Since the time of Parousia was unknown, the religious dissenters did not ignore daily life. Simultaneously, they did not abandon their apocalyptic hope. These religious communities did not experience an acute crisis; rather, the expectation that the apocalypse might come soon was part of their everyday experience and knowledge. To put it in Alfred Schütz’s and Thomas Luckmann’s terminology, it was an intersubjective indigenous social reality. The apocalypse was an objectivized matter of course and basic precondition for their patterns of behavior.128 In this sense, this history may well be understood as a connected history. There is no doubt that we deal with a kind of regional syncretism here. In the nineteenth century, as Russian Orthodoxy and the Russian national state tried to create a coherent and self-contained interpretative system, increasingly more questions about religious belonging were raised. At the level of social practice, “alien” religions required little effort to categorize vis-à-vis the Russian state or Orthodox Church. But the “sects” presented greater challenges. Various forms of interreligious communication certainly took place over several centuries among the inhabitants of the huge border region between western and southwestern Russia, eastern Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania. None of these communities were as isolated from each other as suggested by later national historiographies. People living there certainly considered what other religions had to offer when it came to preparing themselves for the end of the world in the best possible way. Connected history provides in this case a more suitable approach than comparative or transfer history, which have long been criticized for comparing apples and oranges, or for assuming a transfer from the West towards “underdeveloped” cultures. Unfortunately, research on Eastern Europe is still dominated by national historical approaches, allowing little room for the study of connections between the religious communities presented above. However, some scholarship underlines the significance of intercommunity exchanges in this region, particularly in Ukraine, where there is substantial evidence of direct contacts between members of the Orthodox Church and Jews. Mobility played an important role in this context: believers (both Orthodox and Jewish) sometimes went on pilgrimages of several days to holy sites or to meet well-known religious teachers; itinerant preachers (both Orthodox and Jewish) travelled to many villages and assembled their inhabitants.129 The significance of transport routes has been hardly researched,

214  Agnieszka Zaganczyk-Neufeld although we may assume that religious exchange happened also in the context of commercial contacts. Deviant religious communities were flourishing precisely in this region because it was a border region. Similar to the Crimea, western Ukraine, Belarus, and eastern parts of Poland were annexed by Russia in the second half of the eighteenth century. It took several decades to establish a functioning Russian-Orthodox Church structure there.130 Scholars have rightly warned against prematurely equating similar looking phenomena.131 Although direct Jewish-Orthodox influences are difficult to prove, and while the phenomenon of influence itself may be defined in different ways, the histories of Jewish and Orthodox sects in Russia at the end of the eighteenth history are connected histories. They demonstrate that common answers to the same questions and fears may exist within a single space beyond ethnic, linguistic, and religious boundaries.

Notes 1 The term ‘sect’ is a crucial element of the language in the sources. It is used here to designate dissenting religious communities without any pejorative connotation. 2 “The annexation of eastern Ukraine from Poland in 1667 brought thousands of Jews under Russian rule. Conquests in the Baltic region (1721), the Crimean peninsula (1783) and the northern littoral of the Black Sea (1791) —the last two seized from the Ottoman Empire—similarly placed significant numbers of Jews under the dominion of the tsars. The most fateful recasting of borders came, however, with the three-stage partition of Poland (1772, 1792, 1795), as a result of which some half a million Jews—the largest Jewish population of any country in the world—were transformed into subjects of the Romanovs.” —Benjamin Nathans, “The Jews,” The Cambridge History of Russia. Vol. II: Imperial Russia, 1689–1917, ed. by Dominic Lieven (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 184–201, here 186. 3 Nicholas Breyfogle, “The Religious World of Russian Sabbatarians (Subbotniks),” in Holy Dissent. Jewish and Christian Mystics in Eastern Europe, ed. Glenn Dyner (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2011), 359–92, here 361. 4 Vladimir A. Sakharov, Eskhatologicheskiya sochinenya i skazaniya v drevnerusskoy pis’mennosti i vliyanie ikh na narodnye dukhovnye stikhi (Tula: Sokolov, 1879), 53. 5 On defining apocalyptic literature see: John J. Collins, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 6 Albert Schweitzer, Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung (Tübingen: Mohr, 1984), 417. 7 Michael Tilly, “Kurze Geschichte der Apokalyptik,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 51–52 (2012): 17–25. 8 Julian Petkov, Altslavische Eschatologie. Texte und Studien zur apokalyptischen Literatur in kirchenslavischer Überlieferung (Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto, 2016), 36. 9 Petkov, Altslavische Eschatologie, 31, 36. See also Michael S. Flier, “Till the End of Time: The Apocalypse in Russian Historical Experience Before 1500,” in Orthodox Russia. Belief and Practice under the Tsars, ed. Valerie A. Kivelson and Robert H. Greene (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 127–58; Aleksandr I. Negrov, Biblical interpretation in the Russian Orthodox Church. A Historical and Hermeneutical Perspective (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008).

Everyday Apocalypse  215 10 Thomas Seebohm, Ratio und Charisma. Ansätze und Ausbildung eines philosophischen und wissenschaftlichen Weltverständnisses im Moskauer Russland (Bonn: Bouvier, 1977), 149. 11 The Orthodox Study Bible (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2008), 1711. 12 Gabriele Scheidegger, Endzeit. Russland am Ende des 17. Jahrhunderts (Bern: Peter Lang, 1999), 28. 13 Joel Raba, The Gift and Its Wages. The Land of Israel and the Jewish People in the Spiritual Life of Medieval Russia (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 279, 312. 14 Stefan Plaggenborg, Pravda. Gerechtigkeit, Herrschaft und sakrale Ordnung in Altrussland (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2018), 48–50. 15 Raba, The Gift, 332–33. 16 Pilchan Lee, The New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation. A Study of Revelation 21–22 in the Light of Its Background in Jewish Tradition (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 1. 17 Saint Justin Martyr, The First Apology, the Second Apology, Dialogue with Trypho, Exhortation to the Greeks, Discourse to the Greeks, the Monarchy or the Rule of God, ed. Thomas B. Falls (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008), 339, 357. 18 Michele Murray, Playing a Jewish Game. Christian Judaizing in the First and Second Centuries CE (Waterloo: Wilfried Laurier University Press, 2004), 1–2. 19 Günther Stökl, “Das Echo von Renaissance und Reformation im Moskauer Rußland,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 7 (1959): 413–30. 20 Renee Perelmutter, “Deistic Shifts in the Slavic Translations from Hebrew Associated with the Judaizers,” Translation and Tradition in ‘Slavia Orthodoxa’, ed. Valentina Izmirlieva and Boris Gasparov (Wien: LIT, 2012), 159–80. 21 Shmuel Ettinger, “Vlijanie evreev na eres’ zhidovstvuyushchikh v Moskovskoy Rusi,” Jews and Slavs 4, no. 4 (1995): 9–27, here 18. See also: Rusell Zguta, “The ‘Aristotelevy vrata’ as a Reflection of Judaizer Political Ideology,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 26 (1978): 1–10. 22 Seebohm, Ratio, 159. 23 “Poslanie arkhiepiskopa Gennadiya Novgorodskogo Ioasafu, byvshemu arkhiepiskopu Rostovskomu,” quoted from Dietrich Freydank, ed., Auf Gottes Geheiß sollen wir einander Briefe schreiben. Altrussische Epistolographie (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999), 219 [my translation]. 24 “Poslanie,” 215. 25 Iosif Volockij, Prosvetitel’ (Moscow: Institut Russkoy Tsivilizatsii, 2011), 103. 26 Andrei Pliguzov, “Archbishop Gennadii and the Heresy of the ‘Judaizers’,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 16 (1992): 269–88; Joel Raba,“‘Zhidovstvuyushchie’ li? Istoriya zadushevnoy mysli,” Russia Medievalis 10, no. 1 (2001): 126–49. 27 Peter Hauptmann, “Russische Christenheit und Ostjudentum,” in Kirche und Synagoge. Handbuch zur Geschichte von Christen und Juden. Darstellung mit Quellen, ed. Karl Heinrich Rengstorf and Siegfried von Kortzfleisch, vol. II (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag, 1970), 639–67, here 639. “The Book of the Alphabet” (Azbukovnik), a treasury of sixteenth-century foreign words and expressions, explains the difference between Hebrew, Jew and Israelite (evrein, iudein, izrail’tianin) as follows: the word Hebrew denoted those who had crossed over the Red Sea, the term Jew defined those who professed the Jewish religion, while the term Israelite described those who were God-fearing (as opposed to those of the Jewish persuasion).”—Raba, The Gift, 272. 28 Slovar russkogo yazyka XI–XVII vv. Vypusk 5 (E—Zinutie) (Moscow: Nauka, 1978), 108. 29 While Judaizers also spread across Moscow, they are mostly called the “Novgorod Heresy” in the scholarship. 30 Entsiklopedicheskiy slovar Brokgauza i Efrona. Tom XI A (22) (Saint Petersburg: Efron, 1894), 943–45; and Tom XIII A (26), 768–69.

216  Agnieszka Zaganczyk-Neufeld 31 J. R. Howlett, “The Heresy of the Judaizers and the Problem of the Russian Reformation” (Unpublished diss., Oxford, 1976), 1. 32 Constantine Zuckermann, “The ‘Psalter’ of Fedor and the Heresy of the ‘Judaizers’ in the Last Quarter of the Fifteenth Century,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 11 (1987): 77–99, especially 98. 33 Seebohm, Ratio, 142–45; Joseph L. Wieczynski, “Hermetism and Cabalism in the Heresy of the Judaizers,” Renaissance Quarterly 28 (1975): 17–28. For a comprehensive research review, see: Howlett, “The Heresy,” 8–13. 34 This interpretation was made prominent already by probably the first scientific treatise on the Judaizers: Nikolay Rudnev, Razsuzhdenie o eresyakh i raskolakh, byvshikh v russkoj cerkvi so vremeni Vladimira Velikago do Ioanna Groznago (Moscow: Sinodal’naya Tipografiya, 1838), 119, 122, 142. In a pointed way, this opinion was most or all represented by Soviet historical science which completely gave up on the name “Judaizers” and instead used the term “novgorodsko-moskovskaja eres”: Natal’ja A. Kazakova and Jakov S. Lur’e, Antifeodal’nye ereticheskie dvizheniya na Rusi XIV – nachala XVI veka (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1955); Aleksandr I. Klibanov, Reformatsionnye dvizheniya v Rossii v XIV—pervoy polovine XVI v.v. (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1960). See also: George Verdansky, “The Heresy of the Judaizers and the Policies of Ivan III of Moscow,” Speculum 8 (1933): 436–54, especially 442. 35 Andrey Korenevskiy, “’Novyy Izrail” i ‘Svyataya Rus.” Etnokonfessional’nye i sotsiokul’turnye aspekty srednevekovoy russkoy eresi zhidovstvuyushchikh,” Ab Imperio 3 (2001): 123–42; V. Stroev, “Zur Herkunftsfrage der ‘Judaisierenden’,” Zeitschrift für Slavische Philologie 11 (1934): 341–45. 36 Johann Maier, “Zum jüdischen Hintergrund des sogenannten ‘Laodicenischen Sendeschreibens’,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 17 (1969): 1–12; Moshe Taube, “Jewish-Christian Collaboration in Medieval Slavic Translations from Hebrew,” in Translation and Tradition in “Slavia Orthodoxa,” ed. Valentina Izmirlieva and Boris Gasparov (Wien: LIT, 2012), 26–45. According to Joel Raba, there were limited contacts with Jews: “This began with contact with Crimean Jews, progressing to commercial and military ties with PolandLithuania in the sixteenth century, and ending with connections with Jewish prisoners and displaced persons from the wars of the second half of the seventeenth century.” — Raba, The Gift, 346. 37 However, it was intensively disputed if these might be called a closed, Jewishinfluenced corpus, see John V. A. Fine, “Fedor Kuritsyn’s ‘Laodikijskoe poslanie’ and the Heresy of the Judaizers,” Speculum 41 (1966): 500–4; Fairy von Lilienfeld, “Das ‘Laodikijskoe poslanie’ des großfürstlichen D’jaken Fedor Kuricyn. Günther Stökl zum 60. Geburtstag,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 24 (1976): 1–22; Yakov S. Lur’e, Ideologicheskaya bor’ba v russkoj publitsistike konca XV—nachala XVI veka (Moscow: Izdate’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1960), 82–84; Aleksandr I. Nikitskij, Ocherk vnutrenney istorii tserkvi v Velikom Novgorode (Saint Petersburg: Balashev, 1879), 162–63; Alexander Pereswetoff-Morath, A Grin Without a Cat. 1: “Adversus Judaeos” Texts in the Literature of Medieval Russia (988–1504); 2: Jews and Christians in Medieval Russia—Assessing the Sources (Lund: Institutionen för Öst- och Centraleuropastudier, 2002); William Francis Ryan, The Bathhouse at Midnight: Magic in Russia (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 16–18, 341, 394–97; Michael Schneider, “The ‘Judaizers’ of Muscovite Russia and Kabbalistic Eschatology,” Jews and Slavs 24 (2013): 222–58; Moshe Taube, “The Fifteenth-Century Ruthenian Translations from Hebrew and the Heresy of the Judaizers: Is there a Connection?,” in Speculum Slaviae Orientalis: Muscovy, Ruthenia and Lithuania in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Vyacheslav Ivanov (Moscow: Novoe Izdatel’stvo, 2005), 185–208.

Everyday Apocalypse  217 38 Edgar Hösch, Orthodoxie und Häresie im alten Rußland (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1975), 86. 39 “For during the course of fifty years, between 1470 and 1520, the official attitude of Muscovy towards the Jews altered radically. Indeed, the success of the enemies of the heresy was such that it launched Russia into a five hundred year period of unabated anti-Semitism.” Henry H. Huttenbach, “The Judaizing Heresy and the Origins of Muscovite Anti-Semitism,” Studies in Medieval Culture 4 (1973): 496–506, here 497. More cautiously: Charles J. Halperin, “Judaizers and the Image of the Jew in Medieval Russia: A Polemic Revisted and a Question Posed,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 9 (1975): 141–55. 40 Mikhail Dmitriev, “What Was Not Understood by Martin Gruneweg in the Orthodox Culture of Eastern Europe?,” in Martin Gruneweg (1562–nach 1615). Ein europäischer Lebensweg, ed. Almut Bues (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009), 213–40. See also: Ettinger, “Vlijanie,” 13. 41 Seebohm, Ratio, 194–96. 42 Huttenbach, “The Judaizing Heresy,” 496. 43 Raba, The Gift, 239. 44 Raba, The Gift, 291, note 118. 45 Róbert Dán, “‘Judaizare’ — the Career of a Term,” in Antitrinitarianism in the Second Half of the 16th Century, ed. Róbert Dán and Antal Pirnát (Leiden: Brill, 1982), 25–34. 46 John G. Gager, The Origins of Anti-semitism. Attitudes toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 118. 47 Louis Israel Newman, Jewish Influence on Christian Reform Movements (New York: Columbia University Press, 1925), 6, 19. 48 In academic research both the names “Karaimy” and “Karaites” are used. “The terminological discrepancy derives its origin from the languages spoken primarily in the neighborhood of the Karaims. […] the originally Hebrew plural […] karaim was preferred as the basis of the Slavonic adjective karaimskij […].” Tapani Harviainen, “The Karaites in Eastern Europe and the Crimea: An Overview,” in Karaite Judaism. A Guide to its History and Literary Sources, ed. Meira Polliack (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2003), 633–55, here 634–35. The literature overview on the Karaites in this chapter does not attempt to be exhaustive. 49 Volockij, Prosvetitel’, 414–15. 50 Nikitskij, Ocherk, 159; Verdansky, “The Heresy,” 438. 51 Christfried Bötrich and Sabine Fahl, Leiter Jakobs. Jüdische Schriften aus hellenistisch-römischer Zeit. Neue Folge, Band 1, Lieferung 6 (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Mohn, 2015), 45–46. 52 Most prominent, among others: Fedor F. Livanov, Raskol’niki i ostrozhniki. Ocherki i razskazy. 4 vols. (Saint Petersburg: Chana and Merkul’ev, 1868– 1873). See also: Il’ya Panov, “Eres’ zhidovstvuyushchich,” Zhurnal Ministerstva Narodnago Prosveshcheniya CLXXXIX (1877): 1–40, especially 11–17, and CXCI (1877): 1–59. 53 Johannes Gehring, Die Sekten der russischen Kirche (1003–1897) nach ihrem Ursprung und inneren Zusammenhang (Leipzig: Richter, 1898), 11. Torsten Ysander, Studien zum b’ešṭschen Hasidismus in seiner religionsgeschichtlichen Sonderart (Uppsala: Lundequist, 1933), 376, refers to Gehring and calls Judaizers “Scharajiten.” 54 Hösch, Orthodoxie, 79, 218; Seebohm, Ratio, 201. 55 Harviainen, “The Karaites.” See also: Simon Szyszman, Le Karaïsme. Ses doctrines et son histoire (Lausanne: L’Age d’homme, 1980). 56 Hannelore Müller, Religionswissenschaftliche Minoritätenforschung. Zur religions­ geschichtlichen Dynamik der Karäer im Osten Europas (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010), IX, 30; Golda Akhiezer, “Karäer,” Enzyklopädie jüdischer Geschichte und Kultur, Band 3, ed. Dan Diner (Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler), 325–30.

218  Agnieszka Zaganczyk-Neufeld 57 Müller, Religionswissenschaftliche Minoritätenforschung, 60. 58 Harviainen, “The Karaites,” 646–47; Julius Fürst, Geschichte des Karäerthums von 1575 bis 1865 der gewöhnlichen Zeitrechnung. Die letzten vier Abschnitte (Leipzig: Leiner, 1869), 103. 59 Harviainen, “The Karaites,” 648. 60 Müller, Religionswissenschaftliche Minoritätenforschung, 65. 61 “Ob uvol’nenii Tavricheskikh Evreev, imenuemykh Karaimy, ot polozhennych na sech voobshche Evreev dvoynych podatey,” in Polnyy chronologicheskij sbornik zakonov i polozheniy, kasayushchikhsya Evreev, ed. Vitalij O. Levanda (Saint Petersburg: Trubnikov, 1874), 38–40. 62 Akhiezer, “Karäer,” 326; Adam Frostig, “Zur Ethnogenese und Geschichte der Karäer in Polen,” Anthropos 75 (1980): 25–48. 63 On identifying rationalism with Jewry, see: Dmitrij Gusev, Eres’ antitrinitariev tret’ego veka (Kazan: Universitetskaya tipografiya, 1872). On controversies on Karaite research, see for example: Hermann L. Strack, A. Firkowitsch und seine Entdeckungen. Ein Grabstein den hebräischen Grabschriften der Krim (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1876), 39–40. 64 Korenevskiy, “‘Novyy Izrail’,” 131; Maier, “Zum jüdischen Hintergrund,” 2. 65 Taube, “The Fifteenth-Century Ruthenian Translations,” 195; Similarly, Stroev, “Zur Herkunftsfrage,” 342; Verdansky, “The Heresy,” 442. 66 Gehring, Die Sekten, 16, 176. 67 Mateusz Mieses, “Judaizanci we Wschodniej Europie,” Miesięcznik Żydowski 2 (9–10) (1933): 169–85, here 174 [translated by AZN]. 68 Ibid. 69 George H. Williams, “Protestants in the Ukraine during the Period of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 2 (1978): 41–72 and 184–210, here 53. 70 Magdalena Luszczynska, Politics of polemics: Marcin Czechowic on the Jews (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018); Konrad Onasch, Grundzüge der russischen Kirchengeschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1967), 54–56; Williams, “Protestants.” 71 James Billington, The Icon and the Axe. An Interpretive History of Russian Culture (London: Weidenfels & Nicolson, 1966): 89–90. 72 The Old Believers (Russian starovery or staroobryadtsy) split away from the Russian Orthodox Church in the seventeenth century, after having rejected the Church reform and having been excommunicated by the Church. 73 Fedor V. Livanov, Raskol’niki i ostrozhniki. Ocherki i razskazy. Tom 1 (Saint Petersburg: Chan, 1868), 248–53, 319–46; and Tom 2 (1870), 316–21, 369– 94, 413, 453–54. Quotation: 374. 74 Willard Sunderland, Taming the Wild Field. Colonization and Empire on the Russian Steppe (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2004), 71–72. 75 Nikolai I. Barsov, “Molokane,” Entsiklopedicheskiy slovar Brokgauza i Efrona. Tom XIX A (38) (Saint Petersburg: Efron, 1896), 644–46; Pavel P. Obolenskii, Kriticheskii razbor veroispovedaniia russkikh sektantov-ratsionalistov: du­khobortsev, molokan i shtundistov (Kazan: Tipo-Litografiya Imperatorskogo Universiteta, 1903), 402. 76 Obolenskii, Kriticheskii razbor, 412–13; “Istoricheskie svedeniya o molokanskoj sekte,” Pravoslavnyi sobesednik 3 (1858): 42–80 and 291–327, here 50, 62. 77 Livanov, Raskol’niki, Tom 1, 158–65, 252, 386–87, 392–93. 78 “Proshenie,” Dukhovnyi khristianin 1 (1905), 9–13. 79 Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiyskoy Imperii, Sobranie pervoye, Tom 28 (1804–1805) (Saint Petersburg: Tipografiya II Otdeleniya Sobstvennoy Ego Imperatorskogo Velichestva Kantselyarii, 1830); Sobranie postanovleniy po chasti raskola. Tom pervyy; Postanovleniya Ministerstva Vnutrennych Del’

Everyday Apocalypse  219 (London: Trübner, 1863). In one of the most recent publications on the Molokans the author admits that in the source compilations there are no such documents. Evgeniy V. Buyanov, Dukhovnye khristiane molokane v Amurskoy oblasti vo vtoroy polovine XIX – pervoy treti XXvv. (Blagoveshchensk: AmGU, 2013), 28. 80 Aleksandr L’vov, “Delo o karaimskikh molitvennikakh,” Paralleli 4–5 (2004): 48–72. See also: David Moon, Russian Peasants and Tsarist Legislation on the Eve of Reform. Interaction between Peasants and Officialdom, 1825–1855 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992). 81 A paradigmatic explanation in: RGIA [Russian State Archive of History], F. 1285, op. 3, d. 112. 82 Paul W. Werth, The Tsar’s Foreign Faiths. Toleration and the Fate of Religious Freedom in Imperial Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 45. 83 Werth, The Tsar’s Foreign Faiths, 56. 84 Livanov, Raskol’niki, Tom 1, 248–53, 319–46; and Tom 2 (St. Petersburg: Chan, 1872), 316–21, 369–94, 413, 453–54. 85 RGIA, F. 1473, op. 1, d. 1; d. 2 and d. 6. 86 Sv. G. V., “K istorii molokanskoy (zhidovstvuyushchey) sekty v Astrakhanskoy gubernii,” Astrakhanskie eparkhial’nye vedomosti, chast’ neofitsial’naya 4 (1889): 157–71. 87 Livanov, Raskol’niki, Tom 2, 382; E-v, “Sekta posledovateli Moiseeva zakona, ili Iudeystvuyushchikh, v Voronezhskoy gubernii,” Voronezhskie eparkhial’nye vedomosti 9 (1877): 267–84. 88 E-v, “Sekta posledovateli Moiseeva zakona,” 272. 89 Nikolay V. Varadinov, Istoriya Ministerstva vnutrennykh del. Vos’maya, dopolnitel’naya kniga. Istoriya rasporyazhenii po raskolu (Saint Petersburg: Tipografiya Vtorago Otdeleniya Sobstvennoy E.I.V. Kantselarii, 1863), 95. 90 L’vov, “Delo.” 91 M. Bylov, “Raskol v Voronezhskoy Eparkhii pri Episkope Tikhone I. (Svyatitele) (1763–1767 g.g.),” Voronezhskie eparchial’nye vedomosti 4 (1890): 146–54; Pavel N. Milyukov, Ocherki po istorii russkoy kultury. Chast’ vtoraya: Tserkov i shkola (vera, tvorchestvo, obrazovanie) (Saint Petersburg: Skorochodov, 1897), 118; Avraam Shmulevich and Mark Kipnis, “Subbotniki (iudeystvuyushchie),” in Kratkaya Evreyskaya Entsiklopediya, Tom 8 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1996), 635–39; Entsiklopedicheskiy slovar Brokgauza i Efrona. Tom XIX A (38) (Saint Petersburg: Efron, 1896), 644–46. 92 Julij Gessen, Istoriya evreyskogo naroda v Rossii. Izdanie ispravlennoe (Moscow: Evreyskiy universitet, 1993), 198. On the origins of the Subbotniks, see also: Shmulevich and Kipnis, “Subbotniki,” 63; E-v, “Sekta posledovateli Moiseeva zakona,” 271; Velvl Chernin, The Subbotniks. Field Reports of the Rappaport Center. Vol. 6 (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University, 2007), 7. 93 Varadinov, Istoriya, 87–88. 94 Mieses, “Judaizanci,” 177. 95 Entsiklopedicheskiy slovar Brokgauza i Efrona. Tom XXX A (62) (Saint Petersburg: Izdatel’skoe delo, 1901), 874; Gehring, Die Sekten, 18. 96 Mieses, “Judaizanci,” 179. 97 Aleksandr L’vov, Sokha i Pyatiknizhie. Russkie iudeystvuyushchie kak tekstual’noe soobshchestvo (Saint Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Evropeyskogo Universiteta, 2011), 15. 98 Breyfogle, “The Religious World,” 367. 99 “O merach k otvrashcheniyu raspostraneniya zhidovskoy sekty pod nazvaniem subbotnikov,” in Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiyskoy Imperii, Sobranie pervoye, Tom 40 (1825) (Saint Petersburg: 1830), 397–408. 100 Livanov, Raskol’niki, Tom 2, 375. 101 Korenevskiy, “‘Novyy Izrail’,” 130.

