The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1
III. Calculates Time of Antichrist From 1290 Years
In 1297 Villanova wrote the first part of his Tractatus de Tempore Adventus Antichristi (Treatise on j the Time of the Coming of Antichrist) 21 the tract which was to bring upon his head the wrath of the Paris theologians. PFF1 751.5
It is concerned largely with the approximate time of Anti-christ by means of the 1290 days interpreted as years. He now uses the year-day principle, as he has worked it out five years earlier for the 2300 days, as a basic rule to apply to the 1290 and 1335 days. The two main points of the argument are to show that the days are years, and to locate the starting point of the period from the taking away of the Jewish sacrifices after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. PFF1 752.1
Villanova first leads up to the subject by way of Christ’s great prophecy of Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21. He says that after the personal reign of Antichrist and the great tribulation, will come the darkening of the sun and the moon and the falling of the stars, accompanied by the roaring of the sea and the “withering” of men with fear, and then the sign of the second advent. The day and hour of the end is not revealed, he continues; yet Christ gives a hint when He refers to the prophecy of Daniel concerning the abomination, namely, the Anti-christ. 22 Then, since Daniel is cited by Christ as authority, it is sufficient to believe what he wrote concerning the year of the end in Daniel 8. PFF1 752.2
1. REITERATES YEAR-DAY ARGUMENT FOR 2300
He refers to the 2300 days as the duration of the world: PFF1 752.3
“In the third year of King Belshazzar there were revealed to him the years of the duration of the world under these words: ‘Up to the evening and the morning, two thousand three hundred days.’ By a day, however, he understands a year.” 23 PFF1 752.4
Continuing, he repeats the arguments from the sun’s orbit, and from Ezekiel’s “day for a year” and the angel’s statement to Daniel that “in the time of the end the vision will be fulfilled.” If one knew, he says, how many years passed from the third year of Belshazzar to Christ, one could add the years from Christ to the present, and compute how many remain of the 2300 years until “the year in which all generation and corruption will cease and time will be no longer.” 24 He expects this before the close of the fifteenth century-at least a century earlier than the computation of De Semine-for he places that starting point at some uncertain time more than eight hundred years before Christ (actually three hundred years too early). Because of this uncertainty he turns to another method. 25 PFF1 752.5
If he cannot locate the end of the 2300 years, he will calculate the time of Antichrist. The key is furnished by the 1290 and 1335 days of Daniel 12, which are years. PFF1 753.1
“‘From the time when the continual sacrifice will have been taken away, and there will have been set up’—that is, up to the time when will be set up—’the abomination upon the desolation’ namely, of the faithful people, ‘a thousand two hundred and ninety days.’ And here, just as above, by a day a year is understood, which is clear through what precedes, since it says ‘And when the dispersion of the power of the holy people, all these things will be completed.”’ 26 PFF1 753.2
2. CONNECTS 1290 WITH 70 WEEKS
Disagreeing with “many blind watchmen” who date the 1290 years from the death of Christ, as the taking away of the continual sacrifice, he connects it rather with the destruction of the temple and the fall of the city “through Titus and Vespasian in the forty-second year after the passion or ascension of Christ.” 27 He begins the period with the taking away of the continual Old Testament sacrifice when the Jews lost the Promised Land.. the only place where they were allowed by law to sacrifice; this was “in the midst of the week,” probably in the fourth year after Jerusalem’s fall, 28 that is, the forty-sixth year after the crucifixion of Christ. PFF1 753.3
In placing this event he brings in the “one week” although he does not offer a complete interpretation of the seventy weeks. He merely says that “after 62 weeks, Christ will be killed,” after which follow the war and desolation and the confirming of the covenant in one week. 29 PFF1 753.4
Daniel 9, says Villanova, gives the time of the first advent of Christ, just as Daniel 12 gives the time of Antichrist; the seventy weeks are weeks of years which point out the time of Christ’s first advent and death. 30 PFF1 754.1
3. END OF 1290 YEARS 1N FOURTEENTH CENTURY
After some discussion he summaries: PFF1 754.2
“What, however, suffices us here is this, namely that when 1290 years have been completed from the time when the Jewish people lost possession of their land, there will stand, as the Lord says, the abomination of desolation, namely Antichrist, in the holy places, which will be about the 78th [sic] year of the following century, evidently the 14th [century] from the advent of the Saviour. I cannot determine how many [years] before or how many after, for the reason that I do not know how `many years after the overthrow of Jerusalem the Jewish people lost the land of promise. Yet it is certain from the words of the prophet that that number will be completed within the century mentioned or the following, by understanding for days lunar or solar years.” 31 PFF1 754.3
