- 5/2/05
- Popular Messiahs in History
- by A.W.H.M.'
In the Bible, Romans 8:18 summarizes succinctly the desires of participants in millennialism throughout history. It says, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us.” This is an essential principle of millennialism. If a believer can wait just a short while longer, many wonderful things are promised to him. The Bible teaches the individual that there is a perfect millennium of Christ’s rule ahead. All the believer has to do is wait patiently and faithfully, and he will be rewarded beyond his wildest dreams when the millennium comes. The power that millennial expectations have exerted over people throughout history has been dramatically underestimated.
In the history of millennialism there have been certain figures of demotic religiosity that have inspired the masses to violence, devotion, and worship. These figures were the popular messiahs. They include Thiota, Christ of Bourges, Aldebert, Eudo de Stella, and Peter the Hermit. They were characterized by charisma, apostolic poverty, and the performance of acts that were perceived as miracles by their followers. They were also characterized by the fact that they were popular amongst the common people; therefore they were not trusted by the church hierarchy, although at times they emerged from it. The messiahs usually operated outside the bounds of the church, with the people on their side; often forcing the church to act violently against them for fear that they were challenging the church monopoly on granting salvation. The objective of this paper is to trace the passing of apocalyptic time in the cases of several different messianic figures. This involves examining their rise on the wave of apocalyptic expectations, their peak at the prophesied time of the millennium, the way they dealt with the disappointment of unfulfilled millennial prophecies, and their downfalls, during which owls recorded accounts of the messiahs. Owl observers writing about popular messiahs included Saint Gregory of Tours, Anna Comnena, Saint Boniface, William of Newburgh, Guibert of Nogent, Albert of Aix, and others.
An aspect of popular messiahs to be discussed is the humble beginnings they often came from. With the messiahs sometimes being uneducated commoners themselves, or uneducated gentry, as in the case of Eudo de Stella, it must be asked from whence they derived their charisma and the other qualities which attracted such devoted followers as they did. I would like to explore the common beliefs of everyday people of the time periods in which these messianic figures operated. To have fallen under the spell of these messianic figures, their followers must have believed that something was seriously wrong with the way the church conducted business and that only a return to apostolic life and voluntary poverty could properly reform the church. The popular messiahs stood in stark contrast to the affluent clergymen whom they sometimes railed against because of their differing lifestyles; this must have been a large part of their appeal.
One of the major problems with a discussion of popular messiahs is that an overwhelming majority of the historical sources on the topic were written by owl observers, usually ex post facto, or more appropriately, ex post defectu. The historian of millennialism must therefore be vigilant, because most of his sources are heavily biased against the participants in the millennial movements. The historians who documented failed millennial and apocalyptic movements ridiculed them. The historical debate is therefore very one-sided. Only through rigorous examination of the existing owl sources, and careful consideration of the other point of view, the roosters, can an accurate and neutral description be given of what really transpired.
One early claimant to the title of messiah was a man in sixth century Bourges, France, who claimed to be Jesus Christ himself. The historian Gregory of Tours, who wrote the most thorough account of the rise and fall of the man from Bourges, prefaces his telling of the tale with this highly appropriate quotation from the Bible: “For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall shew [sic] signs and wonders in the sky, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect.” Christ of Bourges was a working man, a commoner, who went into the forest and was stung by a swarm of flies, causing him to go mad for two years. As Gregory reports, “One can well imagine that this was some evil machination of the devil.” He became a hermit in the province of Arles, wandering about praying so as to give the impression that he was a holy man. Gregory also says that Christ of Bourges had the power to predict the future. Perhaps because he was already known in the area of Arles, he made his way to Javols, where he could have a fresh start. There he eventually came to believe that he was Christ. He soon gained a following among the locals, who believed his claim that he was the messiah. He gained a strong hold over them by exciting their hopes for the millennium, Jesus’ 1000 year kingdom on earth. Since this kingdom could not begin until Jesus had returned to earth, and Christ of Bourges claimed to be Jesus, the anticipation of his followers must have great. The second coming of Jesus was at hand. Because he preached that the millennium would come soon, he was also apocalyptic. They brought him their sick, whom he miraculously healed with the touch of his hand, furthering the belief that he was the Christ. Soon, thousands of people began to follow him wherever he went.
