Last Things
Page 18
The Israelites conquered Canaan and established a monarchy, but it split into two kingdoms of which the northern fell to the Assyrians in the eighth century and the southern, Judea, to Nebuchadnezzar, whose exiling of the leading citizens became a symbol of disappointment with Canaan. This caused an anonymous prophet to envision another exodus:
Comfort, comfort my people . . . speak tenderly to Jerusalem and tell her this, that she has fulfilled her term of bondage, that her penalty is paid. . . . Prepare a road for the lord through the wilderness, clear a highway across the desert for our God. (Isa. 40: 1–3, New English Bible)3
Exodus led to captivity and captivity to a new exodus. The prophets had voiced God’s discontent with Israel and Judea because they had failed to achieve the justice that the covenant demanded. When the dispersal of the northern people by the Assyrians was followed by the exile of the Judeans, the temptation grew to abandon Yahweh and to embrace the victorious deities of Babylon. The Judeans were dazzled by the opportunities in the metropolis, realizing how poor and off-the-beaten-track Jerusalem had been. Apocalypticism emerged in the prophets, Second Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, who created the notion of a renewed exodus and conquest to keep Judaism alive among the exiles. Cyrus, the Persian, permitted the return, but the second temple era had its own problems, culminating in the first Jewish War with the Romans in 70 AD.4
Popes Leo IX (1049–54) and Gregory VII (1073–85) launched the papal reform movement confident that God would enable them to attain their goals despite opposition from churchmen and lay rulers. Gregory, who expressed his vision of a reformed church in apocalyptic terms, was one of the first reformist apocalyptics, the prophets who used language traditionally associated with the end of history to describe thoroughgoing clerical reform. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) was the preeminent reformist apocalyptic of the first half of the twelfth century, and his De consideratione (written 1145–53) became a manifesto for his disciples, who included Gerhoch of Reichersberg (1092/1093–1169), Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179), and Joachim of Fiore (1130S–1202). Bernard urged Eugenius III to implement clerical reform, arguing that the pope had been given the position of vicar of Christ in order to purify Christendom spiritually. Bernard was upset that Eugenius, instead of working for reform, was preoccupied with judicial business, was surrounded by lawyers, and was taking the temporal sword. Bernard reminded Eugenius that the issue of Abelard and Gilbert of Poitiers was still hanging in the air.5
The trends that made Bernard uneasy intensified under the following pontiffs. The brief pontificate of Anastasius IV (1153–54) alarmed Hildegard, who addressed a scathing letter to him.6 Gerhoch of Reichersberg sought to persuade Hadrian IV (1154–59) to implement the decrees of the synod of Rheims over which Eugenius had presided in 1148, to read De consideratione, and to address its concerns, but Hadrian instead became involved in an increasingly bitter dispute with Frederick I.7
The schism between Alexander III (1159–81) and Victor IV (1159–64) completed both Gerhoch’s and Hildegard’s disillusionment with the popes as the agents to achieve clerical reform. Gerhoch supported the legitimacy of Alexander III, but he came reluctantly to the conclusion that simony had been involved in the pope’s election and that because Alexander refused to clear himself, he was quite probably a simoniac and certainly consumed by avarice. As such he was an “abomination of desolation” sitting on the papal throne. Alexander’s usurpation of the rights of Frederick and Alexander’s championing of papal justice and canon law were additional elements in Gerhoch’s indictment.8 Unable to believe that Alexander would struggle to realize reform, Gerhoch could only rely on his faith that somehow Jesus would reform the church just as he had come to his disciples on the stormy sea during the fourth watch of the night and reached out to Peter, whose lack of faith was causing him to sink beneath the waves (see Matthew 14: 25–33, Mark 6: 46–52, John 6: 15–21).9
Hildegard’s Sciuias (written 1141–51) was Augustinian in its apocalypticism, giving a detailed portrait of the final Antichrist but also alluding to a period of improvement after his annihilation (see Robert Lerner’s “Refreshment of the Saints”). Hildegard did, however, introduce the notion of a succession of periods before Antichrist characterized by five animals—a fiery dog, a yellow lion, a pale horse, a black pig, and a gray wolf.10 Charles Czarski has shown that Hildegard completely altered her thinking when she wrote her De operatione dei siue liber diuinorum operum simplicis hominis (begun in 1163). Under the fiery dog, the princes of the empire will strip the clergy of their temporal wealth, and the era of the yellow lion will begin millennially with holiness, peace, and prosperity. The pacifism of the Christians will induce outsiders to attack, but reform will again triumph. Both kings and princes will cease to have any respect for the empire and the pope will rule only Rome and its immediate environs. The renewed holiness will finally be engulfed by heretics and other sinners until Antichrist comes. The Liber diuinorum operum is certainly reformist, and, as Czarski has cogently argued, the shift must have resulted from Hildegard’s disillusionment with the papacy.11
