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The Historiography of the Super Prophetas (also known as Super Esaiam) of Pseudo-Joachim of Fiore

David Morris

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I am profoundly grateful to the following : Sylvain Piron, of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, for giving me the opportunity to present this essay in Oliviana ; his fellow editors, Gian Luca Potestà of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and Robert E. Lerner of Northwestern University, for bibliographic references ; Bernard McGinn of the University of Chicago ; my advisor, John Van Engen of Notre Dame, for his unfailing support ; and the Nanovic Institute for European Studies and its benefactors, whose generous financial assistance has made possible both the writing of this essay and continued work on my PhD dissertation, “Apocalypse Now or Later : The Super Prophetas of Pseudo-Joachim of Fiore”.

Introduction

  • 1  In Venice, Lazaro de Soardis printed the first edition of Super Jeremiam, or at least one version (...)
  • 2  Thanks to the efforts of the editorial committee for Joachim’s Opera Omnia – Robert Lerner, Alexan (...)
  • 3  I refer especially to Warren Lewis’s forthcoming critical edition of one of the most important apo (...)
  • 4  The most significant breakthroughs in this area remain Robert E. Lerner and Christine Morerod-Fatt (...)

1Joachim of Fiore’s legacy has been shaped nearly as much by what he did not write, namely the works attributed to him after his death in 1202, as by anything he actually composed. It is telling that these pseudo-Joachite texts, so widely read from the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries, were among the first works attributed to Joachim to have been sent to the printer’s press1. The transmission of Joachim’s ideas, whether in their authentic or spurious manifestations, has defied complete understanding because of a lack of critical editions of several foundational texts and all of the attendant problems : a relatively inaccessible manuscript tradition and dependence upon early-modern prints with their myriad corruptions and interpolations. After many years of labor, we can now anticipate a complete set of editions for Joachim’s authentic corpus2. Concurrently, scholars have edited or are in the midst of editing compositions by some of the abbot’s best-known heirs within the Franciscan tradition, especially Peter of John Olivi3 and John of Rupescissa4. The time has come, therefore, to turn our attention to what effectively came in between, to the pseudo-Joachite works, and to lay the groundwork for comparable advances in this area.

  • 5  While I plan on a more complete treatment of this issue, of what to call this text and its constit (...)
  • 6  Herbert Grundmann, “Federico II e Gioacchino da Fiore”, in Ausgewählte Aufsätze, vol. 2, Monumenta (...)
  • 7  For example : Robert Moynihan, “The Development of the ‘Pseudo-Joachim’ Commentary ‘Super Hieremia (...)
  • 8  Cf. Wessley, Joachim of Fiore and Monastic Reform, p. 132, n. 87.
  • 9  I say, “depending on how one reckons” because often in the literature, this figure collection, the (...)
  • 10  Though it is present in the 1517 edition—and now ubiquitous in the secondary literature—there is m (...)
  • 11  Super Esaiam Prophetam, Venetiis, Lazaro de Soardis, 1517, f. 9v.
  • 12  Ibid., ff. 11r-27v. These diagrams are composed of circles, representing various cities, typically (...)
  • 13  Ibid., f. 50v.

2As a prelude to such an undertaking, I propose to discuss the historiographical trends behind Super Prophetas – the so-called “Isaiah commentary” of pseudo-Joachim that has been known to the past 150 years of scholarship by the title of its 1517 edition, “Super Esaiam Prophetam5. Scholars have long regarded it as one of the most important examples of the genre and in special need of being properly edited.6 The other major pseudo-Joachite text of the thirteenth century, Super Jeremiam, has proven to have a ferociously difficult tradition that remains shrouded in mystery despite various investigations in the late 1980s and early 1990s7. Adrift in what Stephen Wessley has called a  “Sargasso Sea of texts and versions” may well be two distinct works and multiple intermediary stages8. Super Prophetas spares us these complexities, but presents a few of its own. Depending on how one reckons, it is the only major pseudo-Joachite text from the thirteenth century with extensive images9. Beyond a series of prefatory figures, commonly called the Praemissiones10, there is another diagram of concentric circles related to the burdens of Isaiah and the minor prophets11 ; an extended sequence of diagrams listing the cities and regions of the known world, together with relevant prophecies12 ; and finally, a figure of the Old Testament Tabernacle13.

  • 14  On the composite nature of Super Prophetas, cf. Harold Lee and Marjorie Reeves’ discussion in Haro (...)
  • 15 Super Esaiam Prophetam, ff. 1r-9r.
  • 16 Ibid., ff. 9r-49v. This section begins at f. 9r thus : “Hic ponuntur undecim onera secundum Esaiam, (...)
  • 17  Ibid., ff. 49v-59v : The incipit is : Ecce ab oneribus omnibus expediti. Though Lee et al., Wester (...)
  • 18  While I plan on a more thorough discussion of this issue in the near-future, it suffices to say th (...)

3The text itself is a composite, made up of distinct sections or parts, and may well be regarded as a small collection of associated pseudo-Joachite works14 : (1) the Praemissiones ; (2) an incomplete Isaiah commentary that abruptly terminates at chapter 1115 ; (3) a section about the prophetic burdens, which in the 1517 edition bears the title “De Oneribus Sexti Temporis” and contains the geographic diagrams, coming between the discussion of the Burden of Babylon and the other various onera16; and finally, (4) another section the 1517 edition calls “De Septem Temporibus Ecclesie”, which is really a separate tract on the seven seals of Revelation and the seven ages of the Church17. All these parts appear together, in the same order, going back to the earliest copies in the thirteenth century. Moreover, unlike several other pseudo-Joachite works, Super Prophetas has extensive marginal glosses that are present at all stages of the manuscript tradition and have never been comprehensively analyzed18.

4For over a century, most major treatments of Joachim have made reference to Super Prophetas, but compared to other works written by or attributed to the abbot of Fiore, the literature devoted to it has been sparse. Much of what has been written conforms to two tendencies. First, discussion of Super Prophetas often takes a subordinate place to analyses of other Joachite works, such as Super Jeremiam or the LiberFigurarum, and as such, our text typically becomes something of an afterthought. Second, what does focus on Super Prophetas tends to center on the Praemissiones and thus the remaining sixty folios or so of text are often neglected. This tendency has pushed scholarship toward certain positions that may be untenable in light of more sustained investigation into the text and its manuscript tradition.

5What follows, then, is not meant as an exhaustive recounting of every appearance of Super Prophetas in the scholarship, but rather a broad overview of the highlights, wherever our knowledge of Super Prophetas and its manuscript tradition took a major step forward. This literature review then concludes with what is, effectively, the status of two very pressing quaestiones : who produced Super Prophetas and when ? As we shall see, the jury is still out on both issues, but on balance, it is much farther from rendering a verdict in the former case, and much closer in the latter.

General Overview

  • 19  For this literature review, at least through the historiography of the early 1970s, I am particula (...)

6The historiography behind Super Prophetas reflects the broader currents of research on Joachim of Fiore and, more generally, on medieval apocalypticism in at least two respects. First, scholarship from Germany was overwhelmingly predominant in these areas throughout the nineteenth century and up until the First World War. Although German scholarship would continue to enjoy some degree of preeminence after c. 1920, especially in the person of Herbert Grundmann, its lead gradually dissipated as scholars from other countries turned their attention to apocalyptic texts such as Super Prophetas. In the years during and after World War II, these studies became truly international, and over the course of the twentieth century, scholars from Italy and from the Anglophone world, particularly Marjorie Reeves of Oxford, also advanced the field19.

  • 20  See Johann Engelhardt, Kirchengeschichtliche Abhandlungen, Erlangen, Palm und Enke, 1832, p. 53-54 (...)
  • 21 “Friderich’s Kritische Untersuchung der dem Abt Joachim von Floris zugeschriebenen Commentare zu Je (...)

7Second, the interest in Super Prophetas and other Joachite texts that had emerged at the universities of nineteenth-century Germany was itself an outgrowth of the rise of historical-critical theology and modern source criticism. Several of the leading figures in these developments, such as Johann Engelhardt and Christoph Hahn, had doubted the authenticity of at least parts of what we now know to be pseudo-Joachite texts20. Yet only in the second half of the nineteenth century did one scholar disprove Joachim’s authorship of Super Prophetas and Super Jeremiam in a work that effectively marks the beginning of modern research on Joachim and medieval apocalypticism. Karl Friderich, a student of Ferdinand Christian Baur, the leader of the Tübingen School of theology, published his “Kritische Untersuchung” in 1859, using the sixteenth-century editions to prove that both texts were spurious and were written decades after Joachim’s death21.

  • 22  Ibid., p. 451.
  • 23  Ibid., p. 453.
  • 24  Ibid., p. 475.

8Friderich here assembles an impressive array of evidence, demonstrating that both Super Prophetas and Super Jeremiam discuss people and events that Joachim could not possibly have known about. We will consider these elements in greater detail below. Yet he also determines that both works stand at a variance from Joachim’s authentic writings in terms of their style, which Friderich finds to be comparatively crude, hastily-written, and lacking in Joachim’s profundity or clarity22. Friderich notes that the two works’ exegetical technique differs markedly from Joachim’s, for as the abbot was careful to seek the deeper meaning of a particular biblical passage, these apocryphal texts use scripture as a vehicle for their prophecies23. Moreover, he detects in these commentaries a much more strident critique of scholasticism, canon law, and decretists – in short, many of the defining features of the high-medieval Church – than can be found in Joachim’s genuine writings24.

  • 25  One must make a distinction between Friderich’s analysis of Super Prophetas and that of Super Jere (...)
  • 26  Johann Schneider, Joachim von Floris und die Apokalyptiker des Mittelalters, Dillingen, 1873, p. 2 (...)
  • 27  Ernest Renan, “Joachim de Flore et l’évangile éternel”, in Nouvelles études d’histoire religieuse, (...)
  • 28  Tocco, L’eresia nel medio evo, p. 304-308.

9Insofar as Super Prophetas is concerned, the Friderich thesis has never been seriously challenged, and in the quarter century after the publication of the “Kritische Untersuchung”, scholars either independently corroborated it, or came to accept it readily25. Unaware of Friderich’s study, Johann Schneider also rejected the authenticity of Super Prophetas in his Joachim von Floris und die Apokalyptiker des Mittelalters, published in 1873. According to Schneider, the text refers to the Amalrician heretics, the Emperor Frederick II, and the Mongol invasions. Yet the Amalricians were not condemned until 1210 ; Frederick II did not become emperor until 1215 ; and the Mongols did not invade Europe until c. 1240 – all events that had occurred after Joachim’s death. Schneider thus concludes that if Joachim were to have actually written about such things, he would have to have excelled the prescience of any Old Testament prophet26 ! Ernest Renan had also been unaware of Friderich at the time of the first edition of his seminal piece, “Joachim de Flore et l’évangile éternel” (1866), but in the second edition of 1884, Renan accepts Friderich’s findings and mentions the parallel effort of Schneider27. In L’eresia nel medio evo (1884), Felice Tocco appears to be unaware of Friderich’s work and of the latest developments in German scholarship, but he asserts the spuriousness of Super Prophetas as well28.

  • 29 Franz Kampers, Kaiserprophetieen und Kaisersagen im Mittelalter, Munich, 1895, p. 240-41.
  • 30 Oswald Holder-Egger, “Italienische Prophetieen des 13. Jahrhunderts”, Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft (...)
  • 31  The ongoing conflation of these two texts can be found, for example, in Guido Bondatti, Gioachinis (...)

10From the end of the nineteenth century through roughly the first third of the twentieth, the next generation of German scholars began to move beyond the 1517 print toward an engagement with the manuscripts, ultimately laying the groundwork for the mid-century proliferation of research into our text. An early example can be found in Franz Kampers’ Kaiserprophetieen und Kaisersagen im Mittelalter (1895), one of the most important general treatments of political apocalyptic in the Middle Ages to come from this era. Here, Kampers describes the sources used by the fourteenth-century Joachite writer, Telesphorus of Cosenza, including two pseudo-Joachite works that he calls the “Liber de Oneribus” and the “Liber de Provincialibus Praesagiis”. Kampers claims that both are to be found in the 1517 edition of Super Prophetas, identifying the former with the section called “De Oneribus Sexti Temporis” and the latter with the geographic sequence. He lists several manuscripts containing De Provincialibus Praesagiis. Among these are a complete copy of Super Prophetas, Vat. Lat. 4959, and three copies of the geographic section only : Vat. Lat. 3819, Vat. Lat. 3820, and Vat. Borgh. 3829. However, the prolific MGH Mitarbeiter, Oswald Holder-Egger, determined in his 1908 edition of De Oneribus Prophetarum that Kampers was in error on this fundamental point : this text is not the same as the De Oneribus Sexti Temporis found in the 1517 edition30. The potential for confusion, nevertheless, led astray later scholars who, even into the 1950s, would continue to assume that Super Prophetas – in both its manuscript and print manifestations – contains a version of De Oneribus Prophetarum31.

  • 32  H. Hermann, Die italienischen Handschriften des Dugento und Trecento, Leipzig, Hiersemann, 1928, p (...)
  • 33  Grundmann, Studien über Joachim von Floris, Leipzig, B. G. Teubner, 1927. A second edition, with a (...)
  • 34  Idem, “Liber de Flore : Eine Schrift der Franziskaner-Spiritualen aus dem Anfang des 14. Jahrhunde (...)
  • 35  Emil Donckel, “Studien über die Prophezeiung des Fr. Telesphorus von Cosenza, O.F.M. (1365-1386)”, (...)

