Mediæval Heresy & the Inquisition

by Arthur Stanley Turberville

The contemporary reputation of Joachim would appear to have been derived as much from his spoken utterances as from his writings: but Adam Marsh prized the smallest fragments of his works, sending them whenever he could obtain them from Italy to Bishop Grosseteste. On the other hand, however interesting and indeed startling they may have been, they were not during their author’s lifetime regarded as in any way injurious. His reputation as a seer was wholly orthodox and unexceptionable. In 1200 he submitted his books to the Holy See for its approval, and the verdict was that they were undoubtedly of divine inspiration. Thirteen years later, indeed, certain speculations concerning the Trinity in one of his minor tracts were condemned by the Council of the Lateran. But the author was not personally condemned, and his order was definitely approved; while in 1220 Honorius III issued a bull declaring Joachim to have been a good Catholic.[47]

It is doubtful if the name of Joachim of Flora would ever have been of any more than very transitory importance had it not been for the appearance in 1254 of a work entitled ‘The Eternal Gospel,’ of which he was stated to be the author. No book of that title figures among the authentic works of Joachim, nor did he give that name to any collection of them. It seems that the book which appeared in Paris in 1254 consisted of Joachim’s three principal works—which had none of them been hitherto deemed heretical—with explanatory notes and a lengthy and all-important introduction (Introductorius in Evangelium Aeternum). It must have been rather in the notes and introduction than in the text that the heresy lay, in the interpretations put upon Joachim’s apocalyptic effusions rather than in the effusions themselves. The true author, therefore, of the heresies associated with ‘The Everlasting Gospel’ would appear to be the commentator, not the originator. The authorship of the introduction and the glosses was early ascribed to one of two persons—to a certain Gherardo da Borgo San Donnino by the contemporary chronicler Salimbene, to John of Parma by the inquisitor Eymeric in his ‘Directorium Inquisitorum,’ written more than a century later. In any case the author was a Franciscan.[48] And between the conceptions contained in ‘The Everlasting Gospel’ and the Franciscan Order, it will be seen, there was a very close and a very significant connection.

We may take it that the compiler of the work which startled the world in 1254—whether it was Gherardo or John of Parma—is to be regarded less as an expounder of the teaching of Joachim of Flora than as an original thinker, either honestly finding a preceptor and a kindred soul in the prophet and simply elaborating his thesis, or else utilizing the apocalyptic utterances of a man who had died in the full odour of sanctity in order to build up a thesis essentially his own on esoteric writings easily susceptible of a new construction. It is sufficient that ‘The Everlasting Gospel’ has direct reference to that section of the Franciscans which was at the time led by John of Parma, and that in the new religion which the work predicts the Friars are to play the leading part as inaugurators. The work is indeed astoundingly revolutionary. In much the same way that Mazzini in his ‘From the Council to God’ proclaimed the emergence of a new religion of Humanity superseding Christianity did ‘The Everlasting Gospel’ proclaim a new religion, that of the Holy Ghost. But whereas condemnation of the Catholic Church was commonplace in the nineteenth century and humanitarian ideas familiar; in the thirteenth century it is rather astonishing to find an admission that Christianity has failed and that a new dispensation is necessary for the salvation of mankind. The text of ‘The Everlasting Gospel’ is the words in the book of the Revelation, ‘And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him, for the hour of his judgment is come.’[49] Joachim had foretold in his ‘Concordia’ that the world would go through three cycles, those of the Father or the circumcision or the law; of the Son, crucifixion, grace; of the Holy Ghost, peace and love. The first had been the era of Judaism, of the Old Testament. It had led on to that of the New Testament and the Christian Church. The second period was very shortly to reach its accomplishment, and the third and last era, that of ‘The Everlasting Gospel,’ to be inaugurated by a new religious order. By mystic computations the date of the commencement of the final era was found to be 1260.

