The Man Who Invented the Future

Imagine a world with no clocks or calendars in the homes. You lived by the cycle of the seasons and the annual religious festivals and holy days. Life is cyclical. After all, "If winter comes, can spring be far behind?" as Shelley wrote centuries later. No need to look ahead, unless the pope called a synod or Crusade that took years of preparation. No one imagines this changing. Into this world comes Joachim de Fiore (c.1135 - 1202), who begins to study the Bible, looking for hidden meanings. He especially focuses on John's book of Revelation that describes a very different world.

We've talked about medieval attitudes to the end times before (here and here, for example). Clearly the world did not end or change radically at the millennium, and Joachim was trying to figure out what biblical references to upcoming events meant. What he proposed was a theory of the ages of the world that was very appealing to his co-religionists, and saw what lay ahead in very attractive terms.

He tied the history of the world—both past and future—into the concept of the Trinity. The first age of the world was represented by God the Father and aligned with the Old Testament. The second age was the age of Jesus Christ, and aligned with the New Testament. A third age was coming, however, and this is why Joachim's thought was such a pivotal moment in theology and culture. Each age was better than the previous, and the best was yet to come.

Of course people had a concept of the future, in that they knew they would wake up tomorrow and different events might happen during their day. They knew they would eventually die, but their children would age, have children of their own, and the cycle would continue. Joachim envisioned a future in which the entire world evolved into something new.

The third age was the age of the Holy Spirit. It was supposed to arrive at or by 1260, and would be the age of universal love, the Kingdom of the Holy Spirit, and the ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church would be replaced—an enormous change in society!—by the "Order of the Just," people whose level of Christian enlightenment would mean no rules were needed: people would simply care for each other.

Those who felt the church was too worldly were attracted to Joachim's theory. One of Joachim's followers, Gerardo, would later declare the "Order of the Just" was the Franciscan Order, that had developed an ascetic branch called the Spirituals. Ubertino de Casale adopted Joachim's ideas. Joachim's notion of the third age also inspired the Cult of the Holy Spirit centuries later.

One of the problems with the reception of his writing was, of course, that he foresaw the end of the current ecclesiastical system. He had no problem declaring the end of the papacy because Rome was Babylon and the pope as the Antichrist. As the year 1260 approached, however, his writing was widely circulated. Thomas Aquinas (writing just after 1260) opposed Joachim's theory, but Dante (c.1265 - 1321) placed Joachim in Paradiso. Some Franciscan Joachimite Spirituals decided that the Antichrist was Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (died 1250).

The Fourth Lateran declared some of his ideas heretical. Worthy of note, however, was that Joachim himself was still respected and never declared a heretic.

Joachim has been referenced by poets and authors, including Umberto Eco, James Joyce, Yeats, the modern Illuminatus trilogy. Some think that Hegel's theory that each age of history gets better than the last came from Joachim's theory.  There was even a 2023 movie called Joachim and the Apocalypse.

I want to get away from "heavier" topics for a bit and build on what I said in the fourth paragraph above. Tomorrow we'll look at the question "Did children exist in the Middle Ages?"

Joachim de Fiore

In a message for the World Day of Creation (27 June, 2024), Pope Francis said of Joachim de Fiore that he  "was able to propose the ideal of a new spirit" and that this was a turning point in history. And Rick Searle, author of the Utopia or Dystopia blog, called him "The Man Who Invented the Future" in a 2015 post. These are extraordinary 21st century statements about a little-known 12th century monk. So who was Joachim de Fiore?

He was born in Calabria c.1135 to a good family who made sure he was educated to become a clerk of the courts and then follow his father's footsteps and become a notary.

On a pilgrimage to the Holy Land c.1159 he experienced a spiritual conversion that made him turn away from a worldly life. On his return to Calabria, he became a hermit, wandering and preaching for several years although he did not join an order. Lay preaching was not always an acceptable practice to church authorities, who pressured him to "form Alize" his actions by joining the monks of the Abbey of Corazzo, where he was ordained c.1168. He began studying Scripture intently, certain that there was meaning hidden there that had not yet been revealed or understood. He was especially concerned with the apostle John's book of Revelation.