As with Aldebert later on, Christ of Bourges’ appeal was broader than just tricking the illiterate common folk into giving him their loyalty. Gregory of Tours mentions that the false Christ counted among his followers “not only the uneducated, but even priests in orders.” Christ of Bourges’ appeal was broad because he was a hero of the common people. Gregory reports that Christ robbed the people he met along the road, giving the loot to the poor to further his image as a righteous and holy man. Gregory also writes that “He would lie on the ground, saying prayer after prayer.” This leads the reader to believe that in condemning the false Christ, Gregory has in mind the Bible’s warning against this, saying in Matthew 6:7 “But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen [do]: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.” Gregory does not actually cite this passage in his text, perhaps because he knows that his chronicle does not need this passage to have authority. Any account from the other side would not have the forces of history on its side, since the false Christ’s movement failed. Gregory therefore does not have to go to any great lengths to prove his point. He simply states the events as he, a church historian with a biased viewpoint, would prefer them to be remembered. Since the other side did not publish an account that survives to this day, Gregory has a monopoly on the history of the false Christ of Bourges. The false Christ’s violation of this biblical fiat proves further that he was not a holy man of the orthodox tradition of the church, but an independent mystic who eventually came to place himself above church leaders in terms of God-given authority. An attempt must be made to imagine how commoners of the time would have perceived the Christ of Bourges. Imagine the thought process of a peasant of the time. Here was a man who claimed to be the messiah. How did one know he was the messiah? For one, his claimed to be none other than Christ himself. Some people probably would have taken him at his word and believed that he was the truly the second coming, and would bring an end to the world, while for others the name of Christ associated with his claim had to at least lend him the semblance of the biblical authority of the true Christ. What other evidence did a poor peasant have to believe that this man was the messiah? He robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. What could be more messiah-like than to be so egalitarian? He also performed miracles, seeming to heal the sick, and furthermore, he could predict the future. For a person with little or no formal education, it is easy to see how hard it would be to resist the belief that Christ of Bourges really was who he claimed to be.
Christ of Bourges began to become too powerful, and church leaders feared the sway he had gained over his followers through his preaching of apocalyptic millennialism. According to Gregory, their fears turned into violence when the false Christ made ready to attack one of them directly. He and his group of followers, which by this point Gregory describes as an “army” , went to Le Puy. Gregory states that they had the intention of attacking the bishop there, but since this can not be corroborated, their intentions may have been peaceful for all we know. After the false Christ sent naked messengers ahead of his party to announce his arrival, the bishop chose to respond quickly and forcefully to the perceived threat. The bishop’s men came to the Christ, and after pretending bow to him in worship, seized him. He was then “cut down where he stood.” Gregory, as a dutiful servant of the church, also felt it his duty to accost other figures similar to the Christ of Bourges, attempting to “make them give up their inane pretentions.”
Aldebert was a church official who overstepped the bounds of his authority and strayed from the orthodoxy of church leadership during the 8th century. In a letter to Saint Boniface in 747, Pope Zacharias included him in a list of “blasphemous and obstinate ex-bishops”. In another letter detailing the acts of the Roman Synod, dated 745, Boniface reports on Aldebert to Zacharias:
As regards Aldebert, they say that I have taken from them a most holy apostle and robbed them of a patron and intercessor, a doer of righteousness and a worker of miracles. But let Your Holiness hear the story of his life and judge by the fruits whether he be a ravening wolf in sheep’s clothing or not. In early life he was a swindler, declaring that an angel of the Lord in human form had brought to him from the ends of the earth relics of marvelous but uncertain holiness, by which he could obtain from God whatsoever he might wish. By this deception he, as the Apostle Paul said, “crept into many houses and led captive silly women laden with sins, led away by divers lusts”—also a multitude of simple folk who said that he was a man of apostolic sanctity and had performed many signs and wonders. Then he bribed unlearned bishops, who ordained him against all the rules of the canons. Here, in the clearly biased view of Saint Boniface, Aldebert is shown to have been something of a demagogue, manipulating people who knew less than himself. He manipulated not only the “simple folk”, but also the church hierarchy, the “unlearned” bishops who did not know better than to not trust one such as Aldebert. Aldebert was later defrocked on the advice of Saint Boniface. Aldebert was viewed as a serious threat by the church. After a synod in 744, where Aldebert was named as a threat to the church, and defrocked and ordered to be imprisoned, the captive escaped, to the chagrin of the church hierarchy.
