Last Things

by Bynum, Caroline Walker; Freedman, Paul;

  24. McGinn, Calabrian Abbot, 101–44. Jean Leclercq defined monastic theology in his The Love of Learning and the Desire for God (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982). Horst Dieter Rauh, Das Bild des Antichrist im Mittelalter: Von Tyconius zum Deutschen Symbolismus, 2d rev. ed., Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, Neue Folge 9 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1979), called monastic theology deutsche Symbolismus.

  25. Joachim, Liber de concordia, xv–xvi; the Vita in Grundmann, Biographie, 532–33; Luke of Cosenza in Grundmann, Biographie, 539. Bernard McGinn edited the De prophetia ignota in his “Joachim and the Sibyl,” Cîteaux Com. Cist. 2(1957): 97–138. Matthias Karp, De prophetia ignota: Eine frühe Schrift Joachim von Fiore, MGH Studien und Texte 19 (Hanover: Hahn, 1998), has provided a critical edition with commentary.

  26. Joachim, Liber de concordia, xviii. Clement’s letter is edited there on p. 3. See also Grundmann, Biographie, 492–93.

  27. On this interview see E. R. Daniel, “Apocalyptic Conversion: the Joachite Alternative to the Crusades,” Traditio 25 (1969): 128–54, esp. 134–35 (reprinted in Delno West, Joachim of Fiore in Christian Thought, 2 vols. [New York: Burt Franklin, 1975], 2: 301–328, esp. 308–9, hereafter Joachim of Fiore). There are two accounts of the interview, both from the pen of Roger of Hoveden. The first is found in Ps. Benedict of Peterborough–Roger of Hoveden, Gesta regis Henrici secundi Benedicti abbatis, ed. William Stubbs, 2 vols., Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores, Rolls Series (hereafter Rolls Series) 49 (London: HMSO, 1867), 2: 151–55. The second and somewhat different account is in Hoveden’s later Chronica, ed. William Stubbs, 3 vols., Rolls Ser. 51 (London, 1870), 3: 75–78.

  28. Joachim, Liber de concordia, xx; Grundmann, Biographie, 503.

  29. Joachim, Liber de concordia, xx; Reeves, Influence, 12–14. The interview is recorded in Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon anglicanum, ed. J. Stephenson, Rolls Ser. 66 (London, 1875), 67–79.

  30. Joachim, Liber de concordia, xviii–xix.

  31. Bernard of Clairvaux, De consideratione, 5.7.15, Opera, 3:479; On consideration, 158.

  32. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones super Cantica canticorum, 80.4.6–9, Opera, 2: 281–83. On this controversy, see Richard W. Southern, Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe, vol. 1, Foundations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 225–30.

  33. Reeves, Influence, 28–36; Wessley, Joachim of Fiore, 90–92, 102–3. No copy of Joachim’s treatise has been found, and the circumstances surrounding its composition are unknown.

  34. Robert Moynihan, “The Development of the ‘Pseudo-Joachim’ Commentary ‘Super Hieremiam’: New Manuscript Evidence,” Mélanges de l’Ecole Française de Rome, Moyen Age–Temps Modernes 98 (1986): 109–42, argues that three versions are extant among the manuscripts, of which the earliest may be Joachim’s own work; the second is dated after 1215 and reflects the defense of Joachim by his disciples, and the third postdates the organization of the Order of Friars Minor and the Order of Preaching Friars. Moynihan has not yet published his promised edition.

  35. E. R. Daniel, “A Re-Examination of the Origins of Franciscan Joachitism,” Speculum 43 (1968): 671–76; reprinted in West, Joachim of Fiore, 2: 143–48.

  36. Reeves, Influence, 59–70.

  37. For scholarship prior to about 1955, see Morton Bloomfield, “Joachim of Flora: A Critical Survey of his Canon, Teachings, Sources, Biography, and Influence,” Traditio 13 (1957): 249–311; reprinted in West, Joachim of Fiore, 29–91. E. R. Daniel, “Joachim of Fiore and Medieval Apocalypticism,” Medieval et Humanistica n.s. 14 (1986): 173–88, surveys some of the later literature.

