Visions of an Empty Throne

Decentralization and the Decline of Imperial Eschatology in the Late Byzantine Empire and Early Middle Ages.

In the five centuries which mark the Early and High Middle Ages, Europe underwent a slow but radical transformation of its self-conception. In both the East and the West, the legacy of the Christian Roman Empire established by Constantine formed the basis for reconciling temporal and divine authority, and thus provided a framework through which to understand the unfolding of history. Central to this framework was a voluntarist conception of historical movement, wherein the divinely legitimated will of the emperor was understood to be the paramount instrument and representation of divinely-guided human agency in the shaping of history. This is reflected in Christian Apocalypses from both the East and the West in the first thousand years of Christian history, with the figure of a ‘Last World Emperor’ featuring in the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius, and having deep influence on both the East and the West¹. However, after the eleventh century, increasing decentralization, most importantly the diffusion of economic productivity, the emergence of additional influential social classes, and fading belief in the restoration of a Europe-wide Roman Empire led to a decline in the centrality of the Emperor in apocalyptic narratives. First in the West, and eventually in the East, Imperial authority was removed from its privileged position in shaping the fate of human history, and its eventual reconciliation to divine will in the Eschaton. In its place, ecclesiastical authority, in the form of the Pope in the West, and more immediate and personal conceptions of eschatology became dominant. Ultimately, these shifts in Christian conceptions of the telos of history reflect the growing impact of diverse social and economic systems that undermined conceptions of power as centralized and anthropomorphic, thereby compelling a reimagining of humanity's historical place increasingly through universal spiritual and ecclesiastical narratives rather than more concrete historical and imperial dramas.

This essay primarily looks at the presence and role of the Emperor and temporal political systems in Christian eschatological texts. Since the beginning of written history, and presumably before, humans have thought about the “end” of history. This may be the result of generalization of biological death to a historical scale, common religious sentiment, or a combination of these and many other factors. Regardless of the precise causes, the way in which a society conceives how humanity will meet the end of this age can reveal much about what they view as the most fundamental or natural structures of human organization. I am proposing that the movement of Christian eschatological focus from the figure of the emperor to ecclesial structures or personal realities was a reaction to a period of decentralization and diffusion of political and societal influence, which undermined the potency of figure of the emperor as a unifying master of human affairs. Human history, across all different continents, from the earliest hunter gatherers, to the first agriculturalists, and eventually to the first Kings and Emperors, has fluctuated in its degree of centralization. However, over time, history has trended consistently toward centralization, the unification of systems of influence, and the proliferation of cultural and political ideals, resulting in increasing uniformity and consistency in political life and personal belief². Clearly, the full picture is more nuanced than this, with different regions experiencing different levels of centralization. Additionally, it can be difficult to compare the actual impact on common life of different political systems, even if they controlled similar areas or have similar structures. It is far outside of the scope of this essay to make a full argument for this view, but it is a view held by some scholars, and when speaking in very broad terms about high-level political structures, this trend seems to hold. One attempt to demonstrate this can be found in Chase-Dunn et al’s Cycles of Rise and Fall, Upsweeps and Collapses: Changes in the Scale of Settlements and Polities since the Bronze Age. Fig 1. plots estimates of the territorial sizes of the largest and second largest empires in the ‘Central System’ of a given time³. We can see a general trend towards larger, more unified systems of control, even to this day (though decolonization efforts and the emergence of strong economies in previously less developed nations obscure this for the time being at least).

Figure 1. “Rise, fall and upward sweeps as revealed by Taagepera's estimates of the territorial sizes of the largest empires in the Central System”

Most relevant here is the increase experienced between 200 BC and 600 AD. This movement of centralization became the basis of common Christian and European heritage, and Christians in the first millennium of Christian history largely privileged imperial authority in their historical analysis and eschatological predictions⁴. Notable examples of this include Eusebius of Caesarea, as well as Apocalypses such as the Vision of Pseudo-Methodius and the Apocalypse of Daniel. Pseudo-Methodius assigns the emperor a central role in the Eschaton, naming a “king of the Romans” whose final benevolent rule will bring a “great peace and quiet upon the earth such as has not been nor will be until the last [day] at the end of the ages”⁵, and whose death will mark the end of “all rule and authority”⁶. Pseudo-Methodius, written in Syriac in the seventh century, was influential in both the Christian East and West, demonstrating a strong imperial tendency at the beginning of the early middle ages⁷. The Apocalypse of Daniel, written in the ninth century, describes the same ruler, and in doing so epitomizes the centrality of empire in Byzantine notions of God’s providence and rule in this world:

