revealed. During his lifetime he enjoyed the reputation of a prophet. When Richard of England and Philip Augustus were at Messina, they sent for him to inquire as to the outcome of their crusade, and he is said to have foretold to them that the hour had not yet come for the deliverance of Jerusalem. Others of his fulfilled prophecies are also related, and the mystical character of the apocalyptic speculations which he left behind him served to increase, after his death, his reputation as a seer. His name became one customarily employed for centuries when any dreamer or sharper desired to attract attention, and quite a literature of forgeries grew up which were ascribed to him. Somewhat more than a century after his death we find the Dominican Pipino enumerating a long catalogue of his works with the utmost respect for his predictions. In 1319 Bernard Délicieux places unlimited confidence in a prophetical book of Joachim’s in which there were representations of all future popes with inscriptions and symbols under them. Bernard points out the different pontiffs of his own period, predicts the fate of John XXII., and declares that for two hundred years there had been no mortal to whom so much was revealed as to Joachim. Cola di Rienzo found in the pseudo-prophecies of Joachim the encouragement that inspired his second attempt to govern Rome. The Franciscan tract De ultima, Ætate Ecclesiæ, written in 1356, and long ascribed to Wickliff, expresses the utmost reverence for Joachim, and frequently cites his prophecies. The Liber Conformitatum, in 1385, quotes repeatedly the prediction ascribed to Joachim as to the foundation of the two Mendicant Orders, symbolized in those of the Dove and of the Crow, and the tribulations to which the former was to be exposed. Not long afterwards the hermit Telesforo da Cosenza drew from the same source prophecies as to the course and termination of the Great Schism, and the line of future popes until the coming of Antichrist—prophecies which attracted sufficient attention to call for a refutation from Henry of Hesse, one of the leading theologians of the day. Cardinal Peter d’Ailly speaks with respect of Joachim’s prophecies concerning Antichrist, and couples him with the prophetess St. Hildegarda, while the rationalistic Cornelius Agrippa endeavors to explain his predictions by the occult powers of numbers. Human credulity preserved his reputation as a prophet to modern times, and until at least as late as the seventeenth century prophecies under his name were published, containing series of popes with symbolical figures, inscriptions, and explanations, apparently similar to the Vaticinia Pontificum which so completely possessed the confidence of Bernard Délicieux. Even in the seventeenth century the Carmelites printed the Oraculum Angelicum of Cyril, with its pseudo-Joachitic commentary, as a proof of the antiquity of their Order.[13]

Joachim’s immense and durable reputation as a prophet was due not so much to his genuine works as to the spurious ones circulated under his name. These were numerous—Prophecies of Cyril, and of the Erythræan Sybil, Commentaries on Jeremiah, the Vaticinia Pontificum, the De Oneribus Ecclesiæ and De Septem Temporibus Ecclesiæ. In some of these, reference to Frederic II. would seem to indicate a period of composition about the year 1250, when the strife between the papacy and empire was at the hottest, and the current prophecies of Merlin were freely drawn upon in framing their exegesis. There can be little doubt that their authors were Franciscans of the Puritan party, and their fearless denunciations of existing evils show how impatient had grown the spirit of dissatisfaction. The apocalyptic prophecies were freely interpreted as referring to the carnal worldliness which pervaded all orders in the Church; all are reprobate, none are elect; Rome is the Whore of Babylon, and the papal curia the most venal and extortionate of all courts; the Roman Church is the barren fig-tree, accursed by Christ, which shall be abandoned to the nations to be stripped. It would be difficult to exaggerate the bitterness of antagonism displayed in these writings, even to the point of recognizing the empire as the instrument of God which is to overthrow the pride of the Church. These outspoken utterances of rebellion excited no little interest, especially within the Order itself. Adam de Marisco, the leading Franciscan of England, sends to his friend Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, some extracts from these works which have been brought to him from Italy. He speaks of Joachim as one justly credited with divine insight into prophetic mysteries; he asks to have the fragments returned to him after copying, and meanwhile commends to the bishop’s consideration the impending judgments of Providence which are invited by the abounding wickedness of the time.[14]

Of Joachim’s genuine writings the one which, perhaps, attracted the most attention in his own day was a tract on the nature of the Trinity, attacking the definition of Peter Lombard, and asserting that it attributed a Quaternity to God. The subtleties of theology were dangerous, and in place of proving the Master of Sentences a heretic, Joachim himself narrowly escaped. Thirteen years after his death, the great Council of Lateran, in 1215, thought his speculation sufficiently important to condemn it as erroneous in an elaborate refutation, which was carried into the canon law, and Innocent III. preached a sermon on the subject to the assembled fathers. Fortunately Joachim, in 1200, had expressly submitted all his writings to the judgment of the Holy See and had declared that he held the same faith as that of Rome. The council, therefore, refrained from condemning him personally and expressed its approbation of his Order of Flora; but notwithstanding this the monks found themselves derided and insulted as the followers of a heretic, until, in 1220, they procured from Honorius III. a bull expressly declaring that he was a good Catholic, and forbidding all detraction of his disciples.[15]

His most important writings, however, were his expositions of Scripture composed at the request of Lucius III., Urban III., and Clement III. Of these there were three—the Concordia, the Decachordon, or Psalterium decem Cordarum, and the Expositio in Apocalypsin. In these his system of exegesis is to find in every incident under the Old Law the prefiguration of a corresponding fact in chronological order under the New Dispensation, and by an arbitrary parallelism of dates to reach forward and ascertain what is yet to come. He thus determines that mankind is destined to live through three states—the first under the rule of the Father, which ended at the birth of Christ, the second under that of the Son, and the third under the Holy Ghost. The reign of the Son, or of the New Testament, he ascertains by varied apocalyptic speculations is to last through forty-two generations, or 1260 years—for instance, Judith remained in widowhood three years and a half, or forty-two months, which is 1260 days, the great number representing the years through which the New Testament is to endure, so that in the year 1260 the domination of the Holy Ghost is to replace it. In the forty-second generation there will be a purgation which will separate