When might the Saracen woe be said to have terminated? Perhaps we might fix on the epoch of A. D. 934, when the Caliphate at Baghdad was stripped, as has been noted, of its temporal power: perhaps on the period of from 960 to 980 or 985, when the public and striking evidence of it was exhibited to Christendom, in the conquest, from those once terrible enemies, of Crete, Cyprus, Cilicia, Antioch; when the Greek arms were borne triumphantly eastward, even across the Euphrates; and, in the west, the last great attempt of the Moorish Saracens against the rising Christian kingdoms in Spain, was, after a temporary success, totally repulsed, and the Moslems, with continually contracted dominions, reduced finally, and almost for ever, to the defensive. 1
Let us take the last mentioned epoch, which dates, we said, about the close of the tenth century. In correspondence with it there seems to have been a pause in the prophetic representations: and perhaps too a silence from tempests in the firmamental heaven; such as that noticed as occurring before the blowing of the Trumpets. And nothing broke it to the Evangelist on the apocalyptic scene, but the solemn intimation, " One woe is past! Behold there come two more woes after it."
The era that I suppose to be here refereed to is one memorable in European history, for a panic of very remarkable origin and results, which then intensely agitated men's minds, especially in Western Christendom. It was supposed that with the end of the tenth century the world would end also. The opinion arose, doubtless, from Augustine's interpretation of the apocalyptic millennium, as that millennial or rather quasi-millennial period of Christ's triumph by his church over Satan, which, beginning at his first advent and miracles, would only terminate with Satan's re-loosing and Antichrist's manifestation, just before the consummation of all things. I say quasi-millennial, because in Augustine's own mind, we have seen, as well as in that of interpreters following him in the fifth and sixth centuries, the full definite value of 1000 years was not supposed to attach to this ecclesiastical millennium.
Their expectation that the sabbatism of the saints would ensue after the world's lasting 6000 years, and belief in the Septuagint chronology, which reckoned 5500, or else 5350, or at least 5200, out of the 6000, to have already elapsed at the Nativity,' made them construe the apocalyptic millennium as only that interval which yet remained after Christ's birth to complete the sixth millenary; perhaps 500 years, or it might be 600, or 700, or a little more. 2 But the Greek Septuagint with its chronology having, in the long interval since Gregory I, been altogether superseded in Western Europe by the, Latin Vulgate, and Hebrew chronology there given, and the sabbatical theory too having been probably forgotten in the darkness of those dark ages, the main point only of Augustine's interpretation was remembered; I mean his construing the time of Satan's binding to signify that of the present supremacy of the church over him.
And the natural and reasonable alteration having been applied to this his opinion about the millennium, of its being not, as he had supposed likely, a mere fraction of a thou- sand years, but a thousand years fully and exactly, it was scarce possible but that, as the tenth century drew near, and yet more after it bad begun and was advancing, the subject should be felt one of intense personal interest. Thus it was then frequently preached on, and by breathless crowds listened to; the subject of every one's thoughts, every one's conversation. The time, they thought, was actually come; the end of all things at hand; the loosing of Satan, Antichrist's manifestation, and, what was most terrible, the day of judgment.
Belief on such a subject could not be inoperative. Its form of working took its character from that of the times. Under the impression of its truth multitudes innumerable, says Mosheim, having given their property to monasteries or churches, traveled to Palestine, where they expected Christ to descend to judgment. Others bound themselves by solemn oath to be serfs to churches or to priests; in hopes of a milder sentence on them, as being servants of Christ's servants. In many places buildings were let go to decay, as that of which there would be no need in future. And on occasions of eclipses of sun or moon, the people fled in multitudes for refuge to the caverns and the rocks.
But the time of the consummation, fixed in God's counsels, was not yet. In, the apocalyptic chronology it was written, "One woe hath past: behold there come yet two more woes after them." The dreaded 1000th year came and past, without any great calamity accompanying; and gradually the alarm and the expectation died away.
Yet there was woe at hand, the prophecy declared, though of another kind; the woe of the sixth Trumpet. And where to fall, and on whom? Was it to be on western Christendom: which, though not without spots less dark at times, and points of relief had been too universally and progressively settling down since Pope Gregory's time, last noted, into the demonolatrous apostasy with its predicted accompaniments. Of clerical fraud, avarice, superstition, and licentiousness, till in the tenth century its moral debasement was such, as to fix on that century the appellation of the iron age?
