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will be associated with the destruction of Rome, and may be a pseudoMessiah for the Jews (perhaps even destroying their true Messiah). A powerful figure, he will be known for his false miracles and false cures.
It should be kept in mind that in the later part of the 19th century, the notion of the Anti-Christ was, to a considerable degree, in the intellectual atmosphere. I think it can hardly be doubted that Freud knew Nietzsche’s Anti-Christ (1895/1931). Some years earlier, Renan, a favorite of Breuer, had published his Anti-Christ (1873/1899). Editions of both these Anti-Christ books are listed in Freud’s personal library: the Renan in French (no date); Nietzsche’s in two forms (as part of Nietzsche’s complete works, and in an English translation dated 1928).166 In early 1900, Freud wrote to Fliess that he had “just acquired Nietzsche, in whom I hope to find words for much that remains mute in me….”167 Wilhelm Boussett’s The Anti-Christ Legend (1895/1896) is also a possible influence on Freud—not to mention the Malleus Maleficarum, which, as noted in Chapter Four, refers to the Anti-Christ. It should also be kept in mind that Faust is in many respects an Anti-Christ figure and that the Anti-Christ concept contributed to the origins of the Faust legend.168 One further piece of evidence suggests itself. In 1910, prior, to writing his essay on Leonardo da Vinci, Freud read The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci by the Russian writer Dmitri Merejkowski. Freud certainly knew this work well, since he cited it often in his essay,169 and Freud’s portrayal of Leonardo was similar to that of the Russian writer. Merejkowski’s historical romance is part of a trilogy called Christ and Anti-Christ, and without doubt the author represents Leonardo as a kind of Renaissance Faust or Anti-Christ figure. The story comes complete with a dramatic Walpurgisnacht scene,170 as well as regular references to Leonardo as impious and sometimes perhaps as the Anti-Christ.171 Like Faust, Leonardo in the novel is haunted by a woman of great beauty; also like Faust, in spite of his life of religious skepticism (even apostasy), Leonardo is portrayed as receiving the last rites and dying as a faithful son of the Church.172 The atmosphere of this lengthy novel is much like that of C. F. Meyer’s works set in Italy. That is, it is a somber, complex, Italian Catholic environment, in which great historical figures interact in ways rich with irony, sophistication, ambiguity, and ambivalence. At the center stands Leonardo–Faust–Anti-Christ. In short, the possibility that Freud saw himself, at least in certain aspects, as the Anti-Christ must be taken seriously. And, indeed, it is only in this light that Velikovsky’s hypothesis of a diabolical pact involving baptism might make sense. That is, Freud’s notion of himself as the Anti-Christ might have required his conversion—his entry into the Church. Some of Bakan’s Sabbatian evidence can also be viewed as part of an Anti-Christ identification; that is, the Anti-Christ is part of a |