I. The Principal Topoi of Apocalyptic Thought

The eve of the Thirty Years' War was spent, on the Protestant side, trembling at the prospect of the apocalypse. Because the Council of Trent had largely suppressed all apocalyptic interpretations of the present, political and theological ideas about the apocalypse were to be found mostly in the Protestant churches. Two factors were fundamental to these movements:

1. The apocalyptic reform groups were not to be based on secular law but instead should be spiritual in their constitution. Their political goals were always to be realised with virtually immediate divine help.

2. From the beginning, the apocalyptic movements had an anti-Habsburg emotional tone. The tenor of their polemics suggested that the House of Habsburg was actually international and not German, that it subordinated all patriotic interests to its own, and that in so doing it had also lost its legitimate claim to the Roman and German imperial title. The characteristics of spiritual politics with which the present-day final battle could be fought had to be found in the Bible. Here lies the origin of the apocalyptic interpretation of politics with Biblical, prophetic topoi. The characteristics of such political, apocalyptic thought were modelled after patterns of prophecy formulated in the Bible. The Book of Daniel, Isaiah's panegyrics to the kings of the north and the east, and the Revelations of St. John were especially important to this. The Book of Daniel supplied the motifs of the four kingdoms, the battle of kings preceding the end of the world, and the archangel Michael.

The doctrine of the four kingdoms (Dan. 7:1-28) was absolutely fundamental to the self-interpretation of the Holy Roman Empire. The empire understood itself to be the dominion of the fourth, nameless beast, which followed upon the empire of the winged lion, the bear, and the winged panther, and after which the judgement of the Lord would descend upon the world. This interpretation was particularly virulent during the Thirty Years' War, for the collapse of the empire would also have meant the end of the world.

The vision of the battle of the kings (Dan. 11:20-12:3) and of the helpful king of the north could be applied to the situation during the Thirty Years' War in many ways: The king of the south overruns the sanctuary and forces the people into apostasy. The king of the north wages war against the king of the south and inundates the realm of the king of the south with his army. "And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people ... and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book." (Dan. 12:3)

This vision of the helpful king of the north was reinforced by the prophecy of Isaiah (Isa. 41:25 and 49:12) linking the king of the north with a king from the east.

The most important topoi in Revelations are the visions of the cosmic Madonna, the thousand-year reign of Christ, the Last Judgement, and the heavenly Jerusalem.

The cosmic woman, symbol of Mary and the church, is "clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars." She cries out in the travails of birth and is persecuted by a dragon with seven heads, ten horns, and seven crowns, who intends to devour her child. But "her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne," and the woman flees from the dragon, who is overthrown by Michael during a heavenly battle. (Rev. 12:1-9)

The doctrine of the millennium is based on Rev. 20:1-7. The angel binds the dragon, that old serpent, for a thousand years. During this time, the martyrs reign together with Christ. Then there is a second time of tribulation before the Last Judgement comes to pass. This doctrine of a double resurrection and the thousand-year reign of the righteous had been forbidden as a theological teaching within the Lutheran faith since the Augsburg Confession of 1530.

In contrast, the teaching of the fall of the great whore Babylon, who sits atop a dragon with seven heads and who will be destroyed, is identified with the Roman Catholic church and the Pope, following Luther's interpretation. (Rev. 17 and 18) Her destruction follows the conversion of the heathens and Jews according to Romans 11:25-27. "That blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved ..." Then the Last Judgement ensues, in which the Lord judges the dead according to the Book of Life. (Rev. 20:12) The doctrine of the Last Judgement was dogmatically indispensable, because it was part of the Apostles' Creed.



II. Johann Heinrich Alsted's Restitution of Millenarianism

In 1627, an unprepossessing little book was published in Herborn, entitled Diatribe de Mille Annis Apocalypticis. It claimed to be an exact exegesis of the Book of Daniel and Revelations, and not to be a work of chiliastic or millenarian fanaticism. In an analysis of Rev. 20 and Dan. 11 ff., the booklet declared that the beginning of the millennium was to be expected in 1694. The essential criteria: By then, the final battle would be decided in favour of the king of the north; and the conversion of the Jews would be imminent, for with the discovery of America, the gospel was now known to all ends of the earth. The author, Johann Heinrich Alsted, connected the expectation of the conversion of the "heathen" Turks to the conversion of the Jews.