  38. For Reeves, see note 16.

  39. McGinn, Calabrian Abbot, 62–66, 190–91.

  40. Joachim, Liber de concordia, bk. 2, pt. 1, chap. 9, pp. 74–76 (hereafter 2:1: 9:74–76), where Joachim compares the Son to the uerbum dei and the Spirit to the amor dei.

  41. Augustine of Hippo, Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans, bk. 20, chap. 7; bk. 22, chap. 30, trans. by Henry Bettenson with an introduction by David Knowles (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), 906–10, 1087–91. Joachim’s most extended discussion of the etates is in his De ultimis tribulationibus, ed. E. R. Daniel, “Abbot Joachim of Fiore: The De ultimis tribulationibus,” in Prophecy and Millenarianism: Essays in Honour of Marjorie Reeves, ed. Ann Williams (Burnt Hill, Harlow, Essex: Longman, 1980), 165–89; ed. Kurt-Victor Selge, “Ein Traktat Joachims von Fiore iiber die Drangsale der Endzeit: De ultimis tribulationibus,” Florensia 7 (1993): 7–35. On the widespread expectation of the seventh worldweek according to anno mundi dating, see Richard Landes, “Lest the Millennium Be Fulfilled: Apocalyptic Expectations and the Pattern of Western Chronography 100–800 C.E.,” The Use and Abuse of Eschatology, in the Middle Ages, ed. Werner Verbeke, Daniel Verhelst, and Andries Welkenhuysen, Medievalia Louvaniensia, ser. 1, studia xv (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1988), 137–211.

  42. Joachim, Liber de concordia, 4:1:2:62: “Concordia proprie esse dicimus similitudinem eque proportionis noui ac ueteris testamenti, eque dico quo ad numerum non quo ad dignitatem; cum uidelicet persona et persona, ordo et ordo, bellum et bellum ex parilitate quadam mutuis se uultibus intuentur.”

  43. Joachim, Liber de concordia, 2:1:4:66: “Intelligentia uero illa, que concordia dicitur, similis est uie continue, que a deserto porrigitur ad ciuitatem, interpositis locis humilioribus in quibus se uiator ambigat iter rectum adire, et nichilominus interpositis iugis montium a quibus possit posteriora et anteriora respicere et residui itineris rectitudinem ex retroacte uie contemplatione metiri.”

  44. John Bright, A History of Israel (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1959), 297–300 (hereafter History of Israel).

  45. 2 Kings 23: 28–30; Bright, History of Israel, 302–3.

  46. Joachim, Liber de concordia, 4:1:30–31:382–83.

  47. See above.

  48. Joachim, Liber de concordia, xxvi–xxvii.

  49. Joachim, Liber de concordia, 2:1:11:80: “Prima diffinitio designatur in A quod est elementum triangulatum. Secunda designatur in w in quo una uirgula de medio duarum procedit.” Chapters two through twelve of the Liber de concordia have been translated into English in Bernard McGinn, Apocalyptic Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), 120–34 (hereafter Apocalyptic Spirituality).

  50. Matthew only lists forty names, and because Abraham is counted by both Matthew and Luke, the total listed in the two gospels is fifty-nine. Joachim adds the remaining four generations, which are Ochozias, Ioas, Amasias, and Joachim (nos. 40–42, 50). Cf. Liber de concordia, Table Two, 88–92.

  51. Joachim, Liber de concordia, 2:1: 25:108–9.

  52. Joachim, Liber figurarum, tav. XIa, Xlb, XIII. The first two of these are the tree circles, and in the upper left corner of each is a drawing of the alpha. Tav. XIII is a drawing of the ten-stringed psaltery.

