Apocalypse Then!

Within the Christian view of the world God was seen as creator of the universe and he controlled when it began, as well as when it ended. This ending of the world is presented in the biblical Book of Revelations, which says that there will be Final Judgement followed by the reign of the Antichrist. It was the common belief amoung Christian at the beginning of the thirteenth century that this End would be coming soon. Thus, many Christians- including Matthew Paris- began to write and create art depicting this Final Judgment or Apocalypse. Many of these verses and sketches are still in existence, and give an interesting window into the minds and lives of this generation of people who truly believed their world was about to come to an end.

The apocalyptic visions were depicted in both written verse, as well as, through rich imagery. These images and texts used a diverse array of symbols and rhetorical and allegorical tactics. They were also very dramatic in form, which shows the author's “desire to present a picture of the conflict between good and evil,” through “ a set of easily visualizable scenes and strongly-drawn characters that because of their imaginative power remain fixed in the reader's mind.” ¹ Each of the scenes depicting the Apocalypse were all commonly structured and scripted with a “threefold pattern of crisis, judgement, and salvation essential to apocalypticism.”² This structure is similar to that of a dramatic piece of theatre, which also always has a crisis, judgement, and usually ends with catharsis. This connection reemphasizes the need to use presentation and imagination to ensure that the apocalyptic message gets ingrained in the reader mind.

Matthew Paris spoke of the coming of the Antichrist on many occasions in his chronicles. For instance, Paris wrote about the destructive actions of the Tartars of 1242-3, and made a connection to these actions with the end of world- "In these times also, on account of the terrible rumors of this kind, the following verses, declaring the coming of Antichrist, were spread about.”³ Many of these rumours were started by the Joachite movement, and spread around England. This movement, led by Abbot Joachim in the late middle ages, was based on Joachim's writings, and his belief that the apocalypse would take place in 1260. Unfortunately, because the Joachim's visions were expressed through either rumours or through his very complex and vague writings this date was debatable. There were people who said it was 1260 and there were some who believed 1250⁴ There are many instances, where Joachim's visions of the coming of the Antichrist were written down in manuscripts, such as an inscription written in a bible owned by the Gilbertine house, which said:

According to the prophet Joachim,

When a thousand two hundred years and six decades

Have passed since the Virgin gave birth,

Then Antichrist shall be born full of the devil.⁵

This verse shows that this person believed that the end was coming in 1260, however, another manuscript commenting on Joachim's visions was found written by Bury St. Edmunds, which is similar to this previous one, but placed the end in 1250.⁶ By all accounts, these examples are only a small number of the written documentation on this subject matter.

Matthew Paris depicts the Apocolypse through both verse (as written above), but also through images. An example of these images is his drawing of the Nativity of Christ. This image depicts the birth of Christ, which for most contemporary people would represent the beginning of a new life- innocent, naive, pure, and full of hope. However, as Suzanne Lewis discusses in The Art of Matthew Paris, that because in the Christian middle ages there was a “closed historical chronology beginning with Creation and moving through clearly defined periods toward the Last Judgment at the end,” this is image is thus depicting the beginning of the end.⁷ This moment of new birth therefore loses that sense of hope and purity, for as Paris writes in the margins, “When twice six hundred years and fifty more. Are gone since blessed Mary's son was born, then Antichrist shall come full of the devil.”⁸ By all accounts, this marginality clearly represents the mindset of most people during this time- that their Earthly lives were about to be terminated and the world will soon be shrouded in darkness as the devil takes full reign of it.

1 Bernard McGinn Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 6.

2 McGinn, 6.

3 As quoted in Suzanne Lewis The Art of Matthew Paris (Berkley: University of California Press, 1987), 103.

4 McGinn, 158-9.

5 As quoted in Lewis., 104.

6 As quoted in Lewis., 104.

7 Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris, 102.

8 As quoted in Lewis., 102.