Quick Facts
Fiore also spelled:
Floris
Italian:
Gioacchino Da Fiore
Born:
c. 1130, /35, Celico, Kingdom of Naples [Italy]
Died:
1201/02, Fiore

Joachim Of Fiore (born c. 1130, /35, Celico, Kingdom of Naples [Italy]—died 1201/02, Fiore) was an Italian mystic, theologian, biblical commentator, philosopher of history, and founder of the monastic order of San Giovanni in Fiore. He developed a philosophy of history according to which history develops in three ages of increasing spirituality: the ages of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The known facts regarding the life of Joachim of Fiore are few. Legends about his parentage and youth are of little historical significance, but from an autobiographical reference it seems certain that he went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land that reputedly had an effect on his conversion to the religious life. He became a Cistercian monk at Sambucina and in 1177 abbot of Corazzo (Sicily). About 1191 he broke away from the distracting duties of administration and retired into the mountains to follow the contemplative life. Although claimed as a fugitive by the Cistercians, Joachim was allowed by Pope Celestine III to form the disciples who gathered around him at San Giovanni in Fiore (a town located in present-day Cosenza province in Calabria) into the Order of San Giovanni in Fiore in 1196.

Far more significant is the evidence for the inner development of a man who came to believe that spiritual understanding would be given to one who wrestled with the “letter” of the Scriptures to get at the “spirit.” Three moments of special illumination are indicated, but the first is only known in legendary form, connected with either his pilgrimage or his novitiate at Sambucina. The second, recorded by himself, took place one Easter eve, after a period of frustrated study of the biblical book of Revelation when he felt himself “imprisoned” by difficulties. In the midnight silence, suddenly his mind was flooded with clarity and his understanding released from prison. The third was an experience at Pentecost, when, after a time of agonizing doubt on the doctrine of the Trinity, Joachim had a vision of a psaltery with 10 strings, in a triangular form, that clarified the mystery through a visual symbol and called forth paeans of praise from him. He expresses this experience of illumination given after mental striving in terms of the city seen intermittently by the approaching pilgrim or of the spirit breaking through the hard rind of the letter.

He was summoned by Pope Lucius III in 1184 and urged to press on with the biblical exegesis he had begun. This probably refers to the Liber concordie Novi ac Veteris Testamenti (“Book of Harmony of the New and Old Testaments”), in which Joachim worked out his philosophy of history, primarily in a pattern of “twos”—the concords between the two great dispensations (or Testaments) of history, the Old and the New. But already Joachim’s spiritual experience was creating in his mind his truly original “pattern of threes.” If the spiritualis intellectus springs from the letter of the Old and New Testaments, then history itself must culminate in a final age of the spirit that proceeds from both the previous ages. Thus was born his trinitarian philosophy of history in which the three Persons are, as it were, built into the time structure in the three ages or status of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The third status was to be won by the church only after arduous pilgrimage and great tribulation, like the Israelites marching through the wilderness and crossing the Jordan River into the Promised Land. As guides through this crucial stage, Joachim prophesied the advent of two new orders of spiritual men, one of hermits to agonize for the world on the mountaintop and one a mediating order to lead men on to the new spiritual plane. Although the third age belongs par excellence to contemplatives, secular clergy and laymen are not shut out of it. In a strange diagram, a “ground plan” of the New Jerusalem, various categories of monks are grouped around the seat of God, but below, secular clergy and tertiaries (lay members) live according to their rule.

In the Expositio in Apocalypsim (“Exposition of the Apocalypse”), Joachim seeks to probe the imminent crisis of evil, as pictured in the apocalyptic symbols of Antichrist, and the life of the spirit to follow. His third main work, the Psalterium decem chordarum (“Psaltery of Ten Strings”), expounds his doctrine of the Trinity through the symbol of his vision of the 10-stringed psaltery. Here and in a lost tract he attacked the doctrine of “quaternity” (an overemphasis on the “one essence” of the Godhead that seems to separate it from the three Persons of the Trinity and so create a fourth), which he attributed to Peter Lombard, a 12th-century theologian. Besides this trilogy, written concurrently, Joachim left minor tracts and one uncompleted major work, the Tractatus super quattuor Evangelia (“Treatise on the Four Gospels”).

Joachim was a poet and artist. His lyricism breaks through the biblical exegesis that he chose as his medium and the turgid Latin of his style. Above all, his visual imagination is expressed in the unique Liber figurarum (“Book of Figures”; discovered in 1937), a book of drawings and figures thought to be a genuine work by most Joachim scholars today. Here his vision of the culminating age of history is embodied in trees that flower and bear fruit luxuriantly at the top; his doctrine of the Trinity is expressed in remarkable geometric figures; his kaleidoscopic vision fuses images in some strange shapes, such as the tree that becomes an eagle, which may have influenced Dante. Joachim’s figures probably carried his ideas in exciting and popular form far more widely than his indigestible writings.

Are you a student?
Get a special academic rate on Britannica Premium.

In his lifetime Joachim was acclaimed as a prophet, gifted with divine illumination, and this is how he was seen by the first chroniclers after his death. The condemnation of his tract against Peter Lombard by the fourth Lateran Council in 1215 dimmed his reputation for a time, but the appearance of the Franciscan and Dominican mendicant orders, hailed as Joachim’s new spiritual men, reestablished him as a prophet. The Spiritual Franciscans at mid-13th century and various other friars, monks, and sects down to the 16th century appropriated his prophecy of a third age. But Joachim has always had a double reputation, as saint and as heretic, for cautious Christian thinkers and leaders have seen his writings as highly dangerous. The debate as to whether he was orthodox or heretic continues today.