220  Agnieszka Zaganczyk-Neufeld 102 Breyfogle, “The Religious World,” 359; Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, Das Reich der Zaren und die Russen (Sondershausen: Eupel, 1887), 456; Aleksandr Panchenko, “Subbotniki i ikh sny,” Svoy ili chuzhoy? Evrei i slavyane glazami drug druga. Sbornik statey (Moscow: Dom evreyskoy knigi, 2003), 248–65. 103 Semen D. Bondar, Sekty khlystov, shaloputov, dukhovnykh khristian, Staryj i Novyy Izrail’ i subbotnikov i iudeystvuyushchikh (Petrograd: Smirnov, 1916), 90; Entsiklopedicheskiy slovar, Tom XXX A (62), 874–75. However, there are also reports according to which they gave their children Jewish names: Nikolay Dingel’shtedt, Zakavkazskie sektanty v ikh semeynom i religiozmon bytu (Saint Petersburg: Stasyulevich, 1885), 28–29; “Subbotniki,” Minskie eparkhial’nye vedomosti 43 (1871): 342–43. 104 Tat’yana Khizhaya, “Dvizhenie russkich iudeystvuyushchikh: k voprosu o phenomene ‘uspekha’,” Al’pha i Omega 53 (2008): 166–82. 105 Nikolay S. Leskov, The Jews in Russia: Some Notes on the Jewish Question (Princeton, NJ: Kingston Press, 1986), 6. 106 RGIA, F. 1284, op. 222 (1905), d. 3. 107 Tat’yana Khizhaya, “‘She has become an Israeli’. Women in the Russian Subbotnik Movement of the 19th Century,” Vestnik SPbGU. Filozofiya i konfliktologiya 33 (2017): 134–41. 108 E-v, “Sekta posledovateli Moiseeva zakona,” 283. 109 Khizhaya, “Dvizhenie.” 110 Varadinov, Istoriya, 98. 111 L’vov, Sokha, 13. 112 Bondar, Sekty, 91; Breyfogle, “The Religious World,” 386, note 1; “Subbotniki,” 343; Varadinov, Istoriya, 98–99. 113 I. Zhabin, “Selenie Privol’noe, Bakinskoy gubernii, Lenkoranskogo uezda,” Sbornik materialov dlya opisaniya mestnostey i plemen Kavkaza, 27 (1900), 42–94, especially 57–58. 114 Mikhail Kizilov, “Tolerantnost’, mistitsizm i evreyskie religioznye sekty v epokhu imperatora Aleksandra I,” Rossiyskaya istoriya 1 (2010): 108–17. 115 “Subbotniki (a Judaizing Russian Sect),” in Bibliographia Karaitica. An Annotated Bibliography of Karaites and Karaism. Karaite Texts and Studies. Vol. 2, ed. Barry Dov Walfish and Mikhail Kizilov (Leiden/Boston, MA: Brill, 2011), 573. 116 RGIA, F. 1284, op. 217 (1864), d. 33—there, several petitions by followers of “zakon moiseeva” and “malakanskaya sekta evangel’skago ispovedaniya” from the Governorate of Astrakhan were collected. 117 V. F. Bogdanov, “Subbota i voskresen’e i spor o nikh,” Vestnik Dukhovnykh Khristian Molokan 8 (1927): 10–13; N. G. Kozlov, “Na kakom osnovanii dukhovnye christiane ‘Molokane’ ostavlyayut vsyakuyu rabotu i sobirayutsya na molitvu v den’ voskresnyy,” Vestnik Dukhovnykh Khristian Molokan 1 (1928): 18–33. 118 A.S.P., “Fundament nashego molokanstva,” Dukhovnyy Khristianin 2 (1906): 1–4. 119 The precise definition of “apocalypse” or “apocalypticism” often depends on the context. “In modern scholarship apocalypticism has also been related to other terms, especially ‘eschatology’ (teaching about the last things), ‘millennialism’ or ‘chiliasm’ (belief in a coming better age on earth, such as that described in the thousand-year reign of Christ at the end of the book of Revelation), and ‘messianism’ (hope for a heaven-sent savior who will usher in the better age). […] all these terms overlap and are often used interchangeably.” John J. Collins, Bernard McGinn and Stephen J. Stein, “Introduction,” The Continuum History of Apocalypticism, ed. Bernard J. McGinn, John J. Collins, and Stephen J. Stein (New York, London: Continuum, 2003), ix–xv. In this chapter, the term “apocalypse” is used as a synonym for the “end of the world.”

Everyday Apocalypse  221 120 Jüdisches Athenäum. Gallerie berühmter Männer jüdischer Abstammung und jüdischen Glaubens, von der letzten Hälfte des 18. bis zum Schluß der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Grimma/Leipzig: Comptoir, 1851), 132. 121 Bonaventura Mayer, Die Juden unserer Zeit. Eine gedrängte Darstellung ihrer religiösen und politischen Verhältnisse in den drei alten Erdtheilen (Regensburg: Manz, 1842), 3. 122 On the new approaches on the Study of Russian Religious Dissent in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries see: Gosudarstvo, religiya, cerkov v Rossii i za rubezhom 3 (38) (2020). 123 On the role of the figure of the Antichrist in Russian culture, see among others: Robert O. Crummey, The Old Believers and the World of Antichrist: The Vyg Community and the Russian State, 1694–1855 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970); Michael Hagemeister, “Eine Apokalypse unserer Zeit. Die Prophezeiungen des heiligen Serafim von Sarov über das Kommen des Antichristen und das Ende der Welt,” in Finis mundi—Endzeiten und Weltenden im östlichen Europa. Festschrift für Hans Lemberg zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Joachim Hösler and Wolfgang Kessler (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1998), 41–60; Scheidegger, Endzeit. 124 Crummey, The Old Believers. Raphael Patai compared the radicalism of the Old Believers to the radicalism of the Sabbateans: “There was a striking similarity between the Shabbataians and the Old Believers in their apocalypticism, fascination with occult numerical computations, ecstatic sense of elation, and semi-masochistic acceptance of suffering.” Raphael Patai, The Jewish Mind (New York: Scribner, 1977), 183. 125 J. Eugene Clay, “Apocalypticism in Eastern Europe,” The Continuum History of Apocalypticism, ed. by Bernard J. McGinn, John J. Collins, and Stephen J. Stein (New York, London: Continuum, 2003), 628–48, here 634. 126 August von Haxthausen, Studien über die inneren Zustände, das Volksleben und insbesondere die ländlichen Einrichtungen Rußlands: Erster Theil (Hannover: Hahn, 1847), 386. On the influence of the German revivalist movements in Russia: Ernst Benz, Endzeiterwartung zwischen Ost und West. Studien zur christlichen Eschatologie (Freiburg/Br.: Rombach, 1973). On the comparison between the Molokans and Cathars: Frederick C. Conybeare, Russian Dissenters (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1921), 271– 78. See also: Leroy-Beaulieu, Das Reich der Zaren und die Russen, 440–41; Andrej Sinjawskij, Iwan der Dumme. Vom russischen Volksglauben (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1990), 364–65; Bernhard Stern, Geschichte der öffentlichen Sittlichkeit in Russland. Kultur, Aberglaube, Sitten und Gebräuche (Berlin: Hermann Barsdorf, 1907), 196–203. For Russian authors, see most of all: O. M. Novitskiy, Dukhobortsy. Ikh istoriya i verouchenie. 2nd ed. (Kiev: Universitetskaya Tipografiya, 1882), 10–15 (however, he refers only to Haxthausen), and Sergey V. Petrovskiy, Molokane ili »dukhovnye khristiane« (Odessa: Slavjanskaja tipografija E. Chrisogelos, 1980), 7–12. 127 For the definition of millenarianism see: Yonina Talmon, “Millenarian Movements,” Archives Européennes de Sociologie 7 (1966): 159–200. 128 Alfred Schütz and Thomas Luckmann, Strukturen der Lebenswelt (Konstanz/ München: UVK, 2017), 331, 364, 387. 129 Yaffa Eliach, “Jewish Hasidim, Russian Sectarians Non-conformists in the Ukraine, 1700–1760” (PhD diss., CUNY, 1973); Svetlana A. Inikova, “The Tambow Dukhobors in the 1760s,” Russian Studies in History 46 (2007/2008): 10–39; Patai, The Jewish Mind, 183–86; Stephen Sharot, Messianism, Mysticism, and Magic. A Sociological Analysis of Jewish Religious Movements (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 145–55; Bernard D. Weinryb, The Jews of Poland. A Social and Economic History of the Jewish Community in Poland from 1100 to 1800 (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1973), 238.

222  Agnieszka Zaganczyk-Neufeld 130 Eugene J. Clay, “Russian Spiritual Christianity and the Closing of the BlackEarth Frontier: The First Heresy Trials of the Dukhobors in the 1760s,” Russian History 40 (2013): 221–43; Mara Kozelsky, Christianizing Crimea. Shaping Sacred Space in the Russian Empire and Beyond (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010). 131 Sharot, Messianism, 146; Ysander, Studien, 391–92. On “Jewish influence,” see: Newman, Jewish Influence on Christian Reform Movements, 6–8.

Part III

Messianic Kings

9 Margins of the Encubierto The Messianic Kings’ Tradition in the Iberian World (15th–17th Centuries) Claudio César Rizzuto

The expectation of a Hidden King is one of the most ancient political myths in the history of the West. The Encubierto (Hidden One) is the Iberian version of it. Historiography identifies at least three lines of tradition in which this myth developed. First, the Hidden One has been described as originating in the Aragonese-Catalan prophetic tradition. It allegedly appeared in the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries in texts by writers like Ramon Lull, Arnau of Vilanova, and Francesc Eiximenis, in connection with European prophetical ideas. The prophetic and messianic expectations associated with King Ferdinand the Catholic (r.1479–1516) constituted in this view the culmination of these Aragonese-Catalan ideas, and were triggered by his interests in the Mediterranean Sea.1 The second interpretation views the Encubierto in a Hispanic prophetic frame, which was associated with ideas of the destruction and restoration of Spain in prophetical terms typical of the Islamic invasion and the Reconquista periods.2 The third interpretation puts the Encubierto into a wider Christian framework and underlines that the belief in Hidden Kings and their return existed in different European regions from Portugal to Russia. The idea of an eschatological emperor was part of the Sibilins’ prophecies and of Joachimism. In this view, the Encubierto may thus be regarded as an Iberian adaptation of these traditions.3 Sanjay Subrahmanyam has proposed a much wider geographical framework for millenarian expectations. He underlines that there were millenarian tendencies from Portugal to India in the sixteenth-century. This opens the possibility of a global history of prophetic traditions.4 This chapter has more modest aims, however. It explores only mutual influences between the Iberian territories. Focusing on the messianic idea of the Hidden King or Encubierto, it connects Portugal with Spain, Iberia with America, and Spanish “Old Christians” with converso and crypto-Jewish minorities.5 Over the past decades, many studies have shown the numerous ties between the Portuguese and Spanish worlds.6 It now clearly appears that the Iberian overseas expansions cannot be understood separately. However, this position is not always accepted or put into practice in the historiography. Often, Portugal plays only a minor role in Spanish history (and vice versa). It appears above all in  narratives about specific wars or about the era of Spanish domination DOI: 10.4324/9781003081050-13

226  Claudio César Rizzuto over Portugal (1580–1640). Most of the time, the connections between Spanish and Portuguese history are barely studied. This chapter explores connections between the traditions of the Iberian messianic kings. It sheds light on mutual influences, and not only on transfers from Spain to Portugal, on which the historiography normally concentrates.

Comunidades and Germanías The most famous manifestation of the Encubierto myth took place during the Revolt of the Germanías of Valencia (1519–1523). The new King Charles (r.1516–1556) needed resources for his election as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, so he left the Iberian Peninsula without visiting the city of Valencia. Before leaving, he had authorized the people of the city to defend themselves against the attacks of Muslim pirates. In the middle of a plague epidemic, the guilds (germanías) armed themselves and took control of the city against the resistance of the nobility and the viceroy, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, who had abandoned the city. After most of the rebellion was defeated, a man claiming to be the Encubierto appeared in the south of the realm, in the localities of Xátiva and Alcira. This messianic figure tried to organize the peasants and artisans of the region by appealing to an eschatological discourse. He claimed to establish the Millennium among them. Only two months later, this alleged Encubierto was killed but, until 1541, different men claimed to be the Encubierto who had survived.7 This episode still presents many challenges, since we have only few and late sources. Also, tracing the origins and the role of this messianic figure in the Germanías revolt has provoked controversy among historians. That this messianic episode was connected with ancient traditions is undeniable, especially with the prophecy of Juan de Unay or Johan Alamany. We know virtually nothing about the author of this fifteenth-century prophecy, which was probably written down in Castile. It has survived in different manuscripts, and a Valencian translation was printed in 1520 in Valencia under the title De la veguda de Antichrist e de las coses que se han de seguir (“On the Coming of the Antichrist and on the Things to Come”). In this prophecy, the Encubierto defeats the Antichrist and destroys the Moors, the Jews, and the tornadizos or conversos. Its publication in the middle of the revolt of the Germanías was hardly a coincidence, and the person who claimed to be the Hidden One in Xátiva in 1522 was possibly inspired by this story, which was already known for years or decades before its publication in 1520.8 As we noted above, a number of historians have tried to trace the origins of the Encubierto of Valencia. Pablo Pérez García has dedicated several studies to this task, even publishing documents from the inquisitorial trial against the followers of the Encubierto after the Revolt of the Germanias.9 These suggest that the Encubierto spoke in Castilian (not in Valencian) to his supporters. Other sources attribute an Andalusian origin to the Encubierto. The Valencian Germanías revolt was indeed paralleled in Castile by the so-called Comuneros or Comunidades uprising. Based on this

Margins of the Encubierto  227 and other evidence, Pérez García has proposed a Castilian origin for the Encubierto of Xátiva, and that he was perhaps related to the comuneros refugees who escaped from the repression after their uprising was defeated. The Encubierto only had influence in Xátiva, a city in the south of the Valencian Kingdom, not in the city of Valencia, where most of the Revolt of the Germanías developed. Thus, far from being the head of the movement or the last effort of the popular forces to take the control of the realm, the Encubierto of 1522 was part of a minor group or a sect that intended to establish a millennial kingdom in Xátiva. After the germanías were defeated, other Encubiertos appeared and tried to mobilize people—but with little success. After the failure of 1522, the Encubierto myth persisted among marginal groups for over 20 years. Since the main leaders of the germanías in the city of Valencia were not messianic leaders, the alleged encubertismo, in Pérez García words, came across as peripheral to the rebellion rather than a core component.10 The Encubierto of Valencia was the product of a Hispanic-Gothic prophetic tradition, born from the war against the Muslims, together with Joachim of Fiore’s and Franciscan-apocalyptical influences.11 But this is hardly the whole story. The messianic image of the Portuguese royal family also may have been a source of inspiration to the Encubierto’s myth in Valencia.12 Pablo Pérez García has emphasized the comuneros refugees’ role in the construction of the Encubierto of Xàtiva, suggesting that the borders of Valencia were porous. But other historians have studied the messianic projections on the comuneros leaders and the presence of other prophetic traditions, without finding anything like an Encubierto who might have re-appeared in Xàtiva or served as a model for the one who did appear there.13 Indeed, the two revolts in Castille and Valencia were not identical in form or goal. The Revolt of the Comunidades (1520–1521) had more general goals than that of the Germanías. When King Charles left the Iberian Peninsula in 1520 to become “King of the Romans”—he had been elected by the German princes in 1519—the cities of Castile organized a junta to replace the government he had left in command.14 They proposed a far-reaching reform of administration and of the central institutions. The revolt had a broad geographic and social scope. Still, after months of civil war, the rebels were defeated at the battle of Villalar on 23 April 1521, and only the city of Toledo resisted the royal forces until February 1522.15 No Encubierto figure emerged from among the comuneros, at least not under this name. While there were messianic expectations among the rebels, the only testimony of an Encubierto-like figure is to be found in a letter of the Admiral of Castile, Fadrique Enríquez de Cabrera. The Admiral was a powerful grande of Spain who became one of the governors of Castile after being designated, along with the Condestable of Castile, Iñigo Fernández de Velasco, to join Adrien of Utrecht (later Pope Adrian VI)—the original governor left by Charles. Admiral Enríquez de Cabrera’s letters are a critical source for the study of the revolt. In one of them, delivered on 28 November 1520, he writes a long report on the situation of the kingdom to the city of

228  Claudio César Rizzuto Seville. Among many things, he says that the comuneros have published an “evil” prophecy claiming that a king named Charles will rule Castile and destroy it. Then, a son of the King of Portugal will arrive, defeat Charles, and redeem the kingdom. According to Enríquez de Cabrera, the rebels printed this prophecy and sold it as bula—a crusading indulgence, usually taken for millions of Spaniards. This letter of the Admiral was printed in Seville, so while unfortunately no copy of the prophecy remains, we can assume that the story of the King of Portugal’s son was well known, either because of the comuneros’ printings or because of those of the royalists.16 Prudencio de Sandoval, who published a history of the reign of Charles V in 1604, incorporated this prophecy and others that apparently circulated among the rebels.17 Sandoval’s mention of a son of the King of Portugal in prophetical terms among the comuneros was not related with the union of the crowns of Spain and Portugal (1580–1640) but he could read it from a document produced during the Comunero revolt, the quoted letter of Enríquez de Cabrera. That the Admiral’s letter was an inspiration for Sandoval has not been noted by historians so far.18 De Cabrera’s letter mentions the hopes placed in both the Infante of Portugal and the city of Seville. The mention of the Portuguese prince gives an important clue about the connections between Spanish and Portuguese messianisms. According to historiography, the story of the Encubierto of Valencia played an important role in the emergence of Sebastianism, which is discussed below. The Admiral’s letter suggests that a certain image of the royal family of Portugal played a major role in Spanish messianic views before the emergence of an Encubierto in Valencia in 1522. First of all, the description provided by Enríquez de Cabrera, although it is brief and does not mention the Antichrist, is reminiscent of Juan de Unay’s prophecy: an evil king intends to destroy the kingdom, and a new king arrives to defeat him and bring prosperity and redemption. The distinction is that the Admiral identifies the king as a Portuguese Infante. In order to understand messianic scenarios, it is therefore critical to explore the representations of the kings and princes of Portugal in Spanish culture. It is also important to recall that Juan de Unay’s Encubierto was an adventurer who fought Turks, and destroyed the Moors, Jews, and tornadizos or conversos in the course of saving the kingdom. Portugal had a troubled relationship with Castile during the Middle Ages, as historians have often pointed out.19 However, during the fifteenth-century, and despite the part played by the king of Portugal in the Castilian war of succession between 1475 and 1479, we can find not only cooperation between both royal courts, but also mutual influences in the fields of culture and literature.20 The Portuguese kings, for example, had an epic and messianic tradition that gained popularity in Castile and in the other Spanish kingdoms. The adventures of Infante Dom Pedro of Portugal (1392–1449) became a famous component of this tradition. The prince travelled around Europe between 1425 and 1428. He visited Hungary, Bruges, England, Flanders again, Cologne, Nuremberg, and Regensburg, and served Emperor

Margins of the Encubierto  229 Sigismund in Vienna in his war against the Ottomans. He was subsequently received with honors in Venice, Florence, and Rome, and finally returned to Portugal via Barcelona, Valencia, and Valladolid. This long journey and the prestige he gained subsequently as a regent of Portugal until his death in 1449, made him the character of the Castilian story Libro del infante don Pedro de Portugal. It was written after his death, but probably before 1470, and was first printed in Seville in 1515, a few years before the revolt of the Comunidades. The book added many marvelous elements and different destinations to the prince’s travels, putting the story in the genre of travel literature. It narrates a visit to Jerusalem and all the Holy places and an encounter with Prester John and his famous kingdom.21 Through his real and fictional deeds, Dom Pedro could bring courage, adventure, and commitment in righteous battles (especially against “Turks”) to the figure of the “Portuguese prince” in Castilian imaginations. Thus, the prophecy about a Portuguese Infante that the Almirante mentioned in his letter to the city of Seville may have been inspired partly by this fifteenth-century narrative. Stories about the Hidden One may have been connected in other ways with images of the Portuguese royal family. The above-mentioned Pablo Pérez García remarked that the fifteenth-century romance Tirant lo Blanch probably provided some inspiration for the Encubierto of Valencia.22 This famous chivalric story narrates the adventures of the fictional hero Tirant throughout Europe, and of how he becomes a governor of the Byzantium Empire and fights against the “Turks”. These elements were also present in the Encubierto narrative.23 Tirant lo Blanch is not about Portugal, but it was dedicated by its author (the Valencian Joanot Martorell) to Prince Ferdinand (1433–1470), the brother of Peter, Constable of Portugal (1429–1466). The dedication is an acknowledgment that the inhabitants of the Spanish kingdoms expected that the savior from their own unwanted kings might issue from a Portuguese house. After all, Peter was named King of Aragon by the Generalitat de Catalunya between 1464 and 1466, during its rebellion against John II of Aragon (r.1458–1479). The conflict between the Generalitat and King John II persisted until 1472,24 and after Peter died in 1466, the rebels considered Prince Ferdinand as a possible successor, but finally chose René of the House of Valois-Anjou (1409–1480). Not long after Catalunya’s appeal to Portuguese princes, the Portuguese were involved in the Castilian war of succession (1475–1479). King Alphonse V of Portugal (r.1438–1477), who had married Henry IV of Castile’s daughter, Juana, in 1475, entered Castile to take the crown in the name of his wife. According to the anonymous Crónica incompleta de los Reyes Católicos (“Incomplete Chronicle of the Catholic Kings”), Alphonse passed through the fortress of Codosera, near the town (villa) of Albuquerque. There, Alphonse tried to make the people believe, with some success, that he was the Encubierto of the prophecies.25 This episode is a further testimony that the Hidden One was repeatedly presented as Portuguese in the turmoils of the Spanish kingdoms.

230  Claudio César Rizzuto Nearly fifty years later, Portugal’s royal family was not mentioned directly among the rebels of the Germanías revolt, but its presence can still be detected in the entwining of Portuguese and Castilian identities. The Valencian Hidden One preached in Castilian language and was apparently Andalusian. There were also rumors about some Comuneros soldiers participating in the Germanías revolt after the defeat of the Castilian one.26 Considering these facts, the prophetical story of an Infante of Portugal related to both the Comuneros and the city of Seville could become critical to the Germanías’ revolt. Furthermore, the clergyman Joao Longo de Fuenteventura, probably from a Portuguese or Castilian origin, was the only cleric executed for his participation in the Germanías revolt. He was the priest or confessor of the Encubierto of Xàtiva, the one who participated in the rebellion. This presence adds some evidence to the hypothesis that the Hidden king of 1522 in Valencia was related to people and ideas coming from other Iberian kingdoms.27

American Experiences Historians have long been studying the relation between European eschatological expectations and contacts with the New World. Almost all the European oceanic explorations from the Late Middle Ages had a messianic context, and Columbus’s arrival in the Caribbeans and the events that followed it triggered further eschatological expectations. The evangelization of the “Indians” was presented as a core element of the process of conversion of all the humans before the beginning of the End Times, and this idea quickly prompted important missionary enterprises in the lands recently discovered.28 The Encubierto also became part of the American cultural repertoire, both for Europeans and their descendants and for some indigenous groups.29 The case of Gregorio López (d.1596) is an important example. Of unknown origins, he came to New Spain in 1562. There, he was the “first hermit” of the New World. He gained a reputation as a pious man and was very famous in the Catholic West throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He wrote a treatise on medicine and a commentary on the Apocalypse of John. He quickly became an inspiration for different mystical groups that ended under inquisitorial persecution, especially in the years after his death in 1596. More importantly for our purposes, he came to be identified with Prince Charles (1545–1568), the dead son of King Philip II (r.1556–1598), a “myth” that Alvaro Huerga, who published a modern edition of López’s book on the apocalypse, rejects with good reason.30 The story of Prince Charles is one of the most dramatic events in the history of Spain. The official history tells that Charles was a problematic person, who perhaps suffered from a mental disease and died in some kind of prison in 1568 at the age of twenty-three. At the time of his death, there were suspicions that he was negotiating with nobles from the Low Countries who were opposed to the rule of his father.31

Margins of the Encubierto  231 How Gregorio López came to be identified with Prince Charles is a mystery, but it seems to be a Spanish-American echo of the Encubierto prophecies. They could not have been the same person: As Alvaro Huerga shows, Charles was still alive when the first notice of the hermit in Mexico was recorded. Huerga attributes the story to a nineteenth-century historian who had no proof. But we do have evidence that the equation of the two men existed before the nineteenth century. Gregorio López was regarded as Prince Charles by different “heterodox” persons in seventeenth-century Mexico. For example, Juan Fabián Arias declared in 1633 before the inquisitors that López was Prince Charles.32 Arias was part of a group of people who considered themselves disciples of the hermit. They presented López as a popular saint or as a member of the royal family in order to protect themselves from the Inquisition and the accusations against them. Gonzalo Tenorio argued more elaborately for López’s identity as Prince Charles and assigned him a millenarian role. Gonzalo Tenorio (1602–1682?) was a creole Franciscan friar who went to Spain after many years of missionary work in Peru. He wrote 16 unpublished volumes in which he announced, under the influence of Joachim of Fiore, that a third age would arrive after the defeat of the Antichrist. This age, he claimed, would be characterized as the definite advent of the kingdom of Christ. But before its advent, the pope would seek refuge in Spain or the Indies. Tenorio suggested, too, that the universal governor of the third age would perhaps come from the New World. It was in this context, that Tenorio mentioned rumors that Gregorio López (d.1596) was the son of Philip II, and that someone named “Juan” who resembled the late king Philip IV (r.1621– 1665) had appeared in Peru, and was possibly his son.33 By this, Tenorio suggested that some members of the Habsburg dynasty (ruling Spain since 1516) could already be in the Indies, perhaps waiting for these events to happen. He thus placed hope in the coming of a messianic king.34 The idea that members of royal families went secretly to the New World is reminiscent of elements of many other narratives about Hidden Kings. As the legends of Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, and Emperor Fredrick show, the return of a great ancient king was a topic of prophetic expectations. The Encubiertos of Valencia, for example, were supposedly members of royal dynasties. According to the seventeenth-century Valencian historian Gaspar Escolano, the Encubierto of the revolt of the Germanias said that he was the grandson of the Catholic kings, Isabella and Ferdinand—specifically the child who was still-born to Margaret of Austria after Prince John died in 1497 at the age of seventeen. As in a conspiracy narrative, he said he had been secretly sent to live in Gibraltar by his uncle Philip the Handsome—who was married to Prince John’s sister Joanna—to keep him away of the throne.35 Similar claims were made by other personages who called themselves Encubierto. The alleged Encubierto of 1529 in the Kingdom of Valencia, whose propaganda campaigns had begun three years earlier, also asserted that he was the son of the late Prince John and his wife Margaret. During

232  Claudio César Rizzuto the trial that ended with the execution of the alleged Hidden One and of some of his followers, someone declared that the Encubierto had visited Margaret in Flanders (d.1530). This version added more information to the story of a royal origin, even describing the meeting between mother and son.36 According to this trial, the Encobert (in Valencian) was another Castilian who had tried to revive the rebellion with a new Germania in different parts of the kingdom of Valencia. As we can see, the royal origin and the status as a forgotten, lost, or excluded heir, were key conditions for the apparition of these messianic figures. The figure of the Encubierto reappeared through the remainder of the sixteenth century. Europeans and creoles were not the only ones waiting for a messianic figure in America. There were also similar expectations among the indigenous population during the colonial period. While introducing all the dimensions of the indigenous populations’ culture would exceed the limits of this chapter, it is worth noting that some ideas were similar to Christian conceptions about messianic kings, and perhaps even Jewish and Muslim ones.37 Different authors have pointed at similar forms of millenarianism in the Andean indigenous culture.38 In any case, some indigenous groups waited in colonial times for the Inca (the ruler of the ancient Tawantinsuyu Empire) to return. This expectation persisted even after the creation of South America’s modern states, and brought about the “Andean Utopia,” that is, the attempt to restore the ancient order with its symbolic, political, and religious characteristics.39 This combination of Christian and indigenous elements, particularly with millenarian or messianic expectations, was echoed also among the Brazilian indigenous population.40 In addition, similar beliefs associated with the idea of a hidden king were expressed by the mestizo Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl (c.1568–1648). According to this chronicler, the Toltecs and the Chichimecs in Mexico were waiting for the return of the ancient king Topiltzin, much like the Portuguese people waited for King Sebastian’s return.41 This Portuguese king is the most famous figure in the Iberian hidden king tradition, and it is to the myths of his survival and the role of Sebastianism that we now turn.

