Gioacchino da Fiore and the Rhetoric of Apocalypse
“The first great revolutionary movements in Europe, in Europe at any rate, [were] all more or less imbued with the ideas of Joachim of Fiore”
March 30th marks 820 years since the death of the Calabrian abbot Gioacchino da Fiore (ca. 1135 – 30 March 1202), or Joachim of Fiore, long held to be the author of the most important apocalyptic work of the Middle Ages, the Vaticinia pontificum, which we present here in an intriguing manuscript on grey-blue paper dating to the end of the sixteenth century. That Joachim did not in fact author these prophecies matters little, for the attribution draws on the ongoing significance of the Calabrian’s thought in the shaping of western history. As Eric Voegelin dually noted, Joachim’s approach “created the aggregate of symbols that govern the self-interpretation of modern political society to this day.” (E. Voegelin, New Science of Politics, Chicago 1987, p. 111)
(pseud-) Gioacchino da Fiore. Vaticinia Pontificum. Illustrated manuscript on grey-blue paper, in Italian. Italy, end of the sixteenth century.
See the complete description of this manuscript here.
Mystic, biblical exegete, and founder of the monastic order of San Giovanni in Fiore, Joachim of Fiore is regarded as one of the most original thinkers of the Middle Ages whose work had a tremendous and lasting impact on western apocalypticism as well as conceptions of history more generally.
Gioacchino da Fiore, miniatura sec. XIV, Codice Chigiano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Rome.
At the time of his spiritual conversion Joachim was an official in the court of the Norman kings of Sicily; after a pilgrimage to the Holy Land he returned to Calabria and lived as a hermit before joining the Cistercian Order and applying himself to uncovering hidden meanings in the scriptures. He was especially concerned with the symbolism in the Book of Revelation (also known as the Apocalypse of John), whose predictive value he aimed to reassert in the wake of Augustine (who denied such a literal reading was possible). A moment of spiritual enlightenment while engaged with this work led him to a deeper understanding of it and the relationship between the other books in the Bible, resulting in his critically important commentary on the Apocalypse and trinitarian conception of history.
Joachim’s major contribution lay in his intervention of Christianity’s teleological model of time – generally linear and progressing toward an “end”—through which God Himself is revealed. He conceived of this time in terms of three major eras corresponding to the Holy Trinity: the age of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Gioacchino da Fiore, Liber figurarum, Tav. XI, with the Trinitarian Circles enclosing the Tetragrammaton.
The first era, that of the Father, was also that of the Old Testament, and was characterized by mankind’s obedience under the Law with an emphasis on power and patriarchy. The second era, that of the Son, aligned with the New Testament; it began the birth of Christ and was the provenance of clerics and the organized church.
According to Joachim, these first two eras lasted 42 generations each, and from his calculations he understood that only two generations, at most, remained from his own lifetime until the end of the second era, i.e. that the age of the Spirit would arrive between 1200 and 1260.
The end of the second era was to be marked by the crisis of the Antichrist and persecution of the good; God’s ultimate victory over the Antichrist would then usher in the third era of the Holy Spirit, a contemplative utopia in which the deepest meanings of God’s words could be truly understood. Thus inspired by the Gospel but transcending it as well, the period would be characterized by universal love, justice, and freedom, with infidels and Christians living in peaceful union and spiritual enlightenment within a monasticized society.
Joachim’s view on time was widely influential, especially his idea of a third age, which, it has been argued, paved the way for such later philosophers of history as Hegel, Marx, and even Hitler. (On this topic see especially M. Reidl, “Longing for the Third Age: Revolutionary Joachism, Communism, and National Socialism,” in M. Reidl, ed. A Companion to Joachim of Fiore, Leiden 2017, pp. 267-318) However, it is on the more proximate relationship between Church and society that we focus on today.
Importantly, according to Joachim it would be a pope that would ultimately guide the transition from the persecution of the Antichrist into the era of the Holy Spirit, and likely a pope as well that would come to represent the Antichrist.
Evidently this made the place of the institutional papacy somewhat uncertain, but that did not mean Joachim was condemned. Already in his lifetime, Joachim of Fiore was internationally renowned and Bernard McGinn writes of his service as “something like an apocalyptic adviser” to a number of popes in the difficult last two decades of the twelfth century. (B. McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions In the Middle Ages, New York 1979, p. 126). Joachim even responded to queries from King Richard the Lionheart on the latter’s way to the Third Crusade.
