In order to obtain a “readable” result, Beatus has no qualms in having recourse to citations that he presents as faithful, but which are in fact altered ever so slightly, changing a word here, eliminating an aside there, or modifying an inflection.
6.5. Mille Annos
What makes the Apocalypse fascinating for the Middle Ages is the substantial ambiguity of chapter 20, verses 1–15, which it will be useful to cite in full here. Here we can read it in the King James Version but we are obliged to put in a footnote the text as it was quoted by Beatus, which was lacunary at certain points with respect to the Vulgate:
And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand.
And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years.
And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.
And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.
But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection.
Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.
And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison. And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.
And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and the fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.
And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.
And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them.
And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God: and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.
And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.
And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.
Taken literally, this chapter could mean that, at a certain point in human history, Satan will be cast into prison and, during the entire time of his imprisonment, the kingdom of the Messiah will be realized on earth, and all of the elect will participate in it, rewarded with a “first resurrection.” This period will last for the 1,000 years of the Devil’s captivity. Then the Devil will be freed for a certain period of time, then once more defeated. At this point the enthroned Christ will begin the Last Judgment, human history will be fulfilled, and (we are now at the beginning of chapter 21) there will be a new heaven and a new earth, the advent, that is, of the Heavenly Jerusalem.
The problem for the Christians of the early centuries is whether the 1,000 years of the Messiah’s reign were still to come or whether they were the years that they themselves were living. If the first interpretation was correct they had to wait for a Second Coming of the Messiah and a kind of golden age (which had also been promised by a number of ancient religions), followed by a return of the Devil and his false prophet the Antichrist (as the tradition will gradually come to call him, although the Apocalypse itself speaks only in fact of a false prophet). And finally, the Last Judgment and the end of time. This is the dominant reading, with some fluctuation, down to Augustine.
In the fourth century the Donatist heresy gained a footing. True, it targeted the unworthy ministers of the cult, insisting that the sacraments that they administered were invalid; but to deny validity to the liturgical actions of a considerable portion of the official Church, and to set against it the purity of a rigoristically virtuous community illuminated by the Holy Spirit, was tantamount in the last analysis to setting against a Heavenly Jerusalem (yet to come) the new Babylon represented by the current Church.
Augustine’s response (De Civitate Dei XX) is that neither the City of God nor the millennium are historical events that will be realized in this world; they are mystical events. The millennium John speaks of represents the period that stretches from the Incarnation to the end of history, therefore it is the period we are already living, the period in progress, completely realized in the living Church. It does not occur to Augustine to separate in day-to-day history the perfect members of the perfect city from the reprobates; he is well aware that human history is riddled with sin and error, even the history of the just who seek salvation in the body of the Church. Earthly history, then, will not be the site of a battle for the supremacy of the heavenly city—Armageddon is not of this world.10
With this solution, however, Augustine leaves the way open for two magnificent suggestions. The first concerns the earthly possibility of that City of God that he had already demonstrated was not of this world. What happened in Augustine’s case was what happens with many polemists who, thinking to refute an argument, write a book that turns out to be such a success that the argument in question is, if not bolstered, at least brought into the public eye. Accordingly, we will see how, in the course of subsequent history, the idea of the two cities will fascinate reformers and revolutionaries alike, all of them convinced that the City of God must be realized forthwith by the elect; what is needed, then, is a great battle, an Armageddon on earth, a revolution.
The second suggestion concerns the immediate advent of the Day of Judgment, and hence the expectation of the year 1000. If the millennium is not a promise for the future, but is going on here and now, if we are to interpret the Apocalypse correctly, the first thing that must come to pass is the end of the world. The fact that the interpreters were divided over doing the math—whether 1,000 years was to be taken as an approximate or precise figure, whether it was to be calculated from the year of Christ’s birth, from his Passion, from the beginning or end of the persecutions: whether in other words the years were 1,000, 1,400 or 1,033—did not affect the fact that the end of the world must come sooner or later.
The history of the Apocalypse in the Middle Ages oscillates between these two possible interpretations, accompanied by alternate euphoria and dysphoria, as well as a perennial sense of expectation and tension. Because, either Christ must still be coming to reign for 1,000 years on earth or he has already come, in which case it won’t be long before the Devil returns and with him the end of the world.
This is the context in which Beatus writes his commentary. History informs us that he wrote it for precise theological reasons. Elipandus, archbishop of Toledo, and Felix, bishop of Urgel, had resuscitated an old heresy, adoptionism, which denied the divinity of the Word, relegated to the role of adopted son of the Father. Spanish adoptionism was a “mitigated” form of the heresy and, while they accepted the fact that the Word was the natural son of the Father, they saw Christ in his human nature as merely an adopted son.
Beatus finds in the Apocalypse a text apt to display a Christ in his full consubstantial divinity and sonship, and he employs his commentary as a weapon. And he proves to be a winner, since later Charlemagne will
