JOACHIM OF FLORIS (c. 1145-1202), Italian mystic theologian, was born at Celico, near Cosenza, in Calabria. He was brought up at the court of Duke Roger of Apulia. At an early age he went to visit the holy places. After seeing his com rades decimated by the plague at Constantinople he resolved to change his mode of life, and, on his return to Italy, after a rigorous pilgrimage and a period of ascetic retreat, became a monk in the Cistercian abbey of Casamari. In August 1177 he was abbot of the monastery of Corazzo, near Martirano. In 1183 he went to the court of Pope Lucius III. at Veroli, and in 1185 visited Urban III. Later he retired to Pietralata, and founded with some companions under a rule of his own creation the abbey of San Giovanni in Fiore, on Monte Nero, in the massif of La Sila. Innocent III., on Jan. 21, 1204, approved the "ordo Florensis" and the "institutio" which its founder had bestowed upon it. Joachim died in 1202, probably on March 20.
The authenticated works of Joachim are : the Concordia novi et veteris Testamenti (first printed at Venice in 1519), the Expositio in Apocalypsin (Venice, 1527), the Psalterium decem chordarum (Venice, 1527), together with some "libelli" against the Jews or the adversaries of the Christian faith. It is very probable that these "libelli" are the writings entitled Concordia Evangeliorum Contra Judaeos, De articulis fidei, Confessio fidei and De unitate Trinitatis. The last is perhaps the work which was condemned by the Lateran council in 1215 as containing an erroneous criti cism of the Trinitarian theory of Peter Lombard.
It is impossible to enumerate here all the works attributed to Joachim. Some served their avowed object with great success, being powerful instruments in the anti-papal polemic and sus taining the revolted Franciscans in their hope of an approaching triumph. Among the most widely circulated were the commen taries on Jeremiah, Isaiah and Ezekiel, the Vaticinia pontificum and the De oneribus ecclesiae. Of his authentic works the doc trinal essential is very simple. Joachim divides the history of humanity, past, present and future, into three periods, which, in his Expositio in Apocalypsin (bk. i. ch. 5), he defines as the age of the Law, or of the Father ; the age of the Gospel, or of the Son ; and the age of the Spirit, which will bring the ages to an end. The third is the age of contemplation, the monastic age par excellence, the age of a monachism wholly directed towards ecstasy, more Oriental than Benedictine. Joachim does not con ceal his sympathies with the ideal of Basilian monachism. In his opinion—which is, in form at least, perfectly orthodox—the church of Peter will be, not abolished, but purified; actually, the hierarchy effaces itself in the third age before the order of the monks, the viri spirituales. The entire world will become a vast monastery in that day, which will be the resting-season, the sab bath of humanity.
The Joachimite ideas soon spread into Italy and France, and especially after a division had been produced in the Franciscan order. The rigorists, who soon became known as "Spirituals,"
represented St. Francis as the initiator of Joachim's third age. (See FRANCISCANS.) In 1260 a council held at Arles condemned Joachim's writings and his supporters, who were very numerous in that region. The Joachimite ideas were equally persistent among the Spirituals, and acquired new strength with the publication of the commentary on the Apocalypse. This book, probably pub lished after the death of its author and probably interpolated by his disciples, contains, besides Joachimite principles, an affirma tion of the elect character of the Franciscan order, as well as extremely violent attacks on the papacy.
The Joachimite literature is extremely vast. From the 14th century to the middle of the i6th, Ubertin of Casale (in his Arbor Vitae crucifixae), Bartholomew of Pisa (author of the Liber Conformitatum), the Calabrian hermit Telesphorus, John of La Rochetaillade, Seraphin of Fermo, Johannes Annius of Viterbo, Coelius Pannonius, and a host of other writers, repeated or compli cated ad infinitum the exegesis of Abbot Joachim. A treatise entitled De Ultima aetate ecclesiae, which appeared in 1356, has been attributed to Wycliffe, but is undoubtedly from the pen of an anonymous Joachimite Franciscan. The heterodox movements in Italy in the 13th and 14th centuries, such as those of the Segarellists, Dolcinists, and Fraticelli of every description, were penetrated with Joachimism ; while such independent spirits as Roger Bacon, Arnaldus de Villa Nova and Bernard Delicieux often comforted themselves with the thought of the era of justice and peace promised by Joachim. Dante held Joachim in great rever ence, and has placed him in Paradise (Par., xii. See Acta Sanctorum, Boll. (May), vii. 94-112; W. Preger in Abhandl. der kgl. Akad. der Wissenschaften, hist. sect., vol. xii., pt. 3 (Munich, 1874) ; idem, Gesch. d. deutschen Mystik im Mittelalter, vol. i. (Leip zig, 1874) ; E. Renan, "Joachim de Flore et Ptvangile kernel" in Nouvelles etudes d'histoire religieuse (Paris, 5884) ; F. Tocco, L'Eresia nel medio evo (Florence, 1884) ; H. Denifle, "Das Evangelium aeternum und die Commission zu Anagni" in Archie fir Literatur- und Kirchen gesch. des Mittelalters, vol. i.; Paul Fournier, "Joachim de Flore, ses doctrines, son influence" in Revue des questions historiques, t. i. (1900) ; H. C. Lea, History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, vol. iii. ch. i. (London, 1888) ; F. Ehrle's article "Joachim" in Wetzer and Welte's Kirchenlexikon. On Joachimism see E. Gebhardt, "Recherches nouvelles sur l'histoire du Joachimisme" in Revue historique, vol. xxxi. (1886) ; H. Haupt, "Zur Gesch. des Joachimismus" in Briegers Zeit schrift fiir Kirchengesch., vol. vii. (1885). See also the relevant articles in the Catholic Encyclopaedia.