1 ) Introduction
2 ) The conceptual beating heart of Concordia.
3 ) Summary of the 4 Books of Concordia.
3a ) The analytical and theoretical levels of Concordia.
3b ) Father, Son and Holy Spirit, servitude, discipline and freedom.
3c ) The Concordia plan: Books I, II, III and IV.
4 ) Conclusion
5 ) Notes
6 ) Illustrations: the Tree of the 3 Ages (p 101), The 3 Circles with the 3 inner circles (p 131), The Marble Causeway (p 157), The ruins of Jure Vetere in March 2014
“New wine is not made to be received in old wineskins, and those who see the old do not willingly look at the new.” (p. 85)
” … It is therefore necessary that in the time of the lilies, which come after the roses, frost and rain disappear…” (p 101) (in Sulla Vita e la Regoola di san Benedetto).
1 ) Introduction
In April 2022, the Centro Internazionale di Studi Gioachimiti published the first 4 books of the Concordia by Joachim, “the Calabrian abbot endowed with a prophetic spirit” according to Dante. This work, hitherto difficult to access in vernacular languages, can be seen as the Manifesto of the Order of Fiore heralding the coming of the 3rd Age of human emancipation and, as such, it has had and will continue to have great resonance throughout the world, despite all the attempts at obfuscation by all the prevailing regressive and exclusivist circles that were unleashed shortly before Joachim’s death in March 1202. It is regrettable that the publication of the Fifth Book was postponed. In fact, this fifth Book contains the spiritual, theoretical and practical conclusions of the previous Books, drawn by Joachim himself. Let’s hope that it will be published as soon as possible, with an Index, and that the publication of Joachim’s Complete Works will be accompanied by a separate volume containing the Nominative and Thematic Index and an up-to-date bibliography. Whatever the case, we can already summarize the veritable spiritual, conceptual and historical revolution contained in the first four books. Quite simply, it heralds the human emancipatory revolution conceived as the obligatory result of human and historical development, which will lead to the development of republican and secular Humanism throughout Europe and the West, then to the French Revolution and the social future heralded by the Paris Commune of 1871. (1)
Let’s start with the spiritual-conceptual revolution. The fact that Joachim was familiar with Plato’s Apology of Socrates, the Banquet and the Republic is attested to on several occasions in his work, notably when he explains why Christ drank the chalice to the dregs, or when he criticizes the high clergy, particularly worldly monks, who from a nature of gold, seeking light, become corrupt to the point of transforming into lead. Joachim’s Pythagorean project is twofold (2). It involves establishing Trinitarian becoming as a veritable syllogism of human historical emancipation, making the “Trinitarian mystery” the monad of this development, while reformulating the Pythagorean-Christian narrative of his time, already fallen into the wrong hands, to herald the Age of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Tolerance and Peace, but a real peace going beyond the pax romana. (“Thus, throughout the period of Frankish kings and emperors, who treated Peter’s successors with a certain benevolence compared to other times, the Church succeeded in realizing this long-desired Roman peace…”, p 267). This is the purpose of the Concordia.
In so doing, Joachim sets out to rehabilitate and reformulate the original spirit of the Pythagorean-Christian narrative, bringing it back into step with the times and with its original purpose – Human Emancipation. He did so with the support of the Norman Monarchy, then the Swabian-Norman Empire, as well as three successive popes just before Innocent III, who invented the first de facto inquisition against him and the Order of Fiore.
It’s a risky undertaking, since it presupposes a new way of reading biblical texts, one that goes against the grain of a worldly and increasingly delegitimized ecclesiastical hierarchy. Right from the Prologue, Joachim repeatedly emphasizes that he is addressing the “chosen ones” – in fact, the vanguard of Pythagorean initiates who have been particularly present in the monastic order since its Roman patrician beginnings. This “Latin” monastic order was always attached to the rebirth of the Roman-Christian empire attributed to Constantine. This was the case for St. Benedict, even more so than for Cassiodorus or St. Augustine and St. Gregory. But for Joachim, who did not approve of the Crusades, the true temple is the human conscience, the true empire that of brotherhood and peace. He writes: “In order that there should be no risk of error in what I have just said, in order that there should not remain in the Church of Christ an empty space at the disposal of diverse and foreign doctrines, in order to warn those who wander in darkness and are unaware of Satan’s wiles, in order to avoid, as far as God allows, the inventions of false prophets who, if it were possible, would lead astray even the elect, we have seen fit to compose this work from both ancient and new history. And after carefully examining the wheels of Ezekiel, we have convincingly shown how great is the concordance between the one and the other…” (p 33)
The reference to Ezekiel is not insignificant, nor is the place of honor given in the Calabrian abbot’s work to the Apostle John the Evangelist. We’ll show below that Ezekiel’s wheels refer to the four stars and constellations of the Tetramorph, the celestial “fixed” point, which enabled the development of ancient astronomy and thus the control of time through the calendar and associated rituals. These included, through the will of Pope Gregory the Great, the setting of Christmas at the winter solstice and Passover at the spring equinox, in place of the Jewish Passover, which followed the lunar calendar. (See: “Short notes on Joachim of Fiore, Pythagorean presented at the conference organized by the Gunesh cultural association”, August 27, 2016, in http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org/short-notes-joachim-of-fiore-pythagorean-presented-at-the-conference-organized-by-the-gunesh-cultural-association-august-27-2016 )
With Innocent III’s offensive against Joachim’s work, the Church cut itself off from its Pythagorean scientific origins and initiated its path on the stations of the cross, iron and fire towards the hell of a-scientific narrative dogma and an exclusivist, inegalitarian regression. Its persecutions grew, for example against the Social Franciscans and other Joachimites, against Galileo, Campanella (3) and Giordano Bruno, not to mention all the reformers condemned by the Inquisition or by the Princes, including Fra Dolcino and Thomas Müntzer. This tragic regression culminate in the final failure of Vatican II, whose attempt at aggiornamento was interrupted by Paul VI, his successors and their exclusivist coteries.
As early as the Middle Ages, the resignation in 1294 less than 6 months after his election, of the Benedictine hermit Celestine V, whom some had hailed as “the angelic pope”, marked the first turning point in this drift that gradually distanced the best minds from the Church (v. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9lestin_V ) In his Divina commedia, Dante places him in Hell, condemning his “Great refusal”. Joachim’s work helps us to understand the profound reasons for the failure of an institution that had betrayed its original vocation, that of supporting the dialectic of general emancipation that Joachim had described in his New Social (Monastic) Order. (On this subject, see my commentary on Table XII, in the article of August 27, 2016 referred to above). Political parties practicing internal democracy – democratic centralism – to defend equality, liberty and fraternity, by definition tolerant and anti-exclusivist, as well as the development of collective security, naturally took over the role of mass educational avant-garde.
And this is why Joachim sets out to draw up a reasoned history of the “First Testament” that can be meaningfully mapped onto that of the “Second Testament”. This is necessary to better grasp the profound significance of the Third Age, which Joachim is aware of announcing. The choice of the terms “First” and “Second” Testament is loaded with meaning. For this reason, Joachim warns that it is pointless to take the counting of generations in the First and Second Testaments too seriously, firstly because the existing chronicles enabling such calculations are incomplete and, secondly and above all, because the meaning of this approximate chronology is and remains above all conceptual.
Ever since the Pythagorean-Christic “true lie” (4) has been overturned by the Church into a venal, worldly lie, a veritable “ignoble lie” that also takes the form of the quaternarism of Peter Lombard and other theologians and scholastics, Joachim will not stop at testamentary narratives. Since the Order of Monks is supposed to herald the Age of the Holy Spirit, or human consciousness generalized to all, Joachim will also set about establishing his emancipatory concordances with the 7 Seals of the Apocalypse, which, of course, take precedence over the Augustinian formulation of the City of God. Joachim, a Calabrian Pythagorean, knows that the Celestial City is nothing other than the Tetramorph that brings order to the astronomical future so important to the evolution of civilizations, especially when these are based primarily on agriculture and livestock farming.
2 ) The conceptual beating heart of Concordia.
Let’s take a closer look at this conceptual revolution. I have already shown how Joachim, an outstanding logician, turns the Roman Christian Trinity into a “syllogism of historical becoming” (5). The first four Books of the Concordia allow us to demonstrate in greater detail this revolutionary concept, in every sense of the word. It is a syllogism of human emancipation in History, not a simple catechism of “salvation” through obedience to the Church and its hierarchy. In fact, we are confronted here with the first rigorous formulation of the Overall Dialectic (6) uniting the foundations offered by Nature to open up to historical development and the active role of collective and individual Subjects in this overall becoming.
In his major works, la Concordia, Comment on Apocalypse and Ten-string Psaltery, worked on though not completed in parallel, Joachim takes great care to defend the concept of the Roman Christian Trinity against the erroneous versions of Sibelius, Arian and the Greeks – Filioque – and against Peter Lombard’s quaternary version. (7) According to Joachim: “Sabelius wanted to expose this problematic, but his boat ran aground on the reefs. And Arian, trying to avoid this danger, ends up in deep mud. In fact, Sabelius says that God is one person, but that by his will he is now the Father, now the Son, now the Holy Spirit. Arian, disapproving of this, says that they are three persons, but distinct – and it is blasphemy to claim this – in their essence and majesty.” (Psaltery, p. 11) As for the Greeks, the Father alone begets both the Son and the Holy Spirit, thus doing away with the Trinitarian syllogistic becoming. Peter Lombard subjected the Trinity to the intermediation of a 4th pole, the ecclesial hierarchy, with the Pope at its head, without whom no salvation – in the hereafter! – was possible. Outside the Church, there only universal damnation, which is very convenient for controlling gullible flocks…
His logical-Pythagorean motivation is identical to that of his insistence on preventing the falsification of numbers in ancient texts, whose meaning, which can sometimes prove mysterious given our current understanding of the texts, can be clarified later. For example, when he judges that the number of years 70 or 72 – Babylonian captivity, disciples Christ sends out to preach throughout the world, etc. – is less important than their deeper conceptual, practical and astronomical significance, despite the numerical fluctuation. In the Concordia, he takes great care to distinguish between his Trinitarian conception and that of the Greeks – Filioque. In the latter case, the Holy Spirit – or full achieved human consciousness – always proceeds, like the Son, from the Father. For Joachim, the Father is uncreated, the Son proceeds from the Father and the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son.
