Vaticiana in chiaroscuro wash drawings

(pseud-) Gioacchino da Fiore.

Vaticinia Pontificum. Illustrated manuscript on grey-blue paper, in Italian. Italy, end of the sixteenth century.

An interesting manuscript on grey-blue paper containing the earliest translation in Italian vernacular – made by the Dominican Leandro Alberti – of the Vaticinia pontificum, the mystical prophecies traditionally attributed to the Calabrian abbot Joachim of Fiore (ca. 1132-1202). The Vaticinia may have had Byzantine origins, but by the late thirteenth century the prophecies were being disseminated by Joachimite disciples and were associated with his authorship. It is the most important apocalyptic work of the Middle Ages, and the manuscript was widely circulated.

The text of the Vaticinia pontificum was produced in two stages. The older set consists of fifteen prophecies, substantially Latin translations of the Greek Oracles composed by Leo the Wise which had been in circulation since about the time of Pope Benedict XI’s death in 1304. In the second half of the fourteenth century, another fifteen similar prophecies were produced. From the early fifteenth century onward these two series, along with their related images, commonly circulated together, the more recent series generally placed before the older one to keep the future predictions further from the present. Each prophecy follows a canonized scheme composed of four elements: an emblematic image of a pope, his name before and after becoming pope, a mystical prophecy, and a motto. In 1515, the Bolognese Dominican Leandro Alberti (1479- 1552) – well-known author of the popular Descrittione di tutta Italia, first published in 1550 – was responsible for one of the earliest printed editions of the Vaticinia pontificum.

Alberti’s edition, his first published work, appeared in print in Bologna in July 1515 under the title Ioachimi abbatis Vaticinia circa apostolicos viros et Ecclesiam Romanam. The booklet was 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 not belonging 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. 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”). 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.

M. Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages. A Study in Joachimism, Oxford 1969; D. L. Drysdall, “Filippo Fasanini and his ‘Explanation of Sacred Writing’, The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 13 (1983), pp. 127-155; 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.