This, as written, would end the 1290 years in 1378, but it was definitely not 1378 originally. The 78 is a correction over an erasure, and the original number is uncertain. 32 Whatever Villanova’s date was here, he claimed for it no “certainty or necessity,” but only “possibility having evidence of the more probable and sane understanding,” 33 but he repeats with emphasis that “it is certain, as was clear above, that Daniel under the name of days gives us to understand years and not usual days,” and adds that “such an understanding agrees with the common concepts of men and the truth of Sacred Scripture commonly known.” 34 PFF1 754.4
4. CITES SIBYL FOR FOURTEENTH CENTURY ANTICHRIST
Quite characteristic of Villanova’s medieval outlook is his addition of arguments from the Babylonian Sibyl, from whom “Augustine and the rest of the holy doctors have accepted particularly the fullness of the signs of the judgment.” She goes, he says, “through the successive kings of the Greeks and the Romans, and describes the advent of the beast, namely Mohammed,” the rise and maturity of the Dominicans and Franciscans, the advent of Antichrist, and finally the coming of the heavenly Lamb and the general judgment. He finds some of her predictions fulfilled in the political events of his day, and enumerates only four events that have not yet been fulfilled: the forced reunion of the Greek with the Latin church; the scattering of the “barbarian nation” (the Saracens), which he regards as imminent; the coming of Antichrist; and the second coming of Christ to judgments. 35 PFF1 755.1
By allowing at least twenty-four years between these four events he is certain that Antichrist will come before the end of the following (the fourteenth) century, “about the aforementioned terminus.” The fact that his reign is not to last as long as a century, fits in with the fifteenth-century ending of the 2300 days arid of the other number of Daniel 12, the 1335 years. This last number he reckons from the same starting point as the 1290, ending it in “the time of universal tranquility and peace of the church, in which throughout the whole world truth will be known and Christ will be worshiped, and `there will be one shepherd and one fold.’” This will be at the opening of the seventh seal; and following the silence of half an hour (as if a half year, or the middle of the century), and then will come the sudden tribulation of the judgment. 36 PFF1 755.2
5. ARGUES FOR FOURTEENTH CENTURY FROM AUGUSTINE’S SIXTH MILLENNIUM
After this 1297 exposition was attacked by the Dominicans at Paris, and Villanova escaped punishment through influential friends, he wrote part 2, in which he answers his critics and reiterates his arguments. This peppery reply assails the Paris theologians on their own ground. If they accuse him of error, in saying that the end is near, he can show that they are accusing the church of error in, preaching, the Crusades, for unless the end of the times of the Gentiles is near, how can the “faithful people” regain the Holy Land from the unbelievers? If they cite Augustine, so can he. Did not Augustine reckon the sixth millennium from about a century before his own time? That would put the end of it in the fourteenth century, the century which, he reminds them, is to begin at the end of the present year, 1300. Therefore he expects the expiration of the times of the Gentiles and the scattering of the Mohammedans in the near future; and the conversion of the Jews in the end of the age. 37 PFF1 756.1
6. CALLS OPPONENTS FORERUNNERS OF ANTICHRIST
Villanova declares his fidelity to the pope and accuses his opponents. He does not identify the Antichrist, but points out his forerunners as he lashes out at the Paris theologians who have tried to silence him: PFF1 756.2
“For who of the faithful is ignorant, since the Chaldeans and barbarians are not ignorant, [of the fact] that the Roman pontiff is Christ on earth? ... How, therefore, without the greatest ruin of the Catholics, can those despise his authority who have been chosen for the protection of the Lord’s vineyard? Can it be argued from this that the persecution of Antichrist already hastens exceedingly, since he is to be specially armed with a whole phalanx of his iniquity against the apostolic see as against the chief and personal see of (Jesus Christ, and he is to speak great things against the chief pontiff as against the God of gods in the church militant. Are not such despisers of the apostolic see the exact forerunners of Antichrist?” 38 PFF1 756.3
Villanova ends the second part of this work with a concluding section in which he invites the reader to consider three things carefully: “Whether the assertions set forth in it are possibly true, whether they may be proved in an orthodox way, and whether they are effective to lead the hearts of mortals to a contempt of earthly things and a desire for heavenly things, which is the principal purpose, and one appropriate to the bride of Christ”; then he closes with a concise nine—point summary of the work. 39 PFF1 756.4