Last Things

by Bynum, Caroline Walker; Freedman, Paul;

  43. Best and Bergin, Lebor na Huidre, 76; and M. Stokes, Three Months, 278.

  44. Selmer, Navigatio, 18–19.

  45. Eleanor Knott, ed., Togail Bruidne Da Derga (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1975), 5.

  46. The Mabinogion, trans. Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones (London: J. M. Dent, rep. 1975), 61–63.

  47. Whitley Stokes, “Tidings of the Resurrection,” Revue Celtique 25 (1904): 232–59; Kenney, Sources, 738.

  48. The so-called Catechesis Celtica is edited by André Wilmart in Analecta Reginensia (Rome: Vatican, 1933), 29–112.

  49. Arguments for a Goidelic (Irish) background are presented by Paul Grosjean, “A propos du manuscrit 49 de la Reine Christine,” Analecta Bollandiana 54 (1936): 113–36, esp. 118; and Martin McNamara, “Irish Affiliations of the Catechesis Celtica,” Celtica 21 (1990): 291–334 (esp. 332–34 for a summary of his arguments).

  50. Wilmart, Analecta Reginensia, 107.

  51. Seymour, “Notes on Apocrypha in Ireland,” 114. See also the same author’s “The Bringing Forth of the Soul in Irish Literature,” Journal of Theological Studies 22 (1920): 16–20.

  52. Selmer, Navigatio, 65–68.

  53. W. Stokes, “Voyage of the Húi Corra,” 48.

  54. Best and Bergin, Lebor na Huidre, 75; and M. Stokes, Three Months, 276.

  55. Best and Bergin, Lebor na Huidre, xii.

  56. Whitley Stokes, ed., Saltair na Rann (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1883). The work has been studied as much for its grammatical and metrical forms as for its content, but see St. John D. Seymour, “The Signs of Doomsday in Saltair na Rann,” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 36 (1922) C, 154–63, and Kenney, Sources, 736–37.

  57. A study of the legend of the fifteen signs, with an edition and translation of the relevant section from Saltair na Rann is in William W. Heist, The Fifteen Signs Before Doomsday (East Lansing: Michigan State College Press, 1952), 2–21.

  58. Wilmart, Analecta Reginensia, 58.

  59. [Pseudo-]Bede, Excerptiones Patrum, Collectanea Flores ex Diversis, Quaestiones, et Parabolae, ed. J. P. Migne in Patrologiae cursus completus. series latina, 217 vols. (Paris, 1844–55), 94, cols. 539–75 (col. 555).

  60. Heist believed that the Collectaneum was a late work composed after Saltair na Rann; see Fifteen Signs, 95–96. An earlier date is argued by Robin Flower in Standish O’Grady and Robin Flower, eds., Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the British Library (formerly the British Museum), 2 vols. (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1992), 2: 487. Kenney, Sources, 680, dates its composition to the eighth century.

  61. A transcript and translation of the relevant passage is in Heist, Fifteen Signs, 24–25.

  62. Heist, Fifteen Signs, 115.

  63. Margaret Enid Griffiths, Early Vaticination in Welsh, with English Parallels (Cardiff: University of Wales, 1937), 44–47.

  64. J. O’Keefe, “A Poem on the Day of Judgement,” Ériu 3 (1907): 29–33; Kenney, Sources, 737.

  65. Best and Bergin, Lebor na Huidre, 74; and M. Stokes, Three Months, 274.

  66. Fergus Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1988), 50; the law code cited is Bretha Crólige.

  67. The main versions are edited by Georges Dottin, “Le Teanga Bithnua du manuscrit de Rennes, 70a,” Revue Celtique 24 (1903): 365–403; and Whitley Stokes, “The Evernew Tongue,” Ériu 2 (1905): 96–162; a twelfth-century text is edited by U. Nic Énrí and G. Mac Niocaill, “The Second Recension of the Evernew Tongue,” Celtica 9 (1971): 1–60. For a brief discussion see Kenney, Sources, 737–38; and Wright, Irish Tradition, 35.

