Last Column of the Millennium

As everyone knows, the 21st century--and with it, the third millennium--will not really start until January 1, 2001. This past year, the Year 2000, was simply irrelevant. Yet few are celebrating this milestone; we've already had one millennium celebration in the last 12 months, and no amount of persuasion will convince the populace that the calendar started in the Year 1, not the Year 0. Besides, television executives have already filled their quota of network specials on the Vikings or King Ethelred the Unready.

It is thus that I have been entrusted with the dubious honor of writing the last Crimson column of the true millennium, a column whose subject is at the same time pre-determined and obsolete, a column of exactly one thousand words that will drop instantly from our printing press to our archives to blessed obscurity, as no one reads The Crimson on the last day before Winter Break. (Including you.)

Fortunately, I am not the first to face this dilemma; this is the third millennium, after all, and there are some precedents for how to proceed. An obscure manuscript recently discovered in the Vatican Library has been revealed to be a message from a clerk to his fellow students at the cathedral school of Fleury (this was before universities) containing his comments on the passage of the millennium. I have reproduced it here with my comments, so it may serve as a basis for comparison with our time.

"Fleury, on the 19th day of December, in the Year of Our Lord One Thousand, in the 14th indiction.

"As everyone knows, the XIst century--and with it, the second millennium--will not really start until January I, MI. This past year, the Year M, was simply irrelevant. Yet few are celebrating this milestone; we've already had one millennium celebration in the last XII months, and no amount of persuasion will convince the populace that the calendar started in the Year I, not the Year...well, not the year before that. [This was before zeros, at least in Europe anyway. The Hindus, Arabs and Mayans had zeros, but it didn't seem to do them much good.]

"But this millennium has been no stranger to calendar disputes. It was not until the sixth century that the monk Dionysus Exiguus created our calendar system by putting a date on Jesus' birth, and many people have still not yet agreed on the details. Think of the old dispute in Northumbria over the correct date of Easter: Starting in the year 627, as the Venerable Bede records, the Celtic and Roman traditions provided two different dates for Easter, and the Northumbrians were left to celebrate Easter twice a year. The queen fasted on a different day than the king; all was chaos and confusion. Eventually, the two competing dates could be reconciled, but only after monks from Italy and Gaul brought to Northumbria the strange teachings of 'arithmetic' and the 'rules of the Egyptians.' [This was before algebra.]

"Calendar bickering aside, this has been a truly remarkable millennium. Think of what has occurred: the birth of Christ, conversion of Constantine, the fall of the Western Empire, the barbarian invasions, the rise of Islam, the coronation of Charlemagne, the creation of the Holy Roman Empire. We have seen the spread of new types of government, such as arbitrary lordship, and new ideas, such as religious intolerance, across Europe; will these trends continue into the future? The tenth century was called by Henricus Luce "The Ottonian Century" for the dominance of the Holy Roman Empire, but will the Empire maintain its hegemony, or will new challenges arise to its control? Think also of the changes in daily life: Now, just like in all previous societies, most of humanity scratches out a living from small dirt fields in grinding, famine-prone poverty, and vast numbers of children die before age five.

"Technological developments are a further hallmark of this past millennium. We have developed the three-field system, cultivating great fields of legumes to replenish the soil and increase our food supply. We have created the heavy iron plow, which can bite through the heavy earth of Northern Europe. We have even unleashed the mighty power of the horse, with a new stirrup for shock combat and a collar that enables horses to pull heavy weights without choking them to death.

"But with these new technological solutions come also new technological problems. We are all familiar with the threat of the YM problem last year, when the abaci that recorded the Year CMXCVIIIJ were to roll over and show the year...well, something other than the Year M. [The lack of a zero can cause problems sometimes.] Luckily, few people were using the abacus, since it had only been introduced to Europe a few decades earlier by Gerbert of Aurillac, now Pope Sylvester II. [This is part of how you got to be Pope in those days. Want to make friends and influence people? Learn the abacus.]

"Our technologies may expand human potential, but they can be used for both good or ill. Now that we can plow deeper and faster than ever before, will we have the wisdom to know if we have plowed too far? We think that we control our watermills--but will our watermills one day begin controlling us?

"Yet we can look back in history to see that that humanity has survived its many travails over the past millennium. Furthermore, the predictions of the French priest Raoul Glaber that Satan would be unleashed upon us and that the great Apocalypse would arrive last January have not come true. We can also take comfort in what one of our forebears thought of the passage of the last millennium, one thousand years ago:

"'As everyone knows, the first century--and with it, the first millennium--will not really start until January 1, A.D 1. This past year, the Year...wait a minute...[Damn that lack of a zero!]'"

Stephen E. Sachs '02 is a history concentrator in Quincy House. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.