Europe at 999 AD: The End of Time?
The last years of the 10th century saw a desperate time in Europe.
Across the entire continent, invading peoples such as the Goths, Magyars
and Saracens battled with the native Europeans, destroying towns and villages
while killing
thousands. The Vikings wreaked havoc across the continent
as well, quickly entering coastal towns and pillaging all they could find.
From the north of Britain to central Italy, no coastal town was safe from
their touch and their devastation even reached inland into Britain, France
and what is now Belgium among others. Even Rome was not spared the devastation
of the time, as it had shrunk from the capital of the greatest empire on
the planet to a town of merely 50,000 people. Saint Peter’s Cathedral,
while one of the two most important sites in the Christian realm, was far
from its modern image as it still lacked its trademark dome and parade
ground. The Papal Basilica of Sylvester the II
could be taken as
simply another church in a city of many. The Colloseum
itself had been demoted to the status of an apartment house. With the collapse
of the Carolingian dynasty in France, lesser nobles gained control and
brought into being a feudal system that remained unchanged for centuries.
There were unexpected and extremely violent Danish raids into Britain that
left the population in terror. Essentially, one is painted a picture of
Europe on the verge of the Middle Ages. With the decline in any civilization,
notions of the end of time could be found, yet Christianity found itself
in an interesting period. In northern Europe, Iceland, Denmark and Norway
were on the verge
of accepting Christianity while the strength of this
new religion was beginning to find itself a home in Sweden. In the east,
the kings of Ukraine, Hungary and Poland were about to be baptized. In
Spain, the Reconquista was only three years away from beginning. Conflicting
visions of the apocalypse are thus found in Europe at this point as many
pointed to the events surrounding them as the signs of the end of the world.
What the average individual could not see at this time was the spread of
Christianity throughout the continent.
Were the common thoughts about the potential apocalypse at all related to the actual calendar?
Either follow the above links to other pages dealing with the Year 1000, or head back to the Main Page.