Joachim of Fiore

The teaching

Taught from his own books, above all the Book of Concordance and the Exposition on the Apocalypse, with his figures.

Spiritual understanding

Joachim holds that the shape of history is written in Scripture and can be read by those to whom God gives spiritual understanding. It came to him, he says, at a stroke rather than by study alone: on an Easter night the fullness of the Apocalypse and the concord of the two Testaments opened to his mind, and at Pentecost, when he was struggling with the mystery of the Trinity, the figure of a psaltery of ten strings showed it to him. He teaches as an interpreter, not as a prophet. He claims no new revelation, only the gift of understanding the one already given.

Concord

His method is concord. The Old Testament and the New are set side by side, generation against generation, person against person, order against order, like the two halves of one pattern. Twelve patriarchs answer to twelve apostles and twelve tribes to twelve churches, and as the Gospel counts forty-two generations from Abraham to Christ, he counts forty-two in the age of the Church.

Concord is not allegory. Allegory draws a spiritual meaning out of a text; concord matches one history to another, so that what happened once shows the shape of what happens again. By it the reader can tell where in the pattern the present stands, and what season is coming.

The three states of the world

History has three states, one for each Person of the Trinity. The first is the state of the Father, the time of the Law and of the married, who serve God by begetting and labour. The second is the state of the Son, the time of the Gospel and of the clergy, who serve by preaching and the sacraments. The third is the state of the Holy Spirit, the time of the monks, who serve by contemplation and praise, and in it the understanding of the Scriptures will be complete.

The states do not simply follow one another. Each has a long hidden beginning inside the one before it, then a time of bearing fruit, then an end. The first began with Adam and bore fruit from Abraham; the second was already at work among the prophets of Israel and bore fruit with Christ; the third began with Saint Benedict and his monks, and its fruit is still to come. Joachim looked for new orders of spiritual men to open it, living and preaching the life of the Spirit in poverty and contemplation.

Servants, sons and friends

He sets the three states side by side in chains of images. The first was in the servitude of slaves, the second in the servitude of sons, and the third will be in liberty. The first was in fear, the second in faith, the third will be in love. The first was of slaves, the second of free men, the third of friends. The first was in the light of the stars, the second in the light of dawn, the third in the brightness of day. The first was winter, the second the start of spring, the third summer. The first bore nettles, the second roses, the third lilies. The first was water, the second wine, the third oil.

The movement is always the same: from command to grace, from grace to a fuller grace, from the letter to the spirit. Nothing of the earlier state is thrown away; it ripens.

Peter and John

Two apostles carry the second and third states. Peter, the active one, the shepherd who holds the keys, stands for the Church of the clergy. John, who leaned on the Lord's breast and outlived the others, stands for the contemplative Church to come. When Peter asks what will become of John, Christ answers, “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?” Joachim reads it of the two Churches: the Church of Peter is not destroyed but carried over into the spiritual Church, as the active life gives way to the contemplative without ceasing to be needed.

The Apocalypse as history

In the Exposition on the Apocalypse the visions of Revelation become a map of the Church's history. The seven seals open seven times of struggle, and the dragon's seven heads are seven persecutors of the Church in turn, from Herod and Nero to the Antichrist still to come, the sixth in his own day. After the Antichrist falls there will be a sabbath on earth, a time of peace and contemplation before the end, and the last enemy, Gog, comes only at the very close. The reader of the book is meant to know the season, and to watch and amend.

Thinking in figures

Joachim thinks in drawings as much as in words, and the figures gathered after his death keep his thought in that form. Trees grow through the generations, their branches the tribes and the orders. Three circles, each passing through the others, show the three states interlocked as the three Persons are one God. The psaltery of ten strings, one instrument with three corners, shows the one God in three Persons, and its strings sound the praise owed by all creation.

The figures are meant to be looked at slowly, until the eye takes in at once what the words must say one by one.