Table Of ContentApocalypse 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 possi-
ble interconnections.
Why were eschatological movements so pervasive in early modern times?
This volume provides some answers to this question by exploring the inter-
connected 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 his-
tory 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 con-
centrates 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 essen-
tial 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
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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
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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
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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
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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 Names 282
Preface
The origin of this book is a workshop I organised in 2018 that was gener-
ously 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 deci-
sive 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 con-
vinced 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 con-
fessional 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 other-
wise be doomed for not chastising the wicked. Shortly afterwards, Ivan the
Terrible launched a campaign of repression against his subjects on an unprec-
edented 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 eschato-
logical 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