It’s easy to understand the logical and scientific reasons for this fastidious defense. The Age of the Father is not only that of hierarchical authority in a subordinate and obedient society of “spouses” – connugi – it is also that of Nature, of the flesh and of the animal stage of evolution, in some ways frightening because unknown. The Age of the Son is that of the power of example, leading to a society of the faithful guided by institutions that regulate arbitrary authority. The Age of the Holy Spirit is that of the society of Equals, free and fraternal among themselves, that of universal Peace, which the Pax romana has not been able to re-establish, and can no longer do so, because of its sinking into the temporal pretensions of the Church. (p 267) Henry Mottu was not wrong when he said that the Calabrian abbot had theorized “the secularization of the Holy Spirit”, but Joachim’s message goes far beyond this, establishing the future of the individual and social emancipation of Humanity and announcing a New World Order, and not only of the monastic Order charged with announcing it. (8)
Armed with this conceptual baggage, Joachim set about reinterpreting the canonical biblical texts and the monastic text of St. Augustine, which would ultimately be replaced by his own interpretation of the Apocalypse of the Apostle John the Evangelist, who would thus become the tutelary figure of the Order of Fiore founded by Joachim to herald the transition to the Third Age. In other words, while recreating the Pythagorean-Christian narrative better suited to the revolutionary transition he was announcing, he set himself the task of operationalizing his theory. He had already paid tribute to the Roman patrician and Pythagorean monastic reformer, St. Benedict, while adopting his motto “Ora et labora”; he now invents what is indeed a praxis – if you will, in the Gramscian sense of the term.
In so doing, he became the first modern inventor of what Giordano Bruno, who emulated Joachim’s concordances in astronomy, e.g. in his On composition (9), called the “monad“, a key concept later taken up by Spinoza, albeit with difficulty, to show the transition from natura naturans to the attributes of human understanding. This revolutionary dialectical concept was taken up again by Leibnitz, but typically by falsifying it – see La Monadologie, a text diplomatically written in French – then, likewise, by Hegel, but it was finally totally elucidated by the double dialectic of Nature and History enunciated by Marx-Engels (and which I have rid of several drosses added by others with my Overall Dialectic, including the Hegelian absurdity of the “unity of opposites”, which confuses distinct categories with opposites and thus destroys any scientific conception of dialectical becoming ; this theory set out in my Methodological Introduction cited in Note 6 below. )
The Joachimite subtends all the comments and analyses of the Joachim trinity, as well as its illustrations by the Schemas of concordances and the 7 Seals, but it is also enlightened by an ingenious Figure proposed by Joachim itself with a title that leaves no doubt on its nature of conceptual-theoretical foundation, to wit ” the Marble Causeway – or floor “. (p 157).
In this way, the Joachimite Trinitarian monad develops concretely in History. It constitutes what Vico would later call the Invariant Axis around which human historical becoming oscillates. This Trinitarian tension of becoming then makes it possible to define the principal characteristic of the various human Epochs, which will of course vary according to the increasingly accomplished progression of Nature towards socialization, or of the Father towards the increasingly accomplished Consciousness or Holy Spirit. And this is why Joachim can also illustrate this historical becoming with diagrams of Trees representing concordances, or with an ascending spiral, an image that will be taken up by Vico with his “ricorsi” and later by Nietzsche and all reactionaries with their “ascending returns”, albeit typically in reverse – see the Figure “Mistero della chiesa“, https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber_Figurarum .
The same goes for the history of human conflicts, between types of individuals, between peoples – the Hebrews, then the Christians, the peoples of Antiquity – or which agitate the Cities, i.e. societies with their social conflicts. The Seals, or conflicts, are then colored by an in-depth analysis of cognitive development, i.e. the 7 Intelligences, all of which have equal dignity among themselves and are equally necessary for a harmonious society, but whose dominance(s) will be marked by the Epoch in which they are expressed. Joachim thus developed a veritable cognitive science; for the sake of concordance, he will sometimes link the 7 intelligences to the 7 days of creation, or to Augustine. But staying away from astrology, he avoided planetary correspondences, let’s say alchemical ones.
On the other hand, his concern for concordance led him to further specify his scientific theory; Indeed, in his Pythagorean perspective, and well before Bernardino Telesio, who restored the primacy of sensations, he posited the complementarity of the 5 senses and the 7 intelligences, according to the principle that the Father precedes the Spirit, that animality precedes spirituality, that nature precedes consciousness, Joachim’s narrative is based on references to the 5, then 7, Hebrew tribes, to which, at the beginning of the Second Age, would correspond the first 5 churches – still linked to the Father and the Law – and to which would be added the 7 new churches of the East, born of a renewed Pythagorean-Christian universalist desire. Joachim is careful to emphasize that this historical development is universal, encompassing all other peoples, including the ancient ones. (See above) In the introduction, Potestà remarks that for Joachim Orpheus and Ulysses are types of Christ.
To specify the historical concordances, Joachim refines his diagram with a first representation of three circles, each symbolizing an Age, aligned here horizontally, side by side, without entanglement, each containing three small inner circles. Of course, this diagram is intended to illustrate the Trinity, but in its historical declination specific to each Age. There is no identical repetition, but rather a historical progression following the same Trinitarian – or dialectical – development. Thus, in the First Age, Ozia was already announcing Jesus, just as in the Second Age, St. Benedict, reformer of the monastic order, would herald the Third Age. Let’s quote Joachim to better grasp the agility of his dialectic in handling the manifestation of Trinitarian personalities or Figures in History: “Since it seems that in the third partition – in reference to the monadic scheme of the “Marble Causeway”, p 157, ndr – , which we have dealt with so far, he who signifies the Holy Spirit is prior to King David, who signifies Christ, it was necessary that in the fourth, Elijah, who signifies Christ, should be prior to Elisha, who is of the type of the Holy Spirit. And indeed, the history of the Book of Kings teaches that Elisha was an assistant to Elijah, as was Joshua to Moses.” (p 183)
Conceptual and theoretical rigor – and not god knows what difficulties and contradictions Potestà imagined – required Joachim to further specify how this Trinitarian spiral and its invariant monad are integrated into the general scheme of the Trinity embodied in the Three Ages: namely, that the Father – or Nature – is uncreated, that the Son – or organized society – is begotten by the Father, and that the Holy Spirit – or Consciousness – is begotten by both the Father and the Son, i.e., that the monad is permanently expressed on the existing natural and social basis according to context. Drawing on the Evangelist’s text, Joachim then introduces his scheme of Alpha and Omega. The Alpha is a triangle, the top angle of which is later sectioned off in the Psaltery to better express graphically that this angle representing the Father – or Nature – is uncreated, while it creates the other two angles, the Son and the Holy Spirit and their respective Ages.
In the Alpha scheme – contrary to what Potestà and many other academics say – Joachim is concerned, without the slightest contradiction, with the first phase of historical development, which he summarizes as the concordance of the generations of the First and Second Testaments. Joachim could not at this stage have wanted to integrate the Third Age into this scheme, since he was a vocal critic of Sibelius’, Arian’s and the Greeks’ conception of the Trinity – Filioque. The Alpha schema illustrates the uncreated Father begetting the Son. But we must also rigorously account for the Trinitarian becoming embodying the Holy Spirit and the Third Age, which is begotten by both Father and Son. Joachim then draws up the relationships between the first two – the 1st and 2nd Ages – and the second – the 3rd Age designated by the Omega – which brings the process to a close, expressing the fullness of Trinitarian historical expression with the Age of the general Emancipation of Humanity. Hence his basic choice: “I am the Alpha and the Omega”.
Later, following the same method of scientific reinterpretation, Joachim would propose a Figure in Three Intersecting Circles to represent this same conception of the monad incarnating historically, but according to the initial concept of an uncreated Father-Nature engendering the other two circles and their emanations or internal conflicts. The whole thing seems to foreshadow Venn diagrams (see Figure “Cerchi trinitari”), https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber_Figurarum ) This new presentation, which does not appear in the first four Books of the Concordia, has a precise aim, namely to rid the Trinitarian and scientific biblical conception of the many obscurantist ineptitudes of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton according to the presumed name of Yaweh. Joachim, sensitive to the damage created by such obscurantism, based on some sort of gematria that has nothing to do with the biblical texts themselves, co-opted the discussion in a scientific sense, that of the Trinitarian historical future set out in the Concordia and in all his work.
The persecution of the Order of Fiore initiated by Innocent III after Joachim’s death in March 1202 gave rise to a veritable obscurantist outpouring of various gematria, culminating in the Corpus Hermeticum, a forgery denounced from the outset by the Huguenot Isaac Causabon. In 1461, it was translated by Ficino, whom Lorenzo de’ Medici asked to interrupt his translation of Plato for this purpose, and was subsequently widely propagated, for example by the specialist in gematria, Pico Della Mirandola, who died young but was brought up from infancy in the Hebrew language. What better way to block the road to Science than with the delusion of gematria? According to Frances A. Yates (1964), who mistakenly refers to G. Bruno as a “magician”, the Trismegist narrative was an attempt to defuse the religious war by referring the parties to a common ancestor and corpus. But you can’t fight an exclusivist narrative with another narrative – only science can do that. Joachim, for his part, was not fooled, any more than Rabbi Scholem in the twentieth century, whose oral tradition was respectful of the scientific and historical method; on the subject of gematria, he simply asked: according to which, given that there are several proposed.
