Apocalypticism in the Western Tradition by Bernard McGinn

Abstract

528 BOOK REVIEWS Apocalypticism in the Western Tradition. By Bernard McGinn. [Variorum Collected Studies Series, CS 430.] (Brookfield,Vermont:Variorum,Ashgate Publishing Co. 1994. Pp. x, 324. $89.95.) Bernard McGinn is a master in the field ofearly and medieval apocalypticism. This volume of his collected essays—all written between 1971 and 1991 — amply demonstrates both the impressively wide range of his studies and the richness of detail which brings his themes to life. There is inevitably some overlap between some essays but the different articles have been so arranged as to form a coherent whole rather than a random selection. The volume justly deserves its broad title. In Part !,"Background and Historiography," McGinn first picks a masterly path through the controversies surrounding the origins and development of early apocalypticism and then—defining "apocalyptic" as eschatology which announces the future and final course ofhistory—gives a historiographical sketch of a century of scholarship on medieval aspects of this subject, with illuminating comments on the variety of viewpoints (ecclesiastical and political) provoked by it. Part II deals broadly with "Themes of Medieval Apocalypticism." "Symbols of the Apocalypse" emphasizes the intensely visual power of "John the Seer's" Apocalypse, especially in its oppositions between Babylon and Jerusalem,the cosmic conflict between evil and good. The essay then moves on to the unique Figurae of Joachim of Fiore ("the first apocalypticist to be his own iconographer") and the paradoxes of Dante's great picture-sequence at the end of Purgatorio. The second essay in this section "Teste David cum Sibylla," traces the origins and significance of the prophetic role played by Sibylline texts in the Middle Ages. In the essay on "Angel Pope and Papal Antichrist ," McGinn begins to deal with a specifically Joachimist theme but places it within the broader context of the dialectical juxtaposition of roles assigned to the Papacy in the drama ofLast Things, as played out in the later Middle Ages outside official doctrine. He concludes:"We can know all we want about hierocratic theory, canon law, papal politics and finances; without some understanding of why Angel Pope and Papal Antichrist loomed so large in the imagination and emotions of many, our grasp ofthe history of the papacy in the later middle ages would be incomplete." The next essay deals in more detail with the proliferation offourteenth-century texts on the same theme, especially in the "new literary genre" created by the "fusion ofprophetic text and picture." In a paper entitled "Apocalyptic Traditions and Spiritual Identity" the author asks himself the question, "What were millenarian and apocalyptic ideas used for in the Middle Ages?" He finds one answer in the nourishment of spiritual identity which they gave to particular radical groups and, after instancing Joachim of Fiore's prophecy of future viri spirituales, gives us a "triptych" of which the central panel represents Franciscan involvement in apocalyptic ideas and the two contrasting side panels portray Dominican appropriations of these themes and their use by the extreme Apostolic Brethren. The tension created in the Church by such claims to special identity in the Last Age are perceptively explored and lead on to the last essay in Part II on Bonaventure's Theology of BOOK REVIEWS 529 History, particularly as contained in his unfinished Collationes, where, argues McGinn, Bonaventure chose to appropriate what he found valuable in Joachim's vision and, in dependence on Joachim, "to depart from Augustine in significant ways." Part IH takes up specific themes and problems inJoachimist studies. The first essay—McGinn's earliest in this field—contrasts the reactions of Aquinas and Bonaventure to the radical eschatology of Joachim. The second, a theological appraisal of Joachim's famous doctrine of the Tertius Status, brings out the complexity of this concept as it emerges in the Abbot's vision from the double procession of the Spirit. In the third, on the role of Bernard of Clairvaux as an alterMoyses inJoachim's thought, McGinn suggests the possibility thatJoachim knew and was influenced by Bernard's Sermones super Cántica. Finally, attempting to assess the "Influence and Importance" ofJoachim of Fiore, the author ponders on the difficulty of knowing whether we scholars claim "too much or too little" for...