Joachim of Fiore was born in the 1130s at Celico near Cosenza in Calabria. His father was a notary, and Joachim, the eldest son, was educated in his father’s profession and then given a post at the Norman court at Palermo. Sometime in the late 1160s or early 1170s, Joachim left the court, went to Palestine as a pilgrim, and returned convinced that he ought to become a wandering preacher. He became a monk at Corazzo, a Benedictine house between Cosenza and Catanzaro, where he was elected abbot in the late 1170s. In 1184 Joachim was at the Cistercian house of Casamari, which is located up in the mountains east of Frosinone between Rome and Monte Cassino. Joachim was trying to persuade the Cistercians to take Corazzo into their order. Eventually this happened, but by that time (c. 1189) Joachim had left Corazzo, was leading an eremitical life, and was about to found San Giovanni in Fiore, the mother abbey of his Florensian Order. The new order was prospering before Joachim died in 1202.12
Three intuitions shaped Joachim’s prophetic message. The first occurred when Joachim was in Palestine and involved concords between persecutions of Israel and persecutions of the church.13 This intuition was the basis of book one of the Liber de concordia.14
The second intuition came to Joachim at Pentecost while the abbot was at Casamari (probably in 1184). Joachim thenceforward understood trinitarian relationships by analogy to the musical instrument called a psaltery that was shaped like an equilateral triangle but with a blunt top; it had ten horizontal strings and a hole in the middle. The hole represented the unity while the top represented God the Father by whom the Son was generated. The Spirit proceeded from both the Father and the Son. Visualize a triangle with the Father at the top, the Son at the lower left facing angle and the Spirit at the lower right facing angle. The line from the top to the left angle represents the generation of the Son, the line from the top to the right angle the procession of the Spirit from the Father and the bottom line the procession from the Son.15
The third intuition happened after Joachim had left Casamari (hence in 1185 or 1186). Joachim was working on his commentary on the Apocalypse and was wrestling with some difficulty when, on Easter eve, the solution came to him.16 Joachim, I believe, realized that the Apocalypse was the inner wheel that corresponded to the outer wheel in Ezekiel’s vision (Ez. 1: 4–21). The outer wheel was the history of the Hebrew people from Abraham to the return from Babylon, recorded in the scriptures from Genesis through Nehemiah. The Apocalypse or inner wheel thus “concorded” with the history of the Hebrews and contained the history of the church.17
Joachim began his Liber de concordia while he was at Casamari (c. 1183–85) and finished it no later than 1198. The first four books formed a prolegomenon in which Joachim worked out the concords between the history of the Hebrew people and the history of the Church. In this working out, Joachim defined the patterns of history to which I shall return shortly.18 The Psalterium decem chordarum was begun at Casamari a
nd finished about 1186. In it Joachim explored trinitarian relationships and began to formulate the pattern of three status. Book five of the Liber de concordia commented on the scriptures from creation week to the prophets, ending with a commentary on Daniel. The Expositio in Apocalypsim was begun at Casamari and was finished by 1200 when Joachim wrote his Testamentary Letter.19 The Tractatus super quatuor euangelia commented on a harmony of the four gospels. Most scholars have considered it to be a late work because it is incomplete and is not listed in the Testamentary Letter. That omission, however, may have been because it was left unfinished.20 Joachim intended to comment on all those books of the Bible that were considered suitable for spiritual or allegorical interpretation—the histories, the prophets, the gospels, and the Apocalypse. The wisdom books were excluded, as well as the letters of Paul and the other apostles, except for Job, which Joachim considered one of the four special books from the Hebrew scriptures (the others were Esther, Judith, and Tobit). Joachim commented on these four special books in book five of the Liber de concordia.21 The four gospels corresponded to these four special books and to the four hubs and the living creatures on Ezekiel’s wheels.
