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Because anno Domini dating (setting the annual calendar from the birth of Christ) was still relatively new in A.D. 1000, historians doubt the year had much apocalyptic significance for medieval men and women. A Burgundian monk named Raoul Glaber spoke a few years later of "numerous signs and prodigies that had occurred before, after, and around the year 1000" and more around 1033 (the millennium of Christ's death and resurrection), but that's about the only evidence for first-millennium fever. That's not to say, however, that the turn of the first millennium was quiet, or that late medieval Christianity was little interested in end-times speculation. Quite the contrary.

Around 950, a monk named Adso wrote the most complete treatise on the Antichrist to date. The Antichrist would come from the Jewish tribe of Dan, he argued, and would be raised in the East.

Before he could come, however, a Frankish king must reign. This king would triumph over all the enemies of Christendom and rule a peaceful, Christian world. He would then go to Golgotha to surrender his crown, and this would signal the coming of the Antichrist.

Adso's notion of "The Last World Emperor" became widespread, and soon became the ideal for temporal power. The Chanson de Roland, written about 1095, depicted Charlemagne (d. 814) as a messianic ruler who triumphed over all Muslims and pagans. Count Emich of Leisingen, a leader of the First Crusade, massacred Jews who refused to convert because he was convinced God had summoned him to be a Last World Emperor. At the same time, tensions between national and church rulers were waxing, and kings and emperors used Adso's messianism in their defense.

Church corruption (greed, sexual license, and power grabbing) and the inability of ecclesiastic leaders to reform the church energized apocalypticism.

As a result, people like the German Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) predicted that lay princes would forcibly take away land and riches clergy had amassed, and Christendom would enter an era of millennial prosperity and peace. Though disarmament would entice pagans to attack Christian nations, she believed Christians would eventually win. Ultimately, the Roman emperor would lose almost all authority, and the pope would only rule Rome.

One of the more well-known proponents of church reform was Abbot Joachim of Fiore (c. 1135-1202). Joachim constructed two schemes for understanding the past and the future. One divided history into two times, that of the Jews and that of the Gentiles, culminating after 1200. The other scheme divided history into three status, paralleling the Trinity and the three orders (laity, clergy, and monks).

Joachim compared Christendom to Babylon because everyone wanted money, power, and worldly fame. Shortly after 1200, he speculated, two anti-Christian forces, possibly Muslims and heretics, would attack, defeat, and severely persecute Christians. Thus purified, a reforming pope and monastic orders would create a holier world in which people would attain unsurpassed understanding of the hidden meaning of the Scriptures. For an indeterminate period, Christians would dominate the world in peace.

The rivalry between the popes and the emperors culminated in the 1240s when Pope Innocent IV waged "total war"—a war of both swords and words—against emperor Frederick II.

Frederick's supporters hailed him as a messiah, wonder of the world (stupor mundi). But Innocent and his supporters branded Frederick the Antichrist. Even after the Holy Roman Emperor died in 1250, at least one Innocent supporter refused to believe it—the emperor had not accomplished all the evil that was expected of him as Antichrist. This conflict reverberated in apocalyptic texts well into the 1300s.

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