Joachim responded ambivalently to this topic. His historicization of the Bible meant he connected it to actual episodes in history. In this way he understood contemporary events, especially in terms of the persecution of Christians, to be the realization of prophecies put forth in the Book of Revelation. The crusades, however, were out of sync with his historical framework, and his firm idea of God being the active agent behind the change of eras—rather than mankind’s engagement via the crusades’ call to arms—meant he conceived of the project as essentially futile.
This connection to “real” events made Joachim’s work particularly attractive, as did his emphasis on showing what his rather opaque texts endeavored to explain. An extremely imaginative visual thinker, Joachim relied on symbolic imagery to elucidate many of his ideas, as with the three rings pictured above or the image of a tree, repeatedly invoked to demonstrate the organic fluidity of his notion of time.
While Joachim himself continued to be held in high regard, his ideas and the movements they inspired were not without controversy. In 1200, the abbot had to submit his texts for examination by Innocent III, although he died in 1202, before a judgment was pronounced. In 1215 some of his ideas were condemned by the Fourth Council of the Lateran. As the year 1260 approached, works began to circulate under his name, further raising the stakes, and in 1263 his theories were deemed heretical in light of his views of the Holy Trinity.
His reputation nevertheless persisted, especially through the numerous varieties of Joachimites who fashioned themselves in terms of the sort of “spiritual men” that Joachim had placed among the elite of the third age. Foremost among these were the Spiritualist Franciscans, who, in the thirteenth century, began to use Joachimite ideas and the rhetoric of eschatology against the institutional Church. (McGinn, p. 129).
The term pastor angelicus, i.e. Angel Pope, also came into use by the end of the thirteenth century to denote the savior-pontiff who would help bring about a better age. Figures like Clement IV (1265-1268) and Gregory X (1271-1276) were hailed as reformers and contributed to the idea of the Angelic Pope, but it was the quick and dramatic opposition between the hermit-pope Celestine V, who was elected, against his will, in 1294 and voluntary abdicated in December of that same year, and the far less spiritual Boniface VIII (1294-1303), who proceeded to keep Celestine imprisoned until the latter’s death, that brought the opposition between the idea of an Angel Pope and Papal Antichrist into the sharpest relief. (McGinn, p. 188)
This idea is at the heart of the two sets of prophecies that make up the Vaticinia de summis pontificibus, the first of which appeared right at this time. Generally known or by the incipit, Genus nequam, this first set consists of a series of 15 prophecies concerning the future popes, including the coming of the Antichrist, with the last five being angelic popes of the new era.
(pseud-) Gioacchino da Fiore. Vaticinia Pontificum. Illustrated manuscript on grey-blue paper, in Italian. Italy, end of the sixteenth century.
Fol. 18v, a pope being crowned by an angel (‘Pro honoratione’), and fol. 19r: a pope enthroned and surrounded by angels (‘Occisione bona’).
(pseud-) Gioacchino da Fiore. Vaticinia Pontificum. Illustrated manuscript on grey-blue paper, in Italian. Italy, end of the sixteenth century.
Fol. 16v, a pope with a fox and flagstaffs (‘Con bona gratia cessara la Symonia’), and fol. 17r, view of a city (‘La potestate sera unitate’).
Generally beginning with Nicholas III (1277-1280), each prognostication is presented through a combination of four elements: an emblematic image of a pope, his name before and after becoming pope, a mystical prophecy, and a motto.
(pseud-) Gioacchino da Fiore. Vaticinia Pontificum. Illustrated manuscript on grey-blue paper, in Italian. Italy, end of the sixteenth century.
Fol. 6v: Iohannes XXIII (‘Elatione’), and fol. 7r: Benedictus XIII (‘Li homini forti sara orbati de la Inuidia’).
The Genus nequam prophecies are in fact largely based on the so-called “Leo Oracles,” a series of twelfth-century Byzantine prophecies attributed to Emperor Leo VI that portend the advent of a savior-emperor who restores unity to the empire. The modification and adaptation of these Oracles, along with their translation into Latin, was most likely the work of Spiritual Franciscans, but it was with an attribution to Joachim of Fiore that they were known, being in circulation already by Pope Benedict XI’s death in 1304, if not earlier.
