Christians and Muslims in Early Medieval Italy by Berto Luigi Andrea;

Author:Berto, Luigi Andrea;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge

Predictions and prophesies

At the beginning of his religious experience in southern Italy, Elias the Younger gave moral support to the Byzantine soldiers and the inhabitants of Reggio Calabria by predicting the Christians’ victory over the Muslims and by telling them that God would fight for them.39 This is an exceptional case, however, because, in the Sicilian-Calabrian saints’ biographies, the predictions about the Saracen attacks are always connected to the theme of the impiety of the Christians, unable, because they were sinners, to understand the warnings of God’s messengers (several biblical prophets had the same experience). In this way it was also possible to justify the successes of Allah’s followers in a period in which they were invincible. Elias the Younger distinguished himself in these activities since his childhood. Emphasizing the foolishness of some Christians and the great number of sinners among them, his biographer recounts how, as a young man, the exactitude of his vaticinations earned him a reputation as a soothsayer and prophet of misfortunes, while his words were mocked in his old age.40 God let Saint Luke of Demenna (tenth century) know of a forthcoming Muslim attack upon Calabria, which the Lord was going to send to punish that region’s sinners. Nevertheless, unlike Elias the Younger, Luke did not reveal it to the Calabrians, and, believing that his prayers were useless, he left his cave and moved into a fortified center. Saint Neilos’s predictions were, on the other hand, addressed to specific individuals. Warning Bishop Blatton not to have any relationships with the Muslims, the saint foretold his death by the Saracens. To the Byzantine commander’s offer to build a church with the loot obtained from fighting Allah’s followers, Neilos replied that it was useless because the Muslims would destroy that building and devastate Calabria.41

In ca. 850, probably influenced by the crisis that the division of the Carolingian Empire and the ensuing civil war had provoked in western Europe, the Muslim incursion against Rome in 846, and the widespread corruption of the Ravennate clergy, the chronicler Agnellus of Ravenna predicted that many calamities would strike his city and the rest of Europe. In the first part of his vaticinations he did not say anything about the enemies who would pillage ‘the head of all’ and the neighboring cities. Mentioning other invaders coming from the sea, he adds that they were ‘ignorant of God’, and therefore it is possible that he was referring to the Vikings, who were devastating several parts of northwestern Europe in these years. On the contrary, in a following passage he states that the raiders would be the Muslims.

The people of the Agarens will rise from the east and will plunder the cities located in the seacoast, and there will not be anyone to get rid of them. For in all the regions of the earth there will be kings needy and desiring wealth, and they will oppress the peoples subject to them, and the empire of the Frankish Romans will perish, and kings will sit on the imperial throne.

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