What History’s Fallen Societies Have in Common

In the Middle Ages, prophecies of a coming global collapse proliferated across Europe. Conditions were ripe for a powerful strain of apocalypticism to take hold: Population growth, the rise of industry, increasing inequality, and an onslaught of natural disasters and plagues had made life feel more difficult and precarious than it had ever been. The poor and itinerant classes bore the brunt of these developments, while the wealthy were more insulated from their assault. Self-styled messiahs appeared in towns and cities promising healing and redemption to the oppressed. During this period, the historian Norman Cohn has written, parts of Western Europe witnessed the emergence of what he called “messianic movements of the poor.” In almost every instance, he argued, “a collective sense of impotence and anxiety and envy suddenly discharged itself in a frantic urge to smite the ungodly”—to seize wealth and power, and hold it for “all eternity.”