11The interwar years witnessed further advances in the early exploration of the manuscripts. Published in 1928, H. Hermann’s Die italienischen Handschriften des Dugento und Trecento presents images and a detailed description for Cod. 1400 (Theol. 71) in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna. While noting the badly-garbled nature of the text, Hermann determines that this fourteenth-century manuscript must have been directly based on a thirteenth-century one from Italy ; its distinct variations have allowed later scholars to determine readily its relation to other manuscripts32. However, the leading figure in these early studies was Herbert Grundmann, whose rise to prominence was one of the major developments of Weimar-era scholarship, marked by the publication of his landmark Studien über Joachim von Floris (1927) and a series of seminal articles33. In one of these, his 1929 study of the Liber de Flore, Grundmann discusses the manuscript tradition of the pseudo-Joachite texts, noting that he had found two manuscripts of Super Prophetas from the end of the thirteenth century and three from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries34. While Grundmann himself never wrote extensively about Super Prophetas, his relentless search for manuscripts and his generosity in sharing the fruits of this labor enriched later scholarship immensely. Emil Donckel attributed to Grundmann his 1933 list of Super Prophetas manuscripts, which included, beyond the ones Kampers had already mentioned in 1895, additional copies in Görlitz, Budapest, and two in Vienna35. Much of Marjorie Reeves’ own trailblazing scholarship in the post-war years depended on manuscripts that Grundmann had referred to her.

  • 36 Leone Tondelli, Il libro delle figure dell’abate Gioachino da Fiore, 2 vols., Torino, Societa éditr (...)
  • 37  Fritz Saxl, “A Spiritual Encyclopaedia of the Later Middle Ages”, Journal of the Warburg and Court (...)
  • 38  Marjorie Reeves, “The Liber Figurarum of Joachim of Fiore”, Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies, vol (...)
  • 39  As evidenced, for example, by Tondelli’s brief notice about the Vatican manuscript, Ross. 552 in “ (...)
  • 40  Russo, Bibliografia Gioachimita, p. 32. Hirsch-Reich mentions this error in her critique of Russo, (...)

12Breakthroughs related to another Joachite text ultimately led to further investigation of Super Prophetas. By chance, in the space of only three years, two scholars working independently of each other produced groundbreaking studies of the Liber Figurarum, a long-overlooked collection of diagrams inspired by Joachim’s teachings. Leone Tondelli discovered a manuscript of this work in Reggio Emilia and prepared an edition of it in 193936. Unaware of this development, the Warburg Institute’s Fritz Saxl drew attention to another version at Corpus Christi College, Oxford in 194237, which Marjorie Reeves identified, supposing it at the time to be the only known manuscript of the Liber Figurarum38. These efforts generated much scholarly excitement and drew attention to the figurae in Joachim’s compositions. This proliferation of work on the Liber Figurarum caused scholars to look more carefully at Super Prophetas because of its own distinctive figures, although into the 1950s, Tondelli continued to assume that the figures in Super Prophetas and the Liber Figurarum were essentially the same, notwithstanding their apparent distinctions39, while Francesco Russo’s Bibliografia Gioachimita from 1954 includes the copy of the Praemissiones in Vat. Ross. 552 with the listing for the Liber Figurarum40.

  • 41  Reeves says that Vat. Lat. 4959 and Vat. Ross. 552 were brought to her attention, respectively, by (...)
  • 42  Ibid., p. 64.
  • 43  Ibid., p. 60. In their printed manifestations, the Praemissiones accompany not only Super Propheta (...)
  • 44  Reeves, “The Abbot Joachim’s Disciples and the Cistercian Order”, Sophia 19, 3-4, 1951, p. 355-371 (...)

13It was not until the third quarter of the twentieth century that Reeves – perhaps the preeminent Joachim scholar of recent times, and certainly within the English-speaking world – demonstrated conclusively that the Liber Figurarum and the Praemissiones are different works, and that the latter is closely associated with Super Prophetas. Having learned of two early manuscripts  – Vat. Lat. 4959 from Grundmann and Vat. Ross. 552 from Tondelli – Reeves undertook the first major analyses of the manuscript tradition behind the sixteenth-century print41. She presented her investigation of the Liber Figurarum and its textual issues in a 1950 essay that considers yet another line of inquiry : the figure collection found in the sixteenth-century editions, often assumed to be just another version of the Liber Figurarum. Promising herein a full treatment of what she had already determined to be a “separate picture-collection”42, Reeves identifies several manuscript copies from across Europe, with the observation that in every instance, the images preface Super Prophetas – a different situation from the Venice editions, in which these figures also accompanied other Joachite and pseudo-Joachite texts43. In “The Abbot Joachim’s Disciples and the Cistercian Order” (1951), she engages with the thematic elements of the main body of text in Super Prophetas, while discussing the origins of the pseudo-Joachite works overall44. We will consider this last work in greater detail in our discussion of the authorship of Super Prophetas.

  • 45  Marjorie Reeves and Beatrice Hirsch-Reich, “The Figurae of Joachim of Fiore : Genuine and Spurious (...)
  • 46 Ibid., p. 171-172.
  • 47  Ibid., p. 183, n. 2. Reeves and Hirsch-Reich retain this title, noting that it can also be found i (...)
  • 48  Ibid., p. 171-172. The authors were unable to study in detail the Milich and Lobkowicz manuscripts (...)
  • 49  Ibid.
  • 50  Ibid., p. 185. Add. 11439 remains the only known version that omits the main text of Super Prophet (...)

14Reeves’ major follow-up, “The Figurae of Joachim of Fiore : Genuine and Spurious Collections”, co-authored with Beatrice Hirsch-Reich in 1954, is perhaps the most significant work of scholarship on Super Prophetas, at least since Friderich’s landmark study from nearly a century earlier.45 The article sorts through several manuscripts to determine three broad categories : full copies of the Liber Figurarum, partial copies, and what Reeves and Hirsch-Reich call the “small pseudo-Joachite collection”46, which they rename the “Praemissiones”, after the title found in the sixteenth-century prints47. In what is really the first sustained analysis both of the Praemissiones and Super Prophetas across several manuscripts, Reeves and Hirsch-Reich take stock of the following : Vat. Lat. 4959 and Vat. Ross. 552 ; the Cottonian manuscript and Add. 11439, both in London ; Cod. 1400 in Vienna ; Class. Lat. I, Cod. 74 at the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice ; the Milich manuscript in Görlitz ; and finally, the Lobkowicz manuscript in Roudnice, Czechoslovakia48. The authors herein notice numerous patterns and relationships, establishing that Vat. Lat. 4959 has nine figures, but that Vat. Ross. 552 has eleven, while another set of versions – the Venice edition, plus the Marciana, Milich, and Cottonian manuscripts – has only eight49. Moreover, Add. 11439 in London and Cod. 1400 in Vienna show signs of being closely related, especially through their distinctive representation of God the Father in the figure of the Psaltery of Ten Chords50.

  • 51  Ibid. The chart is between p. 182-183.
  • 52  Ibid., p. 186.
  • 53  Ibid., p. 196.
  • 54  Ibid., p. 190.
  • 55  Ibid., p. 196, n. 2.
  • 56  Ibid., p. 194. However, as further research into the manuscripts will show, the fact that the marg (...)

15In a chart that describes the figurae across all these versions, Reeves and Hirsch-Reich compile citations from Joachim’s principal works and from the main text of Super Prophetas, demonstrating the images’ roots in the former but also their intimate relationship with the latter51. They come to the tentative conclusion that the Praemissiones, while crude or garbled compared to the Liber Figurarum52, were intended as an explanatory supplement to Super Prophetas, devised either by the writer or someone close to him53. Both the images and the text assuredly emerged in a south Italian, probably Calabrian, milieu : the entire complex points to southern Italy as the center of a looming crisis of history54, while within the geographic section, one diagram calls special attention to Cosenza, Joachim’s home diocese55. Finally, looking to Super Prophetas overall, Reeves and Hirsch-Reich note its composite nature and the presence of marginal glosses in both the edition and the manuscript tradition, which they suggest were part of the text from the very beginning56.

  • 57  Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy : A Study in Joachism, second edition, Notre Dame and London, Un (...)
  • 58  Reeves’ listing has the opposite problem of Russo’s : whereas Russo offers comprehensive lists of (...)
  • 59  Reeves and Hirsch-Reich, The Figurae of Joachim of Fiore, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1972, p. 287-28 (...)
  • 60  Ibid., p. 276-283.

16In her magisterial opus, The Influence of Prophecy (first edition : 1969, second : 1993), Reeves sums up a lifetime of research on Joachim and his legacy in what remains a superlative English-language treatment of these issues. Her narrative discusses the pseudo-Joachite works, including the overarching contexts of their debt to Joachim’s authentic writings, their authorship, and their reception throughout the later Middle Ages. In one of the book’s many appendices, Reeves presents an extended survey of manuscripts and editions for all of Joachim’s known works, including apocryphal texts such as Super Prophetas, for which she lists ten manuscripts57. Though not devoid of problems, Reeves’ list represents an improvement over Russo’s Bibliografia Gioachimita and has remained a useful starting point for research58. A final collaboration with Hirsch-Reich, The Figurae of Joachim of Fiore (1972), also summarizes and refines earlier conclusions while exploring further paths of inquiry. Reeves and Hirsch-Reich elaborate upon their previous discussion of the Cosenza diagram within the geographic section, this time noting that it can be found in the early manuscripts as well as the sixteenth-century print59. They are also able to incorporate into their comparative study of the Praemissiones the Lobkowicz manuscript, which they had been unable to study in 1954 and had since reemerged in Prague60.

  • 61  McGinn, “Apocalypticism in the Middle Ages”, p. 268.
  • 62  Bernhard Töpfer, Das kommende Reich des Friedens : zur Entwicklung chiliastischer Zukunftshoffnung (...)

17At the same time Reeves and Hirsch-Reich were undertaking their investigations into Super Prophetas, the Cold War era produced an East German interpretive approach, focusing on revolutionary movements and their interplay with medieval apocalypticism. By far, the most impressive example of this scholarship has been Bernhard Töpfer’s Das kommende Reich des Friedens, published in 1964 and standing among the most important of the general surveys treating of Joachimism and its place in medieval thought. As Bernard McGinn has pointed out, Töpfer’s book suffers from his imposition of a rigid, almost perfunctory, Marxist framework, usually manifest in chapter conclusions that seem tacked on61. However, Töpfer’s enduring historiographical import derives from his mastery of the sources, and in this vein, he devotes considerable effort to understanding the significance and the complexities of the pseudo-Joachite works, especially Super Jeremiam and Super Prophetas62. As we shall see, he had much to say about their dating and origins.

  • 63 Elena Bianca Di Gioia, “Un manoscritto pseudo-gioachimita : Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma V (...)
  • 64  Ibid., p. 109. Like Cod. 1400 in Vienna and Add. 11439 in London, V. E. 1502 includes a representa (...)
  • 65 Ibid., p. 94.
  • 66  Fabio Troncarelli and Elena Bianca Di Gioia, “Scrittura, testo, immagine in uno manoscritto gioach (...)

18New manuscripts have come to light since these definitive studies. Perhaps most important has been the thirteenth-century manuscript the Italian government acquired in 1976 from the piecemeal dispersal of the Phillipps Collection in Britain. This version, now at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Rome (shelf-mark : Vittorio Emanuele 1502), was the basis of a substantial essay published in 1980 by Elena Bianca Di Gioia, “Un manoscritto pseudo-gioachimita”, which compares the Praemissiones in this recently-discovered manuscript to the ones previously studied by Reeves and Hirsch-Reich in their 1954 study63. Di Gioia’s analysis of the variations suggests that V. E. 1502 and Vienna Cod. 1400 are closely related64, and that the two Vatican manuscripts represent the oldest, most correct, and most “organic” versions of the Praemissiones65. The following year, she co-authored a study with Fabio Troncarelli that, in its comparisons with other Joachite manuscripts from southern Italy, further notes the distinct similarities between Vat. Lat. 4959 and Vat. Ross. 55266.

  • 67  Robert E. Lerner, “Frederick II : Alive, Aloft, and Allayed in Franciscan-Joachite Eschatology”, i (...)
  • 68  Lee et al., Western Mediterranean Prophecy, p. 10-12.
  • 69  Kurt-Victor Selge, “Un codice quattrocentesco dell’Archivio Generale dei Carmelitani, contenente o (...)
  • 70  Wessley, Joachim of Fiore and Monastic Reform, p. 121. Again, I am inclined to believe that this C (...)
  • 71  Troncarelli, “Tra beneventana e gotica : manoscritti e multigrafismo nell’Italia meridionale e nel (...)
  • 72 Selge, “Handschriften Joachims von Fiore in Böhmen”, in Eschatologie und Hussitismus : internationa (...)
  • 73  Patschovsky, “The Holy Emperor Henry ‘the First’ as One of the Dragon’s Heads of the Apocalypse”, (...)

19The closing years of the twentieth century did not spawn treatments specifically devoted to Super Prophetas, but scholarly investigation continued apace. In his 1988 essay, “Frederick II : Alive, Aloft, and Allayed in Franciscan-Joachite Eschatology”, Robert E. Lerner identifies what he believes to be the five oldest manuscripts in the tradition. These are Vat. Lat. 4959, Vat. Ross. 552, V. E. 1502, and the Milich and Perugia manuscripts67. In the introduction to the 1989 edition of the Franciscan-Joachite Breviloquium, Reeves, together with Harold Lee and Giulio Silano, briefly discuss the main text of Super Prophetas, its composite nature, and the themes found throughout68. That same year, Kurt-Victor Selge published a description of a fifteenth-century codex in the Carmelite Archive in Rome, containing what he thought to be another version of Super Prophetas69, which Stephen Wessley shortly thereafter used as a comparison to the 1517 edition70. Fabio Troncarelli’s “Tra beneventana e gotica”, from 1994, pays special attention to Vat. Lat. 4959 and its script71. Selge, in his “Handschriften Joachims von Fiore in Böhmen” (1996), discusses the Prague manuscript and briefly compares it to the Milich version, formerly at Görlitz and now at the University of Wrocław Library. In his view, the Milich manuscript originated in thirteenth-century Italy and represents an earlier version than that found in the Prague codex72. Alexander Patschovsky also discusses this Prague version in his 1998 essay on the seven-headed dragon as a Joachite motif73.