Protestantism was in a dramatic situation in 1627, following the transient enthusiasm for the Winter-King (Frederick V, Elector Palatine). Tilly and Wallenstein had conquered most of the Protestant territories that did not willingly co-operate with the Emperor. Wallenstein stood at the Baltic Sea; indeed, it looked as though only help from above could save Germany's Protestant churches. The oppression that, according to Revelations, would precede the millennium was thus politically manifest. It would last until 1694, according to Alsted's calculations. Then the millennium would begin.

With Alsted's tract - which made a significant impact not only in the empire but above all in revolutionary England - millenarianism become theologically acceptable.



III. Jakob Böhme's Time of Roses and Lilies

The Thirty Years' War had already been raging for nearly ten years when Alsted's Diatribe appeared. The attempts of the Bohemian estates to achieve their independence with the help of Frederick V of Palatine had failed at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620. The entire Protestant elite of Bohemia and Moravia was on the run, together with the Winter-King. In a letter of 10 December 1622, Jakob Böhme complained of the "great affliction and heinous pillaging, murder and unheard-of devilry within Christendom" and interpreted the horrors as "a prefiguration of the future judgement upon this land".

It was the time of political prophets, and precisely the radical spiritual groups could not comprehend Frederick's defeat as being the end of their Biblically-foretold millenarian hopes. Böhme counted on a sacred Golden Age: "The Aureum Saeculum will then begin to flourish in the midst of the fire of Babel," he wrote on 8 June 1621. "Only with humility under the cross for a small time will the May bring its roses, and the lily-branch its fruit."

On 20 February 1623, Böhme concisely summarised his eschatology: "the tribulation and annihilation of Babel is drawing near with great violence, the storm is approaching, it will rage ferociously: vain hope deceives, then the destruction of the tree draws near." The destruction of Babel means the end of all institutionalised churches. "The Tower of Babel has lost its foundation, people think they can prop it up, but a wind from the LORD will knock it down." This is aimed at Austria and the Catholic reforms: The attempt of the Catholic parties to reinstall the old church - Luther's Babel - with the help of the House of Habsburg would fail in the divine storm. "The oriental beast will receive a human heart and countenance; and before that comes to pass, it will help to tear down the Tower of Babel with its claws." Here appears the prophetic motif of the conversion of the Turks, who are to help in overthrowing the House of Habsburg. This motif characterises the entire radical Protestant eschatological propaganda, and it is supplemented by prophecies about the north: "In the darkness of midnight a sun rises, which takes its light from the sensual qualities of the nature of all living things, from the Word that is formed, uttered, and repeating; and this is the miracle at which all peoples rejoice." Here Isaiah's vision is interpreted in such a way that it can be applied to the Swedish king; and he knows the essence of things and stands in the Word of God; he thus has the function of a redeemer, leading things back to their origin and transforming the oppression of the peoples into joy.

This prophecy is now explained in terms of heraldic emblems: "An eagle hatched lion cubs in his nest and brought them his prey until they grew large, in the hope that they would bring him their prey in return; but they have forgotten this, and take the eagle's nest away from him, and pluck out his feathers, and disloyally bite off his claws so that he can no longer catch prey and will starve: But they quarrel over the eagle's nest and tear each other to pieces in wrath, until their wrath becomes a fire that burns up the nest, and such from the LORD of all creation." The eagle is, of course, the House of Austria. Although the lions cannot be unambiguously identified, they suggest the heraldic animals of Bohemia and the Palatinate. In any case, the disappearance of the House of Habsburg is once again foretold, which will perish on account of its alliance policies. Nor will the partners in the alliance survive as political entities, Böhme predicts. Böhme's interests cannot readily be politically co-opted. He is concerned with an inner, spiritual church. He rejects a spirituality that turns into political power. His ideal is the lily, the blossoming of the world according to God's primordial plan. Böhme described the final state of affairs symbolically: "A lily stands from noon against midnight: he who comes to own it will sing the song of God's mercy; and in his time God's Word will flourish like grass upon the earth, and the peoples will sing the song of Babel in a single voice, then the beginning will have found the end." The lily symbolises the time when the world of paradise is restored in the eschatological process.



