Last Things

by Bynum, Caroline Walker; Freedman, Paul;

  By means of the concordia, the uiator could look back from a “mountain peak” and by seeing the road that had been traveled, discern the main shape of the road that still lay ahead. To reveal the concords and interpret them was the task that God had given Joachim.47

  The first intuition gave Joachim the notion that the persecutions that the Hebrew people had suffered paralleled those suffered by the Christians. This is the subject of book one of the Liber de concordia, written at Casamari and left untouched thereafter.48

  Joachim began anew with the first twelve chapters of book two, part one. Joachim contrasted Jewish insistence on a literal, earthly fulfillment of the promises to Abraham with spiritual, heavenly Christian expectation and then defined the concordia (chapter two) and allegory (chapter three). Chapter four introduced the prima diffinitio—the pattern of the three status and their parallel, the evolution of the three orders of the married, the clergy, and the monks (chapter five). Chapter eight introduced the secunda diffinitio—that of the two tempora to which correspond the Jewish and gentile peoples and the two testaments or covenants.49

  Both diffinitiones were patterns extrapolated from series of generations. The first series consisted of the ancestors of Jesus according to Matthew’s and Luke’s genealogies. The second and third series begin with someone in the first series but continue beyond it to the generations of the common era, each of which is computed at thirty years, although Joachim refused to commit himself on the length of the generations after the fortieth (1170–1200 A.D.), in which he was living when he wrote. The first series included sixty-three generations, divided into three groups of twenty-one each.50 Joachim likened this series to a tree of which the first twenty-one generations are the root projecting upward (the initiatio), the second twenty-one the trunk sending forth limbs and leaves (fructificatio), and the final twenty-one the full blossoming and the gradual decay (consummatio).51

  Joachim conceived the prima diffinitio as A or as the ten-stringed psaltery, shaped like an equilateral triangle with a blunted top. The psaltery, as we have seen, described the generation and procession of two persons from one, of the Son and the Holy Spirit from the Father.52

  The first status, representing the Father and the married, had its root in Adam, its fruition in Jacob, and its consummation in Uzziah (Ozias) (king of Judah, 783–42 B.C.). The second status, which began with Uzziah, who was the twenty-first generation before Jesus, flowered in Jesus, and began its final stage in the twenty-second generation after the Incarnation, belonged to both the Son and to the Holy Spirit, primarily to the Son who was generated from the Father and secondarily to the Holy Spirit who proceeded from the Father. Like the Son from the Father, the clergy proceeded from the married and the monks like the Holy Spirit came from both the married and the clergy. Hence the third status began twice, the first time in the reign of Asa (Judah, 913–873 B.C.) with the appearance of Elijah and Elisha and the second time with Benedict of Nursia. Joachim tried to draw these three trees in the Liber de concordia but never succeeded. The closest representation is Table Seven, in which the first column represents the generations of the first status from Adam to Joseph, the third column represents the generations of the second status from Uzziah to generation forty-two after Jesus, the second column represents the first beginning of the third status with the generations from Asa to the forty-second generation after Jesus, and the fourth column represents the second beginning of the third status from generation sixteen of the church to the forty-second generation after the end of the second status or the eighty-fourth of the church. The three status are organic, living entities sprouting from each other, overlapping and progressively moving step by step from the world of the married and from the promise that the Hebrews would conquer the land of Palestine to the ultimate virginal monastic contemplatives whose “conquest” would be complete peace and silence in which to contemplate God.53

  Joachim described the lower case Greek omega, ω, which symbolized the secunda diffinitio, as one rod that proceeded from two. The first tempus, identical to the first status, consisted of the generations from Adam to Joseph, husband of Mary, and corresponded to the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father, to the letter of the Hebrew scriptures, and to the populus iudaicus. The second tempus, which was the same as the generations of the second status from Uzziah to the forty-second generation of the church, corresponded to the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son to the letter of the Christian testament and to the populus christianus. From the letter of the two scriptures proceeded the spiritual understanding (spiritualis intelligentia), and from the two peoples came the uiri spirituales, or monks.54 Thus the two diffinitiones describe the same historical pattern, the progression from the original exodus to the still future monastic “land of promise.”55