And the king of the Romans will subdue every enemy and adversary under his feet. And the scepter of that king will be long-lived, likewise that of the two small boys. And his fame will go forth from the east and the west. And there will be one empire. And no one will resist him because this man has come from God and he will cause all war to cease. And there will be great peace. And every city and fortresses will be built. And there will be many altars acceptable to God in all the civilized world. And all the islands and the mountains will be inhabited. And the bread and the wine and the olive oil and the gold and the silver will increase in all the earth. And that king will cause all hostility to cease upon the earth. And they will make their weapons into scythes. And his reign will be for thirty-six years.⁸

The importance afforded to imperial figures in Christian apocalypses is of course, largely influenced by scriptural and theological symbolism and ideas, not simply historical and political conditions. The first three hundred years of Christian thought were conducted under the shadow of periodic Roman persecutions, and early Christian thought (including the book of Revelation) portrays the Roman Empire as an Antichrist-like entity. However, the conversion of Constantine and the succeeding centuries forced the Church to come to terms with an Empire that was not only friendly to them, but played an essential role in her organization and development. This is what Guran calls the millenarian tradition⁹. He contrasts this with the ‘katechontic’ tradition, derived from Second Thessalonians 2:6-8¹⁰, which describes the κατέχων (katechon), or the one who restrains, a mysterious figure whose presence prevents the end of the world, and who will be ‘taken out of the way.’ allowing for the rise of the antichrist. This verse, along with the positive influence of Constantine and successive Roman Emperors on the development of Christianity solidified a strong tradition of eschatological thought in which the Roman Empire, and her Emperor, stood as divinely-appointed guides of human history and restrainers of the final evil. However, as Guran notes, “the two eschatological trends, millenarian and katechontic, both believe that in the last act of history the imperial power will eventually become the manifestation of evil, the Antichrist.”¹¹ Not only did this strong association imbue eschatology with an imperial element, it also imbued Imperial Authority with eschatological significance. In the Byzantine Empire, political crises were often thought of in eschatological terms, and bad emperors were often depicted as Antichrists.

The Christian West had undergone a process of de-unification throughout the first half of the millenium, but the shadow of the Roman empire hung heavy in the imagination of Western Christians, and the glorious past of the Empire which had formalized the Christian faith remained inextricably tied up in conceptions of the end of history and the fulfillment of religious prophecies. Charlemagne’s crowning in 800 demonstrates the persistence of Roman imperial ambition in the West, and the Holy Roman Empire would persist for many more centuries. However, in both the East and the West, as memories of a Europe, and a Christendom, ruled by a single Roman emperor grew more distant, more pressing and charged historical realities began to exert a pressure on eschatological thinking. A variety of causes can be proposed and indeed well defended as crucial to the decentering of Imperial authority in eschatology, and I will cover a few, before reiterating my view of the most fundamental reason for this change. Muslim conquests into Byzantine lands occupied the foremost place in the Eastern Christian imagination for the latter half of its existence, and it is my view that this initially preserved, but perhaps eventually contributed to undermining the Imperial eschatological mythos. The presence of an external enemy is a powerful unifying force, and the desire to reconquer conquered lands and return to a previous state of Christian hegemony–which existed under an emperor, lended validity to the central position of the Empire in historical narrative. The Pseudo-Methodius narrative, for example, served as a potent symbolic re-inscription of imperial potency, offering hope for the recovery of these lost territories. It presented a "last good emperor" who would perform decisive redemptive acts, including a culminating pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he would lay down his crown on the Holy Cross on Golgotha, symbolically reclaiming the sacred space before Christ's Second Coming¹². However, the presence of a large, initially unified Caliphate threatening Byzantine territory, and the internal strife caused by the Iconoclast crisis¹³, likely put strain on this unity of temporal and spiritual authority in eschatological imagination. However, overall, the success of the Seventh Ecumenical Council clearly provided some basis for reconciliation between the two, and bad emperors were not something that Byzantine political theology or katechontic eschatology were not prepared to deal with. The composition of the Apocalyptic visions of Daniel in the late ninth century, more than a century after the second Ecumenical council, shows that ‘Last Good Emperor’ symbolism was still potent and even dominant in Greek eschatological thinking long after the iconoclast heresy had pitted emperors against bishops. The crusades which responded to Muslim conquests greatly increased enmity between Eastern and Western Christians, and potentially further damaged the potency of an entirely restored Christian empire in historical imagination. However, the crusades only began fifty years after the Great Schism’s traditional dating (1054), in 1095, and the most damaging of the crusades to East-West relationship, the Fourth Crusade and its culmination in the Sack of Constantinople, would not occur until the early thirteenth century. The very occurrence of these events points to an severely weakened sense of Christian unity, and how that point was reached is a hugely complex topic. Suffice it to say, considerable cultural and theological differences had emerged between the two civilizations, and their respective historical self-conceptions became increasingly less interested in framing the Roman Empire as the inheritance of all Christians. After the schism and the crusades, Eastern and Western Christians became more likely to consider the other as having not a triumphal role in history and thus eschatology, but a prodigal one, requiring guidance, or even subjugation. Such a shift does certainly complicate conceptions of Roman Imperial authority as an unquestionably reliable ally or even an inherent function of the Christian faith. However, an ecclesially endorsed Imperial authority claiming Roman inheritance had only re-emerged in the West in 800 with the crowning of Charlemagne, and neither its geographical control or its spiritual significance were as universal as that of the Empire in the East. Far before the schism compromised the unifying universality of Constantine’s Empire, the Christian West had been forced to reckon with a historical trajectory not captured within an imperial narrative. Similarly, the Eastern Empire’s increasingly Eastern identity meant it too had long been grappling with a historical self-conceptions which incorporated not only the universal temporal dominion of the Christian Roman Empire, but also the particularly Eastern character and location of Divinely ordained authority. In other words, by the time it was apparent the schism would not be resolved soon, perhaps not for a long time, both the East and the West had already dealt with historical realities which forced them to decenter Imperial authority in the case of the West, or particularize the Imperial inheritance, in the case of the East.