  53. Joachim, Liber de concordia, 2:1: 9:74–76; Table Seven, 173–77.

  54. Joachim, Liber de concordia, 2:1:8: 72–73, 2:1:11:80; Joachim, Liber figurarum, tav. XIa, Xlb. The secunda diffinitio is found on the lower left side.

  55. E. R. Daniel, “The Double Procession of the Holy Spirit in Joachim of Fiore’s Understanding of History,” Speculum 55 (1980): 469–83, shows the similarities between the two schemes.

  56. Joachim, Liber de concordia, xxxv–xlii; 2:2:10:185.

  57. Joachim, Liber de concordia, 3:1:1:209–10; Joachim, Liber figurarum, tav. xv. See Ezekiel 1:15–28; Apocalypse 4:7–8. On this figure see Reeves and Hirsch-Reich, Figure, 224–31; and West and Zimdars-Swartz, Joachim of Fiore, 95–98.

  58. Joachim, Liber de concordia, 3:1:1:210:

  Porro generatio quadragesima prima sola ipsa una pro duplici est accipienda, ut iure dici possit bis sexta, nimirum quia duplex tribulatio sub sexta apertione futura est ad similitudinem parasceue, in quo, dupplicatis tenebris, passus est Christus. Sane quadragesima secunda, que erit in sabbatum, aperietur signaculum septimum, de quo dictum est in libro Apocalypsis: “Et cum aperuisset
sigillum septimum, factum est silentium in celo quasi media hora.”

  59. This scheme is laid out graphically in Table Eight at the end of book two, part two. See Joachim, Liber de concordia, 193–95.

  60. See above.

  61. Joachim, Liber de concordia, 4:1:32–35:384: “Generatione quoque tricesima octaua, uenit rex Henricus in urbem, et cepit papam Paschalem in ecclesia sancti Petri; et tamdiu illum et alios multos cum eo tenuit in custodia, donec extorqueret ab eo priuilegium de inuestitura ecclesiarum.”

  62. Joachim, Liber de concordia, 4:1:29:380:

  Fuit autem iste Sedechias, filius Iosie, homo pessimus et iniquus. Vbi et illud diligentius notari conuenit quod, instante tempore confusionis, confusum est regnum Iuda, ut non secundum ordinem et rationem generationum regnarent ipsi reges, sed tum frater, tum nepos, tum patruus, ueluti communiter duo et duo. Sic et in ecclesia confusio quedam facta est occasione principum mundi, de quorum uiribus scismatici homines presumpserunt; ita ut aliquando tam indecenter quam illicite duo et duo sub eodem tempore uiderentur conscendere ad papatum, de quibus stupefacti populi diutius dubitarent, et contrarie partes hominum contraria sentirent. Et quamuis unum duorum catholicum, alterum scismaticum fore constiterit, non ideo tamen quod sic accidit a concordia uacat.

  63. Joachim, Liber de concordia, 4:1: 37:386: “Perseuerauit autem pax eadem reliquis diebus ipsius pape, que cepit iterum infringi in diebus pape Lucii maximeque Vrbani, ita ut in diebus eius supramodum et supra uires angustaretur ecclesia. Vtrum autem huiuscemodi occasione ammiserit aliquid ecclesia de libertate sua apud filios Babilonis noue, uideat ipsa que nouit melius quid patiatur.”

  64. Joachim, Liber de concordia, 4:1: 29:380–381.

  Summa itaque concordie istarum generationum illa est, qua et ibi regem Babilonis pugnasse legimus contra Iherusalem, et hic Romanos imperatores contra libertatem ecclesie. Et quod ibi aliqui regum Iuda obedierunt ei, et rursum reniti et stare in libertate sua pristina regis Egypti uiribus usi sunt; aliquis absque bello egressus est ad eum, ducendus cum ipso in Babilonem; hic aliqui Romanorum pontificum aliquando inclinati sunt et assenserunt imperatoribus, aliquando uiribus aliquorum principum adiuti eisdem uiriliter restiterunt; aliqui omnino decreuerunt humiliari sub potenti manu eorum et agere pacifice dies suos.

