Joachim of Fiore

Italian historian and religious leader

• Born: c. 1135
• Birthplace: Celico, Kingdom of Naples (now in Italy)
• Died: 1202
• Place of death: Fiore (now in Italy)

Joachim developed a persuasive system of historical understanding that evolved through three successive stages, culminating in what he termed as an age of the Holy Spirit filled with bliss and understanding.

Early Life

Joachim of Fiore (yoh-AH-keem uhv FYOH-ray) was born to Maurus, a notary, and Gemma in Celico. Although later writers would claim that the family members were converted Jews, there is no convincing evidence to support this statement. Joachim, who was trained to be a court bureaucrat and notary, entered the service of King William II of Sicily at Palermo as a young man. About 1167, after an illness, he left William’s service to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where he decided to follow a religious life. While meditating on Mount Tabor, he experienced his first revelation; as a result, he believed that God had given to him a special insight into scriptural understanding.

Joachim returned to Sicily and lived as a hermit on Mount Etna for a few weeks, then he traveled back to the vicinity of Cosenza, where he began to live the life of a hermit-preacher. In 1170, he entered the novitiate at a monastery at Corazzo and rose to the position of prior shortly after taking his vows. Seven years later, he was elected abbot of the monastery. Either shortly before his election or shortly thereafter, Corazzo chose to join the Cistercian community.

As the new abbot, Joachim’s first task was to seek association for the Corazzo monastery with a Cistercian motherhouse. Thus, he began to travel almost immediately in search of a monastery that would assume that obligation, going both to Sambucina and to Casamari. He was unsuccessful in convincing the Cistercians in either place to accept Corazzo. Finding a motherhouse for his monastery was doubly important to Joachim as he was anxious to begin writing about his scheme of history and theology. The Cistercian General Council would not authorize his scholarly activities until Corazzo was officially within the Cistercian community. Frustrated with the Cistercians and anxious to begin his writing, he appealed to Pope Lucius III in 1184. Permission was granted to him to begin his studies, and the pope also allowed him a leave of absence from his duties as abbot.

Life’s Work

Joachim returned to Casamari and began to write Liber de concordia Novi ac Veteris Testamenti (1519; book of concords between the Old and New Testaments) and Expositio in Apocalypsim (1527; exposition on the Apocalypse) simultaneously. As he wrote, he realized that he still did not have a clear understanding of the relationship between the Trinity and biblical concords; thus, on Pentecost, 1183 or 1184, he received his second revelation. This revelation was so graphic that he put aside the two manuscripts on which he was working and wrote the first book of his third major treatise, Psalterium decem chordarum (1527; ten-stringed psaltery). Utilizing the imagery of the strings on the musical instrument, Joachim presented a full explanation of the mystery of the Trinity.

Returning to Corazzo the following year, he continued his writing; after failing to understand the meanings of the apocalyptic writings in the Bible, he received his third revelation. While he was again in deep meditation, it seemed as if curtains were lifted within his mind causing “a certain clearness of understanding before the eyes of my mind which exposed to me the fullness of this book of the Apocalypse and the entire concord of the Old and New Testaments.”

In 1186, Joachim visited the new pope, Urban III , and received renewed permission and encouragement to continue his writing. In 1187, however, Urban died; Joachim traveled again to Rome in 1188 to visit Urban’s successor, Clement III. Clement, too, endorsed his writings. By 1189, Joachim was feeling the pressures of growing fame and recognition as an exegete of prophecy, and he was becoming more and more disenchanted with the Cistercian order, which he believed to be too lax in its religious life. In late winter of that year, he went deep into the Sila Mountains to seek a place of peace and quiet. In May, he settled at San Giovanni in Fiore. As a result, the leadership of the Cistercian order considered him a renegade. He finally broke with the order when Henry VI, the Holy Roman Emperor, issued a charter to Joachim on October 21, 1194, authorizing a new monastery at San Giovanni in Fiore with Joachim as its abbot. With the charter in hand, Joachim approached Pope Celestine III seeking approval of a constitution for a new religious order; the pope did so by a papal bull on August 25, 1196. Thus the Order of Fiore was born with its motherhouse located in San Giovanni in Fiore in Calabria.

Despite periodic revelations, Joachim never claimed to be a prophet. Instead, he insisted that God had given him the gift of a clearer exegetical understanding of Scripture that enabled him to display a new system of theology and historiography. Joachim’s apocalyptic attitudes and theology of history were a significant departure from the Augustinian tradition in that he viewed history as dynamic rather than static. The Calabrian abbot perceived three progressive status (ages), or a threefold pattern of history, in which each member of the Trinity played guiding roles. The first status, in which God the Father directed the course of human events, began with Adam and ended with Christ’s Incarnation. The second status, characterized by the leadership of Jesus Christ, overlapped back into the first status and lasted until the thirteenth century. The third status was more complicated. Its origins were in both the first and second status a double origin and progression from the Old and New Testaments and the Father and Son; it would be guided by the Holy Spirit.