  Joachim began to explicate these two diffinitiones in book two, part one, chapter twelve. The development of the prima diffinitio ended with book two, part two, chapter nine. From chapter ten to the end of the first part of book four, Joachim devoted himself to the secunda diffinitio.56

  In book three, part one Joachim interpreted the seven seals of the first tempus, and in part two the corresponding seven openings of the second tempus. Using the image of the wheels of Ezekiel Joachim devised another pattern of generations in which the first four tempora signaculorum represent four animals, each with six wings, and four ordines, those of the apostles, martyrs, confessors, and virgins to which were alloted six generations each for a total of twenty-four. The fourth opening ended in 720 A.D. The fifth opening, the sedes, would have sixteen generations and would last from 721 to 1200 A.D.57

  Moreover the forty-first generation alone is to be accepted as double, so that it could rightly be called twice the sixth, for the chief reason that there is to be a double tribulation under the sixth opening in likeness of the passion, in which, the shadows being doubled, Christ has suffered. Indeed in the forty-second generation, which will be like a sabbath, the seventh seal will be opened, about which the Apocalypse has spoken: “And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.” (Apoc. 8: I)58

  In the second tempus when the seals were to be opened, ten generations were to be subtracted from the sixth and seventh seals and added to the opening of the fifth seal. The opening of the fifth seal would extend therefore from 720 to 1200. The sixth seal would follow and last only one generation. During it, two persecutions would occur. Then the seventh seal would ensue, an era of sabbath.

  The seals embraced forty generations, from Abraham to Jehoiachin, to which were added the forty-first designated by Shealtiel and the forty-second that belonged to Zerubbabel. Hence forty generations were counted down to the beginning of the Babylonian Exile. Shealtiel, the forty-first, reigned during the Exile. Zerubbabel led the return to Palestine in the forty-second generation.59

  Joachim’s objective was to equate the history of the Hebrews from Jacob to the Exile with the history of the church from Jesus to Joachim’s own fortieth generation (1170–1200). Specifically Joachim equated the generations from Josiah to Shealtiel with the period from Pope Leo IX (1049–54) to 1200. Thus Joachim made the history of the church from the beginning of the papal reform movement correspond to the events that began with Josiah’s reform in Judah and ended less than a century later with the deportation of the Jews to Babylon. The parallel between Josiah and Leo IX has already been pointed out.60 Ioachaz’s removal from Jerusalem to Egypt by pharoah Necho “concorded” with Gregory VII’s flight to Salerno and Henry IV’s elevation of Clement III as antipope. Joachim’s forcible submission to the Babylonians paralleled Henry V’s effort during his coronation “to extort a privilege of investiture” from Paschal II.61 After Joachim died, Jechonias, his son, reigned until Nebuchadnezzar removed him and put on the throne Zedekiah, the paternal uncle of Jehoiachin and son of Josiah, a king whom Joachim called “homo pessimus et iniquus.” Joachim described the years after the death of Josiah as a “time of confusion” a
nd noted:

  Thus also in the church a certain confusion has been created by the intervention of worldly princes on whose strengths schismatic men relied, so that sometimes both indecently and illegally two and two at the same time seemed to go up together to the papacy, about whom the stupefied people doubted a long time and opposed parties of men had opposed sentiments. And even if one of the two was catholic, the other schismatic, this did not upset the concords.62

  Joachim was referring to the Alexandrian schism, which finally ended when Alexander and Frederick agreed to the Peace of Venice in 1177. That peace, Joachim said, was broken “in the days of pope Lucius and especially of Urban, in whose pontificate the church suffered almost beyond endurance.” Then Joachim added: “Whether moreover on this occasion the church will have lost something of its liberty to these sons of the new Babylon, may she see who better knows that which [the church] has suffered.”63 Then Joachim summed up his point:

  The summit of the concordia of these [five] generations is this that there we have read that the king of Babylon fought against Jerusalem, and here Roman emperors against the liberty of the church. And some of the kings of Judah obeyed the king, but repented and tried to stand in their liberty by relying on the strength of the Egyptians; another [king] went over to the [Babylonians] without war and was led to Babylon. Here some of the Roman pontiffs inclined toward and agreed with the emperors on some occasions, but at other times tried to resist them with the help of various princes; some [pontiffs] decided entirely to humble [themselves] under the [imperial] hands and to live pacifically.64

