Divine Punishment and Daniel’s Dream: Eschatology and Moralism in Central European History Writing in the Mid-Sixteenth Century

Abstract

In the field of early modern historiography, and generally in the history of Reformation, the Wittenberg view of the past is the given name of the historical thinking which became predominant in the areas influenced by Luther’s and Melanchthon’s teachings. The main components of this universalist world view were the belief in the imminent Apocalypse; the idea of four Empires; the organic cycles of world history; and the firm conviction that the Turkish conquest of southeastern Europe and parts of Hungary was God’s rightful punishment for the innumerable sins of Christianity. It is well known that Protestant eschatology had deep medieval roots. The idea of divine punishment, however, was also reinforced by other sources in the first half of sixteenth century. This paper aims to demonstrate through the works of various German and Hungarian historians and religious thinkers of the period (Johannes Sleidanus, Samuel Budina, Ferenc Forgách and others) that this concept and its literary use was also influenced by Erasmian moralism based on the rediscovery of certain forgotten, mostly Platonic ideas, which in Christian humanism could be harmoniously combined with the prophetic messages amplified by the Turkish threat and the Reformation.