In 1018, the French monk Ademar de Chabannes wrote of a pre-dawn panic
and trampling before the Abbey of St. Martial, sparked by fears of the
Antichrist. Cases of heresy were reported to be widespread throughout
southern France at the time. A prolific writer - and forger - Ademar
produced 500 folios of speculative writings/fictions about the
apocalypse before his death in 1034.
As a footnote, Ademar
wrote the oldest surviving autograph musical manuscript in the western
world: a mass written to support his fraudulent claim that the
historical St. Martial was an apostle during Christ's life, rather than a
bishop in Gaul in the third century.
