Last Things

by Bynum, Caroline Walker; Freedman, Paul;

  The legend of the fifteen signs had a long currency in European literature. Remaining in an insular context, the narrative in the Psalter of the Quatrains seems to have been one of the sources for the late twelfth-century Irish tract known as the Fifteen Tokens of Doomsday (Airdena inna Cóic Lá nDéc ria mBráth).62 That tract counts backward to the Last Day. Earlier Welsh works that are more closely allied with the poem in the Psalter of the Quatrains are two texts with titles both meaning Prophecy or Sorrow of Doomsday, Yrymes Detbrawt and, from it, the Armes Dydd Brawd.63 The date of those pieces is uncertain; although they survive in a manuscript of the fourteenth century, they could be several centuries older. An interesting difference between the Irish and Welsh tracts is that in Yrymes Detbrawt the dead do not arise until the actual day of judging, rather than slightly before, as found in the Psalter of the Quatrains.

  Other works were less interested in the signs preceding Doomsday than in the events of that day. As noted for the Psalter of the Quatrains, an enduring concern was the identification and the separation of those destined for salvation from those earning damnation. The issue of the division of the saved from the damned on the Last Day is considered in a work known as [The Day of] Judgment (Bráth), composed probably in the late tenth century.64 The poem is concerned entirely with the fate of the damned, whose tortures are expressed in terms of pain inflicted on the body: bitter cold, great thirst, hunger, stifling smoke. The horror extends to the view presented to the lost soul, which sees terrible monsters, a burning sea, and devilish faces. The poem has some interest for cultural history with its list of those professions and classes especially vulnerable to damnation. The list begins with the legal profession, in the person of lying brehons (the interpreters of native law), before continuing with satirists, proud clergy and impious leaders. Such lists become less unusual and more precise in other texts, such as the first Vision of Adomnán, which gives two lists.65 The first list includes such unpopular figures as the wicked manager of church lands (the airchinnech, an individual whose importance increases after the destruction of churches during the Viking Age), brehons, and unjust satirists before concluding with the heads of monastic schools (fir léighinn) who teach heresy. The second list is more secular and names dishonest artisans, cloth makers, traders, and wicked messengers who damage the reputations of others, as well as the expected impious kings or wicked airchinnech. Although some of the individuals such as the impious king or dishonest advocate figure in condemnation so frequently that they seem to be almost clichés, these lists do appear to reflect genuine concerns. For example, the maker of unjust satires (the cáinte) is condemned in the early Irish law tracts, and one code states that even if he is injured it is more proper to repudiate than to protect him.66 Less obvious is the inclusion of other professions. Why were cloth makers especially vulnerable to condemnation or, for that matter, what manner of heresy was being taught in the monastic schools during the tenth and eleventh centuries?

  Unusual among Celtic eschatological works is a tract that describes what happens after the Judgment. This is a work of the late tenth/early eleventh century called the Evernew Tongue (Tenga Bith-núa).67 The story purports to describe an assembly at Mount Sion where the monarchs of the east were addressed by the spirit of the Apostle Philip, known as the “ever-new tongue” because his tongue was nine times removed by heathens and each time healed. The language used to address the group, it is claimed, will become the common speech of angels, animals, and humans after the Day of Judgment.68 The Evernew Tongue also describes in grisly detail the great conflagration and destruction that accompany the Judgment, with the interesting information that the event will occur at midnight.69 Great attention is given to the physical appearance of the day, as seven fiery winds come from heaven, the moon turns red, and the sun loses its light. The torments of the animals are described, with beasts crying in terror as the forests are laid low, the birds screaming at the rivers of fire, and the denizens of the sea suffering as the water heats.

