The Past and Present Society

Review: In Search of the Millennium

Author(s): Gordon Leff
Source: Past & Present, No. 13 (Apr., 1958), pp. 89-95
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/649872
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ReviezvArticle
IN SEARCHOF THE MILLENNIUM
IT IS NOT ENTIRELYFORTUITOUSTHAT SO MUCH OF WRITTEN HISTORY
deals with the minorities who appear to make it. Apart from the
historian's bias it is often a matter of inescapable fact that when he
deals with the records of government, constitutions, politics,
diplomacy and especially ideas he is confronted with activiiies which,
hitherto at least, have been the preserve of a minority; and to write
about them is to write the history of minorities. Whether this is
true for the present, it indubitably applies to the past, and nowhere
more than to the middle ages. There, the sources, whether the
official records of royal chanceries, the chronides of monks or the
treatises of schoolmen, derive from exclusive and privileged groups;
they record and reflect activities and outlooks not shared by the
majority of society. For the vast illiterate mass of the population
there is no such material. Our knowledge of them is perfunctory
where it is not non-existent. At best we may catch a fleeting glimpse
of a popular movement, or pick out the faint note of an oral tradition,
but these are the slenderest of straws. If we can sometimes visualize
their economic position through estate records or royal surveys, there
is virtually nothing to tell llS what ordinary people thought or how
they believed. The gulf between popular legend and the refinements
of scholasticism could not appear to be wider. Small wonder that
we have hardly begun to form a picture of mediaeval man.
Professor Cohn* has now made an attempt with his study of
millenarian movements from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries.
His theme is the periodic rising of the poor and unprivileged against
the existirlgorder in the belief that a new world was at hand, "a world
purged of suffering and sin, a Kingdom of the Saints" (p. xiii).
Professor Cohn sees the main source of this apocalyptic outlook
in the Jewish messianic tradition, especially the Book of Revelations,
which was handed on to the early Christians. Their cause he regards
as the manifestation of a paranoiacstate of mind which prevailed in
the towrls, bred of rootlessness and frustration and fed by the
propheiic elemellts of the Bible. This led the urban poor "to
seek messianic leaders; and they were also the people who were most
prone to create demonic scapegoats. The resulting paranoid
phantasy could easily be integrated into the old eschatology derived
: Norman Cohn: ThePursuitof theMillennium, (Secker and Warburg, I957;
pp. xvi and 476; 42/-.
9o PAST AND PRESENT

from the Johannine and Sybilline traditions [i.e. prophecies of a

saviour]. In this form it becomes a coherent social myth which was
capable of taking entire possession of those who believed in it.
It explained their sufferings, it promised them recompense, held
their anxieties at bay, it gave them an illusion of security even
while it drove them, held together by a common enthusiasm, on a
quest which was always vain and often sviicidal" (p. 74). For
Professor Cohn millenarianismwas emotional in its nature; and his
book is essentially a study of mass revolutionarypsychology in action
down the ages. By the use of psychological criteria he feels able to
view the whole range of revolutionary activity from the eleventh
to the twentieth century as sharing the same set of messianic visions
(derived from Jewish and Hellenistic traditions) and motivated by
the same emotional drives (paranoia and frustration). Such an
approach naturally leads Professor Cohn to relegate historical data
to second place, and if it seems graceless to take him to task because
his emphases are not those of the historian, the criticism is made
because they seem to lead to serious weaknesses.
Briefly, Professor Cohn holds that the more or less continuous
emergence of revolutionary outbursts from the eleventh century
had their source in the new conditions of urban life: "In addition to
poverty as great as that of any peasant, the masses of journeymen
and casual labourers suffered disorientation such as could scarcely
occur under the manorial regime. There was no immemorial body
of custom which they could invoke in their defence, there was no
shortage of labour to lend weight to their claims. Above all, they
were not supported by any network of social relationshipscomparable
to that which sustained a peasant . . . And if in the upper strata
of the urban population kinship-groups were still important, in the
lower strata they dwindled away to the point of insignificance. The
migrations from the over-populated countryside into the industrial
centres began by disrupting and ended by destroying the large
peasant families . . . Journeymen and unskilled workers, peasants
without land or with too little land to support them, beggars and
vagabonds,the unemployed and those threatenedwith unemployment,
the many who for one reason or another could find no assured and
recognized place-such people, living in a state of chronic frustra-
tion and anxiety, formed the most impulsive and unstable elements
in medieval society. Any disturbing, frightening or exciting event
any kind of revolt or revolution, a summons to a crusade, an
interregnum, a plague or a famine, anything in fact which disrupted
the normal routine of social life-acted on these people with peculiar
 IN SEARCHOF THE MILLENNIUM 9I

