Humanity has filled its history with many unique, mysterious, terrifying events. One of the brightest incarnations of such incidents was the year 1666. It was a mystical 12 months during which the European world was engulfed in panic and various riots based on religious grounds. What exactly happened in this "terrible" year?
Waiting for the apocalypse
Christianity played a huge role in the outlook of the European man of the 17th century. He associated all the events of his life with the favor or wrath of God. The future of humanity was then determined by the prophecies and predictions of church leaders. The idea of the end of the world was central to them. Before the apocalypse, people always trembled, but at the same time, attempts were made to calculate its exact date. The prophets and soothsayers, as they themselves then thought, managed to do this.
Initially, it was believed that the end of the world should come after the first millennium from the date of the birth of Christ, that is, at the end of the year 999. People with all responsibilityprepared for the apocalypse, actively prayed and tried to do as many righteous deeds as possible. Everything perishable was sold or given away for free, the rich donated their huge savings to monasteries. On the last night of the outgoing year, many people crowded into temples to face the horrific end of the world with righteous dignity. It's dawn. But the end of the world never came.
Then the prophets announced a new date - 1666. With his arrival, Europe was seized with horror on the eve of the end of the world. After all, it was at this time that the invasion of sinful peoples of non-Christian, and therefore impure faith, was to take place. Following them, according to legend, the Antichrist will appear, who will begin the hunt for the righteous. Everything will end with his death, the victims will be resurrected and the Last Judgment will come, at which it will be decided who will find peace in paradise and who will be tormented in hell.
Europe cowered in fear. This time she was in no hurry to confess and correct her sins. She sacrificed a huge number of "sinful" souls in order to save her own. Bonfires were burning, burning the "black forces". Religious fanatics expressed the hysterical mood of the people, everywhere proclaiming the imminent arrival of a new Messiah.
"Brutal" number
Why did the predictors choose 1666 for the end of human existence? This prophecy is attributed to Anastasios Gordios, a Greek religious author. At that time, many clergy in their writings reflected on the symbolism of this significant date. Number 666always considered apocalyptic. This date combines a thousand, that is, the year of the first prediction, and the so-called "number of the beast" - three sixes. However, its interpretation by religious authors is somewhat different. Anastasios Gordios, for example, associated a thousand with the schism of the church, and three sixes with the Pope. In conjunction, this date meant the submission of Rome to the power of the Antichrist.
All kinds of tragedies, be it natural disasters, public uprisings or ethnic wars, were taken as signs of an imminent end. In particular, the year 1666 was remembered in history as the year of a large-scale fire in the capital of England and a grandiose religious schism in Russia.
English apocalypse
At that time, London was the largest city in England with a large population density. It was predominantly wooden, residential buildings were located very close to each other. This created ideal conditions for the rapid spread of fire. A local fire in a baker's house turned into the Great Fire of London, one of the biggest tragedies of the time.
There are different opinions about the occurrence of fire. Most boil down to the fact that the fire did not start on its own, it was set up by the enemy-minded French and Dutch, because England was at war with these peoples. Many interpreted this tragedy as another sign of the imminent end of all things and the approach of the fateful Last Judgment.
The course of events
The fire in London started on September 2, a hot Sunday afternoon, and lasted for three days. Windy weather contributed to the lightning spread of fire. From the bakery, he spread to neighboring houses. All attempts made to extinguish the fire were pointless: wooden buildings overwhelmed the city. The indecisive mayor of the city was afraid to destroy neighboring houses and preferred to hide in his house. The people had no choice but to flee.
The city was gripped by panic, in which conflicting rumors of political and religious conspiracies multiplied. Most of the efforts of the authorities were spent not on extinguishing the fire, but on eliminating the riots. King Charles II himself took matters into his own hands. Many houses were blown up, firebreaks were created. On Wednesday, the fire in London was still managed to be stopped.
Aftermath of the disaster
Prosperous London was destroyed. One disaster was eliminated, and an even larger one followed: the townspeople were left homeless. The authorities have been solving this problem for ten years. London was rebuilt according to old drawings, but fire safety measures were improved, the buildings became stone. The main temple of the city, St. Paul's Cathedral, and other churches that burned down in the great fire of London, were reconstructed under the leadership of the eminent architect Christopher Wray.
Apocalypse in Russia
In the Moscow state during this period, it was also restless. There were social unrest based onChurch reforms of Patriarch Nikon. Powerful Russian Orthodoxy was shaken, dividing the people into two ideological groups. Contemporaries perceived the subsequent events as a kind of local variation of the end of the world, which everyone expected, but not as much as in Europe. The reason for this is not the courage and bravery of the Russian people, but a different chronology, because in Russia then it was 5523 from the creation of the world, where apocalyptic events were not foreseen.
Church reforms
In 1666, an important religious event took place in Russia: a Council was convened to discuss the ongoing church reform. Patriarch Nikon considered Russian religious rites and prescriptions obsolete and was guided by modern Greek dogmas. First of all, he called on all true Orthodox to be baptized not with two fingers, but with three. Initially adopted in Russia, the two-finger symbolized the unity of the human and the spiritual in Jesus, while the three-finger symbolized the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
The authorities approved the innovations, henceforth all the old religious texts and rites were considered non-Orthodox. But she condemned Patriarch Nikon, a former close tsar. He was stripped of his dignity and sent into exile. It was believed that he claimed more power than was allotted to him; was cruel and arbitrary.
Religion is a rather conservative thing, so such cardinal changes were accepted negatively by the people. Thus began the split of the Russian Orthodox Church in the 17th century. People either accepted the new rules or became outlaws. Religious contradictions resulted in a popular revolt.
Many people fundamentally refused to follow "heretical" dogmas, were ready to sacrifice themselves for "true" Orthodoxy. They became known as the Old Believers. They were persecuted by the authorities. For the Old Believers, the end of the world nevertheless came. They believed that the Antichrist, represented by Nikon and Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, had come to power and was hunting their righteous souls.
Later, almost all adherents of the old order were still forced to accept Orthodoxy according to the new model. Otherwise, they would have suffered the fate of the famous Old Believer Archpriest Avvakum. He and his companions were sentenced to be burned. However, this did not mean that the heretics were completely destroyed. The Old Believers also existed after the split of the Russian Orthodox Church in the 17th century. Since his followers advocated the preservation of old traditions, it was thanks to them that many aspects of ancient Russian culture have survived to this day.
Birth of a king
This year, another important event took place in the Moscow state: on September 6 (according to the new style), the future Tsar Ivan 5 Alekseevich Romanov was born. Unfortunately, due to numerous illnesses, he did not leave a tangible mark in the history of Russia. He was diagnosed with scurvy and eye disease. He was a sovereign only formally, but in practice he was not at all interested in state affairs, he tried to devote all his time to his family. Ivan 5 Alekseevich Romanov died in 1696 inage 30.
More events
What other remarkable and outstanding events were taking place at this time? Here are some of them:
- Newton discovered the dispersion of light.
- Founded Paris Academy of Sciences.
- Samuel Peeps announced the world's first blood transfusion that was tested on dogs.
- Austrian troops occupied Hungary.
- There was a peasant uprising in France.
- Poland and Turkey fought for the right bank of the Dnieper.
- Afghans rebelled against the Mongols.