IV. Comenius' Lux in tenebris

Along with the Bohemian exiles, the community of the Bohemian Brethren and their spiritus rector Johann Amos Comenius were on the run. Comenius (1592-1670), who had studied with Alsted in Herborn in 1612, remained a millenialist throughout his entire life. Ten years after the end of the Thirty Years' War, he tried one last time to give political force to the prophecies regarding the Winter-King. After the death of Emperor Ferdinand II in 1657, he published a collection of prophecies from the Thirty Years' War, "Lux in Tenebris," which contained the visions of Christoph Kotter, Christiana Poniatovia, and Nicolaus Drabic from the years 1616-1656. Its tenor was to predict the downfall of the House of Habsburg. Still in 1657, Comenius wanted to prevent the election of another Habsburg as the new Emperor, not least to make possible the reign of an apocalyptic king. This undertaking failed and the new Emperor, Leopold I (born 1640, ruled 1658-1705) was once again a Habsburg.

In the preface to his prophetic collection, Comenius summarised in fifteen theses the outlines of the prophecies that he believed to be divinely inspired: "1. The world is as depraved as in Noah's time before the deluge, above all the Christian peoples, and especially the Germans. 2. The Pope is that great Antichrist and the whore Babylon. 3. The beast on which the whore is riding is the Roman Empire, or more precisely, the House of Habsburg. 4. God will no longer tolerate this, he will once again destroy the world of the godless and inundate it with blood. 5. Therefore he will move heaven and earth, i.e., he will incite all peoples against one another and bring about unheard-of disorder. 6. When this war is over, the Pope and the House of Austria will have been annihilated. 7. They will be defeated by all four corners of the world due to their shameful tyranny. 8. The first will be the northern and the eastern peoples. 9. These are primarily the Swedes together with their king, the Pfalzgrafen bei Rhein, and the House of Rákóczi. 10. They will attempt it individually but in vain; finally, the work of God will proceed from their alliance. 11. This will occur with unheard-of speed, in a year, a month, a day, an hour, to the astonishment of the entire world. 12. The Turks and Tatars will intervene and hasten the work. 13. As a reward, the light of the gospel will be made known to them. 14. The reformation of the entire earth will ensue, prior to the end of the world. 15. This reformation will have the following laws and form: The icons will perish, along with iconolatry, the purest service of the Highest will flourish everywhere." (1. Die Welt ist so verdorben, wie sie es zu Zeiten Noas vor der Sündflut war, vor allem die christlichen Völker, zumal das deutsche. 2. Der Papst ist jener gro e Antichrist und die Hure Babylon. 3. Das Tier, auf dem die Hure reitet, ist das Römische Reich, genauer das Haus Habsburg. 4. Gott wird dies nicht länger ertragen, er wird die Welt der Gottlosen erneut zerstören und mit Blut überschwemmen. 5. Deshalb wird er Himmel und Erde in Bewegung setzen, d.i. er wird alle Völker gegeneinander hetzen und eine unerhörte Verwirrung erzeugen. 6. Wenn dieser Krieg zuende ist, werden der Papst und das Haus Österreich untergegangen sein. 7. Wegen ihrer himmelschreienden Tyrannei werden sie von allen vier Seiten der Welt geschlagen. 8. Die ersten werden die nördlichen und östlichen Völker sein. 9. Das sind vor allem die Schweden, gemeinsam mit ihrem König, dem Pfalzgrafen bei Rhein, und dem Haus Rákóczi. 10. Sie werden es einzeln versuchen, aber vergeblich, schlie lich wird von ihrer Vereinigung das Werk Gottes ausgehen. 11. Das wird mit unerhörter Schnelligkeit geschehen, in einem Jahr, Monat, Tag, einer Stunde, zum Erstaunen der ganzen Welt. 12. Die Türken und Tartaren werden intervenieren und das Werk beschleunigen. 13. Als Lohn wird ihnen das Licht des Evangeliums verkündet werden. 14. Es wird die Reformation des gesamten Erdkreises eintreten, vor dem Ende der Welt. 15. Diese Reformation wird folgende Gesetze und Form haben: Die Bilder werden mit dem Bilderkult vergehen, der reinste Dienst der Höchsten wird überall blühen.)

It was clear to Comenius: With the end of the war in 1648, the apocalyptic task of the warring parties had not been fulfilled. It should come as no surprise that his book was banned in Catholic countries.