The composition of the Genus nequam was likely politically motivated, written in opposition to the Orsini with the intention of influencing the latest papal elections. The attribution to Joachim of Fiore was thus of great importance. As Reeves writes, “By ascribing the series to Joachim, freedom for a sharp attack could be gained, while revolutionary hopes could be concealed under the guise of prophecy.” (M. Reeves, “Some popular prophecies from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries”, Studies in Church History, 8 (1972), p. 109) The significance lay in the grounding of the objective in a sense of historical continuity and authority. “These Joachites were able, through these symbols, to make a veiled but bitter commentary on the contemporary papacy and then to highlight the Joachimist expectation.” (Reeves, p. 115)
Around 1328, the second set of prophecies that make up the Vaticinia de summis pontificibus appeared. Known by their incipit Ascende calve and likely coming from a group of Florentine Fraticelli, this set also seems to begin with Nicholas III and follows the model of the Greek oracles, but it does so more loosely and with more clearly propagandist aims. “It sharpens the contrast between Celestine V and Boniface, bewails Clement's abandonment of Rome, shows John XXII as a man of blood wounding the Lamb of God, and concludes with a fearsome beast, the final Papal Antichrist-a far more pessimistic view of the future papacy than that of the earlier series.” (B. McGinn, “Angel Pope and Papal Antichrist”, Church History, 47 no. 2 (1978), p. 169)
(pseud-) Gioacchino da Fiore. Vaticinia Pontificum. Illustrated manuscript on grey-blue paper, in Italian. Italy, end of the sixteenth century.
Fol. 7v: Clemens V (‘Mobile, et immobile se fara, et assai mati guastata’); fol. 8r: Innocentius VII (‘Le decime seranno dissipate in la effusione del sangue’), and fol. 8v: Gregorius XII (‘La penitentia, tenera le vestigie de Simon Mago’);
(pseud-) Gioacchino da Fiore. Vaticinia Pontificum. Illustrated manuscript on grey-blue paper, in Italian. Italy, end of the sixteenth century.
Fol. 12v: Innocentius VI (‘Il lupo habitata con lo agnello, et parimente cibaransi’), and fol. 13r: Urbanus V (‘Questo sole aprira il libro scritto con il dito de Dio viuo’).
(pseud-) Gioacchino da Fiore. Vaticinia Pontificum. Illustrated manuscript on grey-blue paper, in Italian. Italy, end of the sixteenth century.
Fol. 19v: a pope with Nabuchodonosor as a monstrous creature (‘Reuerentia’).
From the early fifteenth century onward these two series, along with their related images, commonly circulated together and were very popular, and the popularity of the collective Vaticinia de summis pontificibus was only heightened with the advent of print.
The Bolognese Dominican Leandro Alberti (1479-1552) was responsible for producing the first extant printed edition of the Vaticinia, which appeared in Bologna in July 1515. Alberti’s edition – the first published work of the well-known author of the popular Descrittione di tutta Italia, first published in 1550 – appeared under the title Ioachimi abbatis Vaticinia circa apostolicos viros et Ecclesiam Romanam, issued from the press of Girolamo Benedetti simultaneously with the Italian vernacular edition of the text (Prophetia dello abbate Ioachino circa li Pontifici et R.C). Surprisingly, both editions obtained the imprimatur from the Inquisition, despite the nature and content of the prophecies bordering on the fringes of heresy and the occult.
The Bolognese edition of the Prophetia dello abbate Ioachino is illustrated with thirty woodcuts: these partially follow the traditional illustrative apparatus found in the manuscript tradition of the Vaticinia as they lack the names of the popes depicted in the emblematic images. A second edition of Leandro’s translation was published in Venice in 1527 by an anonymous printer with a different set of woodblocks, including two additional illustrations that do not belong to the traditional Vaticinia series.
The present manuscript closely follows the Venetian edition of 1527, containing – like its printed counterpart (we referred to copy 730/1609 in the British Library) – thirty-two illustrations in the form of chiaroscuro wash drawings, including the two additional images, along with the identical elaborate cartouche on the title leaf. The first illustration is painted here on the verso of the first leaf and shows a friar at a desk – evidently Joachim of Fiore – preaching to his confreres.
(pseud-) Gioacchino da Fiore. Vaticinia Pontificum. Illustrated manuscript on grey-blue paper, in Italian. Italy, end of the sixteenth century.
Fol. 1v: a friar at a lectern – evidently Joachim of Fiore – preaching to his confreres;
The second illustration depicts an unidentified monk with a halo giving a book titled “Vitae Patrum” to four monks on his right, and an untitled book to four nuns on his left (in contrast, in the Venetian Prophetia both books are titled “Vitae Patrum”).
(pseud-) Gioacchino da Fiore. Vaticinia Pontificum. Illustrated manuscript on grey-blue paper, in Italian. Italy, end of the sixteenth century.
Fol. 4v: monk with a halo giving books to four monks and four nuns, and fol. 5r: Onorius IV (‘Dure fatiche sustinerà del corpo’).
The thirty subsequent illustrations belong to the traditional Vaticinia series, but, as in the aforementioned printed editions, the scheme is composed of only three elements: an image of a pope at the centre of the page, a motto at the top, and the mystical prophecy below. In this manuscript, however, the sequence of emblematic illustrations does not always follow that of the Venetian publication. The mottos and the mystical prophecies accompanying each illustration are substantially identical to those included in the publication of 1527, with a few minor orthographical variants.
