Small Apocalypses
By Tricia de Souza
On December 21, 2012, the world as we know it was meant to change forever. According to the Mayan long-count calendar, the day ushered a new period of history similar to the turn of the 21st century. A Reuters global poll in May 2012, however, showed that 10 percent of people worldwide anxiously awaited the day, believing it marked something more sinister: the end of times, which would be caused by either “the hands of God, a natural disaster or a political event.”
This preoccupation with an impending doomsday is not particular to the twenty-first century, however. Charles Webster’s book A Portrait of Samuel Hartlib: In Search of Universal Betterment chronicles the ventures of Samuel Hartlib, known as “the Great Intelligencer of Europe.” Hartlib lived during the tumultuous decades of the mid-seventeenth century when a growing apocalyptic fervour gripped the masses. As Webster reveals, this broader concern for predicting the end of times also reflected deeper concerns regarding the bleak realities that many were facing during these periods of crisis.
The 17th century saw England grapple with consecutive civil wars between Parliamentarians and Royalists that lasted from 1642 until 1651. In total, it is estimated that upwards of 200,000 people lost their lives as a consequence of these civil wars, be it through direct combat or disease. Among those who died was Charles I, who was accused of treason and was subsequently executed on January 30, 1649, causing the temporary fall of the Stuart line. Fifth Monarchists promoted the millennialist belief that the demise of the head of state would usher in a thousand-year-long reign of Christ.
Religious and political turmoil also impacted Hartlib’s early life. He was born around 1600 to a German-Protestant father who fled various towns in Poland due to mounting persecution against religious minorities during the Counter-Reformation. His father would eventually settle in Elbing, Poland in 1589, with hopes of creating a more stable life among the larger immigrant population of the coastal city. However, these aspirations would also come to a standstill as the plague claimed nearly a third of the city’s population in 1625 and Swedish forces occupied the city a year later until 1635 and then once more from 1655 to 1660.
Following academic opportunity, Hartlib moved to Cambridge in 1625. Beyond occasional trips back to Poland, this move cemented England as his permanent abode. Nevertheless, Hartlib maintained a deep concern for the plight of refugees. He offered help in various forms, be it helping to raise funds for exiled communities or promoting universal education. Even while dealing with financial uncertainties due to inconsistent sponsorships, Hartlib also opened his home to fleeing Protestants.
It is out of this dedication to the Protestant cause that Hartlib, with major contributions from Scottish minister John Dury and tax official Michael Gühler, published one of his most widely circulated texts in February 1651, Clavis apocalyptica—a title that borrowed its name from Joseph Mede’s 1627 study on the eschatological chronology of the Book of Revelations.
In Clavis apocalyptica, Gühler surmised that the world would end in 1655, but instead of apocalyptic figures solely vanquishing the earth, he predicted it would end the strife of the Protestants and that the “oppressed [would] take the possession of their former dignities” (Hartlib 89). While Dury did not pinpoint an exact year unlike Gühler, his preface in the book also related Judgment Day to the dismal condition of Protestants, citing a letter written by Czech theologian John Amos Comenius in which he mentions his son-in-law witnessing only terrors when visiting the Polish cities of Warsaw and Brieg.
Within this 1651 text, the apocalypse unfolds not only as a celestial event. It was intertwined with the earthly dealings of monarchies and their treatment of their subjects, in which Hartlib and his circle were indelibly enmeshed.
A recurring theme within A Portrait of Samuel Hartlib is that the lives of both Hartlib and his confidantes were coloured by financial hardship. Many of Hartlib’s associates migrated to different countries in pursuit of better financial opportunity outside of England. Others were not so fortunate. Hartlib describes how Gabriel Plattes, an English writer of agriculture, fell “downe dead in the street for want of food.” By the time of his own death in 1662, Hartlib wrote extensive letters regarding his worsening state of health and financial distress—about which his friends could only send messages of sympathy.
Thus, while Webster’s book provides an overview of the larger, fiery debates regarding millennialist movements, the Counter-Reformation and political shifts in Europe, A Portrait of Samuel Hartlib also sheds a critical light on the “personal apocalypses” that Hartlib contended with as he transformed from an aspiring student with little professional training to a prominent European interlocutor.
Within Webster’s chapters, Hartlib’s accomplishments become testaments to the enduring value of education, religious freedom and community-building. While Hartlib’s tenacity is certainly a strong point, it was born out of difficulties that many times he had no means to change. Amidst such turmoil, the ability to predict the end times may have provided a sense of control during these periods. More than that, it instilled a sense of hope that, amidst despair, change was just on the horizon.
Hartlib, however, did not look towards the future in hopes of erasing his world. Instead, his continued commitment to universal betterment even as his own life was near its end reminds readers that imagining a different tomorrow does not preclude committing oneself to a different today.
Nearly four centuries later, this still stands true.
'A Portrait of Samuel Hartlib: In Search of Universal Betterment' by Charles Webster is an Open Access title available to read and download for free or to purchase in all available print and ebook formats at the link below.