Joachim of Fiore

Joachim of Fiore , c.1132-1202, Italian Cistercian monk. He was abbot of Corazzo, Italy, but withdrew into solitude. He left scriptural commentaries prophesying a new age. In his "Age of the Spirit" the hierarchy of the church would be unnecessary and infidels would unite with Christians. Joachim's works had a vogue in the 13th and the 14th cent.; many, especially the extremist Spiritual Franciscans, acclaimed him as a prophet. Dante places him in Paradise.

Bibliography: See study by D. C. West (1983).

Joachim of Fiore (c.1132–1202). Christian mystic and prophetic visionary. As a young man he became a Cistercian, but later left and eventually founded his own monastery at Fiore in Calabria. He saw history divided into three ages: the age of the Father, in the Old Testament; the age of the Son, the period of the Church; and the shortly-to-be-inaugurated age of the Spirit, in which new religious orders would convert the world and usher in the ‘Spiritual Church’. His views were influential among the new orders of the 13th cent., especially the Spiritual Franciscans. He wrote a harmony of the Old and New Testaments, a commentary on the Apocalypse, and The Psalter with Ten Strings.