  The struggle between the reforming pontiffs and the emperors had culminated in a Babylonian exile of the church, according to Joachim. The emperors from Henry IV through Henry VI persecuted the popes and deprived the church of its liberty. The popes themselves were partly to blame, especially Alexander III and his successors, because of their vacillating policies. Joachim, however, counseled the popes to submit because the exile was God’s will. Although there were some “spiritual Christians” who tried to live holy lives, the overwhelming majority of the Latin Christians were driven solely by carnal desires and by worldly ambitions. Using Lamentations as a text, Joachim included a scorching indictment of the simoniac clergy and the monks who were cenobites only on the outside.65 “Until this present place we have rowed securely navigating past landmarks that we knew well. Henceforth, we must voyage cautiously, keeping careful lookout from side to side during the rest of our journey. We are like seamen who sail unfamiliar coasts, even if we are close inshore, because to steer by what we have heard is one thing, but by what we have seen is very different, although both are equally possible from God.”66

  The concords permitted Joachim to interpret God’s plan securely down into the 1190s. The abbot was confident that he correctly understood the events that had ensued since 1049. Beyond 1200, however, only the scriptural concords could be discerned clearly. Their imminent parallels remained dim. Joachim dated Holophernes’s assault, recorded in the book of Judith, during the exile. He also tried to date Haman’s plan against the Jews, which is recorded in Esther, to this same period. Joachim therefore expected two antichristian persecutions of Latin Christendom while it was in “Babylon.” Joachim, however, could only speculate on the identity of the future persecutors.67

  Josiah’s successors had been literally conquered and exiled. The exile of the papacy and of Latin Christendom was figurative. Simony and the pursuit of worldly goals had become so pervasive that the church had become Babylon rather than Jerusalem. Even the popes had been lured into pursuing temporal power, especially by embarking on military adventures. The combined effect of the antichristian persecutions would shatter Babylon as John of Patmos had predicted in Apocalypse 18; in other words these assaults would purify Latin Christendom of the simoniac clergy and of monks who were only outwardly followers of Benedict.68

  The exilic prophets had interpreted the return to Jerusalem from Babylon as another exodus and journey in the wilderness.69 Joachim used the same imagery when he wrote that:

  The forty-second generation will begin in the church in the year or hour that God knows better [than we do]. In that generation, indeed, after the general tribulation has purged the weeds from the grain thoroughly, a new dux [i.e., a new Zerubbabel] will ascend from Babylon, a universal pontiff of the new Jerusalem, that is of holy mother church; in whose type it is written in the Apocalypse [7: 2]: “I have seen an angel ascending from the direction where the sun rises, having the sign of the living god.” And the remainder of those who have been released from exile [will journey] with him. He will ascend, moreover, not by actual walking or by a journey from one place to another, but because complete liberty will be given to him to reform the Christian religion and to preach the word of God, because the lord of hosts has begun to reign over the entire earth.70

  After the “antichrists” have purged the clergy, then a reform pope will lead a figurative return to Jerusalem. This pope will realize the Gregorian dream of a holy and purified Latin Christendom that then will dominate the entire world.

  In book two of the Liber de concordia, Joachim had drawn a figure of three circles, resembling the circle figures in the Liber figurarum.71 In the Liber de concordia version, each large circle contained three smaller circles that enclosed texts. In the first circle (that of the primus status duodecim patriarche), the texts referred to the sons of Israel entering Egypt, leaving Egypt, and entering the promised land. The second circle, labeled secundus status duodecim apostoli, cited the apostles preaching in the synagogue, then going to the gentiles, and receiving their hereditary, gentile Christianity. The third circle, inscribed tertius status duodecim spirituales uiri, referred to the uiri spirituales who would preach in the world to gain others, who would cross over to a harsher monastic life, and to those who would have faith in the uiri spirituales and thus enter the rest the prophets foresaw. In this version of the circle figure, each status is an exodus involving precisely the three elements of liberation, journey, and conquest. The first was a literal journey; the other two were figurative, the last more spiritual than the second.

