REEVES - REFLECTIONS

Because there are three coeternal and coequal trinitarian persons, when we take into account that which exemplifies the likeness of these persons the first status is reckoned from Adam to Christ, the second from King Josiah to the present time, the third from Saint Benedict to the consummation of the age. When, however, we omit the initial tempora and concentrate on that phase which is crucial to each status, then the first status is reckoned from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, up to Zachary, the father of John, or even to John himself and to Christ Jesus. The second is reckoned from this same time up to the present. The third is reckoned from the present time to the end. [Marjorie Reeves, “The Originality and Influence of Joachim of Fiore,” in The Prophetic Sense of History in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, Variorum Collected Studies Series (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), article 4, pp. 268, 293. ]

See Also: M. Reeves, “The Abbot Joachim’s Disciples and the Cistercian Order’, Sophia, xix (1951), 355-71

M. Reeves and B. Hirsch-Reich, ‘The Figurae of Joachim of Fiore’, Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies, iti (1954), 170-99 [chart of image]

Reeves: PRINCIPAL BOOK available for viewing: Reeves: https://archive.org/details/figuraeofjoachim0000reev_b9y5/page/364/mode/2up

available for viewing at: https://archive.org/details/figuraeofjoachim0000reev_b9y5/page/n27/mode/2up

[p. 7] Just as the spiritualis intellectus springs from the text of the two Testaments, so Joachim’s pattern of threes springs from his meditation on the concords of twos. From dealing with concords on ff. 7 and 8 he passes straight to the first statement of three dispensations,3° There was one time in which men lived according to the flesh, that is, from Adam to Christ. There is another era in which men have lived between flesh and spirit, from the time of Elisha, or of Ozias, King of Judah, up to the present time. There is yet another to be lived according to the Spirit until the end of the world, having its ¢wi#iatio in the days of the blessed Benedict. The fructificatio of the first time, or rather first status, was from Abraham to Zacharias, of the second from Zacharias to the forty-second generation after Christ; the fractificatio of the third status will be from the forty-second generation after St. Benedict to the consummation of the age.

In the following pages he makes it clear that he is now operating with two alternative ways of looking at history. According to one mode, three stafus must be assigned to the history of the world, embodying the mystery of the Trinity.3! But according to another, one must think, not in terms of three ‘times’, but of two. As he works on them, these alternative, but mystically connected, patterns weave themselves into a complex design which forms the background to much of Joachim’s thinking. One can easily miss this double -design, since the passages expounding it are embedded in expositions scattered through his works. It will be useful to summarize some of these.32 There are two types of -concotds, one of threes, symbolizing the equality of the three Persons and expressed in the three orders elected to the three status, and the other of twos, symbolizing the authority of the Father and the nativity of the Son, and expressed in the two Peoples, the Jewish and the Gentile, elected to the faith of the One God, under the two Testaments. In the first assignation of concords, the first status begins in Adam and ends in Christ, the second begins in Ozias and ends 7” temporibus istis, the third begins in St. Benedict and ends in the consummation of t

Page 90 In the Liber Figurarum, Plate 31: XII does not really accord as much honour to the Cistercians as Joachim does in his writings. It does not state that the central oratory belongs to the Cistercians, only that these fast according to the Cistercian Rule, whereas in the Liber Concordie Joachim sees the fructification of the third s/atus itself as beginning in this order. The crux of the argument lies, however, in the T'tee with side-shoots (Plate 20: XXII), where the line of direct spiritual growth clearly passes through the Cistercian order, whilst the Cluniacs ate only an offshoot. This is a not unlikely development from the view of Joachim as we have summarized it. The order of spiritual growth in the Liber Concordie is clearly ftom monasticism, as initiated by St. Benedict, to the Cistercians, from whom the fructification of the third status—here the flowering of the tree—springs. Moreover, Joachim’s few references to the Cluniacs are mainly disparaging.8° But it should be emphasized that even in this tree the highest honour is not accorded to the Cistetcians : they do not form the flowering of the tree itself, only the final stage leading up to this consummation. None the less, Joachim’s constant hesitation in assigning parts to contemporary institutions makes us pause here. We have noted the characteristic way in which he withdraws from assigning the final lead to the Cistercians, never naming them as the ultimate seven who inhetit. This raises a question whether the top section of this tree could have been added later. We shall return to this question again.he age. In the second assignation of concords the first period begins in

xcxxcxxc  F ” “ This Webpage was created for a workshop held at Saint Andrew's Abbey, Valyermo, California in 1990....x....  ’ “”.