To them the "day" was
not as our brief prosaic day--to them too had been "appointed a day
for a year." The "time, times, and half a time" were the 1,260 days,
and these were 1,260 years, and the stupendous catastrophe, the
battle of Armageddon, the reign of Antichrist, the new heavens and
the new earth, the slaughter and the resurrection of the two heavenly
witnesses, were at hand. Eleven hundred and ninety years had passed
away of those 1,260. "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth," said
Joachim; "Antichrist is already born, yea born in the city of Rome!"
Though King Richard, in the strange interview of which contemporary
historians have left us a curious narrative, exhibited much more of
the spirit of the scoffer than of the convert, and evidently had no
faith in Abbott Joachim's theories and his mission, it was otherwise
with the world at large. At the close of the twelfth century a very
general belief, the result of a true instinct, pervaded all classes
that European society was passing through a tremendous crisis, that
the dawn of a new era, or, as they phrased it, "the end of all
things" was at hand.
The Abbot Joachim was only the spokesman of his age who was lucky
enough to get a hearing. He spoke a language that was a jargon of
rhapsody, but he spoke vaguely of terrors, and perils, and
earthquakes, and thunderings, the day of wrath; and because he spoke
so darkly men listened all the more eagerly, for there was a vague
anticipation of the breaking up of the great waters, and that things
that had been heretofore could not continue as they were.
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