Sebastianism and the Iberian World The legend of King Sebastian of Portugal is one of the most famous cases in the history of messianic and millenarian movements. It was highly influential in the early modern Lusitanian world in Europe, America, and Asia. Far from giving an overview of these ideas, we are going to explore some of its elements that suggest the need for studying the hidden king tradition in the Iberian world by connecting different geographical areas. King Sebastian died on 4 August 1578 in the battle of Alcazarquivir against the King of the Maghreb, in modern-day Morocco. In this battle, a significant part of the Portuguese nobility was killed and there was no heir to the Crown, which initiated a succession crisis. The uncle of the dead king, Cardinal Henry, ruled Portugal until his own death in 1580, and thus ended

Margins of the Encubierto  233 the Avis dynasty (1385–1580). Consequently, Philip II of Spain—King Sebastian’s uncle—became King of Portugal. The union of the Iberian crowns led to military conflict with another pretender, Antonio, Prior of Crato, who was defeated. Antonio was an illegitimate son of Infante Luis— he tried to prove his legitimacy—a nephew of Cardinal Henry, and also a survivor of the disaster of Alcazarquivir.42 The uncertainties about Sebastian’s death gave birth to Sebastianism: a messianic hope that the dead king or another Hidden King from Sebastian’s lineage might return. This myth had a long tradition in the Portuguese world in Europe and America and, in the period of the union of the crowns, it was expressed as a form of resistance against the Spanish kings.43 The fate of King Sebastian was a political issue not only in Portugal, but also in Spain and its domains. After Philip II became King of Portugal, he ordered the return of Sebastian’s body to Portugal. However, doubts about Sebastian’s death continued for decades and different stories were invented around it, including in Spain. This led to the emergence of Spanish pseudoSebastians, like the famous case of the baker Gabriel Espinosa. This man from Madrigal de las Altas Torres in central Spain claimed to be Portugal’s missing king with the support of exiled Portuguese clergymen and the involvement of members of the royal family. This plot was initiated in the summer of 1594 by the entourage of Ana of Austria, a natural daughter of the famous Don Juan of Austria, King Philip’s half-brother.44 The plotters tried to capitalize on the Encubierto tradition, although with limited success.45 The myth of a so-called living Sebastian also inspired another imposter in Calabria, who gained a certain fame in Spanish territories outside the Iberian Peninsula.46 Sebastianism took root in the Portuguese messianic tradition, and many cases drew on it. For example, the supporters of the baker-Sebastian drew on the Trovas of the shoemaker Gonçalo Annes Bandarra (1500–1556) from Trancoso.47 These were composed between 1520 and 1540 and circulated in handwritten copy.48 The Encoberto is repeatedly mentioned in the verses. Baker Gabriel Espinosa’s supporters in 1594 quoted the Trovas as a messianic message proving that Sebastian would return.49 The Trovas also reveal more about the complex creation of the Hidden King as a shared Iberian tradition in the very years around the Germanías revolt. The Valencian Encubierto—with probably a Portuguese background as it was showed—influenced Bandarra’s writings, and the image of the Hidden One passed through him (back) from the Spanish tradition into Portuguese literature. It is for this reason that we can speak of an Encubierto peninsular, which passed from Valencia to Portugal between the 1520s and the 1530s.50 With such literary and political movements, it is clear that the Iberian messianic traditions should be studied together. The Trovas of Bandarra—and hence the Sebastianism it inspired—took inspiration from Spanish literature, more specifically from the prophecy of Pseudo-Isidore, as was noted by Spanish writers even in the sixteenth century.51 In 1588, Juan de Horozco y Covarrubias, in his work against “false

234  Claudio César Rizzuto prophecies,” mentioned the work and its author, noting that Bandarra was influenced by Saint Isidore (i.e. the prophecy of Pseudo-Isidore), the Catalan Francesc Eiximenis (named as Francisco Ximenez), as well as by Castilian sources.52 The Trovas was also influenced by other texts from the Spanish prophetic tradition, like translations of John of Rupescissa that were very popular in Late Medieval Spain.53 Yet in bearing the influence of the prophecy of Pseudo-Isidore, the Trovas yet again bears witness to mutual patterns of influence on the Iberian Peninsula. The prophecy of Pseudo-Isidore is now called as such because it was attributed wrongly to the famous archbishop, Saint Isidore of Seville (c.556–636); it was probably the most widely known prophecy on the peninsula and circulated even among minorities such as conversos and moriscos. The prophecy, with its many versions and vulgarizations, refers to the Muslim invasion and the subsequent Reconquista. The Hidden One was expected to restore Christian rule on the peninsula. Some of its copies even suggest that the Encubierto would be related to David’s lineage.54 Some of the Spanish versions of this prophecy, as in the one included in Ms. 1779 at the Biblioteca Nacional de España, refer to Portugal, as well, and indicate that this kingdom, as part of Spain, would also be destroyed.55 Portugal could be then considered in a prophetic narration to be sharing the same fate as the rest of the Iberian kingdoms. Another source of inspiration on the Trovas was the more mysterious Carthusian Friar Pedro de Frias. This monk is mentioned as someone who summarized the prophecy of Pseudo-Isidore with his Coplas, apparently printed in 1520 or 1521 during the Germanías revolt in Valencia. Frias is usually quoted in studies on Bandarra and the Hidden One in Portugal. He seems to have been a compiler of a cancionero from the late fifteenth or the early sixteenth centuries. J. Lucio D’Azevedo doubted his existence because there is so little evidence of him in historical sources,56 but it seems he was a real author whose work was lost.57 Nevertheless, all sixteenth- and seventeenth-century texts that appear to mention Frias relate him to Spain and to the prophecies of Pseudo-Isidore. For example, in one letter written by Francisco Mendes and included in the inquisitorial trial against Bandarra, we find the mention of pero de frias as a source of inspiration for the author of the Trovas. The verses reproduced there referred to the figure of the Encubierto who was going to fight against the Muslims: “a king that does not uncover himself.”58 In a letter of 1659, the Jesuit Antonio Vieira (1608–1697), maybe the most important of all writers associated with Sebastianism, made a possible reference to Pedro de Frias: he mentioned a “Carthusian” monk as a source of inspiration for himself and quoted a Spanish verse.59 Furthermore, the Pseudo-Isidore prophecy was present in other Sebastianist writers. Fernão Homem de Figueiredo made a summary of this prophecy, asserting that he took it from a Latin version and that this prophecy had been printed in Valencia in 1520.60 Another Sebastianist writer and

Margins of the Encubierto  235 first editor of Bandarra’s Trovas, João de Castro, claimed that Isidore had announced the coming of the Encubierto King Sebastian, and even quoted prophecy of Pseudo-Isidore in Spanish.61 Thus, through the mysterious Pedro de Frias or not, the Spanish prophecy attributed to Pseudo-Isidore was a permanent element in the Portuguese messianic kings tradition in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This proves the important circulations of Pseudo-Isidore’s prophecy in Portugal, in both Portuguese and Spanish.62 Thus, Pseudo-Isidore was the main source for the Encubierto myth.

Sebastianism’s Wider Iberian Connections Sebastianism was not only connected with Spain through its sources of literary inspiration. Streams of Sebastianism are usually considered an expression of Portuguese nationalism and wish for independence in the context of the dynastical union of Portugal and Spain under the Spanish kings. However, some Sebastianist texts endorse Portuguese primacy without rejecting the union of the crowns. Such is the case in the writings of the New Christian Manoel Bocarro Francês (c.1588–c.1662), also known by the name of Jacob Rosales, which is the name he took when he converted to Judaism. Rosales is an important figure in the history of Sebastianism during the seventeenth century. His Anacephaleoses da Monarquia Lusitana (first published in 1624) and his Luz pequena Lunar e Estelífera da Monarchia Lusitana (written in 1626) are some of the great works drawing on this tradition. Rosales’ approach differed from other Sebastianist traditions in three ways. First, he was not expecting the return of King Sebastian, but of someone of his lineage. This would have been possible because Rosales claimed that Sebastian had not died in 1578, but had survived and had procreated heirs.63 Second, Rosales hoped for the restoration of the Portuguese monarchy, but did not think it would (or should) become separated from Spain. Third, Rosale was not clearly identifiable as a champion of a typically “Portuguese” cause: during his life, he worked in different European courts as doctor, astrologer, poet, and mathematician. He was, moreover, usually connected to Spanish (not Portuguese) diplomats and businessmen across Europe and he even had diplomatic functions for the Habsburg House. For Rosales, Sebastianism was associated with the idea that the union of both Iberian monarchies should be maintained. The center of this composite monarchy was to be Lisbon, however, not Madrid. Rosales refers to an agreement from May 1496, under the rule of Manuel I of Portugal (r.1495–1521), by which the House of Braganza could inherit the kingdom of Spain in case there was no heir.64 In Rosales’ hands, Sebastianism would have maintained a united destiny for Portugal and Spain, with both to be saved by the Encoberto.65 Part of Rosales’s Sebastianism was enacted with the “Restoration” of 1 December 1640, in which the Portuguese revolted and the Duke of Braganza became King John IV of Portugal (r.1640–1656), which became a separated

236  Claudio César Rizzuto kingdom again.66 The text El principe encubierto, published under the name of Lucindo Lusitano but written by Luis Marinho de Azevedo (1599–1652), shows that the Encoberto tradition played a role in legitimating this revolt. It was published in 1642, two years after the revolt, and was dedicated to Philip IV of Spain as an explanation of how the new king of Portugal was the manifestation of prophecies concerning the Hidden One. This text is interesting because, although authored by a Portuguese and published in Portugal, it was written in Spanish by someone who claimed to be a former subject of the Spanish king in response to divine signs.67 Last, the Sebastian myth also had impact on another fundamental point of Iberian history: the conversos and marranos. People with Jewish ancestors, indifferent of the depth or sincerity of their conversion to Christianity, may have played an important role in the eventual spread and development of Sebastianism. Jacob Rosales, as cited above, was one such converso; according to some testimonies in the inquisitorial trial against Bandarra, he too may have been a converso (and it is possible his prophecies referred to the conversos). Certainly in the early 1500s, Jews were associated with messianism: after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, many of them went to Portugal to avoid conversion. Three years later, however, they were expulsed from Portugal as well, which motivated many to convert to Christianity. These “New Christians,” or “crypto-Jews” continued to elaborate a Jewish messianic tradition, now as a Christian one, that could be dated to at least the mid 1600s.68 The New Christians from Portugal and from Spain were united by culture and kinship. Thanks to the union of the crowns, they could also establish themselves, though not without conflicts, through the whole Iberian world.69 By the mid seventeenth century, it is hard to tell how one of the most famous proponents of the messianic kings and the Fifth Empire theories, the Jesuit Antônio Vieira, acquired his knowledge of Bandarra’s prophe­cies. He heard of them while living in Brazil as a missionary, but he might there have had contact with conversos and their messianic expectations as well. As in their origin, the later circulation of Bandarra’s prophecies were tied to people, texts, and ideas coming from many Iberian territories, on the peninsula and in the New World.70

Conclusion Portuguese and Spanish discourses on Hidden Kings appear to become intertwined in the late sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth centuries. Sebastianism developed in this period as a clear reaction to the union of the crowns. However, Sebastianism was not merely an expression of Portuguese resistance; in some cases, Sebastianism expressed a commitment to the preservation of the union. From the political level alone, Sebastianism bears witness to a complex literary interchange between Spain and Portugal. More fundamentally, it can be seen that proponents of Sebastianism were deeply influenced by the tradition of Spanish prophecies. From the

Margins of the Encubierto  237 prophecies of Pseudo-Isidore, through the Trovas, the fates of Spain and Portugal were contemplated jointly. A Hidden King from one or the other might save one or both countries. Furthermore, as shown with respect to the Germanías revolt, the early Encubierto tradition itself may have been influenced by images of the Portuguese monarchy. Influences on the Iberian Peninsula were mutual, and transfers took place in both ways. Finally, prophecies concerning a Hidden King were adapted to very different situations over several centuries in the Iberian world. In a shared tradition of messianism, specifically expressed with reference to the Encubierto, the Iberian kingdoms were connected long before the creation of the personal union of the crowns. Through messianism and the Encubierto, Jewish, and Christian communities were also connected within and between Spain and Portugal. Some of these connections found their way to—and back from—the New World, through the writings and personal trajectories of Iberian-born Christians and Jews, as well as of indigenous peoples and creoles. At its widest application, therefore, this case shows that connected history should not be written merely as the history of encounters between a specific European nation and some native groups. To do so would be to produce just another version of national history.

Notes 1 For the Aragonese-Catalan prophetic tradition, the classic reference is José Pou y Martí. Visionarios, beguinos y fraticelos catalanes (siglos XIII–XV), ed. Albert Hauf i Valls (Alicante: Instituto de Cultura Juan Gil-Albert, 1996). 2 On prophetic ideas in Spain: Alain Milhou, Colomb et le messianisme hispanique (Montpellier: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée, 2007); Sara T. Nalle, “The Millennial Moment: Revolution and Radical Religion in SixteenthCentury Spain,” in Toward the Millennium: Messianic Expectations from the Bible to Waco, ed. Peter Schäfer and Mark Cohen (Boston, MA: Brill, 1998), 151–71; Adeline Rucquoi, “Mesianismo y milenarismo en la España Medieval,” Medievalismo 6 (1996): 9–32; Mercedes García-Arenal and Stefania Pastore, eds., Visiones imperiales y Profecía: Roma, España, Nuevo Mundo (Madrid: Abada Editores, 2018). 3 On the ideas of the Hidden King and the eschatological emperor: Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 108–26; Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), 293–392; Yves-Marie Bercé, Le Roi caché (Paris: Fayard, 1990); Gian Luca Potestà, L’ultimo messia. Profezia e sovranità nel Medioevo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2014). 4 Sanjay Subrahmayam, “Du Tage au Gange au XVIe siècle: une conjoncture millénariste à l’échelle eurasiatique,” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 56 (2001): 51–84. 5 The figure of the Hidden One was interpreted in various ways. On the Encubierto tradition: Alain Milhou, “La Chauve-souris, le nouveau David et le roi caché (trois images de l’empereur des derniers temps dans le monde ibérique: XIIIe– XVIIe s.),” Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez 18, no. 1 (1982): 61–78; Sara T. Nalle,

238  Claudio César Rizzuto “Revisiting el Encubierto: Navigating Between Visions of Heaven and Hell on Earth,” in Werewolves, Witches, and Wandering Spirits: Traditional Belief & Folklore in Early Modern Europe, ed. Kathryn A. Edwards (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2002), 77–92; Pablo Pérez García, “Las ciudades valencianas y el Milenio (1450–1550): el problema del encubertismo,” in Ciudades en conflicto (siglos XVI–XVIII), ed. José I. Fortea Pérez and Juan E. Gelabert (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León/Marcial Pons, 2008), 279–305. 6 A study in this sense: Serge Gruzinski, Les Quatre parties du monde: Histoire d’une mondialisation (Paris: La Martinière, 2004). 7 On the Encubierto in Valencia, see Pérez García, “Las ciudades valencianas,” 279–305; Pablo Pérez García and Jorge Antonio Catalá Sanz, Epígonos del encubertismo. Proceso contra los agermanados de 1541 (Valencia: Biblioteca Valenciana, 2000). 8 On the different versions of the Juan of Unay story, see María Isabel Toro Pascua, “Milenarismo y profecía en el siglo XV: La tradición del libro de Unay en la Península Ibérica,” Península: revista de estudios ibéricos (2003): 29–38. For the one published in Valencia in 1520, a modern edition appears in Eulalia Duran and Joan Requesens, Profecia i poder al Renaixement. Texts profètics catalans favorables a Ferran el Catòlic (Valencia: Edicions 3 i 4, 1997), 77–33. For a Castilian version, taken from the Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid, see José Guadalajara Medina, Las profecías del anticristo en la Edad Media (Madrid: Gredos, 1996), 405–25. 9 Pérez García and Catalá Sanz, Epígonos del encubertismo. 10 I am following Pérez García, “Las ciudades valencianas.” 11 This Hispanic-Gothic dimension, associated with the ideas of destruction and restauration, was emphasized by: Milhou, “La chauve-souris.” 12 An overview of Portuguese millenarianism is given in Jean Delumeau, Histoire du paradis, vol. 2: Mille ans de Bonheur (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1995), 201–17. 13 Ramón Alba, Acerca de algunas particularidades de las Comunidades de Castilla tal vez relacionadas con el supuesto acaecer terreno del Milenio Igualitario (Madrid: Editorial Nacional, 1975); Antonio Moreno Vaquerizo, “Milenarismo y comunidades de Castilla: propósito del liderazgo mesiánico de los caudillos comuneros,” in Política y cultura en la época moderna: (cambios dinásticos, milenarismos, mesianismos y utopías), ed. Jaime Contreras, Alfredo Alvar Ezquerra, and José Ignacio Ruiz Rodríguez (Madrid: Servicio de Publicaciones Universidad de Alcalá de Henares, 2004), 553–64; Miguel Fernando Gómez Vozmediano, “‘Porque como pecado de adivinación es la rebelión.’ Augurios, vaticinios y mesianismos durante las Comunidades de Castilla,” in Iglesia, eclesiásticos y revolución comunera, ed. István Szaszdi León-Borja (Valladolid: Centro de Estudios del Camino de Santiago de Sahagún, 2018), 285–338. 14 Charles became Holy Roman Emperor in 1530 after coronation by Pope Clement VII in Bologna. Before that, the titles “King of the Romans” and “Emperor of Germany” were used as a result of his preceding election by the German princes. Charles V was the last emperor who was crowned by the pope. This was no longer made after the consolidation of the Reformation in parts of the Holy Roman Empire. 15 On the comuneros, see José Antonio Maravall, Las comunidades de Castilla. Una primera revolución moderna (Madrid: Alianza, 1979); Stephen Haliczer, The Comuneros of Castile: The Forging of a Revolution, 1475–1521 (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1981); Joseph Pérez, La revolución de las Comunidades de Castilla (1520–1521) (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1999); José Joaquín Jerez, Pensamiento político y reforma institucional durante la guerra de las Comunidades de Castilla (1520–1521) (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2007).

Margins of the Encubierto  239 16 “Han de saber que han sacado una prophecia muy autorizada de maldades y traiciones diciendo que un tal Rey Carlos había de reynar en Castilla: y auia de destruir y abrasar, y que un hijo del Rey de Portugal auia de entrar y tomar el Reino; y remedialle. E hanla imprimido y hecho tomar a todos como bula,” reproduced in Manuel Danvila y Collado, Historia crítica y documentada de las Comunidades de Castilla, 6 vols. (Madrid: Memorial Histórico Español, 1897–1900), 2: 545. This six-volume collection reproduces documents concerning the Comunidades. It has played a seminal role in initiating the study of this revolt. There are four copies of the Admiral’s letter, in Madrid, Paris, New York, and Rome. On this letter and others printed during the Comunero Revolt, see Mercedes Fernández Valladares, Arsenal de impresos comuneros: repertorio bibliográfico ilustrado de la revuelta comunera a través de la imprenta (Madrid: E-Prints de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2013). 17 “Pronósticos y profecías en que creía el común. Estaban las cosas de España tan turbadas, los hombres tan desatinados, que no parecía sino azote del cielo, y que venía sobre estos reinos otra destrucción y acabamiento peor que la que fué en tiempo del rey Don Rodrigo. Creían en agüeros, echaban juicios y pronósticos amenazando grandes males. Inventaron algunos demonios, no sé qué profecías, que decían eran de San Isidro, arzobispo de Sevilla; otras de fray Juan de Rocacelsa, y de un Merlín y otros dotores, y de San Juan Damasceno; llantos o plantos que lloró San Isidro sobre España. Y en todas ellas anuncios malos de calamidades y destrucción de España, que atemorizaban las gentes y andaban pasmados […] Particularmente creían los ignorantes en una que decía que había de reinar en España uno que se llamaría Carlos, y que había de destruir el reino y asolar las ciudades. Pero que un infante de Portugal le había de vencer y echar del reino, y que el infante había de reinar en toda España. Y paréceme que ha salido lo contrario. Tales obras hace la pasión ciega, y tales desatinos persuade,” Fray Prudencio de Sandoval, Historia de la vida y hechos del emperador Carlos V, ed. Carlos Seco Serrano, 3 vols. (Madrid: Atlas, 1955–1956), 1: 259–60. 18 Jacqueline Hermann quotes this fragment from the history of Sandoval as an addition a posteriori in the context of the union of the crowns, without mentioning the existence of a letter contemporary to the events. Jacqueline Hermann, “Sementes do Messias: Percursos do messianismo régio ibérico (sécs. XIV–XVI),” Mirabiblia 21 (2015): 222–41, here 224–25. A similar interpretation appears in Luis Filipe Silvério Lima, O Imperio dos sonhos. Narrativas proféticas, sebastianismo & mesianismo brigantino (São Paulo: Alameda, 2010), 179–80. 19 On Portugal and other Iberian kingdoms in the Middle Ages, see Manuel Fernández García, Portugal, Aragón, Castilla. Alianzas dinásticas y relaciones diplomáticas (1297–1357) (Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 2008); Violeta Medrano Fernández, Un mercado entre fronteras. Las relaciones comerciales entre Castilla y Portugal al final de la Edad Media (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 2010). 20 On the images of Portuguese kings in Castile, see Adeline Rucquoi, “Rois et princes portugais chez les auteurs castillans du XVème siècle,” Península. Revista de Estudis Ibéricos (2003): 39–51. 21 This book had many editions and translations in the early modern period, as well as two modern editions, and an English translation, see Francis M. Rogers, The Travels of the Infante Dom Pedro of Portugal (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961); Elena Sánchez Lasmarías, “Edición del Libro del infante don Pedro de Portugal, de Gómez de Santisteban,” Memorabilia 11 (2008): 1–30. 22 Pérez García, “Las ciudades valencianas,” 303–4. 23 On Tirant lo Blanch: Arthur Terry, ed., Tirant Lo Blanc: New Approaches (London: Tamesis Books, 1999).

240  Claudio César Rizzuto 24 On the Catalan civil war, see Santiago Sobrequés i Vidal and Jaume Sobrequés i Callicó, La guerra civil catalana del segle XV, 2 vols. (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1973). 25 “La hora de llegada y las profeçias compliendose de las desauenturas d’España, el rey don Alonso de Portugal entró por la Codosera en los Reynos de Castilla, el qual, para que las gentes oviesen lugar de creer que él fuese el encubierto, segund vna profecía de Sant Esidro se publicaua, que el encubierto auia de entrar en Castilla en cauallo de madera, este rey, fingiendo venir doliente, o por uentura seyendo çierto, entró en andas, mirándose mucho por las gentes las çeremonias que más çercanas a las profeçías en este caso se conformasen; y como la gente castellana, vsada de la tirana libertad, eran enemigas a se ver de ningund rey señoreadas, a los inoçentes, que de aquellas encubiertas profeçias no tenian conocimiento, les hazian creer que, por las señales pareçidas, este rey don Alonso era el encubierto, trayendo mucho en plática sus virtudes y grandezas y loándole de muchas cosas eçelentes que él, en la verdad, tenia,” Crónica anónima de los Reyes Católicos (1469–1476), ed. Julio Puyol (Madrid: Academia de la Historia, 1934), 180–81. 26 The last Comunero bastion was Toledo, defeated in February of 1522. The Encubierto of the Germanías revolt was active between March and May of 1522. 27 On Joao Longo de Fuenteventura, see Pablo Pérez García, Las Germanías de Valencia, en miniatura y al fresco (Valencia: Tirant Humanidades, 2017), 307–13. 28 On this subject, see John L. Phelan, El reino milenario de los franciscanos en el Nuevo Mundo, 2nd ed. (Mexico: Universidad Autónoma de Mexico, 1972); Georges Baudot, Utopía e Historia en México: Los primeros cronistas de la civilización mexicana (1520–1569) (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1983); Djelal Kadir, Columbus and the Ends of the Earth: Europe’s Prophetic Rhetoric as Conquering Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Adriano Prosperi, America e Apocalisse e altri saggi (Pisa-Roma: Instituti Editoriali e Polifrafici Internazionali, 1999); Frank Graziano, The Millennial New World (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Denis Crouzet, Christophe Colomb: Héraut de l’Apocalypse, 2nd ed. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2018). A critical vision: Joseph Saranyana and Ana de Zaballa, Joaquín de Fiore y América, 2nd ed. (Pamplona: Eunate, 1995). 29 For a synthesis on the apocalyptical movements in Colonial Latin America, with a good bibliographical overview, see Alain Milhou, “Apocalypticism in Central and South American Colonialism,” in The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism volume 3: Apocalypticism in the Modern Period and the Contemporary Age, ed. Stephen J. Stein (New York/London: Continuum, 2000), 3–35. 30 Gregorio López, Declaración del apocalipsis, ed. Alvaro Huerga (Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española-Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, 1999), 21–24. 31 A resume of the life of Charles and the enigma of his death: Geoffrey Parker, Imprudent King: A New Life of Philip II (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2014), 175–91. 32 Antonio Rubial García, Profetisas y solitarios: espacios y mensajes de una religión dirigida por ermitaños y beatas laicos en las ciudades de Nueva España (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica-UNAM, 2006), 83. 33 Gonzalo Tenorio writes these texts during the reign of Charles II of Spain, after Philip IV’s death in 1665. Philip IV had at least 40 children with numerous women, including his first and second wives. This could cause a number of stories about his progeny. On Philip IV, see Alain Hugon, Felipe IV y la España de su tiempo. El siglo de Velázquez (Barcelona: Crítica, 2015). 34 Here I follow the classical work of Antonio Eguiluz, “Father Gonzalo Tenorio, O.F.M., and His Providentialist Eschatological Theories on the Spanish Indies,”

Margins of the Encubierto  241 The Americas 16, no. 4 (1960): 329–56. A Spanish longer version: Idem., “Fr. Gonzalo Tenorio, O. F. M., y sus Teorías Escatologicoprovidencialistas sobre las Indias,” Missionalia Hispanica 16, no. 48 (1959): 257–322. See also Phelan, El reino, 169–72. 35 “Porque dixo que quando el Principe murio, auia quedando la Princesa preñada, y siendo encomendada al Cardenal Don Pedro González de Mendoza, pario un hijo y el Cardenal concertó con la partera que dixesse era hija, y que murió luego: entendiéndose con el Archiduque Don Philipe de Austria (casado que era con doña Juana hermana del Principe Juan) porque pusiesse suceder en los estados de España. Dixo mas, que al niño que era el, le traspusieron a las partes de Gibraltar, donde le crio una pastora, que dende niño le llamo Enrique Enrriquez de Ribera,” Gaspar Escolano, Segunda parte de la década primera de la historia de la insigne y coronada ciudad y reyno de Valencia (Valencia: Pedro Patricio Mey, 1611), 1610–11. This version appears also in Sandoval, Historia de la vida, 1: 288–89. 36 The testimonies are reproduced in Pérez García and Catalá Sanz, Epígonos del encubertismo, 237–38. 37 Whether we can speak of messianism and millenarianism outside the “religions of the book” is a debated issue. The pioneer work on this topic is Peter Worsley, The Trumpet Shall Sound: Study of the “Cargo” Cults in Melanesia, 2nd ed. (New York: Schocken Books, 1968). 38 For example, Juan M. Ossio, ed., Ideología mesiánica del mundo andino. Antología (Lima: Edición de Ignacio Prado Pastor, 1973); Nathan Wachtel, The Vision of the Vanquished: The Spanish Conquest of Peru through Indian Eyes 1530–1570 (Hassock: The Harvester Press, 1977); Henrique Urbano, “Ídolos, figuras, imágenes. La representación como discurso ideológico,” in Catolicismo y extirpación de idolatrías. Siglos XVI–XVIII, comps. Graciela Ramos and Henrique Urbano (Cuzco: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos “Bartolomé de las Casas,” 1993), 7–30. 39 A classic book on this topic: Alberto Flores Galindo, Buscando un Inca. Identidad y utopía en los Andes (Lima: Editorial Horizonte, 1994). 40 Ronaldo Vainfas, A heresia dos indios: Catolicismo e rebeldia no Brasil colonial (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1995). 41 “Este rey dicen muchos indios que está todavía en Xico […] todavía creen que han de salir de allí en algún tiempo, como los portugueses, que todavía creen que ha de volver el rey D. Sebastián y que está vivo, lo cual se ha de creer que es mentira y fábula,” Obras históricas de Don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, vol. 1: Relaciones, ed. Alfredo Chavero (Mexico: Oficina Tipográfica de la Secretaria de Fomento, 1891), 55–56. On the messianism in Mexican indigenous populations, see Serge Gruzinski, Les Hommes-dieux du Mexique. Pouvoir et société coloniale, XVIe–XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Éditions des Archives Contemporaines, 1985); José de la Cruz Pacheco Rojas, Milenarismo tepehuán: mesianismo y resistencia indígena en el norte novohispano (Mexico: Siglo XXI-Universidad Juárez del Estado de Durango, 2008). 42 On this figure and its prophetic implications, see Jacqueline Hermann, “Um rei indesejado: notas sobre a trajetória política de D. Antônio, Prior do Crato,” Revista Brasileira de História 30, no. 59 (2010): 141–66; Idem., “Between Prophecy and Politics. The Return to Portugal of Dom Antônio of Crato, and the Early Years of the Iberian Union,” in Visions, Prophecies and Divinations: Early Modern Messianism and Millenarianism in Iberian America, Spain, and Portugal, ed. Ana Paula Torres, and Luís Filipe Silvério Lima (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2016), 112–35. 43 On Sebastianism, see J. Lucio D’Azevedo, Evolução do Sebastianismo (Lisbon: Livraria Clássica Editora, 1918); José Van Den Besselaar, O Sebastianismo— História Sumária (Lisbon: Instituto de Cultura e Língua Portuguesa, 1987);