Around this time he had become a counselor to Margaret of Navarre, mother and regent for the underage William II of Sicily, where he probably met Peter of Blois.

About 1177 the monks of Corazzo, impressed by his scholarship and piety, made him their abbot, a responsibility and authority which he did not crave. In 1182, after trying and failing to join Corazzo to the Cistercian Order because of Corazzo's poverty, and convincing William II of Sicily to grant Corazzo some lands, he got permission from Pope Lucius III to step down as abbot and find another home. Joachim went to the Abbey of Casamari, which had recently changed from Benedictine to the more strict Cistercian Order. There he wrote three books: The Harmony of the New and Old Testaments, Exposition of Apocalypse, and the Psaltery of Ten Strings.

He was one of those rare people in this era who was writing things people had not said before, but did not get declared heretical. Lucius III and succeeding popes approved of what he was saying, and his fame spread. Constance the Empress of Sicily invited him to hear her confession, and left her raised chair to sit on the ground when he pointed out the need to humble herself. Richard the Lionheart met with him prior to the Third Crusade to get advice. The Spirituals of the Franciscans declared him a prophet (which Joachim denied).

In 1200 he submitted all of his writing to Pope Innocent III for examination and approval. Sadly, he died in 1202 before the results and before he could finish his final book, Tract on the Four Gospels, but his works were copied and distributed widely.

What was it that he wrote that created such an impact that, 800 years later, a pope would call his work a turning point and a scholar would call him the man who invented the future? I'll go. explain that tomorrow, but leave you with this teaser: by "future" Searle did not mean he predicted what things would be like in the future. Searle meant that Joachim invented the concept of the future. Stay tuned.

Ubertino the Heretic

Ubertino de Casale felt so strongly that the proper spiritual life for a Franciscan and other prelates required a life of strict poverty that he strongly denounced those who thought and lived otherwise. Franciscans who felt the same were called the Spirituals.

The Spirituals publicly declared the leaders of the Franciscans as heretics, along with Popes Gregory IX, Nicholas III, and Innocent III. Innocent had spoken against the teachings of Joachim of Fiore, a brilliant theologian whose ideas supported the Spirituals. Another pope, Benedict XI, forbade Ubertino from preaching and banished him to Monte Alverna, a remote convent in the center of the Tuscan Apennines that was associated with St. Francis (he supposedly received the stigmata there).

Rather than be penitent and alter his views, Ubertino used his time to write a book, Arbor Vitae Crucifixae Jesu Christi ("The Tree of the Crucified Life of Jesus"), in which he promoted his views on the poverty of Christ and Christians. The book became popular reading, which brought it to the attention of the church authorities.

In the book, Ubertino had identified Pope Boniface VIII and Benedict XI as the first and second beats of the Apocalypse. This was not received well by the papacy, and Ubertino was summoned to Avignon with other leaders of the Spirituals to debate his ideas. Ubertino's demand that the Spirituals of the Franciscans have separate monasteries was denied. Pope Clement V issued a bull in 1312, Exivi de Paradiso, in which he declared the Franciscans able to accept and use money for necessities despite the strict rule of St. Francis.

In 1317, Ubertino was allowed to lave the Franciscans and make his home with the Benedictines, but he did not stop commenting loudly on the Franciscans, for which he was excommunicated in 1318. In 1322, the Dominicans and the Franciscans were arguing about the poverty of Jesus Christ, and Ubertino was summoned once again to Avignon to offer his opinions. Ubertino's opinion mirrored the papal bull of 1312: although Christ and the Apostles rejected personal possessions, they used alms and goods for necessities and to help others.

Pope John XXII liked this answer. Ubertino stayed in Avignon, but in 1325 he was accused of heresy again by speaking out in support of Peter Olivi, a French Franciscan who had been Ubertino's teacher in Florence who also promoted strict poverty and probably influenced Ubertino in that direction. Pope John XXII ordered him arrested, but Ubertino fled and disappeared from the historical record.

I mentioned Joachim de Fiore above. His ideas still resonate today among theologians. Our current Pope quoted him just a few months ago, so I think he's worth discussing. See  you next time.