Barthalomew Holzhauser was a parish priest and an ecclesiastical writer. He was born in 1613 at Laugna in Bavaria, and died in 1658. Holzhauser came from a very large, poor family, but eventually he managed to gain an education and became a theologist. He served as a pastor and a dean, and founded a religious community. (6)

Holzhauser was renowned for his extraordinary cures. He wrote several books, including his Visions (1646). Several of the ten visions have been fulfilled. The following describes a Great Monarch and Holy Pope, and a period of status consolationis, lasting from the Holy Pope to the Antichrist. It is followed by the status desolationis, lasting from the Antichrist till the end of the world:

"[After a world war] will come a new period, in which two mighty ones will face each other. The wrangle between these two will begin in the second half of the twentieth century. It will overthrow mountains and silt up rivers. A great change will come to pass, such as no mortal man will have expected; Heaven and Hell will confront each other in this struggle, old states will perish and light and darkness will be pitted against each other with swords, but it will be swords of a different fashion. With these swords it will be possible to cut up the skies and split the earth. A great lament will come over all mankind and only a small batch will survive the storm, the pestilence and the horror. And neither of the two adversaries will conquer nor be vanquished. Both mighty ones will lie on the ground, and a new mankind will come into existence. God possesses the key to everything. Blessed is he who will then be able to praise him, having obeyed all his commandments. And the great monarch of the world will create new laws for the new mankind and will cause a new age to begin, in which there will be only one flock and one shepherd, and peace will be of long, long duration, for the glory of God in heaven and on earth...

"When everything has been ruined by war; when Catholics are hard pressed by traitorous co-religionists and heretics; when the Church and her servants are denied their rights, the monarchies have been abolished and their rulers murdered... Then the Hand of Almighty God will work a marvelous change, something apparently impossible according to human understanding. There will rise a valiant monarch anointed by God. He will be a Catholic, a descendant of Louis IX, yet a descendant of an ancient imperial German family, born in exile. He will rule supreme in temporal matters. The Pope will rule supreme in spiritual matters at the same time. Persecution will cease and justice shall rule. Religion seems to be suppressed, but by the changes of entire kingdoms it will be made more firm.

"He will root out false doctrines and destroy the rule of Moslemism. His dominion will extend from the East to the West. All nations will adore God their Lord according to the Catholic teaching. There will be many wise and just men. The people will love justice, and peace will reign over the whole earth, for divine power will bind Satan for many years until the coming of the Son of Perdition.

"The reign of the Great Ruler may be compared with that of Caesar Augustus who became Emperor after his victory over his enemies, thereby giving peace to the world, also with the reign of Constantine the Great, who was sent by God, after severe persecution, to deliver both the Church and State.

"On account of a terrible war Germany will wail, France will be the cause of all the woe, Germany will be terribly wounded, all will be impoverished. England shall suffer much. The King shall be killed.

"After desolation has reached its peak in England, peace will be restored and England will return to the Catholic faith with greater fervor than before.

"The Great Monarch will have the special help of God and be unconquerable.

"The Fifth Epoch of time dates from the reign of Charles V until the reign of the Great Monarch.

"The Sixth Age of the Spirit commences with the powerful Monarch and the Holy Pontiff... and will last until the appearance of the Antichrist. This will be an age of consolation in which God will console His Spirit of the affliction and the great tribulation of the preceding age. All the nations will be united in the Catholic faith. The sacerdocy will flower more than ever, and men will seek the kingdom of God in all solicitude.

"The Lord will give good pastors to the Church. Men will live in peace, each in his own field. They will be reconciled with the one God. They will live in the shadow of the powerful Monarch and of his successors.

"Many saints and doctors will flourish in the earth. Men will love reason and justice. Peace will reign in all the universe, because the divine power will bind Satan for many years, until the son of perdition will rave anew.

"The Sixth Epoch of the World, which commences with the emancipation of the people of Israel and the restoration of the Temple and of the city of Jerusalem, will endure until the advent of Jesus Christ.

"For likewise, in this epoch, the people of Israel will be consoled to a very high degree by the Lord, our God, who will deliver them from the captivity of Babylon. The kingdoms, the nations, and the people will submit to the Roman Empire, furiously vanquished by the very powerful and very illustrious monarch who will govern during fifty-six years, rendering the peace of the universe and reigning alone until the advent of Jesus Christand even after him. Thus, in the Sixth Age, God will delight his Church with the greatest prosperity.

"For, although, in the Fifth Age, we saw everywhere the most deplorable calamities: whereas all is devastated by war; that the Church and its members are rendered tributaries; that the subjects are tormented and that all men conspire to erect republics: man himself will be so astonishingly changed by the hand of God, such that no one can imagine humanity. For the powerful monarch, who will come like an envoy of God, will destroy the republics thoroughly in climax; he will subdue all to his will and will employ his zeal in favor of the true Church of Christ. All the heresies will be relegated to hell. The empire of the Turks will be broken and this monarch will reign in the orient and in the occident. All the nations will come and adore the Lord their God in the true Catholic and Roman faith.

"Now the Great Monarch also will dominate over all the beasts of the earth, that is to say over the barbarian nations, over the rebellious peoples, over the heretic republics and over all men dominated by their evil passions.

"It is in that age that the relation of the sixth Spirit of the Lord will be known, that is to say the Spirit of Wisdom that God diffuses over all the surfaces of the globes in those times. For men will fear the Lord their God, they will observe the law and serve it with all their heart. The sciences will be multiplied and complete on the earth. The Holy Scriptures will be unanimously understood, without controversy and without the errors of heresies. Men will be enlightened, so much as in the natural sciences and in the celestial sciences.

"Finally, the Sixth Church, the Church of Philadelphia, is the type of this sixth age, for Philadelphia signifies friendship of brothers, and again guarding the heritage in union with the Lord. Now all these characters convene perfectly in the sixth age, in which they will have love, concord and perfect peace and in which the powerful Monarch will have to consider almost the entire world as his heritage. He will deliver up the earth, with the aid of the Lord his God from all his enemies, of ruin and of all evil."