Millenium (57 page)

No wonder, then, when the ferociously outnumbered crusaders succeeded in yet again shattering the Turks upon their steel, when they continued to win famous cities long lost to Christendom, and when, on 7 June 1099, they finally arrived in triumph before the walls of Jerusalem, there were few among them who doubted that they had arrived as well at a turning point in the order of heaven and earth. No one could know for certain what wonders might follow their capture of the Holy Sepulchre - but merely to win it would rank as wonder enough. Ambition, greed and ingenuity: all these qualities, honed by the three long and terrible years of the pilgrimage, had served to bring the crusaders to the very brink of a miracle. Yet in the mingled sense of urgency and brutality that they had displayed, and in their convic­tion that there was nothing in the world that might not be changed and improved by their own labours, there lay the proof of a revolution long pre-dating their taking up of the Cross. For better and for worse, the previous century had seen Christendom, and the Christian people, transformed utterly. The arrival of the crusaders before the walls of the Holy City was merely a single - albeit the most spectacular - man­ifestation of a process which, since the convulsive period of the Millennium, had made of Europe something restless, and dynamic, and wholly new. Nor would it be the last.

A thousand years had passed now since an angel, parting the veil which conceals from mankind the plans of the Almighty for the future, had given to St John a revelation of the last days. And the saint, writing it down, had recorded how a great battle was destined to be fought; and how the Beast, at its end, would be captured and thrown into a lake of fire. But before that could be brought about, and the world born anew, Christ Himself, 'clad in a robe dipped in blood', was
destined to lead out the armies of heaven. 'From his mouth issues a sharp sword with which to smite the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron; he will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath ofGod the Almighty.'
¹³⁹

On 15 July, the crusaders finally broke into Jerusalem and took pos­session of the object of all their yearnings. The wine press was duly trodden: the streets were made to flow with blood. And at the end of it, when the slaughter was done, and the whole citv drenched in gore, the triumphant warriors of Christ, weeping with jov and disbelief, assembled before the Sepulchre of the Saviour and knelt in an ecstasy of worship.

Meanwhile, on the Temple Mount, where it had been foretold that Antichrist would materialise at the end of days enthroned in fearsome and flame-lit glory, all was stillness. The slaughter upon the rock of the Temple had been especially terrible, and not a living thing had been left there to stir. Already, in the summer heat, the corpses were starting to reek.

Antichrist did not appear.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Sources for medieval history tend to be much less freely available than their equiv­alents from the classical period. Not only do a majority remain untranslated, but many are accessible only in intimidating volumes of nineteenth-century scholar­ship. Two resources are particularly indispensable. One is the
Patnlogia Latina,
an immense compendium of sermons, saints' lives and other writings on ecclesiasti­cal themes, gathered together in no fewer than 221 volumes by a single French priest, Jacques-Paul Migne. The other is the
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