sharpness and called forth reactions of peculiar violence. And the

way in which they attempted to deal with their common plight was to
form a salvationistgroup under the leadershipof some man whom they
regarded as extraordinarilyholy" (pp.2g-30). In addition to stating
his main tenets, this passage also exemplifiesProfessorCohn's method
of approach; he regards the niillenarian movement as inspired by
the insecurity and frustrationof town life, and the revolts themselves
as the occasion for these underlying, ever-present feelings to manifest
themselves. Consequently, the whole of Professor Cohn's study
suffers, from an historical point of view, from a tendency to happen
in a void without real recourse to time and place. We are faced with
the apocalyptic ideal on the one hand and the successive events with
which it was associatedon the other; but there is no sustained attempt
to delineate the precise relationship between the two. Their
coalescence is taken for granted so that one movement tends to shade
into another and by the time we have reached the sixteenth century
we cannot but feel that a sense of development is lacking.
The most unsatisfactory effect of this situation is that one is left
wondering why and how, if at all, millenarianism is peculiar to
Christianity or the middle ages; and indeed Professor Cohn himself
seems to share this doubt, for, once launched, the messianism which
came from the Jews seems, in his view, to go on without fundamental
alteration, embracing twentieth-century Nazism and Communism.
SimilarlyProfessorCohn's insistence upon the towns as the indispens-
able centres for these movetnents also raises problems: why did they
not occur in the centres of the Roman Empire which were far more
urban than those of the middle ages? Why were there so many
risings which, on Professor Cohn's own showing, were not specifically
urban, such as those in Brittany under Eudes d'Etoile, or the vast
peasant risings of the fourteenth century, or the people's crusade,
drawn from every quarter? Finally, if insecurity and frustration
were the dominant drives in millenarianism, why did it not abound
in the great age of invasions, from the fifth to the tenth centuries,
when human ties were never more tenuous and human life never so
precarious? If Professor Cohll does not sufficiently pause to
consider these matters it is because he is primarilyconcerned with the
prevalence of the disease rather than with its circumstances. Yet it
may be doubted whether the disease can be understood without a
more thorough-going study of its origins. At the present stage of our
knowledge this is not yet a practicalpossibility, but certain lines may
by suggested.
In the first place, it would seem that millenarianismis only one
92 PAST AND PRESENT

and that the most extreme marlifestationof a current of popular

belief which runs throughout the middle ages. This does not always
have to be revolutionary nor is it necessarily coloured by Jewish
messiasiism. It was more a syncretism of diverse elements, pagan
and Christian, memory and myth. It osved as much to the deeds of
an Arthur and a Charlemagneas to specifically Judaic or Christian
concepts. Together they combined to produce the idea of the leader,
the emboditnent of all the virtues, who by deeds of supernatural
proportions overcame evil asld re-established righteousness. This
pattern of a saviour was, as Professor Cohn observes, common to all
millenarianism. What he lmderestimates is the debt it owed to
legend as well as to reiigion. It represented a separate experience
firomthat of the ecclesiasticalhierarchywith the result that it continued
to flourish long after St. Augustine's Cityof Godhad come to replace
millenarianism as the official doctrine of the church. It is this
divergence between the orthodox and l:he heterodox which helps to
explain why the same teachings of Christianity could be interpreted
so differently. From the concept that the Fall of Man demanded
Christ's intercession to redeem him, two different attitudes could be
born. On the one hand, conviction in a final reckoning and the
triumph of righteousness could lead to a revolutionarydesire to bring
about its immediate realization under some self-appointed messiah.
On the other hand, it could induce an attitude of acceptance in the
assurancethat all injusiice and suffering, as the pain of sin, would be
righted in the next world.
Now, a priori, there is no inherent reason why one should be
preferred to the other. They represented two different views of
life. The first made its appeal to those who found their present
condition too hard to bear. The second rested on the assumption
that the existing order was the best that could be achieved and
that any change would be for the worse. The latter gained in
strength from the fifth century onwards, enshrined m the Augustinian
doctrine that the Church was the repository of God's saving will
on earth, and hence to follow its precepts was the pre-requisite of
salvation. It is Professor Cohn's great merit that he has looked
beneath this surface of orthodoxy in trying to assess the whereabouts
of Christianity's revolutionary traditions. Where one differs with
him is in confining the latter too narrowlyto revolutonary messianism
pure and simple. Had he been prepared to widen his terms of
reference he would have noticed strong affinities to this popular
acovist conceptionlong before the eleventh century, even though it did
not manifest itself in revolution. The so-called Dark Ages are full
 IN SEARCHOF THE MlLLENNIUM 93