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux was the precursor to the third age. His rule had laid the groundwork for a future monastic community that eventually would encompass all Christians: monks, clerics, and laymen. Two new orders would appear and usher in the age followed by the first appearance of the Antichrist. The Antichrist would cause terrible trials and tribulations, but he would be defeated by Christians. After the Antichrist was defeated, the Holy Spirit would guide life until the second appearance of the Antichrist and Doomsday. It was with the concept of the third status that Joachim broke from the Augustinian tradition by placing eschatological events into human history. As a dreamer of the future, he did not look backward in time to some golden age, such as the apostolic age, in which people would emulate Christ and his disciples; rather, he concluded that the future time would be a true renovatio, unlike anything in the past, led by the Holy Spirit. Such ideas became fertile ground for scores of future movements of reform.

In Joachim’s schema, each age was progressive toward the next; collectively, they moved toward an ideal human existence. The first age, for example, had been lived under Law, the second had been lived under grace, and the third would be lived in full freedom and understanding. Each of Joachim’s three status was divided into seven estates (times) with five concordant types or species and seven typicus intellectus. For example, the twelve patriarchs of the Old Testament were precursors to the twelve Apostles, and one would expect a similar concordant type in the third age. Thus, history is given continuity.

Joachim has frequently been described as a “picture thinker.” Toward the end of his life, he began to make elaborate and colorful drawings that graphically explained his main ideas. These drawings were compiled around 1227-1239 as Liber figurarum by his disciples and provide visual explanations of the intricacies of his thought.

The peace and understanding of the third age, an age that would accomplish true monastic contemplation, would be phased in exactly as the second had emerged from the first. Two new monastic orders, contemplative in the pattern of Moses and evangelical in the pattern of Elijah, would usher in the age, guiding human history from the second status to the third. All human history would reach fruition when “the new order of the people of God,” as Joachim called it, was established. This future state of the church and society would be a physical commune based on the monastic utopian model that he drew in Liber figurarum and entitled Dispositio novi ordinis pertinens ad tercium statum. The community, which in the drawing is heavily annotated with explanatory details, would feature a contemplative society of monks, clerics, and laity living harmoniously together under the direction of a spiritual father and his councillors.

By 1200, Joachim had finished his major works, and many minor ones too, presenting them with a testamentary letter to Pope Innocent III. Joachim died just before Easter, 1202.

Significance

Joachim was the most important apocalyptic writer and exegete of prophecy in the Middle Ages. He introduced an optimistic pattern of history that challenged future generations to view human events in terms of progress instead of deterioration.

Joachim’s influence has been significant but difficult to measure because many thinkers whose ideas reflect his tripartite scheme of history cannot be shown to have had direct access to his texts. It is certain that he influenced millenarian sects of the thirteenth century whose teachings, unlike his own, were thoroughly heretical, and references to his ideas can be tracked through subsequent centuries. The nineteenth century brought an upsurge of interest in Joachim; in particular, Joachimite thought entered the current of esoteric lore that profoundly influenced nineteenth century European literature. As a consequence, modern writers as diverse as William Butler Yeats and D. H. Lawrence were familiar with Joachim’s ideas and appropriated them in fashioning their own apocalyptic visions of history.

Bibliography

Gould, Warwick, and Marjorie Reeves. Joachim of Fiore and the Myth of the Eternal Evangel in the Nineteenth Century. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. A revised and enlarged edition of the 1987 study. The book analyzes the influence of Joachim, including major literary figures of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who utilized the ideas of Joachim in their own works.

Joachim of Fiore. Liber de concordia Novi ac Veteris Testamenti. Edited by E. Randolph Daniel. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1983. A modern edition of one of Joachim’s major works. Introductory chapters answer perplexing questions about the abbot’s extant manuscripts and technical aspects of his schema.

McGinn, Bernard. The Calabrian Abbot: Joachim of Fiore in the History of Western Thought. New York: Macmillan, 1985. Through both new essays and reprints of past articles by the author, this book firmly places Joachim in the history of Western thought. A good introduction to Joachim and his thought.

Reeves, Marjorie. The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism. 1969. Reprint. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame, 1993. This remains the classic study of Joachim, his life, his works, his teachings, and his influence up to the sixteenth century. An appendix contains lists of Joachim’s authentic and spurious works, and a preface has been added to the new edition.

Reeves, Marjorie. Joachim of Fiore and the Prophetic Future: A Medieval Study in Historical Thinking. Rev. ed. Stroud: Sutton, 1999. A revision of the 1976 edition, this work examines Joachim’s vision of history and its progression. Illustrated, with bibliography and index.

Reeves, Marjorie, and Beatrice Hirsch-Reich. The Figurae of Joachim of Fiore. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1972. The most definitive study of Joachim’s drawing and symbols. Chapters address major themes in Joachim’s scheme through his own visual portrayal of those themes.

Wessley, Stephen E. Joachim of Fiore and Monastic Reform. New York: Peter Lang, 1990. A study of the religious thoughts of Joachim, particularly his views of monasticism.

West, Delno, ed. Joachim of Fiore in Christian Thought. 2 vols. New York: Burt Franklin, 1975. A sequence of journal articles in several languages that are generally unavailable in American libraries. Essays relate to Joachim and Joachimite themes studied over the twentieth century.

West, Delno, and Sandra Zimdars-Swartz. Joachim of Fiore: A Study in Spiritual Perception and History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983. Meant as an introduction for the general reader, this book is focused on Joachim’s life and teachings as a major contribution to Western intellectual history.