Joachim of Flora: A Critical Survey of his Canon, Teachings, Sources, Biography and Influence

Abstract

One of the most significant and influential figures of the ‘renaissance of the twelfth century,’ though not mentioned by Charles Haskins in his monumental work of that title (Cambridge 1927), was the Calabrian Joachim of Flora, a man who contributed nothing directly to the revival of science, to a knowledge of Greek or Latin antiquity, or to the rise of a secular attitude. Long before the date of the appearance of Haskins' work, however, since Michelet in fact, Joachim's name was associated with the Renaissance, and in the early years of this century this link was emphasized by Burdach and his followers. He is supposed to have done more to orient men's minds towards, and to have aroused expectations of, a coming new age in the later Middle Ages than anyone else. Whether one wishes to go as far as Burdach went (and I myself certainly do not wish to do so), it is at least true that his works and the works associated with his name helped to create the ferment that was eventually, in a few centuries, to make men feel that they were in a new era of rebirth and that a period of darkness lay behind them.