  A contemporary visionary tract is known as the [first] Vision of Adomnán (Fís Adamnáin), and it is one of the most important works of the period.70 According to this tract, the famous Abbot Adomnán of Iona is said to have had a vision of the afterlife during the meeting called to endorse the “Law of Innocents” (Cáin Adamnáin). The Vision of Adomnán describes heaven and hell in addition to the end of time, and it has been described as the finest of all the medieval visions that exist prior to Dante.71 As well as material from the Apocalypse of Thomas and the Vision of Paul, the Vision of Adomnán may incorporate material from a now lost work of Elijah preaching to bird-souls.72 This complex tract raises a number of interesting questions, among which is its debt to Old English works, for parts of it resemble closely the vision of the Anglo-Saxon Drythelm as related by Bede. There is a fourfold division of humanity, and the division determines how close to the divine presence a particular individual will be. Unlike Drythelm, however, in the Vision of Adomnán the heavenly city is perceived as on a hill, with gates and gate-wardens protecting it from sinners. The particular penalty of the damned is to glimpse the heavenly city and then be forced away from it. Especially striking is the image of a bridge spanning the glen of hell; for the pious the bridge is narrow at the beginning but wide at the end, while for the sinful a broad beginning gives way to a narrow end from which the soul falls into the pit. The sinners are tormented by fire that is wrapped around them, piercing their flesh and pouring down in showers. Centuries before Dante’s Divine Comedy, the author of the Vision of Adomnán saw specific punishments meted out to particular categories of sinners. Teachers who fail to fulfil their obligations, for example, wear cloaks of red fire with wheels of flame around their throats and are forced to eat raw, rotten dog flesh fed to them by little children, the ones who were cheated of their education.

  Several texts that generally are dated to the eleventh century are more explicit concerning the state and division of bodies and souls during and after the Last Judgment. The Tidings of the Resurrection, which has been introduced above, is unique in the attention it gives to the question of the body in connection with the resurrection. The commentary concludes that everyone will have the age of thirty years, in conformity with the age of Jesus when he was crucified at the completion of thirty-three years, and their bodies will be formed perfectly, with full complements of hair.73 An exception is the bodies of those who died as martyrs and who will bear their scars as marks of beauty. The resurrection at Doomsday is distinguished from other forms of bodily change resurrection such as metaformatio (transfiguration such as werewolves). Could those erroneous forms of resurrection have been among the heresies taught by heads of monastic schools and condemned in the Vision of Adomnán?

  The Tidings of the Resurrection not only indicates a more general concern for the role of the body as part of the resurrection but also shows an increased concern for children. On the question of the form that the resurrection will take for some babies, the Tidings of the Resurrection asserts that those who died in the womb or were aborted, as well as the malformed, will all be resurrected complete, while those of “two bodies in one union” (Siamese twins) will be separated and complete; all will have the proper form and full heads of hair.74 The attention given to children might be a reflection of criticisms leveled at the Irish clergy; in the second half of the eleventh century Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury would send a letter to Irish clergy in which he felt it necessary to state the canonical position on the giving of communion to infants at baptism, and into the twelfth century criticism continued to come from fellow clergy and the papacy.75

  Mention should be made briefly of two other tracts. The first is known as the Tidings of Doomsday (Scéla Lái Brátha), and it describes the division of the resurrected at the Last Judgment.76 The author of this piece was interested in chronology. Doomsday itself lasts a thousand years. The soul condemned to the pit falls for thirty years before reaching the bottom. An eastern orientation similar to that of
the Evernew Tongue is found in the work known as the Two Sorrows of the Kingdom of Heaven (Dá Brón Flatha Nime).77 The prophets Enoch and Elias are the two sorrows, waiting for the end of time in order to die. This tract is important for its information about the Antichrist, and among its sources are pseudo-Augustine’s De Antichristo, pseudo-Hippolyte’s De consummatione mundi, and Adso of Montiér-en-Der’ De libellus de Antichristo.78