I have finally demystified this Pons asinorum. The Old Testament is an often incomplete and extra-dogmatic copy of earlier texts, Sumerian and others, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, King Sargon – from which the mythical figure of Moses is partly derived etc. For its part, the Hammurabi Code was copied and betrayed by the Leviticus, since the former was careful to note that the brutal “eye for an eye” rule applied for the sake of justice, unless the parties managed to reach a less expeditious settlement among themselves, thus paving the way for social mediation, and so on. But Sumerian also used letters for numbers. Originally, we understand the efficiency of this system, and its role in conscious or unconscious etymological development. But transposing this to the Hebrew language or to other languages used in the writing of the Bible – including Greek, by integrating certain Pythagorean data by borrowing from Plato’s Academy – is tantamount to what Baruch Spinoza rightly called “the delirium of the rabbis”. As we’ve already said, Joachim, a scientific and rigorous mind if ever there was one, born in Calabria no less, was no fool. What’s more, the Church did not look kindly on astrology, at least not officially.
The development of the necessarily ever-present Trinitarian monad as an invariant axis or marble causeway, into 3 great Ages and 7 Seals or Epochs marked by conflict, is generally misunderstood, particularly by religiously-approved analysts and, worse still, by many academics. This is exacerbated by Joachim’s unprecedented use of charts and tables as both memory aids and didactic figures. This is also true of the Figures used as “types”, which have nothing to do with what a Max Weber would make of his “ideal types” (not to mention obscurantist Jungian “archetypes”), for they are, in fact, figures, individual or collective (peoples, groups, including monastic orders) who express through their personality the intellectual and material determinants provided by their particular Epochs and not merely a static social stratigraphy. They are themselves in the process of becoming, through their internal tension, which is what makes them so interesting. In the same way that Gramsci conceived of Individuals as “historical blocks”, Subjects in the grip of History, Roland Barthes spoke of “mille-feuilles”.
We’ll give just one example of this accredited and/or academic flaw here, that of the introduction written by Gian Luca Podestà to the Concordia published in 2022 by the International Center for Joachimite Studies in San Giovanni in Fiore. But this also applies to all the footnotes included, which are supposed to shed light on the text, both in this edition and in the others. Podestà, far from being an exception, doesn’t understand – or doesn’t want to understand – much of Joachim’s conceptual and theoretical contributions. He remains trapped in a simplistic interpretation of the Abbot’s calculations, whereas Joachim himself specifies that the numerical correspondence underlined by these concordance calculations is of little importance to his conceptual-theoretical meaning.
In his academic simplesse Podestà, professor of the history of Christianity at Milan’s Sacred Heart Catholic University, points out the abbot’s supposed incoherence with regard to the concordance of the Ages, particularly when considering the 3rd Age of the Spirit. Thus, Joachim would not be able to propose a Tree Figure incorporating the concordance of previous Ages with the Third Age (see Alpha and Omega above). The same difficulty would concern the concordance for the 7 Seals. In his view, Book IV magnifies this incoherence, focusing instead on defining the last two Seals, or conflicts of the Second Age, which are presumably dealing with the coming of the “Antichrist” which, in the traditional Catholic version, preludes the period of rest at the time of the 7th Seal and opens onto the 3rd Age; in so doing Joachim would be avoiding the task of predicting and specifying their concordances.
This is a complete misunderstanding of Joachim. In fact, Joachim proceeds as a good, rigorous scientist, just as Marx would later do when he laid the foundations for the transition to socialism and communism, without, of course specifying the concrete forms this would take. Since these transitions call into question the determinations of History in the light of the free decisions of Men, both Objects and Subjects of History, Joachim clearly leaves this question open. For him, the important thing is to demonstrate the necessary and ineluctable transition through Trinitarian becoming towards the 3rd Age of Equality, Liberty, brotherly love, tolerance and universal peace. The rest will be up to Men themselves, and what they make of the Trinitarian – let’s call it “dialectical” – tension they feel within themselves and in the conditions prevailing in their particular Epochs. Hence Joachim’s focuses on the 6th and 7th Seal – the conflicts seen as the prelude to the final transition that will complete the Trinitarian becoming. For him, what matters is the concrete and imminent transition rather than the point-by-point prediction of the future.
However, he doesn’t rule anything out, since the opening of the 3rd Age won’t immediately bring about its completed expression. Moreover, to drive the point home, in Book IV, Joachim deals very precisely with the need to create a New Monastic Order more in tune with the monastic mission linked to the Holy Spirit, as well as the question of Church-Empire relations. Here, Podestà brazenly betrays the text of the translation, which he comments on three major and emblematic occasions. Firstly, as we have just said, Potestà is mistaken about the concordances between the Second and Third Ages and the 6th and 7th Epochs of the Second Age in which Joachim lives; he makes Joachim into a millenarian who would announce the end of the world rather than the end of the present times and the transition to the Age of the Holy Spirit. Joachim would therefore be concerned about the arrival of the Antichrist.
He states: “The abbot’s announcement is intended to be operative: it is a matter of discerning and proclaiming the stages and direction of history, so that, knowing the logic of stroboscopic dynamism, Christians will be prepared to resist the ultimate tribulations and above all the very imminent attack of the son of perdition (the Antichrist par excellence) destined to immediately precede the terrestrial Sabbatical era”. (p 8) But the Concordia begins literally with this sentence: “Since the terrible signs and events described by the Gospel herald the coming ruin of this world’s history, which is precipitating and about to end, I do not think it vain, in view of the outcome of this work, to make explicit what divine providential design has consigned to me, albeit unworthy, concerning the end of times, to warn the faithful and awaken hearts sunk in the torpor of sleepers with a sound that is unusual to say the least . “ (p 26) (emphasis mine)
This malicious interpretation has its origins in the attempts at “Joachimite” recuperation made by the sections, particularly the Franciscans, most attached to the papacy. In the wake of Innocent III, they continued the theoretical-ideological purge carried out against Joachim and the Order of Fiore. The end of the world and the fear it would arouse would drive the flock into the arms of the Church, thus assuming its role as intermediary, reaffirmed in his Sentences by Peter Lombard, Innocent III’s master of quaternary theology. Joachim says quite the opposite from the very start of the Concordia, while taking care to appeal to the “chosen ones”, in my opinion the “Pythagorean initiates”, at the head of whom should be the pope-monk who is still supposed to know that the emancipating Spirit of the original Pythagorean-Christian narrative had to be re-established, reformulated and up-dated to achieve its goal, while increasingly premonitory conflicts were undermining the theological and social foundations of the Church. To give just one example, in 1189, shortly after the completion of Book IV, the people and plebs of Assisi stormed the city’s formidable fortress, the Rocca Maggiore, sowing fear in the dominant strata. This fear, quickly manipulated by the papacy and Cardinal Segni, gave rise to the Franciscan movement.
This is why Joachim, who does not deny St. Gregory or his Latin Passover, gives pride of place above all to the Apostle Paul, the most universalist and Roman, and to the Apostle John, the most knowledgeable in astronomy. Here, then, is what Joachim writes on the subject as early as the Prologue to the Concordia: “Holding therefore solely to what is written in the divine books, and retaining from them as authoritative only what is clear to us, we refute as peregrine and foreign the superfluous assertions about the birth and works of the Antichrist and about the end of the world which, taken as we have already said, from apocryphal pamphlets, are embraced by most naïve people.” ( p 34) At best, Potestà will be put in the category of the ingenuous. The fact remains that, far more than the Antichrist, Joachim is concerned by the announcement and imminent arrival of the Paraclete, the worldly Holy Spirit, and this in particular in the opening of the 7 Seals, as evidenced throughout his work and graphically in “The Marble Causeway” (p. 157).
The second concerns Joachim’s unprecedented accusations against the worldly Church, denounced in no uncertain terms as a “New Babylon”, an expression that would later flourish with all the social Joachimites and Protestant schools. The Lutherans, for example, attacked Indulgences head-on, as they symbolized the great venality and depravity of the “worldly” Church based in Rome, and the resulting subjugation of the Germanic people. In Book IV, Joachim denounces in all tones, and often in capital letters, the excesses of the Church and worldly monks and their temporal pretensions. In this instance, he writes: “(Peace) was again violated in the time of Pope Lucio and especially Pope Urban, when in the latter’s time the Church was oppressed beyond measure, beyond its strength. However, if on this occasion the Church lost some of her own freedom from the sons of the new Babylon, she can see it for herself, since she knows perfectly well what evils she suffers from.” (p 281) And Joachim clarifies what he means by “the sons of Babylon” from the point of view of the Concordia and its critics of the temporal Church: “Next, the Chaldeans and the sons of Babylon mean those who are not only carnal, but in truth those who deeply enjoy shedding human blood without feeling the slightest mercy, resembling in this the beasts and peoples who ignore God, so that their offenses go beyond any wild condition of peoples” (p 272)
Despite Joachim’s own text, Potestà, in his footnote 253, comments on the “syntagm” “sons of the new Babylon” (idem), asserting that the accusation of New Babylon concerns both “bad Christians” and “German rulers”, i.e. the Empire – which, incidentally, in the person of the Norman rulers and then of Frederick II, strongly supported Joachim and his reform. Frederick II, known as Stupor Mundi, was eager to follow in the footsteps of his predecessors, the Normans of Calabria and Sicily, the Altavilla – or Hauteville -, who were keen to unify their cosmopolitan, multi-religious kingdom without too much control from the Papacy! These rulers built numerous “palatial” churches, including the magnificent cultural syncretism of Palermo and Altamura in Puglia. In fact, the Normans literally forced the Pope to recognize their kingship.