  • 74  Matthias Kaup, “Pseudo-Joachim Reads a Heavenly Letter : Extrabiblical Prophecy in the Early Joach (...)
  • 75  Lerner, The Feast of Saint Abraham : Medieval Millenarians and the Jews, Philadelphia, University (...)
  • 76  The Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale’s catalog entry for V. E. 1502 suggests southern Italy as the pl (...)
  • 77  See within Il ricordo del futuro : Franco-Lucio Schiavetto, “Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Aposto (...)
  • 78  Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, “English Joachite Manuscripts and Medieval Optimism about the Role of the Je (...)
  • 79  Marco Rainini, Disegni dei tempi: Il «Liber Figurarum» e la teologia figurativa di Gioacchino da F (...)

20Scholarship has continued to make incremental advances since the turn of the century. In 2001, Matthias Kaup presented a short prophecy from the 1240s, Ad Memoriam Eternorum, which he determined to have been quoted in Super Prophetas, among other pseudo-Joachite works74. In The Feast of Saint Abraham, also from 2001, Robert E. Lerner demonstrates that the prominent Catalan friar, Francesc Eiximenis, cited Super Prophetas in his writings and that his library contained a copy of our text75. Fabio Troncarelli published an article in 2003, “La chiave di David”, that rejects the assumption of a southern Italian origin for V. E. 1502, arguing instead that this manuscript came from the French Midi and may have actually been glossed by Peter John Olivi himself, though this latter point has been challenged by Sylvain Piron and Gian Luca Potestà76. In 2006, Troncarelli edited an essay collection about Joachim and his legacy, Il ricordo del futuro, that includes descriptions of selected manuscripts of Super Prophetas, including Vat. Lat. 4959, Vat. Ross. 552, and V. E. 1502, along with a partial copy found in Cod. 694 at the University of Valencia, a late-fourteenth-century manuscript that is notable because of its ties to the royal court at Naples and its illuminated image of Joachim being greeted by an angel77. That same year, Kathryn Kerby-Fulton published a list of English Joachite manuscripts, including three full or partial copies of Super Prophetas,78 while Marco Rainini’s Disegni dei tempi includes a list of Praemissiones manuscripts, adding V. E. 1502 and the copy at Wrocław to the ones already listed by Reeves in The Influence of Prophecy, for a total of ten known versions.79

21Most recently, additional manuscripts have come to light and mass digitization efforts have made reproductions openly accessible on the Web, together opening new frontiers for research. The two new manuscripts were discovered in 2008 in Olomouc, in the Czech Republic, further demonstrating the Central European circulation of Super Prophetas80. The Google Books Library Project scanned the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek’s copy of the 1517 edition in 200981 and the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek’s copy in 2011, providing freely downloadable PDF images of both82. Within the past year (2012), the University of Wrocław Library digitized the entire Milich manuscript and made its images publicly available online83, while the University of Valencia Library did the same with Cod. 69484.

The Status of Two Quaestiones

  • 85  It is now clear that certain manuscripts that are no longer in Italy did in fact originate there. (...)

22Thus is the current state of work on Super Prophetas. Our knowledge of this text and how it relates to the rest of Joachim’s legacy has advanced steadily over the past 150 years, and particularly since the mid-twentieth century. The literature is in universal accord over the text’s spuriousness and its origins in thirteenth-century southern Italy. Our understanding of the parameters of this and other pseudo-Joachite works now enjoys a certain measure of clarity. We can state that as a composite work, the Super Prophetas complex includes the Praemissiones and De Provincialibus Praesagiis, but does not encompass De Oneribus Prophetarum. Through growing awareness of the manuscripts, we can determine that the geographic distribution of our text was European-wide, with its two main epicenters being Italy, where it originated, and Bohemia85. Thanks to the investigations of Grundmann, Reeves, and Lerner, among others, a potential editor has an informed view of which manuscripts are the earliest and best, allowing one to arrive at a text that improves upon the 1517 print that scholars have had to use. Vat. Lat. 4959 and Vat. Ross. 552, stand out in this regard.

23Nevertheless, despite the efforts of generations of scholars, two issues remain unresolved that are of paramount importance for understanding this text and the transmission of Joachim’s ideas more broadly. They are the questions of which religious community produced Super Prophetas and when it was written, or at least arrived in the form that has come down to us through the sixteenth-century edition and the surviving manuscripts. In both cases, a final answer has been elusive precisely because of the lack of a critical edition, or even of a comprehensive review of the known manuscript tradition, and not just of the Praemissiones but of the whole text.

24The earliest modern scholarship directly engaged the questions of authorship and dating, but by standing on the brittle glass of the 1517 print, unaware of the kinds of textual problems that would eventually obfuscate the study of Super Jeremiam. As later scholars, especially Reeves, delved deeper into the manuscript tradition, it became apparent that despite its many deficiencies, the Venice print preserves a comparatively stable text (i.e. relative to the Jeremiah commentary), and that many of the findings of Friderich and other early researchers still stood, but that a certain level of revisionism was deemed necessary. Thus scholars in the second half of the twentieth century began to attack two basic suppositions that had been in place for decades : first, starting in the 1950s, that Super Prophetas was produced by Franciscan followers of Joachim ; then, about a generation later, that it was written in the 1260s, toward the end of the strife between the papacy and the Hohenstaufen dynasty. In both instances, these revisionist views have met with opposition.

Who ?

25It is virtually impossible to identify a specific author, although it is certain that Super Prophetas originated in southern Italy, and quite possibly in Joachim’s paese, Calabria. Yet the question remains open whether it was composed by a Franciscan friar or a monk, specifically a Cistercian or a Florensian – that is, a member of Joachim’s community that broke away from the Order of Cîteaux. It is an important issue, because knowing the religious order of whoever wrote Super Prophetas could reveal something of the author’s motivation and perspective. In the century-and-a-half since Joachim’s authorship of Super Prophetas was disproven, scholarship has followed much the same trajectory as Super Jeremiam and other pseudo-Joachite works. A once-dominant consensus favoring a Franciscan origin has given way to an assortment of views.

  • 86  A useful overview of this process, by which radical elements within the Franciscan Order came to a (...)
  • 87  Engelhardt, Kirchengeschichtliche Abhandlungen, p. 53-54.
  • 88  Friderich, “Kritische Untersuchung”, p. 499-512, especially p. 506, 511-512.

26From the earliest modern scholarship on these pseudo-Joachite texts in nineteenth-century Germany, it had been assumed that they were Franciscan productions, and thus represented a critical step in the friars’ appropriation of Joachim’s ideas to their agenda. Such an assumption is reasonable because by the mid-thirteenth century, the Franciscans had established themselves among the principal heirs to Joachim’s apocalyptic thought, as evidenced by Salimbene’s account of the growing Joachite influence among the friars in the 1240s and by the Scandal of the Eternal Gospel (1254-1255), which rocked both the University of Paris and the Franciscan Order86. As early as 1832, Johann Engelhardt had suggested that Super Jeremiam itself might have been a Franciscan production, or at least riddled with Franciscan interpolations87. Having rejected Joachim’s authorship of both Super Jeremiam and Super Prophetas, Friderich’s “Kritische Untersuchung” takes stock of both works’ emphasis on the theme of persecution, presumably of rigorist Franciscans, and the coming of two new orders. This prophecy of Joachim’s was widely seen as being fulfilled in the dawn of the thirteenth century with the emergence of the Franciscans and the Dominicans. As would turn out to be a recurring feature in the literature, Friderich’s treatment tends to lavish considerably more attention on Super Jeremiam than on Super Prophetas, and in many respects, both works tend to be grouped together88.

  • 89  Holder-Egger, “Italienische Prophetieen des 13. Jahrhunderts I”, Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für (...)
  • 90  Bondatti, Gioachinismo e Francescanesimo nel Dugento, p. 12-13.
  • 91  Tractatus Quatuor Super Evangelia, ed. Ernesto Buonaiuti, Rome, Istituto per il storico italiano, (...)
  • 92  Grundmann, Neue Forschungen über Joachim von Fiore, Marburg, Simons Verlag, 1950, p. 71, n. 1.

27Thus over the course of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, a consensus favoring Franciscan authorship developed, which often assigned this common origin to all of Joachim’s spurious works. For instance, in his discussion of pseudo-Joachite literature, Oswald Holder-Egger takes it for granted that the Friars Minor were responsible for the proliferation of tracts inspired by Joachim’s historical-theology89. Guido Bondatti’s Gioachinismo e Francescanesimo nel Dugento advances the notion that the pseudo-Joachite literature represents a confluence of Joachite and Franciscan apocalypticism90. In the introduction to his 1930 edition of an authentic work of Joachim’s, the Tractatus Super Quatuor Evangelia, Ernesto Buonaiuti refers to Super Jeremiam and Super Prophetas as “Franciscan Apocalypses [...] compiled during the first struggles of Spiritual Franciscanism against the cruel repression and persecution of Frederick II”91. Herbert Grundmann, in his Neue Forschungen über Joachim von Fiore (1950), calls Super Jeremiam and Super Prophetas the “concoctions” of the Spiritual Franciscans92.

  • 93  Reeves, “The Abbot Joachim’s Disciples and the Cistercian Order”, p. 358-62.
  • 94  Ibid., p. 363.

28Beginning in the 1950s, however, Marjorie Reeves challenged this narrative. Her essay, “The Abbot Joachim’s Disciples and the Cistercian Order”, claims that Joachim’s direct heirs, the Florensians, and associates within their parent order, the Cistercians, represented a continuation of his particular brand of apocalypticism, thus resulting in the pseudo-Joachite literature. Reeves first considers the conflicted attitude toward the Cistercian Order found in the print versions of Super Jeremiam. The text appears to contain an allusion to Joachim’s condemnation at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, identifying Herod with the supreme pontiff after Celestine (i.e. Innocent III), and the priests and the Pharisees with the leaders of the Cistercian Order, a reading supported by numerous references throughout93. Yet Super Jeremiam also seems to accord a special place for the Cistercian religion in the coming dispensation of the Third Age by identifying it with Mary Magdalene, to whom Christ first appeared after the Resurrection, and with Galilee, the refuge of the viri spirituales, the spiritual men who were to reform the Church94.

  • 95  Ibid., p. 364. In the 1517 edition, f. 1r-v, the passage reads, “Tangunt enim hi quosdam cenobitas (...)
  • 96  Ibid., p. 364. See the edition, f. 42v : “Genimina viperarum Pharisei et Saducei, pro quibus nonnu (...)
  • 97  Ibid., p. 364. See the edition, f. 8r. Translation is from the Douay-Rheims version. Reeves here c (...)
  • 98  Ibid., p. 364-65.
  • 99  Ibid., p. 365. See the edition, f. 37v.  Here again, Reeves is quoting from a marginal gloss, whic (...)
  • 100  Ibid., p. 365. See the edition, f. 54v. This passage is found in the main body of text in De Septe (...)
  • 101  Ibid., p. 366. The association between the Cistercians and Ephraim is made here again, for the oth (...)

29Turning to Super Prophetas, Reeves finds a similar dichotomy. She notes a direct comparison between the Pharisees and certain elements within the Cistercian Order near the start of the work, and points out that one of the earliest manuscripts, Vat. Lat. 4959, emphasizes this passage with a rubricated gloss : “Nota de monachis ordinis Cisterciensis95. The explication of the prophetic burdens makes an overt connection between the Pharisees and the Sadducees on the one hand, and “some of the Cistercian religious and secular clergy” on the other96. Yet as with Super Jeremiam, Reeves detects a robust assertion of the Cistercian role in salvation history. She highlights a passage in which the Cluniacs and the Cistercians are compared, respectively, to Manasseh and Ephraim, with Ephraim receiving the greater inheritance97. The text applies the prophecy of Isaiah 11 :1 – “And there shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower will rise up out of his root” – to Bernard of Clairvaux’s flowering from the Order of Cîteaux98. Likewise, the Valley of Vision is equated with the Cistercian Church99, while Bernard appears again, as the fifth angel of the Apocalypse100. This exaltation of Bernard and the Cistercian tradition is consistent with what Reeves finds in the Praemissiones, specifically in the figure of the Two Trees present in some of the manuscripts : the tree rooted in the Order of the Apostles climaxes with the Church of Clairvaux in Bernard101.

  • 102  Töpfer, Das kommende Reich des Friedens, p. 110-111.
  • 103  Ibid., p. 111. See “Petri Iohannis Olivi de renuntiatione papae Coelestini V, Quaestio et epistola (...)
  • 104  Ibid., p. 113-115.

30Despite a plethora of evidence from the sixteenth-century edition and the manuscripts, Reeves’ revisionism did not meet with universal acceptance. In Das kommende Reich des Friedens, Bernhard Töpfer attempts to reassert the traditional narrative, addressing each of Reeves’ points. First, he rejects Reeves’ claim that Super Jeremiam, putatively written in the 1240s, is too early to contain references to the persecution of the Spiritual Franciscans. As Töpfer points out, tensions were already apparent within the Franciscan Order during the generalship of Brother Elias (1232-1239)102. Second, regarding the Florensians’ apparent wrath at Joachim’s condemnation at Lateran IV, Töpfer cites Peter of John Olivi’s 1295 letter to Conrad of Offida. In this correspondence, the Spiritual Franciscan leader inveighs against his order’s most radical element and its rebellion against Pope Boniface VIII, noting that there were those who also reviled the Roman Church for Joachim’s treatment at the Lateran Council103. Finally, based on his reading of Super Jeremiam, Töpfer determines that the role given to the two new orders and to the Franciscans greatly overshadows whatever references are made to the Cistercians104.

  • 105  Ibid., p. 138, n. 202.
  • 106  Ibid., p. 115.

