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The Holy Roman Empire was
God's empire, it was thought. And
were the empire to be crushed, the
end of the world wou ld be ushered
in. Antichrist - a great antagonist of
Christ - would appear and enslave
the nations.
The Germans, then, had the stu–
pendous task of ruling the empire
and keeping it from disintegrating.
The Fear of the End Time
The coronation of Charlemagne
in A.D. 800 became the symbol of
renovario
-
the renewal of the Ro–
man Empire. This new RomanEro–
pire, a Christian empire, was viewed
as the offshoot of the last of four
powerful empires described by Dan–
iel
in
the Old Testament.
Whenever the Holy Roman Em–
pire seemed to be teetering on the
precipice of annihilation - as after
the days of Charlemagne, during
the Investiture Controversy in the
twelfth century and in the "terrible
time
wit~out
an emperor" after
Frederick II died in 1250 - fears
about the end of the world became
widespread. Since the empire con–
tinually oscillated between renewal
and decay, fears about the end time
being near were recurrent through–
out the Middle Ages.
Rai ner of Florence, writing
toward the end of the eleventh cen–
tury, announced that Antichrist had
already been born. Bernard of
Clairvaux saw him stalking in the
shadows. So did Otto of Freising.
Hildegard of Bingen saw Antichrist
in frightening visions. Others were
certain that a particular personality
on the European scene, such as
Frederick II, was Antichrist himself.
Only one reality kept the Chris–
tian world from total panic. This
was the deeply held belief that the
empire would last until the appear–
ance of Antichrist. The downfall of
the Holy Roman Empire
would have
ro be seen
before this terrible An–
tichrist appeared.
The Fourth Kingdom of Daniel
The idea that the Roman Empire
would be the last human empire to
PLAIN TRUTH May 1974
exist before the end time did not
originate in the Middle Ages. Many
centuries before, when the old Ro–
man Empire still existed in the
West, it was generally believed by
Jews and Christians to be the fourth
and last world-ruling kingdom as
described in the book of Daniel.
Something was preventing the
world's collapse. According to John
Chrysostom, Patriarch of Con–
stantinople in the fourth century,
that something was the Roman Ero–
pi re. Chrysostom was one of the first
to expound this idea. He was fol–
lowed by such theological notables
as Tertullian, Ambrose and Augus–
tine.
A tenth-century abbot by the
name of Adso took up this theory
and stated it in a new form for the
Middle Ages. According to him, An–
tichrist would come, then the
revived
Holy Roman Empire would fall,
and the kingdom of Antichrist
would begin. Thus, the collapse of
the empire into sepa rate and
squabbling kingdoms could be a sig–
na! that Antichrist was coming or
was already present.
lt is no wonder that the roen of
the Middle Ages periodically looked
out on their world and confidently
asserted that the end was near.
The one power, however, that was
thought capable of warding off the
final collapse of the world, the Holy
Roman Empire, was again and
again in shamoles in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. The "holy"
body which had supposedly pro–
tected Christendom against the wily
advances of the devil was senile and
decaying.
The Visions of Chaos
In visions, Hildegard, a German
abbess and mystic, saw the whole
Church crumble. A German poet
saw every land, duchy and bishopric
splintered and smashed. The great–
est intellectuals of the Middle Ages,
including Bernard of Clairvaux,
Hugo of St. Víctor, Otto of Freising
and Gerhoh of Reichersberg, were
often deeply committed lo the con–
cept of the end of the world. The
mood of collapse and the terrors of
Antichrist were especially nurtured
by the wars and chaos under the
reigns of Henry V (1106- 1125),
Lothair II ( 1125- 11 37), Conrad IIl
( 1138-1152) and later, Frederick
JI
( 12 11-1250).
For men like Otto of Freising
(11 14-1158), the emperor Frederick
I ( 1152-1190) seemed like the savior
of the world. Frederick would heal
the breach
in
the empire caused by
the investiture struggle of the e lev–
enth and twelfth centuries. He
would
be the world-redeeming em–
peror, saving the world from An–
tichrist. But it did not quite work
out as Otto though t.
Succeeding emperors took upon
themselves the duty of preserving
and strengthening the empire
against the impending evil of An–
tichrist. This idea was, at least in
part, a driving motivation for main–
taining a strong Holy Roman Em–
pire. Frederick
ll
based his program
partly upon this fundamental role of
the empire.
During the final struggle between
empire and papacy under Frederick
11, many contemporaries felt that
both Christ and Antichrist were
physically alive. Both pope and em–
peror were viewed as Christ and
Antichrist. depending on the
beholder's point of view.
In German religious poetry. the
pessimistic tone of a world about to
end is found over and over. The
common people always insisted that
the apocalypse would occur in their
own time. Natural disasters, bad
rulers and social disorders all s igni–
fied the end of the world and the
appearance of Antichrist.
Once Frederick II died, the end of
the empire was awai ted by multi–
tudes of panic-stricken people. The
"terrible time without an emperor"
struck the empire. But Antichrist
did not show his face.
There is a terrible tragedy to all
this mystical pathos.
It
was all based
on a gross misunderstanding of
what the Bible really said . For Dan–
iel did
not
say that Antichrist was to
be ushered in when the fourth king-
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