Fundamental to such a mystic conception of human history is the assumption that Christianity is not the whole and the sole truth, that it is not complete in itself, but only a partial revelation of God to man, destined to be superseded by a fuller, ampler revelation in the same way in which it had superseded Judaism. Such an assumption could only rest upon a pessimistic view of contemporary life and society, a feeling that it urgently needed a new saviour. Joachim strongly denounced the evils of his day, especially those evinced by the Church, which was given up to carnal appetites and neglected its duties, to the advantage of proselytizing heresies, for which it was thus itself indirectly responsible. The author or authors of ‘The Everlasting Gospel’ illustrated this very conception by elaborating a thesis really more destructive of the Catholic faith than Catharism itself. The ending of the second era was to be accompanied by great tribulations, but these grievous troubles would usher in the millennium, days of perfect justice, peace and happiness, in which God would be worshipped everywhere and in which the Eucharist and indeed all other sacraments would be needless, mankind being liberated from such burdens, so complete would be the knowledge of God in the heart of the individual man. The conversion of the world to this new dispensation, in which each man would live the devoted life of a monk, was to be brought about by the new mendicant order, in which would be manifested all the highest powers of man. What order could this be but the Franciscan?

The personality and career of St. Francis of Assisi are of profound significance in the history of mediæval Christianity. Their sanctity and spiritual power gave other men, such as Peter Damiani, Bruno, Stephen Harding, Norbert, Bernard, Dominic, a great reputation and authority even in their own lifetime. But Francis stood apart from and above all of them, even Bernard. His intense sincerity, his absolute, unconditional renunciation of all worldly things, the charm and beauty of his character made the man, upon whose body the στίγματα of Christ were said to have been seen, appear to his own day as one different from all other men—indeed so miraculously near to the spirit of his Master as to be hailed by some even as a second Christ. Simple, unlearned, not interested in intellectual matters, making religion an inward matter of spiritual experience, intense conviction of sin and of repentance together with unreserved devotion of life and soul to God in personal service, St. Francis was no organizer, and when the nucleus of an order gathered round him viewed the future with the utmost disquietude, fearing in the very fact of organization a falling away from those ideas of strictest poverty and personal holiness which marked out the Minorites from all other religious associations. Yet if the influence of St. Francis was to survive his death, organization, whatever its drawbacks, was an imperative necessity. This work was carried out by a man of rare energy and constructive powers, Elias of Cortona, with the active support of Gregory IX. Elias did for the Franciscans what St. Paul did for primitive Christianity. But between the spirit of Elias and that of Francis there was a difference equivalent to that between the zeal of a prophet and the skill of a statesman. The Franciscan Order as it came to be, if it gained something by its organization, lost also, as the founder had foreseen. With organization there came indeed recruitment from the ranks of scholarship, and the followers of the unlearned saint of Assisi included in Alexander of Hales, Bonaventura and Roger Bacon men who could take stand with Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas himself among the followers of the learned Dominic de Guzman. But there came also with organization temporal influence and worldly wealth, entirely out of harmony with the mind and ideals of Francis, and proving indeed a snare and a temptation to those very clerical abuses against which the whole life of Francis had been a protest.

Accordingly, there came about a very serious and indeed irreconcilable cleavage among the Grey Friars. There were on the one side the followers of Elias who came to be known as the Conventuals, arguing that a strict compliance with the principles of Francis was impracticable, indeed fanatical, that compromise involving the abandonment of the mendicant ideal and the acceptance of property was not only justifiable but unavoidable for the continued existence of their society. On the other side were the Spirituals, arguing that the policy of compromise meant nothing less than the repudiation of the distinctive characteristics of the order which had led to its creation and justified its continuation, and urging to the full the strictest conformity with all their uncompromising sincerity. The dispute between the two parties had been some years in progress when ‘The Everlasting Gospel’ was published, the John of Parma to whom the authorship of the work was by some attributed being at that time General of the order and a most perfervid Spiritual. St. Francis himself had indeed been orthodox enough, for the most part accepting the articles of faith in a spirit of unquestioning obedience, though the bent of his mind and his marriage to the Lady Poverty caused him to attach more importance to some dogmas than to others, and in particular to shorten and to simplify all forms and ritual. But in the beautiful fancifulness of Francis there was a strong element of mysticism, and this element was a marked characteristic of those who sought to retain his ideal of asceticism in the order. To such the mystical outpourings of the Abbot Joachim made a powerful appeal. For they perceived in his predictions a clear reference to themselves, found in Francis the forerunner and in themselves, his true followers, the destined preachers of the new era of the Holy Ghost in which the carnal-mindedness of a decadent Church and the corruption and indeed the worldliness of the whole human race were to be known no more. To some extremists Francis figured not as a great saint and servant of Christ seeking to reclaim the world to His truth, but as an equal with Christ—not as the restorer of an existent religion, but as the creator of a new religion. So completely heterodox a construction was it possible to place upon the mission of St. Francis, in the light of Joachite prophecy.[50]