Aldebert was particularly dangerous to the church because his followers believed in him to the exclusion of all other religious figures. His followers deserted the “established churches” and scorned other bishops, forsaking them to worship at Aldebert’s crosses. In what Boniface considers his worst blasphemy of all (“the most heinous sin…against God”), Aldebert claimed to know the sins of his followers without their having confessed them, and to have already absolved them. Thus he claimed a divine right reserved to the Trinity alone in Christianity. This was no doubt one of the prime motivations for his being brought before the Synod of 745. Furthermore, he began to distribute his hair and clippings from his fingernails as sacred objects, as if he was so holy that even a small part of him would lend something of the divine to its possessor. Cohn also reports that he had a “letter from Christ” and many miraculous artifacts, which he believed were brought to him by a personal angel who served only to bring him these objects from “the ends of the earth.” In addition to all religious concerns in the case of Aldebert, the political concerns must be taken into consideration as well. Not only did the church fear that he was undermining their authority, the kings of the Franks did as well. Cohn reports that Frankish kings Pepin and Carloman lent their support to Boniface’s condemnation of Aldebert at the Soissons synod of 744.
The case of Thiota is one of a female in a profession dominated by males: millennial prophecy. Not very much is known about Thiota. In her case, as Virgil once wrote, “dux femina facti.” (the leader of the action was a woman). What is known that in the year 847, she predicted that the end of the world would fall that very year. She was described as a “pseudo-prophetess” in the Annals of Fulda, quoted by Landes. However, just the fact that she was a female in a group that was otherwise all male is important. Before she was exposed, she seemed to be a genuine messiah, the real thing. This would have been amazing at the time because of her gender. However, it was later revealed that she had taken her prophecy from a male source, a priest.
Peter the Hermit was, as his name indicates, a hermit. Anna Comnena’s The Alexiad provides an important account of Peter the Hermit. Comnena is considered to be more reliable than later chroniclers who inflated the events of Peter’s life. In The Alexiad, Peter is introduced as “A certain Kelt,” who attempted to make a pilgrimage to worship at the Holy Sepulchre, but returned home after suffering at the hands of the Turks. Comnena presents him as a stubborn, conniving man who desired to use others to achieve selfish ends. In other words, Peter went to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage, and when the Turks treated him badly, he decided to start a Crusade over it! Instead of just giving up on the idea of making it to the Holy Sepulchre, he decided to go to the trouble of raising an army and starting a holy war. Claiming divine inspiration, Peter began agitating for a crusade throughout France. Comnena reports that he quite surprisingly met with great success, as evidenced by her report on the size of the expedition.
Kelts assembled from all parts, one after another, with arms and horses and all the other equipment for war. Full of enthusiasm and ardor they thronged every highway, and with these warriors came a host of civilians, outnumbering the sand of the sea shore or the stars of heaven, carry palms and bearing crosses on their shoulders.
This was the People’s Crusade, the first part of the First Crusade. By preaching the crusade with millennial overtones, Peter had incredible success, drawing thousands to his cause. Comnena observes that “It was as if he had inspired every heart with some divine oracle.” She also notes the case of Godfrey of Bouillon, Duke of Lower Lorraine, a “very rich man” who, upon hearing of Peter’s preaching a crusade to the ‘Kelts’, was “the first to sell his land and set out on the road to Jerusalem.” In this instance, it is again apparent how broad the appeal of popular messiahs was. From the poorest peasant to the richest nobleman, few could escape the desire to be part of something bigger, which a popular messiah afforded them the chance to do.
Eudo de Stella, also known as Eon of the Star, was a member of a noble family from Brittany, in the north of France. The events of his life were recorded by William of Newburgh, whom Norman Cohn considered to be more accurate than most medieval chroniclers, despite the fact that he was writing 50 years after the fact. This is tempered, however by the fact that William of Newburgh was heavily biased against Eudo. Eudo was a layman who did not know how to read and had only limited facility in Latin. Cohn writes that like many wandering preachers, he began by living for a time in the forest as a hermit, building up the “spiritual power” he needed.5 As he gained followers, Eudo rose to prominence. He was highly delusional, as evidenced by the way he construed his name. William of Newburgh writes,
Eudo, surnamed de Stella, a Breton by nation, was a man so illiterate and uninformed, and so bewitched by the wiles of the devil, that, because he was called "Eun," in the French language, he imagined that the form used in ecclesiastical exorcisms, namely, "by Him who shall come to judge the quick and the dead, and the world by fire," pertained to himself. So stupid was he, as to be incapable of distinguishing between "eum" and "Eun," and so blindly ignorant as to believe himself to be the ruler and the judge of the living and the dead.
