page_title: Kingdom of Asturias
section_title: Millennialism
hierarchical_section_title: Kingdom of Asturias / Religion / Millennialism
context_page_description: The Kingdom of Asturias was a kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula founded in 718 by the Visigothic nobleman Pelagius. It was the first Christian political entity established after the Umayyad conquest of Visigothic Hispania in 718 or 722. That year, Pelagius defeated an Umayyad army at the Battle of Covadonga, in what is usually regarded as the beginning of the Reconquista.
  The Asturian kings were happy to make peace with the Muslims when it suited them, particularly if it left them free to pursue their other enemies, the Basques and rebels in Galicia. Thus Fruela killed 40,000 Muslims but also defeated the Basques and Galicians, and Silo made peace with the Muslims but not with the Galicians. Under King Alfonso II, the kingdom was firmly established with Alfonso's recognition as king of Asturias by Charlemagne and the Pope. He conquered Galicia and the Basques. During his reign, the holy bones of St James the Great were declared to be found in Galicia, in Compostela. Pilgrims from all over Europe opened a way of communication between the isolated Asturias and the Carolingian lands and beyond.
context_section_description: The most transcendental works of Beatus were his Commentaries to Apocalypse, which were copied in later centuries in manuscripts called beati, about which the Italian writer Umberto Eco said: "Their splendid images gave birth to the most relevant iconographic happening in the History of Mankind". Beatus develops in them a personal interpretation of the Book of Revelation, accompanied by quotes from the Old Testament, the Church Fathers and fascinating illustrations.
  In these Commentaries a new interpretation of the apocalyptic accounts is given: Babylon no longer represents the city of Rome, but Córdoba, seat of the Umayyad emirs of al-Andalus; the Beast, once a symbol of the Roman Empire, now stands for the Islamic invaders who during this time threatened to destroy Western Christianity, and who raided territories of the Asturian Kingdom.
  The prologue to the second book of the Commentaries contains the Beatus map, one of the best examples of a mappa mundi of the high medieval culture. The purpose of this map was not to represent the world cartographically, but to illustrate the Apostles' diaspora in the first decades of Christianity. Beatus took data from the works of Isidore of Seville, Ptolemy and the Bible. The world was represented as a land disc surrounded by the Ocean and divided in three parts: Asia (upper semicircle), Europe (lower left quadrant) and Africa (lower right quadrant). The Mediterranean Sea (Europe-Africa), the Nile River (Africa-Asia), the Aegean Sea, and the Bosphorus (Europe-Asia) were set as the boundaries between the different continents.
  Beatus believed that the Apocalypse described in the book of Revelation was imminent, which would be followed by 1290 years of domination by the Antichrist. Beatus followed the views of Augustine of Hippo, whose work, The City of God, influenced the Commentaries which followed the premise that the history of the world was structured in six ages. The first five ones extended from the creation of Adam to the Passion of Jesus, while the sixth, subsequent to Christ, ends with the unleashing of the events prophesied in the book of Revelation.
  Millennialist movements were very common in Europe at that time. Between 760 and 780, a series of cosmic phenomena stirred up panic among the population of Gaul; John, a visionary monk, predicted the coming of the Last Judgment during the reign of Charlemagne. In this time  the Apocalypse of Daniel appeared, a Syriac text redacted during the rule of the empress Irene of Athens, wherein wars between the Arabs, the Byzantines and the Northern peoples were prophesied. These wars would end with the coming of the Antichrist.
  Events taking place in Hispania (Islamic rule, the adoptionist heresy, the gradual assimilation of the Mozarabs) were, for Beatus, signals of the imminent apocalypse. aeon. As Elipandus describes in his Letter from the bishops of Spania to their brothers in Gaul, the abbot of Santo Toribio went so far as to announce to his countrymen the coming of the End of Time on Easter of the year 800. On the dawn of that day, hundreds of peasants met around the abbey of Santo Toribio, waiting, terrified, for the fulfillment of the prophecy. They remained in there, without eating for a day and half, until one of them, named Ordonius, exclaimed: "Let us eat and drink, so that if the End of the World comes we are full!".
  The prophetic and millennialist visions of Beatus produced an enduring mark in the development of the Kingdom of Asturias: the Chronica Prophetica, which was written around 880 CE, predicted the final fall of the Emirate of Córdoba, and the conquest and redemption of the entire Iberian Peninsula by king Alfonso III. Millennialist imagery is also reflected throughout the kingdom in the Victory Cross icon, the major emblem of the Asturian kingdom, which has its origins in a passage of the Revelation book in which John of Patmos relates a vision of the Second Coming. He sees Jesus Christ seated in his majesty, surrounded by clouds and affirming: "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord,
caption: For Beatus of Liébana, the Whore of Babylon (Revelation, 17.4-5)[34] (a Christian allegory of evil) was incarnated by the Emirate of Córdoba.
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