It can easily be understood that the taint of Joachitism among the Spirituals gave a splendid opportunity to their adversaries, which the latter were not slow to take. The Pope, Alexander IV, was appealed to; John of Parma was forced to resign, and his successor, Bonaventura, who belonged to neither party, was made, however unwillingly, to take action against John himself and his most outstanding adherents. Already evidence was accumulating of heretical dangers which might accrue from the wedding together of Franciscan ideas of poverty with Joachitic mysticism, and Spirituals began to be looked upon askance. Already Languedoc, abundant source of all manner of onslaughts upon the faith, was beginning to welcome the ideas of Joachim, and it was possible for the Conventuals to argue that their opponents were no better than a heretical sect, another form of Cathari. Later on there came successors to the author of ‘The Everlasting Gospel,’ in the Franciscan Pierre Jean Olivi in France, in Italy Arnaldo da Villanova, who pronounced the vices of the clergy to be eloquent signs of the presence of Antichrist.

To begin with the Spirituals were in the ascendant. Bonaventura, in controversy with William of Saint Amour, a virulent enemy of the whole Franciscan order, maintained that poverty was an essential feature of Christianity and that neither Christ Himself nor His disciples owned property of any kind. Pope Nicholas III by the bull Exiit qui seminat gave the sanction of the Holy See to the view that St. Francis had been inspired in his creation of the Rule by the Holy Ghost; that Christ had completely renounced the ownership of property and that such renunciation was most laudable and Christian. At the same time he drew a distinction—no new one, because it had already been put into practice by Innocent IV and Alexander IV—between ownership and use, and laid down as a rule always to be followed that the ownership of Franciscan property was vested in the Holy See, the Franciscans themselves simply having the usufruct. This bull did not, as might have been anticipated, settle the dispute between the two Franciscan factions. Laxity increased among the Conventuals, and Joachite tendencies still subsisted among their opponents. The pontificate of Boniface VIII, which began in 1294, brought upon the scene a man most eminently practical, essentially worldly. To the Pope, who had designs on the temporal power and eventually announced categorically, ‘I am Caesar, I am Emperor,’ the ascetic ideal of the Spirituals was a ridiculous fanaticism, which was also a positive nuisance. The mendicant orders had been especially the servants of the papacy; the Spirituals were apt to refer to it as Antichrist. Moreover, the existence of wandering friars, actually beggars, under no proper discipline and supervision—as some of the Spirituals had become—outraged his sense of order and decency. Boniface decided that these lawless bands must be hunted down, and utilized the Inquisition for this purpose. Under Clement V the lot of the Spirituals considerably improved, and inveighing against the abuses of their false brethren they very nearly succeeded in securing a permanent separation into an order of their own. Instead of this Clement, while declaring in favour of the ascetic party and favouring them generally during his pontificate, endeavoured to induce the rival factions to drop their quarrels and live together in amity. His efforts at settlement were defeated by the action of Spirituals in Italy, who at the very time when a Council at Vienne, sitting in 1311-12, was declaring in favour of the Spirituals and prohibiting their enemies from referring to them as heretics, proclaimed themselves a separate community and brought down the Pope’s wrath upon them as rebels and schismatics and indeed founders of a pestilential sect.