31Töpfer’s analysis is problematic on many levels. At no point in his discussion of either Super Jeremiam or Super Prophetas does Töpfer engage with the manuscript tradition, and instead relies exclusively on the sixteenth-century prints. As Reeves did in her essay, he uses Super Jeremiam as a gateway to the broader pseudo-Joachite corpus, but perhaps as a consequence, he neglects the authorship of Super Prophetas specifically, assuming in effect that the origin of the latter work is contingent on that of the former. Indeed, nowhere in his discussion of authorship does he cite Super Prophetas, which allows him to make the curious assertion that while Super Jeremiam does contain clues that could suggest a monastic origin, there is no evidence whatsoever for Cistercian-Florensian authorship in Super Prophetas – a statement that, as we have seen, does not accord with reality105. Nevertheless, Töpfer comes to the conclusion that Reeves’ theory is not strong enough to supplant the older view, favoring a Minorite origin for the pseudo-Joachite texts, and for Super Jeremiam in particular. He acknowledges that the argument for Franciscan authorship is perhaps not as strong as previously thought, and he holds open the possibility that further study will arrive at a definitive clarification of this issue106.

  • 107  Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy, p. 157.
  • 108  Ibid., p. 156-157.
  • 109  Ibid., p. 158. Super Prophetas is ostensibly dedicated “ad fratrem Raynerium de Poncio”. Precisely (...)
  • 110  Ibid., p. 156.

32In The Influence of Prophecy, Reeves answers Töpfer, restating the case for Florensian authorship, but again, by focusing on Super Jeremiam. Indeed, here Reeves explicitly states the underlying assumption – a highly problematic one – that the origin of Super Prophetas and the rest of the pseudo-Joachite corpus hangs on the attribution of Super Jeremiam as the earliest example107. First, Reeves argues that Super Jeremiam is too early for rigorist Franciscans to have framed their protest in the expectation of a coming status of the Holy Spirit. Second, the theme of persecution found therein probably refers to the Florensians in the aftermath of Lateran IV. Third, references to two new orders can be found in Joachim’s authentic works, and any specific identification with the mendicants must be viewed with caution in light of Super Jeremiam’s fraught manuscript tradition. Fourth, Super Jeremiam makes little explicit reference to poverty, the central cause of the Spiritual Franciscans. Fifth, the anti-Hohenstaufen viewpoint could well indicate Franciscan or Florensian authorship. Finally, the prominence accorded to the Cistercians makes it extremely difficult for Reeves to assign this text to the Franciscans108. The ambiguity with which the Cistercian Order is viewed – simultaneously exalted and resented – would suggest Florensian authorship, along with the prominence accorded to Joachim’s companion, Rainer of Ponza, whom Reeves presumes would have been little-known outside the Florensian community109. Yet like Töpfer, Reeves still regards the question as unsettled, and in need of further study110.

  • 111  Lerner, “Frederick II”, p. 378.
  • 112  Troncarelli, “Tra beneventana e gotica”, p. 154.
  • 113  Wessley, Joachim of Fiore and Monastic Reform, p. 121.  

33After more than four decades, the matter largely stands where Reeves and Töpfer left it, although scholars have since expressed their preferences. Robert Lerner has said that Franciscan authorship of the Praemissiones, and therefore of Super Prophetas, is “not absolutely beyond dispute”, but remains for him the most likely possibility111. While Reeves leaned toward the Florensians, other scholars have looked to their parent order. For example, in “Tra beneventana e gotica”, Fabio Troncarelli favors a Cistercian origin based upon paleographical evidence, believing that there is a connection between Vat. Lat. 4959, one of the earliest copies, and a number of Cistercian houses in Calabria, such as S. Maria della Sambucina112. In Joachim of Fiore and Monastic Reform, Stephen Wessley perceives our text as having a fundamentally conservative outlook that extols the glories of the coenobitic tradition and the Cistercian life in particular. Hence, he is more inclined to assign Super Prophetas to the parent order rather than its Florensian offshoot, though it must be remembered that Wessley bases much of his analysis on the Isaiah commentary in the Carmelite manuscript in Rome, an essentially unidentified text113.

  • 114  Fabio Troncarelli has noted this possibility, making a distinction in authorship between Super Pro (...)

34The fact that the field remains wide open in this regard underscores the pressing need for a comprehensive study rooted in the manuscript tradition. Indeed, it is the enduring question of which religious community gave rise to our text that demonstrates this need more than anything else. For the assumption of a uniform origin voiced by Reeves, but implied throughout the literature, has the potential to obfuscate our understanding of the pseudo-Joachite corpus. It is entirely possible that these works arose in different religious communities, within the Sicilian Regno, that happened to share an interest in Joachim’s thought114. If we are closed to this possibility – and we still know too little to say definitively one way or the other – we risk overlooking the full complexity behind the transmission of Joachim’s ideas and his legacy.

When ?

  • 115  Friderich, “Kritische Untersuchung”, p. 485-486.
  • 116 Ibid., p. 488.
  • 117  Translation from the Douay-Rheims version.
  • 118  Friderich, “Kritische Untersuchung”, p. 487. Regarding Super Jeremiam, Friderich claims that the t (...)
  • 119  Ibid., p. 482-483.
  • 120  Ibid., p. 484.
  • 121  Ibid., p. 494-495. Within the main body of text, there are references to these Muslims, whom Frede (...)
  • 122  Ibid., p. 495.

35There is greater consensus on the date of Super Prophetas, largely because Karl Friderich marshaled so many references that seem to highlight people and events from the 1260s. His “Kritische Untersuchung” notes that while Super Jeremiam identifies Frederick II with the seventh head of the beast in the Book of Revelation, Super Prophetas applies this identification not only to Frederick but also to his progeny, thus pointing to the ongoing strife after the emperor’s death in 1250115. Whereas the Jeremiah commentary appears to be making allusions that situate this text in the 1240s, Super Prophetas effectively pushes them at least one generation into the future116. For instance, Friderich’s analysis considers both texts’ handling of Isaiah 14 :29 : “For out of the root of the serpent shall come forth a basilisk (regulus), and his seed shall swallow the bird”117. He determines that unlike Super Jeremiam, Super Prophetas identifies the serpent with Frederick II, the basilisk with his illegitimate son, Manfred, and the seed with the heirs of the basilisk118. Friderich reads Super Prophetas as referring to Manfred’s 1258 usurpation of the throne of Sicily from his nephew, Conradin119. It also appears to “foresee” the end of Latin rule in Byzantium in 1261120, while the presence of “Egypt” – commonly identified in Joachite literature with France – and the coming of a “new pharaoh” all suggest the arrival of Charles of Anjou, who in 1263 would accept the papacy’s invitation to make war on Manfred and his Saracen troops, and take the throne of Sicily for himself121. Friderich ultimately arrives at the conclusion that Super Prophetas was written on the eve of the struggle between Charles and Manfred122.

  • 123  One notable outlier, it should be said, was Felice Tocco, who was apparently unaware of Friderich’ (...)
  • 124  Kampers, Kaiserprophetieen und Kaisersagen im Mittelalter, p. 240.
  • 125  Grundmann, Studien über Joachim, p. 16, n. 1.
  • 126  Töpfer, Das kommende Reich, p. 137. See also n. 192, where Töpfer acknowledges Friderich, “Kritisc (...)
  • 127  Lerner, “Frederick II”, p. 377-78, n. 60, confirms that the thirteenth-century manuscript, Vat. La (...)
  • 128  Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy, p. 522.

36The basic parameters of this dating would remain largely unchallenged for over a century123. Franz Kampers thus favored a date just before Manfred was defeated and killed at the Battle of Benevento, in early 1266124. In his Studien über Joachim, Grundmann makes note of Kampers’ assessment, while also pointing out that Salimbene de Adam never mentioned Super Prophetas, despite his deep knowledge of Joachite texts – a possible indication that it was composed post-1260, after Salimbene forsook his interest in Joachimism when the age of the Holy Spirit failed to materialize125. In his own analysis, Bernhard Töpfer arrives at a range of 1260 to 1266. If the text is indeed referring to the struggle between Manfred and the Franco-papal alliance, then the obvious terminus ante quem would be 1266. In determining a terminus post quem, Töpfer draws upon an observation Friderich had made, that Super Prophetas effectively pushes the start of the age of the Holy Spirit back from 1260 to 1290, even though the 1517 print erroneously renders it, “Nonaginta annis futuris ab anno MCCC126. As Friderich and Töpfer correctly assumed, and as Lerner later verified in one of the earliest manuscripts, the text should read MCC, further suggesting that it was written after 1260 passed without event127. Reeves concurred with Töpfer’s range : in her manuscript list for Super Prophetas, she has “probably 1260-1266” for the date of composition128.

37While accepting that Super Prophetas was most likely composed in the 1260s, Bernard McGinn has suggested a slight variation. In his collection of apocalyptic texts, Visions of the End (first edition : 1979, second : 1998), he includes the following translated passage from near the end of Super Prophetas :

  • 129  Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End : Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages, second edition, Ne (...)

“It is necessary that the more widely the kingdom of France spreads out its branches, the more lightly it will bend the shoulders of its arrogance to the nod of the Church at the sign of the cross. As Jeremiah says : ‘The daughter of Egypt is thrown into confusion and betrayed into the hands of the people of the North’ (Jer. 46 :24). The public is not ignorant of how much the power of the German empire wore down that same kingdom in past days. Yet, under the seed of the seventh head of the beast or dragon (Rev. 17 :8-12), that power will rise up a bit and be brought to the nursery. Within Italian territory it will shave the tail and head of the dragon with its modest forces, both in the case of the college of Peter the fisherman and in that of the ‘Summit’ of the kingdom of France”129.

  • 130  Ibid., p. 325, n. 49.
  • 131  Ibid., p. 325, n. 50 : Although McGinn does not explicitly say so here, it would seem that these t (...)

38McGinn raises the possibility that this passage reflects a date of composition, of at least part of Super Prophetas, after 1266. Charles of Anjou had certainly “spread out his branches at the nod of the Church” by toppling Manfred’s rule over the Sicilian Regno130. There also appears to be a prophecy of a coming defeat or setback to the Franco-papal alliance131. It is important to remember, though, that this passage comes from the De Septem Temporibus, found at the conclusion of both the 1517 edition and the earliest manuscripts : it may very well have been appended after Manfred’s defeat. Yet regardless of whether one dates the work to the time of Manfred or just shortly thereafter, the majority opinion had, for decades, situated Super Prophetas in the 1260s, and thus in something of an intermediate position between the earlier pseudo-Joachite texts from the 1240s and 1250s on the one hand, and the more avowedly Franciscan-Joachite works by Peter of John Olivi, Ubertino da Casale, and John of Rupescissa on the other.

  • 132  Di Gioia, “Un manoscritto pseudo-gioachimita”, p. 89-90.
  • 133 Ibid., p. 91.
  • 134 Ibid., p. 105-106.
  • 135  Ibid., p. 106.
  • 136  Ibid., p. 89-90, n. 10. Di Gioia quotes the passage in question from Guiseppe Scalia’s 1966 editio (...)

39In the final quarter of the twentieth century, scholars began to challenge this chronology. Di Gioia’s 1980 study, “Un manoscritto pseudo-gioachimita”, argues that the ideological positions and phraseology of Super Jeremiam and Super Prophetas are so similar that the dating of the latter, putatively written a decade or more after the Jeremiah commentary, bears reconsideration so as to suggest that the two works are products of the same period132. She sees the imagery of the Praemissiones, particularly the figure of the dragon, as reflective of the polemical exchanges c. 1239 between Frederick II and Pope Gregory IX133. Di Gioia believes that if one accepts a later date in the 1260s, one would have to explain a deliberate revival of a polemical motif that had been dormant for years, by then removed from its historical context and diminished in its potency134. She also finds it strange that if the Praemissiones were from after Frederick II’s death in 1250, that the text accompanying the seven-headed dragon should make overt reference to the now-dead emperor135. Moreover, Di Gioia points to Salimbene’s account of a dispute between Hugh of Digne and a Dominican friar, wherein she sees a direct reference to Super Prophetas. Because that dispute – and Salimbene’s association with Hugh – can be reliably dated to the late-1240s, Di Gioia sees this passage as revealing the circulation of Super Prophetas over the course of that decade136.

  • 137  Lerner, “Frederick II”, p. 377-378, n. 60.
  • 138  Lerner, “Frederick II”, p. 377-378, n. 60. See Cronica Fratris Salimbene de Adam Ordinis Minorum, (...)
  • 139  Ibid. Here, Lerner refers to Vat. Lat. 4959, f. 32r : “[S]ummos pontifices conflictum cum aquila e (...)
  • 140  Ibid.

40Later in the 1980s, Robert Lerner offered a rebuttal to Di Gioia’s arguments. In his essay on Frederick II, Lerner notes that Di Gioia’s attempt to re-date Super Prophetas does not engage with the fundamental work of Töpfer137. Indeed, she seems to refer to the “corrente datazione” of 1260-1266 by way of Reeves, overlooking the fact that Reeves herself had tentatively accepted Töpfer’s range. Lerner also points out that the passage from Salimbene that Di Gioia sees as a paraphrase of Super Prophetas is actually from Super Jeremiam, as noted in Holder-Egger’s MGH edition138. Furthermore, Lerner sees the caption in the Praemissiones that refers to Frederick II as an echo of Revelation 17 :10 – “One is, and the other is not yet come” – and could just as easily have been written after Frederick’s death as before. Super Prophetas contains other references to the strife between the papacy and Frederick’s heirs, as Lerner demonstrates with a passage from Vat. Lat. 4959 that mentions “the Eagle and his seed”, taken in context as a clear allusion to the emperor and his progeny139. Finally, Lerner reiterates Grundmann’s observation that Salimbene never mentions Super Prophetas, presumably because it was composed after his abandonment of Joachim’s teachings (i.e. after 1260)140.

  • 141  Troncarelli and Di Gioia, “Scrittura, testo, immagine”, p. 180.
  • 142  Wessley, Joachim of Fiore and Monastic Reform, p. 39, 54, n. 57.
  • 143  Troncarelli, “Tra beneventana e gotica”, p. 119.
  • 144 Ibid., p. 154.
  • 145 Ibid., p. 154, n. 55.

