Joachim de Flore

Joachim de Flore , born in Celico (Calabria) in 1132, died in the abbey San Giovanni in Fiore, in 1202, is a monk cistercian and a Théologie N Catholique.

Biography

Born in Calabria in 1132, or 1135, it left in Pèlerinage in Palestine where it converts. It was withdrawn then in the Monastère cistercian of Corazzo. It founded the abbey of Saint-Jean-of-Flowers later (from where it drew its name), a more austere branch of Cîteaux approved in 1196 and disappeared at the 17th century. He died in 1202.

Works

Joachim de Flore was a famous ascetic, but it is before a whole exégète which studies the Bible by seeking correspondences between the Ancien and the New Testament. He is the author of a Concordance of Old and New Testament and of a Commentaire on the Apocalypse . The Comments on Isaïe and Jérémie, which was allotted to him to the Moyen-âge, are actually later and apocryphal books.

Doctrines

Like other medieval thinkers, Joachim de Flore is wary of the reason (he refuses Aristote), of laic not obeying the clerks (and thus leaving in fact the obligations of their laic state, considered noble and of great value, though less than monastic contemplation, state of perfection) and of the heretics, with in particular of the regular attacks against the Church today known as orthodoxe, then known as Greek or Eastern, than he shows schism and of refusal of the truth.

Its thought is however very innovative because in very radical. Thus, it modifies received ternary cuttings of holy Augustin. He believes that “the world ages”, put inside one period which will end. For him, there is place for the hope before the end of time. He divides the human history into three periods, thing traditional since Christian antiquity:

an age known as of the Law, the age of the Father : the creation of the world and the Old Testament, the age of God the Father
an age known as of the Grace, the age of the Son : who begins with the foundation from the Church from Pierre, the current age known as Age of the Son
an age known as of the superabundance of the Grace, the age of the Spirit: in this age marked by the prayer, the Christian revelation will be included/understood not by the " insane claim of the reason humaine" (Psalt. X. Chrordarum, I, introduction) but by the grace of Jesus and the overflowing of the Holy Ghost.

The age of the Spirit is not the terrestrial period of paradise describes by the traditional millenarists but one period of purity where the Église will become spiritual. Its disciples will obviate his thought while it wanting controlled by a “Pape angelica”. In the perfect line of the medieval thought, since this age marks the arrival of times of the end, and not of the end of time, there will be a renewal of heresy, which will die out since all (including the heretics and the infidels) will include/understand the message of Jesus-Christ: in accordance with the belief of its time, the major sign of this maturation of the history will be the conversion of the Jews (see the treaty Adversus Judaeos).

The end of the world is close, according to him. The signs accumulate: fall of Jerusalem in 1187, multiplication of the Hérésie S. Contrairement to a spread opinion, in any of its works, it did not predict it for 1260: it is there the calculation of the joachimists of XIIIe incipient century (42 30 years generations since the birth of Jesus). He is satisfied to say imminent not the end of the world, but the end of the second period of the world, and the duration of the third period will be to calculate while determining if the millenium of peace, known as the chiliasme, before the final combat of the powers of the evil, is a millenium symbolic system or reality.

The implicit criticism of the ecclesiastical institution of its time makes the thought of Joachim suspect to Rome. Some modern authors believed that he had been shown of Trithéisme by some of his contemporaries, in particular the secretary of Bernard de Clairvaux. The insults rained certainly between the two men, but this objection in is absent. It is under another reason that the Concile of Lateran IV in 1215 condemns its theology trinitaire: a subtle point of doctrines which try to solve the question of the Unit and the difference of the Divine People in the Trinity. Pierre Lombard in his Summa Theologica published in the middle of XIIe had proposed to solve this question by a " reality supérieure" (Summa LMBO) not having any the particular capacities of each Divine Person. Joachim de Flore there saw an attack with the dogma in the form of Quaternité (three People plus a reality) and published one makes out against Pierre Lombard. It is this makes out today lost which is condemned to the Council of Lateran. Consequently, Pierre Lombard was instituted like theological reference. They is thus all the Masters scholastic, Thomas d' Aquin, Bonaventure, Duns Scot Ockham to quote most known, began their careers with " A Comment of Sentences" who gathered their first teaching like " lecteur" , insinuation professing a reading with accompanying notes of the Sentences of Pierre Lombard. The polemic engaged by Joachim de Flore thus carried out the medieval Church to define the text and the orientation of the scholastic, and thus of her university theology.

Posterity

The influence of Joachim de Flore is considerable 13th century, until the Renaissance. One finds his eschatologic thought behind the research of the “emperor of the last days” (Philippe Auguste, or the Empereur Frederic II).

But its most important posterity is spiritual. It influences a certain number of dissenting currents like:

the Guillelmites in Milan, which believe in a news Église women
the Apostoliques and the Dolcinien S which denounce the corruption of the Église
especially, spiritual the franciscains
the Hermits of Saint-Augustin.

Its theses, more or less edulcorated, partially marked the thought of many thinkers and artists of the Rebirth, from the edition of its works in Venice in the first quarter of the XVI E century (Thus for Michel-Angel CF Bull " The Iconography off the Sistine Chapel, Burlington Magazine, 1988,130). It is supposed to have been one of the models govern the creation of the mythical character who was the founder of Rosicrucian brotherhood, Christian Rosencreutz

Works of Joachim de Flore are strongly illustrated, with its request. There is thus a very clear posterity in the history of art: he was the major craftsman of " the invention" triangle to appear the Trinity, and since this symbol came from there to appear obvious (before the divinity was according to codes inherited the Antiquity announced by the circle forms perfect without beginning nor end)

Spiritual waiting of Christophe Colomb, ignored although revealed by its newspaper, and which thought of hastening the return of Christ by opening the ways necessary to a total evangelization, is a remote heiress of this eschatology. The preaching of a new spiritual age has since 1255 in Paris, by the publication of a compilation less less faithful of its works under the title of " the Éternel" Gospel; by the france G. of Borgo San Donino, franciscain, associated the " terms; Gospel éternel" in Joachim de Flore.

At the same time, the assertion of the time limitation of the actual position of the world gave the theological, orthodoxe bases and hétérodoxes, with a radical criticism of the hierarchies connected with the church and secular. Modern times mark a decline of its posterity. The order which it founded - monastic of strict observance and eremitic reform - disappears at the XVIIIe century. However Jacob Boehme remains very close to its thought.

In the philosophical discussions during the 20th century concerning the roots of the “crisis of the Modernity”, the name of Joachim de Flore and its ideas reappear, in particular in work of Erich Voegelin and at Karl Löwith.

The Catholic church recognizes it like happy even if it forever have lawsuit of beatification, but a decision taken by Honorius III, in 1223. Its worship is not however expected that within the order cistercian. Its feastday is the March 2nd, date of its death.

It is thus one of rare, if not the only character to be declared happy, while having seen its theology trinitaire condemned like heretic by more the high ranking authority of the Catholic church: a decree of an Ecumenical Council (Lateran IV, November 1215) pronounced by Sovereign pontiff of the time (Innocent III).

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