of an undercurrentof oppositionto orthodoxChristianity. There

werethe series of heresiesof which Pelagianism,with its belief in
man's inherentgoodnessand the sufficiencyof his free will, was
perhaps the most dangerous. It occupied the attention of St.
AugustiIle'slast years,and even Bede, three centurieslater,wrotea
treatiseagainstits adherents. Then there were the greatmonastic
reformingmovementsassociatedwith Cluny and C;teauxfrom the
tenth to the twelfth centuries. It could well be arguedthat their
fervour and ideals had much in common with unorthodoxyand
millenarianism.Both received their impetus from a revulsion
against worldlinessand privilege; both took as their image the
primitivecorporatelife of Christand his disciples. They differed
in that monasticreformtookplacewithinthe Churchand for a time
was its mainspring,whereas the Waldenses,Albigenses and the
Brethrenof the Free Spiritput themselves,or wereput, outsidethe
Christiancommunion. The line between heresy and orthodoxy
was oftenthe decisiveone in makinga movementrevolutionary, and
this was due as much to the action of the ecclesiasticaland lay
authoritiesas to the tendenciesof the hereticsthemselves. Nowhere
is this more apparentthan with the Friarswho, had they not been
recognisedby InnocentIII, nzightwell have remainedolltsidethe
Church,with inevitableresults. Even so, the rift in the Franciscan
orderbetweenthe extremewing of the Spiritualsand the orthodox
members led finally to the persecutionof the former for their
unorthodoxy.
Thisdifferencebetweenorthodoxandhereticalreformingfervouris,
therefore,not a simple one and can hardlybe explainedby terms
like paranoia. For this, the circumstancesof each movementmust
be takeninto account,as the firststep. Thus in tracingthe indisput-
able growth of millenarianismafter A.D. IOOO there are certain
historicalcoxlsiderationsof the utmost importance. The first was
the changed position of the Church. Throughout the age of
invasionsit had been as much a prey to oppressionas the poorest
peasant,and it was mainlyby its agencythat any fiormof culture
survived. Not surprisingly,therefore,the Chllrch was the seat
of the new reformingmovementsfrom the tenth to the thirteenth
centuries, attractingthe most outstandingpersonalitiesinto its
ranks. Yet in the processof establishingits own independenceit
contractedall those vices of privilege, wealth and exclusiveness
which had siimulatedthe originalmovementsfor reform. With
the friars the last move of reformunder the Church'saegis was
reached;henceforthit was unable to assimilatepopularfeeling to
94 PAST AND PRESENT

