Eschatologies of the Sword, Compared: Latin Christianity, Islam(s), and Japanese Buddhism

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the role of eschatology in violence, across several ensembles, premodern catholic Christianity (with a focus on the First Crusade), medieval Japanese Buddhism, Twelver Imamite Shi ’ a Islam, and twelfth-century Almohad Mahdism. In particular, it looks at the impact of beliefs in the nature of the eschatological moment on the conduct of war, including intra-cultural war. These eschatologies assumed corruption and evil in the world. All these ensembles could trust that the eschatological moment called for the purge of evil, including in one ’ s own ranks. The call for violent purge was exceptional in Japan, and limited to the Hokke School founded by Nichiren, likely because of both its eschatology and its intolerant exclusivism, which brings it close to medieval Catholicism and the aforementioned versions of Islam, in their refusal to accept the orthodoxy of other variants of the true religion. What can a comparison between medieval Japan and medieval Catholic Europe, with an additional foray into classical and medieval Islams (plural), 3 tell us about the role of eschatology (including apocalyptic expectations) in provoking, explain-ing, or shaping armed violence? Evidently, human beings do not need organised religion in order to wage war; nor is religion war ’ s sole source of meaning or legiti-macy. One should look at religion, rather, as one among several Bedingungen der Möglichkeit , “ conditions of possibility ” , for war. 4 One can also explore whether specific visions of the end push human beings to armed violence and provide scripts for it. 5 East and West had aimed in their struggles at the same thing. With the same violence, the one as the other wanted the unity promised by the prophets, the founders of their respective laws. Furthermore, they were moved by the same force, fear. When I consider Mu ḥ ammad or Gregory VII, I see the same terror for the Last Day, the same tremor that propels two worlds the one against the other: They make haste because they believe that they are at the edge of their last instant. On both sides, a fearsome angel pushes them to the same clash, and the same force is paralyzed by its opposite. 59