  Even a cursory reading of the selected texts in this brief survey reveals that there was no uniformity of interpretation on the subject of eschatology, either personal or communal. To take one example, there was the issue of the division of souls and the time of their separation, or, to state it somewhat differently, the nature of souls at Doomsday. Following the fascination of the Irish literati with category, four interpretations are represented among these texts. One group of texts has the souls divided into four states at the time of death—the good, the not entirely good, the not entirely wicked, and the wicked. To this group belong the first Vision of Adomnán and the Vision of Tnúdgal. A second group follows the fourfold division but places the separation on the Day of Judgment; in this group are the Fifteen Tokens of Doomsday and the Tidings of Doomsday. The third category, found in an addition to the Vision of Adomnán, sees a threefold division—the good, the indifferent, and the wicked. A final category, found in the Two Sorrows of the Kingdom of Heaven, endorses the same threefold parting, but the division is made on the Day of Judgment. Those categories not only show the influence of earlier works, but they also bring up the question of borrowing or loaning within an insular context, for four similar categories are found in Anglo-Saxon materials.79 Similarities between the first Vision of Adomnán and Bede’s account of the vision of Drythelm, for example, have been noted. This is not to discard the very real possibility that the similarity might arise only from the use of the same sources.80 For example, the fourfold division at Doomsday is also found in the writings of Haymo of Halberstadt (died 853), a writer well known at the Carolingian courts frequented by Irish scholars, while the threefold division at death is known from the writings of Pope Gregory the Great.

  A second example of diversity of opinion seems to reflect development of an idea over the course of time. This is the purpose of the Fire of Doomsday, which was connected, in turn, with the problem of whether the body was cleansed or reformed at the Last Judgment, a topic mentioned in a number of texts. Early in the ninth century the purpose of the fire was seen as cleansing and the Old Irish Metrical Rule (circa 800), the Martyrology of Tallaght (circa 831–40), and the Vita Brendani preserved in the Book of Lismore suggest that all souls passed through the fire that would clean away sin.81 After the mid-tenth century there appears to have been some change in that idea, and texts such as the Tidings of Doomsday, the Fifteen Tokens of Doomsday, and the Day of Judgment all declare that the fire will go beyond cleaning and that it will reform bodies in preparation either for admission into the elect or for casting into hell. There is little evidence of the belief that the saints would not suffer, although it was thought that the fire would feel like a soothing rain to the saints.

  The interest in eschatology implied by the increased number of works that deal with some aspect of the subject had an influence on other types of writing. Historical works composed after the tenth century, for example, show an increasing popular preoccupation with matters concerning the Last Days. Two works that use the form of inspired prophecy to narrate a survey of history (vaticinia ex eventu) are now known as the Prophecy of Berchán and the Phantom’s Frenzy. Both works, in their present form, are compositions of the eleventh century, and both are histories of powerful Gaelic princes—Berchán covers Ireland and Scotland while the Phantom’s Frenzy is confined to Ireland. They conclude their accounts of Irish kings with lists of monarchs who, it was believed, would rule Ireland prior to Doomsday. Berchán notes that the final succession of kings will be one hundred and forty years after the death of the last Irish monarch in the historical survey, followed by the time of the Antichrist and concluding with the final conflagration, which will be an arrow of fire from the southeast.82 The Phantom’s Frenzy also gives a list of kings who will reign just before the Last Days, together with the events which will occur, such as the appearance of three suns in the sky and the movement of Lia Fáil, the ceremonial monolith at Tara.83 The Phantom’s Frenzy is particularly interesting because the author/compiler was Dub-dá-leithe of Armagh (died 1064), the “heir” of Patrick. The eschatological element in the Phantom’s Frenzy appears to have been Dub-dá-leithe’s contribution, for it is not found in an earlier work that it imitated, the eighth-century verse prophecy known as Conn’s Frenzy (Baile Chuind).84

  The Panic of 1096

  How influential were these eschatological works beyond the walls of a church? Did they have a popular circulation or were they known only within a small circle of educated clergy? Even in more recent times there is great difficulty in assessing the influence of literature on society, but the comparatively greater survival of eschatological texts from the late tenth/eleventh century than from any other time might not be entirely a matter of chance, but rather a reflection of a popular interest in Last Things. Evidence for this is provided by the aforementioned panic at the approach of the feast of the Decollation of John the Baptist (August 29) in 1096.85 Why did the Gaels believe that a particular feast day in the year 1096 would present a preview of the horrors of the Day of Judgment and might presage the immediate dawning of the dread day?

