The Real History of the End of the World (11 page)

It's possible that this persecution caused the Jews to also believe that they were living in the end times and that the Messiah would soon come. This made it all the more important for them to hold fast to the faith, even if it meant mass suicide.
^ed

The trigger for the crusading movement was the conquest of Jerusalem by the Seljuk Turks in the early 1070s. Jerusalem had been governed by the easygoing Fatamid caliphs who didn't mind Christian pilgrims and were fairly tolerant toward the Jews who lived in their midst. The Seljuks were alien to the area. They dressed differently, spoke a non-Semitic language, and were recent converts to Islam. So they were much stricter with the infidels. The Jews of Jerusalem expressed their reaction to the Turkish invasion in apocalyptic terms.
^ee
This was reinforced by letters from Europe, particularly one written about 1096 stating that Jews from Karzaria in the Balkans were heading to Israel to meet the remnants of the lost tribes.
^ef

In Salonika on the island of Cyprus the pre-crusade Jewish sense of a coming Apocalypse was particularly strong. People sold their businesses, gave away their goods, and stopped their daily activities. “They sit in their prayer shawls, they have stopped working and we don't know what they are hoping for,” a Jewish observer wrote to another community.
^eg
It was also reported that Elijah had appeared in Egypt to announce the pending arrival of the Messiah. The leaders of the various Jewish communities tried to keep a lid on these expectations but the rumors kept circulating.
^eh

Actually, while the Middle Ages saw few millenarian movements among Christians and Ashkenazic Jews (those in northern Europe), the Sephardic Jews of Spain, Italy, Africa and the Near East seemed to have been constantly on the lookout for the Messiah. In the eleventh century, there was much excitement connected with the thousandth anniversary of the fall of the Temple to the Romans. At the end of the thirteenth century, there were a number of predictions of the end coming from Spain, including one from the town of Ayllon that said “on a specified day of that year a blast of the messiah's horn would summon Jews out of their exile.”
^ei

In this section of the book, I discuss some of the other millenarian and messianic ideas in more depth, especially the Islamic Mahdi, the Maya, and Merlin. These all have repercussions that echo to the present.

On the whole I don't see the Middle Ages as a particularly apocalyptic time. But don't be discouraged. The traumatic fifteenth century may have produced great art, but it was also a hotbed of apocalyptic thinking and the following century was even worse.

More audaciously still, he [Geoffrey of Monmouth] has
taken the predictions of a certain Merlin which he has greatly
augmented on his own account, and in translating them into
Latin he has published them as though they were authentic
prophecies resting on unshakeable truth.

—William of Newburgh (c. 1180)
^ej

 

 

 

 

F
or those who have read
The Sword in the Stone
by T. H. White or have seen the Disney movie based on it, the idea of the cute, befuddled wizard Merlin having anything to do with the end of the world is ridiculous. However, for over eight hundred years, the name
Merlin
was associated with prophecy, not just in England but all over Europe. Oddly, there are even those in the twenty-first century who have cited Merlin in their attempts to prove that all the ancient prophets foresaw the end of the world in 2012, although I have not seen any sources for these statements.

The problem is that for all intents and purposes, Merlin is a fictional character. He was invented by a twelfth-century monk who called himself
Galfridus Monemutensis,
or Geoffrey of Monmouth, and who was probably the same as a
Galfridus Artur
(yes, Arthur) who was living at Oxford from 1129 to 1152.
^ek
Apparently, Geoffrey wrote about the prophecies of Merlin first, but he then incorporated that work into his
History of the Kings of Britain
.
^el
It was a runaway best-seller.

Geoffrey's book chronicles the history of Britain from its first settlement by Brutus, a Roman consul. This was a well-known myth, but Geoffrey added his own twist, in that he adds that Brutus was the grandson of Aeneas, the hero of Virgil's
Aenead,
and that before his birth there was a prophecy that Brutus would kill his own father. This came to pass in a hunting accident, and Brutus was exiled, finally ending up in Briton, which was named for him.
^em
Geoffrey follows the descendants of Brutus through the centuries (including King Lear), but the heart of the story begins in book six, when Merlin enters the picture.

