The Disappearing Society: Writer’s Under
Attack
--Joachim
of Flora
--CATHOLIC
ENCYCLOPEDIA
--EDMUND
G. GARDNER
- The Catholic Encyclopedia,
Volume VIII
--Copyright
© 1910 by Robert Appleton Company
Table VI of Liber Figurarum
- Joachim of Flora
--Cistercian
abbot and mystic;
b. at Celico, near Cosenza,
Italy, c. 1132; d. at San
Giovanni in Fiore, in Calabria,
30 March, 1202.
--His
father, Maurus de Celico (whose family name is said to have
been Tabellione), a notary holding high office under the Norman
kings of Sicily, placed him at an early age in the royal Court.
While on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Joachim was converted
from the world by the sight of some great calamity (perhaps
an outbreak of pestilence). He passed the whole of Lent
in contemplation on Mount Thabor, where he is said to have
received celestial illumination for the work of his life.
Returning to Italy, he retired to the Cistercian Abbey of
Sambucina, probably in 1159, and for some years devoted himself
to lay preaching, without taking the religious habit or receiving
any orders. The ecclesiastical authorities raising objections
to his mode of life, he took the Cistercian habit in the Abbey
of Corazzo, and was ordained priest, apparently in 1168.
He now applied himself entirely to Biblical study, with a
special view to the interpretation of the hidden meaning of
the Scriptures. A few years later, much against his will,
he was elected abbot. Finding the duties of his office an
intolerable hindrance to what he deemed his higher calling,
he appealed, in 1182, to Pope Lucius III, who relieved him
of the temporal care of his abbey, and warmly approved of
his work, bidding him continue it in whatever monastery he
thought best. He spent the following year and a half at the
Abbey of Casamari, engaged upon his three great books, and
there a young monk, Lucas (afterwards Archbishop
of Cosenza), who acted as his secretary, tells us of his amazement
at seeing so famous and eloquent a man wearing such rags,
and of the wonderful devotion with which he preached and said
Mass.
--The
papal approbation was confirmed by Urban
III, in 1185, and again, more conditionally, by Clement
III, in 1187, the latter exhorting him to make no delay
in completing his work and submitting it to the judgment of
the Holy See.
Joachim now retired to the hermitage
of Pietralata, and finally founded the Abbey of Fiore (or
Flora) among the Calabrian mountains, which became the center
of a new and stricter branch of the Cistercian
Order approved by Celestine
III in 1198. In 1200 Joachim publicly submitted all his
writings to the examination of Innocent
III, but died before any judgment was passed. It was held
to be in answer to his prayers that he died on Holy Saturday,
"the Saturday on which Sitivit is sung, attaining the
true Sabbath, even as the hart panteth after the fountains
of waters." The holiness of his life is unquestionable; miracles
were said to have been wrought at his tomb, and, though never
officially beatified, he is still venerated as a beatus
on 29 May.
--Dante
voiced the general opinion of his age in declaring Joachim
one "endowed with prophetic spirit." But he himself always
disclaimed the title of prophet. The interpretation of Scriptural
prophecy, with reference to the history and the future of
the Church, is the main theme of his three chief works: "Liber
Concordiae Novi ac Veteris Testamenti," "Expositio in Apocalipsim,"
and "Psalterium Decem Cordarum." The mystical basis of his
teaching is the doctrine of the "Eternal Gospel," founded
on a strained interpretation of the text in the Apocalypse
(xiv, 6). There are three states of the world, corresponding
to the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity. In the first
age the Father ruled, representing power and inspiring fear,
to which the Old Testament dispensation corresponds; then
the wisdom hidden through the ages was revealed in the Son,
and we have the Catholic Church of the New Testament; a third
period will come, the Kingdom of the Holy Spirit, a new dispensation
of universal love, which will proceed from the Gospel of Christ,
but transcend the letter of it, and in which there will be
no need for disciplinary institutions. Joachim held that the
second period was drawing to a close, and that the third epoch
(already in part anticipated by St. Benedict) would actually
begin after some great cataclysm which he tentatively calculated
would befall in 1260. After this Latins and Greeks would be
united in the new spiritual kingdom, freed alike from the
fetters of the letter; the Jews would be converted, and the
"Eternal Gospel" abide until the end of the world.