Marjorie E. Reeves

eschatology, the doctrine of the last things. It was originally a Western term, referring to Jewish, Christian, and Muslim beliefs about the end of history, the resurrection of the dead, the Last Judgment, the messianic era, and the problem of theodicy (the vindication of God’s justice). Historians of religion have applied the term to similar themes and concepts in the religions of nonliterate peoples, ancient Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cultures, and Eastern civilizations. Eschatological archetypes also can be found in various secular liberation movements.

Nature and significance

In the history of religion, the term eschatology refers to conceptions of the last things: immortality of the soul, rebirth, resurrection, migration of the soul, and the end of time. These concepts also have secular parallels—for example, in the turning points of one’s life and in one’s understanding of death. Often these notions are contrasted with the experience of suffering in the world. Eschatological themes thrive during crises, serving as consolation for those who hope for a better world or as motivation for a revolutionary transformation of society.

Shaped by the extent and nature of the believer’s involvement in the world, eschatological expectations assume either an individual or a collective form, embracing individual souls, a people or group, humanity, or the whole cosmos. The social implications of the two forms of eschatology are significant. Individual forms tend to foster either apolitical or politically conservative attitudes—predicated on the belief that each person experiences God’s judgment upon death and that there is therefore little purpose to changing the world. Some forms of collective eschatology, however, involve political activism and the expectation of the public manifestation of God’s justice. Not only do they hope for collective corporeal salvation and a transformation of the world, but they actively prepare for it.

The theme of origins and last things

Because the origins of biblical eschatology are found in unique “historical” events (such as the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt in the 13th century bce), difficulties occur when eschatological concepts are imposed on the framework of other religions. In religions outside the biblical tradition, there is no “end” but rather a cyclic pattern of cosmic destruction and rebirth. Therefore, a distinction must be made between mythical and historical eschatologies. The former interprets the human condition in relation to the realm of the sacred and the profane as defined in nontemporal terms and stories, the latter in temporal terms and stories.

In mythical eschatology the origin of the world is reproduced at the end of the world; that is, the process of creating order out of chaos that occurred at the beginning of time occurs again at the end of time (the “End” or “Endtime”). In the beginning, according to this approach, universal laws and the pure order of things are established, but eventually law and order decay and degenerate. Salvation, therefore, is found in a return of the world’s origin. Both the mythical actions of the gods and historical actions of humans are seen as representations of an eternal struggle in which the world order is defended against chaos. History thus becomes a cultic drama in which priests and kings play out preordained ritual roles.

Mythical eschatology, then, can be defined in terms of the “myth of the eternal return,” which posits a cyclic view of history. In religious festivals, the lost time of history is regenerated and eternity is represented. Through the ritualistic repetition of the creation of the cosmos, the impression of transience is proved wrong. Everything is shown to remain in place, hope is inherent in memory, and future salvation is depicted as a return to the primordial origin or to an original golden age. In mythical eschatology, the meaning of history is found in a celebration of the eternity of the cosmos and the repeatability of the origin of the world.

Historical eschatology, on the contrary, is grounded not in a mythical primal happening but in events in time that provide the structure of history and are essential to its progress. Biblical and biblically influenced eschatologies are historical and directed toward the historical future. In this view, experiences are never universal. Rituals such as Passover and seder are not attempts to repeat events and experiences but are ways to remember them through the telling of history and tradition. Rituals are events in which a novum (a new or extraordinary event or action) is symbolically experienced. Hope is thus grounded in historical remembrance but transcends what is remembered historically.

Are you a student?
Get a special academic rate on Britannica Premium.

The future of history is final because history is unrepeateable. Understood in this context, history is not the arena of the horrors of chaos but the field of danger and salvation. The meaning of history is thus found in its future fulfillment. The divine, or sacred, is not experienced in the ritualistic reenactments of the eternally recurring order of nature and the cosmos; rather, God’s freedom of action, faithfulness, and promises for the future can be discerned in the irreversible events of history.

Historical eschatologies are found in the faith of Israel and Judaism, which is grounded in the Exodus and which has focused increasingly on the expected revelation of the glory of God in all lands. Historical eschatologies are also found in Christianity, which is based on the life of Jesus and his Resurrection from the dead. Christian hopes focus on the kingdom of God, through which history is to end and be fulfilled. In Judaism and Christianity the unique occurrence of a historical event serves as a basis for belief in a long-desired future. A historically occurring novum offers hope for a new existence that will be more than the reproduction of the primordial condition.

The forms of eschatology

Historical eschatology appears in one of three distinct forms— messianism, millennialism, or apocalypticism. Messianic hopes are directed toward a single redemptive figure who, it is believed, will lead the people of God, now suffering and oppressed, into a better historical future. Messianism sometimes promotes visions of the vengeance and justice that befall tyrannical political and religious leaders. In these instances, local historical expectations shape the belief in the fulfillment of history before its end. Apocalypticism, on the other hand, promises a sudden, cataclysmic intervention by God on the side of a faithful minority. According to this view, "this world," unable to bear the "justice of God," will be destroyed and replaced by a new world founded on God’s righteousness. Millenarian, or chiliastic, hope is directed toward the 1,000-year earthly kingdom of peace, fellowship, and prosperity over which Christ and his saints will reign following the destruction of the forces of evil and before the final end of history.