The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Religion, War, Famine and Death in Reformation Europe (review)

Abstract

In every age of the Christian world there have been some who believed that the Last Days prophesied by Christ had arrived. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that feeling was intense and shared by many. The four horsemen of the Apocalypse foretold in the Book of Revelation seemed to be already unleashed: "and power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth" (Rev. 6:8). In their excellent book Andrew Cunningham and Ole Grell show how many different episodes in the history of early modern Europe were interpreted in such apocalyptic terms. The Reformation was linked by Protestants to the purity of the white horse in the Book of Revelation, while the horseman who sat on it would punish with his bow the corruption of the Catholic Church and so prepare for the Second Coming of Christ and the Day of Judgment. Wars and the Apocalypse often went together. The Ottoman incursions into Europe and the wars of religion that culminated in the Thirty Years War were seen as the work of the rider on the red horse who was given "power. . . to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword" (Rev. 6:4). Similarly, Europe's recurring famines were ascribed to the horseman on the black horse. Death and disease, especially the new disease of the pox and the devastating presence of plague, issued from the fourth horseman: "and behold a pale horse; and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him" (Rev. 6:8).