242  Claudio César Rizzuto Jacqueline Hermann, No reino do desejado: A construção do sebastianismo em Portugal, séculos XVI e XVII (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1999); Silvério Lima, O Imperio dos sonhos. 44 On this case, see Ruth Mackay, The Baker who Pretended to be King of Portugal (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2012). 45 Mackay, The Baker, 140. 46 See H. Eric R Olsen, The Calabrian Charlatan, 1598–1603: Messianic Nationalism in Early Modern Europe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). 47 Mackay, The Baker, 58. According to Mackay, this case was not one of Sebastianism because there was no direct messianic context. It was just an attempt to replace one foreign king (Philip II) with a natural one (the supposed Sebastian). However, they could quote Bandarra’s writings as a form of propaganda. 48 The Trovas do Bandarra have many printed editions. I consulted Trovas do Bandarra, Natural da villa de Trancoso (Barcelona: n. p., 1809). The first printed edition in the early modern period was: Paraphrase et concordançia de Alguas Propheçias de Bandarra çapateiro de Trancoso por Dom Ioam de Castro (Paris: n. p., 1603) There is a facsimile edition: Porto: Ediçoes Lopes Da Silva, 1942. On this work, see Leandro Henrique Magalhães, Trovas de Bandarra. Leituras, Releituras e Interpretações (Porto: Edições Ecopy, 2010); Azevedo, Evolução do Sebastianismo, 145–90; Van Den Besselaar, O Sebastianismo, 43–58. 49 Mackay, The Baker, 198. 50 For example: Luis Carmelo, “Simbología del ‘encubierto’ peninsular. Del origen valenciano a los ‘moriscos’ aragoneses y al gran mito portugués,” Actas del encuentro La política y los Moriscos en la Época de los Austrias (Madrid: La Fundación del Sur, 1999), 113–26. 51 See: Van Den Besselaar, O Sebastianismo, 44; Azevedo, Evolução do Sebastianismo, 22–23. 52 “Tuue yo noticia de vn çapatero en Portugal que fue tenido por propheta, y er auer leydo en algunas prophecias, como las de San Isidoro, y de las cosas notables que dixo, tengo notada vna, en que a mi parecer dixo muchos años ha, el auer de juntarse aquel Reyno de Portugal con el nuestro con harta particularidad, y de la misma manera pueden aprouechar algunas reuelaciones del Archangel San Miguel, que se refieren en el libro de natura Angelica en Castellano, que compuso fray Francisco Ximenez,” Juan de Horozco y Covarrubias, Tratado de la Verdadera y Falsa Prophecia (Segovia: Juan de la Cuesta, 1588), 38r–v. Eiximenis appears as Francisco Ximenez also in the quoted manuscript of the Biblioteca Nacional de España, Ms. 1779, 51v. 53 On this figure, see Leah De Vun, Prophecy, Alchemy, and the End of Time: John of Rupescissa in the Late Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009). 54 On Pseudo-Isidore’s prophecy, see Alain Milhou, “De la Destruction de l’Espagne a la destruction des Indes,” in Etudes sur l’impact culturel du Nouveau Monde, 3 vols. (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1981–1983) 1: 25–47 and 3:11– 54; Guadalajara Medina, Las profecías, 343–52. The Pseudo-Isidore prophecy had no relationship with the Carolingian-era Pseudo-Isidore as the False Decretals. Prophetical ideas falsely attributed to Saint Isidore are a later development in Spanish historiography and hagiography during the Middle Ages. The Pseudo-Isidore prophecy as an independent text appeared in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Spain. 55 Biblioteca Nacional de España, Ms. 1779, Relación de todo lo sucedido en las Comunidades de Castilla y otros Reynos reynando el emperador Carlos quinto, 51r. 56 D’Azevedo, Evolução do Sebastianismo, 22 n. 2. 57 We have notice of a book by Pedro de Frías, Coplas de Sant Lazaro, which seems to be a lost book of the Biblioteca Capitular y Colombina in Seville. See

Margins of the Encubierto  243 Frederick. J. Norton, “Lost Spanish Books in Fernando Colon’s Library Catalogues,” in Studies in Spanish Literature of The Golden Age: Presented to Edward M. Wilson, ed. R. O. Jones (London: Tamesis Books Limited, 1973), 161–71, here 168. We have no notice of other copies of this book nor of its publication date. 58 “Hum rey que não se descubre.” The letter is reproduced in: Teixeira de Aragão, Diabruras, Santidades e Prophecias (Lisbon: Academia Real das Sciencias, 1894), 136–38. 59 P. António Vieira, Obras Escolhidas. Volume VI. Obras Várias, ed. António Sérgio and Hernâni Cidade (Lisbon: Livraria Sá da Costa, 1952), 55. On Vieira, see Raymond Cantel, Prophétisme et messianisme dans l’œuvre d’Antonio Vieira (Paris: Ediciones Hispano-Americanas, 1960); José Van den Basselar, Antônio Vieira. Profecia e polêmica (Rio de Janeiro: Eduerj, 2002); Silvano Peloso, Antonio Vieira e l’impero universale: La Clavis prophetarum e i documenti inquisitoriali (Viterbo: Sette città, 2005); J. Lúcio de Azevedo, História de Antônio Vieira (São Paulo: Alameda, 2008 [1931]). 60 Fernão Homem de Figueiredo, Resorreiçam de Portugal e morte fatal de Castella (Nantes: Guillelmo do Monner, 1641), 10. Printed in Valencian, not in Latin, the prophecy of Johan Alamany was published in Valencia in 1520. It summarized the Encubierto and the Pseudo-Isidore prophecies, and has been edited in Duran and Requesens, Profecia i poder, 77–133. On the question of a possible translation of Unay’s prophecy into Portuguese, see the doubts of Milhou, Colomb et le messianisme, 278. This is confirmed by a list from a seventeenth-century copy: Toro Pascua, “Milenarismo y profecía,” 29; Isabel Soler, El sueño del rey: Viajes y mesianismo en el Renacimiento peninsular (Barcelona: Acantilado, 2015), 62–63. 61 “Do nome del Rey Dom Sebastiam profetizou Sant Isidoro na propheçia çincoenta & sete, dizendo assi: El Encubierto tendra en su nombre letra de hierro,” Paraphrase et concordançia de Alguas Propheçias de Bandarra çapateiro de Trancoso por Dom Ioam de Castro, 117r. 62 A quick search, for example, shows that the Bibliotecas Municipais do Porto has at least three translations: Ms. M-VR-83, Ms. 1734, and Ms. 484, 188–97. I had notice of this last copy from María Isabel Pascua, “Milenarismo y profecía,” 36–37. The others are easily found in the catalogue. 63 “Rey Dom Sebastiaõ naõ morreo na batalha de Africa, (pois temos disso demostrativa certeza) contudo naõ esperamos por elle, pera o Dominio de Portugal: Rey temos nelle; por el Rey dom Sebastiaõ entendemos, seu sangue, E verdadeiro heredeiro,” Luz pequena, Lunar, e estelifera Da Monarchia Luzania do Doctor Manoel Bocarro Frances Rosales (Rome, n. p., 1626), 6v. 64 Ibid., 7r. Here I am following the analysis of Francisco Moreno-Carvalho, “A Portuguese Jewish Agent of the Philips and a Sebastianist: The Strange Case of Rosales/Manuel Bocarro,” in Visions, Prophecies and Divinations, 161–78. 65 On Manoel Bocarro Francês/Jacob Rosales’ Sebastianism, see also Azevedo, Evolução do Sebastianismo, 72–73; Van Den Besselaar, O Sebastianismo, 79–81; Sandra Neves Silva, “Criptojudaísmo e Profetismo no Portugal de Seiscentos: o Caso de Manoel Bocarro Francês alias Jacob Rosales (1588?– 1662?),” Estudios Orientais 8 (2003): 169–83; Carlos Eugênio Silva Negreiros, “‘Eu o vi, Lusitanos, não me engano/ Já temos o monarca descoberto’: o rei Encoberto para Manuel Bocarro Francês (1593–1662),” Revista Vernáculo 39 (2017): 20–36. 66 On the Restoration, see Eduardo D’oliveira França, Portugal na época da Restauração (São Paulo: Hucitec, 1997). For the Spanish period: Fernando Bouza, Portugal no tempos dos Filipes. Política. Cultura, representações (1580–1668) (Lisbon: Cosmos, 2000); Pedro Cardim, Portugal y la Monarquía Hispánica (ca. 1550–ca. 1715) (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2017).

244  Claudio César Rizzuto 67 “Exclamar a V. Magestad estos quatro discursos políticos, y dalle a entender en su lengua materna, que lo que contienen es manifestar al Mundo el Principe encubierto asta el primer dia de Deziembre fin del memorable año de 1640,” El principe encubierto, manifestado en quatro discursos políticos exclamados al rey don Phelippe IIII de Castilla por vn vassallo que lo fue suyo hasta las nuebe de la mañana del siempre memorable dia Sabbado primero de Diciembre del año de 1640. Escribelos Lucindo Lusitano (Lisbon: Officina de Domingos Lopes Rosa, 1642), 1r. On King Sebastian and Sebastianism in Spanish literature, see María Sol Teruelo Núñez, “Un tema portugués en la literatura española: el Sebastianismo,” Estudios humanísticos. Filología 6 (1984): 129–38. 68 See Marcus de Martini, “In Defense of Prophecy: The Inquisitorial Proceeding of Father Antônio Vieira,” in Visions, Prophecies and Divinations, 195–214, here 197. The crypto-Jews were usually associated with Messianic expectations; see Carlos Carrete Parrondo, “Mesianismo e Inquisición en las juderías de Castilla la Nueva,” Helmantica. Revista de filología clásica y hebrea 31, no. 95 (1980): 251–56; John Edwars, “Elijah and the Inquisition, Messianic Prophecy among Conversos in Spain, c.1500,” Nottingham Medieval Studies 28 (1984): 79–94; Eleazar Gutwirth, “Jewish and Christian Messianism in 15th-Century Spain,” Medievalia Lovaniensia 26 (1998): 1–22. 69 The conversos often suffered different forms of discrimination and even inquisitorial trials. On the Portuguese marranos in the New World, most of the studies center on the inquisitorial archives, see Nathan Wachtel, The Faith of Remembrance: Marrano Labyrinths (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); Bruno Feitler, Inquisition, juifs et nouveaux-chrétiens au Brésil. Le Nordeste, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2003); Arnold Wiznitzer, Os Judeus no Brasil colonial (São Paulo: Livraria Pioneira Editôra, 1966). 70 We also have notice of a nineteenth-century copy of Vieira’s works from Puebla, Mexico, see Ana T. Valdez, “Vieira between History of the Future and Clavis Prophetarum,” in Visions, Prophecies and Divinations, 215–29, here 222.

10 Mirror Images Imperial Eschatology and Interreligious Transfer in Seventeenth-Century Greek Orthodoxy Nikolas Pissis In his long-awaited, magisterial study on the “Mediterranean Apocalypse,” Cornell Fleischer described “Prophecies of Empire” as an “interpretive structure that was, despite communal specificities, largely common” among early modern Muslims, Jews, and Christians: “In an age that, across the communal board, saw spiritual and social salvation as nearly coterminous, argument was not over the nature of the end of history, but rather over the particular identities of the historical protagonists.”1 Fleischer focuses on inter-imperial competition between Ottomans and Habsburgs in the sixteenth century, a combat conducted to an extent in an apocalyptic language,2 but his observation is also valid for connections and exchanges between religious communities inside the Ottoman Empire itself. In fact, the multi-religious Ottoman society constitutes a prominent research field for an attempt to write a connected history of early modern apocalypticism, as this volume aspires to do. The aim of this chapter is to contribute to that research agenda by drawing on apocalyptic beliefs in the Greek Orthodox world of the seventeenth century and especially by tracing connectedness along all three conceptual lines that inform the framework of this volume: interreligious transfers, mutual perception of apocalyptic currents, and, finally, similar responses to common causes or, in other words, providing providential interpretations to common experiences. However, in addition to highlighting some characteristic cases of cultural transfer, in the sense of manifold recontextualizations in time and space,3 a further task will be to reflect on the limits of “connected histories.” It will be argued that those limits had social and ideological preconditions, concerning the structure of the Orthodox community and its particular understanding of “imperial eschatology” (Reichseschatologie, following Gerhard Podskalsky)4 for imaginations of the End Times. While imperial eschatology formed a common prophetic language among Ottoman religious communities and beyond, the “communal specificities” to which Fleischer referred often proved crucial. Studies on Byzantine and post-Byzantine Greek apocalypticism have, as a rule, stressed the significance of apocalyptic beliefs either as part of Byzantine imperial ideology or—in the case of the Ottoman period—as factors in the formation of confessional and national identities.5 They have DOI: 10.4324/9781003081050-14

246  Nikolas Pissis examined the fates of certain textual traditions and central tropes, their transmissions and transformations over time, by tracing the subsequent recontextualizations and reinterpretations of those tropes. This is certainly a legitimate and—in terms of the work to be accomplished—still much needed approach. After all, the endurance of texts, figures, and even interpretive models over centuries is evident to anyone systematically enquiring into the topic. Moreover, the reconstruction of those transformations has revealed several transfer routes between East and West, as, for instance, concerning the messianic legend of the Last World Emperor.6 Nevertheless, if a “vertical” survey across the time-axis may shed light on the twisted trajectories of apocalyptic beliefs, a contextual approach that asks about commonalities and shared patterns, as well as about the actual mechanics of transfer in given historical constellations, may not just complement the former—but also help deepen interpretive insights with regard to the various functions of apocalyptic beliefs.7

Connected Traditions It has been recorded—an observation already made by the Papal legate Liutprand, Bishop of Cremona, in 968—8 that Byzantine and Arab apocalyptic legends were intertwined from the very beginning, sharing scenarios and topoi as a rule, holding opposite, that is mirroring, roles. In Ottoman times, those very legends alongside new creations formed part of a “common idiom”9 shared by the religious communities of the new Empire, an idiom that was recognizable and comprehensible beyond social and religious boundaries. Since the work of Frederick W. Hasluck, who unearthed several pieces of evidence for Muslim-Christian prophetic exchanges during the Ottoman times, Ottomanists in particular have traced the common ground on the field.10 It is not an overstatement that Ottoman imperial eschatology cannot be adequately understood and contextualized without taking into account the heritage of the Byzantine one. As Kaya Sahin recently put it: “In a sense, it can be argued that the Ottomans did not only take over the capital city of the Byzantine Empire, but also the Byzantine apocalyptic traditions associated with the empire and with Constantinople.”11 The central theme of the Byzantine apocalyptic tradition since the shock of the Arab conquests of the seventh and the eighth centuries had been imperial restoration connected with manifest or tacit eschatological implications and connotations.12 This remained true for its later rearrangement in the Ottoman context, when the challenges of theodicy—after all the Empire had ended but the world still existed, and it was a world in which infidels reigned over the faithful—were even more pressing. This theology of salvation was not preoccupied with determining the cause of the misfortunes—the cause was considered to be the sins of the faithful—but with their duration and their part in the divine script. In this sense, it was a consistent reading of this imperial eschatology that prompted the first patriarch of Ottoman Constantinople, Gennadios Scholarios, after his abdication

Mirror Images  247 in 1472, to predict the end of the world in two decades, in 1492.13 It was consistent, because the Last Worldly Empire, the fourth of the Danielic scheme and the Katechon of Paul (II Thesslonians 2: 6–7),14 the Roman Empire had fallen, and the year 1492 would correspond to the year 7000 in the Byzantine calendar. Thus, the dating would mean that the seven millennia of the world’s duration corresponded to the seven days of Creation. Of course, this prophecy was not fulfilled; apart from—a bon mot hard to resist—the discovery of a New World in that same year, 1492. However, as is the rule for prophecies, the failure of this one did not lead to a questioning of the whole interpretative framework. Some elements were tacitly abandoned, others rearranged and reapplied. The only certainty was that the Ottoman Empire, at least after the Near Eastern conquests of Sultan Selim I (r.1512–1520) (who among other things reunited the four Orthodox patriarchates in a single World Empire), could not be explained away as a short apocalyptic episode during the final countdown. Instead, the victory and the reign of the Muslims over the Christians had to be accommodated in the divine plan. The responses to this challenge followed two possible expectations: otherworldly redemption in the Last Judgement or terrestrial redemption through the Restoration of the Orthodox Empire, shortly before the End Times. This was a functional duality and allowed for occasional, situational switches from the one to the other expectation. The commonplace parallels to the captivity of Israel or to the Early Church under pagan Rome did not provide definitive answers to the question of when and how the “captivity” of the Christians and their church would end.15

Reinterpreting Byzantine Oracles Foretelling the doom of the Ottoman Empire by drawing inspiration from prophecies was a widespread European phenomenon in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, judging from the sheer number of pertinent Turcicapamphlets16 published at the time. Part of this heterogeneous and multi-lingual textual corpus was formed by age-old Byzantine oracles. These oracles had found their way into print mainly via Venice in the context of the VenetianOttoman Wars, especially in the years around the War of Cyprus and the naval Battle of Lepanto (1570–1571), which marked a peak in the production of such texts in manuscript and print form in Italian, Latin, and Greek.17 In this dynamic communication and exchange between actors in Venice and Istanbul, both Ottoman and Venetian Greeks were prominently involved.18 To make—for the purposes of this chapter—a long and complex story short, one has to deal mostly with the reinterpretation of Byzantine vaticinia ex eventu.19 Such cryptic narrations of historical events disguised as prophecies prompted creative misunderstandings and re-adaptations as soon as the allusions to the initial context were no longer discernible. For example, whereas older texts “predicted” the fall of Constantinople to the Crusaders (1204) and its eventual retaking by the Byzantines,20 the cryptic language of the oracles allowed (or invited) the detachment of the prophetic texts from

248  Nikolas Pissis their original context and their actualization in the Ottoman one. A further telling example are the oracles attributed to Emperor Leo VI (r.886–912) (Oracula Leonis), which initially alluded to the sequence of five emperors of the early ninth century (from Eirene to Leo V) and were reapplied subsequently to the Komnenoi in the late twelfth century. In the years of Lepanto, these oracles were reinterpreted as predictions of the five Ottoman sultans from Mehmed II the Conqueror (r.1444–1446, 1451–1481) to the then reigning Selim II (r.1566–1574), who thus was supposed to be the last of his dynasty and empire.21 But also new (post-1453) creations following similar patterns were susceptible to the same process of reinterpretation. The most popular oracle of this type was allegedly discovered on the tomb of Constantine the Great (Epitaphium Constantini).22 Initially it referred to the Venetian-Ottoman War of 1463–1479, but it was repeatedly re-applied as a prophecy of Ottoman doom, since it was included in the Chronograph,23 a best-selling Greek historical book since its first edition in 1631 and up to the nineteenth century, as an appendix which rounded up the narrative from Creation to the present and the predicted future. One of the central tropes of this Byzantine oracular tradition which was obsessively connected to the fate of the imperial capital Constantinople/ Istanbul, its loss and retaking, was that of the “blonde people” (ξανθόν γένος).24 The trope of the “blonde people” was initially, that is, in oracles of the ninth century, an allusion to some supposed Western allies of the last Roman Emperor in his final struggle against Ismail (the Arabs). Later, the “blonde people” came to denote the Crusaders as threatening conquerors of Byzantine Constantinople. Although the connotation of the trope switched again after 1453, it retained its part in the script: the “blonde people” were still expected to take the City, as in the Epitaphium Constantini. However, they were now identified with the Christian enemies of the Ottomans. From the early seventeenth century onward, the “blonde people” were identified with the Russian coreligionists. Greek ecclesiastics employed it in the seventeenth century in orchestrated attempts to export an ideology of universal monarchy to Russia.

Interreligious Transfers The trope of the “blonde people” is a prominent case in point for interreligious transfers. The “blonde people,” or actually “the sons of the Blonde/ Yellow one” (Banu al-Asfar in Arabic, Beniasfer in Turkish), performed similar functions in Islamic apocalyptic tradition. If one is to search for origins, these might be found in the Old Testament (Genesis 25:25), in the story of Jacob and his red-haired brother Esau/Edom (which means “red”) who in Jewish apocalyptic tradition became the ancestor of the Romans after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in 70 CE, and subsequently the ancestor of Christianity as a whole.25 In any case, the Banu al-Asfar represented the Romans (that is the Byzantines) in what constituted the mirror image of the Byzantine apocalyptic scenario from at least the ninth century.

Mirror Images  249 This shows that both traditions were already shaped by intense interreligious exchange. In the battles of the Latter Days, the “blonde people” would prove initially victorious over the Muslims before being finally defeated by the Mahdi, the messianic redeemer in the Islamic tradition.26 Since the age of the Crusades, Byzantine, and Arabic apocalypticisms both applied the trope of the “blonde people” to the Crusaders. In Ottoman times, this became part of pessimistic imperial eschatology (again analogous to the Byzantine one), the Beniasfer being identified, as a rule, with the Christian adversaries of the Ottomans. In the eighteenth century, identification with the Russians was common among Ottoman Muslims and Christians alike.27 Western European travelers, diplomats,28 and missionaries took notice of the legend either in the Greek Christian or in the Turkish Islamic version. But there were also those who observed that it was common across religious boundaries. Thomas Smith, chaplain of the English embassy in Istanbul between 1668 and 1671,29 particularly stressed the legend’s popularity: A certain Prophecy, of no small Authority, runs in the minds of all the People, and has gained great credit and belief among them, that their Empire shall be ruined by a Northern Nation, which has white and yellowish Hair. The Interpretation is as various, as their Fancy. Some fix this Character on the Moscovites; and the poor Greeks flatter themselves with foolish hopes, that they are to be their Deliverers, and to rescue them from their Slavery, chiefly because they are of their Communion […]. Others look upon the Sweeds, as the persons described in the prophecy, whom they are most to fear […] their continued successes confirmed the Turks in their first Belief and their Fears.30 Indeed, the identification with the Swedes had already been recorded by the Swedish Ambassador Claes Rålamb in 1658, who also quoted a further shared prophecy: They have a particular suspicion against the Swedish nation, it being writ in their prophecies, that their empire shall be destroy’d by a northern nation […] This their overthrow shall come from that people northward, which in the said prophecy is called caumies fer, i.e. yellow haired sons. But the ruin of Constantinople shall happen in one sultan Mehemet’s time, and then the Turks shall be reduced to so few in number, that sixty Turkish women shall have but one husband among them. Now as the present sultan’s name is Mehemet, when they heard of your majesty’s [the Swedish king Charles X Gustav] progresses in Poland, they were extremely affected with it, fearing the accomplishment of those prophecies now at hand. For they call the Swedes sfed, and say that between sfed and sfer there is so little difference.31 Rålamb’s reference to the name of Sultan Mehmed pointed to the belief that the first and the last emperor would have the same name, which dated back to

250  Nikolas Pissis Byzantine times. The fall of Constantinople under the last Byzantine Emperor Constantine Palaiologos in 1453, the namesake of its founder, Constantine the Great, gave further credence to this belief. It lived on in Ottoman times as a shared prophecy with opposite connotations. Thus, the rule of sultans bearing the name of the Conqueror such as Mehmed III (r.1591–1603) and especially Mehmed IV (r.1648–1687) gave birth to speculations about Ottoman doom, whether ominous anxieties or wishful thinking.32 The prophecy of the “blonde people” permeated Ottoman borders, since it found its way not only into Western anti-Ottoman printed pamphlets and prophetic compilations, but also into seminal erudite achievements such as the Glossaria of Charles du Fresne, sieur du Cange,33 or the Dictionnaire historique et critique of Pierre Bayle (1647–1706). Bayle may have ridiculed prophetic “credulity,” but nevertheless meticulously collected and quoted in his footnote apparatus numerous variants of both the Christian and the Islamic mirroring traditions.34 The spread of the legend facilitated multi-directional transfers. These cannot be adequately analyzed in a strictly Ottoman framework, since exchange between Ottoman Muslims and Christians often depended on Western mediation. A good example is the work of Ierotheos Komninos, a learned doctor and later Metropolitan of Drystra (1711–1719). In 1698, he translated the work by the polyhistor Stansilaus Reinhard Axtelmeier, “Muscowittisches Prognosticon,” from German into vernacular Greek for the Wallachian court, an idiosyncratic work that predicted the imminent crushing of the Ottoman Porte by Tsar Peter on the basis of both geopolitical and astrological evidence. Axtelmeier quoted the prophecy of the “blonde people” in the last part of his book devoted to the actual prognostica, apparently from an earlier German adaptation of an Italian translation (figlioli biondi) of the Beniasfer-variant.35 This is rendered in Ierotheos’ translation into the familiar Greek version of the “blonde people.” On the Muslim side one may quote the example of the Hungarian convert Ibrahim Müteferrika, the pioneer of Ottoman printing, who in 1710 combined Protestant and Islamic apocalyptic material in his portrayal of Sultan Ahmed III (r.1703–1730) as the World Emperor of the Latter Days, based on both the Book of Daniel and the Revelation of John.36

Mutual Perceptions To be sure, not all exchange was mediated. Apart from being a prominent example for a transreligious myth, the “blonde people” topos provides evidence for a second mode of connectedness: mutual perceptions. Ottoman Muslims and Christians were aware of each other’s apocalyptic lore and pointed to it in their pleas for the credibility and probability of the prophecy. A case in point is provided by a letter of the Metropolitan of Ioannina, Kallinikos, in May 1650 to the Russian Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich. The story Kallinikos tells to the tsar concerns an Ottoman dignitary from Istanbul who visited the region of Epirus. Near the village Stroumi (today Amphithea), the dignitary gave a feast which many local Muslim notables

Mirror Images  251 attended. They apparently came to talk about the military strength of the various contemporary rulers including the Muscovite tsar. Some orthodox monks from nearby monasteries, who came to pay tribute to the dignitaries, and later apparently narrated the incident to Kallinikos, were asked for their appraisals of the strength of other rulers. One of the monks, a certain Nektarios, had been in Muscovy for alms-seeking purposes and he was asked about the tsar’s strength. Following his appraisal, a former Orthodox Christian and convert to Islam,37 who was in the entourage of a certain Demir-pasha, referred to the oracles; he pointed to the Russians as the ones who would take the City and let the Greeks rule again—in allusion to the Epitaphium Constantini. Some days later, the worried local governor decided to consult a much revered local ulema—a learned teacher of Islamic theology—called Lezi effendi. Lezi confirmed the ominous oracles and added that the Turks’ time was running out since the Muscovite tsar would soon reign in Istanbul. He then was asked: How come this is written only in our books and not in the books of the Greeks? Lezi proposed to ask the abbot of the nearby monastery of Kosmas and Damianos to bring the Greek book Chronograph. This happened; Lezi asked the abbot to read out the oracle of the tomb of Constantine and then assured the dignitaries of its truthfulness. “What is God’s will, shall happen!” the ulema exclaimed. Kallinikos’s letter continued its account: The upset dignitaries left the ulema undisturbed; but they found other complaints with the abbot. Apparently, he had repaired his monastery’s church without asking for prior permission, and the dignitaries insisted that it had to be demolished. This was actually the motive of Kalinikos’s letter to the tsar, as he proceeded to ask for financial support in rebuilding the church. But we should not dismiss the entire story as fabricated to manipulate the tsar. In any case, such an exchange and consensus between Muslims and Christians was at least imaginable.38 Around the same time, Greek agents of the Muscovite tsar who encouraged him in an active anti-Ottoman policy and employed the prophecy of the “blonde people” to this aim were aware of its mirror image. They cited from Muslim sources accordingly or referred generally to pessimistic Ottoman predictions: They [the Ottomans] are been humiliated [by the Don Cossacks]. Because in their own books it is written that their Empire will be ruined by a Blonde people. The Turks have found it in their Chronicle that their time ran out.39 It is a standard feature of such cross-references that the infidels’ books or chronicles, which in other contexts would be dismissed as “full of lies,” are deemed particularly credible.40

Shared Challenges Besides transfers and mutual perceptions, eschatological expectations were connected in a third way: Greek and Ottoman Turkish texts responded in

252  Nikolas Pissis similar manners to common challenges. The existential crisis of the Ottoman government in the middle of the seventeenth century triggered apocalyptic speculations about its near doom among Ottoman Muslims and Christians as well as foreign observers.41 However, the Ottoman seventeenth-century framework represents once again only part of the overall context one should consider. The crucial question, one that is much debated in the context of connected histories and histoire croisée, is in which cases one deals with connected experiences and exchanges, comparable parallels or, what Reinhard Koselleck used to call “anthropological constants.”42 Set next to contemporary phenomena, Greek messianic expectations in the Russian Tsar as divinely ordained avenger and redeemer from Ottoman rule acquire the character of a pattern; the pattern of an ethno-religious community that must come to terms with the rule of infidels over the faithful and develops providential narratives ascribing messianic qualities and a messianic mission of redemption to a savior-king. In similar, or actually mirroring circumstances, the Iberian Moriscos of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century developed an almost identical catalogue of topoi: First, the Ottoman sultan appeared as the protector of Islam and as the messianic redeemer of his coreligionists in accord with ancient prophecies, vaticinia ex eventu, which had already “predicted” the initial victory of the Christians and the sufferings of the Muslims. Second, those vaticinia were partially ascribed to Christian authorities as further substantiation of their reliability. Third, they were used as a political language in diplomatic missions at the courts of adversaries of the Spaniards, seen as future redeemers (e.g. the Ottoman Sultan, the French King, various Protestant powers), and in conspiracies. Finally, the providential narrative identified sins that had to be chastised and effaced before the foretold time of revenge and redemption.43 Surely, it would not be odd to imagine mutual awareness of those beliefs among contemporaries and even trace channels of communication facilitating exchange. However, what is of primary importance here is that they belonged to a political imagery that was apparently widespread, if not commonplace; an imagery that did not constitute an Ottoman peculiarity. After all, similar messianic expectations were invested in, and addressed to, the Swedish king Gustav Adolf, the “Midnight Lion,” by endangered Protestant communities during the Thirty Years’ War.44 The biblical archetype for such imagery can be found in Deutero-Isaiah and his praise of the Persian King Cyrus as an instrument of God for the liberation of the Jews from Babylonian captivity (Isaiah 44–45). That reference alone suggests a shared resource, a cultural code common to the three main monotheistic religions.