  68. Stokes, “Evernew Tongue,” 102.

  69. Ibid., 138.

  70. Best and Bergin in Lebor na Huidre, 67–76. There is also a translation in C. S. Boswell, An Irish Precursor of Dante (London: D. Nutt, 1908).

  71. For discussions see St. John D. Seymour, “The Vision of Adamnan,” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 37 (1927) C: 304–12; Boswell, An Irish Precursor of Dante; D. Dumville, “Towards an Interpretation of Fis Adomnan,” Studia Celtica 12/13 (1977/78): 62–77; and Wright, Irish Tradition, 35.

  72. Seymour, “Vision of Adamnan,” 310.

  73. The idea of thirty years as the perfect age is found also in the Irish Adam and Eve story, see Greene et al., Irish Adam and Eve, ii, 70.

  74. W. Stokes, “Tidings of the Resurrection,” 236.

  75. For a brief discussion with references, see Benjamin T. Hudson, “Gaelic Princes and Gregorian Reform,” in Crossed Paths: Methodological Approaches to the Celtic Aspect of the European Middle Ages, ed. Hudson and Vickie L. Ziegler (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1990), 61–82 (65–66).

  76. Whitley Stokes, “Tidings of Doomsday,” Revue Celtique 4 (1880): 245–57; Kenney, Sources, 738.

  77. Georges Dottin, “Les deux chagrins du royaume du ciel,” Revue Celtique 21 (1900): 349–87.

  78. Kenney, Sources, 738.

  79. Seymour, “Eschatology of the Early Irish Church,” 191–97.

  80. This has been suggested for other theological works; see Milton McC. Gatch, Preaching and Theology in Anglo-Saxon England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), 168, n. 11.

  81. R. I. Best and H. J. Lawlor, The Martyrology of Tallaght (London: Harrison and Sons, 1931). The Life of Brendan in the Book of Lismore is a twelfth-century reworking of a probable ninth-century original; see Whitley Stokes, ed., Lives of the Saints from the Book of Lismore (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1890), 99–115, 247–61, and 349–54.

  82. Benjamin T. Hudson, Prophecy of Berchdn (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996), 37–38.

  83. Kuno Meyer, “Das Ende von Baile in Scáil,” Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 12 (1918): 371–82.

  84. G. Murphy, “Two Sources in Thurneysen’s Heldensage,” Ériu 16 (1952): 145–51.

  85. Kenney, Sources, 749–52.

  86. The legend is preserved by Geoffrey Keating, Foras Feasa ar Eirinn, ed. David Comyn and Patrick S. Dineen, Irish Texts Society 6, 8–9 (Dublin: Irish Texts Society, 1914), 8, lines 3170–86.

  87. Félire Óengussu Céli Dé, The Martyrology of Oengus the Culdee, ed. Whitley Stokes (London, 1905; rep. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1984), 190. Two studies by K. Müller-Lisowski are “Texte zur Mog Ruith Sage,” Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 14 (1923): 145–63, 422, esp. 154–56; and “La légende de St. Jean dans la tradition irlandaise et le druide Mog Ruith,” Etudes Celtiques 3 (1938): 46–70.

  88. Máire Herbert and Pádraig Ó Riain, Betha Adamnáin (London: Irish Texts Society, 1988), 60.

  89. A most useful and succinct discussion of this chronology is given in the Annals of Ulster, 2: 56–57.

  90. Whitley Stokes, “The Annals of Tigernach, the Continuation,” Revue Celtique 18 (1897): 18.

  91. Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters, from the Earliest Period to 1616, ed. John O’Donovan, 7 vols. (Dublin: Hodges, Smith, 1851), 2: sub anno 1096.

  92. Whitley Stokes, “Adomnan’s Second Vision,” Revue Celtique 12 (1891): 420–43. For an old but still useful discussion, see Eugene O’Curry, Lectures on the Manuscript Materials of Ancient Irish History (Dublin: J. Duffy, 1861; rep. 1878), 423–30.

