T

he image of everyone in Europe huddled in churches on the eve of the year 1000 in terror of the end of the world has largely been discounted although it lingers in popular imagination. After all, at that time there was no agreed upon date for the beginning of a new year. Some people dated years from the spring equinox, others from the beginning of the reigns of their kings. Some people did measure from the assumed year of the birth of Jesus.

Then there are those people who see the entire Crusading movement as an attempt to fulfill the prophecies of Revelation and bring about the end of the world. Others feel that the Crusaders had other religious goals and that those who saw them in apocalyptic terms were in the minority.

Where the Crusaders apocalyptic?   Where people from the middle ages obsessed with the End Times?