Apocalypticism as a Self-Referential Discourse Nevertheless, the study of the Greek apocalyptic commentaries tends to confirm an observation that can claim validity also for oracular literature:

Mirror Images  253 they can hardly be read merely as discourses of crisis, or of mere “hope and despair.”45 To be sure, accommodation of Ottoman rule into a divine plan and/or the promise of its near end might have brought consolation, if that was sought. But the consistency of the phenomenon for centuries despite some undeniable peaks of popular preoccupation suggest also considering more nuanced interpretations. Pierre Bayle, in the lemma quoted above, was especially keen in observing this multiplicity of apocalyptic motivations and expectations: Si nous voulons attribuer toutes ces menaces prophétiques à une seule cause, nous nous tromperons. L’envie de se consoler par l’espérance de la ruine d’un furieux persécuteur, fait trouver facilement cette ruine dans les prédictions de l’écriture, ou dans quelques autres sources. Voilà donc des gens qui prédisent par crédulité et par illusion. L’envie de consoler les peuples et de dissiper leurs craintes, oblige certaines gens à supposer que l’Ecriture, les prodiges et plusieurs autres pronostics promettent la prochaine ruine de la puissance que l’on redoute. Voilà donc des gens qui prédisent par Politique. Ceux qui le font afin de rendre plus courageuses les troupes qu’on met sur pied, sont des Prophètes de la même classe. Il y en a qui le font afin d’exciter les soulèvements dans le païs ennemi; par exemple, afin d’animer les Grecs qui reconnaissent le grand Turc pour leur Souverain, à prendre les armes contre leur maître. Ceux-ci appartiennent à une autre classe; il les faut nommer Prophètes de sédition.46 In so far as apocalypticism provides authoritative answers to the riddles of terrestrial, historical events and invests them with meaning in accordance to a transcendent, divine script, thus structuring time, it may be read in terms of functional models (compensation) or of anthropological constants (hope, fear, and not least: curiosity). In such a view, apocalypticism possessed a relatively self-referential character; it was a language providing meaning in its own context. Apocalyptic and oracular predictions were often “functionally ambiguous” and had rather limited direct practical consequences, especially for individuals.47 This is not to say that Greek Orthodox apocalypticism lacked political relevance. On the contrary, it is primarily to be read as a political language, albeit a flexible and adaptable one, in that it legitimates, contests, aligns, and sometimes motivates. Although certain anti-Ottoman revolts and practically all pertinent designs did seek and find inspiration in apocalyptic imagination,48 as Bayle noted, the same providential narrative rationalized Ottoman rule and supported legitimist discourses. It certainly did not lead to the emergence of a genuine messianic or millenarian social movement comparable to contemporary phenomena in different religious contexts. It remained for the most part “a learned, a scribal phenomenon,” following the terminology of Bernard McGinn.49 Individuals “who both believed that the world was going to end and planned as if it would not,”50 like Patriarch Gennadios Scholarios, who

254  Nikolas Pissis presided over the renegotiation of the Church’s status under the sultan’s rule, are not a special feature of Greek Orthodox apocalypticism. However, we should ask why, despite multiple transfers from other monotheistic religions and Christian confessions, Greek Orthodoxy did not experience millenarianism proper, nor the emergence of messianic figures—individuals claiming with some success such a divine mission. There is no Greek Sabbatai Zevi, no Moro al Fatimi,51 no Jan van Leiden. It is in this field— messiahs and messianism proper—that the limits of transreligious commonalities emerge more clearly.52 A possible answer may be found in sociopolitical preconditions. The Orthodox community did enjoy a relatively comfortable position within the Ottoman Empire, as well as a relative institutional stability around the Patriarchs and the Church. Despite all laments, not least so in apocalyptic contexts, the Orthodox were not a persecuted religious minority. On the other hand, the conservative spirit of Byzantine imperial eschatology, the vision of vengeance and restoration to be followed only by the End of Times, did not really allow for a new millennium. Characteristically enough, in Greek Orthodox apocalyptic literature of the Ottoman period, the restored Orthodox Empire is never described, a reminiscence perhaps of the eschatological connotations of the expectation of redemption.

Conclusion The mirroring of apocalyptic beliefs in different religious communities of Ottoman society suggests that these communities shared a set of cultural resources that made sense beyond the religious boundaries and, moreover, tended to confirm each other. Nevertheless, it is doubtful whether these eschatological expectations can be described as a single phenomenon of “Ottoman messianism.”53 First, eschatological expectations were linked to contrasting political visions. Greek Orthodox writings about the End Times had an unmistakable political content—they expected vengeance, in one way or the other, terrestrial or otherworldly, and an end to the infidels’ rule. Second, their specific medieval Byzantine background determined to a large degree the imagination of that end, enabling certain elements to be appropriated into the inherited apocalyptic scenarios and others not. Third, more crucially perhaps, multiple connections point beyond an Ottoman imperial framework. The paramount role, for example, of Venetian Greeks in mediating anti-Ottoman discourses between East and West has been underlined. In addition, Greek Orthodox apocalyptic exegesis adopted from Western (especially Lutheran) apocalypticism the conviction that Islam—in the form of the “false prophet” Muhammad, the Ottoman Empire, or the currently reigning sultan—was the biblical Antichrist or at least one of his forerunners. From the early seventeenth century onward, this belief became standard in Greek printed works as well as in composite manuscripts which combined oracular and exegetical material in a common apocalyptic vision.54 This occurrence reinforces the relative self-referentiality of

Mirror Images  255 apocalyptic discourses—after all, common references to the sultan as the Antichrist did not lead Orthodox subjects to refuse paying their taxes or to openly combat Ottoman rule. But these multiple connections suggest that it would be misleading to consider such apocalyptic discourses as a particularly Ottoman phenomenon. Instead, it is more reasonable to regard apocalypticism as part and parcel of an interpretive structure that was shared by early modern Jews, Muslims, and Christians.

Notes 1 Cornell H. Fleischer, “A Mediterranean Apocalypse: Prophecies of Empire in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 61 (2018): 18–90, here 21, 79. 2 Cornell H. Fleischer, “Shadows of Shadows: Prophecy in Politics in 1530s Istanbul,” International Journal of Turkish Studies 13 (2007): 51–62; idem, “The Lawgiver as Messiah: The Making of the Imperial Image in the Reign of Süleymân,” in Soliman le Magnifique et son temps, ed. Gilles Veinstein (Paris: La Documentation française, 1992), 159–72; Tijana Krstić, Contested Conversions to Islam: Narratives of Religious Change in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 75–84; Kaya Şahin, Empire and Power in the Reign of Süleyman. Narrating the Sixteenth-Century Ottoman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 74–87, 243–53. This combat has been recognized as a model case for connected histories: Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Turning the Stones Over. Sixteenth-Century Millenarianism from the Tagus to the Ganges,”The Indian Economic and Social History Review 40/2 (2003): 129–61. 3 This notion of transfer as movement from one temporal, spatial, or epistemic context into another follows the concept of the Collective Research Center (SFB 980) “Episteme in Motion. Transfer of Knowledge from the Ancient World to the Early Modern Period” at the Free University Berlin. See Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum and Anita Traninger, eds., Wissen in Bewegung. Institution—Iteration—Transfer (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2015) [Episteme in Bewegung; 1]. 4 Gerhard Podskalsky, Byzantinische Reichseschatologie (Munich: Fink, 1972). 5 Paul J. Alexander, The Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Marios Hatzopoulos, “Oracular Prophecy and the Politics of Toppling Ottoman Rule in South-East Europe,” The Historical Review/La Revue Historique 8 (2011): 95–114; N. A. Veis, “Περί του ιστορημένου χρησμολογίου της Κρατικής Βιβλιοθήκης του Βερολίνου και του θρύλου του Μαρμαρωμένου Βασιλιά,” Byzantinisch-Neugriechische Jahrbücher 13 (1936–1937): 203–44λστ΄. 6 Paul J. Alexander, “Byzantium and the Migration of Literary Works and Motifs. The Legend of the Last Roman Emperor,” Medievalia et Humanistica N. S., 2 (1971): 47–68; Hannes Möhring, Der Weltkaiser der Endzeit. Entstehung, Wandel und Wirkung einer tausendjährigen Weissagung (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2000); Andras Kraft, “The Last Roman Emperor Topos in the Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition,” Byzantion 82 (2012): 213–17; idem, “The Last Roman Emperor and the Mahdī. On the Genesis of a Contentious Politico-religious Topos,” in Πρακτικά Διεθνούς Συμποσίου: Βυζάντιο και Αραβικός κόσμος. Συνάντηση Πολιτισμών, ed. Apostolos Kralides and Andreas Gkoutzioukostas (Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 2013), 233–48. 7 As a good example of such an approach, see G. Koutzakiotis, Attendre la fin du monde au XVIIe siècle. Le Messie juif et le grand drogman (Paris: Association Pierre Belon, 2014).

256  Nikolas Pissis 8 Alexander, The Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition, 96–99. 9 Fleischer, “Mediterranean Apocalypse,” 20. 10 F. W. Hasluck, Christianity and Islam under the Sultans (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929), vol. 2, 352–55, 471–74, 721–26, 736–40; Stéphane Yerasimos, Légendes d’Empire. La Fondation de Constantinople et de Sainte-Sophie dans les traditions turques (Paris: Librairie d’Amérique et d’Orient J. Maisonneuve, 1990); Michel Balivet, “Textes de fin d’empire, récits de fin du monde: à propos de quelques thèmes communs aux groupes de la zone byzantino-turque,” in Les Traditions apocalyptiques au tournant de la chute de Constantinople, ed. Benjamin Lellouch and Stéphane Yerasimos (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999), 5–18; Julian Raby, “Mehmed the Conqueror and the Byzantine Rider of the Augustaion,” Topkapi Saray Müzesi Yıllığı 2 (1987): 141–52. 11 Kaya Şahin, “Constantinople and the End Time: The Ottoman Conquest as a Portent of the Last Hour,” Journal of Early Modern History 14 (2010): 317– 54: here 352; cf. Suraiya Faroqhi, Kultur und Alltag im Osmanischen Reich. Vom Mittelalter bis zum Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts, 2nd ed. (München: Beck, 2003), 91–92; Fleischer, “Mediterranean Apocalypse,” 49. 12 David Olster, “Byzantine Apocalypses,” in The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, vol. 2: Apocalypticism in Western History and Culture, ed. Bernard McGinn (New York-London: Continuum 2000), 48–73; Alexander, The Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition, 151–84; Paul Magdalino, “The History of the Future and Its Uses: Prophecy, Policy and Propaganda,” in The Making of Byzantine History. Studies Dedicated to Donald M. Nicol, ed. Roderick Beaton and Charlotte Roueché (Aldershot: Variorum, 1993), 3–34; idem, “The End of Time in Byzantium,” in Endzeiten. Eschatologie in den monotheistischen Weltreligionen, ed. Wolfram Brandes and Felicitas Schmieder (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), 119–33. 13 Œuvres complètes de Gennade Scholarios, ed. L. Petit, X. A. Siderides and M. Jugie (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1928–1936), vol. 4, 510–12; MarieHélène Congourdeau, “Byzance et la fin du monde. Courants de pensée apocalyptiques sous les Paléologues,” in Les Traditions apocalyptiques au tournant de la chute de Constantinople, ed. Benjamin Lellouch and Stéphane Yerasimos (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999), 56–73; Marie-Hélène Blanchet, GeorgesGennadios Scholarios (vers 1400–vers 1472). Un Intellectuel orthodoxe face à la disparition de l’empire byzantin (Paris: Institut Français d’Études Byzantines, 2008), 125–33, 217–22; Wolfram Brandes, “Der Fall Konstantinopels als apokalyptisches Ereignis,” in Geschehenes und Geschriebenes. Studien zu Ehren von Günther S. Henrich und Klaus-Peter Matschke, ed. Sebastian Kolditz and Ralf C. Müller (Leipzig: Eudora, 2005), 453–69. 14 L. J. Lietaert Peerbolte, “The κατέχον/κατέχων of 2 Thess. 2: 6–7,” Novum Testamentum 39, no. 2 (1997): 138–50. 15 For expanded comments on this duality, see Nikolas Pissis, “Apokalyptik und Zeitwahrnehmung in griechischen Texten der osmanischen Zeit,” in Das Osmanische Europa. Methoden und Perspektiven der Frühneuzeitforschung zu Südosteuropa, ed. Andreas Helmedach et al. (Leipzig: Eudora, 2014), 463–86. 16 Carl Göllner, Turcica, vol. 3: Die Türkenfrage in der öffentlichen Meinung Europas im 16. Jahrhundert, (Bucharest: Editura Academiei; Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1978), 173–215, 334–56; Kenneth M. Setton, Western Hostility to Islam and Prophecies of Turkish Doom (Philadelphia, MA: American Philosophical Society, 1992). 17 Géraud Poumarède, Pour en finir avec la Croisade. Mythes et réalités de la lutte contre les Turcs aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2004), 83–104; Paolo Preto, Venezia e i Turchi, 2nd ed. (Rome: Viella, 2013), 51; Letita Pierozzi, “La vittoria di Lepanto nell’escatologia e nella profezia,” Rinascimento 34 (1994): 317–63; Antonio Rigo, “Profetizzare Lepanto,”

Mirror Images  257 in Η απήχηση της ναυμαχίας της Ναυπάκτου στον ευρωπαϊκό, ed. K. G. Tsiknakis (Athens-Venice: Ελληνικό Ινστιτούτο Βενετίας, 2013), 139–55. 18 Antonio Rigo, Oracula Leonis. Tre manoscritti greco-veneziani degli oracoli attributi all’imperatore bizantino Leone il Saggio (Bodl. Baroc. 170, Marc. Gr. VI.22, Marc Gr. VII.3) (Padua: Editoriale Programma, 1988); Katerina Kyriakou, Οι ιστορημένοι χρησμοί του Λέοντος του Σοφού. Χειρόγραφη παράδοση και εκδόσεις κατά τους ΙΕ΄-ΙΘ΄ αιώνες (Athens: Σύλλογος προς Διάδοσιν Ωφελίμων Βιβλίων, 1995). 19 Paul J. Alexander, “Medieval Apocalypses as Historical Sources,” The American Historical Review 73 (1968): 997–1018; Lorenzo Di Tommaso, The Book of Daniel and the Apocryphal Daniel Literature (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2005), 75, 104–7. Cf. Thomas Long, “Revisiting the Revelation: Early Modern Appropriations of Medieval Apocalypticism,” in A Companion to the Premodern Apocalypse, ed. Michael A. Ryan (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2016), 378–425, esp. 381, 385 on early modern “disassembling and reassembling” of medieval prophecies. 20 Paul Magdalino, “Prophecies on the Fall of Constantinople,” in Urbs Capta. The Fourth Crusade and Its Consequences, ed. Angeliki Laiou (Paris: Lethielleux, 2005), 41–53; Wolfram Brandes, “Konstantinopels Fall im Jahre 1204 und ‘apokalyptische’ Prophetien,” in Syriac Polemics. Studies in Honour of Gerrit Jan Reinink, ed. Wout Jac. van Bekkum et al. (Leuven-Paris-Dudley, MA: Peeters, 2007), 239–59. 21 W. G. Brokkaar et al., eds, The Oracles of the Most Wise Emperor Leo and the Tale of the True Emperor (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam, 2002); Cyrill Mango, “The Legend of Leo the Wise,” ZRVI 6 (1960): 59–93; Kyriakou, Οι ιστορημένοι χρησμοί. 22 Patrologia Graeca vol. 160, col. 710–714; C. J. G. Turner, “An Oracular Interpretation Attributed to Gennadius Scholarius,” Ελληνικά 21 (1968): 40–47. 23 Βιβλίον Ιστορικόν περιέχον εν συνόψει διαφόρους και εξόχους ιστορίας (Venice 1631), p. ψιστ΄ (Pseudo-Dorotheos); Νέα Σύνοψις διαφόρων Ιστοριών αρχομένη από κτίσεως κόσμου (Venice 1637), p. φκε΄ (Matthaios Kigalas). The Epitaphium Constantini was also a standard text in the numerous prophetic manuscripts from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. 24 Agostino Pertusi, Fine di Bisanzio e fine del mondo. Significato e ruolo storico delle profezie sulla caduta di Constantinopoli in Oriente e in Occidente (Rome: Nelle sede dell’Istituto, 1988), 40–109; Nikolas Pissis, Russland in den politischen Vorstellungen der griechischen Kulturwelt (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020), 311–47. 25 Ignác Goldziher, “Asfar,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., vol. 1, ed. P. Bearman et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1960), 687–88; Maribel Fierro, “Al-Asfar,” Studia Islamica 77 (1993): 169–81; Yerasimos, Légendes d’Empire, 187–99; F. v. Erdmann, “Ueber die sonderbare Benennung der Europäer, Benu-l-asfar (Nachkommen des Gelben), von Seiten der Westasiaten,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 2 (1848): 237–41. On Edom and the Edomites, see Hans Schmoldt, Lexikon der biblischen Personen und Gestalten, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2009), 76–77. The alternative derivation from the name of the Flavius dynasty seems to me less convincing: Hasluck, Christianity and Islam, vol. 2, 471–72; Pertusi, Fine di Bisanzio, 66–67; Magdalino, “Prophecies,” 51; Brandes, “Konstantinopels Fall,” 257. 26 Şahin, “Constantinople and the End Time,” 324–26; Hannes Möhring, “Endkaiser- und Mahdi-Erwartung als Charakteristikum der Geschichte Europas und des Vorderen Orients,” Historische Zeitschrift 274 (2002): 315–27. 27 I. N. Lebedeva, Pozdnie grečeskie chroniki i ich russkie i vostočnye perevody, [Palestinskij Sbornik 18 (81)] (Leningrad: Nauka, 1968), 104–5; Poumarède, Pour en finir avec la Croisade, 135; Hasluck, Christianity, vol. 2, 471–72; Goldziher, “Asfar,” 688.

258  Nikolas Pissis 28 Diplomats of European powers attempted to capitalize on pertinent fears of the Ottoman government. This was the case with the French ambassador Jean de la Forêt in 1535 and the Habsburg ambassador Michael Talman in 1708. See respectively Balivet, “Textes de fin d’empire,” 9–11; H. Fleischer, “Shadows of Shadows,” 56; Eudoxiu de Hurmuzaki, Documente privitóre la Istoria Romanilor, vol. 6 (Bucharest: Socecu, Sander & Teclu, 1878), 64–68. 29 Charles Miller, “Educating the English: Dr. Thomas Smith and the Study of Orthodoxy in the Seventeenth Century,” in Anglicanism and Orthodoxy. 300 Years after the ‘Greek College’ in Oxford, ed. Peter M. Doll (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2006), 113–32. 30 John Ray, A Collection of Curious Travels & Voyages in Two Tomes (London 1693), vol. 2, 80–81. 31 “A Relation of a Journey to Constantinople,” in A collection of Voyages and Travels, 3rd ed., vol. 5, ed. A. Churchill, J. Churchill (London 1732), 669–716, here 682, 701–2. 32 Gennadios Scholarios referred to the Constantine-connection in his Chronographia in 1472: Œuvres complètes de Gennade Scholarios, vol. 4, 510–11.; Cf. Congourdeau, “Byzance et la fin du monde,” 63, n. 30; Radu G. Păun, “Enemies Within: Networks of Influence and the Military Revolts against the Ottoman Power (Moldavia and Wallachia, Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries),” in The European Tributary States of the Ottoman Empire in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed. G. Kármán and L. Kunčévić (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2013), 209–49, here 236–38; Setton, Western Hostility, 38. Cf. the inclusion in the Chronograph: Βιβλίον Ιστορικόν, p. φμε΄. 33 Charles du Fresne, sieur du Cange, Glossarium ad Scriptores mediae et infimae latinitatis, 2nd ed. (Paris 1733), vol. 3, col. 544–45, art. “Flavi”; idem, Glossarium ad Scriptores mediae et infimae graecitatis (Lyon 1688), vol. 1, col. 1012, Art. “Ξανθοί.” 34 Pierre Bayle, Dictionnaire Historique et Critique, vol. 2 (Rotterdam 1697), art. “Mahomet,” 487–89. On Bayle’s critical stance towards apocalypticism, see John Christian Laursen, “Bayle’s Anti-Millenarianism: The Dangers of Those Who Claim to Know the Future,” in Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture, vol. IV: Continental Millenarians: Protestants, Catholics, Heretics, ed. John Christian Laursen and Richard H. Popkin (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), 95–106. 35 Stanislaus Reinhard Acxtelmeier, Das Muscowittische Prognosticon oder Der Glorwürdige Czaar Peter Alexowiz. Von der gewachsenen Russischen Macht, von dem Tyrann Iwan Wasilowiz, biß unter höchsterwehnte Czaarische Majestät, deren umständige Kriegs-Anstalten ihr das Orientalische Reich und dero Patriarchen Sitz Constantinopel versprechen (Augsburg, 1698). On Axtelmeier see: W. Harms, “Axtelmeier, Stanislaus Reinhard,” in KillyLiteraturlexikon, vol. 1, 2nd ed. (Berlin-New York: de Gruyter, 2008), 273. Axtelmeier’s source was probably Johann Praetorius, Turci-Cida, Oder der vielfach-vorgeschlagene Türcken-Schläger […] (Zwickau, 1664), f. Bv. On Praetorius see Gerhild Scholz Williams, Ways of Knowing in Early Modern Germany. Johannes Praetorius as a Witness to His Times (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006); M. Schilling, “Praetorius, Johannes,” in Killy-Literaturlexikon, vol. 9, 2nd ed. (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2010), 313–14. 36 N. E. Kovaćs, “Eschatology as an Instrument of Ottoman Imperial Propaganda in the Early Eighteenth Century: Some Remarks on the Treatise of Ibrahim Müteferrika,” in Şerefe. Studies in Honour of Prof. Géza Dávid on His Seventieth Birthday, ed. P. Fodor et al. (Budapest: Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2019), 481–501. According to Mütefferika, Ahmed would triumph over Russian (ekalim-i moskoviyye) and Roman (memleket-i kizil elmaviyye) Christianity (see p. 490).