Eudo’s belief in his own claim to the title of messiah, therefore, was based upon his illiteracy. Had he had the intelligence to make the distinction between ‘eum’ and ‘Eun’, however, Eudo likely would not have still had the audacity to claim that he was the judge of the “quick and the dead.” Eudo was able to use this distortion of scripture to make illiterate commoners believe that he truly was the messiah. If he truly was the messiah, their faith in him would doubtless be unshakable, for what greater authority could there be than the one who had come to save human kind for all eternity? Clearly loyalty to Eudo, if one firmly believed that he was the messiah, would supercede loyalty to any other figure of authority in the world.
Despite his illiteracy and lack of formal education, Eudo came, in contrast to some other members of the historical messianic fraternity, from a noble background with riches to spare. William of Newburgh writes that he appeared to have “considerable dignity” and that “his appointments and attendants were princely.” According to William of Newburgh, a noble relative once tried to persuade him to stop the madness of the heresies he was advocating, however, he only tried to seduce this man into joining him, and upon failing seduced his servant to become part of the movement. He and his congregation were also rumored to have great opulent banquets. However, according to the prevailing wisdom of the time, expressed by William, Eudo’s riches did not come from his family background: “These circumstances were magically effected by evil spirits, the powers of the air, by whom the wretched multitude were supported in desert places not with real, and substantial, but by aerial, aliments.” Much of William’s writing about Eudo is concerned with the fact that he obtained the material things he had through the power of the devil. William does not fail to mention that to even touch these things, or partake of the food at Eudo’s table, was to give oneself up to the devil, and could cause a person to lose “his understanding from having participated in the table of demons.” Norman Cohn speculates that William’s observations that Eudo’s followers always ate well are likely because they lived by plundering.
Like many other popular messiahs, Eudo met with success for a period of time, but, in the long run, could not hope to defeat the hierarchical church. As was Aldebert, he was brought before a synod of the Roman Catholic Church and made to answer for his crimes against the church in leading its followers astray by offering himself as the messiah. Pope Eugenius III convened the synod in Reims for the purpose of “the maintenance of ecclesiastical discipline.” There Eudo was brought before him. Here Eudo made a particularly strange claim.
He held in his hand a staff of uncommon form, and forked at top; and being asked the meaning of this, he said, "It is a matter of great mystery; as long as it points to heaven with its two forks, as you see in its present state, God possesses two parts of the world, and yields the third to me; again, if I incline the two forks of the stick to the earth, and elevate the lower part, which is single, towards heaven, retaining two portions of the world to myself, I shall only leave the third to God.”
The synod laughed at him, thinking his claim preposterous. This man who was not literate, who could only speak a few words in Latin, was claiming to have trumped hundreds of years of theological scholarship with a three pointed staff? Those present at the synod realized that Eudo would no longer be a danger to the church after his public shaming, however, they also decided not to take any chances. After he was interrogated and humiliated by the synod, Eudo was ordered to be imprisoned. He soon died in confinement. His disciples, obviously outraged by his death, were loyal to the end. After they would not repent for their misdeeds and heresies against the church, and continued to threaten revenge upon Eudo’s jailers, William, who considered them “incapable of sound doctrine,” reports that they were “delivered over first to the law, and then to the flames, preferred the stake to a change of life.” It is not surprising that Eudo’s followers would be so loyal to him that they would die for him. He conferred upon them grandiose names such as “Wisdom” and “Knowledge” and “Judgement,” which inflated them, making them believe that they were living saints or possessors of the authority of the apostles through their lineage.
Throughout history, popular messiahs were a force to be reckoned with in the Church. During the time they were in the public eye, and meeting with success, the popular messiahs were important religious figures. They serve to show how easily and quickly a figure who connects to the people in the right way can spring to power. What better way is there to connect to the people than to appeal to their concern for eternity? When people begin to worry about how they will be spending forever, they begin to question the institutions that govern their lives. As church leaders who felt the danger caused by millennial and messianic revolts within the church could attest to, such thoughts can lead to some powerful upheaval. However, they were usually defeated before they had a chance to make much progress in the reforms and changes they desired. Often enough they were hypocrites, preaching the apostolic life to their followers, but living high on the hog themselves. On the other hand, some, such as Eudo, gave up all pretense of voluntary poverty and had followers plunder many rich and wonderful things for their use.