Or was it to fall distinctively on Rome itself, the western religious capital: where all these evils had long been rampant; and where the impiety and profligacy, specially of its popes and cardinals, (witness the names of Theodora, Marozia, and John XII) had in this tenth century risen to such a height, 3 as according, not to Mosheim only, but even to Baronius, might seem to have cried to heaven, like as from another Sodom, for vengeance?
No! not so! For Antichrist (supposing our presumption as to his identity with the Roman Popes correct) had not yet grown up in those western regions to full maturity or development: and it was in God's purpose, as before said that for this his predicted complete development scope and time should be given. For the resent eastern Christendom was to be again the chief and primary sufferer: it being indeed sunk as deeply as the west in apostasy; though not, like it, subject to a single heading Antichrist. Here it was, I say, and near about this time, that the new woe was fated to fall: although certainly at the time spoken of, judging by human calculations, the probability' of such a visitation might have seemed very small.
It was the second Basil that was then on the throne of Constantinople: 4 his long reign having extended from the year 976 through the first quarter of the 10th century. And when we think what, on his looking around, and considering what was and had been, must have past before him, it will be found that he might reasonably, as I said, on mere human calculations, have prognosticated prosperity and splendor, rather than woe, to the Greek empire. For let us make the review with him. Since the era of Haroun Al Raschid no woe, like that of the Saracens, had come, near, so as to mutilate or to mar the empire of the city of Constantine. 5 The only irruption on Christendom that might at all be deemed a woe, that of the Hungarians, from 889 to 955, 6 had scarcely been felt in the Greek dominions. Its course had been speedily deflected from Constantinople; followed the line of the Danube into the heart of Germany; thence sent out its ravaging detachments into Italy, North Germany, and the south of France; and been then at length utterly defeated, and repelled out of Christendom, into that ancient Dacian province, which has subsequently borne from them the name of Hungary.
Thus enjoying a long comparative exemption from the desolations of foreign invasion, with a loyalty and civil union of its provinces unknown in other kingdoms, the insurrectionary movements of the Greeks, when such there were, scarce ever extending beyond the day and the capital, with a superiority of naval strength in the Mediterranean, and an active commerce, the source of national wealth resulting, the empire had had time and means to recover in no little measure from the effects of the tremendous Saracen scourge. There seemed indeed to be inherent in it a principle of vitality, and of endurance, unknown elsewhere.
Unchanged' itself, how many the changes that had been witnessed by the city of Constantine! Inviolate, how many assaults had she repulsed! Yea, more! She had within the last half century waked up, as with somewhat of the revived vigor of youth, to a measure of military enterprise and success. The two immediate predecessors of Basil, Nicephorus and John Zimisces, had conquered Crete, Cyprus, and Cilicia from the Saracens.
And Basil had himself just achieved (it was in the year 1017) a yet more important triumph, in the conquest of the Bulgarians: that power of which the rise was associated with the history of Belisarius and Justinian; which had in 680 been consolidated into a kingdom; and which, including as it did, under its jurisdiction not Bulgaria proper only, between Thrace and the lower Danube, but the provinces also, half peopled by its colonists, of Dardania, Thessaly, Epirus, 7 and connected too, as it was, with the kindred bands of Servians, Bosnians, Croats, Wallachians, by which in the eighth and ninth centuries the whole country obliquely from the Danube to the Adriatic had been occupied and Sclavonized, 8 had been always, even after its embracing Christianity, like a thorn in the side to the Greek empire. 9 Thus circumstanced, with victory again attending its banners, with a measure of fresh spirit infused into both rulers and people, with its dominions extended from Antioch to Belgrade, and from the mouths of the Danube, beyond Greece, to its subjected province in the south of Italy,-was there not reason for Basil, from considerations of its own present state, to augur well of the future prospects of his empire?
And certainly these anticipations might have been strengthened by a consideration of the state of other surrounding countries. For whence was any overwhelming woe likely to arise and fall on it? From the western European states? But these were but constituent parts of the Christian world: a guarantee, it might seem, almost of itself, against their falling as a woe on another division of Christendom. Moreover, if the will were theirs, the power seemed wanting.
United though they were by that singular religious tie of looking to Rome as their common ecclesiastical head, (a relation to it from which the Greek empire had in the ninth century completely emancipated itself), yet politically there was no confederation, nor any likely principle of combination, for common purposes of war. And separately considered, and individually, it needed not the practiced eve of a Greek politician to discern their weakness.