This opposition between Church and Empire eventually led to the separation of the two domains, religious and public, via the opposition between Guelphs and Ghibellines, then between Whites and Blacks etc., struggles in which Dante took part and which Machiavelli brilliantly describes in his Florentine History, which impressed Marx. Going symbolically to the heart of the matter, Joachim noted: “Slavery is proper to black – not according to color, but according to pathology – charity, to white” (Sulla Vita e sulla Regola di san Benedetto, p 67). St. Francis’ reform of monastic co-optation under the aegis of the house of the Counts of Segni – which included pope Innocent III, Joachim’s sworn enemy and Cardinal Segni of Assisi, who instrumentalized Francis and his spiritual movement – was initiated during the plebeian unrest that led to the capture and partial demolition of the Rocca Maggiore, the formidable fortress atop the city.
The fear of the clergy and merchant bourgeoisie was great, and they consequently invented the manipulated legend of the Poverello supporting at arm’s length a Church ready to fall to the ground, an image that Giotto sacralized in a famous fresco. Francis was never appointed head of the order he founded, as the papacy and Segni were suspicious of his “authenticity” in defending the poor. The Order of Fiore soon realized this, and gained a great deal of support in this new order that had been invented against it, and which eventually led to a split between the Friars Minor and the Conventuals. The situation subsequently degenerated with the creation of other minor orders, such as the Capuchins, which were completely transformed into proverbial “low clergy”.
We have already mentioned that Innocent III, a disciple of Peter Lombard, was the sworn enemy of Joachim and his Order. He launched a veritable ideological and theoretical cleansing campaign against Joachim, culminating in the condemnation at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 of an alleged early opuscule by the Abbot on the Trinity, which would have included the critics against Peter Lombard’s quaternary Trinity. Peter Lombard’s venal theses on quaternity, which assumed that there could be no salvation without the intermediary of the Church, triumphed. In fact, if we consider the reasons behind the condemnation of this presumed youthful opuscule, we realize that the whole is to be found in a very elaborate way in the Ten-string Psaltery and indeed in all Joachim’s major works. In reality, Joachim had written with the permission and support of the three popes preceding Pope Segni. Innocent III could therefore not openly condemn him. But pressure had been exerted on the Order of Fiore even before Joachim’s death. In his Testament, Joachim took care to protect his Order by declaring his submission to the Church and by submitting his work to its scrutiny. Similarly, the attempt to suppress the Order by reintegrating it into the Cistercian Order, which Joachim had left, was not immediately successful, as the rule prohibited the merger of a more rigorous order into a less rigorous one.
Despite all kinds of vicissitudes and more or less open persecution, the Order of Fiore maintained a certain autonomy for decades. In 1214, the original abbey at Jure Vetere, which heralded the arrival of the 3rd Age, was destroyed by a fire, which I consider suspicious, and this in the context of the manipulation of certain monks who protested against the too rigorous cold “in frigid Sila” in order to force the move down to the plain. Joachim’s faithful successor, Matteo, first rebuilt Jure Vetere, then was forced to partially retreat and rebuild the abbey at San Giovanni in Fiore, a locality close by that belonged to the Fiore estate but symbolically dedicated to St. John the Baptist, i.e. to the one who heralded the 2nd Age of Christ! Quite a symbolic retreat. This didn’t stop Abbot Matteo from opening other abbeys and barns, and spreading his founder’s work far and wide. Matteo enjoyed the enthusiastic support of Emperor Frederick the Second, who confirmed the Order of Fiore in all its possessions.
Persecution intensified again at the Anagni meeting in 1254-55. The context had become more tense. Joachim’s work had filtered down to the Franciscans and many others, including in France, where Gerard de Brogo San-Donnino’s Introduction to the Eternal Gospel – in fact, to Concordia – was burned on the Parvis de Notre Dame, in Paris. What was to become the Inquisition had its roots here. The fact remains that Joachim’s work circulated widely, as European history and peasant and religious revolts demonstrate, from movements claiming to be Christian Rosicrucians, to Jean Hus and Böhme and so many others, including Müntzer commented on by Marx-Engels in The Peasants’ War of 1525, right up to the French Revolution and beyond, including the Chinese Taiping, see: http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org/short-notes-joachim-of-fiore-pythagorean-presented-at-the-conference-organized-by-the-gunesh-cultural-association-august-27-2016
Podestà’s third falsehood, despite the text of the translation whose introduction he signs, relates more specifically to Empire-Church relations, or temporal and spiritual power. He brazenly betrays Joachim’s text in relation to a supposed concordance of views – dare I use the expression … – between the Calabrian Abbot and Innocent III, Joachim’s bitter enemy, disciple of Peter Lombard and now pope, concerning the King-Judge or Temporal-Spiritual concordance. Innocent III never relied on Joachim to defend this nonsense, since Joachim said the exact opposite and Innocent III was his worst enemy. It was a vulgar papal manipulation, a typical inversion of meaning.
The error is serious, for Joachim had already proposed a double lineage in the Old Testament, that of the Kings and that of the Judges, reflecting the Trinitarian tension, with the Judges becoming the order of monks abstracted from temporal power. The Abbot of Fiore was elected by his monks. And that’s why Joachim makes Jesus a figure who increasingly gives way to the Apostle of the Gentiles – “delle genti” – and his universal message, both the King descended from David according to the genealogy invented in the New Testament to embed the Pythagorean-Christic narrative in Hebrew culture, and the Judge descended from Moses. In this way, Joachim prefigures, in the Age of the Son, St. Benedict’s new announcement of the monastic role, paving the way for the 3rd Age of emancipation with the Order of Fiore. Note that this internal chronology and genealogy, which anchors Christ in the Old Testament and its promises, is central to Joachim’s conception of concordances, which simply continue the Pythagorean work of origin, updating it according to the future of human emancipation.
In Book IV of the Concordia, Joachim harshly attacks the Cistercians, including Geoffroi d’Auxerre, whose main claim to fame was that he had been one of Bernard de Clairvaux’s scribes. In the eyes of the Calabrian abbot, they were confusing the role of spiritual heralds of monastic orders with that of regimenters of Christendom and, in so doing, had succumbed to worldliness, transforming property for collective use into property for private use, while aiming for political and worldly grandeur.
From his principled critique of the Cistercians in Book IV – preceded by Joachim’s “Interpretazione dei canestri di fichi” against G. d’Auxerre – Joachim draws the conclusion that the drift away from the monastic mission of heralding the libertarian egalitarian 3rd Age is so far advanced that no internal reform of the Cistercian Order to which he belonged no longer seems possible. As a result, Book IV, completed in 1187, is also the announcement of Joachim’s break-up and of the creation of the Order of Fiore en Sila, with the powerful support of the Altavillas and all the Normans, then of the Swabian-Norman Imperial House, reconfirmed by Frederick II. This heralded the march towards a secular state, with an increasingly marked and ecumenical separation of the temporal from the spiritual.
As usual, Joachim gets to the heart of the matter. He shows how, according to tradition – fantastical as everyone knows today – Emperor Constantine offered temporal power to Pope Sylvester, who, aware of the monastic mission – dare we say “Pythagorean-Christian” in Joachimite terms – of the Church and the Papacy, refused. Etymologically, ecclesia = community.
The return to the mission of monastic orders implies the reform not only of the Papacy and the Church, but also of society as a whole, a reform that the Calabrian abbot announces as inevitable and imminent. He sets the parameters with clarity: apart from late Christian falsifications, he returns to the universal, anti-exclusivist message of the Apostle Paul and stresses the importance of Luke’s Act of the Apostles, which affirms equality in deed among the first Christian communities, erasing within them the social differences between masters and slaves to pool wealth so as to enable “each to receive according to his need.” But Joachim was well aware of the difference between social organization and the organization of a small community. As the man who wrote a laudatory analysis of the Rule of St. Benedict, he knows the importance of work and the organization of production and distribution. It was Joachim of Fiore who laid down the transitional principle of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his work”, and then generalized the rule of the revised Acts of the Apostles for the fully emancipated social order: “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”, see below.
In the New Monastic and Social Order illustrated in Table XII (see http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org/short-notes-joachim-of-fiore-pythagorean-presented-at-the-conference-organized-by-the-gunesh-cultural-association-august-27-2016 ) – Joachim sets up the material and intellectual conditions – ethico-political we would say today – for the realization of this New Order. The abbey domain of Fiore belonged to the Norman royal and then imperial domain, and was therefore inalienable. Possession was vested in perpetuity in the Abbey of Fiore. All monks and other people living in the vast territory of the abbey on the Sila Altopiano were entitled to the fruits of their labor, after paying the abbey’s operating fees. In so doing, the Calabrian abbot had invented a revolutionary concept: joint inalienable ownership – empire/abbey – going hand in hand with joint possession in terms of land development and individual ownership of the wealth produced. In terms of management and use, the sacred/public opposition was erased for the first time.
Thus, all private property in the Abbey’s territory at least since – and even before – 1500 with its ecclesiastical-feudal transformation into a University or City ceded to sponsors, is abusive. Here’s an example of these abuses, and of the Order of Fiore’s efforts to combat if not curb them: “In December 1722, the Abbey’s bailiff, the notary Santo De Marco, went to Cosenza to testify against the claims of secular ecclesiastics and the archiepiscopal curia of Cosenza itself, who had brought their flocks into the Abbey’s territories without paying anything in bond and ignoring warnings, given the violation of the Abbey’s rights. The Bailiff proceeded to seize the animals, but the Royal Audience, at the request of Cosenza’s ecclesiastical authorities, ordered him to release the seized animals. In his statement, De Marco accuses the Audience officials of ignorance, as they failed to realize that the violators of the abbey’s rights were undermining “imperial jurisprudence”, referring the Fiore foundation back to the initiative of the State, which the royal officials were obliged to protect against the dithering and interference of ecclesiastical power.” The Bailiff was referring to the granting of the Fiore Order’s rights over the Domaine of Fiore, which was reconfirmed by Emperor Frederick II. (Note the still sadly present permanence in our country, and in Calabria , of these systemic abuses of authority supported by this type of illegality, all tainted with arrogant “ignorance” as my namesake used to say, but capillary and invasive of the institutions, police leaders and judges included, to the benefit of the abuses of the notables, their camarilla and other mafias. It’s a veritable hold-up of democracy – socially diffuse and normalized P2, to boot – aimed to enforce a police-mafia control of the territory).