  93. Best and Bergin, Lebor na Huidre, 67.

  94. For scúap a Fánait, sirfes Érinn anairdhes draic lonn and roth ramach, see the Martyrology of Oengus, 190; and the study by Paul Grosjean, “Le balai de Fánaid,” Etudes Celtiques 2 (1937); 284–86.

  95. Kenney, Sources, 751.

  96. Bernard McGinn, Apocalypticism in the Western Tradition (Brookfield, Vt.: Variorum, 1994), 3: 277.

  97. Hudson, “Gaelic Princes,” 61–82.

  98. For editions and references see Kenney, Sources, 741–42. A discussion appears in Carl Watkins, “Doctrine, Politics and Purgation: The Vision of Tnúthgal and the Vision of Owein at St. Patrick’s Purgatory,” Journal of Medieval History 22 (1996): 225–36.

  99. McGinn, Apocalypticism i
n the Western Tradition, 3: 274.

  100. Rodney Mearns, ed., The Vision of Tundale (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1985), 8.

  101. Whitley Stokes, “The Fifteen Tokens of Doomsday,” Revue Celtique 28 (1907): 308–26, 432.

  102. Oskamp, Voyage of Máel Dúin, 16.

  103. Ibid., 61–63.

  104. Fragmentary Annals of Ireland, ed. Joan Newlon Radner (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1978), 104.

  105. Kenney, Sources, 354–56.

  106. Myles Dillon, “Literary Activity in the Pre-Norman Period,” Seven Centuries of Irish Learning, 1000–1700, 2nd ed., ed. Brian Ó Cuív (Dublin: Mercier Press, 1971), 22–37, at 32.

  Exodus and Exile: Joachim of Fiore’s Apocalyptic Scenario

  1. The words are taken from Songs of Zion (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1981), no. 112. J. Jefferson Cleveland and William B. McClain in their introduction to the section of Songs on spirituals point out that “the Old Testament is much more extensively represented in spiritual texts, for through its stories of the Hebrews in bondage, it immediately spoke to the slaves” (no. 73, 3rd unnumbered page).

  2. Michael Walzer, Exodus and Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 149.

  3. The translation is from the New English Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, 1970).

  4. My treatment of the origins of apocalypticism and the development of reformist apocalypticism is drawn from my manuscript in progress entitled “Bound for the Promised Land.”

  5. See Daniel, “Bound for the Promised Land.” Bernard’s De consideratione is edited in Sancti Bernardi opera, ed. J. Leclercq, H. M. Rochais, and C. H. Talbot, 8 vols. (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1957–77), 3: 379–493, hereafter Opera. John D. Anderson and Elizabeth T. Kennan have translated it as Five Books of Consideration: Advice to a Pope, The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux, vol. 13, Cistercian Fathers Series . 37 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1976), hereafter Consideration.

  6. Hildegard of Bingen, The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, trans. Joseph L. Baird and Radd K. Ehrman, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), no. 8, 41–43; Lieven van Acker, ed., Hildegardis Bingensis Epistolarium: Prima pars, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis (hereafter CCCM) 91 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991), 19–22.

  7. Gerhoch of Reichersberg, Letter to Pope Hadrian About the Novelties of the Day (Liber de nouitatibus huius temporis), prol., sect. 5, chap. 41, s. 9, ed. Nikolaus M. Háring, S.A.C. Studies and Texts 24 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974), 24, 105–6.

  8. Gerhoch of Reichersberg, De inuestigatione antichristi liber 1., ed. E. Sackur, Monumenta Germaniae Historica (hereafter MGH), Libelli de lite 3 (Hanover: Hahn, 1897), 304–95.

  9. Gerhoch of Reichersberg, De quarta uigilia noctis, ed. E. Sackur, MGH, Libelli de lite, vol. 3 (Hanover: Hahn, 1897), 503–25.