Mirror Images  259 37 On the role of Ottoman converts in apocalyptic exchange see Krstić, Contested Conversions, 75–97. 38 Nikolaj F. Kapterev, Kharakter otnoshenij Rossii k pravoslavnomu vostoku v XVI i XVII stoletijakh (Sergiev Posad: Elov, 1914), 340–43. 39 “Tαπηνόνουνται διότης και εις τα βιβλία τους γράφη πως η βασιλεία τους από ξανθό γένος θέλει να παρθή,” Letter of Ioanis Tafralis (Ivan Petrov) to Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich. Rossijski Gosudarstvennyj Arkhiv Drevnykh Aktov [RGADA, Moscow], fond 52, opis’ 2, nr. 219, f. 4, 15. November 1644; “Tο ήβραν οι Τούρκοι εις το ταρίχι τους πως εσόθικεν ο καιρός τους,” Letter of Ioannis Anastasiou (Ivan Anastasev) to Tsar Aleksej Mikhajlovich. RGADA f. 52, op. 2, nr. 549, 25. Mai 1656. See also Nadezhda P. Česnokova, “Ideja vizantijskogo nasledija v Rossii serediny XVII v.,” Kapterevskie Chtenija 5 (2007): 179–98, here 181. 40 Fleischer, “Mediterranean Apocalypse,” 25. 41 Păun, “Enemies Within,” esp. 245. See also for further evidence, Pissis, Russland, 148–50, 218–20. 42 Reinhart Koselleck, Zeitschichten. Studien zur Historik (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 2000), 218; Jürgen Kocka, “Comparison and Beyond,” History and Theory 42 (2003): 39–44; Jürgen Osterhammel, “Transferanalyse und Vergleich im Fernverhältnis,” in Vergleich und Transfer. Komparatistik in den Sozial-, Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften, ed. Hartmut Kaelble and Jürgen Schriewer (Frankfurt-New York: Campus, 2003), 438–66; Magrit Pernaut, Transnationale Geschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 36–56. 43 Mayte Green Mercado, “Morisco Prophecies at the French Court (1602– 1607),” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 61 (2018): 91–123; idem, “The Mahdi in Valencia: Messianism, Apocalypticism and Morisco Rebellion in Late Sixteenth Century Spain,” Medieval Encounters 19 (2013): 193–220; Mercedes García-Arenal, Messianism and Puritanical Reform. Mahdis of the Muslim West (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2006). 44 Carlos Gilly, “The ‘Midnight Lion’, The ‘Eagle’ and the ‘Antichrist’: Political, Religious and Chiliastic Propaganda in the Pamphlets, Illustrated Broadsheets and Ballads of the Thirty Years War,” Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis 80 (2000): 46–77; Helmut Zschoch, “Größe und Grenzen des ‘Löwen von Mitternacht’. Das Bild Gustav Adolfs in der populären protestantischen Publizistik als Beispiel religiöser Situationswahrnehmung im Dreißigjährigen Krieg,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 91 (1994): 25–50; Georg Schmidt, Die Reiter der Apokalypse. Geschichte des Dreissigjährigen Kriegs (Munich: Beck, 2018), 343–90. 45 Robin Barnes, “Images of Hope and Despair: Western Apocalypticism: ca. 1500–1850,” in The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, vol. 2: Apocalypticism in Western History and Culture, ed. Bernard McGinn (New York-London: Continuum, 2000), 143–84. 46 Bayle, Dictionnaire, 489. 47 Thomas Kaufmann, “Apokalyptische Deutung und politisches Denken im lutherischen Protestantismus in der Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts,” in Die Autorität der Zeit in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Arndt Brendecke et al. (Berlin: LIT, 2007), 411–53, esp. 414–18; Felicitas Schmieder, “Eschatologische Prophetie im Mittelalter—Ein Mittel ‚politischer‘ Kommunikation?” in Politische Bewegungen und symbolische Ordnung. Hagener Studien zur Politischen Kulturgeschichte. Festschrift für Peter Brandt, ed. Werner Daum et al. (Bonn: Dietz, 2014), 17–31; Matthias Pohlig, “Was ist Heilsgeschichte? Formen und Funktionen eines Deutungsmusters in Spätmittelalter und Reformation,” in Geschichtsentwürfe und Identitätsbildung am Übergang zur Neuzeit. Vol. 1: Paradigmen personaler Identität, ed. Ludger Grenzmann et al.

260  Nikolas Pissis (Berlin-Boston: de Gruyter, 2016), 54–77; idem, “Exegese und Historiographie. Lutherische Apokalypsekommentare als Kirchengeschichtsschreibung (1530– 1618),” in Frühneuzeitliche Konfessionskulturen, ed. Thomas Kaufmann et al. (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2008), 289–317. 48 Eleni Gara, “Prophecy, Rebellion, Suppression: Revisiting the Revolt of Dionysios the Philosopher in 1611,” in Paradigmes rebelles. Pratiques et cultures de la désobéissance à l’époque moderne, ed. Gregorio Salinero et al. (Brussels: PIE Peter Lang, 2018), 335–63. 49 Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 30–31. 50 Ian P. Wei, “Introduction,” in Medieval Futures. Attitudes to the Future in the Middle Ages, ed. J.A. Burrow and Ian P. Wei (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2000), 9–14, here xii. 51 Green Mercado, “The Mahdi in Valencia.” 52 Phokion P. Kotzageorgis, “‘Messiahs’ and Neomartyrs in Ottoman Thessaly: Some Thoughts on Two Entries in a Mühimme Defteri,” Archivum Ottomanicum, 23 (2005–2006): 219–31. 53 Eugenia Kermeli, “Kyrillos Loukaris’ Legacy: Reformation as a Catalyst in the 17th Century Ottoman Society,” The Muslim World 107 (2017): 737–53. On “Ottoman Messianism,” 752–53. 54 Asterios Argyriou, Les Exégèses grecques de l’Apocalypse à l’époque turque (1453–1821). Esquisse d’une histoire des courants idéologiques au sein du peuple grec asservi (Thessaloniki: Hetaireia Makedonikôn Spoudôn, 1982).

11 Restorers of the Divine Law Native American Revolts in the New World, Christianity, and the Quest for Purity in the Age of Revolution1 Catherine Ballériaux, in collaboration with Damien Tricoire During his missionary career among the Delaware in the 1760s, the Moravian David Zeisberger was, like all missionaries, frequently confronted with native criticisms. A Shawnee reacted, for example, to Zeisberger’s attempts to convert him by claiming that he had “read the Bible from beginning to end and that it is not written in it that the Indians should live like the white people, or that they should change their lives.”2 This kind of statement on the part of indigenous people was extremely frequent in all American colonies, and their unease over the “European” version of Christianity increasingly resulted in armed resistance over the course of the eighteenth century. These movements, whether led by the “Delaware prophets” active on the border between New France and English colonies, or by the many Mexican and Peruvian leaders who claimed to have received their authority from both the Christian God and their own royal ancestors, are often interpreted as the expressions of an unrealistic wish to return to a native past that was doomed to disappear. The historiography tends to follow this diagnosis by interpreting these complex cultural phenomena with a methodology based on suspicion: these movements, although their leaders frequently use an explicitly Christian vocabulary, are considered to be essentially indigenous and traditionalist. Under the cover of a pseudo-Christian language, their message is thus considered fundamentally anti-Christian. This chapter wishes to show that such a historiographical premise has an unexpected consequence: by rejecting the validity of their Christian claims, such scholars also overlook, or even deny, these leaders’ political autonomy and agency. By taking the Christian character of American Native revolts seriously, this chapter endeavors to connect more strongly than has heretofore been done the worlds of Native Americans and of Europeans. We intend to accomplish this by both insisting on the links between European eschatology and native revolts and by considering the latter against the backdrop of the Age of Revolution. Whereas recent scholarship identifies a Eurasian age of eschatological expectations, stretching “from the Tagus to the Ganges,” the Americas have hardly been integrated into this picture. Focusing on the teachings of two native prophets, Juan Santos Atahualpa (fl.1742–1756) in the Peruvian Amazonian forest and Neolin (fl.1760s) among the Lenni DOI: 10.4324/9781003081050-15

262  Catherine Ballériaux and Damien Tricoire Lenape—also known as the Delaware—in the north-east of today’s USA, and on the respective movements they inspired, this article holds that many Native Americans crafted prophetical and eschatological movements like their Eurasian counterparts, and thus contributed to the emergence of a truly global Age of Millenarianism. The cornerstone of these revolts was an endeavor to restore divine law and purify society accordingly. Our argument holds that Juan Santos and Neolin may be compared to many revolutionary leaders on both sides of the Atlantic in the eighteenth century.

Juan Santos and Neolin: Two Nativist Leaders? From 1742 until well into the 1750s, Juan Santos, a mestizo from Cusco who was the head of natives inhabiting the Amazonian forest, led a series of attacks on the Franciscan missions. He adopted the name of one of the last kings before the conquest, Atahualpa, and maintained that he himself was the Apu Inca, supreme king and lord of Peru who had obtained “license from God” to win back his kingdom. A little more than a decade later, in 1763, at the end of the Seven Years’ War, and on the border between New France and the English territories on the northern American continent, a group of Algonquian peoples rebelled against the presence of English settlers on their lands, which hitherto had been occupied by France. Their main leader was the Ottawa chief Pontiac, who based his resistance on the teachings of a Lenape prophet, Neolin. Juan Santos, Neolin, and Pontiac claimed to directly follow God’s injunctions. According to the first, the rebellion that he was leading in Peru could only be victorious, as he had the support of “the Lord Jesus Christ and his Holy Mother.”3 He maintained that he had awaited God’s permission to launch the revolt.4 The Lenape prophet Neolin claimed that he had embarked on a journey to Paradise, where he had met God in person, and that God had ordered the natives to drive out the English from their lands and had promised his support.5 Neolin’s teaching famously inspired Pontiac (d.1769) to launch a major revolt against the British (1763–1766). Despite numerous explicit references to a very Christian God, Juan Santos’s and Neolin’s Christian affiliations tend to be disqualified in the historiography. There is a general tendency to try to recover “authentic” elements of native cultures in these movements. Sabine MacCormack, a renowned historian of ideas, asserts for example that Andean culture “remained intelligible from within itself” after the conquest, and that the natives maintained an exclusively Andean belief system despite the European presence.6 For many historians, the natives only adopted some aspects of the Christian faith because they corresponded to indigenous beliefs, which were in truth the real ideological groundings for their actions.7 While the Christian elements in Juan Santos’s and Neolin’s teachings have not been ignored altogether in the scholarship, they have been largely downplayed. In the 1960s, the religious dimension of South American “liberation movements” was reevaluated, and scholars began to qualify them as “messianic” or “millenarian” movements. However, “messianism” and “millenarianism” were

Restorers of the Divine Law  263 understood in a rather vague sense as desires and struggles to restore a utopian pre-colonial order, and thus as expressions of nativism rather than as Christian ideas.8 Scholars searched above all for expressions of a native counterculture to the colonial order. For this reason, they interpreted the “mystical” elements in Juan Santos’s thought as stemming from Amazonian shamanism.9 To be sure, some leading scholars underlined the presence of Christian ideas in Santos’s teachings, but they claimed that he took leave from Christianity in the course of his revolt.10 In the late twentieth century, it became common to emphasize that Santos’s thought was syncretic, but that he was hostile to Christianity. For example, Alberto Flores Galindo claims that Juan Santos Atahualpa rejected the “western world” and that his movement was fundamentally anti-Christian.11 Recently, some scholars have cast doubts on such interpretations: according to Daniel J. Santamaría, Juan Santos was not a nativist prophet who took leave from Christianity, nor was he struggling to restore a pre-colonial order of the Tawantinsuyu (the “Inca empire”). In his view, the historiography has been too obsessed with utopia and, for this reason, following uncritically the invectives of Santos’s enemies: the Franciscan friars. Juan Santos was struggling instead to create an order reminiscent of the Jesuit missions.12 The Lenape prophet Neolin, even more so than Juan Santos, has been interpreted as a nativist activist. Even in recent publications, most scholars do not consider Neolin as a Christian. While they confess that Christian influences were strong, they hold that Neolin’s deity, whom he called the “Master of Life,” is not to be equated with the Christian God. Similar to studies about Juan Santos, some scholars claim that Neolin’s ideas were syncretic but, as we shall see, they do not acknowledge the extent to which they were Christian.13 Alfred Cave, for example, claims that Neolin was only borrowing “foreign elements,” that is, some aspects of the Christian faith, to “reaffirm the cultural integrity” of the natives.14 In the scholarship about North American natives—as in that about Spanish America—the term “millenarianism” has been used largely in a non-Christian sense, as a struggle to purify society from European influences.15 The connections between Juan Santos’s and Neolin’s teachings, on the one hand, and Christian eschatological ideas, on the other hand, have been barely studied. A notable exception is Alonso Zarzar’s claim that Joachim of Fiore’s idea of a Third Age (the Age of the Holy Spirit) played a role at the beginning of Juan Santos’ revolt.16 This argument stems from hostile reports according to which Juan Santos claimed to be the Holy Spirit. However, Zarzar’s claim is weak: first because, as Arturo Enrique de la Torre Lopez and Daniel Santamaría point out, it is problematic to follow the polemical sources against Juan Santos uncritically, and it is unclear how Santos could have been influenced by Joachimism;17 second because there is no evidence that Juan Santos ever spoke of an Age of the Holy Spirit. As we shall see, he probably claimed to be a son of the Holy Spirit, or of God, in the sense that, like Jesus, his conception was supposed to be purely spiritual, not corporal. This idea is absent in Joachimism.

264  Catherine Ballériaux and Damien Tricoire From our reading of the primary sources, the Christian dimension of these movements is undeniable: Juan Santos, Neolin, and Pontiac all believed in an omnipotent God who intervenes in temporal affairs, and in heaven and hell, two elements usually absent from native belief systems.18 Both movements also emphasized moral reform over ritual efficacy, thus clearly departing from native traditions, and often with clear confessional inclinations. Juan Santos, for example, claimed that he was “a good man and did not wish to introduce any law other than the one that the fathers [i.e. the Jesuit missionaries] teach, since it is the true law.” He maintained that he would only accept indigenous priests in his kingdom, and no Spaniards, except the “fathers of the Society of Jesus, as they were very advantageous to the republic.”19 During a meeting with a Franciscan missionary, Juan Santos demonstrated a good knowledge of Catholic dogma and could recite the Credo in Latin. According to witnesses, he usually wore a silver cross on his chest and claimed to be as wise as Salomon. He also prayed daily with a book of Christian doctrine.20 Many reports, even hostile ones, underline his Catholic piety, as well as that of his followers.21 This pervasive Catholicism is actually hardly surprising: Juan Santos was most probably a pupil of the Jesuits and his main addressees were the Christian neophytes living in the Franciscan missions, not “heathens.”22 As for the prophet Neolin, he preached from one village to another and was “almost constantly crying whilst he was exhorting” people, which is somewhat reminiscent of the emotionalism of evangelical preachers in New England and the Middle Colonies during the first Great Awakening. David Brainerd, one of these “new light” missionary preachers among the Delaware in the 1740s, had most probably influenced Neolin’s religious experience. The “Master of Life” whom Neolin claimed to have met in person gave him a prayer and insisted that it should be learnt by heart and recited every morning and evening. According to Neolin, the “Master of Life” forbade the natives to drink alcohol, to have multiple sexual partners, and to practice “sorcery,” claiming that they should not “‘make medicine,’ but pray, because in ‘making medicine’ one talks with the evil spirit.”23 Neolin clearly rebuked the Lenapes’ traditional religion. A French Officer based in Illinois reported that the Pottawatomi, following Neolin’s influence, had given up their “Manitoux” and now prayed morning and evening, and that all desired to be baptized.24 Neolin also owned a kind of chart, which depicted the difficult path to Heaven.25 His teaching was thus a frontal attack on traditional Lenape religion and on aspects of Lenape culture that were incompatible with Christian ideas of morality and social order.

Prophecy and Christian Innovation Of course, Juan Santos and Neolin were no mainstream Christians. But as such, they were similar to the many prophets in early modern European history, who were always considered heterodox by the established churches. Juan Santos’s and Neolin’s ideas present many idiosyncratic elements, and this apparent strangeness might have misled scholars to suppose that these

Restorers of the Divine Law  265 elements had a native origin. Yet that Juan Santos and Neolin innovated religiously does not mean that they did not take inspiration from Christianity. They introduced certain innovations that involved both native and Christian cultural aspects, yet; many supposedly “native” ideas and images can be traced to the Bible and other Christian sources. The process of religious innovation took place as much with heterogeneous Christian ideas as with a creolization between native and Christian elements—something which has been largely overlooked in the scholarship. It is famously hard to reconstruct with any degree of precision Juan Santos’s teachings, as almost all information we have on his theology and self-fashioning comes from hostile Franciscan sources. However, these sources concur on a number of points which allow a tentative reconstruction, above all when these elements were not of great value as polemical weapons. We know that Juan Santos pretended to be the heir of the last Tawantinsuyu king, that he ate sparingly, and that he avoided the company of women. He showed clear ascetic tendencies. He forbade eating pork and indeed ordered all pigs to be slaughtered.26 According to some sources— whose reliability is, however, difficult to assess—he claimed to be the son of God, to have been born by a virgin mother, or to be the Holy Spirit himself.27 His Franciscan opponents claimed that Juan Santos rejected the ideas of transubstantiation and purgatory,28 and that he asserted to have the power to release people from the obligation to hear Mass or to receive the sacraments.29 According to polemic sources, he claimed to be able to stop the sun in its course.30 In his kingdom, he abolished all kinds of servitude, not only of American natives, but also of African slaves.31 Although not all these details are equally certain, a general portrait emerges from the sources: that of a messianic king drawing heavily on the Old Testament, especially the prophetic books. It is highly implausible that the claim to have the power to stop the sun was of shamanic origin; an inspiration from Joshua 10:12–20 is much more probable for a pupil of the Jesuits. Furthermore, the law he introduced was in several ways consonant with that of the old Israel, like the interdiction of pork meat shows. The similarities between the ways Juan Santos and Iberian encubiertos (people claiming to be messianic “hidden kings”) presented themselves should be underlined. To be sure, we do not know whether Juan Santos situated the restoration of the Tawantinsuyu towards the end of times. But it is clear that he claimed to be a “hidden” king who revealed himself at God’s command in order to restore purity in a millenarian manner. He claimed to put an end to earthly injustice and to open a new phase in history. In the early modern world, these phenomena were typical of prophetic movements endeavoring to establish a New Israel. Juan Santos’s alleged birth from a virgin and conception by the Holy Spirit may indicate his claim to messianic status. As the coming of messianic figures is a central feature of the End Times in the Old Testament scenarios, we can conclude that Juan Santos’s movement had most probably an eschatological character and was of Jewish-Christian millenarian inspiration.

266  Catherine Ballériaux and Damien Tricoire The sources on Neolin’s teachings are even scarcer than those on Juan Santos. But it is clear that the core features of his narrative about the vision that established him as a prophet were drawn from both Protestant and Catholic Christianity.32 Neolin’s vision of a purification of society was consistent with the endeavors of the Great Awakening. Since the beginnings of the eighteenth century, Pietists and other Evangelicals driven by millenarianism had intensified missionary work overseas. Among others, the Herrnhuter, radical Pietists usually called “Moravians” in English, had become active in North America. This millenarian Christianity influenced Lenape Amerindians, who created “prayer towns” isolated from European settlements. Papoonan, a prominent Lenape religious leader, preached evangelical purity in the 1750s. He held the teachings of the Quakers in high esteem and, in 1763, he was baptized a Moravian. He carried out Moravian missionary work until his death in 1775.33 Papoonan and his followers, as well as the “prayer town” movement, were highly critical of European influences, which in their view brought about sin and thus God’s wrath. But this skepticism towards European settlers and their bad influence was not purely the expression of nativism; it was also a typical feature of Christian missionary thought, both Protestant and Catholic. Neolin was neither a Moravian neophyte nor a follower of Papoonan, however. He crafted instead an original synthesis, introducing not only some elements from native cultures, but also central tenets of different Christian denominations—a feature overlooked in the scholarship. Neolin claimed that, wishing to meet the Creator, he had a vision showing him that men can choose between three ways: a wide, a medium wide, and a narrow one. In his vision, Neolin tried these ways one after the other. While the two first led to flames, the third one led to a mountain, where a woman clothed in white showed him the way up. At the top of the mountain, a man dressed in white greeted him and led him to God. The idea of the two paths, which comes from Matthew 7:13–14, was a common topos in Lutheran preaching in general, and in the Pietist one in particular. It was already present in Johann Arndt’s Four Books of the Real Christian Religion (Vier Bücher vom wahren Christentum) (1605–1610), a major source of inspiration for Pietism. In the eighteenth century, the two paths became arguably the most popular allegory for moral teaching in evangelical Lutheranism. As Pietist illustrations show, the narrow way was commonly depicted as leading to a mountain, on the top of which lay the City of God.34 Neolin’s vision may thus have been directly inspired by Evangelical preaching. However, it differs from the Protestant descriptions of the two paths in several manners: most importantly, Neolin saw three—and not two—paths; and he encountered a woman and a man clad in white who showed him the way to God. These elements can be identified as influences from Catholicism: the second path which leads to the flames—like the first one leading to hell—may be derived from the Catholic belief in purgatory. The woman in white showing the way to heaven can be equated with the Virgin Mary and the man in white greeting newcomers to Heaven is clearly reminiscent of Saint Peter.

Restorers of the Divine Law  267 That Neolin took over Catholic elements is only surprising at first sight: not only did the Lenape Amerindians live on the border between the French and the British empires; Neolin, and Pontiac with him, were allied with the Catholic French and fought against the Protestant British.35 In Neolin’s vision, the “Master of Life” explicitly stated that the French “know [him] and pray to [him],” contrary to the English.36

The Modernity of Amerindian Prophetic Movements The scholarly emphasis on the indigenous dimension of resistance movements and the related downplaying of their Christian components appears at first sight to restore the natives’ agency: according to this narrative, the natives were not crushed under the weight of European invasion and colonialism, but were able, with crafty stratagems and through dissimulation, to keep their own culture and ideas alive under a Christian disguise. If this argument partially returns the natives their voice by taking their culture and their capacity for resistance seriously, it also entails a few problematic aspects. Invariably, these narratives tend to present these leaders as the passive recipients of ancestral cults and not as historical actors who reacted to specific colonial conditions.37 This tendency to relegate them to a mythical past unrelated to current historical events and to the wider world deprives them of any real political autonomy. The ways in which their message is depicted often seems to overlook the coherence and political dimensions of their programs at the expense of emphasizing a supposed willingness to return to a past that was simpler and free from any European presence. The natives’ message thus belongs to the realm of tradition, which is depicted as being in constant struggle with the violence of Western modernity. From this perspective, these movements can teach us very little about modernity, except to illustrate its irresistible ascension. The natives, in this type of narrative, were not truly historical agents, but spectators watching progress unfold before their eyes. As victims of European imperialism, they were helplessly fighting foreign domination but ultimately failed miserably.38 Yet, the American natives were an integral part of the Atlantic world; they played a crucial role in global conflicts through diplomacy and warfare; in the productive complex through labor, enslavement, and trade; as well as in intellectual and religious developments. The Atlantic saw the emergence of a complex network of political, social, cultural, and economic interactions. This transcontinental process inextricably linked Europe, the Americas, and Africa, and brought together multiple peoples and cultures. Paul Cohen describes the Atlantic as “a motor for change which set in motion its own internal economic, social, cultural and political dynamics, a crucible for modernity which helped forge the global market economy and the Atlantic Revolutions.”39 New approaches place Afro-Caribbean and Afro-American cultures within their Atlantic and historical context, and do not portray them as the expressions of fixed and immutable traditions frozen in time. As Palmié

268  Catherine Ballériaux and Damien Tricoire claims in his study of Afro-Cuban witchcraft, “creole” religious ideas and practices were no less “modern” than, say, Enlightenment philosophy or world capitalism. They all were the result of a similar attempt to understand and shape the moral relationships between the various actors of the Atlantic world, and to make sense of the changing, chaotic, and violent conditions brought about by new encounters and colonial expansion. The anthropologist Eric Wolf terms these attempts to give meaning to this “New World” “ecologies of collective representations”: in the American colonies, there was no such thing as a “whole” and coherent culture, but rather a multitude of historical agents who chose among the various practices and ideas available to make sense of and adapt to changing circumstances, and—in so doing—reinvented those practices and ideas.40 Recent scholarship recovers the dynamics of Christianity in the Atlantic world and shows, among other things, the crucial role that Catholicism and Protestantism played in shaping the identity of enslaved people and other subaltern groups.41 Native millenarian movements must be studied within this Atlantic context. The colonies in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were spaces where numerous peoples and interest groups were in contact, as they had been for many generations. On the frontier areas between New France and English territories, native groups were incredibly diverse and constantly interacting with French, English, Dutch, and German settlers, who were themselves competing for territories as well as for souls. Religious diversity was also great, as Catholics (Jesuits and others), Puritans, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Methodists, Moravians, Quakers, and other missionary groups were present alongside a number of Europeans (like fur traders) who were, as a group, not much interested in religion. From the sources, one can easily gather that, as early as the seventeenth century, the American indigenous people were quite aware not only of European political strife, but also of confessional disputes and their own capacity to influence these conflicts. They also understood the doctrinal subtleties at play, as well as the prominent role of conversion in colonial competitions. They frequently negotiated with English and French colonial authorities, and were in permanent contact with Catholic and Protestant missionaries who were constantly competing for their souls. As for Juan Santos in the Andean region, we know from the sources that he had most probably been educated by the Jesuits and that he spoke Latin and Spanish fluently, in addition to Quechua and various Amazonian dialects. He had also traveled to Congo, Angola, and Spain with the Jesuits.42 In addition to this multicultural background, he ultimately attempted to unite a myriad of Andean and Amazonian indigenous groups, who had themselves been confronted for generations with the presence of Spanish colonial authorities, missionaries, as well as enslaved people from African origin. Santos’s group was not only composed of “Indians of the mountains,” but also of blacks, mulattoes, “gentiles of various nations,” and above all Christian natives from the Amazonian forest.43 Juan Santos

Restorers of the Divine Law  269 maintained a clear contrast between the Franciscans and the Jesuits, being favorable to the latter, and was aware of the competition between these Catholic orders. Such actors were in permanent contact with a great variety of cultures, whether through conversion, education, conflict, enslavement, or trade, and were the product of a political, social, and religious context which was diverse and “hybrid.” By necessity or by choice, and often under difficult circumstances, they combined the many beliefs and practices they came into contact with. In a context that was fundamentally disempowering, the natives not only appropriated Christianity, but also adapted their own traditions to changing circumstances. “All unchangeable traditions have changed the day before yesterday,” claims Bruno Latour.44 To the same extent that they were able to adopt and create their own version of Christianity, native peoples also constantly reinvented their own cultural roots. Ironically, the very idea of an “Indian” identity that many historians implicitly take as a given in their analysis of resistance movements did not pre-exist these times of crisis, but rather emerged with them. These movements laid the foundations for the adoption of a new idea in native societies: that of pan-Indianism. Both Juan Santos Atahualpa and Pontiac brought together a multiplicity of native groups whose ethnic identity previously had been highly localized and differentiated. Prophetism allowed the natives to redefine their identity as “Indian.”45 This pan-Indianism was by definition transcultural and transnational (and as such typical of the Atlantic world). It reinvented native cultures while giving them an opportunity to emphasize the value of their practices; in this way Pan-Indianism enabled projects of political, cultural, and social renewal. The idea of pan-Indianism also expressed the natives’ intention to influence the colonial government and allowed them to redefine the terms of the political negotiation. Pan-Indianism also conveyed the idea that the natives should get rid of all nefarious aspects of European cultures. Juan Santos, for example, wanted to restore the Tawantinsuyu and “free all the Indians of the persecutions and tyrannies of the Spaniards,” who “had stolen his crown”.46 He maintained that he was the only judge for the religious practices to be observed in his kingdom.47 As for Neolin’s God, he demanded, in addition to the moral injunctions relating to alcohol, women, and witchcraft, that the natives abandon some customs imported by Europeans, such as the use of guns or the trading of food, among others.48 But this desire to get rid of detrimental European customs did not imply a return to the precolonial state, nor a complete rejection of everything European. Referring to the declarations of a native who claimed that his people should access God through different ways from the white people, Gregory Dowd maintains that this “separatist notion, although informed by the Christian notion of salvation as a coming to God, nonetheless was clearly and consciously anti-Christian.”49 But could it be that this type of declaration was truly Christian and at the same time truly native? Could it be that such a declaration rejected not all, but only specific aspects of European cultures?

270  Catherine Ballériaux and Damien Tricoire Numerous other sources show that many natives advocated the creation of native Christian communities, segregated from Europeans, where they could practice their own form of Christianity, away from European settlers’ abuses. Actually, this idea had been a recurring motto of missionaries too, both Catholic and Protestant, in the seventeenth century. It was even put into practice by some, including the Jesuits to whom Juan Santos was most favorable. Christian missionaries themselves had long strived to create pure native societies separated from corrupt Europeans, and had even anticipated a moral renewal in America.50 In the historical moment, would not the voicing of a native desire for separation also have been a Christian desire?