The Merlin that Geoffrey created was drawn from several sources. The first was the work of the eighth-century chronicler Nennius. In this work, King Vortigern in Wales wants to build a castle, but the foundations keep crumbling. The king's soothsayers tell him that the only way to fix this is to find a boy “with no father.” The child must be sacrificed and his blood sprinkled on the ground around the foundation. The boy they find, named Ambrose, is not keen on this plan. He tells the king that there are two serpents in a pool under the ground that are twisting and breaking up the foundations. The building is excavated and the serpents are found. Ambrose explains that they symbolize the Britons and the Saxons and that if Vortigern gives up on building the castle on that spot he will prevail against the Saxon invaders. Vortigern thanks Ambrose, moves his castle to a new location, and gives him all the land around the serpent-infested place to be lord of.
^en

There is another tradition of a Myrddin (many spellings), a warrior who went mad in the battle of Arfderyddt in 573 and spent many years wandering around Scotland. In his madness, he is supposed to have received the gift of prophecy.
^eo
Poems about him may have been written as early as the tenth century. However, because all manuscripts containing these references are from the thirteenth century or later, it's difficult to be sure that the Merlin stories were in the poems originally or added later to cash in on Merlin's popularity, as happened with King Arthur.
^ep

There are stories that Geoffrey tells about Merlin that have parallels in both Celtic and Latin sources. One, in which he predicts three different deaths for one person in three different disguises, only to have all of the means combine in the actual death, is told of a prophet named Lailoken in a Welsh story and also of Bishop Hildebert of Le Mans (1056—1133).
^eq
Geoffrey could have learned the story from either source.

Sometimes Merlin is paired with the poet Taliesin. Taliesin was a fifth-century bard and some poems attributed to him have survived. However, none contains prophecies. It is only in later folklore that Taliesin became a prophet.
^er
The Welsh traditions of Merlin continue in that language independently, with Merlin being a warrior and lover as well as a poet and prophet.
^es

In his own invention of Merlin, Geoffrey expands on Nennius's story, making Merlin's father a supernatural being. He turns the serpents under the castle into dragons. Dragons always sell.
^et
Later Geoffrey has Merlin magically move Stonehenge to its present spot. Finally, Merlin accomplishes his prime directive, that of arranging for the conception of King Arthur. In Geoffrey's history, that's the end of Merlin.

Except . . . Geoffrey decided to stop his account of Arthur's magical fathering to add a few pages of prophecies from his earlier book. Why waste the material because it didn't sell on its own? Geoffrey explains this digression by telling the reader that Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, gave him a book of prophecies in the British language and asked him to translate it into Latin. So Geoffrey bowed to the bishop's entreaty and inserted these prophecies, rather like a news break, into his chronicle. No copy of this book has been found, nor is it mentioned in any other source.

These prophecies are mysterious and open to many interpretations. They mainly deal with the further adventures of the dragons and how the red dragon (Wales) will suffer under the various invaders. A lot of it reads like a parody of Revelation and Daniel, both of which Geoffrey, as a cleric, would have known well. There are many references to magical women, one who will “bear in her right hand the forest of Colidon and in her left the battlements of London's walls.”
^eu
There is an image very much like this in Revelation. There are also many astrological predictions but somehow askew, such as “Virgo will mount on Sagittarius' back and defile her virginal flowers.”
^ev
(She probably didn't use a saddle.) There are also many mutant animals as in the Apocalypse but somewhat less impressive. Instead of horned dragons with lions' tails there are foxes with heads of asses, and deer with buffalo horns.

