Terror in A.D. 1000?

While we look to the new millennium with both trepidation and amusement, medieval scholars argue about what really happened at this time 1,000 years ago

  • By Patricia Bernstein
  • Smithsonian magazine, July 1999, Subscribe
 

Popular accounts of the turn of the last millennium paint a world gone mad. Churches crammed with penitents, soldiers departed from the battlefield, farmers gone from their fields; and the church offering solace to all in exchange for property and gold. While easy to embrace, this vision of medieval Europeans, gripped by paralyzing fear in anticipation of the end of the world, is more legend than fact. So say most medieval historians, who long ago dubbed it a myth and named it the "Terrors of the year 1000."

However, history professor Richard Landes, who is also director of the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University, recently challenged old-guard academe with a new theory arguing that, in fact, millennium-related activity did occur on a larger scale in the years surrounding the first millennium and that the Terrors myth may actually contain elements of truth. Sources are few and subject to wide interpretation, making the resulting academic debate lively and contentious.

But how did the tale of the Terrors get its start? The short answer is that historians from the 16th century on found the entire notion to be territory too rich to resist. Add to that the idea that interpretation of events in the past are often colored by the historian's own biases. Over the centuries, these interpretations flowered into the Terrors myth.

Journey through the last ten centuries and learn how history is written down, interpreted, reinterpreted and analyzed. Why do year 1000 events so fascinate historians of the 16th, 17th and 19th centuries? And how will our own modern interpretations of the year 1000 be seen 1,000 years from now?


Popular accounts of the turn of the last millennium paint a world gone mad. Churches crammed with penitents, soldiers departed from the battlefield, farmers gone from their fields; and the church offering solace to all in exchange for property and gold. While easy to embrace, this vision of medieval Europeans, gripped by paralyzing fear in anticipation of the end of the world, is more legend than fact. So say most medieval historians, who long ago dubbed it a myth and named it the "Terrors of the year 1000."

However, history professor Richard Landes, who is also director of the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University, recently challenged old-guard academe with a new theory arguing that, in fact, millennium-related activity did occur on a larger scale in the years surrounding the first millennium and that the Terrors myth may actually contain elements of truth. Sources are few and subject to wide interpretation, making the resulting academic debate lively and contentious.

But how did the tale of the Terrors get its start? The short answer is that historians from the 16th century on found the entire notion to be territory too rich to resist. Add to that the idea that interpretation of events in the past are often colored by the historian's own biases. Over the centuries, these interpretations flowered into the Terrors myth.

Journey through the last ten centuries and learn how history is written down, interpreted, reinterpreted and analyzed. Why do year 1000 events so fascinate historians of the 16th, 17th and 19th centuries? And how will our own modern interpretations of the year 1000 be seen 1,000 years from now?

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Comments (1)

I think people who still believe in the end of the world tend to believe that such event will happen at the of the millenium. I know some members of a church back home who call themselves Jehovah's Witness. When their church leaders announced the time of the end of the world in the year 2000, their members sold all their properties - lands, houses, furnitures, etc. They also closed all their bank accounts. Many of the members went out two by two and did home visitation, giving out milleniarist tracts to the homes they visit. But when the year 2000 arrived, they found nothing happened. So today, these people are homeless. To survive, they sell jugs of waters using push carts and bring them to the public market and sell them to restaurant owners. Another reason why some churches believe the end of the world comes at the end of a millenium is, some believe it's what the bible says. Biblical literalists preachers and evangelists, take advantage of that event to use it for their evangelistic efforts. They use fear to invite people to become members of their churches. It's also a big money-making business for churches. Their church leaders convince their more wealthy church members to donate their money to the church, because they tell these poor, innocent church members they don't need any money when they get to heaven anyway. And we have many churches do this thing, even in America today. Which is quite sad.

Posted by jnriingen@aol.com on August 19,2012 | 09:29 PM



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