Adversaria (37)
‘When a man decided to become a wandering preachers, whether orthodox or dissenting, he often started by going into a forest and living for some time as a hermit. During this period of ascetic training he would acquire the spiritual power for his mission; he might also acquire a reputation as a holy man and attract his first followers’ —Norman Cohn (The Pursuit of the Millennium, p. 45)
‘And one fact about the Millennium which emerges with great clarity is that it is to be strongly anti-capitalist’ —Norman Cohn (The Pursuit of the Millennium, p. 122)
‘The old religious idiom has been replaced by a secular one, and this tends to obscure what otherwise would be obvious. For it is the simple truth that, stripped of their original supernatural sanction, revolutionary millenarianism and mystical anarchism are with us still’ —Norman Cohn (The Pursuit of the Millennium, p. 286)