The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages by Norman Cohn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Emperor of the Last Days

Norman Cohn describes a continuous line of religiously inspired revolutionaries from the author of the Book of Daniel in the 2nd century BCE to the apocalyptic cults of the 19th and 20th centuries. Arguably it was the Montanists of the mid-second century who held the first millennial revivals, even then calling for a return to the ‘original’ message of Jesus’s teaching. And it was they who established the paradigm for future Christian enthusiasts, a vision of a world ruled by demons, upon which God would imminently take revenge. They lived expectantly not, as the Jews for victory over their oppressive enemies, but for the destruction of the entire world - a kind of religious paranoia.

To describe this religious attitude as a psychosis may seem an exaggeration but it appears exactly that (how else to describe a hope for global annihilation?). These millennial cults arise most forcefully not in the midst of persecution but rather through some other general dislocation in society. As Cohn says, “again and again, in situations of mass disorientation and anxiety, traditional beliefs about a future golden age or messianic kingdom came to serve as vehicles for social aspirations and animosities.” In other words, this kind of religious fervour is much more political than it is spiritual. The goal is always power and dominance over other groups, even (perhaps especially) those who share similar beliefs.

According to Cohn, such movements are always anti-establishment. But while Judaism tolerated a range of eccentric groups, the Christian Church did not, indeed, could not, since it was doctrine rather than genetics which held the institution together. So, “When in the fourth century Christianity attained a position of supremacy in the Mediterranean world and became the official religion of the Empire, ecclesiastical disapproval of millenarianism became emphatic.” But despite persistent attempts to suppress doctrinal deviation, such internal ecclesial strife “persisted in the obscure underworld of popular religion.”

Cohn identifies the primary constituents of these radical movements, namely “the unprivileged, the oppressed, the disoriented and the unbalanced.” In every case, it appears, the ‘have nots’, even while espousing the spiritual superiority of their relative disadvantage, seek to reverse their roles with those whom they criticise. In those instances in which their objectives are attained, they then maintain their attitude of superiority while accumulating the the means of power they formerly despised. Thus the continuing cycle of religious sociology through the Protestant Reformation and beyond.

It was the Christian appropriation of Jewish apocalyptic in the Book of Revelation and the derivative Sibylline prophecies of the Middle Ages which kept the fires of radical religion burning. These documents “deeply affected political attitudes. For medieval people the stupendous drama of the Last Days was not a phantasy about some remote and indefinite future but a prophecy which was infallible and which at almost any given moment was felt to be on the point of fulfilment.” The specific political situations that evoked these prophecies - the Roman Empire in the case of the New Testament and medieval social hierarchies in the case of latter prophecies - were forgotten, but the prophecies themselves retained their appeal and continue to motivate millennial and evangelical groups.

Perhaps the most important conclusion that can be drawn from Cohn’s work for the 21st century is the essential paradox of these movements. They start with popular discontent, attaching themselves to some expression of religious precept as an alternative to current norms. Very quickly they generate a leader who is invariably associated with the Messiah, either as his messenger or as the Last Emperor who will prepare the world for his arrival. But inevitably:

“In almost every new monarch his subjects tried to see that Last Emperor who was to preside over the Golden Age, while chroniclers bestowed on him the conventional messianic epithets, rex justus or maybe David. When each time experience brought the inevitable disillusionment people merely imagined the glorious consummation postponed to the next reign and, if they possibly could, regarded the reigning monarch as a ‘precursor’ with the mission of making the way straight for the Last Emperor.”

Am I simply prejudicial in suggesting Trump and his evangelical mob constitute the latest manifestation of the millennial fantasy?

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