While he was a hermit at Petra Lata before he founded the abbey at S. Giovanni in Fiore, Joachim began but left unfinished a commentary on the life and rule of St. Benedict. Stephen Wessley dated it to 1186–88 and argued that in it Joachim was justifying himself by reference to the life of Benedict.22
Joachim thought visually and analogically. Trees, vines, and geometrical shapes underlay his thinking. He inserted figure into the Liber de Concordia, Psalterium decem chordarum, and Expositio in Apocalypsim, and the Liber figurarum is a collection in which the figures are considered to be genuine works of Joachim, although the compiler was one of his disciples. Some of the figures in the Liber figurarum correspond to those in the other works, but even in these cases there are significant differences.23 Like Bernard, Gerhoch, and Hildegard, Joachim was a monastic theologian. Theology was commentary on Scripture and primarily on the spiritual senses. Symbolism was intrinsic in Joachim’s methodology.24
Joachim was widely respected as a prophet during his lifetime. In 1184 he went to Veroli to see Pope Lucius III. The abbot sought permission to write and confirmation that God had indeed revealed the concordia to him. While he was in the pope’s presence, he commented on a sibylline text that had been discovered among the papers of Matthew of Angers, cardinal priest of San Marcello. This commentary is his earliest extant work, the De prophetia ignota.25
In 1186 Joachim went to Verona, where Pope Urban III (1185–87) renewed Joachim’s permission to write. On June 8, 1188 Clement III wrote to Joachim from the Lateran Palace in Rome, mentioning Urban’s permission and exhorting Joachim to finish his “Expositionem Apocalipsis and Opus concordie.” Joachim came to Rome in this same year and received Clement’s permission to leave his post at Corazzo, which became a daughter house of Fossanova.26
During the winter of 1190–91, Joachim was interviewed by Richard I the Lionhearted while the English king was wintering in Messina.27 Joachim went to Rome again during the pontificate of Celestine III (1191–98), and on August 25, 1196, Celestine issued a bull formally approving the foundation of S. Giovanni in Fiore and the constitutions of the Order of Fiore.28 Finally Adam of Persigny, a Cistercian, interviewed Joachim while he was in Rome. The extant account dates the interview to 1196, but Marjorie Reeves has argued that it must have been in 1198 after Innocent III had become pope because it refers to him.29 In addition to his contacts with the popes and with Richard I, Joachim maintained active ties with the rulers of Sicily and Calabria, William II (died 1189), Tancred of Lecce, and Henry VI.30
Bernard of Clairvaux in his De consideratione wrote: “Quaternity sets limits to the earth; it is not a characteristic of the deity. God is trinity, God is each of three persons. If it pleases you to add a fourth divinity, I am already convinced that what is not God should not be worshipped.” 31
Bernard was attacking Gilbert of Poitiers.32 Bernard’s attack on Gilbert probably caused Joachim to write a treatise in which the Calabrian abbot accused Peter Lombard of teaching that the godhead was a quaternitas rather than a trinity. Lateran IV took Lombard’s side and condemned Joachim’s attack. This condemnation provoked a furious reaction among Joachim’s Cistercian and Florensian disciples.33 This reaction is reflected in Pseudo-Joachim, Super Hieremiam prophetam, completed by 1248 at the latest.34
In 1248 Friar Gerard of Borgo San Donnino was in Provins, where he cited the Super Hieremiam to Friar Salimbene.35 In 1254 Gerard published a Liber introductorius in euangelium eternum at Paris, which probably consisted of an introduction and all or parts of the Liber de concordia, Expositio in Apocalypsim, and Psalterium decem chordarum with glosses by Gerard in which Gerard interpreted the third status radically. Gerard was a Franciscan, and the order was currently involved in a bitter dispute with the secular masters at the University of Paris. They seized on the Liber introductorius, arguing that it reflected the antichristian heresies that the mendicants were propagating. The condemnation of Gerard’s Liber and the subsequent condemnation of extracts from Joachim’s works by the Commission of Anagni raised questions about Joachim’s orthodoxy that are still argued.36
Hence modern scholarship has focused on two issues—Joachim’s doctrine of the trinity and his division of history in three status. Interpreters who have favored a radical understanding—making Joachim the progenitor of Hegel—have argued that Joachim was a tritheist who gave more weight to the three persons than to the unity and gave the Holy Spirit a mission equal to and separate from that of Jesus Christ. The third status of the Holy Spirit would involve as complete a break from the present status of the Son as that status had made from the first status of the Father. In particular, the clerical church and the sacraments would cease to function when the ecclesia spiritualis arrived, just as the synagogue had earlier been replaced by the church.