41This refutation notwithstanding, Fabio Troncarelli has proposed a date of composition before the 1260s, largely hinging on his paleographical analysis of the early manuscripts, and particularly of Vat. Lat. 4959. His collaboration with Di Gioia, “Scrittura, testo, immagine”, dates this manuscript to the first half of the thirteenth century141. However, over the course of the 1980s, Troncarelli came to push back the dating of Vat. Lat. 4959, from as early as 1230-1250 to about 1250-1260142. Indeed, in his 1994 article, “Tra beneventana e gotica”, he fixes the date of Vat. Lat. 4959 to shortly before Pope Innocent IV’s death in 1254143. Within this manuscript, Troncarelli identifies two hands : a developed Gothic script for the main text and a more primitive Gothic for the image captions. Together, they suggest to Troncarelli that the manuscript cannot be dated much past the middle of the thirteenth century144. Moreover, he sees a paleographical association between the Gothic hand in Vat. Lat. 4959 and other samples that can be safely dated to c. 1240, including the hands of scribes active in Rome during the pontificates of Gregory IX (1227-1241) and Innocent IV (1243-1254)145.

  • 146 Ibid., p. 154.
  • 147 Ibid., p. 163. One of the specific passages that Troncarelli refers to is at f. 59r in the 1517 edi (...)
  • 148 Ibid.
  • 149  The two early Vatican manuscripts have a marginal gloss, not found in the 1517 edition, that direc (...)

42On this basis, Troncarelli deems it “impensabile” that this codex could have been produced after Manfred’s usurpation of the throne of Sicily in 1258146. Yet he settles on a date in the early 1250s because he believes that Super Prophetas alludes to the victory of Frederick’s son, Conrad of Swabia, over William of Holland in 1250. Troncarelli concludes that the language of crusading one finds can only make sense in light of the earlier struggles of the 1240s and 1250s against Frederick and Conrad. Conversely, if the text were written after 1260, it would make no sense to speak of a crusade against the Hohenstaufen because by that time, Charles of Anjou was not seeking to restore the Sicilian Regno to the Church, but to occupy it as its newly-appointed king147. Of course, Troncarelli overlooks several pertinent facts, including that Charles accepted the papacy’s offer to take the Sicilian throne in 1263, not in 1260148. More importantly, when one considers that Charles was fighting on behalf of the Roman Church against its (excommunicated) enemies, Manfred and later Conradin, who both employed Muslim troops, as Super Prophetas mentions, the crusading tone that Troncarelli perceives makes absolute sense in the context of the 1260s149.

  • 150  Lerner, The Feast of Saint Abraham, p. 148, n. 5. One can add in support of this argument the pass (...)
  • 151  See, for example, Harvey Hames, Like Angels on Jacob’s Ladder : Abraham Abulafia, the Franciscans, (...)
  • 152  The URL is : http ://www.centrostudigioachimiti.it/Gioacchino/opera24.asp.
  • 153  Schiavetto, “Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 4959”, p. 224.

43At present, there remains no definitive statement on the dating of Super Prophetas, although in The Feast of Saint Abraham, Lerner again rejects an earlier date, and especially Troncarelli’s arguments to that effect, this time pointing out that the allusions to the Mongols throughout the text and the hope of a Mongol-Christian alliance against Islam strongly suggest that it was written after 1258, when Hulagu Khan sacked Baghdad150. Recent literature for the most part seems to favor a date in the 1260s151, while the website of the Centro Internazionale di Studi Gioachimiti, in its list of Joachim’s apocryphal works, assigns the range that Töpfer had first proposed, 1260-1266152. Yet Franco-Lucio Schiavetto’s description of Vat. Lat. 4959, included in the Troncarelli-edited Il ricordo del futuro, continues to assert that this manuscript is from the mid-thirteenth century, meaning that the text itself must have been composed at that time or earlier153.

  • 154  It is possible that the scribe of Vat. Ross. 552 had King Enzio of Sardinia on his mind : in the g (...)

44Thus we may say that although universal agreement is lacking, the majority opinion has preferred – and, despite thirty years of challenges, continues to prefer – a later dating, and for good reason. The attempts to date Super Prophetas before 1260 ultimately stand on the following : a reference in Salimbene that is actually found in Super Jeremiam ; the curious assumption that the motifs applied to the fight between the popes and the Hohenstaufen in the 1240s and 1250s (i.e. the image of the beast, the language of crusade) were too passé to be used in the 1260s, even as the same political issues were still in play ; and the assertion that one of the oldest manuscripts can be dated to the early 1250s and yet cannot possibly be from later in the decade, or over the next couple decades – that is, well within a scribe’s lifetime. All these arguments are advanced without any substantive engagement with the dating indices compiled by Friderich, Töpfer, and Lerner. However, as per McGinn’s suggestion, it remains an open question of how late into the 1260s Super Prophetas, or at least part of the complex, can be dated. No doubt that even after Manfred’s demise, the invasion of Conradin and the survival of Frederick’s long-imprisoned son, Enzio of Sardinia, would have caused much anxiety for Joachim’s followers in the Kingdom of Sicily, among others who feared “the Eagle and his seed”154.

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Notes

1  In Venice, Lazaro de Soardis printed the first edition of Super Jeremiam, or at least one version of it, in 1516, and Super Esaiam Prophetam the following year. The Jeremiah commentary would go on to be printed twice more, again at Venice in 1525, and at Cologne in 1577, while the apocryphal figure collection, the Praemissiones, would also be printed three times, in 1517, 1525, and 1527.

2  Thanks to the efforts of the editorial committee for Joachim’s Opera Omnia – Robert Lerner, Alexander Patschovsky, Gian Luca Potestà, Roberto Rusconi, and Kurt-Victor Selge – we are approaching an achievement that has been generations in the making : a complete set of critical editions for Joachim’s surviving corpus. In recent years, the committee has published the following : Dialogi de Prescientia Dei et Predestinatione Electorum, ed. Gian Luca Potestà, Roma, Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 1995 ; Sermones, ed. Valeria De Fraja, Roma, Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 2004 ; Exhortatorium Iudeorum, ed. Alexander Patschovsky, Roma, Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 2006 ; Tractatus in Expositionem Vite et Regule Beati Benedicti : cum Appendice Fragmenti (I) de Duobus Prophetis in Novissimis Diebus Praedicaturis, ed. Alexander Patschovsky, Roma, Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 2008 ; Psalterium Decem Cordarum, ed. Kurt-Victor Selge, Hannover, Hahn, 2009. Of Joachim’s remaining principal works, we await Patschovsky’s edition of the Liber de Concordia and Selge’s edition of the Expositio in Apocalypsim.

3  I refer especially to Warren Lewis’s forthcoming critical edition of one of the most important apocalyptic works of the Middle Ages, Olivi’s Lectura Super Apocalypsim (1297), St. Bonaventure, NY, Franciscan Institute Publications, 2013. I am indebted to Warren Lewis for sharing his work with me, and for all his much-needed encouragement during and after his appointment as research fellow at Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute.

4  The most significant breakthroughs in this area remain Robert E. Lerner and Christine Morerod-Fattebert’s edition of Rupescissa’s Liber Secretorum Eventuum : Édition critique, traduction et introduction historique, Fribourg, Éditions universitaires, 1994 and the edition of the Liber ostensor quod adesse festinant tempora, ed. André Vauchez et al., Rome, École française de Rome, 2005.

5  While I plan on a more complete treatment of this issue, of what to call this text and its constituent parts, I believe that “Super Prophetas” is preferable to “Super Esaiam Prophetam”, or some variant thereof, for several reasons. Most importantly, it better represents what is actually found in the manuscript tradition beyond the 1517 print that is more familiar to scholars. Most of the oldest manuscripts, from the thirteenth century, have the title “Super Prophetas”, as do several later versions. Indeed, there is scant manuscript evidence for calling it “Super Esaiam Prophetam”. The only manuscript that does this is Venice, Biblioteca Marciana, Lat. I, Cod. 74, from the fourteenth century, which most assuredly gave rise to the 1517 edition. Even in this instance, it is quite apparent that the original title at f. 5r, in a fourteenth-century hand, was “Super Prophetas”, but that a sixteenth-century editor changed it to “Super Esaiam Prophetam”, which of course ended up in the printed version and became, by extension, ubiquitous in the scholarship. Moreover, while Super Prophetas contains an incomplete Isaiah commentary, it also includes numerous other elements, making it misleading to describe the entire complex as a straightforward commentary on the Book of Isaiah. For these reasons, scholarship should henceforth use the more correct appellation of “Super Prophetas”, as continued use of “Super Esaiam Prophetam” would only privilege the corrupt sixteenth-century print over the manuscript tradition.

6  Herbert Grundmann, “Federico II e Gioacchino da Fiore”, in Ausgewählte Aufsätze, vol. 2, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Schriften 25, 2, Stuttgart, Hiersemann, 1977, p. 220-226 (originally published in Atti del Convegno Internazionale di studi Federiciani, Palermo, 1952, p. 83-89), especially p. 224 (p. 87-88). While much work remains before the publication of a formal, critical edition, my dissertation will present a working edition of Super Prophetas based on the 1517 print and the two oldest manuscript versions, Vat. Lat. 4959 and Vat. Ross. 552, both from the thirteenth century.

7  For example : Robert Moynihan, “The Development of the ‘Pseudo-Joachim’ Commentary ‘Super Hieremiam’ : New Manuscript Evidence”, Mélanges de l’École francaise de Rome : Serie Moyen Age et Temps Modernes 98, 1986, p. 109-42 ; idem, “Joachim of Fiore and the Early Franciscans : A Study of the Commentary Super Hieremiam”, Yale PhD Dissertation, 1988 ; and Stephen Wessley, Joachim of Fiore and Monastic Reform, New York, Peter Lang, 1990, particularly chapter 5, “Terra Incognita : The Commentary on Jeremiah”, p. 101-135. For a more recent review of these efforts and discussion of this text, see Gian Luca Potestà, “Il Super Hieremiam e il gioachimismo della dirigenza minoritica della metà del Duecento”, in Mediterraneo, Mezzogiorno, Europa : Studi in onere di Cosimo Damiano Fonseca, vol. 2, ed. Giancarlo Andenna and Hubert Houben, Bari, Mario Adda, 2004, p. 879-894.

8  Cf. Wessley, Joachim of Fiore and Monastic Reform, p. 132, n. 87.

9  I say, “depending on how one reckons” because often in the literature, this figure collection, the Praemissiones,and the main text of Super Prophetas are listed as separate works, even as the manuscript evidence suggests that they should be considered parts of a composite whole. See below for discussion of Marjorie Reeves and Beatrice Hirch-Reich’s scholarship on this issue. It also depends on whether one believes that the Liber Figurarum is a genuine or spurious work of Joachim’s. Reeves has argued for its authenticity : “The Liber Figurarum of Joachim of Fiore”, Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies, vol. 2, London, The Warburg Institute, 1950, p. 57-81, and particularly p. 67. More recently, Alexander Patschovsky has expressed a degree of doubt concerning the Liber Figurarum’s authenticity : “The Holy Emperor Henry ‘the First’ as One of the Dragon’s Heads of the Apocalypse – On the Image of the Roman Empire Under German Rule in the Tradition of Joachim of Fiore”, Viator, 29, 1998, p. 291-322 ; see p. 303 : An online version of Patschovsky’s essay can be found at the following URL :
http ://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/ebook/p/2001/patschovsky/www.uni-konstanz.de/fuf/philo/geschichte/patschovsky/aufsaetze/inhalt/xxxiii/hauptteil_xxxiii.html.

10  Though it is present in the 1517 edition—and now ubiquitous in the secondary literature—there is minimal manuscript evidence for the title “Praemissiones” apart from the Marciana version : ff. 2r-4v have “Premisiones Abbatis Joachim in Esaiam Prophetam” as a running title, but it was clearly added later in a sixteenth-century hand, just like the main title, “Super Esaiam Prophetam” at f. 5r. However, as the manuscript tradition does not readily suggest an alternative, and as we need to differentiate this figure collection from the Liber Figurarum, it seems efficacious to retain “Praemissiones”.

11  Super Esaiam Prophetam, Venetiis, Lazaro de Soardis, 1517, f. 9v.

12  Ibid., ff. 11r-27v. These diagrams are composed of circles, representing various cities, typically connected with lines to a rectangle above, representing a region or metropolitan see.

13  Ibid., f. 50v.

14  On the composite nature of Super Prophetas, cf. Harold Lee and Marjorie Reeves’ discussion in Harold Lee et al., Western Mediterranean Prophecy : The School of Joachim of Fiore and the Fourteenth-Century Breviloquium, Toronto, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1989, p. 10-12. The idea that the 1517 print contains a collection of texts had already been proposed by Felice Tocco, L’eresia nel medio evo, Firenze, G. C. Sansoni, 1884, p. 304-305, n. 1.

15 Super Esaiam Prophetam, ff. 1r-9r.

16 Ibid., ff. 9r-49v. This section begins at f. 9r thus : “Hic ponuntur undecim onera secundum Esaiam, quibus adduntur tria alia secundum prophetas minores”. The diagram of concentric circles dominates f. 9v, before going to an introduction and an exposition on the Burden of Babylon, f. 10r-v, then the geographic diagrams, and then picking up again the discussion of the burdens of the prophets at f. 28r, with the incipit : Ecce in provinciis istis. This part of the text ends at f. 49v with : Explicit prima pars de oneribus ecclesie. All of these elements can be found in the manuscripts, except the explicit : both Vat. Lat. 4959 and Vat. Ross. 552, along with several other versions, instead render : Explicit tractatus onerum prophetarum.

17  Ibid., ff. 49v-59v : The incipit is : Ecce ab oneribus omnibus expediti. Though Lee et al., Western Mediterranean Prophecy, p. 11, see it as a separate Joachite tract, it can be found at the conclusion of every complete manuscript copy of Super Prophetas, and should be seen as an associated – if also distinct – text within the complex.

