Stephen Wessley

For the thirteenth-century Guglielmites women were the only hope for the salvation of mankind. These idealists believed that contemporary human failings could be remedied and that all were soon to be saved through the intervention of a female. Yearning for such immanent change, the Guglielmites quickly moved from enthusiasm to heresy. If the false Christians, jews, saracens, and, in fact, all diose outside Christianity were still not transformed by grace, according to these zealots, it was the fault of the present form of the ecclesia which must therefore be altered to fulfill their utopian expectations.

Within the last decade noteworthy efforts have been made to provide for a better understanding of Joachim of Fiore through new editions of his work and the establishment of a more exact chronology for the events in his life. Under the direction of Kurt-Victor Selge a Herausgeberkommission der kritischen Gesamtausgabe der Werke Joachims von Fiore has been established, a symposium on the manuscript traditions of Joachim’s work has been held under its auspices, and new critical editions are expected to be forthcoming soon. Professor Selge has contributed significantly to these efforts with his study of the chronology of Joachim’s writings and his edition of the Praephatio sive Prologus super Apocalypsim. I am building on this work and, of course, the outstanding work of such scholars as Marjorie Reeves, and hope now to identify a distinctive stage in Joachim of Fiore’s career.

That Jerusalem, especially the heavenly Jerusalem of Revelation, plays an important role in the writings of the famous apocalyptical thinker Joachim of Fiore is to be expected. What has not been looked at before is the elaborate role ascribed to the Holy Land and Jerusalem by Joachim’s immediate followers. The thesis of this paper is that the early followers of Joachim justified their very existence in terms of a distinctive apocalyptical role for the Holy Land.