Geoffrey added a few lines of “prophecy” that would be understandable to most readers and help Merlin's credibility. For instance, “Two dragons will succeed, one of which will be suffocated by the arrow of envy, while the other will return beneath the shadow of a name.”
^ew
That might actually be a veiled reference to the death of King William Rufus in a “hunting accident” and the reign of his brother, Henry I. But most of them seem to be intended as humor. For instance, “The paws of barking dogs will be cut off,” “Men with curled hair will wear fleeces of varied hue,” “Women will move like snakes and their every step will be filled with pride,” and “All the soil will be rank, and mankind will not cease to fornicate.”

Are these prophecies or observations? Of course, these observations could have been made to convince readers that the end was near since these things were clearly going on all around them.
^ex

These first of a long line of prophecies of Merlin are a lot of fun to read, but I don't see how anyone could have taken them seriously. And many people didn't. Geoffrey's contemporary William of Newburgh lamented that everyone was reading about Arthur and Merlin even though they were pure fiction and no one was reading his serious history.
^ey

Even Geoffrey implies that the prophecies needed reinforcement when, at the end of the history, there is a separate prophecy that one day the British (Welsh) would win back their land. To validate the prediction, the prophecies of Merlin are consulted, but the experts also check “the eagle which prophesied at Shaftsbury”
^ez
and the Sibyl, who could always be counted on for backup. Even for Geoffrey, Merlin's prophecies need to be supported by others.

So why did authors for centuries to come write prophecies in Merlin's name? Why did he have so much authority that some people still believe in his ability?

My answer is that Geoffrey's stories of King Arthur, which make up the second half of the
History,
were a tremendous hit. All over Europe the story was copied and expanded on. I think it is safe to compare Geoffrey's success to that of Dan Brown with
The Da Vinci Code
, minus the movie deal. There were even spin-offs. Minor characters in Geoffrey's book went on to have adventures of their own. Like Merlin's prophecies, the stories of King Arthur are fictional, gripping, and full of possibilities.

Unless you agree with me that Geoffrey was doing a take off on the Bible, there are actually no apocalyptic references in Geoffrey of Monmouth's work.

But by the thirteenth century, there were many books containing nothing but prophecies of Merlin, and some of them were very much concerned with the Millennium and the end of the world.

The Old French
Prophecies de Merlin
are typical of this genre. In them, the author has found a lost book of Merlin about a knight who was once a dinner guest along with Merlin. During dinner, the wizard told him stories of King Arthur's knights, interspersed with predictions involving the Antichrist, the dragon with seven heads, and the Whore of Babylon. It ends with a “wise cleric” opening a book that Merlin had given him, to find a prophecy that the Antichrist will be born in Barcelona and that he will make war on his neighbors, killing more than half of them with “swords and lances and big sharp knives and axes.”
^fa

This book, which has also been found in an Italian version, was likely written to comment on the politics of the Italian peninsula during the battle between the popes and the Holy Roman emperors. It is just one of many such stories, along with “biographies” of Merlin. Some contain prophecies; others just elaborate on other aspects of his life. In the early seventeenth century, the playwright Thomas Heywood wrote a history of Britain up to his own time, stating that it had all been foretold by Merlin.
^fb

A pamphlet published anonymously in 1603 included prophecies of Merlin along with those of the Venerable Bede, Thomas Rhymer, “Sibbilla,” and several others. Even in those millennial times, Merlin does not predict the end. Rather, he says, “With Hunger and Hirship on every Hill. Yet this wicked World shall last but a while.”
^fc

So, after spending some amount of time looking for a seriously apocalyptic prophecy by someone calling himself (or herself) Merlin, I have concluded that, like Arthur, there may have been a man named Merlin (Myrddin) in Wales or southwest Scotland in the seventh century. He may have even taken a break from sanity after a battle and made some prophecies. But, if he did exist, he didn't write any of the material published in his name, and he certainly didn't say the world would end in 2012. So, if someone tells you that he did, feel free to hand them this book.