  10. Hildegard of Bingen, Sciuias, bk. 3, vision 11:1–6, ed. Adelgundis Führkötter OSB and Angela Carlevaris OSB, CCCM 43–43a (Turnhout: Brepols, 1977–78), 578–80, trans. Mother Columba Hart and Jane Bishop, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York and Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1990), 494–95. Robert Lerner, “The Refreshment of the Saints,” Traditio 32 (1976): 97–144, traces the notion that a period of time will be left after the destruction of the final antichrist during which the saints will be at peace and rest. On Hildegard see pp. 112–13. Lerner’s article has been printed in an Italian translation in Refrigerio dei santi: Gioacchino da Fiore e l’escatologia medievale (Rome: Viella, 1995), 19–66 (hereafter Refrigerio).

  11. Hildegard of Bingen, De operatione dei siue Liber diuinorum operum, bk. 3, vision 10, sect. 15–38, PL 197, cols. 1017–38. Charles Czarski, The Prophecies of St. Hildegard of Bingen, Ph.D. diss., University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, 1983, is the fundamental work on Hildegard’s apocalypticism. He first pointed out the significant differences between the Sciuias and the Liber diuinorum operum and suggested why Hildegard reinterpreted her vision. Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Reformist Apocalypticism and “Piers Plowman,” Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 7 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 26–75, first applied reformist apocalypticism to Hildegard.

  12. The fundamental study is Herbert Grundmann, “Zur Biographie Joachims von Fiore und Rainer von Ponza,” Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 16 (1960): 437–546. This was reprinted in Herbert Grundmann, Ausgewählte Aufsätze, Teil 2, Joachim von Fiore, MGH, Schriften 25.2 (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1977), 255–360 (hereafter Biographie). Grundmann edited the anonymous Vita b. Joachimi abbatis, which was written by a companion who had been with Joachim since the abbot left Corazzo to become a hermit (pp. 528–38), and Luke of Cosenza’s brief memorial (pp. 538–44). Luke was one of Joachim’s scribes at Casamari and remained a friend and supporter. See also Joachim of Fiore, Liber de concordia noui ac ueteris testamenti: Books 1–4, ed. E. Randolph Daniel, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 73, part 8 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1983), xi–xxii (hereafter Liber de concordia).

  13. Grundmann, Biographie, 528, where the anonymous Vita says: “Moises noster geminae reuelatione legis accepta de monte descendit et ad suos, quos pro desiderio terrenorum ima tenere nouerat, rediturus perambulare prius omnem terra, in qua uideri deus et cum hominibus conuersari dignatus est, uoluit et religiosos usquequaque degentes pia sollicitudine uisitare.” Stephen E. Wessley, Joachim of Fiore and Monastic Reform (New York: Peter Lang, 1990), 29–31 (hereafter Joachim), interpreted this identification of Joachim with Moses to mean that the author of the Vita was a Florensian who saw the Florensians as part of a new exodus led by Joachim, the “new Moses.” Joachim himself saw Bernard of Clairvaux as the new Moses. See below, p. 138.

  14. Joachim, Liber de concordia, xii–xiii, xxvii. Most scholars have called these experiences visions, but I prefer “intuition” to distinguish Joachim’s experiences from the visions of Hildegard of Bingen. Hildegard saw definite images and later described and interpreted them. Joachim had been thinking about a problem when a flash of insight solved the problem. Joachim, however, clearly believed that these insights came from God.

  15. Grundmann, Biographie, 532: “Tunc cum esset in dicto monasterio Casamariae, reuelatum est ei misterium trinitatis et scripsit ibi primum librum Psalterii decem chordarum.” The Vita refers to Joachim’s Psalterium decem chordarum (Venice, 1527; rep. Frankfurt am Main: Minerva, 1965). Joachim described his Pentecost intuition on fol. 227rb–vb.