All of these factors are inextricably linked with the development of the Christian conception of Imperial authority and its eschatological role, but for the reasons I gave, I do not believe they, either individually or taken together without further contextualization, provide us with a primary, and common cause for the collapse of the Empire’s role in Christian understanding of history’s end, and thus, in the movement of history in general. Rather than being reducible to a set of historical events and challenges to the its potency, my argument is that slowly, over time, in the West before the East, the emperor’s once-central eschatological function, as the personification of concentrated political will¹⁴, could no longer be sustained in either Byzantium or Rome, as the momentum of history shifted toward increasingly diffuse networks of influence. There are a number of metrics we can use to explore this thesis, and its implications for the persistence of Imperial eschatology in Eastern Europe as it waned in the West. One of these is the development of urban economic centers, and towns in general. The emergence of more economic centers led to a strengthening of the aristocratic class, and the development of counter-balances to centralized systems of economic control, which operated through control of large rural areas from comparatively rarer centers of economic and social influence.

Figure 2. “Urban development of Europe in 1300 (towns with over 10,000 inhabitants).”¹⁵

Vandermotten notes that “In the confusion and complexity of the powers characterising the western part of medieval Europe, which was a kind of protected ‘land’s end’ following the stabilisation of the Vikings and their Norman ‘assimilation’, a merchant bourgeoisie was able to emerge around the 10th -11th centuries. It was to claim in turn a link between wealth and the political power, beside the feudal landlords system. The foundations were laid for a less holistic society, which was also different from those in other parts of the world because of the more nuclear families that favoured the accumulation of wealth.”¹⁶ The fragmentation which occurred after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century, which incentivized the development of more economic centers than was strictly geographically necessary, was followed by a relative consolidation of political power which allowed for greater cooperation and development of economic power. Meanwhile, the East remained preoccupied with external threats, rendering its internal structure and economic development more unified, but less rapid.

Figure 3. “Europe in the Middle Ages.”

