The Economist reviews Tom Holland’s new book, Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom:
To cut a long and complex tale short, he suggests that the 1,000-year landmark in the Christian calendar (whose effect was felt throughout the following century) helped to stimulate a mood of impending apocalypse, and a tendency to interpret troubling geopolitical events, such as victories by the Berbers in Spain or the Turks in Anatolia, in apocalyptic terms.
This mood created a favourable background for zealous forms of religion—the sort of religion that thrives when people see little virtue in marrying, breeding or building up private property. That in turn made it easier for clerical power to trump the worldly kind. Having extended their influence at the expense of purely earthly powers, the theocrats had an interest in keeping geopolitical tension on the boil.
The conclusion makes a jab at the recent return of religion, the subject of a recent book by two Economist writers:
Yet as this book will make clear, even to the most hard-boiled of readers, such tricks would not have worked without an intensity of belief that is difficult to imagine today. Or difficult to imagine before the lesson of September 11th 2001.
Continue reading at the Economist.