V. Christoph Kotter's Heraldic Visions

The collection was an attempt to pursue the spiritual, apocalyptic interpretation of history that had begun with the visions of Christoph Kotter (d. 1647) even before the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War. From 1616 onward, Kotter, a tanner from Sprottau, had had visions that became ever more concrete in political terms: On 6 September 1620, a divine messenger prophesied that Frederick would remain king if he set his standard on God. The Winter-King was defeated on 8 November. The vision was therefore spiritually reinterpreted as the general struggle of the lions against the eagle of the House of Habsburg. The lion gradually became the heraldic animal of Protestantism: The Palatinate, Bohemia, Sweden, and England all had lions as heraldic animals.

On 25 August 1622, Kotter had the following vision: "A splendid eagle of great stature, with richly-plumed wings, is attacked by a white lion. The lion tears a feather out of his left wing. After that, the bird is attacked by a red lion, who plucks a large feather from his torso." The bird dies of its wounds. The white lion is "given the sound 'Weh' [woe] with which he resounds over the earth. And this lion will conquer a large part of the state and rule it wisely. Of the red lion, know this: ... That red lion who wears the light of sunrise will come to the aid of those who love the gospel, and he will conquer a part of the state. And because he loves him, he will collaborate well with the blue lion. The blue lion ... will receive from God steadfastness of the soul, strength, glory, and power against the enemy. He is the one you see as he is crowned by a threefold powerful hand: The hand that comes from above is the hand of God Himself. The two that come from the side are the two mediators whom God has provided as help: from the north and from the east."

The meaning of the vision is unambiguous: The Habsburg eagle is first plucked to death by three Protestant lions; then the red, white, and blue lions each assume governmental control. The white lion is the Swede, the red lion is the prince of Siebenbürgen, Bethlen Gabor, and the blue lion is the new, holy Bohemia. The new kingdom of Bohemia is founded by the two kings from the north and the east that were prophesied in Isaiah, and it will be a new Israel, crowned by heaven.



VI. Christiana Poniatovia's Vision of the Heavenly King Frederick

On 23 January 1628, Christiana Poniatovia (1610-1644), a Polish noble in Comenius' entourage, had a vision: The most holy trinity - an old man, the Lord, and a third person - revealed the future to her in images. The seer saw Emperor Ferdinand sitting on a throne, surrounded by a great multitude. The people lay down their gold before him, prostrated themselves at his feet, and kissed his feet. He gave them pieces of paper and commanded them to take their leave. When the seer asked who they were, the Lord answered, "That is the whore Babylon, the wild beast who arrogates religious and temporal sovereignty to itself and intends to subordinate it to its dominion. That is the man who disturbs the world, alters the ruling authority, puts the entire earth into disorder, and forces the nations to obey him. That is the basilisk from the lineage of the serpent." (Lux in Tenebris II, p. 37) The Lord's patience had run out, reported the seer, and Ferdinand's world should now await the Lord's punishment. The Lord is summoning the powers of the north and the east so that these giants will dethrone the arrogant ones. "And I immediately saw the two men return who had overthrown the kings, and between them they were leading Frederick! When he came to us, Frederick blossomed like a tree blossoms, and I cried when I saw him: Thou art the olive tree that turneth green in the countenance of the Lord. And the Lord said again: See! And I saw a shimmering, exquisitely beautiful throne, and the Lord spoke to the giant: Lead him to the throne and place him upon it." Like the blue lion in Kotter's vision, Frederick, too, is crowned by the Lord and by the powers of the north and the east. "And the Lord and that old man spoke once more: "Thus speaks Jehovah, who appoints and repudiates the kings of the earth, that I will be eternally merciful to my servant and will remain true to my covenant with him. My eyes will always be upon him, my hand will help him, and my arm will be his support. My mercy and blessing will be with him, he will always be agreeable to my ears, and his prayers find a hearing.' ... But Frederick rose from his throne, fell upon his countenance before the three persons, and spoke: 'O Jehovah, great and just Lord, from thee cometh this victory, from thee the wisdom, thine is the glory. I want to serve thee forever.'" (Lux in tenebris II, p. 38 ff.)

This prophecy, which is based on Psalms 21:1-9, very precisely explains the heraldically encoded apparition in Kotter's vision. The Emperor is the whore Babylon, who will be overthrown with help from the powers of the north and east, by Sweden and Hungary/Siebenbürgen and possibly even by the Turks, in order to enthrone the messianic King Frederick at last.