  65. Joachim, Liber de concordia, 4:1:38–39:388–94.

  66. Joachim, Liber de concordia, 4:1:38:388:

  Vsque ad presentem locum per experta, ut ita dicam, litora nauigantes securo remigio iter fecimus. A modo cautius est agendum, et hinc inde circumspecte reliquum itineris peragendum, utpote qui non per cognita nauigare incipimus, etsi uelut a uicino conspecta, quia nimirum aliud est audita referre, aliud uisa, quamuis eque ex deo sit utrumque possibile.

  67. Joachim, Liber de concordia, 4:1:40–43:395–400. I will deal more completely with these two “antichrists” in my book “Bound for the Promised Land.” Joachim’s most succinct presentation of his thinking is in the Liber figurarum, tav. XIV, the dragon figure. McGinn, Apocalyptic Spirituality, 135–41, has a translation of this text.

  68. Joachim, Expositio, pt. 6, fols. 195ra–202vb.

  69. See above.

  70. Joachim, Liber de concordia, 4:1:45:402:

  In ecclesia incipiet generatio quadragesima secunda anno uel hora qua deus melius nouit. In qua, uidelicet, generatione, peracta prius tribulatione generali et purgato diligenter tritico ab uniuersis zizaniis, ascendet quasi nouus dux de Babilone, universalis scilicet pontifex noue Ierusalem, hoc est sancte matris ecclesie; in cuius typo scriptum est in Apocalipsi: ‘Vidi angelum ascendentem ab ortu solis, habentem signum dei uiui;’ et cum eo reliquie excussorum. Ascendet autem non gressu pedum aut immutatione locorum, sed quia dabitur ei plena libertas ad innouandam christianam religionem et ad predicandum uerbum dei, incipiente iam regnare domino exercituum super omnem terram.

  71. Joachim, Liber figurarum, tav. XIa and Xlb; Joachim, Liber de concordia, 2:2:6–7:162–72.

  72. Joachim, Liber de concordia, 4:2:2:416.

  73. Joachim, Liber de concordia 4:2:2:417:

  Sed tamen gratie prerogatiua quasi dux omnium et magister, eo quod esset doctus a spiritu et manus domini esset cum eo, factus est etiam quasi alter Moyses, qui non tam filios suos quam fratres et filios fratrum suorum educeret de Egypto. . . . Nec defuit illi socius quasi alter Aaron, qui fuit summus sacerdos Eugenius papa Romanus.

  74. Joachim, Liber de concordia, 4:2:2:417–19. The passage is from Bernard, De consideratione, bk 2:1–2, Opera 3:411–12.

  75. Joachim, Liber de concordia, 4:2:2:411–16, 419–21.

  76. Wessley, Joachim of Fiore, 1–70.

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

  1. The focus of most end-gazers was the arrival of Antichrist rather than the rearrival of Christ. For background see Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979); idem, Apocalypticism in the Western Tradition (Aldershot: Variorum, 1994); idem, Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1994); McGinn and Richard K. Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages: A Study of Medieval Apocalypticism, Art, and Literature (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981). See also the essays collected in The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed. Emmerson and McGinn (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992). For the earliest Christian traditions, see Christopher Rowland, The Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Christianity (New York: Crossroad, 1982). For the Byzantine view, see Paul J. Alexander, The Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition, ed. Dorothy DeF. Abrahamse (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).