The Anglo-Saxon dynasty in England had just been conquered by Canute the Dane; 10 a new conquest that might be expected to prolong its state of civil disunion and semi-barbarism. In France the Carlovingian dynasty, fallen by its own weakness, had been succeeded by that of Capet; 11 1and the latter, disorganized as the whole kingdom was, and specially paralyzed by the inroads on its north-western coasts of the ferocious Normans , shrunk from even the attempt of subjecting the independent princes that held fiefs of the crown. In the Germanic empire a similar multitude of independent principalities was conspicuous; notwithstanding even their temporary combination under Henry the Fowler and Otho, for the repelling of the Hungarians.
The attempt of Charlemagne to bind together his vast dominions, had proved to be premature. They were compressed by his giant grasp, not combined; and when his grasp was relaxed in death, separated necessarily into their political molecules. It was possible that out of these molecules, instinct as they were with vitality, new forms of political life and energy might in time arise. But for the present a retro gradation into barbarism was the consequence. In Spain the Christian nascent kingdoms of Asturias and Navarre had too full occupation for their rude valor and chivalry in the Moorish wars, to think of others far distant. And as for Italy, trisected as she was, (and seemed fated to be,) between the papal estates in the center, the northern attached to the Germanic empire, and the southern, now chiefly in the hands of the Greeks themselves, what could she do, except with her papal thunders, which in Constantinople and its empire were impotent?
Thus much as regarded the states of western Christendom. To the north, the conquest of Bulgaria had not only removed an enemy? but restored to the empire the Danube, as its strong frontier line of defense. And the settlement of the Hungarians beyond it might, now that they had become christianized, 12 be deemed a further bulwark ; indeed all that was needed against other invaders from that quarter. It was true that the Russians, a new barbarous power, half Scandinavian, half Sclavonian, had explored another route in their naval marauding expeditions; and descending their rivers from the far North into the Euxine, had from time to time threatened, and sometimes humiliated, the Greek capital.13 Moreover respecting them a singular prophecy was rife, said to be inscribed on an equestrian statue in the square of Taurus, to the effect that the Russians would in the last days become masters of Constantinople.14 But their power, sufficient to annoy, seemed quite insufficient to conquer; and the prophecy idle, and to be despised.
Thus the Islamic dynasties to the east and south alone remained to be considered. And certainly, split as the Saracens had been into three hostile Caliphates, and ten or twelve fragments of kingdoms, from those of Spain, Morocco, and Fez westward, to the principalities o the Fatimites in Egypt and Syria, and so on to the Abbassides at Baghdad, and beyond them the independent dynasties of Khorasan and Persia, I say, thus divided as they had become among themselves, and inferior to the Christians as they had proved of late in battle, there seemed little to be apprehended from them. The only really formidable power was that, of which rumor must have told, of the Sultan Mahmoud of Ghizni, near Caubul, in the far East. 15
But this was far distant. He had almost absorbed himself in the great enterprise of the subjugation of India; and he was now moreover in his old age, and the empire likely to fall to pieces at his death. Thus even to that quarter Basil might have looked without any great apprehension. Political security, and even prosperity, seemed assured to his Greek kingdom, on the most considerate review that be could make of the then state of the world. No woe seemed from any side to threaten; least of all from the Euphrates and Baghdad. Could a power so fallen be resuscitated? Could religious fanaticism be rekindled from its embers, and under a new commission, become again terrible?
So might the royal Basil have naturally thought within himself. Devoted as he was to the Greek superstitions, it is not likely that the guilt of image worship, and of its many accompanying corruptions, such as, we shall presently see, still flourished unchecked in the empire, would have weighed upon his mind, as that which must need bring down again God's vengeance. That fearful declaration against them that receive not the love of the truth, "God shall send them strong delusion that they shall believe a lie," had already begun to have its fulfillment. But with real Christians, such as St. John represented on the Apocalyptic scene, the impression must have been most different.
As they had seen one woe already sent to punish the apostate nation, so there must have sounded in their ears a foreboding sound of other judicial woes yet to come. For self delusion was not security. In fact even while men were saying, Peace and safety, sudden destruction impended on the Greek empire; and that from the very quarter least looked to with apprehension.
The agencies were prepared: the Trumpet blown again: and the four angels, under a new commission to destroy, let loose from the Euphrates.
1I allude to the wars of Almanzor, Vizier of Haccharn the 2nd; who for a short time almost revived the Saracen woe to the Spanish Christians. In A.D. 980, he attacked and defeated them, and destroyed Leon and Barcelona; but was in 990 and 998 defeated by Dons Sancho and Garcia: and, after the latter repulse, in despair committed suicide. " With him," says the learned writer in the English Univ. Hist. 22. 411, " expired the fortune of the Cordovan Moors." So too Hallam ii. 4.