VII. Gustavus Adolphus as Eschatological King

Sweden's role in the Thirty Years' War as the lion from the north was the religious legitimation for Gustavus Adolphus' invasion of the empire. Granted, the religious interpretation corresponded to Sweden's political interests. It was not a difficult decision between the alternatives of having Wallenstein as a direct opponent on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea, or of consolidating a Swedish empire on the Baltic by driving back the Habsburgs. Still, Gustavus Adolphus did not make it easy for himself. It was clear to him that an invasion would mean the open internationalisation of a war that had been mostly limited to the empire until then. But he was pushed into it. At the camp in Tilsit, Comenius was one of his spiritual advisors; in Tilsit, medallions were coined that showed a portrait of the king on one side and the lion of the north on the other. And that is also exactly how he was seen by the empire's Protestant estates, who would rather preserve their faith than keep their fatherland unified, as became clear in Kotter's vision. The iconography of the flyers showed this view: The lion shields the church from the dragon. (Figure 2)

A flyer from 1631 represents the situation of the Protestant church in a vision, in the dawn of its deliverance, at the cock-crow of the Swedish invasion of 6 July 1630.

The church stands on the three pillars of divine attributes: omniscientia - turning into a pillar of light and crowned by an all-seeing eye; omnipotentia - turning into a pillar of clouds, ending with the hand that holds the globe. The third pillar is "an ash tree / that laughs at all venom / upon which the pelican makes everything live again." The pillars of the divine attributes of the church have the Bible as their foundation: "Verbum domini manet in aeternum." Even though all that remains of the five pillars in the vestibule is their stumps, their base is nevertheless indestructible. Atop the broken-off pillars of Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, Augsburg, and the Palatine lies the Roman dragon: Two of its seven heads are indeterminate; of the others, one wears a Jesuit's biretta, two a cardinal's hat, one a tiara, and one dragon's head has a monk's tonsure.

On the left side, the true doctrine is depicted on a rock: "But see, in the North a ray of sun shot just / upon a rock / where the true doctrine was also to be found." In a cavern at the foot of this rock of the true doctrine, the Swedish lion is lying, who at first "somewhat shyly" (etwas scheu) awaits the ship that will carry him into the war against the dragon: "A long yellow cross with a blue flag" [the Swedish coat of arms; the inscription is the one with which the first Christian Emperor, Constantine, brought heathendom to an end at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 A.D.: In hoc signo vinces].

"A seacock on the mast guarded a bag of wool" [the Hanseatic cities, which gave Gustavus Adolphus financial support].

"A cherub trumpeting, he became the helmsman" [messenger of divine judgement - and at the same time, the glory of Gustavus Adolphus].

"A Dutch sailor steered hard toward land" [Holland supported Gustavus Adolphus financially; there were exiles from the Catholic Netherlands in Sweden, as well].

"Near to the ship's port, a black lion lay listening/

With a bishop's hat / before which the sea roared"

[Christian William of Brandenburg allied with the Swedish king after his dismissal as Administrator of Magdeburg and returned from his exile together with the Swedish fleet].

"A gloriously-crowned, generous lion leapt onto the land

And joyfully, eagerly, with his sword to the dragon ran

Upon which I heard a cry: Rejoice, you exiles/

And also all of you who are the kindred of religion/

Through his omnipotence, in his omniscience/

God has prepared His mercy for us all/

From eternity to eternity.

The symbolism of this flyer works with the motifs of the last days as if they were self-evident: the true doctrine is proclaimed in the north; the lion from the north is naturally Swedish; the ambivalent figure of the apocalyptic cherub with a trumpet steers the invading ship of the holy army. The inscription on the Swedish heraldic sail shows Gustavus Adolphus as standing in the tradition of Constantine and as the true heir to the Christian empire. Since Luther, the apocalyptic dragon has belonged to the standard repertoire of Protestant polemics against the papal church, and this symbol is a stable one. Yet in this flyer, the church is lacking all the signs of the heavenly Jerusalem and of internal renewal: With its foundation, the Holy Word, and the three pillars of the divine qualities omniscience, omnipotence, and mercy, the Protestant church has arrived at its timeless consistency.

LITERATURE