Figure 3 is an excellent visualization of the protection from external threats, and remarkable economic density which Western Europe enjoyed. With these factors in mind, it is no surprise that Byzantine apocalypses remain more focused on the Emperor as a persistent, positive figure in eschatological imaginings. The Oracula attributed to Emperor Leo VI (886-912), portrays the Empire as the guardian of all Christians, protecting them from “unbelievers” until Christ’s second Coming.¹⁷ Around the same time, about 950, in the West, Adso of Montier-en-Der was composing his On the Birth and Time of Antichrist. Adso writes that “we see that the Roman Empire is for the most part destroyed, nevertheless, as long as the kings of the Franks last, who ought rightfully to hold Roman imperial power, the dig-nity of Roman rule will not totally perish, since it will stand in their kings.”¹⁸ Though Adso does foresee a Final Roman Emperor, his identification of the Roman inheritance with the Franks, a power decidedly less universal to Christendom than the Empire of Constantine, clearly shows a vastly reduced confidence in the centrality of a single emperor in guiding History. Though Kingship remains the primary conception of power, and motifs of the Last Emperor remains popular throughout the continent as a means of legitimizing one’s dynasty, it has been degraded from the position of inherent and ever-present divine guidance, to one of a political ideal, perhaps the most reflective of man united under God, but not a political given, let alone necessary for understanding humanity’s movements throughout history and ultimately, towards the Eschaton.

Eschatological imagination has the primary function of reconciling the pursuit of human interests with Divine, Eternal truth. In some ways, the dual role of the Last Emperor and the Antichrist represents a type of sorting or purification of human dominion upon the Earth, in which just, divinely-ordained power finds its apotheosis in a single, worldwide Empire, before being torn completely apart by the Antichrist, a figure who St. Ephrem the Syrian says men will call just, blessing him and considering him righteous as he assumes rule over the height of human prosperity and development. In the context of Christian theology, this serves to reconcile the self-conception of Christian governments as divinely-guided and ultimately righteous with the Bible’s troubling characterizations of worldly power as corrupted in some way.¹⁹ Christian apocalyptic narratives generally seek to affirm the Eternal significance of human activity, while recognizing the ultimate futility of human endeavors for their own sake. When a society produces an Apocalypse, it is asked to assign characteristics to those human activities which might be in accordance with eternal truth and goodness, and those which are under the dominion of the prince of this world, and ultimately subject to corruption and death. With this function in mind, it makes sense that Western Europe would still consider a Last Emperor to be a powerful motif, even during the historical reality of fragmentation. To those who considered themselves Imperial subjects in temporary turmoil, or even just those who sought to envision their power in the same vein as the great Emperors of old, the Emperor is still a powerful, even a central figure in imaginations of power and historical destiny. Hence the persisting strength of Imperial eschatology in figures like Adso (and even much later, continuing even until the Enlightenment). But to those who had lived in a patchwork continent for almost a millenia, and were neighboured by a unified imperial power which they often considered heretical and tyrannical, it is not surprising that the Emperor could not maintain his monopoly on guiding human affairs in the public imagination. Joachim of Fiore, operating in the late twelfth century, became a pivotal figure in this re-narration of history in the West, offering an innovative theological praxis that further decentered the imperial subject and elevated a spiritualized Church.²⁰ While the concept of translatio imperii (the transfer of empire) was already an accepted notion in both East and West, Joachim re-interpreted it as a movement of divine grace from Greeks to Latins, confirming the decline of Byzantine imperial power as part of God's plan, and offering the Latin Church, a spiritualized authority placed above all temporal rulers, as the new center of human historical movement. Fiore painstakingly detailed how the Greeks, analogous to the ten tribes of Israel, had fallen into heresy by rejecting Roman doctrine (e.g., filioque) and would eventually return to the more "spiritual" Latin faith. Their conversion, and that of the Jews, would be orchestrated by the "spiritual men" from the Latin Church. This vision directly positions the Roman Church, in its spiritualized form, as the final agent of historical unification, displacing the emperor from this universal redemptive role.²¹

In essence, the evolution of Christian eschatological narratives from the Early to the High Middle Ages charts a profound transformation in historical self-conception. The once-central figure of the Last World Emperor, a potent symbol of divinely-sanctioned will shaping human destiny, gradually receded from the apocalyptic imagination as the material and political conditions that sustained such a vision dissolved. This shift was not uniform; in the Byzantine East, the continuity of imperial structures and the unifying pressure of external threats allowed the Emperor, as seen in the Oracula of Leo VI, to retain his katechontic role far longer. Conversely, the fragmented political landscape of the West, which fostered a diffusion of economic and social power among a rising merchant class and diverse ruling parties, eroded the foundations of this imperial voluntarism. The work of Adso of Montier-en-Der epitomizes this Western transition; while the motif of a final Roman Emperor endures, it is now qualified, tied not to a universal Christian imperium but to a specific Frankish dynasty, rendering it a political ideal rather than a theological necessity.