2 The Vulgate was the Latin translation made by Jerome from the Hebrew; and A.M. 4000 the date of Christ's birth, as computed from it. About the year A.D. 527 Dionysius, a Roman abbot, computed from, and mainly contributed to introduce into use, this the Vulgar Era
3 Of the earlier half of the eleventh, or next succeeding century, let the case of Benedict IX be an example: a boy, brought up in debauchery, and made Pope at the age of twelve.
4 He was of the fourth Greek dynasty subsequent to the rise of Islam. The one first reigning was the Heraclian; which continued through the seventh century, and so bore the brunt of the Saracen woe. The next was the saurian ; which filled the eighth century, and was memorable for its part in the iconoclastic controversy. thirdly there was the less notable Phrygian dynasty, which continued only about fifty years: and then, fourth, the Macedonian, begun by Basil 1, A.D. 867, and to which belonged also that Basil II of whom we now speak, as reigning 150 years after. It was superseded by the Comnenian, A.D. 1051 ; just in time to receive and suffer under the first Turkish onset.
5 So Gibbon of Constantinople in the tenth century, x 103 Her treasures might attract; but her virgin strength had repelled, and still promised to repel, the invasions of the Persian and Bulgarian, the Arab and the Russian."
6 A.D. 934 is the date of Henry the Fowler's victory; 953 of that of Otho.
7 In the famous dispute of ecclesiastical jurisdiction between the patriarchs of Rome and Constantinople in the ninth century, the provinces of Dardania, Thessaly, and the two Epiri, are assigned to the kingdom of Bulgaria. So Baronius Ann Eccl. A.D. 869, referred to by Gibbon x. 196. Lychnidus, or Achrida, was the Bulgarian capital, and seat of its patriarch.
8 As early," says Gibbon, x. 10.5, " as the eighth century, Greece. and even Peloponnesus, were overrun by some Sclavonian bands, which outstripped the royal standard of Bulgaria."
9 In the year 903 the Bulgarian king dictated the conditions of peace, while besieging Constantinople. Anc. Un. Hist. xvii. 87.
10 A.D. 1016
11 A.D. 987
12 This was in the tenth century. The family of Arpad formed, and reigned 300 Years over, the kingdom of Hungary; beginning A.D. 972.
13 These Russian marauding excursions were continued at intervals from 865 to 1043. The Christianization of Russia began, but with very partial success, during the patriarchate of Photius. The more proper era. is that of the baptism of the Russian Queen Olga in Constantinople, A D. 955.
14So Gibbon x. 233 ; " By the vulgar of every rank it was asserted, and believed, that an equestrian statue in the square of Taurus was secretly inscribed with a prophecy," &c. And in his Note he says that this was a brazen statue which had been brought from Antioch, and was melted down by the Latins. He refers for authorities to Nicetas Choniates, Codinus, and a writer on the Antiquities of Constantinople, who lived about A.D. 1100. " They witness," he says, " the belief of the prophecy; the rest is immaterial."
In a curious Book entitled Valicinia Abbalis Joachimi, printed at Venice A.D. 1589, the Editor, Paschalinus Regisilmus, states in his Annotations at p. 1, that certain Greeks asserted their nation's propriety in Joachim's prophecies; ascribing them to one of their emperors, of philosophic turn, named Leo, and reporting that they were engraved on an ancient column at Constantinople. Paschalinus rebuts the claim indignantly, as an injury to the prophetic fame of Joachim ; and adduces evidence to show that no such engraved column or statue then existed in the Byzantine capital. Presuming that the column or statue intended was the same with that mentioned by Gibbon, the asserted melting it down by the Latins, on their capture of the city, would account for its disappearance. That a remembrance of the prophecy itself, or some similar one, has been kept up among the Turks as well as Greeks, even till now, the author can himself testify; his Janissary having related it to him, and added that it was frequently talked of in the Turkish coffee-houses at Constantinople. The prophecy is noticed by Mr. Forster, i. 49 t. He refers to Wallichius, Vit. Mohametis, 158.
15 'Cities that have of late years been the scenes of the triumph, and once of the cats strophe, of British armies. The question seems natural, Can it be without some high object in the divine counsels, that the British from the far west have, in this latter age of the world, advanced their Indian empire to the confines of Cabul and Ghizni?
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/masoudi.html#The Caliph Haroun Al Rashid