  The reasons for apprehension can be set forth briefly. Even though the Gaels believed that they shared the general human guilt for the death of Christ, legend suggested that they were culpable to a slightly lesser degree because when an Irish king named Conchobar mac Nessa learned of Christ’s arrest, he had gathered together a war-band to rescue Him but had died in an apoplectic fury upon learning of the crucifixion.86 Concerning the death of John the Baptist, however, the same popular tradition believed that the Irish carried a particular guilt for his death because an Irish druid named Mog Roth supposedly carried out the murder, so greater atonement by the Gaels was in order.87 Because of their sins, they would be punished in an especially deadly form. The belief in a significance to the feast of the Decollation of the Baptist is visible by the mid-tenth century, when the vernacular “life” of Adomnán, composed circa 956–64, warns of tribulation for the Gaels of Ireland and Britain around the feast of the Baptist.88 By the end of the eleventh century, it was believed that if the feast day satisfied four conditions, this would presage disaster. First, the festival had to fall on a Friday; second, it had to fall in a bissextile (i.e., leap) year; third, it had to occur in a year with an embolism (an extra lunar month); finally, the year of the festival had to stand at the end of a chronological cycle. Three of the four chronological criteria were satisfied precisely by the year 1096: the twenty-ninth of August fell on a Friday, and the year was both bissextile and embolismal; it was not, however, at the end of a cycle recognized by the Irish.89 This final point might not have been interpreted strictly.

  The first type of terror (perhaps the only one, but this point is not obvious in the sources) would be a plague so savage that St. Patrick’s gain of the immersion of Ireland prior to Doomsday would be as naught. The consequences were to be so fatal that three-quarters of Ireland’s population would perish. What seemed to be physical confirmation of this scenario appeared late in the year 1095, when a plague began in August and continued for nine months to the beginning of May 1096. The mortality from the pestilence was severe, and it affected the aristocrat and the peasant indiscriminately. Among the dead were the bishops of Armagh and Dublin, the king of the Isles, and numerous lesser princes. Even the chronicles make note of the significance of the year: the Annals of Ulster, whose main comment has been quoted, have a marginal note that identifies 1096 as the “year of mortality” (blíadhain na mortla), while the Annals of Tigernach describe this as the “year of the festival of John” (blíadan na féil Eoin).90 The Annal
s of the Four Masters, a seventeenth-century collection of earlier materials, notes that the Irish were saved through fasts, alms-giving, and donations of land to the churches, essentially a repetition of the remedy given in the vision.91

  Literary expression of the horror that would be unleashed at the time of that feast is found in a work known as the “second” Vision of Adomnán.92The date when Adomnán became associated with this calamity is uncertain; it was certainly before the composition of his vernacular “life” in the mid-tenth century, and it was firmly established by the time of the composition of the “first” vision of Adomnán (Fís Adomnáin), which placed the saint’s visit to the afterlife on the feast of the Baptist.93 The “second” vision begins by listing the several chronological signs satisfied (at least in part) by the year 1096 that would foretell, it was believed, a tribulation upon the Irish known variously as “broom out of Fánad” (located on the north coast of Co. Donegal), a “fierce dragon which will search Ireland from the south-east,” or the “rowing wheel.”94 Origins for these manifestations of vengeance have been sought in pre-Christian ceremonies. The “rowing wheel,” for example, has been tentatively identified as a horn originally used in certain pagan rituals, the memory of which had been incorporated into Irish Christian apocalyptic thought by the eleventh century.95 The answer need not have been so remote, however, and the “first” Vision of Adomnán mentions “wheels” (rotha) of fire round the throats of sinners in hell.