§ 67. MONASTIC PROPHETS. 377
in the Old Testament by the deliverance from Egypt, in the New by the resurrection of Christ ; the second seal respec tively by the experiences in the wilderness and the perse cutions of the ante-Nicene Church ; the third by the wars against the Canaanites and the conflict with heresy from Constantine to Justinian; the fourth by the peril from the Assyrians and the age lasting to Gregory III., d. 741 ; the fifth by the Babylonian oppression and the troubles under the German emperors ; and the sixth by the exile, and the twelfth Christian century with all the miseries of that age, including the violence of the Saracens, arid the rise of heretics. The opening of the seventh seal was near at hand, and was to be followed by the Sabbatic rest.
Joachim was no sectary. He was not even a reformer. Like many of his contemporaries he was severe upon the vices of the clergy of his day. " Where is quarrelling," he exclaims, "where fraud, except among the sons of Juda, except among the clergy of the Lord ? Where is crime, where ambition, except among the clergy of the Lord ? " l His only remedy was the dawning of the third age which he announced. He waged no polemic against the papacy,2 submitted himself and his writings dutifully to the Church,3 and called the church of Peter the throne of Christ. He was a mystical seer who made patient biblical studies,4 and saw in the future a more perfect realization of the spiritual Church, founded by Christ, exempt from empty formalism and bitter disputes.
An ecclesiastical judgment upon Joachim's views was precipitated by the Franciscan Gerardus of Borgo San Donnino, who wrote a tract called the Introduction to the Eternal G-ospel, 5 expounding what he considered to be
1 See Schott, 175. 2 Bellinger, 379 ; Schott, 178, etc.
3 The Fourth Lateran Council, Canon II.
4 He also quotes freely from Jerome, Ambrose, Gregory the Great, and other Fathers.
6 Introductorius in Evangelium ceternum.
378 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
Joachim's teachings. He declared that Joachim's writings were themselves the written code of the Eternal Gospel,1 which was to be authoritative for the third age, as the Old and New Testaments were authoritative for the ages of the Father and the Son. Of this last age the abbot of Flore was the evangelist.
When Gerard's work appeared, in 1254, it created a great stir and was condemned by professors at Paris, the enemies of the Franciscans, William of St. Amour among the num ber. The strict wing of the Franciscans, the Spirituals, adopted some of Joachim's views and looked upon him as the prophet of their order. Articles of accusation were brought before Innocent IV. His successor, Alexander IV., in 1255 condemned Gerardo and his book without, however, pass ing judgment upon Joachim.2 Gerardo and other Spirituals were thrown into prison, where Gerardo died eighteen years after. John of Parma was deposed from his office as head of the Franciscans for his Joachimism. The Franciscan chroni cler Salimbene was also for a while a disciple of Joachim, and reports that the prophet predicted that the order of the Friars Minor should endure to the end while the order of Preachers should pass away.3 In 1263 a synod of Aries condemned the writings of Joachim. A century after Joachim's death, the Franciscan Spirituals, John Peter Olivi and Ubertino da Casale, were identified with his views. The traces of Joachimism are found throughout the Middle Ages to their close. Joachim was the millenarian prophet of the Middle Ages.,
1 Or the " Gospel of the Holy Spirit." See Denifle, p. 60.
2 The practical English monk, M. Paris, speaks of Joachim's doctrines as " new and absurd." III. p. 206.
3 Coulton's Reproduction, pp. 105, 163.
§ 68. THE MENDICANT ORDERS. 379