>Notice the connection the collect draws between the incarnation of
>Christ and his crucifixion - both believed to have taken place on the
>same day.
abbo of fleury, who is the first to tell us that apocalyptic expectations first
spread far and wide at the approach of one of these dates (970). after the
next such date (981) he issued his famous "correction" of dionysus exiguus by
pointing out that there was no way that the annunciation and the crucifixion cd
have happened on the same date, and that the only plausible way to date the
incarnation was to subtract 21 years (thus making his year 1004, not 983 -- how
convenient).
i go into this in some detail in my piece on 1000
(http://www.mille.org/scholarship/1000/AHR9.html), which will shortly
appear (in
revised form) in the next issue of speculum.
the passage from abbo reads:
Concerning the End of the World, as a youth I heard a sermon preached to the
people in the Paris church to the effect that as soon as the number of 1000
years was completed, Antichrist would arrive, and not long after, the Last
Judgement would follow. I resisted as vigorously as I could to that preaching,
citing Revelation and Daniel. Then my abbot of blessed memory and keen mind
rejected another error which grew about the End of the World; and after he
received correspondance from Lotharingians he ordered me to answer. For a rumor
had filled almost the entire world that when the Annunciation fell on Good
Friday, without any question, it would be the End of the World.
On the patristic and Carolingian origins of this calculation, see David C. Van
Meter, "Christian of Stavelot on Matthew 24:42, and the Tradition That the
World Will End on a March 25th," Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale
63 (1996), 68-92. See also Eduard Weigl, "Die Oration ‘Gratiam tuam, Quaesumus,
Domine’: Zur Geschichte des 25. März in der Liturgie," Liturgisches Jahrbuch 3
(1923), 57-73.
Richard Landes
Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University Department of History
704 Commonwealth Ave. Suite 205 226 Bay State Road
Boston MA 02215 Boston MA 02215
617-358-0226 of 358-0225 fax 617-353-2558 of 353-2556 fax
http://www.mille.org [log in to unmask]
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