San Giovanni in Fiore: Florens
Abbey
Photography by Francesco Saverio ALESSIO,
©
copyright
1981
Florenses
Escatology
...they
left again from Petra and were withdrawn between the mounts
in Fiore, so that in Nazareth the new fruit of the Saint Spirit
would be announced, until, beginning from that place, the
Lord operate the maximum salvation on earth. [...]
Biography of Gioacchino
da Fiore
ANONYMOUS
--Although
certain doctrines of Joachim concerning the Blessed Trinity
were condemned by the Lateran Council in 1215, his main teaching
does not seem to have excited suspicion until the middle of
the century. Many works had meanwhile come into being which
were wrongly attributed to Joachim. Among these the "De Oneribus
Prophetarum," the "Expositio Sybillae et Merlini," and the
commentaries on Jeremias and Isaias are the most famous. The
sect of the "Joachists" or "Joachimists" arose among the "spiritual"
party among the Franciscans, many of whom saw Antichrist
already in the world in the person of Frederick II, nor was
their faith shaken by his death in 1250. One of their number,
Fra Gherardo of Borgo San Donnino, wrote a treatise entitled
"Introductorium in Evangelium Aeternum", of which the contents
are now known only from the extracts made by the commission
of three cardinals
who examined it in 1255. From these it is clear that the Joachists
went far beyond what the abbot himself had taught. They held
that, about the year 1200, the spirit of life had gone out
of the two Testaments and that Joachim's three books themselves
constituted this "Eternal Gospel," which was not simply to
transcend but to supersede, the Gospel of Christ. The Catholic
priesthood and the whole teaching of the New Testament was
to be rendered void in a few years.
--This
work was solemnly condemned by Alexander
IV, in 1256, and the condemnation involved the teaching
of Joachim himself. His central doctrine was confuted by St. Thomas
in the Summa Theologica (I-II, Q. cvi, a. 4), and its Franciscan
exponents were sternly repressed by St. Bonaventure. Another
blow was given to the movement when the fatal year 1260 came,
and nothing happened. "After Frederick II died who was Emperor,"
writes Fra Salimbene of Parma, "and the year 1260 passed,
I entirely laid aside this doctrine, and I am disposed henceforth
to believe nothing save what I see." It was revived in a modified
form by the later leader of the spiritual Franciscans, Pier
Giovanni Olivi (d. 1297), and his follower, Ubertino da Casale,
who left the order in 1317. We hear a last echo of these theories
in the letters of Blessed Giovanni dalle Celle and the prophecies
of Telesphorus
of Cosenza during the Great Schism, but they were no longer
taken seriously.
--Divini
vatis Abbatis Joachim Liber Concordiae novi ac veteris Testatmenti
(Venice, 1519); Expositio magni prophetae Abbatis Joachim
in Apocalipsim: Eiusdem Psalterium Decem Cordarum opus prope
divinum (Venice, 1527); REUTER, Geschichte der religiösen
Aufklärung im Mittelalter, II (Berlin, 1877); TOCCO, L'Eresia
nel Medio Evo (Florence, 1884); DENIFLE, Das Evangelium aeternum
und die Commission zu Anagni in Archiv fur Litteratur- und
Kirchen-Geschichte, I (Berlin, 1885): HOLDER-EGGER, Cronica
Fratris Salimbene de Adam Ordinis Minorum (Hanover, 1905-08);
WICKSTEED, The Everlasting Gospel in The Inquirer (London,
1909); FOURNIER, Etudes sur Joachim de Flore et ses doctrines
(Paris, 1909). The only contemporary account is the sketch,
Virtutum B. Joachimi synopsis, by LUCAS OF COSENZA, his secretary:
but the fuller Vita by JACOBUS GRAECUS SYLLANAEUS, written
in 1612, is professedly drawn from an ancient manuscript then
preserved at Fiore. Both are printed by the Bollandists, Acta
SS., May, VII.
EDMUND
G. GARDNER
Transcribed by Alison S. Britton
For the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume
VIII
Copyright © 1910 by Robert Appleton Company
Online Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. Knight
Nihil Obstat, October 1, 1910. Remy Lafort, S.T.D.,
Censor
Imprimatur. John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New
York
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