  Joachim was very much a disciple of Bernard, whom he called an “alter Leui et alter Moyses”72: “But nevertheless [Bernard has been made] like a leader and teacher of all by the prerogative of grace. Because he was taught by the spirit and the hand of God was with him, he has been made like another Moses, who led his brothers and their sons, not his sons, from Egypt. . . . He did not lack an ally like another Aaron, who was the high priest Eugenius, Roman pope.”73

  Joachim compared the Second Crusade to the journey of the Israelites in the wilderness. Both the Israelites and the crusaders “perished in the desert” and turned against their leaders, but Bernard, Joachim added, defended himself in his De consideratione by comparing the crusade to the Sinai journey.74Joachim equated Cîteaux, La Ferté, Pontigny, Clairvaux, and Morimund with the five tribes that received their inheritance first in the promised land in the first status and the five patriarchates in the second.75 Joachim refused to identify any candidates for the concords to the seven tribes that received their inheritance later and to the seven churches to which John of Patmos had written in the Apocalypse, but the author of the anonymous Vita certainly thought that Joachim intended them to come from his own foundation, the Order of Fiore, and this same thinking may well have motivated the monks of this order.76

  The third status was already becoming fruitful when Joachim was writing in the 1180s and 1190s. The founding of Cîteaux and its daughter houses was a step toward its realization. Bernard of Clairvaux was its Moses. Joachim understood the status of the Holy Spirit as a third exodus, one that had begun already at the end of the eleventh century and was going to come to complete fruition when the church was completely reformed after 1200.

  Two paradigms shaped Joachim’s thinking, the exodus and the exile. The former included three components—liberation, journey, and conquest. The Israelites had been freed from
Egypt, had journeyed in the wilderness, and had conquered Canaan, but eventually they were conquered and the people of Judah were deported to Babylon. Jesus and his apostles had been a second “exodus,” but simony and worldliness had transformed Latin Christendom into another “Babylon.” A third exodus, however, had already begun and under papal and monastic leadership would culminate in the coming, contemplative land of promise.

  Like the American slaves and the Communists in Russia, Joachim would have been deeply disappointed had he lived to see the actual future he imagined. Scholastic theology triumphed over monastic theology, and clerical reform never occurred. The early promise of the Florensian Order was not fulfilled. The advent of the friars excited Joachimists but proved finally unavailing as a means of thoroughgoing clerical reform. For Joachim even the envisioned exodus proved elusive.

  Arnau de Vilanova and the Body at the End of the World

  Clifford R. Backman

  The Prospect of Christ’s second coming can be terrifying. Even if the scenes described by John in Revelation do not represent the actual events of that day to come, there is little about the end that is not unsettling to contemplate. The terror results primarily, of course, from concern about our own fates or those of our loved ones. St. Augustine taught medieval Christians that no one—not even the most devout and blameless—can afford to be without fear when Judgment Day arrives: our fates have long been sealed, he proclaimed, and all we can do is to live piously and hope that we number among those whom God has chosen to admit into his heavenly kingdom. But one can never be sure. No one, he emphasized, deserves salvation—that is, no one can claim to be worthy of spending eternity in God’s presence—and only those whom God has inscrutably selected will receive that greatest of gifts. Augustine’s interpretation of predestination was not universally accepted, but the influence of his uncertainty principle was widespread and long felt. Most early medieval artists represented Christ as a stern judge, a king with a bad temper, rather than as a loving and gentle savior. His power received more attention than his love, and power inspires awe. Besides, the popular assumption of the early medieval period was that in all probability only professed monks and nuns would be saved on Judgment Day, if anyone would be at all; knowing how slim one’s chances were only enhanced the trepidation people felt when contemplating the end. Christian faith, in other words, provided early medieval people with many convictions, but a conviction of certain salvation was not one of them. Mark Twain’s wry summation of one of his fictional characters, that “he possessed all the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces,” is a description that would not have, nor could ever have, fit most early medieval faithful—with or without the cards.