A Beautiful Ending: The Apocalyptic Imagination and the Making of the Modern World by John Jeffries Martin

Abstract

One may not expect to see the apocalyptic imagination foregrounded as a key constituent element in the traditional telling of modernity’s origins. According to Martin, however, apocalyptic ideas are deeply embedded in modern thinking about the nature of history, its direction, and human aspirations to shape its outcome.Martin began his research for this book intending to write a straightforward history of Early Modern Europe from the age of Columbus until the French Revolution, and that original plan can still be seen in the volume’s chronological progression and organization. All of the major historical touchstones and markers for the making of the Early Modern Era remain present, including among other developments the invention of print, the European encounter with the Americas, the rise of the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires, the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, and the ensuing Wars of Religion. The project took a different turn, however, when Martin discerned a particular thread running through those critical centuries of transition between the medieval and modern worlds, namely, that of apocalyptic ideas and millennialist hopes for “a beautiful ending” to history—a Golden Age of justice, prosperity, and peace before the end of time.In his compelling tour of apocalypticism from c. 1400 to 1700, Martin finds numerous examples to substantiate this finding—such as the fact that the oldest surviving printed text from Europe relates to the Final Judgment; that Columbus perceived his voyages as fulfilling biblical prophecies; the strands of messianic thinking that informed Hapsburg imperial ideology; the utopian visions of authors such as Thomas More; and the battles between Protestant and Catholic reformers, which seemed to suggest the final tribulations under the Antichrist were at hand, thereby setting the stage for the ultimate triumph of the Elect.Beneath Martin’s engaging prose, there lies a long-standing and far-reaching academic debate over the relationship between (premodern) theology of history and (modern) philosophy of history, associated with the likes of Löwith and Blumenberg. Löwith argued that modern theories of historical progress (evident in the works of figures such as Georg Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx) represented “secularized” versions of theological interpretations of history (displayed by thinkers such as Augustine of Hippo and Joachim of Fiore).1 Blumenberg posited instead a definitive rupture between medieval and modern temporal conceptualizations of history, as the latter jettisoned the former’s stultifying reliance on God as the architect of a foreordained historical plan that would end in the apocalypse.2 Indeed, Blumenberg explicitly flagged apocalyptic modes of thought as antithetical to modern notions of open-ended historical progress and human agency within the arena of time. Apocalypticism and modernity thus stand at odds with one another.Martin seems to adopt a far more “Löwithesque” perspective, offering his assessment that “Modernity was, in the end, a providential product” (10) and that “the apocalyptic imagination and the hope and energies it inspired played a fundamental role in the shaping of the modern world” (12). As evident in his copious notes, Martin is well aware of the greater stakes in this topic, which are part of a wider debate over secularization and modernity writ large.A Beautiful Ending strikes me as making two especially important contributions. First, Martin calls attention to the fact that Christian apocalyptic ideas, the ones that predominantly shaped European thinking, were just one strand in what he calls an “apocalyptic braid,” bound up with contemporary Jewish and Islamic ideas about the divinely ordained course of history. Admittedly, trained as an expert in Early Modern Europe, his focus remains mostly on the European tradition. But his discussion of how print enabled the dissemination of rabbinical texts on the Final Things, for example, or about the political implications of Ottoman prophecies about the end-times, provides a far richer picture of how apocalyptic ideas shaped intellectual life and culture beyond the confines of Christian Europe.Second, Martin reminds us that, while millenarian visions of the future could inspire violence, rebellion, and fear of “outsiders” as agents of apocalyptic evil, in some instances the longing for the end also generated optimism, egalitarianism, and an ecumenical spirit. That sense of optimism about the end-times seems to be the true casualty of the secular and scientific impulses that eventually came to dominate modern theorizing about time and history. While it is hard to find a “beautiful ending” in the promise of nuclear destruction or the unfolding disasters caused by climate change, perhaps, as Martin speculates in his epilogue, we can and should devise new ways of thinking about the “catastrophes that have littered and continue to litter human history without having recourse to the apocalyptic” (250). Given how deeply the apocalyptic braid is woven into the broader fabric of modernity, he seems to feel that the providential appeal of a beautiful ending is far from exhausted.