ABSTRACT
Crusades to liberate Jerusalem were conducted in an atmosphere of apocalyptic expectation which was absent from other types of crusades. This was true of the First Crusade, a phenomenon explored by Jay Rubenstein in Armies of Heaven: The First Crusade and the Quest for Apocalypse, and also in the Third Crusade.1 When Richard I wintered at Messina in 1190 on his way to the Holy Land, he requested an interview with Joachim of Fiore, a Calabrian Cistercian abbot who was credited with prophetic powers and was writing a commentary on the Book of Revelation. The king and the abbot discussed the twelfth chapter of that book: ‘And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his head.’ Joachim explained that the red dragon was the devil and the seven heads the persecutors of the Church: five of those heads had fallen, but the sixth was Saladin; after he was defeated, there would only be one head left – that of the Antichrist, whose reign would immediately precede the Second Coming of Christ.2 The apocalyptic atmosphere which developed during the Fifth Crusade was not at all unique.
