How did people react to the approaching millennium in 1000 A.D?
It’s important to remember that the huge majority of people who lived in the tenth century had no concept of the significance of the date. Only those who lived in what is today Europe and who followed the Christian calendar would recognize the meaning of a thousand years since the birth of Christ. Of those people, only those who conducted theological research — primarily monks and high-ranking clerics — would find any apocalyptic significance in this time frame. Most common folk had no idea what year it was, and didn’t care; there was no mass fear, hysteria, or rioting. Whether or not there was a general sense of oncoming apocalypse among the educated is debated among historians.