These violations were always recognized as such, at least legally, until the final expropriation carried out by Christian Democracy and its allies in the post WWII era – when Paolo Cinanni discovered too late the Joachimite background to the inhabitants’ staunch defense of collective ownership/possession of the Abbey lands. Among the first commanditarians – appointed directly by the Vatican – was Cardinal Giulio Antonio Santori, the Inquisitor who contributed to the condemnations of G. Bruno and T. Campanella. As we can see, the desire for control and occultation initiated by Innocent III intensified as the Catholic Church accelerated towards the Council of Trent.
In fact, we find this theoretical-practical innovation of Joachim’s in all the conflicts that followed his death in 1202. And, in a particular way, in the communist conception of Gerrard Winstanley, the Diggers and the Levellers before their military defeat at Burford in 1649. This is very different from the English “Commons”, the manorial lands over which residents had restricted access leading to constant conflicts with lords and other possessors, as the English “communist” precursor so aptly demonstrates. (10) Or the accompanying nonsense of the monetarist neoliberalism invented in the West after Reagan’s defeat of Unesco – and its late 70’s attempt to establish a new world order for communications and telecommunications – namely “common goods” in place of public goods supplied by public enterprises. This neo-liberal alternative has the « advantage » of not undermining the perpetuation of private property, including of natural monopolies which should logically be returned to the public sector, nor the accumulation of capital, nor its interpretation of global warming in place of environmental protection and of the implementation of Ecomarxism.
Likewise, William Blake will attempt in his own way to reformulate a vast proto-Biblical narrative to update Winstanley’s project in the wake of Thomas Paine and the French Revolution and of A New System; or an analysis of ancient mythology – 1774 – by Jacob Bryant in line with Charles-Franҫois Dupuis’ Abrégé de l’origine de tous les cultes 1742-1809. (https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Abr%C3%A9g%C3%A9_de_l%E2%80%99origine_de_tous_les_cultes ). In this, in addition to a graphic and artistic power on a par with a Michelangelo, he demonstrates a refined understanding of the use of myths such as emerges, among others, from a careful reading of Joachim and Vico.
Joachim’s reputation and works were known from the outset to England’s Norman rulers and their Cistercians monks. Indeed, Richard the Lionheart, passing through Messina in September 1190, before embarking for the Holy Land, was keen to question Joachim about the future of his crusade – Philip Augustus accompanied him but, hearing more clearly Joachim’s assessment that it would fail, decided to return to France as soon as possible. We know what Joachim thought of temporal power, for whom the true Temple was the human conscience; this conviction was reinforced by Saladin’s capture of Jerusalem in 1187. ( https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_C%C5%93ur_de_Lion )
What’s more, the Cistercian abbot Adam de Perseigne and the English chronicler and Cistercian abbot Ralph de Coggeshall had met him in Rome in 1195. In his Chronicon, completed in 1208, Ralph summarized what he had learned from Joachim himself. (See Pasquale Lopetrone, “Gioacchino raccontato da Radulphi de Coggeshall” Corriere della Sila, 5 giugno 2023, p 10) We also know that G. Bruno made a notable visit to London, which prompted him to write his Cena delle ceneri. In addition to his biting irony at the “pedanterie e asinate ” of the literati of the time, in this dialogue he demonstrates a thorough knowledge of his subject, including that of the Pythagorean astronomer Filolao, a contemporary and friend of the Master of Crotone, and one who already knew that neither the Earth or the Sun were the center of our galaxy. In addition, Blake, who worked closely with publishers, often claimed to have a facility for foreign languages, and was obviously well-informed.
It should be stressed that Joachim was the object of the first inquisition and the first modern ideological-theoretical cleansing before the Inquisition, which arose – for the same reasons – in the wake of the Council of Trent. With his Trinitarian theory, he had roundly condemned the quaternary doctrine of Peter Lombard, who was attempting to salvage the Church’s role as intermediary in the salvation of Christians in the afterlife. Joachim saw the salvation of all humanity, not just Christians, as the manifestation of Consciousness in History.
It so happened that, after the three popes who had supported Joachim’s theoretical efforts, Innocent III, Peter Lombard’s disciple, became pope. This ushered in an era of repression aimed at erasing Joachim’s work, culminating in the Dominican and Jesuitical Inquisitions. This process was accompanied by the usual manipulations: right from the start, several falsifiers claimed that Joachim had announced the creation of the Dominican order – pace G. Bruno! – and of the Jesuits – pace, Bruno, Campanella and Galileo etc. – an announcement that would be pictorially illustrated by the two monks in black habits painted in St. Mark’s in Venice!!!!
We’ve already seen, ironically thanks to Potestà, how Innocent III tried to manipulate the dual Kings-Judges lineage to the benefit of his temporal power by instrumentalizing Joachim’s Concordia. The result was tragic: Jure Vetere was burnt down; the Abbey of Jure Vetere, announcing the 3rd Age – under the aegis of St. John the Evangelist – was regressed to San Giovanni in Fiore under the aegis of St. John the Baptist, thus even before the announcement of the 2nd Age (!); and a whimsical little work, no doubt invented for the needs of the cause, was condemned. In fact, as said above, it was most likely the Ten-string Psaltery, an important work that Innocent III and the Curia could not openly condemn.
Indeed, we have seen that the Trinitarian dialectic lies at the heart of Joachim’s work and reform. However, as it happens, his works had been approved and supported by three successive popes and prudently placed under the protection of the Church by Joachim himself in his Testament; they could not therefore be attacked head-on without undermining papal legitimacy. Unfortunately for these reactionary forgers, Matteo, the abbot who succeeded Joachim, remained faithful to the message and circulated it widely. What’s more, apart from Frederick II, he had powerful supporters in the Church, including Luca Campano, bishop of Cosenza, who had been Joachim’s scribe when the abbot initiated the writing of his major works. Above all, the monastic rule forbade monks to regress and join a less rigorous monastic order. Pope Innocent III’s attempt to reintegrate the Order of Fiore into the Cistercian order from which it had fled was not entirely successful. As a result, popes from Innocent III onwards began to violate the territorial and legal prerogatives of the property-possession of the Fiore Estate. The usurpations began. They accelerated when, after the commissioning of Ludovico de Santangelo from Valencia – 1500 – followed by Rota and many others, an ecclesiastical feudal order was imposed, transforming the abbey estate into a “Università” or City. In this complete demolition of Joachim’s work and emancipatory message, it should come as no surprise that one of the first sponsors was none other than Cardinal Julio Antonio Santori, the same Cardinal who, from the height of the Inquisition, had G. Bruno and T. Campanella condemned.
Of course, the modern epilogue, although not the end of this “story”, is found in the fierce struggles for agrarian reform and the defense of the “usi civici”, which in Sila were true “communist goods” in the etymological sense of the term, in particular on the Sila Altopiano in the area of Fiore. This has been the case since the beginning of these usurpations. The struggle resumed with a vengeance when the Neapolitan Revolution of 1799, featuring the young and brilliant French Republican General Championnet and the great brotherhood of Neapolitan reformers, heirs of Vico and many others, who put the Republic back in the spotlight lending priority to the agrarian reform. This reform was taken up by Joseph Bonaparte and by Joachim Murat on the basis of the pioneering work of Zurlo, in particular with regard to the domain of Fiore.
In modern times, we end up with the betrayal of the Christian Democrats and their allies who endorsed, like the Fascists before them, the expropriations of abbey lands, which however were inalienable in Sila. The agrarian reform only concerned the worst abandoned lands, and even then, when the Opera Sila distributed the plots under popular pressure, it designed them so small that they could not be anything other than a additional resource for a workforce destined to become proletarian labour force destined to serve the industrial developments in the North of the country. At the same time, as is made clear by the analyses of the great Calabrian communist theoretician Paolo Cinanni (11), during its 1949 Venice Conference, the Christian Democracy Party theorized the complete submission to the Marshall Plan and the mass emigration of Italian labor abroad; this came in the wake of the exclusion of the Communists from the government in 1947, including Minister Fausto Gullo who had been responsible for the Agrarian reform. “Learn a foreign language” dared to advise the President of the Republic while legitimizing this bleeding of the vital forces of the Nation. Italy thus very quickly lost more than 2 million of its fellow citizens.
This recipe for socio-economic development continues even more vigorously today since, following the 2007-2008 crisis, Italy lost more than 5 million citizens who emigrated outside the country, taking with them their work force and the value of their educational training and professional knowhow as demonstrated by Cinanni. With his proverbial honesty, Cinanni also shows the analytical errors made by the PCI in relation to the failed agrarian reform in the Mezzogiorno. He adds, lucidly, that in the 60s and 70s, the internal immigration of southern labour forces also led to the decline in the vitality of the local sections of the Communist Party and the allied forces. Calabria, more than any other regions of the country, is today paying the price, having become a land of unprecedented mass unemployment – 39-40% occupancy rate at best – a land of corruption, mafia, and betrayal of constitutional rights and duties in the first place by the regional but above all national guaranteeing bodies. (12)
We can see that Joachim’s message is more relevant than ever before. Let us add that the theory of salvation or human emancipation through historical Trinitarian becoming excludes all guilt-inducing prose focused on sins, so dear to all the high priests and their lower clergy and others servi in camera. If he condemns adultery, Joachim only condemns luxurious immodesty and makes it a reason for divorce; but this condemnation applies to everyone. Divorce is therefore seen as a measure to ensure transparency and peace. Joachim is in favor of the commensurability of the penalty with the fault. In this sense, it will inspire Dante’s Inferno. He writes: “Yet the similarity between the sin and the manifestation of the punishment testifies that they were punished with a penalty which, though very severe, was nevertheless just. Indeed, if they had gone too far because of a natural desire for women, or if they had committed the sin of adultery under the influence of passion, the chastisement of fire might have sufficed, so that, in accordance with their fault, they experienced a rather simple torture.” (p 47) On the other hand, the monk Joachim, who values the celibacy of monks, considers “crimes against nature” an abomination, adding the pestilence of sulfur to the fire. Ultimately, it’s all about being faithful to one’s oaths. The rest, logically speaking, is a matter of the historical future of individual and collective emancipation.