  16. Grundmann, Biographie, 533: “Alexandro autem papa defuncto, cum omnia sub Siciliae rege Guiglermo secundo summa pace agerentur, tertio die post resurrectionis dominice festum, in quo sibi ueteris et noui testamenti fuerat concordia reuelata, uocauit.” Joachim describes this intuition at length in his Expositio in Apocalypsim (Venice, 1527; rep. Frankfurt am Main: Minerva, 1964), fol. 39rb–va. Grundmann argued that the author must have meant Lucius III, who died on November 25, 1185, rather than Alexander III, who died in 1181. In Joachim, Liber de concordia, xvi–xviii, I have discussed the problem. Scholars disagree about both the number and the order of the intuitions. Marjorie Reeves argues that the Easter vision preceded the Pentecost vision. See her The Influence of Prophecy: A Study in Joachimism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969; rep. South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), 21–24 (the reprinted edition differs from the original only in the bibliography), hereafter Influence; and her Joachim of Fiore and the Prophetic Future (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 4–5. Robert Lerner, “Joachim of Fiore’s Breakthrough to Chiliasm,” Cristianesimo nella storia 6 (1985) 489–512; trans. into Italian in Lerner, Refrigerio, 97–116. Lerner argues that the Easter vision came before the Pentecost one. Bernard McGinn, The Calabrian Abbot: Joachim of Fiore in the History of Western Thought (New York: Macmillan, 1985), 19–22, hereafter Calabrian Abbot, reversed the two later intuitions and argued that the Palestine one was unhistorical.

  17. Delno C. West and Sandra Zimdars-Swartz, Joachim of Fiore: A Study
in Spiritual Perception and History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), 95–98, argue that the wheels of Ezekiel served Joachim as a means by which to integrate his thinking.

  18. Joachim, Liber de concordia, xxii–xxvii.

  19. For an edition of the Testamentum, see Joachim, Liber de concordia, 4–6.

  20. Joachim of Fiore, Tractatus super quatuor Euangelia, ed. Ernesto Buonaiuti, Fonti per la storia d’Italia 67 (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano, 1930). Henri Mottu, La manifestation de l’Esprit selon Joachim de Fiore (Neuchatel and Paris: Delachaux and Niestlê Editeurs, 1977), argued that Joachim took a much more radical stance in the Tractatus than in his earlier writings and thus became the progenitor of modern notions of revolution. Mottu later retracted his arguments in two papers: “Joachim de Fiore et Hegel: apocalyptique biblique et philosophie de l’histoire,” in Storia e messaggio in Gioacchino da Fiore: atti del I congresso internazionale di studi gioachimiti (San Giovanni in Fiore: Centro di Studi Gioachimiti, 1980), 151–94; and “La mémoire du futur: signification de l’ancien testament dans la pensée de Joachim de Fiore,” in L “Eta” dello spirito e la fine dei tempi in Gioacchino da Fiore e nel gioachimismo medievale, Atti del II Congresso Internazionale di Studi Gioachimiti, ed. Antonio Crocco (San Giovanni in Fiore: Centro Internazionale di Studi Gioachimiti, 1986), 13–28.

  21. Joachim, Liber de concordia noui ac ueteris testamenti (Venice, 1519: rep. Frankfurt am Main: Minerva, 1964), fols. 112vb–122va.

  22. Wessley, Joachim of Fiore, 1–27; Cipriano Baraut, “Un tratado inédito de Joaquin de Fiore: De uita sancti Benedicti et de officio diuino secundum eius doctrinam,” Analecta Sacra Tarraconensia 24 (1951): 33–122.

  23. Joachim, Liber figurarum, ed. Leone Tondelli, Marjorie Reeves, and Beatrice Hirsch-Reich, Il libro delle figure dell’abate Gioachino da Fiore, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Torino: Societá Editrice Internazionale, 1953; rep. 1990), hereafter Liber figurarum. Marjorie Reeves and Beatrice Hirsch-Reich, The Figurae of Joachim of Fiore (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), is an essential commentary on the figures (hereafter Figurae).