Ultimately, this emptying of the imperial throne within apocalyptic thought reflects a deeper societal recalibration. As power ceased to be imagined as a centralized, anthropomorphic force embodied by a single ruler, eschatology adapted to find meaning in new structures. This is most radically illustrated by figures such as Joachim of Fiore, who re-envisioned the telos of history with a more spiritual lens, and cast the Emperor as an antagonist, as well as Gregory of Palamas, whose conception of the Eschaton as immediately present loosened the hold of the Emperor on individual and collective destiny. The focus shifted from the will of a temporal emperor to the authority of the Church and the spiritual state of the individual. As earthly kingdoms fractured and diversified, so too did the imagined maps of humanity’s journey toward the Eschaton and the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, replacing the singular vision of an imperial destiny with a plurality of ecclesiastical and personal paths to salvation.

1. Whalen, Brett Edward. Dominion of God: Christendom and Apocalypse in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010.

2. “All systems of interacting polities oscillate between relatively greater and lesser centralization as relatively large polities rise and fall. This is true of systems of chiefdoms, states, empires and the modern system of the rise and fall of hegemonic core states. But there has also been a long-term trend in which polities have increased in population and territorial size since the Stone Age and the total number of polities has decreased.” Chase-Dunn et al., “Cycles of Rise and Fall, Upsweeps and Collapses: Changes in the Scale of Settlements and Polities since the Bronze Age.” p. 64.

3. It should be noted that the idea of the ‘Central System’ is inherently Eurocentric: “The idea of the Central System is derived from David Wilkinson's (1987) definition of "Central Civilization". It spatially bounds a system in terms of a set of allying and fighting states, and the Central System (or Political-Military Network) is the one that emerged in Mesopotamia with the birth of cities and states, then merged with the Egyptian system around 1500 BC and subsequently engulfed the rest of the Earth.” (Chase-Dunn et al., p. 67.) For the purposes of analyzing Christian eschatology and historical self-conception, this is not an issue.

4. Guran, “ESCHATOLOGY AND POLITICAL THEOLOGY IN THE LAST CENTURIES OF BYZANTIUM.”, p. 12.

5. Pseudo-Methodius, and Benjamin Garstad. Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius: An Alexandrian World Chronicle. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, DOML 14. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2012. p. 61.

6. Pseudo-Methodius, and Benjamin Garstad, p. 65

7. Pseudo-Methodius, and Benjamin Garstad, p. ix

8. Charlesworth, James H., ed. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. 1st ed. Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1983. p. 765

9. Guran, p. 3

10. 2 Thessalonians 2:6-8 (NKJV): And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming.

11. Guran, p. 3

12. Pseudo-Methodius, and Benjamin Garstad, p. viii

13. It is interesting that the emergence of a large, unified iconoclastic force in the form of the Caliphate, prompted such internal reckoning and division. Though I do not have the room to defend this suggestion, the tendency to interpret the successes of the Muslims as divine retribution for theological errors suggests a theology of authority in which God and the Empire are the relevant historical movers (a la Israel). This is a model which can only persist for so long in the face of persistent losses and repeated attempts to ‘rectify’ the relationship of the former to the latter. Additionally, the Empire’s eventual reaffirmation of iconodulia despite the proclamations of various emperors could have contributed to a slow division between temporal and spiritual conceptions of authority.

14. As well as social, cultural, interpersonal, etc.

15. Vandermotten, Christian. “Building a Continental Area: Identities, Differences and Urban Developments in Europe.” Belgeo, no. 1-2-3–4 (December 30, 2000): 114–42. https://doi.org/10.4000/belgeo.1394. P. 6

16. Vandermotten, “Building a Continental Area.” p. 6

17. Var, Umut. “An Examination of an Eschatological Christian Leader: Last Emperor Topos in Oracula Attributed to Byzantine Emperor Leo VI. (886-912).” Oksident 6, no. 2 (December 31, 2024): 135–53. https://doi.org/10.51490/oksident.1553746. P. 136

18. Whalen, Dominion of God. P. 14

19. Matt 4:8-9, Luke 4:5-7, 2 Cor 4:4, 1 John 5:19

20. Whalen, Dominion of God, 11.

21. Whalen, Dominion of God, 115.