In the same way Joachim, a monk by choice, will specify in his work the conditions for becoming one, but he will not impose any obligation to anyone, he simply demands that those who can no longer respect their vows, including that of chastity, abandon the monk’s garments. In the Concordia he also condemns these worldly monks, including the Cistercians, who only have the garments to claim being monks. Boccaccio will remember this. And likewise, drawing inspiration from Pythagoras and the Academy of Plato, he will appeal to women, who would like to emancipate themselves and contribute to the general emancipation, to join his Order in order to avoid the “slavery of marriage”. . Joachim writes on this subject: “We see a wife and we say: she is a slave; and we can say it without being wrong of their sons: those of the slave are born from the flesh, those of the free woman from the virtue of the promise (…) In fact, is a slave anyone who does not have control of his own body. (Book V, cap 1, quoted in Gioacchino da Fiore, “il calavrese abate Gioacchino di spirito profetico dotato, La Provincia di Cosenza, 1997, p 158)
It will remain for History to reconcile in the Third Age, through emancipation and free love, the monastic vocation and the reproduction of the Species. Although Joachim will often use the metaphor of Sara and Elisabeth or the sterile woman and her slave on this subject, childbirth does not exclude anything from the point of view of spiritual development. Catholicism today is much more dogmatic and regressive than it was in the Middle Ages. On the other hand, his attack against the excesses of the Church and the worldly monastic orders, against the New Babylon, is severe and precise. It will leave traces. Dante, who knew at least the Concordia and the Liber figurarum, was inspired by it when he virulently denounced usury, and in particularly as it was practiced by the Church (see: “La “tendenza comunista” nella Divina Commedia”, di Daniele Burgio – Massimo Leoni – Roberto Sidoli * in https://www.marx21.it/cultura/la-tendenza-comunista-nella-divina-commedia/ ) The social Joachimites will take up Joachim’s accusations, as will all the reformers coming after them, including Luther and Münzter. The latter claimed to be specifically inspired by the Calabrian abbot and quickly became a figurehead of the people, one who will be cruelly sacrificed by the Princes allied with Luther, during the Peasants’ war in Germany, 1525, a significant event which will earn us an important analysis by Marx-Engels as well as striking drawings by Albert Dürer. (See: https://www.marxists.org/english/marx/works/1850/00/fe1850.htm )
We easily see the modernity of Joachim’s message, the Trinitarian becoming of human emancipation will in effect eliminate the sins and the sense of guilt of the historical subjects instead of being fostered to ensure their domination. Francesco Maria Piave, Verdi’s librettist for Rigoletto, will remember Joachim who often repeats in the Concordia: “there is no love without freedom.” Marx will take up this perspective by theorizing free love, a concept often misunderstood in the current society of mediocrity and consumerist servitude aggravated by its bourgeois psychology-psychoanalysis. (I tried to take up the theory by emphasizing spaces of freedom in my essay “Marriage, civil unions and institutionalization of morals” by relying on my criticism of Freudian charlatanism and that of bourgeois psychology in all its forms. In the first case, see the Pink Part of my old experimental site www.la-commune-paraclet.com and for my definitive critique of Freudianism and other associated bourgeois charlatanism my Pour Marx, contre le nihilisme, in particular the Second Part. This Second part is also translated in English in the same link, in the section Livres-books, Idem.)
3) Summary of the 4 Books of Concordia.
3a ) The analytical and theoretical levels of Concordia.
Let us now move on to the succinct and more bookish summary of the four Books of the Concordia, 2022. We will, however, highlight the orderly development of conceptual and theoretical reflection staged by Joachim in his systematic organization of the concordances in the biblical narrative. We will see that the presentation is impeccable, without contradictions contrary to what Potestà claims. This is because the diagrams presented by Joachim do not claim to refer to a simplistic point-by-point concordance but to different analytical and theoretical levels of dialectical development. Moreover, in the Prologue Joachim took care to warn against an overly academic and simplistic understanding: “The fullness of the concordances, which are discussed in this work, are contained in spaces of time and indications of well-defined events, included in the same numerical report, provided you understand it spiritually; because this number, which enjoys such consideration in the divine books, is the key and the door of this book, and it is on it that the entire argumentation of our in-depth treatment also depends. Indeed, the number, due to the depth of the mystery, requires that we take into account many elements to approach it; and once you have approached it, you discover many mysteries that had remained hidden” (p 35)
Likewise: “It should also be known that concord must not be sought in its entirety, but only according to what is the clearest and most obvious; and not according to the course of stories but according to something particular. (…) Concord should only be assigned to things that are properly relevant. For as the person of the Son is like the person of the Father, and yet one thing is the Father’s, another thing is the Son’s, so the New Testament is like the Old Testament and yet the propriety of the Old Testament is different, just like the New. (…) We must not demand the resemblance of harmony where it is not, but where it is. » (pp 226-227). Joachim will specify his theoretical method by showing how the unveiling of the Seals only occurs at the moment when this is historically possible through the confluence of historical types and the intelligences linked to them.
Marx will not say anything else by showing the unveiling of the Law of value made historically possible by the capitalist Mode of production which finally dissociates human labor, “coldly” “liberated” by capitalist exploitation, from variables linked to social status; in this way he demonstrates that slavery had prevented Aristotle from seeing that the measurement of the exchange value of a bed and a tripod by a common meter, therefore that of two different but commensurable commodities with each other since they are exchanged, was none other than the value of labor power, the universal equivalent. Money is only a general equivalent while each commodity constitutes a particular equivalent, both of which must be defined according to the universal equivalent.
All “concretes in thought”, or universal concepts, once revealed through History, follow the same double historical and logical evolution which the Scientific Method ends up – thanks to Kant – systematizing in the dialectic of investigation and of exposition which goes much further than the simple passage from the particular to the general which characterizes both Aristotle and bourgeois sociology. Of course, the fact of revealing the “concrete in thought” does not necessarily mean that all the theory relating to it is also revealed: this was dramatically demonstrated by the nonsense poured out on Marx’s theory of the value of labor power before my contributions and despite the efforts of the great Marxist epistemologist and methodologist Louis Althusser. I note that the concealment of my contributions is the cause of the continuous flow of the same nonsense, especially among Academic Marxologists, including recently Maximilien Rubel for the edition of Marx in La Pléiade and Micheal Heinrich who temporarily collaborated on the edition of MEGA. This is a blatant violation of scientific methodology and ethics. (I refer here to my Methodological Introduction and my Synopsis of Marxist Political Economy freely accessible in the Livres-Books section of www.la-commune-paraclet.com .) This is how Joachim expresses the theory in the Psaltery, although he equally emphasizes that becoming always follows the same laws, including for other peoples and pre-Christian peoples: “In the first place, the same degrees – of intellect – must be indicated according to history and according to the concord of the three States in the three States themselves, although we can only indicate them in the first and the second according to the concordance, but in no way yet in the third , since we have not yet reached the day and hour when the Jewish people will be converted to God” (p 134)
On several occasions in his work, and in particular in the Psaltery, Joachim explains that numbers must be understood in a spiritual way, that is to say as heuristic instruments in modern parlance, something also necessary because of the fluctuation of the texts according to the copyists. However, Joachim insists on the fact that in interpreting these data according to the knowledge of the moment, we must never “correct” the texts because, as the Psaltery concretely demonstrates, they refer to the “perfect” figures of Pythagoras. The key example to illustrate this method is that of 70 and 72, the years of captivity in Babylon or the number of disciples that Christ sent to preach throughout the world. Once the “mystery” has been solved, everyone understands that 70 refers to 72, i.e. the degrees of the exterior angles of the pentagram, whereas: 72 x 5 = 360 degrees, i.e. the circle used to describe the starry vault and to calculate the astronomical cycles including the Great Year of Plato, namely the Precession of the Equinoxes, since 1 degree of arc in 72 years multiplied by 360 equals 25,920 years. (13)
In the Prologue Joachim bluntly announces his social-monastic reforming intention which he has been mulling over for years, from his first essay dating from 1176 entitled Genealogia degli antichi santi padri to the simultaneous beginnings of the writing of his three major works which he will continue to elaborate until the end of his life. The chronicle tells that after leaving the Arab-Norman Court of Roger II in Palermo, the most opulent and sophisticated in Europe at that time, he went to “Syria”. On his return from what appears to have been a study trip, he first thought of becoming a preacher in Calabria. Noticed by the bishop, whom his knowledge had surprised, he undertook to become a monk at the abbey of Corazzo then in decline. He then spent a year and a half in the Cistercian abbey of Casamari. According to the Psalterium decem cordarum – 1184-1201 – during this stay, in an emblematic way at Pentecost, when he strongly doubted the usefulness of his monastic choice, he had a “revelation” on the meaning of the Trinitarian mystery and above all on the right way to convey it to the people. All his work will bear the trace of it, as much the Expositio in Apocalypsim – 1183-1200ca – as the Concordia Novi ac Veteris Testamenti – 1183-1196 – as well as the Psalterium. When he finished writing Book IV of the Concordia at Petralata, he was ready to retire to the Sila Altopiano, to Jure Vetere, literally “The Ancient Law”, therefore Pythagorean, to found there his new monastic order of Fiore whose mission was to announce the near transition to the 3rd Age of human emancipation.