Christianity as a Weapon Against Assimilation A more flexible approach to the study of culture allows us to acknowledge the cultural specificities of these prophetic movements while taking seriously their political and Christian messages. Most of all, such acknowledgement truly places these movements within their historical context. The new assertions, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, of an Indian identity and of a Christianity that did not require the adoption of all European customs, were not exclusively “traditionalist.” Rather, these combined assertions marked a direct reaction and alternative to the monarchies’ new aspirations for their colonies and subject peoples. Conversion strategies in the seventeenth century had been based on the principle of segregation. First-generation Catholic and Calvinist missionaries had complained relentlessly about the harmful influence of European settlers on the natives and systematically asked for the separation of the two groups and the establishment of isolated villages for their converts where they could be taught progressively in the ways of the Gospel by imitation and good example. In the eighteenth century, this insistence on the necessity of residential segregation and the acceptance of cultural and political autonomy progressively gave way to assimilation policies.51 The monarchies of France, Spain, and England attempted in this period to increase their hold over their colonies and to reinforce the presence of state agents on the frontier. Many of the reforms wished for or implemented in the Americas in the eighteenth century were based on the desire to make the colonies more profitable and useful to the motherland. Earlier missionary practices lost ground in favor of a policy that associated more and more religious and national identities. This implied a stronger integration of colonial frontiers and endeavors to change the natives to make them more “useful” and more similar to other subjects of the king, that is, to “civilize” or even to assimilate them. In the Spanish Americas, the colonizers’ support for separation changed course. In the late seventeenth century, a series of laws was issued to promote the teaching of Castilian and of the Catholic doctrine in Spanish to the natives. By the middle of the eighteenth century, assimilatory policy became prevalent in Spanish colonies. Intensified regalism (i.e. increased authority

Restorers of the Divine Law  271 of the monarchy over ecclesiastical affairs) implied an emphasis on the assimilation of the empire’s subjects to Castilian culture and an extended direct authority by royal officials over Natives living in the missions. The concept of residential separation was progressively eliminated over the first half of the eighteenth century and a “New Method” was gradually put into place.52 For example, during the settlement of Nuevo Santander in 1749, it was thought that “the Indians, even the least savage, are only impressed with what they see […] they need settlements of Spaniards close by […] to contain them, tame them, and protect them.”53 In his famous Nuevo sistema de gobierno economico, written in 1743, José del Campillo y Cosío claimed that “there is no savage who cannot be dominated by industry and made sociable by a ready supply of all the things he likes”; trade and the acquisition of temporal goods were increasingly encouraged so as to make the natives more dependent on the Spaniards.54 Later in the century, crown official Félix de Azara claimed that the segregated missions had been “useless, and never had nor will have good results,” as communal living meant that the natives had had no incentive to “develop their talent and reason, as neither the most skilled, nor the most virtuous, nor the most active would be better fed or dressed than the others,” and this would thus not have provided them with material advantages.55 Some even suggested that the trade of alcohol should be encouraged, as it would create “a new necessity that will oblige them to recognize their dependence upon us more directly.” The ultimate goal of this new system, which constantly emphasized assimilation and trade, was to make the natives “useful vassals” to the Crown.56 New Englanders, as Owen Stanwood suggests, likewise began to embrace “their identity as subjects of a powerful English monarch” in the wake of the Glorious Revolution (1688) and the triumph of Protestantism, and against the backdrop of repeated conflicts with France. For Stanwood, it was only after the Glorious Revolution that a British empire truly emerged, “centered on religious ideology: a loose combination of territories defined by their common Protestantism and allegiance to an English, Protestant monarch and united in their opposition to Catholic France”—and this notwithstanding the fact that George I was a German Lutheran.57 In the eighteenth century, the successive governors put a new emphasis on the necessary submission of the natives to the king, and the related demand that they completely reject any French influence. It was essential to “reduce them to obedience” and make sure “that they would daily see their dependence” on the English.58 As Spanish reformers also claimed, according to Archibald Kennedy, trading with the natives would be the best way to secure the frontiers. In this regard, it was important to offer better deals than the French.59 The Earl of Bellomont, first governor of the provinces of New York, Massachusetts Bay, and New Hampshire, was staunchly anti-Catholic and perceived “very plain evidence of the French Jesuits debauching those Indians.” For Bellomont, one of the main solutions was to send Protestant ministers to the natives to “secure their affection to us” and “oblige them to the interest of the Crown of England.”60 British official Francis Ayscough

272  Catherine Ballériaux and Damien Tricoire affirmed in 1748 that the English should follow the example of the French, who were taking great pains to “make Papists of the Indians” and attempt to make Protestants out of them.61 Perhaps as a result of this new emphasis on the link between Britishness, Protestantism, and shared allegiance to the monarchs of Great Britain, the strategies of interaction with the natives also shifted in New England towards assimilation and Anglicization in the eighteenth century. This was translated into new missionary strategies. As early as 1710, Cotton Mather, who had previously praised the efforts to translate the Bible into the native languages, pleaded in terms very similar to those used in New France: The best thing we can do for our Indians is to Anglicise them in all agreeable Instances; and in that of Language, as well as others. They can scarce retain their Language, without a Tincture of other Salvage Inclinations, which do but ill suit, either with the Honor, or with the design of Christianity. The Indians themselves are Divided in the [sic] Desires upon this matter. Though some of their aged men are tenacious enough of Indianisme (which is not at all to be wondred at) Others of them as earnestly wish that their people may be made English as fast as they can.62 Indeed, by the early eighteenth century, the New England Company had stopped publishing books in native languages.63 New missionary strategies insisted on the necessity to send English families to live with the natives, in order to “civilize and anglicise the Indians.”64 At a time when contacts and conflicts between the three empires were more and more frequent, all actors involved were aware of the instrumentality of religion in the competition between empires and of the crucial role that it would play in securing the fidelity of the natives. During the wars, religious affiliation and nationality were increasingly associated in official writings. The efforts to make the natives into obedient subjects of the Crown were also especially apparent in the language used in the treaties with the indigenous tribes. The assimilation strategy favored by the monarchies in the eighteenth century relied on the idea that, by mixing the two groups (settlers and natives), conflicts could be avoided. This view was often related to economic interests. Whether to favor trade in New France, to supply a labor force in New Spain and Peru, or to get easier access to land for settlers in New England, absorbing native populations into the settlers’ societies was perceived as removing the problematic risk of resistance. Missionaries in the seventeenth century had emphasized the process of making virtuous citizens living in regulated communities. Over time, the term “civil life” became replaced progressively by “civilized life,” and this is illustrative of the ways in which understandings of the nature of conversion evolved. Religious mission was consonant with Enlightenment ideas about progress and stadial theories. Through the development of certain economic principles within native communities and especially of trade, through the

Restorers of the Divine Law  273 Europeanization of their customs, language, and housing and dress, and especially through providing economic advantages, it was expected that the natives would be able to perceive the benefits of civilized life by themselves. Many missionaries now endeavored to mix the natives into the settler population in order to convert and civilize them. Incentives to acquire temporal goods and self-interest would be the best conversion strategy, and the natives were expected to see where their best interest lay and make the best rational choice. Whereas early missionary reports insisted constantly on all men being children of God, later writings tended to emphasize instead the fact that the natives should be assimilated as the children of the sovereign and acculturated into European communities.65 This new emphasis on assimilation may have been a major factor in the multiplication of Christian native millenarian and resistance movements in the eighteenth century and, interestingly so, in our two areas of focus. The monarchies’ willingness to “modernize” the administration of their colonies changed the terms of the relationship between Christian native communities and the kings in Versailles, Madrid or London, who were expected to be benevolent fathers. These new “enlightened methods” and the willingness to assimilate the natives into the colonial European world led them to take Christianity into their own hands and to craft a native identity, often with the notion of pan-Indianism. This allowed them to resist more efficiently European pressures. The multiple millenarian movements occurring in this period were a reaction to changing colonial conditions. Both the reforms undertaken in the colonies and the reactions to them share striking similarities. Most of all, it seemed clear to many Christian natives that belonging to Christianity did not necessarily require assimilation into a European-settler community. As Algonquian convert Ignace Amiskouapeou had already explained in the seventeenth century: [S]ome of my people accuse me of becoming French, of abandoning my nation, & I answer, that I am not French, nor savage, but that I want to be God’s child. All the French or their Captains could not save my soul, I do not believe in them, but in the one who created them.66 Similarly, Shikellmy, a Delaware, told missionary David Brainerd in 1745 that “we are Indians, and don’t wish to be transformed into white men. The English are our Brethren, but we never promised to become what they are.”67 The choice to convert was not an easy one.68 Yet in all colonies, witnessing the disintegration of their traditional worldview and ties of kinship, many natives made that choice and were able to appropriate the Christian message for their own ends. They rejected European rule and corruption, but often had at the same time a positive image of at least some groups of missionaries. While they violently rejected assimilation into settler communities, many natives made use of this new cultural concept, the Christian faith, to defend their independence and authority. Over the century, Christianity became a major part of the cultural landscape in the Americas,

274  Catherine Ballériaux and Damien Tricoire which could be appropriated, rejected, or redefined for very different purposes.69 The varied and often surprising ways in which the natives reinvented Christianity is a strong reminder of the influence of proselytizing on colonial relationships, as well as of the creativity and resilience of peoples whose cultural heritage was under threat.70

The Struggle for Purification of Society and Political Independence The historiographical and ethnohistorical tendencies to distinguish meticulously between European “influences” and “authentic” native ideas in the mindset of leaders of rebellions, despite their rightful attempt to reassert the latter’s agency, proves neither fruitful nor beneficial insofar as there is no “authentic” culture to be found. Scholars’ insistence that the natives rejected everything European or that resistance movements were necessarily antiChristian seem to be attempts at purifying experiences that were in essence complex, multifarious, and highly dependent on the historical context. One must remember that native traditions were oral and polytheistic; they had no difficulty integrating new elements into their worldview, nor being creative with their customs and rites. Most of all, they typically tended to emphasize ritual efficacy, that is to see religion as a practice that was in itself performative rather than as fixed doctrine. Given this emphasis on practice, the fact that the natives would not separate their experience of Christianity from their political and social goals is hardly surprising.71 The prophetic books of the Bible offered a language and worldview that linked religious, social and political renewal, and helped them to conceive a better future. These movements were both very Christian and very native; their members were fully aware of the colonial circumstances in which they lived and offered clear political projects in response. Juan Santos Atahualpa’s program did not rely on a distant dream of a mythical past. He did not endeavor to restore the structures and culture of the Tawantinsuyu. Rather, he wanted to establish an indigenous Christian society separate from the Spanish one. This Indian society was to follow strictly divine law, contrary to the Spanish one. Juan Santos claimed that the Virgin Mary had asked her son to send him, “so that he would crown himself king of this New World of Peru, [and] restore Divine Law, which had been lost by the Spaniards, and especially by the Corregidores.”72 The Spaniards had reportedly “stolen his kingdom” and the governor was a “pig” who enslaved the natives. The missionaries partly agreed, claiming that the rebellion had been caused by the “repeated extortions that, with the unjust and exorbitant repartimientos, the Corregidores impose on the wretched Indians and mestizos.”73 Restoring divine law meant for Juan Santos abolishing slavery, not only for Amerindians, but also for the African slaves. During his revolt, he set free the enslaved people of African origin. Furthermore, inspired by the example of the African kingdoms he had visited with the Jesuits, he strove to create an indigenous clergy.74 On the basis of Christian ideas, Juan Santos struggled to create a new, better society, rather than to return to the pre-colonial order.

Restorers of the Divine Law  275 As for Pontiac, he based his struggle entirely on God’s message to Neolin: This land where ye dwell I have made for you and not for others. […] I do not forbid you to permit among you the children of your Father [the French king]; I love them. They know me and pray to me, and I supply their wants and all they give you. But as to those who come to trouble your lands, drive them out, make war upon them. I do not love them at all; they know me not, and are my enemies, and the enemies of your brothers.75 According to Pontiac, God had demanded from the natives that they “drive off [their] lands those dogs clothed in red who will do you nothing but harm,” that is the British military (who wore red coats), as opposed to the French.76 The expression “children of your Father” is an explicit reference to the French, for the natives called the French king “Father.” By disseminating this divine message, Neolin and Pontiac partook of confessional conflicts between Protestants and Catholics: they asserted that the Catholics prayed rightly to God, as opposed to the Protestant English, who were enemies of God. Pontiac complained relentlessly, as did numerous other native leaders, about English brutality and demanded the outright cancelation of the Treaty of Paris of 1763, which formally transferred the French colonies to the British Crown. Pontiac clearly did not endeavor to return to a pre-colonial state, but rather desired a renewed political order under the tutelage of the French king. The language of Biblical prophecy enabled him to conceive of this better future. Not only were these leaders reacting to the political and religious situation of the colonies in which they lived, but their deeds also had long-term effects on colonial governments. Juan Santos Atahualpa and his followers spread panic on the Gran Pajonal plain in the Amazonian forest for 15 years and destroyed around 30 Franciscan missions.77 The area was subsequently abandoned by Spanish authorities for decades.78 If Pontiac’s revolt did not reach its expected outcome, it resulted nevertheless in the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which formally forbade Europeans to settle on native lands outside of the borders of the 13 colonies.79 This proclamation caused a lot of unrest among English settlers and is considered as one of the causes of the American Revolution.

Revolutionary Religions The undeniable effects that these movements had on colonial policies show how natives were able to call up all cultural resources at their disposal to understand and act upon the difficult conditions in which they lived. By trying to uncover what is purely native in these movements, historians make their very complexity problematic. Their indeterminacy does not reflect the confusion of despairing peoples trying without success to reject “progress,” but is rather in itself constitutive of modernity and partakes in globalization.

276  Catherine Ballériaux and Damien Tricoire Rather than being anomalies that cannot be categorized, these anti-European appeals to Christianity are an essential characteristic of Atlantic modernity or, as we should perhaps rather say, modernities. They were reactions to Enlightenment colonialism in the Americas. A comparative history of these resistance movements would be essential if we want to truly understand the historical dynamics of the Atlantic space in the eighteenth century. Juan Santos, Neolin, and Pontiac are good examples that religion was a major catalyst for revolt in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world. Contrary to the old narrative suggesting a breakthrough of secularization in the Age of Enlightenment, the idea that divine law is the cornerstone of all order gained ground on both sides of the Atlantic in the eighteenth century. That the laws of nature as established by God are superior to tradition was a core feature of French political thought in this period, and it may indeed have been the central idea of the French Revolution.80 The American Revolution was legitimated in a similar way by divine law.81 In the Haitian Revolution, the rebelling slaves also used Christianity massively to develop the vision of a just social order and to articulate the legitimacy of their claims.82 Political resistance was, in the Age of Revolution, intimately associated with the idea of a restoration of divine law. In formulating such claims, Juan Santos and Neolin were fundamentally modern. They lived in the same world as the American and French revolutionaries. These politico-religious revolutionary movements and the peculiar brands of native Christianities that developed over the course of the early modern and modern periods are essential clues to understand the modern world(s) whose legacy is constitutive of our present world. When native leader Scattameck, for example, told the Moravian Davis Zeisberger that “he had been in heaven and had had a conversation with the Son of God,” and that God had told him “that just as the Indians have different skin and colouring from the White people (because it pleased him to make them like this) he also wanted them to come to him through a different way than the White people,” we should take this diagnosis seriously and at face value. These are the declarations of an agent who understood Christianity and was able to choose, transform, and adapt the ideas that were at his disposal to incorporate them into his own “ecology of collective representations.”83 Enhancing “native” elements allegedly free from European influences in these movements entails an epistemic violence that relegates these actors to the world of myths and denies them a place in the common Atlantic history of the quest for political and religious purity, which ran from Moscow to Cusco.

Notes 1 This chapter was written before Catherine Balleriaux joined the ERCEA. It is based on a paper she gave in a seminar in Halle, that Damien Tricoire has thereafter developed substantially. The basic idea to study these prophetic movements as Christian movements is hers. 2 David Zeisberger, “1769 Diary,” in Diaries of the Moravian Missions in Western Pennsylvania, 1769–1772, trans. Tilde Marx, Typescript as part of

Restorers of the Divine Law  277 Merle Deardhoff Papers, Warren Historical Society, Warren, PA (Part 2, B I– IV), 144. 3 Francisco A. Loayza, ed., Juan Santos, el invencible (manuscritos del año de 1742 al año de 1755) (Lima: Miranda, 1942), 34, 50, 86. 4 M. Castro Arenas, La rebelión de Juan Santos (Lima: Milla Batres, 1973), 20, doc 1. 5 Journal of Pontiac’s Conspiracy. 1763, Published by Clarence Monroe Burton under the auspices of the Michigan Society of Colonial Wars. Ed. by M. Agnes Burton [Journal ou dictation d’une conspiration, faite par les sauvages contre les Anglais, et du siège du fort de Detroix par quatre nations différentes le 7 may, 1763] [hereafter Journal of Pontiac’s Conspiracy] (Detroit: Speaker-Hines Printing Company, 1912), 29. 6 Sabine MacCormack, “Pachacuti: Miracles, Punishments, and Last Judgment: Visionary Past and Prophetic Future in Early Colonial Peru,” The American Historical Review 93, no. 4 (1988): 960–1006, here 961. 7 Alfred A. Cave, “The Delaware Prophet Neolin: A Reappraisal,” Ethnohistory 46, no. 2 (1999): 265–90, here 284; Castro Arenas, La rebelión, 26–33. 8 On these tendencies, Daniel J. Santamaría, “La Rebelión de Juan Santos Atahuallpa en la selva central peruana (1742–1756). ¿Movimiento religioso o insurrección política?” Boletín Americanista 57 (2007): 233–56, here 234; Arturo Enrique de la Torre Lopez, “Guerra y religion en Juan Santos Atahualpa,” in El reino de Granada y el Nuevo Mundo. V Congreso Internacional de Historia de América (Mayo de 1992), vol. 3 (Granada: Diputación provincial de Granada, 1994), 517–34. An example of the broad understanding of millenarianism and messianism, Egon Schaden, “Los mesianismos en la América del sur (Fragmentos),” Maguaré, Número 2: 11–21, here 12. 9 Castro Arenas, La rebelión, 26–31. 10 Alonso Zarzar, “Apo Capac Huayna, Jesús Sacramentado.” Mito, utopía y milenarismo en Juan Santos Atahualpa (Lima: Centro Amazónico de Antropología y Aplicación Práctica, 1989), 56–58. 11 Alberto Flores Galindo, In Search of an Inca: Identity and Utopia in the Andes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 74–75, 78; Alberto Flores Galindo, Buscando un Inca. Identidad y utopía en los Andes (Lima: Editorial Horizonte, 1994). 12 Santamaría, “Juan Santos Atahuallpa.” 13 Gregory Dowd, War under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations, and the British Empire (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 92–105; Gregory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 33–35; Linford D. Fisher, The Indian Great Awakening: Religion and the Shaping of Native Cultures in Early America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 11; Lee Irwin, Coming Down from Above: Prophecy, Resistance, and Renewal in Native American Religions (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008), 125–34. Charles Hunter was among the first to emphasize the Christian elements in Neolin’s thought, but his view has not prevailed in subsequent scholarship: Charles E. Hunter, “The Delaware Nativist Revival of the Mid-Eighteenth Century,” Ethnohistory 18, no. 1 (1971): 39–49. 14 Cave, “The Delaware Prophet,” 265, 284. 15 Joel W. Martin, “Before and Beyond the Sioux Ghost Dance: Native American Prophetic Movements and the Study of Religion,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 59, no. 4 (1991): 677–701. 16 Zarzar, “Apo Capac Huayna,” 36–38. 17 De la Torre Lopez, “Guerra y religion,” 12–15; Santamaría, “La rebelión,” 244. 18 Cave, “The Delaware Prophet,” 266, 269, 274–75. 19 Castro Arenas, La rebelión, 11, 15.

278  Catherine Ballériaux and Damien Tricoire 20 Santamaría, “Juan Santos Atahuallpa,” 240; Castro Arenas, La rebelión, doc. 1: “Manuscrito existente en la Real Academia de la Historia Biblioteca Madrid,” 1742, III; doc. 2: “Segunda relacion de la doctrina, errores y heregias que ensena el fingido Rey Juan Santos Atagualpa …,” unpaginated, fifth page; Loayza, Juan Santos, el invencible, 33–34. 21 Zarzar, “Apo Capac Huayna, Jesús Sacramentado,” 41–43. 22 Santamaría, “Juan Santos Atahuallpa,” 241. 23 Journal of Pontiac’s Conspiracy, 31. 24 “Lettre de M. de Villiers à D’Abbadie, 1er décembre 1763,” in Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library, vol. 10, ed. Clarence Walworth Alvord (Illinois State Historical Library, 1915), 52. 25 Hunter, “The Delaware Nativist Revival of the Mid-Eighteenth Century,” 42–45; Cave, “The Delaware Prophet,” 280. 26 Copia de la relación or carta escrita por el reverendo padre fr. Joseph Gill Muñoz, 1742, in Castro Arenas, La rebelión, doc. 1, III; Castro Arenas, La rebelión, 12; Loayza, Juan Santos, el invencible, 33–34. 27 Castro Arenas, La rebelión, 24; Santamaría, “Juan Santos Atahuallpa,” 249. 28 Castro Arenas, La rebelión, doc. 2, 6, unpaginated. 29 Segunda Relacion de la Doctrina, Errores, y Heregias que enseña el fingido Rey Juan Santos Atahualpa, Apunga, Guaipacapac, en las Missiones del Cerro de la Sal, Indio Rebelde, enemigo declarado de la Ley de Dios, y traydor al Rey, nuestro Señor, que Dios guarde, in Castro Arenas, La rebelión, doc. 2, unpaginated. 30 Castro Arenas, La rebelión, 24. 31 Castro Arenas, La rebelión, doc. 1, III. 32 We would like to thank Sarah Wieland for her research on sources about Neolin. 33 Hunter, “The Delaware Nativist Revival,” 42; Dowd, A Spirited Resistance, 31. 34 Jan Harasimowicz, “Die Bildlichkeit des Pietismus: Das Motiv der zwei Wege,” in Die Bilder in den lutherischen Kirchen. Ikonographische Studien, ed. Peter Poscharsky (München: Scaneg, 1998), 195–208. 35 Gregory E. Dowd, “Thinking and Believing: Nativism and Unity in the Ages of Pontiac and Tecumseh,” American Indian Quarterly 16, no. 3 (1992): 309–35, here 310. 36 Journal of Pontiac’s Conspiracy, 29–31. 37 Santamaría, “Juan Santos Atahuallpa,” 245–46. 38 Paul Cohen, “Was There an Amerindian Atlantic? Reflections on the Limits of a Historiographical Concept,” History of European Ideas 34 (2008): 394. 39 Ibid., 391. 40 Eric Wolf, Europe and the People without History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 390–91. 41 Megan Armstrong, “Transatlantic Catholicism: Rethinking the Nature of the Catholic Tradition in the Early Modern Period,” History Compass 5 (2007): 1942–66; Nicholas M. Beasley, Christian Ritual and the Creation of British Slave Societies: 1650–1780 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009); Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Terry Rey, The Priest and the Prophetess: Abbé Ouvière, Romaine Rivière, and the Revolutionary Atlantic World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017); Miriam Franchina, “From Slave to Royal Vassal. Jean-François’ Negotiation Strategies in the Haitian Revolution,” Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies (forthcoming); Miriam Franchina, “A Transatlantic Battle of Robes. French Priests in the Haitian Revolution,” French History (2022), crac002, https:// doi.org/10.1093/fh/crac002 42 Letter by Fray José Gil Muñoz in Loayza, Juan Santos, el invencible, 4.

Restorers of the Divine Law  279 43 Castro Arenas, La rebelión, doc. 2, unpaginated, fifth page. 44 Bruno Latour, Nous n’avons jamais été modernes: essai d’anthropologie symétrique (Paris: La Découverte, 2006), 190–91. 45 Cave, “The Delaware Prophet,” 283. 46 Castro Arenas, La rebelión, 12; Letter by Fray José Gil Muñoz, in Loayza, Juan Santos, el invencible, 4, 50. 47 Castro Arenas, La rebelión, doc. 2, unpaginated. 48 Journal of Pontiac’s Conspiracy, 28–32. 49 Dowd, A Spirited Resistance, 40. 50 Catherine Ballériaux, Missionary Strategies in the New World, 1610–1690: An Intellectual History (New York: Routledge, 2016); Dominique Deslandres, Croire et Faire croire: les missions françaises au XVIIe siècles (1600–1650) (Paris: Fayard, 2003); Takao Abé, The Jesuit Mission to New France. A New Interpretation in the Light of the Earlier Jesuit Experience in Japan (Leiden: Brill, 2011); Barbara Anne Ganson, The Guaraní under Spanish Rule in the Rio de la Plata (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006). See also Sina Rauschenbach’s chapter in this volume. 51 Damien Tricoire, “Introduction,” in Enlightenment Colonialism. Civilization Narratives and Imperial Politics in the Age of Reason, ed. Damien Tricoire (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 1–22. 52 Magnus Mörner, “The Expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain and Spanish America in 1767 in Light of Eighteenth Century Regalism,” The Americas 23, no. 2 (1966): 156–64, here 157, 159; P. Gonzalbo Aizpuru, Historia de la educación en la Epoca Colonial: El Mundo indígena (México: Colegio de México, 1990), 184–90; M. Chocano Mena, La fortaleza docta: elite letrada y dominación social en México colonial (siglos xvi–xvii) (Barcelona: Bellaterra, 2000), 115–21; Magnus Mörner, La Corona española y los foráneos en los pueblos de Indios de América (Estocolmo: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1970), 322–38. See the ordinances in Konetzke, ed., Colección de Documentos para la historia de la formación social de Hispanoamérica: 1493–1810, vol. 2.2 (Madrid, Instituto Jaime Balmes: 1958), 780–81, 831–33; Lía Quarleri, “New Forms of Colonialism on the Frontiers of Hispanic America: Assimilationist Projects and Economic Disputes (Río de La Plata, Late Eighteenth Century),” in Enlightened Colonialism: Civilization Narratives and Imperial Politics in the Age of Reason, ed. Damien Tricoire (Palgrave: MacMillan, 2017), 93–110. 53 “Acuerdo de la junta general de guerra, Mexico, May 13, 1748,” in F. de Lejarza, ed., La conquista espiritual del Nuevo Santander (Madrid: Instituto Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo, 1947), 18. On this, see D. J. Weber, Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2005), 105–7. 54 F. de Bucareli y Ursúa, “Instruccion á que se deberán arreglar los Gobernadores interinos que dejo nombrados en los pueblos de indios guaranís del Uruguay y Paraná,” in Colección de documentos relativos a la expulsión de los jesuitas de la República Argentina y del Paraguay, ed. F. J. Brabo (Madrid: José María Pérez, 1872), 200–10, citations on p. 208. 55 F. de Azara, “Informes de D. Felix de Azara sobre varios proyectos de colonizer el Chaco [1799],” in Colección de obras y documentos relativos a la historia Antigua y moderna de las provincias del Rio de la Plata, 6 vols, ed. P. de Angelis (Buenos Aires, Imprenta del Estado, 1836), vol. 4: 5; C. A. Walckenaer and G. Cuvier, eds., Viajes por la America Meridional, 2 vols. (Madrid: Calpe, 1923), vol. 1, 138–39; Félix de Azara, Geografía, física y esférica de las provincias del Paraguay y misiones guaranies (Montevideo: Museo Nacional de Montevideo, 1904), 417. 56 J. del Campillo Y Cosio, Nuevo sistema de gobierno económico para la América (Madrid: Benito Cano, 1789), 15, 60–71, 75, 90, 120, 210–11, 270, 284; J. de Gálvez, Instrucciones para el Gobierno de las Provincias Internas de Nueva

280  Catherine Ballériaux and Damien Tricoire España (1786), ed. D. E. Worcester (Berkeley: Quivira Society, 1951), art. 67, quoted in Weber, Bárbaros, 184. 57 O. Stanwood, The Empire Reformed: English America in the Age of the Glorious Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 20; The Answer of the House of Representatives, to His Excellency the Earl of Bellomont’s Speech (Boston, MA: Printed by Bartholomew Green, and John Allen, 1699); O. Stanwood, “The Protestant Moment: Antipopery, the Revolution of 1688–1689, and the Making of an Anglo-American Empire,” Journal of British Studies 46, no. 3 (2007): 481–508, here 481; C. Mather, The Wonderful Works of God Commemorated Praises Bespoke for the God of Heaven in a Thanksgiving Sermon Delivered on Decemb. 19, 1689 (Boston, MA: Printed by S. Green & sold by Joseph Browning, 1690), 38. See also T. S. Kidd, The Protestant Interest: New England after Puritanism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004). 58 DHM, vol. 10, 223, 254; “Propositions made […] to the five nations […] the 23th day of September: 1689,” in The Livingston Indian Records, 1666–1723, ed. L. H. Leder (Gettysburg: The Pennsylvania Historical Association, 1956), 151. 59 A. Kennedy, The Importance of Gaining and Preserving the Friendship of the Indians to the British Interest Considered (Boston, MA: Printed for E. Cave, 1752), 12–14. 60 Bellomont in Documentary History of the State of Maine, vol. 10, 69–70; Bellomont in Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of NewYork, vol. 4, 334. 61 S. Hopkins, Historical Memoirs Relating to the Housatonic Indians (Boston, MA: S. Kneeland, 1753), 140. 62 Copy of a letter by Cotton Mather, 1710, “Letter-Book of Samuel Sewall,” in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 6th s., vol. 1 (Boston, MA: By the Society, 1886), 401. See also C. Mather, India Christiana. A Discourse Delivered unto the Commissioners, for the Propagation of the Gospel among the American Indians (Boston, MA: Printed by B. Green, 1721), 43. 63 D. J. Silverman, Faith and Boundaries: Colonists, Christianity, and Community among the Wampanoag Indians of Martha’s Vineyard, 1600–1871 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 218–21. 64 Hopkins, Historical Memoirs, 47; J. Sergeant, A Letter from the Revd Mr. Sergeant of Stockbridge, to Dr. Colman of Boston (Boston, MA: Printed by Rogers and Fowle, 1743), 3–6. 65 Damien Tricoire, “Aux Origines de la mission civilisatrice : Les Lumières, l’idéologie coloniale et Madagascar,” in Les Lumières, l’esclavage et l’idéologie coloniale du dix huitième au vingtième siècle, ed. Pascale Pellerin (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2019), 52–61; Tricoire, “Introduction,” in Enlightened Colonialism, 1–22; Tricoire, “Enlightened Colonialism: French Assimilationism, Silencing, and Colonial Fantasy on Madagascar,” in Enlightened Colonialism, 47–70. 66 Paul Le Jeune, Relation de ce qui s’est passé en la Nouvelle France en l’année 1639: envoyée au R. Pere Provincial de la Compagnie de Jésus en la province de France (Paris: Sebastien Cramoisy, 1640), 94. 67 A. G. Spangenberg, “Spangenberg’s Notes of Travel to Onondaga in 1745,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 2, no. 4 (1878): 428. 68 Daniel Gookin, “An Historical Account of the Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indians in New England, in the Years 1675, 1676, 1677,” Transactions and Collections of the American Antiquarian Society (Cambridge, Printed for the Society at the University Press, 1836), 462, 504. See also 449, 454. 69 On the idea of transculturation, see M. L. Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York: Routledge, 2007), 7–8.