Defenders of Joachim’s orthodoxy argued that his trinitarian theology was completely orthodox and even tried to prove that the treatise condemned at Lateran IV was a forgery. Despite whatever changes the third status might involve, the clergy and sacraments would persist unchanged to the end of history. Scholars quoted random passages from Joachim’s works in defense of their views. Many of these passages had been cited by the Commission of Anagni.37
Marjorie Reeves has compiled a major revision of all prior interpretations. Methodologically, she has argued that the figures are the keys to understanding Joachim’s thought. McGinn, West, and Zimdars-Swartz have all followed Reeves’s lead in this respect. Reeves has also compelled scholars to recognize that Joachim used several patterns of history and that the three status had to be understood in parallel with the two tempora and the patterns of fives and sevens.38
Augustine of Hippo tried to discourage speculation about the end and was pessimistic about the future. Reform for him was strictly personal. Joachim has been contrasted with the Augustinian tradition because Joachim expected the apocalyptic crisis in the imminent future and because he expected the third status of the Holy Spirit to be significantly holier and more spiritual than the second status of the church.39
Joachim, however, was fundamentally Augustinian. His understanding of the trinity relied on Augustine’s analogy to the faculties of the human mind, memory, reason, and love.40 Moreover, Augustine’s eight etates are the foundation of Joachim’s understanding of history. Augustine relied on the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1: 2–17, which supplied forty-two ancestors from Abraham to Joseph divided into three groups of fourteen each (Abraham to David, David to the exile, the exile to Jesus). This was supplemented by the twenty generations that Luke gave from Adam to Abraham (Luke 3: 23–38). Augustine sought to undermine the anno mundi dating that fed constant expectation of a millennial seventh worldweek by using the generations rather than numbers of years to define the etates before Jesus because generations, especially those before Abraham, involved extremely varied
lengths of time. Augustine therefore divided the time before Jesus into five etates, the first two of ten generations each, the last three of fourteen each. Augustine’s sixth etas began from the Incarnation and lasted until the end of the world. Its length was indeterminate so that its end could only be surmised by the onset of various signs. The seventh ran parallel to the sixth, but the sixth was terrestrial, an age of suffering and trouble, while the seventh was heavenly—the rest of the souls who had died in Jesus and were awaiting the final resurrection. Augustine equated the millennium of Apocalypse 20: 1–6 with the entire history of the church, in order to blunt the thinking that it would be the seventh worldweek of earthly bliss. The eighth etas of eternity was beyond history.41
Properly we call the concordia a similitude of equal proportion of the New to the Old Testament, equal I say as to number but not as to dignity, when namely person and person, order and order, war and war by means of a certain parity gaze as it were into each other’s faces.42
Moreover that understanding which is called concords resembles a continuous highway that goes from the desert to the city. Along the route there are low spots where the traveler is uncertain about the right direction to pursue and there are also mountain peaks from which the pilgrim can look both backward and forward and measure the right way by contemplating the path he has come.43
Concordia was not typology or allegory. Events, persons, places, institutions, and orders in a particular generation have similarities or parallels in the same generation in the succeeding status or tempora. Josiah was the twenty-eighth from Jacob in the line of Jesus’ ancestors and the thirty-sixth from Jacob counting by the judges of Israel. Josiah, king of Judah from 640 to 609 B.C., carried out a major reform inspired by “some form of the book of Deuteronomy.”44 Josiah, however, tried to stop pharoah Necho II of Egypt from marching to the Euphrates but was defeated at Megiddo and killed.45 Pope Leo IX (1049–54), who lived in the thirty-sixth generation of the church, initiated the papal reform movement, but his expedition against the Normans resulted in a bitter defeat.46 Josiah and Leo “concord” with each other.