How in Russia they imagined the end of the world, when they were waiting for it and how they were preparing for it.
Remember in "The Cherry Orchard" Firs says that before the misfortune the owl screamed and the samovar hummed without stopping? The old butler called the abolition of serfdom unhappiness, but the signs by which he had a presentiment of the bad are similar to those by which our ancestors determined the imminent onset of the End of the World. Everything unfamiliar and new was perceived by ordinary people as a messenger of the imminent end. The same samovar when for the Old Believers was a real harbinger of the Apocalypse, not to mention the steam locomotive. Natural phenomena that could not be explained were taken as a sign of the end. Since the Apocalypse was constantly awaited, a solar eclipse, starfall, abnormal heat in winter and snow in summer - all this was perceived as a sign of the imminent end. Moreover, any strange natural phenomenon in the mouths of the crowd assumed mythical proportions. So in the 17th century, a rumor spread across Russia,that the whale fish tried to drown the Solovetsky Monastery, and three suns rose over Moscow. This was seen as a sign of the imminent arrival of the Antichrist.
Beginning of the End
Why did they constantly wait for the End of the World? And all then, that John the Theologian, who described his visions of the End in Revelation, did not indicate the exact date. For this reason, Christians had to regularly point their fingers at the sky in anticipation of the horsemen of the Apocalypse.
For the first time, Christians began to wait for the end of the world in 156. The next time, for an understandable reason, in 666, and when the Antichrist did not come, people began to expect 999, which is also kind of like 666, if you look at it from a different angle.
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Since now it is already 20k8, and the light has not yet ended, you can guess that in 999, in a global sense, everything was relatively smooth and calm. But Christians had a fallback for this case - year 1000. It was believed that Jesus would come to earth a second time a thousand years after his birth. According to the Bible, the second coming must be accompanied by various calamities, “people will die of fear,” and it will end with the Last Judgment.
And the year 1000 passed without the coming and the Judgment, then smart people realized that a thousand years should be counted not from the birth of Christ, but from his death. So the end of the world must come in 1033. And here Russia joins in waiting for the end.
1038
Christianity in Russia was adopted in 988, so by 999 and 1000 our ancestors had not yet had time to realize the seriousness of the onset of the Apocalypse, but by 1033 they had already fully realized and joined European hysteria. In 1033, the Antichrist was supposed to appear, then rule for 5 years, which means that the final and irrevocable end was scheduled for 1038. Confidence in the imminent Apocalypse was added by the prediction that it will come when the feast of the Annunciation falls on Easter. In 1038, the Annunciation fell on Holy Saturday, the difference of one day with the original prediction did not confuse the preachers of the Apocalypse, but on the contrary convinced them even more. But this time, to the disappointment of many preachers, the End of the World did not come.
1492
The next estimated date for the beginning of the end was 1492. The prelude to great trouble was the fall of Constantinople, the stronghold of Orthodoxy, in 1453. Another sign was the Pasakhali calculated by the Byzantines, that is, the specific dates of Easter for each year. So the calculation ended in 1492. The main reason for believing that 1492 will be the last for humanity was that this year was 7000th from the creation of the world. Peter's second epistle says that one day for the Lord is equal to a thousand years for a person. The creation of the world took God seven days (he worked six days, rested on the seventh), which means that the world will stand no more than seven thousand years.
By the way, there is a good anecdote about this formula (1000 years for a person = 1 day for God). A devout person goes to God. God promises to fulfill one of his requests. The man says: “Lord, for you our millennium is just one day, which means a million dollars is one kopeck. What should you give me a penny? " God answers him: "Okay, come for the money tomorrow."
In anticipation of the imminent end of the world, the princes en masse went to monasteries and urgently began to lead a righteous life, so as not to lose face at the Last Judgment. The peasants in the last summer on the sinful land decided not to sow their fields and spend more time saving their souls. When the new year 1492 came on September 1, and neither the second nor any other coming, as well as the Last Judgment and cataclysms, happened, the peasants realized that they themselves had arranged the Apocalypse, because they would have nothing to eat next winter. I must say that when the End of the World did not happen, then, just in case, people were waiting for it the next year, two years later, and so on. The Last Judgment, which was supposed to divide all people into two groups, one of which was heading to heaven and the other to hell, was in many ways a long-awaited event for an ordinary person,leading a righteous life. The apocalypse freed the peasant from many problems, so he was expected with such persistence.
Troubles
If all the previous ends were based mainly on ancient prophecies, as well as on sources like "one grandma said", then in the 17th century such events began to occur that made even the most stubborn skeptics believe in the nearness of the Apocalypse. The new century did not work out from the very beginning. In 1601, summer in the middle lane began with prolonged torrential rains, which stopped all field work, and in July frost hit and snow began to fall. In the next three years everything repeats itself: rain and frost. Abnormal weather caused crop failure and severe hunger. They say that then "a third of the Moscow kingdom" died out. Also, imagine that hunger was accompanied by heavenly signs such as comets and a bloody moon. Immediately after the hardest three years, the Troubles flares up, on the throne one after another impostors replace each other. Cities are ravaged by robbers, people are starvingon the throne who knows who, the third Rome is about to fall. Well, how can you not believe in the Apocalypse?
Plague and schism
Further more. In 1654, a monstrous plague epidemic broke out in Russia. Moreover, on August 2, 1654, a solar eclipse occurred, another proof of the imminent onset of the End of the World. For six months, the plague (it began in the summer of 1654, died down in the winter of 1655) killed at least 800 thousand people. And at this very time a church schism occurs. The Old Believers, who refused to accept the church reform, were sure that Nikon was the Antichrist. Proof of this was not only the plague and the eclipse, but also the New Jerusalem Monastery founded by him in 1656 - according to the prophecy, the Antichrist should come from Jerusalem. In addition, the year 1666 was approaching, in which, thanks to the three sixes, the Apocalypse was also expected.
Gary and eunuchs
And what did people do when the expected End of the World came? As mentioned above, the peasants abandoned their fields. They also went into the forest, where they made a coffin for themselves, lay down there dressed in all white and waited for the end. People began to fast. It is curious that the word "post" then meant to mortify oneself by fasting. It was the most godly way of committing suicide. The Old Believers, who were persecuted and tortured, also practiced the so-called "gari". A group of people locked themselves in a hut, set fire to the brushwood or straw prepared in advance, and burned alive under the crackle of a burning tree and prayers.
Some men, in anticipation of the end, were engaged in emasculation, that is, castration. The fashion for castration spread to Russia in the 18th century. As soon as new signs of the End of the World appeared, some men, having fallen under the influence of another wandering preacher, rushed to emasculate themselves and help a comrade, it was believed that in this way the likelihood of being saved increased. The newly minted eunuchs walked through the villages and villages, urging other men to follow their example.
By the way, the wave of religious suicides was also associated with the belief that when the End comes, you will not be able to kill yourself and you will have to die again and again from various disasters and diseases until Jesus calls to the Judgment, and then, in a bad situation, you will have to torment forever. Therefore, people were in a hurry to kill themselves before it was too late.
The end doesn't end
The end of the world in the 17th century was not the last. Then there was the new Antichrist Napoleon (as you remember, the proof of this was brought out in War and Peace by Pierre Bezukhov). And the literal end of the old world - 1917 and whatnot. And now the End of the World comes steadily every year, and yellow newspapers act as its harbingers. And people, although not massively, still react to it vividly. For example, in 2007, a group of cultists spent seven months underground, waiting for the Apocalypse. In short, everything is the same, only instead of the frightening peasants "birds with iron tails" and "wire that entangled the whole world" barcodes, biometrics and robots.
Author: Rick Sanchez