The manuscript also includes the dedicatory letter from Leandro Alberti to Giulio de’ Medici, the future Pope Clemens VII and, at that time, Apostolic Legate in Bologna (fols. 2r-v), followed by the Vita de Ioachino Abbate de S. Flore, likewise composed by Alberti (fols. 3r-v), and the short verse address on fol. 4r ‘Sopra le Prophetie de lo Abbate Ioachino al Lectore’ by Filippo Fasanini (d. 1531), to whom the Italian translation has also been attributed.
Both printed editions of 1515 and 1527 are of the greatest rarity, and extant copies can be counted on one hand. The Bolognese as well as the Venetian Prophetia dello abbate Ioachino were apparently printed in a limited number of copies, a feature which might explain the enduring manuscript circulation of this prophetical work during the age of printing.
The ongoing popularity of the pseudo-Joachim prophecies is attributable in part to the general tendency of prophecies to be interpreted in ways that are generally most accommodating to the interpreter, but above all in the sense of dramatic, liberatory change Joachim unknowingly bestowed upon them. An extended variation on this theme is evident in another printed edition from 1527, Ein wunderliche Weissagung von dem Babstumb. In this case, the Vaticinia was appropriated for the highly polemic cause of the Protestant Reformation. The theologian and scientist Andreas Osiander wrote the preface and explanations for the images (in place of the traditional captions), accompanied by verses by the Meistersinger Hans Sachs and woodcuts by Erhard Schön, which introduced certain modifications into the traditional scheme.
“It was easy to see in these pictures denunciations of papal worldliness, simony and political intrigue, and Osiander was able to use these medieval prophecies as a telling polemic against the papacy in general terms. He did, however, recognise the original portrait of Celestine V as belonging to a different category and immediately applied it to Martin Luther, an identification commented on by both Luther himself and Melanchthon. He did not recognise the culminating series of angelic popes at all, but in any case, for Osiander, the papacy would not have an angelic future.” (Reeves, p. 122)
Such was the power of Joachim de Fiore’s mystical and mysterious work; even out of his hands, it would continue to prove, for centuries after his death, ever enlightening and ever provocative.
A 1573 fresco depicting Gioacchino da Fiore, in the Cathedral of Santa Severina, Calabria, Italy.
References
M. Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages. A Study in Joachimism, Oxford 1969; M. Reeves, “Some popular prophecies from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries”, Studies in Church History, 8 (1972), pp. 107-134; B. McGinn, “Angel Pope and Papal Antichrist”, Church History, 47 no. 2 (1978), pp. 155-173; B. McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions In the Middle Ages, New York 1979; D. L. Drysdall, “Filippo Fasanini and his ‘Explanation of Sacred Writing’, The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 13 (1983), pp. 127-155; R. Lerner, “On the origins of the earliest Latin pope prophecies, a reconsideration”, Falschungen im Mittelalters, MGHS, 33V, 1988, pp.611-35; O. Niccoli, “Prophetie di musaico. Figure e scritture gioachimite nella Venezia del Cinquecento”, A. Rotondò (ed.), Forme e destinazione del messaggio religioso: aspetti della propaganda religiosa nel Cinquecento, Firenze 1991, pp. 197-227; H. Millet, Il libro delle immagini dei papi. Storia di un testo profetico medievale, Roma 2002; A. Damanti, “Bononia docet: Leandro Alberti e l’ambiente umanistico a Bologna. Con qualche nota sulle edizioni albertiane dei Vaticinia Summi Pontificis”, M. Donattini (ed.), L’Italia dell’Inquisitore. Storia e geografia dell’Italia del Cinquecento nella Descrittione di Leandro Alberti, Bologna 2007, pp. 97-116; J.-B. Lebigue – H. Millet et. al. (eds.), Vaticinia Pontificum (ms. A.2448, Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio, Bolonia). Libro de estudios, Madrid 2008; A. Prosperi, “Vaticinia Pontificum. Peregrinazioni cinquecentesche di un testo celebre”. M. Donattini (ed.), Tra Rinascimento e Controriforma: Continuità di una ricerca. Atti della giornata di studi per Albano Biondi, Verona 2012, pp. 77-111.
How to cite this information
Julia Stimac, “Gioacchino da Fiore and the Rhetoric of Apocalypse,” PRPH Books, 30 March 2021, www.prphbooks.com/blog/Gioacchino-da-fiore. Accessed [date].This post is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.