18  While I plan on a more thorough discussion of this issue in the near-future, it suffices to say that the glosses in most manuscripts are roughly contemporaneous to or are in the same hand as the main body of text. Moreover, there are substantial differences among the manuscripts with respect to the gloss tradition. As such, these glosses – where they are not obviously later additions - should be treated as integral to the text and essential for reconstructing its evolution. They are at least as important as the variations among the Praemissiones in this regard. There are glosses common to just about all the known manuscripts, but the two earliest ones, Vat. Lat. 4959 and Vat. Ross. 552, have marginal glosses that are strikingly different from, and shorter than, the rest. The working edition that is in progress now will include the glosses from these two Vatican manuscripts and the 1517 edition, differentiating the version in which each gloss can be found.

19  For this literature review, at least through the historiography of the early 1970s, I am particularly indebted to Bernard McGinn, “Apocalypticism in the Middle Ages : An Historiographical Sketch”, Medieval Studies 37, 1975, p. 252-286 (reprinted in Bernard McGinn, Apocalypticism in the Western Tradition, Aldershot and Brookfield, Vermont, Ashgate, 1994).

20  See Johann Engelhardt, Kirchengeschichtliche Abhandlungen, Erlangen, Palm und Enke, 1832, p. 53-54 ; and Christoph Ulrich Hahn, Geschichte den Ketzer im Mittelalter, vol. 3, Stuttgart, Steinkopf, 1850, p. 83-86.

21 “Friderich’s Kritische Untersuchung der dem Abt Joachim von Floris zugeschriebenen Commentare zu Jesajas und Jeremias, mitgetheilt von D. Baur”, Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Theologie, 2, 1859, p. 349-363, 449-514.

22  Ibid., p. 451.

23  Ibid., p. 453.

24  Ibid., p. 475.

25  One must make a distinction between Friderich’s analysis of Super Prophetas and that of Super Jeremiam. The latter has been challenged by Eugène Anitchkof, Joachim de Flore et les milieux courtois, Roma, Collezione Meridionale, 1931 ; see especially p. 25. More recently, Robert Moynihan’s 1988 dissertation posits as one of its central themes the existence of an authentic core, actually written by Joachim, underneath all the various redactions of the Super Jeremiam. I find Moynihan’s arguments in this regard to be unconvincing.

26  Johann Schneider, Joachim von Floris und die Apokalyptiker des Mittelalters, Dillingen, 1873, p. 27. References to Frederick II as emperor – abreviated to “F. II” in the oldest manuscripts – and to the Mongols are legion throughout Super Prophetas. The reference to Amalric can be found in the 1517 edition at f. 7r, where he is identified with the locusts emerging from the pit of the abyss in Revelation 9 :3. I can confirm that all these elements are present throughout the known manuscript tradition.

27  Ernest Renan, “Joachim de Flore et l’évangile éternel”, in Nouvelles études d’histoire religieuse, Paris, Calmann Lévy, 1884, p. 217-322 ; see p. 231, n. 3.

28  Tocco, L’eresia nel medio evo, p. 304-308.

29 Franz Kampers, Kaiserprophetieen und Kaisersagen im Mittelalter, Munich, 1895, p. 240-41.

30 Oswald Holder-Egger, “Italienische Prophetieen des 13. Jahrhunderts”, Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere Deutsche Geschichtskunde, 28, 1908, p. 136. Apparently neither Kampers nor Holder-Egger knew that Tocco, in L’eresia nel medio evo, p. 304-305, n. 1, had also conflated the De Oneribus Sexti Temporis in the 1517 edition with De Oneribus Prophetarum. His work is cited by neither scholar.

31  The ongoing conflation of these two texts can be found, for example, in Guido Bondatti, Gioachinismo e Francescanesimo nel Dugento, S. Maria degli Angeli, 1924, p. 13, 17-18, who calls it the “Lectura Ysaiae Super Oneribus ;” and Francesco Russo, Bibliografia Gioachimita, Firenze, L. S. Olschki, 1954, p. 37-38. Russo here lists nineteen manuscripts of what he calls the “Expositio in Isaiam seu Lectura Isaiae Super Oneribus”, but about a dozen of these are actually copies of De Oneribus Prophetarum. Then, on p. 40, he identifies ff. 4-29 of Vat. Lat. 4959 as a separate work under the title “Commentarius Super Nonnulla Capita Nahum, Abachuch, Zarachiae et Malachiae”. On the shortcomings of Russo’s list in this regard, see Beatrice Hirsch-Reich, “Eine Bibliographie über Joachim von Fiore und dessen Nachwirkung”, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, 24, 1957, p. 27-44 ; especially p. 32-33.

32  H. Hermann, Die italienischen Handschriften des Dugento und Trecento, Leipzig, Hiersemann, 1928, p. 16-20.

33  Grundmann, Studien über Joachim von Floris, Leipzig, B. G. Teubner, 1927. A second edition, with an accompanying foreword, was also published by Teubner in 1975, under the title Studien uber Joachim von Fiore : mit einem Vorwort zum Neudruck.

34  Idem, “Liber de Flore : Eine Schrift der Franziskaner-Spiritualen aus dem Anfang des 14. Jahrhunderts”, in Ausgewählte Aufsätze, vol. 2, p. 101, n. 2 (originally published in Historisches Jahrbuch, 49, 1929, p. 33-91). The exact identity of these thirteenth-century manuscripts is not clear from this statement, but one suspects that they are Vat. Lat. 4959 and the Milich manuscript in Görlitz, both of which Grundmann would later refer to Marjorie Reeves.

35  Emil Donckel, “Studien über die Prophezeiung des Fr. Telesphorus von Cosenza, O.F.M. (1365-1386)”, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 26, 1933, p. 29-104 ; see p. 55, n. 5.

36 Leone Tondelli, Il libro delle figure dell’abate Gioachino da Fiore, 2 vols., Torino, Societa éditrice internazionale, 1939.

37  Fritz Saxl, “A Spiritual Encyclopaedia of the Later Middle Ages”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtald Institutes 5, 1942, p. 82-142 ; especially p. 107-108.

38  Marjorie Reeves, “The Liber Figurarum of Joachim of Fiore”, Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies, vol. 2, London, The Warburg Institute, 1950, p. 57-81 ; see p. 58.

39  As evidenced, for example, by Tondelli’s brief notice about the Vatican manuscript, Ross. 552 in “Un epistolario di Gioacchino da Fiore e un falso di Filippo Stocchi”, Sophia19, 3-4, 1951, p. 372-377. On p. 372-373, he refers to the figures in Vat. Ross. 552 as being, “in gran parte”, the same as those published in the Liber Figurarum, and does not realize that the text Super Prophetas is the same work as the print Super Esaiam Prophetam. However, even at this stage, Tondelli sees that the figures in Vat. Ross. 552 do not exactly match the Liber Figurarum. Refer also to the debate in Sophia 9, 1941, p. 332-57, 532-39, between Francesco Foberti and Leone Tondelli about the authenticity of the Liber Figurarum. Neither scholar seems aware of the fundamental differences between the images found in the sixteenth-century Venice editions and those in the manuscript copy of the Liber Figurarum. Foberti in particular regards the printed version as the norm for the tradition.

40  Russo, Bibliografia Gioachimita, p. 32. Hirsch-Reich mentions this error in her critique of Russo, “Eine Bibliographie über Joachim von Fiore”, p. 31.

41  Reeves says that Vat. Lat. 4959 and Vat. Ross. 552 were brought to her attention, respectively, by Grundmann and Tondelli in “The Liber Figurarum of Joachim of Fiore”, p. 60, n. 1-2.

42  Ibid., p. 64.

43  Ibid., p. 60. In their printed manifestations, the Praemissiones accompany not only Super Prophetas (1517), but also the 1525 edition of Super Jeremiam and the 1527 edition of Joachim’s authentic works, the Expositio in Apocalypsim and the Psalterium Decem Chordarum.

44  Reeves, “The Abbot Joachim’s Disciples and the Cistercian Order”, Sophia 19, 3-4, 1951, p. 355-371 ; especially p. 363-366.

45  Marjorie Reeves and Beatrice Hirsch-Reich, “The Figurae of Joachim of Fiore : Genuine and Spurious Collections”, Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies, vol. 3, London, The Warburg Institute, 1954, p. 170-199.

46 Ibid., p. 171-172.

47  Ibid., p. 183, n. 2. Reeves and Hirsch-Reich retain this title, noting that it can also be found in a fourteenth-century manuscript from Venice. On this point, see above, note 11.

48  Ibid., p. 171-172. The authors were unable to study in detail the Milich and Lobkowicz manuscripts, as they were displaced during World War II.

49  Ibid.

50  Ibid., p. 185. Add. 11439 remains the only known version that omits the main text of Super Prophetas, but includes both the Praemissiones and the geographic diagrams.

51  Ibid. The chart is between p. 182-183.

52  Ibid., p. 186.

53  Ibid., p. 196.

54  Ibid., p. 190.

55  Ibid., p. 196, n. 2.

56  Ibid., p. 194. However, as further research into the manuscripts will show, the fact that the marginalia differ from one version to the next proves that they could not all be original parts of the work or have been penned by the same author. Similarly, the composite nature of the work could easily suggest multiple authors, especially taking into account the sharp break between the Isaiah commentary and the rest of the text.

57  Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy : A Study in Joachism, second edition, Notre Dame and London, University of Notre Dame Press, 1993, p. 522-523. In Appendix A, Reeves lists eight manuscripts for Super Prophetas and the same eight for the Praemissiones. However, in Appendix C, which lists the contents of selected Joachite anthologies, she includes the excerpted geographic section found in Vat. Lat. 3820 under the title “De Oneribus Provinciarum”, p. 538-539, and also in Vat. Lat. 3819, under the title “De Provincialibus Praesagiis”, p. 539, noting in both instances that these are from Super Prophetas.

58  Reeves’ listing has the opposite problem of Russo’s : whereas Russo offers comprehensive lists of manuscripts brought together in fallacious or problematic associations (e.g. lumping together manuscripts of Super Prophetas and De Oneribus Prophetarum), Reeves tends to get the associations right, but then she often omits reference to several versions that would have been known to her. For example, although she refers to the already-lost Milich manuscript in her earlier work, the 1969 list does not mention it. Nor does it include Budapest, National Széchényi Library, Lat. M.E. 212, a fifteenth-century manuscript containing a copy of Super Prophetas (but lacking the Praemissiones), which is in Russo’s Bibliografia and in Donckel’s 1933 list that Reeves cites in “The Liber Figurarum of Joachim of Fiore”, p. 60, n. 6. In The Influence of Prophecy, p. 81, she mentions the London manuscript Harley 3049, which contains, among other things, the geographic section from Super Prophetas, but she does not include it either. In another instance, she perpetuates an error in Russo’s work, which confuses the incipits and foliation between the two Vienna manuscripts, Cod. 1400 and Cod. 760. Cod. 760’s version of Super Prophetas runs from ff. 91-156 and has the incipit Si ad hoc rotarum ; Russo instead ascribes these features to Cod. 1400 and assigns its real incipit, Ecce in provinciis istis, to Cod. 760. On her part, Reeves omits Cod. 760 from her list of Super Prophetas manuscripts, but assigns its folio numbers to Cod. 1400, as per Russo.

59  Reeves and Hirsch-Reich, The Figurae of Joachim of Fiore, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1972, p. 287-288.

60  Ibid., p. 276-283.

61  McGinn, “Apocalypticism in the Middle Ages”, p. 268.

62  Bernhard Töpfer, Das kommende Reich des Friedens : zur Entwicklung chiliastischer Zukunftshoffnungen im Hochmittelalter, Berlin, Akademie Verlag, 1964 ; see in particular chapter III : “Das Weiterwirken der Anschauungen Joachims im 13. Jahrhundert im Franziskanerorden”, p. 104-153.

63 Elena Bianca Di Gioia, “Un manoscritto pseudo-gioachimita : Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma Vittorio Emanuele 1502”, in Federico II e l’arte del Duecento italiano, vol. 2, ed. A. M. Romanini, Galatina, Congedo, 1980, p. 85-111.

64  Ibid., p. 109. Like Cod. 1400 in Vienna and Add. 11439 in London, V. E. 1502 includes a representation of God the Father at the head of the Psaltery of Ten Chords. V. E. 1502 and Cod. 1400 also render the figure of the trumpet running in the opposite direction from the norm : in these two manuscripts, the bell of the trumpet is on the left and the mouthpiece is on the right. In other versions, one finds the opposite.

65 Ibid., p. 94.

66  Fabio Troncarelli and Elena Bianca Di Gioia, “Scrittura, testo, immagine in uno manoscritto gioachimita”, Scrittura e civilità, 5, 1981, p. 180-81.

67  Robert E. Lerner, “Frederick II : Alive, Aloft, and Allayed in Franciscan-Joachite Eschatology”, in The Use and Abuse of Eschatology in the Middle Ages, ed. Werner Verbeke, Daniel Verhelst, and Andries Welkenhuysen, Leuven, Leuven University Press, 1988, p. 378, n. 61.