In the Prologue Joachim consciously poses as the one to whom, like Elisha or Christ, falls the duty to announce an epochal transition: the transition to the Third Age of human emancipation, thanks to the examination of concordances between the “First” and the “Second” Testament – Potestà rightly notes that he sometimes uses these terms rather than “Old” and “New” p 12 – in the light of the Trinitarian dialectic. He relies on his dynamic interpretation of the “wheels”, or better, according to Joachim, of the “Chariot” of Ezekiel rather than on the symbolic and static concordances with simple value as examples, a method that was current until him.
This is not trivial and send us back to my astronomical-Pythagorean interpretation. The wheels or the chariot of Ezekiel refer to the celestial vault organized around the four main constellations of the Tretramorph which maintains a stable relationship between them so that they allow it to be organized taking into account the other stars and the planets, the latter seeming erratic to the observer. In the Figure “The chariot or wheels of Ezekiel” graphically presented in the Liber figurarum (See Il Cocchio divino di Ezechiele: la ruota bella ruota in https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber_Figurarum ), it is clear that there is nothing anthropomorphic in Joachim, and it is not a question of a wheel within a wheel but rather of the 4 wheels of the Chariot which, by remaining in close relationship with each other, create a sort of ” fixed” point which allows us to organize celestial space and understand the movement of the starry sky. The chariot is sometimes described in the Bible as the throne of gods supported by the 4 most important angels in the hierarchy, the Ophanim, or as the celestial City, or Jerusalem.
The Figure of Joachim leaves no doubt, especially if we take into account my previous clarifications, including the comment on the Pythagorean numbers in my August 2016 essay which are at the heart of the Psaltery; but since it is obvious that Joachim knew the Hebrew language, one must also take into account the correct translation of the Hebrew words which are unfortunately anthropomorphized or otherwise mistranslated – in effect, the wheels move together, in tandem, in the sky, they are not not fitted into a larger wheel. See Ezekiel’s Wheels Explained – Morning Cup of Context. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EPeMotXpXk. As for the correspondence between the two Testaments responding to each other, Joachim finds it in “the mutual contemplation of the two cherubim” described by Ezekiel. The History of Trinitarian development is concretely inscribed in the unfolding of astronomical time. Joachim writes: “Having carefully examined the wheels of Ezekiel, we have convincingly shown the great concordance which exists between them, and we have endeavored to establish what the contemplation of the two cherubim meant in the mutual concordance of the two testaments: for our faith, if defended by worthy witnesses to the truth, cannot be weakened by any error.” (p33)
If he refuted on several occasions to be a “prophet, claiming only to be endowed with “spiritual intelligence”, he claims here a similarity with Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Isaiah for his “call to arms”: “Since the signs and the terrible events described in the Gospel announce the imminent ruin of the history of this world, which precipitates being about to end, I do not consider at all that it is useless, as regards the result of the work, to manifest what the divine providential plan delivered to me, to me unworthy, concerning the end of times (…) It is therefore up to us to predict the wars; it is up to you to rush promptly to arms. It is up to us to climb to the lookout post on the mountain and give the signal in sight of the enemies; it is up to you, having heard the signal, to flee to safer places. “ (pp 29 and 31.) We know that Joachim will substitute whenever he can the Universalist Apostle of Tarsus for Jesus, but how can we not recognize the voice of the Son who announced himself an Epochal transition “Do not believe that I have come to bring peace on Earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” (Matthew, 10:34) As Mao Zedong wrote about the transition to general emancipation, equality, freedom, love, tolerance and universal peace, “the revolution is not a gala dinner.”
By calling for mobilization to announce and prepare the passage to a better temporal and spiritual world, Joachim indicates the method and the end. The method is that of historical analysis, here of the harmony between the Old and New Testaments, but without ignoring the “extra-biblical” stories – Orpheus and Ulysses as types of Christ – or “semi-biblical” (p 11 ) according to the development of the Trinitarian mystery in order to open the way to the Third Age of human emancipation, “…until, as the Apostle says, “we have all arrived at the perfect man, at the measure of the fullness of the Age of Christ”’’. (p. 34). By re-elaborating on the Act of the Apostles, Joachim determines that this plenitude must be concretely made possible by the rule: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his work” to then arrive at the rule established in the Act of the Apostles : “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”. Marx will also pose as a theoretical and practical goal “the recovery of Man by himself” through an egalitarian change in the material conditions of existence, which include social institutions as well as the conceptual and spiritual levels, that is to say the psychological level in the modern sense, in order to allow the human being to put an end to his alienation, religious – i.e. secularism –, political – i.e. democracy – and human – i.e. equality/communist freedom. (See the “Triptych of Emancipation” in the Holy Family including the Jewish Question, https://www.marxists.org/francais/marx/works/1844/09/kmfe18440900.htm )
Joachim often repeats this fundamental dialectical principle, for example again in Book IV: “Nevertheless for men what is spiritual does not come first, but what is animal, and only then what is spiritual.’’ (p 302) The fact remains that by retiring to Sila to found his new monastic order, Joachim had from the start and until the end of his life the eager and powerful support of the Norman Court and then of the Swabian-Norman Imperial Court. The Domain of Fiore, a royal and then an imperial property, which was ceded to the new order of the same name by the successors of Roger II, was very extensive and very rich. This endowment which was reconfirmed by several others and by Germanic Emperor Frederick II necessarily had a political purpose. In 1130, Roger II had forced the pope or anti-pope Anacletus II to recognize him as King of Calabria, Sicily and Puglia, while the other pope Innocent II “was supported by Bernard of Clairvaux and all the European states” ( v. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_II_(king_of_Sicily) )
Indeed, the Cistercians were very close to the Normans of England and the French monarchy. The new southern kingdom was very beautifully cosmopolitan, comprising diverse peoples and beliefs, heirs of the Enotres and the Bruzis, ancient Greeks and Romans, Arberèches of Albanian origin and Greek-Catholic rite, as well as more recent Greeks who had fled the iconoclastic persecutions of certain Byzantine emperors from the 7th to the 9th Century starting with Leo III in 730. Their exodus was such that the numerous Basilian monastic communities were designated as the New Thebaid, in reference to the original Egyptian monasticism. And, of course, to this mosaic of people must be added the Arabs, particularly in Sicily, where they transmitted to the new Norman leaders their high culture, nourished by the translation of ancient texts, which will provoke the First Renaissance. The work of Joachim is undoubtedly the advanced expression of this cultural-scientific regeneration in the West.
Joachim’s Pythagorean-Christ work also had the stated aim of unifying the Kingdom in its ecumenical-scientific spirituality and of modernizing it politically against the archaisms of usual ecclesial narrative, including the contradiction between the temporal and the spiritual that characterized the papacy, archaisms which no longer corresponded to the demands of the times.
3b ) Father, Son and Holy Spirit, bondage, discipline and freedom.
Joachim writes: “The Father indeed imposes the labor of the law, because it is fear; the Son imposes the fatigue of discipline, because he is wisdom; the Holy Spirit shows freedom, because it is love. For where fear reigns, bondage reigns; where magisterium and discipline reign, love and freedom reign. Nevertheless, since there is only one will and the work is three, freedom has been given to men by the Father, as father, and by the Son because he is brother, vice-versa. versa the servitude of good action was imposed by the Holy Spirit, because He too is fear and wisdom” (p 127) He adds “Where the Holy Spirit is, there reigns freedom” (Idem)
Joachim posits the Trinitarian dialectic as the invariant axis around which historical development will be organized. The un-begotten Father begets the Son while the Father and the Son beget the Holy Spirit, or conscience. The Age of the Father refers to Authority and obedience, to the society of spouses but equally, what I am the first to note, to the “flesh”, or, in reality, to Nature. (p. 270 et seq.). We can therefore affirm without fear of committing an anachronism that the modern dialectical conception begins here, combining the Dialectics of Nature – the Father –, the Dialectics of Society or History – the Son – both conjugated according to the Epochs – Ages and Seals or conflicts – by the Consciousness of the Subjects – Holy Spirit. To my great wonder Joachim had anticipated my Methodological Introduction!
Joachim confronts the double question of pre-biblical peoples and the double biblical lineage, that of the Kings representing the Father, the flesh and therefore Nature, and that of the Judges representing the Holy Spirit, the conscience that monastic orders are supposed to carry. On page 176 he writes “But the woman’s uterus is fertile because of the abundance of eggs.” Because Joachim is a fine scholar, he is aware that medicine, like architecture, served as a refuge for the Pythagoreans in their retreat into the underground since the violent destruction of their School in Crotone around 450 BC. J.C. Note that Jure Vetere also innovated in the field of architecture by reinterpreting the Golden Ratio in the light of new Arab-Norman mathematical knowledge in Palermo which made it possible to build higher and brighter spaces. The levels of Nature, History and Thought were always understood as distinct but complementary levels, which is also evidenced by the – Pythagorean – Academy of Plato who, like his master Socrates, was initiated in Calabria and Sicily … At Joachim’s time, the Salernitan School of Medicine was the most advanced and famous in the Western world and also used figures and diagrams according to the method implemented by Joachim. (see https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_de_m%C3%A9decine_de_Salerne)
The discussion will focus, in Book IV, on the criticism of the worldly drift of the Church and monastic orders, including the Cistercians, who regressed towards a venal materiality through their temporal pretension. According to the Trinitarian syllogistic dialectic, Christ becomes the point of conjunction of the two lineages, king and judge, but only to preside over his historical overcoming since the Holy Spirit, the Consciousness, is for All. This is why we can affirm that not only does Joachim stage a true dialectic, but that he does so at the highest level, distinguishing between the natural level, the historical-social level and the conceptual-theoretical level.
Incidentally, to understand the methodological greatness of Joachim, it is not useless to compare the very widespread diagram of the 4 elements – fire, air, water, earth – which Isidore of Seville will take up in his own way, much influenced by astrology, with the figure of the 4 large stars and their constellations which form the Tetramorph – and give us the zodiacal symbols specific to the 4 Gospels. We can better understand the fierce opposition of the Fathers of the Church against the inclusion of other “gospels”. We also know that the 7 planets will be associated with these alchemical – pre-chemical – characters and that Joachim will allegorically link them to the 7 intelligences, but according to a more scientific way of thinking which inaugurates a true cognitive science. The Schema of Isidore of Seville is very present in the Salerno medical school and can be admired in the magnificent Giardino della Minerva in Salerno.