itself. Now this was of the utmost significance because it caused

men to look outside the Church for the realization of their ideals.
It was no accident that the spread of heresy from the thirteenth
century onwards extended far beyond messianic outbursts in the
towns to incorporate elements like the Flemish mystics who might
well have been members of a reforming movement within the Church
a century before. >s!'or was it accidental that the Inquisition became
a permanent ancillary in combating unorthodoxy at the same time
as ecclesiasticallydirected reforms became exhausted.
Secondly, the growth of the towns meant not only a new under-
privileged proletariatever liable to erupt, but new centres of civiliza-
tion and ideas. Cities like Paris, Toulouse, Milan had an importance
far beyond their own walls as the foci of entire regions. Their
contribution to the spread of unrest lay as much in their quickening
effect on life generally as in their internal disturbances - a factor
that Professor Cohn underestimates.
Finally, and intimately connected with the towns, were the stimuli
that came from the East. Many of the most extreme doctrines which
gripped the masses, like Catharismand the emphasis upon existence
as an inseparabledualism of good and evil, were of orientalprovenance,
just as some of the most formative ideas in scholasticism derived
from Persia, Syria, and Moslem Spain. Here, also, Professor
Cohn's unduly restricted vision means that he has largely excluded
some of the most momentous movements of heresy and unorthodoxy,
especially that of the Albigenses in Southern France. With their
manichaean doctrines and their own self-constituted elect-the
perfecti - this heresy presented one of the greatest threats to the
Church at the beginning of the thirteenth century. It mirrored
most of the diverse elements which went to the making of heterodoxy,
in its preoccupation with sin, its revulsion against worldliness and
material well-being, its ascetic elect, its own religious practices, its
fervour, its attraction for the lower orders. It would be hard to
designate it exclusively in either class or psychological terms. It was
a focus of diverse groupings and feelings in revolt against orthodoxy
ratherthan a specific messianic revolt, and in this it was characteristic
of so many of the movements of the iime.
To deal with millenarianism,then, is to confront a complex current
of non-conformity which flowed throughout the middle ages and
beyond. The whole range of their circumstances have to be talren
into account. Both in time and place, to say nothing of their specific
diversities, these movements need a wider context than Professor
Cohn has chosen. Geographically,they extended to the countryside
 IN SEARCHOF THE MILLENNIUM 9s

as well as the towns, even if and when the latter acted as rallying
points. Temporally,they underwenta markedchangein character
in the thirteenthandfourteenthcenturies. The growinginflexibility
of the Churchmade persecutioIlits main defence againstheresy.
In the doctrinesof the CalabrianAbbot,Joachimof Fiore,something
like a rival social and historicaldoctrinegrew up in oppositionto
that of the Church, canalisingthe latent dissatisfactionwith the
existingorder. Thus at a time whenthe Churchwas no longerable
to offer an outlet for religiousfervourJoachismbecameone of its
mainvehicles. Throughoutthe thirteenthand fourteenthcenturies
heresygrewand with it mysticism. The latter,fed partlyfrom the
rediscoveryof the Neoplatonismof Plotinusand Proclus,presented
a personalschemeof experienceandconductin defaultof thatoffered
by the Church. Both in itself and in the impactit madeupon such
movementsas the Brethrenof the Free Spiritit wasa directchallenge
to the establishmentand a call for non-ecclesiastical salvation. Its
effectswerefar-reaching throughoutWesternEuropein the fourteenth
century,extendingfromBohemiato SouthernFranceand Italy. It
was a newelement,and ProfessorCohnhasnot consideredit enough.
Finally,then,therewasno singlepatternof millenarianism.Revolts
couldbe local,asin manytownrevolts;theycouldbe againstlandlord,
urbanpatriciateor Church;theycouldrisefromexultation(as during
the firstcrusade),hardship(the Peasants'Revoltin England)or heret-
ical values (the Albigenses)or, more often, embraceall three; they
could be a direct conflictof classes, or enshrinethe outlookof a
wholeregionas in Languedoc. But to treatthemas a singleexpress-
ion of a universalemotionalill is to do violenceto them. Time,
placeandcircumstances areultimatelythe onlyarbitersin the problem
of whatcausedan outburstto be whatit was, whenit was.
What,then, are the conclusionsto be drawn? ProfessorCohn
woulddoubtlessarguethatwherehe wasconcernedwith millenarian-
ism I have been discussingmuch else besides. This is undeniable,
but the justification,I submit, lies in the Ilatureof millenarianism
itself. To isolateit, as ProfessorCohn does, and to diagnoseit in
psychologicalterms,is to falsifyits nature. We must ratherregard
it as partand parcelof that unofficialstreamof belief whichoffered
a rivalinterpretation to that of the prevailingdoctrines. Whenthat
is said,however,thereremainsthe infinitecomplexityof its differing
expressions,a taskthat will takelong to complete.

Universityof Manchester GordonLeff