Restorers of the Divine Law  281 70 Fisher, The Indian Great Awakening, 5–7. 71 Michael D. McNally, “The Practice of Native American Christianity,” Church History 69, no. 4 (2000): 834–59, here 854. 72 Segunda Relacion de la Doctrina, Errores, y Heregias que enseña el fingido Rey Juan Santos Atahualpa, Apunga, Guaipacapac, en las Missiones del Cerro de la Sal, Indio Rebelde, enemigo declarado de la Ley de Dios, y traydor al Rey, nuestro Señor, que Dios guarde, in Castro Arenas, La Rebelión, doc. 2, unpaginated, first page; Letter by Fray José Gil Muñoz, […] in Loayza, Juan Santos, el invencible, 4–5. 73 Fray José Gil Muñoz, Guatemala, Setiembre 12 de 1745 in Loayza, Juan Santos, el invencible, 81. 74 Santiago Vázquez de Caicedo, transcribed by José Gil Muñoz, in Castro Arenas, La rebelión, documento 1 II–III; ibid., 11, 12, 20; Fray José Gil Muñoz […] in Loayza, Juan Santos, el invencible, 10. 75 Journal of Pontiac’s Conspiracy, 29–31. 76 Journal of Pontiac’s Conspiracy, 31. 77 Castro Arenas, La rebelión, 108. 78 Stefano Varese, Salt of the Mountain: Campa Asháninka History and Resistance in the Peruvian Jungle (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004), 96. 79 Jack M. Sosin, Whitehall and Wilderness: The Middle West in British Colonial Policy, 1760–1775 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961). 80 Tricoire, “La cité de Dieu des patriotes. La pensée théocratique des Lumières et les origines religieuses de la Révolution française” (unpublished article under review at French Historical Studies); Damien Tricoire, “The Triumph of Theocracy. French Political Thought and the Question of Secularization in the Age of Enlightenment,” in Between Secularization and Reform. Religion in the Enlightenment, ed. Anna Tomaszewska and Hasse Hämäläinen (Leiden: Brill, 2022) (unpublished).. 81 Alan Heimert, Religion and the American Mind: From the Great Awakening to the Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966); Nathan O. Hatch, The Sacred Cause of Liberty: Republican Thought and the Millennium in Revolutionary England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977); Ruth Bloch, Visionary Republic: Millennial Themes in American Thought 1756– 1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 82 Miriam Franchina, “From Slave to Royal Vassal”; Franchina, “A Transatlantic Battle of Robes.” See also Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (2004) and “Vodou and History,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 43, no.1 (2001): 92–100. 83 David Zeisberger, “1st January 1773,” in The Moravian Mission Diaries of David Zeisberger, 1772–1781, ed. H. Wellenreuther and C. Wessel (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 2005), 123.

Index of Names

Abarbanel, Isaac 4 Abas, Sophy of Persia 138 Abbas I. (“the Great”), King of Iran 130, 139 Adam (Bible) 11, 34, 40, 110, 165 Adashev, Aleksey 90–92, 94 Adrian VI (born Adriaen of Utrecht), Pope 227 Afanasii, Metropolitan of Moscow 95 Ahmed III, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire 250 Akbar I (“the Great”), Mughal Emperor 13 Alamany, Johan 226, 243 al-Balki, Abu Ma’shar see Balki, Abu Ma’shar al Albert I of Habsburg, Holy Roman Emperor 63 Albert VII, Count of Mansfeld 72, 83 Albrecht II, Margrave of Meissen 81 Aleksei Mikhailovich, Tsar of Russia 250, 259 Alexander I, Russian Emperor and Tsar 207 Alexander the Great 10, 231 al Fatimi, Moro see Fatimi, Moro al al-Mansur, Ahmad see Mansur, Ahmad al Alphonse V of Portugal, King of Portugal 229 al-Shaykh, Muhammad see Shaykh, Muhammad al Alsted, Johann Heinrich 182 Alva Ixtlilxochitl, Fernando de 232 Amalric of Bène 37 Amiskouapeou, Ignace 273 Ana of Austria (natural daughter of Don Juan of Austria) 233 Anastasev, Ivan (Ioannis Anastasiou) 259

Andreae, Johann Valentin 182 Anne of Denmark, Queen consort of Scotland, England and Ireland 156 an-Niyazi, Muhammad see Niyazi, Muhammad an Antiochus IV Epiphanes, King of the Seleucid Empire 163, 168–69 Antonio, Prior of Crato 233 Aquinas, Thomas 40 Arias, Juan Fabián 231 Armilus 9 Arnald of Villanova (Arnau of Vilanova) 45, 58, 225 Arndt, Johann 181, 266 Augustine of Alveldt 61, 76, 78 Augustine of Hippo (Saint) 31, 45–47, 118, 162 Axtelmeier, Stansilaus Reinhard 250, 258 Ayscough, Francis 271 Azara, Félix de 271, 279 Bacon, Francis 143, 157 Bader, Augustin 11 Balki, Abu Ma’shar al 156 Bandarra, Gonçalo Annes 233–36, 242 Bartholomew, Apostle 63 Basmanov, Fiodor 92, 95 Bayle, Pierre 250, 253, 258–59 Bennet, Henry, Earl of Arlington 154 Berg, Maxine 144 Bernadino de Sahagún 167, 169 Beza, Theodore 7 Blake, Robert 126 Bocarro Francês, Manuel/Manoel (Jacob Rosales) 235–36, 243 Bodenstein (Carlstadt/Karlstadt), Andreas Rudolff 181 Bodin, Jean 140

Index of Names  283 Bodley, Thomas 141 Boehme, Jacob 182 Bonfil, Immanuel ben Jacob 201 Brainerd, David 264, 273 Brightman, Thomas 182 Budny, Szymon 11 Bureus, Johannes 141 Calvin, John (Jean Calvin) 7, 164 Campanella, Tommaso 9 Campillo y Cosío, José del 271, 279 Cardozo, Avraham Michael 107 Carlstadt see Bodenstein Carvajal el Mozo, Luis de (“Luis the Younger”) 16–17, 159–70, 173–80 Carvajal y Cueva, Luis de 161, 174 Catherine II (“the Great”), Empress of Russia 204, 206 Charlemagne see Charles I Charles I (“the Great”/Charlemagne), Holy Roman Emperor 231 Charles I of Anjou, King of Sicily 80 Charles I, King of England, Scotland and Ireland 131, 141 Charles II, King of England, Scotland and Ireland 120, 127, 131, 134, 136 Charles II, King of Spain 240 Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor 63 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Spain 8, 114, 166, 226–28, 238 Charles IX, King of France 87 Charles X Gustav, King of Sweden 249 Charles, Prince of Asturias 230–31, 240 Cigala, Johannes Michael (also known as Mahomed Bei) 137 Cisneros, Francisco Jiménez de 6 Clement VI (born Pierre Roger), Pope 62 Clement VII (born Giulio de Medici), Pope 238 Columbus, Christopher 5 Comenius, Johann Amos 182, 187, 196 Conrad III (or Conradin) of Hohenstaufen, nominal King of Jerusalem, Duke of Swabia 65–66, 80 Constantine I (“the Great”), Roman Emperor 93, 248, 250–51 Constantine Palaiologos, Byzantine Emperor 250 Coote, Richard, 1st Earl of Bellomont 271, 280

Corvinus, Johann Friedrich 135 Costa, Uriel da 107 Cromwell, Oliver 121, 125–26, 131 Cyrus, King of Persia 252 Czechowic, Marcin 11 Dalmatov, Semen 208 Dato, Morechai 119 David, King of Israel and Judah (Bible) 22, 93, 111–12, 119, 133, 234 Dee, John 156 Dingel’shtedt, Nikolay 220 Dolcino of Novare (“Fra Dolcino”), friar 39, 42 Dryden, John 120–21, 136, 146–47 Dury, John 139, 155 Egard, Paul 186–87, 195 Eirene of Athene, Byzantine Empress 248 Eiximenis, Francesc (Francisco Ximenez) 225, 234, 242 Elias, prophet (Bible) 67–68 Elizabeth I, Queen of England and Ireland 140–42 Enoch, prophet (Bible) 67–68 Enríquez de Cabrera, Fadrique 227–28, 241 Ephraim (son of Joseph, Bible) 112 Erasmus of Rotterdam 90, 181 Eriugena, John Scotus 45–46 Esau/Edom (Bible) 248 Escolano, Gaspar 231 Espina, Alonso de 115 Espinosa, Gabriel 233 Eve (Bible) 34 Evelyn, John 137–38, 152, 154, 157 Eymerich, Nicolas 82 Faber, Johann Matthäus 197 Fatimí, Abrahim 14 Fatimi, Moro al 254 Fedorov-Chelyadin, Ivan Petrovich 95–97 Ferdinand, Duke of Viseu and Beja, prince of Portugal 229 Ferdinand II, King of Aragon (“the Catholic”) 8, 225, 228, 231 Fernández de Velasco, Iñigo 227 Filipp II, Metropolitan of Moscow 93, 96 Filofei of Pskov 89 Finch, Heneage, Earl of Winchelsea 136 Finch, John 153 Folkhyrde, Quentin 43, 56

284  Index of Names Ford, William 150 Foxe, John 58 Francis I, King of France 8, 11 Frederick of Habsbourg (“the Fair”), duke of Austria and Styria, anti-king of the Holy Roman Empire 63 Frederick I, Landgrave of Thuringia 64–66, 80–81 Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor 6, 65–66, 80, 231 Frederick III (“the Wise”), Elector of Saxony 72, 83 Fresne, Charles du, sieur du Cange 250, 258 Freyburger, Warmud 196 Frias, Pedro de 234–35, 242 Gálvez y Gallardo, José de 279 Gennadii of Novgorod 90, 201 Gennadios II Scholarios, Patriarch of Ottoman Constantinople 246, 253, 258 George I, King of Great Britain and Ireland 271 George of Poděbrady, King of Bohemia 61 Gerónimo de Mendieta 166–68, 170, 177–78 Goliath (Bible) 22 Gomorrah 91 González de Mendoza, Pedro 241 Gorenskii-Obolenskii, Iurii I, prince of 95 Gorenskii-Obolenskii, Petr Ivanovich, prince of 95 Gouge, William 139 Grebner, Paul 140–42, 155–56 Gregory XI (born as Pierre Roger de Beaufort), Pope 82 Grélot, Antoine 186–87, 190, 195 Gustav VI Adolf, King of Sweden 140–41, 252 Halevi, Abraham ben Eliezer (Nathan of Gaza) 10, 11, 133–34, 149 Hardy, Charles 152 Harkavy, Abraham 209 Hartlib, Samuel 120, 139 Hartmann, Johann Ludwig 186, 194 Hausmann, Nikolaus 71 Haxthausen, August von 212–13, 221 Heinrich von Staden 95, 103–04 Helmont, Franciscus Mercurius van 188–89, 196

Henry III (“the Illustrious”), Margrave of Meissen 80 Henry IV, King of Castile 229 Henry VII, Holy Roman Emperor 63 Henry of Aviz, King of Portugal 232–33 Herrera y Tordesillas, Antonio de 167 Hesiod, poet 188 Hildegard of Bingen 45 Hinckelmann, Abraham 187, 195, 198 Hofmann, Matthias 186 Hofmann, Melchior 73 Holzschuh, Dietrich 66 Homem de Figueiredo, Fernão 234 Homer, poet 188 Horozco y Covarrubias, Juan de 233, 242 Howard, Henry, 6th Duke of Norfolk 137, 154 Howard, Thomas, 1st Earl of Norfolk 141 Hurmuzaki, Eudoxiu de 258 Hurtado de Mendoza, Diego 226 Hus, Jan 1, 6, 32, 34, 36, 40–45, 48, 54, 58, 61 Húska, Martin 33–34, 40, 49 Hut, Hans 73, 76, 83 Ibn Abi Mahalli, Ahmed 13 Ibrahim, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire 138 Icazbalceta, Don Joaquin García 177–78 Ignacio de Loyola 162 Innocent IV (born as Sinibaldo Fieschi), Pope 68 Isaak of Troki 11 Isabelle I, Queen of Castile 8, 231 Isidore of Seville (Saint) 234–35, 239, 242–43 Ismail I, Shah of Persia 1, 13 Ivan IV (“the Terrible”), Grand Prince of Moscow and Tsar of Russia 1, 9, 16, 86–99, 103 Jacob (Bible) 248 Jacobell von Mies 48 Jahangir, Mughal Emperor 131 Jakoubek of Stříbro (Jacob of Mies) 32, 36 James, Duke of York, James II, King of England and Ireland, James VII, King of Scotland 132, 141, 156 Jan van Leiden 73, 254 Jeremiah 169

Index of Names  285 Jerome of Prague (Hieronymus Pragensis) 57, 184 Jerónimo de Azambuja (Hieronymus Oleaster) 175 Jessey, Henry 139 Jesus Christ (Bible) 1, 2, 12, 33–34, 37, 40, 42, 46, 64, 67, 69, 70–72, 82, 91, 93, 109–12, 114–15, 119–20, 125, 131–33, 140, 155, 159–60, 163–64, 166, 168–69, 171, 178–79, 183, 185, 188–90, 194–95, 201, 208, 213, 231, 262–64, 276 Joachim Friedrich, Margrave of Brandenburg 140 Joachim of Fiore 5–6, 14, 38–42, 53, 66, 80, 115, 165, 176, 185, 193, 227, 231, 263 Joanna, Queen of Castile (“the Mad”) 231 John II, King of Aragon 229 John III, King of Portugal 11 John IV, King of Portugal 235 John of Rupescissa 6, 14, 41–42, 45, 234 John (“Prester John”), mythical king 229 John, Prince of Asturias 231, 241 Jörg von Passau 73 Joseph of Volokolamsk 201, 203 Joshua, son of Nun (Bible) 65, 79 Juana of Castille (“la Beltraneja”), Queen of Portugal 229, 241 Juan de Torquemada 167, 169, 177–78 Juan de Unay 226, 228, 238, 243 Juan of Austria, natural son of Charles V 8, 233 Judas Ischariot, Apostle 71 Jung-Stilling, Johann Heinrich 212 Justin Martyr (“Justin the Philosopher”) 118, 200, 215 Kallinikos, Metropolitan of Ioannina 250–51 Kashin-Obolenskii, Iuri, prince of 94 Kelpius, Johannes 126 Kentzeler, Heinrich 60 Kerlingen, Walter 78 Knorr of Rosenroth, Christian 183–85, 186–90, 194, 196 Komninos, Ierotheos 250 Köpke, Balthasar 198 Köprülü, Fazil Ahmad 127, 134 Kosoy, Feodosii 205 Kruse, Eilert 98, 103–04

Kuhlmann, Quirinus 187, 196 Kurbskii, Andrei, prince 1, 88, 89, 90–92, 94–95, 98, 102 La Forêt, Jean de 258 La Peyrère, Isaac de 9, 11 Labadie, Jean de 182, 185 Lämmlein (Lemlein/Lemmlein), Asher, of Reutlingen 1, 4, 115 Laurence of Březová 49, 55 Leber, Oswald 11 Le Jeune, Paul 280 Leo V (“Leo the Armenian”), Byzantine Emperor 248 Leo VI, Emperor of the Byzantine Empire 248 Leskov, Nikolay 210 Lezi effendi, ulema 251 Liutprand, Bishop of Cremona 246 Livanov, Fedor F. 206–07, 217–19 Lobanov-Rostovskii, Semen Vasil’evich, prince of 95 Locke, John 131 Longo de Fuenteventura, Joao 230, 240 López de Gómara, Francisco 167 López, Gregorio 230–31 Louis IV (“the Bavarian”), Holy Roman Emperor 63, 75, 84 Louis XV, King of France 275 Lucia of Syracuse (“Saint Lucy”) 63 Luis de Velasco 168 Luis of Portugal, Duke of Beja 233 Lull, Ramon 225 Luna, Fray Francisco Ruiz de 177 Luria, Isaac 11, 133 Luther, Martin 1, 6, 8, 10, 15, 17, 61, 71–72, 74, 76, 78, 84, 164, 181, 183, 192 Maccabee, Judah 166 Mahdi 1, 12–13 Maikov, Nikolai (Nil Sorskii) 102 Makarii, Metropolitan of Moscow 94, 203 Mansfeld, Dionysius 73 Mansur, Ahmad al 13–14 Manuel I, King of Portugal 2, 235 Margaret, Archduchess of Austria 231–32 Margaret of Sicily (or “of Hohenstaufen”), Landgravine of Thuringia 65 Marinho de Azevedo (Lucindo Lusitano), Luis 236 Martorell, Joanot 229

286  Index of Names Marvell, Andrew 121 Mary Magdalene 64, 71, 81, 91, 115, 132, 262, 266, 274 Mather, Cotton 272, 280 Matthew, Apostle 63 Matthew of Janov 6, 7, 32, 36, 40–41, 43, 45, 54, 57, 59 Maxim the Greek (Michael Trivolis) 90 Mayer, Bonaventura 211, 221 Mede, Joseph 120, 182, 185, 187, 195–96 Mehmed II (“the Conqueror”), Sultan of the Ottoman Empire 248 Mehmed III, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire 250 Mehmed IV, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire 134, 136, 147, 154, 249–50 Menasseh ben Israel 9, 139, 172 Mendes, Francisco 234 Michael, Angel 109, 242 Mikhail Fedorovich, Tsar of Russia 259 Mikhail Olelkovich, Grand Prince of Kiev 203 Milíč of Kroměříž 40–41 Milton, John 121, 147 Molcho, Shlomo 16, 107, 119 Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, Baron of 121 More, Henry 182 Morozov, Vladimir Vasil’evich 95 Moses (Bible) 11, 40, 65, 189, 197, 202 Motolinía see Toribio de Benavente Muhammad, prophet 12, 61, 115, 254 Muley Abd-el Malik, King of the Maghreb 232 Muñoz, Joseph Gill 278–79, 281 Müntzer, Thomas 7, 16, 60–61, 71–77, 82–85, 181–82, 191–92 Muscato, Judah 119 Müteferrika, Ibrahim 250, 258 Nayler, James 125, 133, 140, 152 Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon 163 Neolin, Delaware prophet 18, 261–69, 275–78 Nicholas of Dresden 36, 43 Nicholas of Lyra 118 Nicholas of Pelhřimov 43 Nikolas II, Emperor of Russia 206 Nil Sorskii see Maikov Niyazi, Muhammad an 15 Nixon, Anthony 151 Noah (Bible) 71

Oldcastle, John 43 Oldenburg, Heinrich 133, 152–53 Origen, church father 118 Oroz, Pedro de 168, 178 Osmon I, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire 137 Ossnat, daughter of Potty Fera 112 “Padre Ottomano” 137, 152, 154 Palladini, Giacoma of Teramo 54 Papoonan, Lenape religious leader 266 Paracelsus (Theophrastus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim) 182 Pasikhani, Mahmud 129 Paul (Saul of Tarsus), Apostle 41, 82, 112–15, 119, 176 Payne, Peter 36, 44 Pedro of Portugal 228–29 Peter I, Tsar of Russia 250 Peter of Coimbra, Constable of Portugal 229 Petersen, Johanna Eleonora (born as von und zu Merlau) 185–87, 193, 196 Petersen, Johann Wilhelm 183–84, 192–93 Peter (Simon), Apostle 64, 78, 82, 109, 266 Petrov, Ivan (Ioanis Tafralis) 259 Petrus de Prece 80 Pfeiffer, Heinrich 73, 83 Philip I (“the Handsome”), King of Castile 231, 241 Philip II, King of Spain 23, 230–33, 240, 242 Philip IV, King of Spain 231, 236, 240 Pico de la Mirandola, Giovanni 11, 90, 197 Pimin of Novgorod 93, 96–97 Pitton de Tournefort, Joseph 127 Pontiac, Odawa leader 262, 264, 267, 275–79, 281 Postel, Guillaume 11 Potty Fera 112 Praetorius, Johann 258 Prester John see John Primo, Samuel 134 Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita 45–46, 59 Quidort, Jean 45 Rålamb, Claes 249 Ray, John 258

Index of Names  287 René I of Valois-Anjou, King of Naples 229 Repnin-Obolenskii, Mikhail, prince 94 Reuchlin, Johannes 11 Reuveni, David 11 Riccard, Andrew 127 Riccard, Richard 153 Rienzo, Cola di 39, 42 Roeslin, Helisaeus 141 Roe, Thomas 124–25, 131, 141, 143–44, 151, 156–57 Rokyta, Jan 89, 92–93, 103 Romanov-Yurev, Danii Romanovich 95 Römer, Hans 73 Rosales see Bocarro Francês Rosentayl, Heinrich 60 Rothe, Johannes 66, 187, 196 Rudnev, Nikolay 216 Rudolf I of Habsbourg, Holy Roman Emperor 66 Rudolf II of Habsbourg, Holy Roman Emperor 130 Ruth the Moabite (Bible) 112 Rycaut, Paul 16, 121–54, 157 Salomon, King of Israel (Bible) 264 Samael, archangel 112 Sandoval, Prudencio de 228 Santos (“Atahualpa”), Juan, Peruvian prophet 18, 261–70, 274–75, 276 Savonarola, Girolamo 2, 6, 90 Schlichting, Albert 95, 98, 102–04 Schmid, Konrad 16, 61–70, 75–76, 78–79, 81 Schmidt, Tobias 193 Schmincke, Johann Hermann 80 Schoenvelt, Heinrich 67, 68, 81, 82 Schütz, Johann Jakob 187–89, 196 Sebastian I of Portugal, King of Portugal 8, 232–36, 241–44 Ségur-Pardaillon, Pierre 141 Selden, John 139 Selim I, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire 13, 247 Selim II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire 248 Serrarius, Petrus 11, 12, 182 Sharaf of Livorno, Judah 134 Shaykh, Muhammad al 13 Sherley, Anthony 130, 151 Sherley, Robert 130, 151 Sherley, Thomas 130, 151 Shikellmy, a Delaware 273

Sigismund II Augustus, King of Poland 94–97 Sigismund of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia, Holy Roman Emperor (1433–1437) 33, 229 Sil’vestr, protopope 90–92, 94–95 Simon ben Kosevah (Bar Kokhba) 200 Skhariia (Zacharia), a Jew in Novgorod 203 Smith, Thomas 249 Spangenberg, Cyriacus 62, 78 Spener, Philipp Jakob 17, 181–98 Spiegel, Thomas, of Ostheim 73 Spinoza, Baruch 121, 133, 140 Spitzel, Gottlieb 197–98 Stenger, Johann Melchior 186, 194–95 Süleyman I, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire (“the Lawgiver”, “the Magnificent”) 13 Sulzbach, Christian Augustus of, Count Palatine of 188, 196–97 Talman, Michael 258 Tarkishduz, Ustad Yufusi 130 Taube, Johann 98, 103–04 Telepnev-Obolenskii, Dmitrii Fedorovich-Ovchinin, prince 94 Tenorio, Gonzalo 231, 240 Tertullian 118 Thomasius, Jacob 186 Thurloe, John 121 Tirant 229, 239 Titus, Roman Emperor 248 Toribio de Benavente (Motolinía) 166–67, 177–78 Tribbechov, Adam 194–95 Trona, Angel 69 Trypho, a fictional Jew 200 Uklein, Semen 206, 208 Vassili III, Grand Prince of Moscow 90 Vázquez de Caicedo, Santiago 281 Veiel, Elias 186, 194, 196 Vieira, Antonio 9, 147, 234, 236, 243–44 Viskovatyi, Ivan Mikhailovich 96, 101, 104 Vitus, Guy (Guido), saint 63 Vladimir Andreevich of Staritsa, prince 95–96 Voksa of Waldstein, Lord of 43 Wagner, Georg Friedrich 187 Waldo, Peter 35

288  Index of Names Wedigen, Hanns 60 Weigel, Valentin 182 William of Saint-Amour 45 Wyche, Richard, vicar of Deptford 43 Wyclif, John 6, 32, 36, 41–45, 56, 58, 61 Yishaki, David 134

Zabolotskii, Vladimir Semenovich 94 Zeisberger, David 261, 276, 281 Želivský, Jan 33, 43, 49 Zevi, Sabbatai 9, 11–15, 22, 24–25, 107, 128, 132–43, 147–49, 152, 154–55, 254 Žižka, Jan 38 Zwingli, Huldrych 15