68  Lee et al., Western Mediterranean Prophecy, p. 10-12.

69  Kurt-Victor Selge, “Un codice quattrocentesco dell’Archivio Generale dei Carmelitani, contenente opera di Arnaldo da Villanova, Gioacchino da Fiore e Guglielmo da Parigi”, Carmelus, 36, 1989, p. 166-176. The shelf-mark is Archivio Generale III, varia 1. Because it belonged to the fifteenth-century physician Pierleone of Spoleto and is a treasure-trove of materials related to Joachim and Arnald of Villanova, it has frequently appeared in the literature. Descriptions of it can also be found in : M. Batllori, “Dos nous escrits espirituals d’Arnau de Vilanova”, Analecta Sacra Tarraconensia, 28, 1955, p. 45-70 ; Robert E. Lerner, “The Prophetic Manuscripts of the ‘Renaissance Magus’ Pierleone of Spoleto”, in Il profetismo gioachimita tra Quattrocento e Cinquecento : Atti del III Congresso Internazionale di Studi gioachimiti S. Giovanni in Fiore, 17-21 settembre 1989, ed. Gian Luca Potestà, Genova, Marietti, 1991, p. 97-116, especially p. 99, p. 107 n. 13, p. 116 ; Potestà’s 1995 edition of the Dialogi de Prescentia Dei et Predestinatione Electorum, p. 43-45 ; Patschovsky’s 2006 edition of the Exhortatorium Iudeorum, p. 69-73 ; and Marella Mislei, “Roma, Archivio Generale dei Padri carmelitani, III Varia, 1”, in Il ricordo del futuro : Gioacchino da Fiore e il Gioachimismo attraverso la storia, ed. Fabio Troncarelli, Bari, Mario Adda, 2006, p. 352-357. Selge and Mislei both identify the Isaiah commentary found in this collection with Super Prophetas. Based on my reading, I am inclined to agree with Batllori, Lerner, and Patschovsky that this text basically remains unidentified. The Isaiah commentary (incipit : [V]isio Ysaye filii Amos quam vidit super Iudam et Ierusalem, et cetera) begins at f. 131r. At f. 141v, we begin to see discussion of the various prophetic onera, starting with the Burden of Babylon. The text ends at f. 162r thus : “Que nunc sunt opera corruptionis tenebris quoad culpam. Explicit Ysaias”. On the same page, there follows a set of figurae, including the Psaltery of Ten Chords, although the arrangement of this figure is more akin to that found in the Liber Figurarum than in the Praemissiones. At f. 163v, another text begins (incipit : [P]ost primum librum in quo de clericorum lapsu tractavimus) and continues on to f. 173r, ending with “Explicit liber Ezechielis prophete”.

70  Wessley, Joachim of Fiore and Monastic Reform, p. 121. Again, I am inclined to believe that this Carmelite manuscript should not be identified with Super Prophetas, although how exactly it relates will require further investigation.

71  Troncarelli, “Tra beneventana e gotica : manoscritti e multigrafismo nell’Italia meridionale e nella Calabria normanno-sveva”, in Civilità del Mezzogiorno d’Italia : Libro, scrittura, documento in età normanno-sveva, ed. Filippo D’Oria, Salerno, 1994, p. 115-167 ; especially p. 149-163.

72 Selge, “Handschriften Joachims von Fiore in Böhmen”, in Eschatologie und Hussitismus : internationales Kolloquium, Prag 1-4 September 1993, ed. Alexander Patschovsky and František Šmahel, Praha, Historisches Institut, 1996, p. 53-60 ; see p. 59.

73  Patschovsky, “The Holy Emperor Henry ‘the First’ as One of the Dragon’s Heads of the Apocalypse”, p. 291, 303-306.

74  Matthias Kaup, “Pseudo-Joachim Reads a Heavenly Letter : Extrabiblical Prophecy in the Early Joachite Literature”, in Gioacchino da Fiore tra Bernardo di Clairvaux e Innocenzo III : Atti del 5o Congresso internazionale di studi gioachimiti, San Giovanni in Fiore—16-21 settembre 1999, ed. Roberto Rusconi, Roma, Viella, 2001, p. 287-314 ; particularly p. 299. Here Kaup transcribes and translates the text from the Vatican manuscript Vat. Lat. 3822. Besides Super Prophetas, the other pseudo-Joachite works that quote it include the short version of Super Sibillis et Merlino, dated to the 1240s, and De Oneribus Prophetarum, from the 1250s.

75  Lerner, The Feast of Saint Abraham : Medieval Millenarians and the Jews, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001, p. 109, 173, n. 49 : Eiximenis owned a copy of Super Prophetas, but with the incipit Ecce in provinciis istis. In the normal sequence of the text, these words should come toward the middle, just after the extended geographic section, corresponding to f. 28r in the 1517 edition. However, Ecce in provinciis istis comes at the very beginning in two surviving manuscripts, quite probably because they are derived from an earlier copy in which the quires were out of order. These are Cod. 1400 in Vienna and a sixteenth-century manuscript that had belonged to Giles of Viterbo : Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Lat. 3363, f. 79r. It thus seems likely that the copy owned by Eiximenis was related to these two.

76  The Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale’s catalog entry for V. E. 1502 suggests southern Italy as the place of origin, reflecting Sotheby’s judgment when the manuscript was sold at auction in 1976 to the Italian Ministry of Culture. See lot 864 in Sotheby’s sale catalogue, Bibliotheca Phillippica : Medieval Manuscripts : New Series : Eleventh Part, London, Sotheby, Parke, Bernet, 1976, p. 28-31. See also Catalogo dei MSS “Vittorio Emanuele”, vol. 3, p. 388-390 and Di Gioia, p. 109-110, who claims that the manuscript originated in Calabria. However, in “La chiave di David : Profezia e ragione in un manoscritto pseudogioachimita della Biblioteca Nazionale di Roma”, Frate Francesco : Una rivista di culturafrancescana, 2003, p. 5-55, Troncarelli argues that this manuscript came from southern France on the basis of its hand and, perhaps more conclusively, the way it marks out Montpellier. On the latter point, see p. 9. Troncarelli’s observations are put in the service of his central argument, that V. E. 1502 contains a gloss by the hand of Peter of John Olivi. While I accept Troncarelli’s belief that this manuscript came from the Midi, the notion that Olivi himself glossed this text is to be regarded with skepticism. See Sylvain Piron, “Autour d’un autographe (Borgh. 85, fol. 1-11)”, Oliviana 2, 2006 : http ://oliviana.revues.org/index40.html. Accessed December 1, 2011. See also Potestà, “L’anno dell’Anticristo : Il calcolo di Arnaldo di Villanova nella letteratura teologica e profetica del XIV secolo”, Rivista di storia del Cristianesimo, 4, 2007, p. 431-463 ; see particularly p. 458-59, n. 96. Potestà suggests that the reader who thus glossed V. E. 1502 probably did so well into the fourteenth century, long after Olivi’s death in 1298.

77  See within Il ricordo del futuro : Franco-Lucio Schiavetto, “Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 4959”, p. 224-26 ; Maria Paola Saci, “Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ross. 552”, p. 228 ; Troncarelli, “Roma, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale (Vittorio Emanuele II) 1502”, p. 251-57 ; idem, “Valencia, Biblioteca Universitaria 694”, p. 292. See also Giuseppe Mazzatinti, La Biblioteca dei re d’Aragona in Napoli, Rocca S. Casciano, Cappelli, 1897, p. 148 and Marcellino Gutierrez del Caño, Catalogo de los manuscritos existentes en la Biblioteca universitaria de Valencia, vol. 2, Valencia, Libreria Marguat, 1913, p. 153-154. Cod. 694 is marked with the heraldry of the Duke of Calabria. It contains Joachim’s Liber de Concordia, to which is appended only the geographic section from Super Prophetas, here called De Provincialibus Praesagiis. This title and the brief preface, “Ordinamentum modernum non sequtus est Joachim quoniam successibus temporum res mutantur”, indicate that this version of the geographic section is related to those found in Vat. Lat. 3819, Vat. Lat. 3820, and Vat. Borgh. 38, together with Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Lat. 13428. This preface is not found in other versions of Super Prophetas, including the oldest manuscripts in the tradition. Furthermore, Marjorie Reeves’ collation of the Valencia manuscript and the 1517 edition revealed several variations between the two : see Lee et al., Western Mediterranean Prophecy, p. 157, n. 6. In two other instances where the geographic diagrams or their text circulated separately, in the British Library manuscripts Add. 11439 and Harley 3049, this preface and other distinctive variations are lacking, suggesting a different lineage from the other partial copies. I wish to thank Gian Luca Potestà for letting me know about Vat. Borgh. 38 and Harley 3049.

78  Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, “English Joachite Manuscripts and Medieval Optimism about the Role of the Jews in History : A List for Future Studies”, Florilegium, 23/1, 2006, p. 97-144 ; especially p. 107, 110, and 133. These are the Cottonian manuscript, Harley 3049, and Add. 11439, all in the British Library.

79  Marco Rainini, Disegni dei tempi: Il «Liber Figurarum» e la teologia figurativa di Gioacchino da Fiore, Rome, Viella, 2006, p. 277-281.

80  These manuscripts are Knihovna Metropolitní Kapituly, Cod. 28, ff. 135-209 and Cod. 280, ff. 2-87, both from the first half of the fifteenth century. I am immensely grateful to Sylvain Piron for bringing them to my attention and for his generosity in sharing his descriptions and a complete set of digital images. With respect to the broader manuscript tradition, both of the Olomouc versions belong to a Central European family, which can be determined by the ordering of the Praemissiones that they share with the Prague version, and by numerous interpolations in their marginal glosses, also found in the Prague and Budapest manuscripts and Cod. 760 in Vienna (Budapest and Vienna lack the Praemissiones, and so the glosses are the primary indicators of this kinship). Despite the temptation to see a link between Joachites and Hussites in this context, some of the Bohemian manuscripts may be linked to areas that were staunchly anti-Hussite. Olomouc was a bastion of Catholic orthodoxy in the early decades of the fifteenth century, while Cod. 760 had belonged to the Carthusian house just outside of Prague, the Mariengarten, which remained strongly opposed to the Hussites and was sacked in 1419. Refer to Charles Le Couteulx, Annales Ordinis Cartusiensis ab anno 1084 ad annum 1429, Montreuil, S. Maria de Pratis, 1887-1891, v. 7, p. 233, 431. Many thanks to my colleague, Steve Molvarec, for this reference. Depending on what exactly happened, it may well have been something of a small miracle that Cod. 760 survived. See f. 156v, in what appears to be a fifteenth-century hand, and thus from not long before the Mariengarten was destroyed : “Iste liber fratrum Carthusiensum iuxta Pragam extra muros”.

81  Google Books, URL : http ://books.google.com/books?id=iTc8AAAAcAAJ&dq=Scriptum+Super+Esaiam+Prophetam&source=gbs_navlinks_s. It is important to note, however, that Google failed to scan at least two folios out of this version, 40v and 41r, an error that is all too characteristic of its scanning project.

82  Google Books, URL : http ://books.google.com/books?id=NdJIAAAAcAAJ&dq=Scriptum+Super+Esaiam+Prophetam&source=gbs_navlinks_s

83  Digital Library of Wrocław University, URL : http ://www.bibliotekacyfrowa.pl/dlibra/docmetadata?from=rss&id=38571. I am most grateful to Bonnie Mak for this reference. Note that the description confuses the Praemissiones with the Liber Figurarum.

84  RODERIC : Repositori de Contingut Lliure, URL : http ://roderic.uv.es/handle/10550/24277.

85  It is now clear that certain manuscripts that are no longer in Italy did in fact originate there. As already mentioned, Kurt-Victor Selge has pointed out the Italian origin of the Milich manuscript now in Wrocław. Likewise, I can confirm that the fourteenth-century Cottonian manuscript in the British Library almost certainly came from Italy. It has Latin glosses, in a fifteenth-century hand, that mention Duke Filippo of Milan at f. 118r and King Ladislaus of Naples at f. 128r.

86  A useful overview of this process, by which radical elements within the Franciscan Order came to adopt Joachim’s ideas, can be found in David Burr, Olivi’s Peaceable Kingdom : A Reading of the Apocalypse Commentary, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993, chapter 1, “Joachism and the Eternal Gospel”, p. 1-26. On the Scandal of the Eternal Gospel in particular, see Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy, p. 59-70. For primary sources and definitive commentary on this episode, see Heinrich Denifle, “Das Evangelium aeternum und die Commission zu Anagni”, in Archiv fürLiteratur und Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters I, 1885, p. 49-142.

87  Engelhardt, Kirchengeschichtliche Abhandlungen, p. 53-54.

88  Friderich, “Kritische Untersuchung”, p. 499-512, especially p. 506, 511-512.

89  Holder-Egger, “Italienische Prophetieen des 13. Jahrhunderts I”, Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde 15, 1890, p. 143.

90  Bondatti, Gioachinismo e Francescanesimo nel Dugento, p. 12-13.

91  Tractatus Quatuor Super Evangelia, ed. Ernesto Buonaiuti, Rome, Istituto per il storico italiano, 1930, p. LXV.

92  Grundmann, Neue Forschungen über Joachim von Fiore, Marburg, Simons Verlag, 1950, p. 71, n. 1.

93  Reeves, “The Abbot Joachim’s Disciples and the Cistercian Order”, p. 358-62.

94  Ibid., p. 363.

95  Ibid., p. 364. In the 1517 edition, f. 1r-v, the passage reads, “Tangunt enim hi quosdam cenobitas Cistercii, mentam et olus quoque redolens decimantes”. The same passage and the accompanying gloss can be found in Vat. Lat. 4959, f. 4v.

96  Ibid., p. 364. See the edition, f. 42v : “Genimina viperarum Pharisei et Saducei, pro quibus nonnulli religiosi Cistercii et seculares clerici successerunt”. It should be pointed out that this passage is a marginal gloss, which is absent from Vat. Lat. 4959 and Vat. Ross. 552. Moreover, the discussion of “vipers” in the main body of text is actually about heretics, including what appears to be invective against Bologna as the seat of canon law and decretists.

97  Ibid., p. 364. See the edition, f. 8r. Translation is from the Douay-Rheims version. Reeves here comes upon what is but one example of a recurring theme throughout the Super Prophetas : invective against black monks. At ff. 48v-49r, De Oneribus Sexti Temporis equates the relationship between black monks and white to that between Esau and Jacob, or between Greeks and Latins. Shortly thereafter, at f. 49r, the text likens black monks to “ministers of the old law” (i.e. Jews) and Greek priests. The edition reads “monachus inops”, but this is a corruption : both Vat. Lat. 4959 and Vat. Ross. 552 read “monachus ethiops” – an “Ethiopian (i.e. black) monk”. De Septem Temporibus Ecclesie identifies Monte Cassino with Sardis, the church of Revelation 3 :1 that appears to be alive but is actually dead. See the edition, f. 54v. The text then offers this verdict : “Et i[d]circo quia iam ordo ipse pro maiori parte iam recidivavit in vitia, de libro vite prorsus dicitur abolendus”. In both Vat. Lat. 4959 and Vat. Ross. 552, but not in the edition, a bold red gloss in the margin highlights the Order of Cassino being stricken from the Book of Life.