  2. A large literature exists, with studies of Arnau’s scientific work vastly predominating, but a scholarly boomlet on his religious thought is now underway. The publication of critical editions of the religious writings is sorely needed, though, before further significant work is possible. The most impressive recent works in Engli share Robert E. Lerner, “Ecstatic Dissent,” Speculum 67 (1992): 33–57; idem, “Writing and Resistance Among Beguins of Languedoc and Catalonia,” in Heresy and Literacy, 1000–1530, ed. Peter Biller and Anne Hudson, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 23 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 186–204; John August Bollweg, “Sense of a Mission: Arnau de Vilanova on the Conversion of Muslims and Jews,” in Iberia and the Mediterranean World of the Middle Ages: Studies in Honor of Robert I. Burns, S. J., ed. Larry J. Simon (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995), 50–71. I have discussed aspects of Arnau’s career in “Arnau de Vilanova and the Franciscan Spirituals in Sicily,” Franciscan Studies ser. 2, 50 (1990): 3–29; “The Reception of Arnau de Vila-nova’s Religious Ideas,” in Christendom and Its Discontents: Exclusion, Persecution, and Rebellion, 1000–1500, ed. Scott L. Waugh and Peter D. Diehl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 112–31; and in chapter 5 of my The Decline and Fall of Medieval Sicily: Politics, Religion, and Economy in the Reign of Frederick III, 1296–1337 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1995).

  An exciting book by Joseph Ziegler, Medicine and Religion c. 1300: The Case of Arnau de Vilanova (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), appeared too late for me to use in preparing this brief chapter.

  3. See especially Michael McVaugh, Medicine Before the Plague: Practitioners and Their Patients in the Crown of Aragon, 1285–1345 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), with full bibliography. Together with Juan Antonio Paniagua Arellano and Luis Garcia Ballester, McVaugh is coeditor of the ongoing Opera medica omnia Arnaldi de Villanova (Barcelona: Seminarium Historiae Medicae Cantabricense, 1975); six volumes have appeared to date.

  4. Josep Perarnau, ed., “El text primitiu del De mysterio cymbalorum ecclesiae d’Arnau de Vilanova,” Arxiu de Textos Catalans Antics 7/8 (1988–89): 7–22, see appendix 1.

  5. Robert E. Lerner, “The Pope and the Doctor,” Yale Review 78 (1988): 62–79, tells this tale exceptionally well.

  6. Ramon d’Alos Moner, “Colleccio de documents relatius a l’Arnau
de Vilanova,” Estudis Universitaris Catalans 3 (1909): 47–53, 140–48, 331–32, 447–49, 531–34; 4 (1910): 110–19, 496–98; 6 (1912): 98–103, doc. 22: “Sciat Regio Celsitudo, quod magnus rumor est in curia de verbis magistri Arnaldi de Villanova, etiam apud maiores. Dicunt enim, quod ipsius prenuntiationes iam incipiunt verificari, et timent, quod verba ipsius veniant ad effectum.”

  7. Ibid., doc. 20: “et dixerunt isti cardinales: Magister Arnaldus, utinam non venisset. Fama enim est hic—et est verum—quod iam papa fuiseet sepultus nisi magister.”

  8. Protestatio facta Perusii, in Heinrich Finke, Aus den Tagen Bonifaz VIII: Funde und Forschungen (Münster: Aschendorff, 1902; rep. Rome, 1964), 2:cxcvi; Vorreformationsgeschichtliche Forschungen: “ad detestationem evangelicam viciorum in catholicis statibus.”

  9. See Backman, “Reception,” 120–21. See also the discussion in Manfred Gerwing, Vom Ende der Zeit: Der Traktat des Arnald von Villanova über die Ankunft des Antichrist in der akademischen Auseinandersetzung zu Beginn des 14. Jahrhunderts (Münster: Aschendorff, 1996).

  10. Josep Perarnau, “L’Allocutio christiani d’Arnau de Vilanova: edició i estudi del text,” Arxiu de Textos Catalans Antics 11 (1992): 7–135.

  11. See Backman, “Arnau de Vilanova and the Franciscan Spirituals in Sicily.”

  12. Expositio super Apocalypsi, ed. Josep Carreras i Artau (Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 1971). This was intended as the first volume of a comprehensive edition of Arnaldi de Villanova Scripta Spiritualia, but nothing further came of the project.