Whispers and rumors began calling the result of this great survey the Doomsday Book. They compared the book to the Bible's description of the Last Judgment, where God kept an accounting of all mankind's deeds in the Book of Life. Some grew to suspect there was another reason for such a grand survey of all the lands. The accounting was all done as a means of measuring the proper tax owed to the crown. The immense tally was being recorded in a mammoth volume called the Domesday Book, collected together by a single scholar and written in a cryptic form of Latin. Burdened by the cost of war, King William had sent scores of royal commissioners out into the countryside to amass a great accounting of the lands and properties of his kingdom. Martin Borr was the youngest of the royal coroners, ordered here upon a secret edict from King William himself.Īs Martin huddled deeper into his heavy cloak, he remembered the note secured by wax and imprinted by the great royal seal. 'Keep going,' said the traveler sharing the wagon. The horse tossed its head and huffed into the chill of the morning.
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The wagon's driver crossed himself and slowed the cart. Just the frantic beat of wing-then the soft impact of feathered bodies on the hard dirt and broken stone. Wings fluttered weakly.īut most disturbing was the silence of it all. Small bodies struck the road, breaking wing and beak. Over the road, they crashed into each other and rained down out of the skies. The ravens wheeled and swooped, tumbled and flapped. They hurled themselves into the blue of the morning and swept high in a panicked rout, but this was more than the usual startled flight. Within the pages of this novel lies an answer.Most frightening of all, it's true.Īs the horse-drawn wagon traveled down the rutted track between rolling fields of barley, a flock of ravens rose up in a black wash. This massive and mysterious loss generated sensational headlines and fears. The condition earned the name Colony Collapse Disorder. Thriving hives were suddenly found empty, as if the bees simply flew away and never returned. And according to this oddly accurate prophecy, the world ends with the very next one.ĭuring the years 2006 to 2008, one-third of all honeybees in the United States (and much of Europe and Canada) vanished. But most disturbing of all, Pope Benedict XVI is the 111th pope. And the Benedictine order, from which the pope took his name, does indeed bear the olive branch as its symbol. In Saint Malachy's prophecy, the current pope is listed as De Gloria Olivae, the Glory of the Olives. Either way, over the intervening centuries, the descriptions of each pope in that book have proved to be oddly accurate-up to and including the current head of the Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI. Some historians believe that this recovered book was most likely a forgery. This grand accounting-a cryptic description of 112 popes-was recorded and safeguarded in the Vatican archives, but the book vanished, only to resurface again during the sixteenth century. In that ecstatic trance, he was given knowledge of all the popes who would come until the end of the world. It became known as the 'Doomsday Book.'ĭuring the twelfth century, an Irish Catholic priest named Mael Maedoc, who would eventually be named Saint Malachy, had a vision while on a pilgrimage to Rome. Many mysteries still surround this survey, like why it was ordered so swiftly and why some towns were inexplicably marked with a single word in Latin meaning 'wasted.' Furthermore, the strangeness of this census and its exacting detail earned the tome a disturbing nickname by the people of its time. Most historians accept that this grand accounting was done as a means to gather a proper tax from the populace, though this is not certain. It is one of the most detailed accounts of medieval life during that time. The results were recorded in a great volume titled the Domesday Book. BARON NATHAN ROTHSCHILD, WEALTHIEST MAN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURYĭuring the eleventh century, King William of England commissioned a comprehensive survey of his kingdom. The time to buy is when blood is running in the streets.
THOMAS MALTHUS, AN ESSAY ON THE PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION, 1798 The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man. In the final persecution of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, there will reign Peter the Roman, who will feed his flock among many tribulations after which the seven-hilled city will be destroyed and the dreadful Judge will judge the people.