98  Ibid., p. 364-65.

99  Ibid., p. 365. See the edition, f. 37v.  Here again, Reeves is quoting from a marginal gloss, which is present in neither Vat. Lat. 4959 nor Vat. Ross. 552.

100  Ibid., p. 365. See the edition, f. 54v. This passage is found in the main body of text in De Septem Temporibus Ecclesie. As early as 1873, Schneider too had noticed this passage. See his Joachim von Floris und die Apokalyptiker des Mittelalters, p. 31. It is worth adding that earlier in this section, also at f. 54v, there is an identification of Maurus, the disciple of Benedict of Nursia, with the fifth angel of Sardis.

101  Ibid., p. 366. The association between the Cistercians and Ephraim is made here again, for the other tree, springing from the Order of the Patriarchs, culminates in the tribe of Ephraim, in the person of Joseph. In both “The Abbot Joachim’s Disciples”, p. 366, n. 57 and in her 1954 collaboration with Hirsch-Reich, “The Figurae of Joachim of Fiore”, Reeves notes that several versions of the Praemissiones omit the figure of the Two Trees. These include the print version, Vat. Lat. 4959, and the Milich, Cottonian, and Marciana manuscripts. Among the earliest manuscripts identified by Lerner, “Frederick II”, p. 378, n. 61, Vat. Ross. 552, V. E. 1502, and Cod. 15 in San Pietro Abbey in Perugia all have this image. In The Figurae of Joachim of Fiore, p. 277-278, Reeves and Hirsch-Reich suggest that its absence from Vat. Lat. 4959 in particular signifies that it was probably added later. Yet they never consider that each version that omits this figure might itself have lost its first folio, or have been copied from such a manuscript. Where it does occur, the image of the Two Trees almost always occupies the verso side of the first folio, with the recto side dominated by the figure of the Eagle. In every case where the Two Trees are omitted, the Eagle is also missing. Furthermore, Vat. Lat. 4959 is an octavo codex, yet the first gathering has only seven leaves, another indication that it is missing its first folio. Thus one strongly suspects that these first two of the Praemissiones, the Eagle and the Two Trees, were part of the tradition from the beginning, contra Reeves and Hirsch-Reich.

102  Töpfer, Das kommende Reich des Friedens, p. 110-111.

103  Ibid., p. 111. See “Petri Iohannis Olivi de renuntiatione papae Coelestini V, Quaestio et epistola”, ed. Livarius Oliger, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 11, 1918, p. 370.

104  Ibid., p. 113-115.

105  Ibid., p. 138, n. 202.

106  Ibid., p. 115.

107  Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy, p. 157.

108  Ibid., p. 156-157.

109  Ibid., p. 158. Super Prophetas is ostensibly dedicated “ad fratrem Raynerium de Poncio”. Precisely because of his role in this literature, however, Rainer might have become, over the course of the thirteenth century, something of a stock character in these prophetic writings, known to Joachites irrespective of their religious community. Moreover, Rainer enjoyed a level of prominence as Innocent III’s confessor and as a papal legate. I therefore do not think that Rainer being mentioned in Super Prophetas is, in itself, an indicator of authorship. 

110  Ibid., p. 156.

111  Lerner, “Frederick II”, p. 378.

112  Troncarelli, “Tra beneventana e gotica”, p. 154.

113  Wessley, Joachim of Fiore and Monastic Reform, p. 121.  

114  Fabio Troncarelli has noted this possibility, making a distinction in authorship between Super Prophetas , which he readily sees as monastic, and Super Jeremiam, which he acknowledges could be at least partially Franciscan. See Troncarelli, “Il Liber figurarum tra ‘gioachimiti’ e ‘gioachimisti”, in Gioacchino da Fiore tra Bernardo di Clairvaux e Innocenzo III, p. 267-281 ; especially p. 271.

115  Friderich, “Kritische Untersuchung”, p. 485-486.

116 Ibid., p. 488.

117  Translation from the Douay-Rheims version.

118  Friderich, “Kritische Untersuchung”, p. 487. Regarding Super Jeremiam, Friderich claims that the text identifies the serpent with Henry VI, the basilisk with Frederick (no numeral is indicated here, but the second one, the “stupor mundi”, is implied), and the seed with Henry and the other heirs of Frederick II.

119  Ibid., p. 482-483.

120  Ibid., p. 484.

121  Ibid., p. 494-495. Within the main body of text, there are references to these Muslims, whom Frederick II defeated in Sicily, relocated to the mainland, and whom he, Manfred, and Conradin all used as auxiliary troops : see the 1517 edition, f. 59r : “Licet enim partim lavacro, partim ferro barbarice Siculi regni reliquie humiliari habeant vel deleri”.

122  Ibid., p. 495.

123  One notable outlier, it should be said, was Felice Tocco, who was apparently unaware of Friderich’s work when he wrote L’eresia nel medio evo in 1884. At p. 307-308, he suspects that part of Super Prophetas was written during the pontificate of Boniface VIII (1294-1303) for several reasons. Tocco assumed that the recalculation of the start of the age of the Holy Spirit to 1390, as found in the sixteenth-century edition, f. 30v, was the correct reading. With another reference, at f. 34r, to the “presentem generationem inceptam anno 1201 a Christo sub pontifice romano post obitum Celestini”, Tocco here suspects that the text really means 1301. The “Roman pontiff after the death of Celestine” should be read as Innocent III, who was pope during the last years of Joachim’s life. Instead, Tocco suggests that it is Boniface VIII, who had succeeded the hermit-pope, Celestine V.

124  Kampers, Kaiserprophetieen und Kaisersagen im Mittelalter, p. 240.

125  Grundmann, Studien über Joachim, p. 16, n. 1.

126  Töpfer, Das kommende Reich, p. 137. See also n. 192, where Töpfer acknowledges Friderich, “Kritische Untersuchung”, p. 481.

127  Lerner, “Frederick II”, p. 377-78, n. 60, confirms that the thirteenth-century manuscript, Vat. Lat. 4959, f. 32r, has MCC instead of MCCC. We can now add that the great majority of surviving manuscripts render MCC, including two others dated to the thirteenth century : Vat. Ross. 552, f. 31r and V. E. 1502, p. 74. It is also worth pointing out that Vat. Lat. 4959, Vat. Ross. 552, and V. E. 1502 all have the following marginal gloss that corresponds to this passage, which reads : “Nota in anno MoCCoLXXXX prostrari prorsus mundi superbia, conversis ad Deum omnibus infidelibus gentibus et Iudeis”. This gloss is absent from many of the later manuscripts and from the 1517 edition. The fourteenth-century Marciana manuscript, which is the exemplar for the 1517 print, has MCCC at f. 32v, as does its close relative, the Cottonian version (also fourteenth-century), at f. 119r. The Milich manuscript, commonly dated to the thirteenth century and also related to the Marciana and Cotton versions, originally had MCC at f. 30r, but a later hand adds two CCs, to push the age of the Holy Spirit back even further, to 1490 !

128  Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy, p. 522.

129  Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End : Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages, second edition, New York, Columbia University Press, 1998, p. 178. The 1517 edition, upon which this translation is based, reads at f. 59r : “Necesse quidem est ut quo latius regnum Gallicum hucusque ramos suos diffuderit, eo levius ad nutum ecclesiasticum sub crucis caractere fastus sui humeros incurvabit, Hieremia dicente : ‘Confusa est filia Egypti, et tradita in manu populi aquilonis.’ Quantum enim diebus preteritis imperium Theotonice potestatis regnum idem attriverit, publica mundi notitia non abscondit. Et adhuc sub semine septimi capitis bestie vel draconis illud deferri plantario cornu modice orietur, quod tam de Petri piscatoris collegio quam de Gallici regni fastigio infra limitem Italicum in modicis bellatoribus caudam simul et verticem decalvabit”. I can confirm that this passage, minor variations notwithstanding, is present throughout the manuscript tradition.

130  Ibid., p. 325, n. 49.

131  Ibid., p. 325, n. 50 : Although McGinn does not explicitly say so here, it would seem that these two observations together point toward the following interpretation : that if the text were written after 1266, and if it appears to be “predicting” a revival of Hohenstaufen power and a defeat of the Franco-papal alliance, then it would seem that our text is alluding to Conradin’s initially-successful, but ultimately-doomed, invasion of 1267-68 and the brief restoration of Hohenstaufen fortunes, when the papacy and Charles of Anjou stood, for a time, on the verge of defeat.

132  Di Gioia, “Un manoscritto pseudo-gioachimita”, p. 89-90.

133 Ibid., p. 91.

134 Ibid., p. 105-106.

135  Ibid., p. 106.

136  Ibid., p. 89-90, n. 10. Di Gioia quotes the passage in question from Guiseppe Scalia’s 1966 edition of Salimbene’s chronicle, p. 347 : “Cui frater Petrus dixit—‘Volo quod probes mihi per Ysaiam, sicut docet Joachim Abbas, quod vita Friderici imperatoris in anni [sic] LXX debeat terminari (nam adhuc vivit), et quod non possit interfici nisi a Deo, id est non morte violenta, sed naturali’“. Di Gioia sees this quote as an echo of a marginal gloss found in two versions of Super Prophetas, V. E. 1502 in Rome and Add. 11439 in London. Additionally, she sees the statement “nam adhuc vivit” as a clear indication that the text must have been written and circulating before Frederick’s death in 1250.

137  Lerner, “Frederick II”, p. 377-378, n. 60.

138  Lerner, “Frederick II”, p. 377-378, n. 60. See Cronica Fratris Salimbene de Adam Ordinis Minorum, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger, MGH Scriptores, vol. 32, Hannover, Hahn, 1905-1913, p. 240, n. 1 : the Cologne 1577 edition of Super Jeremiam is cited, chapter 21, p. 289.

139  Ibid. Here, Lerner refers to Vat. Lat. 4959, f. 32r : “[S]ummos pontifices conflictum cum aquila et eius semine habituros”.

140  Ibid.

141  Troncarelli and Di Gioia, “Scrittura, testo, immagine”, p. 180.

142  Wessley, Joachim of Fiore and Monastic Reform, p. 39, 54, n. 57.

143  Troncarelli, “Tra beneventana e gotica”, p. 119.

144 Ibid., p. 154.

145 Ibid., p. 154, n. 55.

146 Ibid., p. 154.

147 Ibid., p. 163. One of the specific passages that Troncarelli refers to is at f. 59r in the 1517 edition : “[Q]uo adversus eum Romane sedis elatio sub çelo fidei quadrigas Egyptias innovabit, sed in scissura rubri maris imperii invasor quisque pertimeat, nedum quasi rhetia novus pharao paraverit aliis, prefocatus ipse remaneat super littus”. The lines immediately following this passage are those quoted above by Bernard McGinn, and would seem to indicate that the text is describing events occurring after Charles’ acceptance of the crown of Sicily in 1263.

148 Ibid.

149  The two early Vatican manuscripts have a marginal gloss, not found in the 1517 edition, that directly refers to the Muslim colony based in Lucera. Vat. Lat. 4959, f. 57v reads : “Nota Sarracenos transferendos de Sicilia in Apuliam et gesta eorum”. Vat. Ross. 552 has essentially the same gloss, with slight variations, at f. 60r. This gloss corresponds to a passage in the main text, which can be found in the 1517 edition at f. 55v, referring to the time “in quo Sicularis barbaries de finibus pristinis transferenda contra semen ecclesiastice mulieris, in iniuriam Christiani nominis acuetur”.

150  Lerner, The Feast of Saint Abraham, p. 148, n. 5. One can add in support of this argument the passage in the geographic section concerning the city of Apamea, in Syria. After decrying the Muslim occupation of Apamea, the text reads at f. 25v, in the 1517 edition : “Sed adhuc Tartareus gladius imminet, quo non solum ipsa, sed et terra Moab et Mesopotamia ferietur”. This passage is also present in the manuscripts, including Vat. Lat. 4959, at f. 26r, and Vat. Ross. 552, at f. 25r. There can be no clearer indication that these words were written after the Ilkhanate Mongols ravaged Mesopotamia in 1258 and invaded Syria in 1260.

151  See, for example, Harvey Hames, Like Angels on Jacob’s Ladder : Abraham Abulafia, the Franciscans, and Joachimism, Albany, State University of New York Press, 2007, p. 19. See also Brett Whalen, Dominion of God: Christendom and Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, Cambridge, Mass. and London, Harvard University Press, 2009, p. 172.

152  The URL is : http ://www.centrostudigioachimiti.it/Gioacchino/opera24.asp.

153  Schiavetto, “Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 4959”, p. 224.

154  It is possible that the scribe of Vat. Ross. 552 had King Enzio of Sardinia on his mind : in the geographic section, at f. 14v, one finds a large circle drawn around the dioceses of Sardinia, marking it out in this unique manner. The only other place where one can find something comparable is at f. 21v, where the scribe has drawn a semicircle around the “reges Christianorum”, who include the Holy Roman emperor, the emperor of Constantinople, and the kings of England and France. Clearly, Vat. Ross. 552 is calling attention to Sardinia. In light of the preoccupation of Super Prophetas with the progeny of Frederick II, might the scribe be referring to Enzio, especially during the period 1268-1272, when Enzio would have been Frederick’s last surviving male heir ?

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References

Electronic reference

David Morris, “The Historiography of the Super Prophetas (also known as Super Esaiam) of Pseudo-Joachim of Fiore”Oliviana [Online], 4 | 2012, Online since 14 March 2013, connection on 29 March 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/oliviana/512

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