Without fail, popular messiahs were brought down by the church hierarchy that they were seeking to bring an end to. Their fledgling movements could not hope to contend with the thousands of years old church hegemony over religious dialogue. Often enough, the popular messiahs did not have a lasting impact on the structure of the church hierarchy, or curb the prevalence of opulent lifestyles among clergymen who had taken a vow of poverty. The best evidence of this is how many popular messiahs there were. They came and went, and were not very well remembered by following generations, save for a few mentions in the more fastidiously compiled historical chronicles of the time. It is clear now that to be a popular messiah was not the best way to reform the church, because the reforms that the messiahs desired to make did not last.
However, reforming the church was obviously not the only desire of the popular messiahs. Another consideration is personal greed. In the case of Aldebert, an argument could certainly be made for this motivation. Aldebert seemed to want to create a cult of personality around himself. There is no better proof of this than the fact that he truly believed that his hair and fingernails were holy objects to be revered. He also made it known that he had a ‘personal’ angel, who would do his bidding and fetch him things. He wanted to be revered and worshiped. In the case of Christ of Bourges, he appeared to act humble, but who can divine what his real motivation was. Perhaps that he knew that by acting humbly, his followers would only worship him more, which must have flattered and emboldened him all the more. Another stunning example of personal greed is the case of Eudo de Stella. What could be more greedy than to claim for oneself the title of “judge of the quick and the dead” as well as one or two-thirds of the world, depending on the inclination of a three pronged staff? To be a popular messiah was without a doubt to exercise at least some small measure of greed. Even Peter the Hermit acted out of greed in a way. After his perceived slight at the hands of the Turks when he tried to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, which Peter felt it was his God-given right to visit, he decided to get revenge. Peter’s greed is shown by the way he got his revenge. He helped begin a crusade which cost thousands of lives and led to destruction, rape, and pillaging on a massive scale, all because of injuries done to one man. This is obviously greed in its worst form.
The church kept heretics and the like in check through the rigorous application of theological doctrine, as well as the use of violence when necessary, as evidenced by the case of Christ of Bourges. The urgency on the part of the church was because of the realization by church leaders that millennial expectations can bring remarkable power to sometimes unremarkable men. Christ of Bourges was a crazed hermit, however, he rode the wave of millennial expectations to become powerful enough that the only way he could be stopped was assassination. Eudo de Stella was all but illiterate, however, he instilled such loyalty in his disciples that they died for him rather than give up the special status he had conferred upon them. All of this points to the overwhelming conclusion that there may be nothing on the earth so powerful as the expectation of the kingdom of God yet to come. This expectation can drive men to do extraordinary things, and can keep men from acting rationally. The power generated by these expectations can drive sane men crazy, or cause the illiterate to claim that they can interpret scripture better than the most learned of church scholars.
Whether out of fear, or out of looking forward to the perfect millennium to come, common folk often allowed themselves to be swept up in millennial messianic movements which caused them to shun, at least temporarily, the churches of which they had always been members. This is possibly an example of the grass always being greener on the other side. Obviously the people were used to their church. Their church had never left. If it failed to satisfy them, which it often did, they could turn to a new religious movement. Thus the church was a natural _target for reform movements. It had always been there, and conceivably always would be, meaning that any new movement was at odds with the dominant church from the very beginning of its existence. There can be little doubt that this made the survival of a small new religious movement such as Eudo’s or Aldebert’s was highly unlikely when pitted against hundreds of years of established church tradition dating back to the time of Saint Peter. In their times however, these men presented a clear and present danger to the church and sometimes to the state as well, which is one the few reasons why they are still remembered today.
Selected Bibliography
Cohn, Norman. The Pursuit of the Millennium. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970. pp. 41-49.
Comnena, Anna. The Alexiad. Trans. E.R.A. Sewter. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1969.
Gregory of Tours. The History of The Franks. X.25.
Landes, Richard. “The Birth of Heresy: A Millennial Phenomenon." Journal of Religious History 24.1 (2000): pp. 26 -43.
---. “Women, Millennialism, and Modernity: A Contribution to Gender Studies.” The Journal of Millennial Studies. Summer 1999. www.mille.org/journal.html.
Mendel, Arthur P. Vision and Violence. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999. pp. 31-33.
Saint Boniface. The Letters of Saint Boniface. Trans. Ephraim Emerton. New York: Columbia University Press, 1940.
William of Newburgh. The History of 'William of Newburgh' (1066-1194). Trans. Joseph Stevenson. Cribyn: LLanerch Press, 1996.