2 - From Dante to the Republic of Prophets

Summary

As early as the twelfth century, prophetic voices have shaped the Italian spiritual and moral scenario. Among them, Joachim of Fiore (1135–1202), a figure whom Dante explicitly credited to be “di spirito profetico dotato,” stands out. His vision of the coming of a new order (ordo), or state (status), of spiritual men had a great sentimental impact, stirred hopes of religious renewal, produced other prophecies, and inspired radical religious movements. He did not announce, however, a message of social redemption. To stress its distance from the life of activity and labor, he called the new order that he was invoking the “Virgin Church,” que requiescit in silentio heremi. The models of his order were Elijah and Elisha, from the Old Testament, and Saint Benedict, “viro utique claro miraculis, opere et sanctitate,” from his times. The symbol that he chose to describe his task was the suave dove (“illa suavissima columba”), and the birds that fly to heaven to contemplate the light of the sun in its fullness. The monks belonging to the spiritual order that Joachim founded distinguished themselves for their spiritual liberty and the sacred wisdom they extracted from both the Old and the New Testaments in the silence of contemplation sustained by the jubilation of psalmody.¹ Joachim assigned the new spiritual order a contemplative mission detached from the masses and was concerned with the general body of the Christian people. For this, he prophesied “the conversion of all peoples to spiritual intelligence.” The new spiritual men were to be preachers of the truth (“predicatores veritatis”), capable of carrying out ecclesiastical reform through the spiritual change of the Church’s individual members. He wanted them to act as mediators between God and the crowd of sinners who could not sustain the sunlight of a fully hermitic life. To illustrate this mediation between God and the people, he used the figure of Moses: not the Moses who led the Hebrews from Egyptian bondage to the Promised Land, but the Moses who remained on the mountaintop and told Aaron the words that were to be revealed to the people of Israel.²