Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/549

 12 s. ix. DEC. s, 1921.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 451 to ' N. & Q.,' in which he accused me of several heinous offences. One of them was, if I understand him aright, that I did not go to Paris before I wrote to ' N. & Q.' to examine a manuscript in the Bibliotheque Nationale. Another was that I was quite incapable of distinguishing between first- rate and secondary authorities. The same charge, I may remark, has been brought against a certain French historian, but it did not prevent the French people from giving his name to a handsome boulevard, not a hundred miles away from the Arc de Triomphe. Evidently then, the defect of which Mr. Baskerville complains may coexist with certain merits, and I shall continue to cherish a modest hope that I possess some small share of one or two of them. And now let us consider the detail of Mr. Baskerville's attack. The statement that there was panic about the year 1000 rests, as far as I know, on some half-dozen passages which are to be found in medieval Latin. Mr. Baskerville takes each of these passages and tries to prove that none of them refer to the year in question. Thus, a hermit appeared in Thuringia in the year 960 and preached that the end of the world was at hand. Mr. Baskerville says in effect that the preaching had no particular reference to the year 1000 ; the early Christians were obsessed with the idea of the Second Advent, and the hermit was referring in a general way to that. In 990 it. was said in a sermon at Paris that when a thousand years had been completed the world would come to an end. Mr. Baskerville points out that there is nothing to show that the thousand years were to be counted from the year of the Incarnation. In the year 1010, says Godellus, many people expected the consummation of all things. Mr. Baskerville explains that this fear was due to the fact that they had heard that the Holy Sepulchre had been taken by the Turks, and in any case it was the year 1010. But does it not also prove that men's minds were full of the belief of the coming end of the world and that though it had not occurred in the year 1000, yet the first catastrophe that appeared afterwards seemed to presage it ? Very likely there was doubt in men's minds as to whether the thousand years were to be counted from the Incarna- tion, or from the death of Christ, and this may have been the cause of the wise reticence displayed by the Papacy, while men of action, like the King of France, would use the doubt as an excuse for persisting in their enterprise. But people of a com- moner sort would be incapable of such reasoning. I venture to add a passage to those that are generally quoted in connexion with the panic. In the ' JEx miraculis S. Agili, scriptis ab auctoribus contempo- raneis ' (Bouquet, x. 364) we are told that on Good Friday of the year 1000 " visae sunt multis per multa loca in altitudine aeris igneae acies." It is easy from this passage to infer the mentality of the spectators. They were expecting, they were watching for, the end of the world, and on Good Friday of the year 1000, owing to their excited imagination, they saw sights that almost corresponded to their ex- pectations. None of the above quotations may be very valuable, if they are taken separately, but their cumulative force is considerable. After all, there was nothing particularly superstitious in expecting the end of the world at that moment. A year or two ago I heard a very excellent person declare at a lunch-party that she believed that the end of the world was coming. Perhaps there has never been a time since the Crucifixion, when there have been wars and rumours of wars, men's hearts failing them for fear and so on, that some people have not seen in these terrors a hint of the approaching destruction of the universe. However, I fully sympathize with the evident intention of Mr. Baskerville's com- munication, and of the three obscure but learned writers whom he takes as his authorities. It is just possible that they have already had some influence, for I notice that Lavisse, in his new history of France, gives to the panic of the year 1000 one short guarded sentence. It is, however, a formidable thing to try and destroy a story that has been sanctioned by Hallam, Sismondi, Michelet and Henri Martin, but I know that they all had an anti-medieval bias. With such bias I have no sympathy ; to me it is sometimes a sign of a narrow intelligence and a truncated culture, especially if it occurs in an English- man. But, as I have said, I do not see that " local and spasmodic " panics about the year 1000 are any real reflection on the people of that period. T. PERCY ARMSTRONG. The Authors' Club, Whitehall Court, S.W.