“Nos Nescientes de Hoc Velle Manere”—“We Wish to Remain Ignorant about This”: Timeless End, or: Approaches to Reconceptualizing Eschatology after A.D. 800 (A.M. 6000)

Abstract

The more spectacular a prediction is, the more frustrating it becomes when the prescribed date passes and nothing happens. This essay will discuss not so much the predictions of yesterday but rather the awakening of the morning after. False predictions left a gap and created the need for explicit or implicit responses to the failed prediction, a need that could be filled by modifying the calculations or condemning fresh speculation. This essay shows how people managed to reconceptualize the order of the world aftera.d.800 =a.m.[annus mundi] 6000, the beginning of the supposed seventh, ultimate millennium. As we consider the intellectual progress of the ninth century, we also need to look at the link between the Carolingian reform and the release of apocalyptic tension or post-apocalyptic exhaustion. This investigation builds on recent contributions to the field of medieval eschatology, especially those of Wolfram Brandes, Richard K. Emmerson, Johannes Fried, Richard Landes, Bernard McGinn, and others. It focuses on selected sources, and particularly on exegetical texts, to show that overcoming the eschatological crisis caused more than a shift in the system of counting years, fromannus munditoab incarnatione Domini.Questions about dates led to general reflections about time, the past and the future. The significant shift, therefore, was from counting time to a philosophy of time.

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