For his part, Joachim perfectly differentiates between the natural domain – rerum natura from the Pythagoreans to Lucretius to Isidore and Salerno – and the historical and social domain since their ontologies and methodologies are necessarily different. We know that Giambattista Vico will demonstrate this fundamental difference in his Scienza Nuova which establishes History and social sciences as scientific subjects in their own right. And, in fact, Vico’s phobia against rational scientists who denigrate History, very precisely reflects Joachim’s harsh criticisms against the logic of the scholastic schools, which follow a literal logic far removed from the ontological bases of reflection, therefore from the Pythagorean dialectic, even if he nevertheless grants an ethical motivation to Abelard. Scholastics remain entangled in Aristotelian categories and static oppositions without being able to differentiate between distincts and opposites, one of the bases of logical reflection. He thus sharply criticizes Descartes for his denigrating claim according to which historians can only know as much about History as his own servant… With his human tolerance and his typical understanding of the tensions arising in the thinking of honest but uninformed people, Joachim also criticized Valdo de Lyon for his attachment to the letter of the Old Testament which he had translated at his own expense in order to be able to read it personally and which led this rich merchant to criticize the Catholic Church.
Here is the Diagram of Isidore of Seville, author of a De Natura rerum, on the 4 elements (see: https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-5662535):
At this link you will find the Diagram of Joachim on the Tetramorph taken in the version of the wheels of the chariot of Ezekiel: See Il Cocchio divino di Ezechiele: la ruota bella ruota in https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber_Figurarum
The dialectical transition between Nature, Society and the increasingly perfect affirmation of Consciousness is therefore the key to the Joachimite Trinitarian monad. Joachim repeats this with insistence, relying on the universalist Apostle Paul and on the Act of the Apostles in particular, by opposing earthly and spiritual realities, the Letter and the Spirit, the Flesh and the Spirit, the Old Testament or the Age of the Father being associated with the state of Nature. At the beginning of Book I of the Concordia, he affirms in reference to the events – or tribulations – described by the Old Testament: “… I saw fit to bring them together in this first book, not according to the spirit, but according to the letter, and to allude to them rather than writing them in detail; and therefore, according to this principle, let not what is spiritual come first, but what is material, and then what is spiritual, so that the pious childhood will first be taught according to the letter, and then follow the mystical intelligence specific to the elders. » (p 38) or even at the very beginning of Book II quoting the Apostle Paul: « The first man drawn from the earth, says the Apostle, is terrestrial, the second, drawn from heaven, is celestial. The earthly man is the earthly men, and the heavenly man is the heavenly men” (i.e. the First and Second Testaments and the three Ages). He continues: “When we were children, we spoke like children, we understood like children, we reasoned like children, but when we became adults, we gave up what is childish”. (p 59) We see better why he will attach such importance to the 7 intelligences and to their historical development which allows the opening of the Seals. G. Vico will do the same but he will develop this intellectual maturation both on the general historical level, the Scienza Nuova, as well as on the personal level, the two being strictly linked, as his Autobiography demonstrates.
He adds: “The natural man, as Paul always says, does not understand the things of the Spirit of God. For him, these are nonsense that he cannot understand, since they must be evaluated spiritually (…) “At this stage, a Jew could perhaps say to me: “I am not the earthly man who, like we know, sinned in paradise, but I obey Moses, whom I know as a just and holy man, a very just man and a friend of God. But what can I say, if by their hardness of heart, since they were still earthly, he still allowed them for a certain time many things which are not proper to the saints, he allowed them things not heavenly but earthly, temporary and not eternal?” (pp 60-61)
Or even in Book III, to make yourself understood by going back to pre-testamentary ancient history, thus by posing a universal human perspective and underlining the similarity between the -calendar- passage from the Moon to the Sun, which is part of the Latin universalist lineage of Paul in Saint-Gregory – in particular the problematic of Easter and that of Saturday or even the 7th era of “rest” or the fullness of the “Perfect Man”, socially and individually fulfilled: “Mark the word and take note of the mystery!” All eloquence belongs to the Word, all spiritual understanding to the Spirit. So one comes first, the other after. First there was the lawgiver Moses, educated in the knowledge of the Egyptians, then came Joshua (…) Paul came first, very happy in his preaching in Asia, then John came (…) you why? Because the Word came first, the Spirit followed him.” (p180). Existence precedes consciousness.
The Age of the Son refers to the clerics. The social hierarchy is reorganized on the principle of fraternal Christian example rather than obedience to the Father, still close to the state of nature and brute force. In the Second Age, tensions will arise when the religious hierarchy deviates from its magisterium. The social hierarchy is then organized in the Third Age around freedom, human equality and love, or fraternity, by practicing tolerance with a view to universal peace.
3c) The plan of Concord: Books I, II, III and IV.
The Prologue announces the end of present times and the transition to a new age of emancipation. After passing through the Age of the Father, then of the Son corresponding to the two Testaments, here comes the Age of the Holy Spirit or of individual and collective consciousness. Joachim humbly claims his role in this announcement, though he will often claim to have nothing of a prophet but merely to be endowed with the “spiritual intelligence” destined to become widespread. It anchors the historical and social future of Humanity which it intends to demonstrate, in the astronomical tradition of the biblical texts, particularly the First and Second Testaments brought into concordance through the wheels of Ezekiel and the two cherubim which respond to each other, as well as in reference to the Apocalypse of Saint John which allows us to specify “conflicts” and “tribulations” or, in modern parlance, class struggle. The Trinitarian dialectic will thus develop during the 3 Ages.
Book I: Joachim establishes the basic chronology of the Old Testament, the Age of the Father, according to its Trinitarian progression which will inevitably lead to its transcending in the Age of the Son. In other words, it consolidates its initial testamentary narration by specifying the temporality and the driving force of internal developments. The Trinitarian future, understood as a syllogism of human emancipation in History, will manifest itself through the progression of consciousness or human intelligence; in the light of social conflicts, this will lead to the successive opening of the 7 Seals and the overcoming in a new Age of Humanity.
This choice leads Joachim to concentrate on the concordances in the Christian biblical world but it is clear that the historical future is the same for everyone. Potestà rightly writes in his Introduction “In this perspective, characters like Orpheus and Ulysses are considered types of Christ” (p 11). Joachim explains: “And if the intention was to catalog the events of the nations, it is absolutely necessary to immediately abandon the work undertaken. Nor do I believe myself fit for such an enterprise, for which the learned priest Orosius has collected an entire book, so that it may not remain hidden from posterity. Our task is rather to review quickly, in this first book, the events of the Old Testament and to lay the foundations of this work, so that the informed reader can learn what concordance to look for in the New, when he remembers reading similar things in the Old Testament. For, as the Apostle says, all these things happened as an example, and they were written for our instruction, for us who are at the end of the ages.” (p 48) Biblical narratives, understood as Socratic “true or noble lies”, must now give way to the logic of Trinitarian becoming.
Book II explains how to understand “concordance”. The numbers and series of generations must be respected but without obscuring the Trinitarian process by giving too much importance to a few possible deviations. After all, says the author, the chronicles are not complete and copyists can make mistakes. On this basis, Joachim sets about drawing up the series of generations for the two Testaments. If in the first Age the figure of the Father dictates the dominant logic, it nevertheless does not exclude the manifestation of the Trinitarian becoming towards emancipation which will lead to overcoming in the Age of the Son. Joachim therefore draws up his concordant series by placing them in a vast, inevitable historical process because, he says, “And these things will happen; whether the world likes it or not, they will happen!” (p. 40)
The Trinitarian becoming is nothing other than the syllogism of emancipation. The major premise calls for – engenders – the minor premise and both lead to an inescapable conclusion. This is why Joachim distinguishes so rigorously his Trinitarian conception, according to which the Father is not begotten but begets the Son, the two in turn begetting the Holy Spirit, from those of Sibelius, Arian or even the conception Greek, namely that of the Filioque. “Sabelius wanted to expose this problem but his boat ran aground on the reefs. And Arian, while trying to avoid this danger, ends up in deep mud. In fact Sabelius says that God is one person, but by his will he is now the Father, now the Son, now the Holy Spirit. Arian, disapproving of this, says that they are three persons, but distinct – and it is blasphemy to pretend so – in their essence and their majesty.” (Psaltery, p 11) As for the Greeks, the Father alone engenders both the Son and the Holy Spirit, thus suppressing the Trinitarian syllogistic becoming.
To clearly fix these historical phases and their internal dynamism, Joachim gives as a temporal unit a generation of 30 years and shows how intelligence according to the flesh – or animality and nature – differs from intelligence according to the spirit. (It will be necessary to verify to what extent the choice of a generation of 30 years corresponds to the approximate cycle of Saturn.) This leads him to give two series in the Old Testament, that of Kings corresponding to the Father and that of Judges corresponding to the Son. The Second Age inaugurated by the Son unites in Christ the King – the genealogy goes back to David according to the Pythagorean cultural anchoring maneuver used in the Gospels – and the Judge, but this union is intended to go beyond it since the Holy Spirit, anchored in the nature and society from which it proceeds, will establish the dominance of spiritual intelligence.
To better establish this general Trinitarian development Joachim offers successive illustrations making it possible to clarify the general theory. The first concerns the Alpha and Omega diagrams, the second concerns the Historical Tree, the third introduces the Three circles of the 3 Ages aligned horizontally each containing within it three smaller circles to indicate the Trinitarian unity which moves the whole. Thanks to these elucidations Joachim can then return to the Omega Diagram without, of course, claiming to complete it, since it refers to the 3rd Age still to come.
In the Concordia there does not yet appear the Joachimite attempt to logically reformulate the Hebrew Tetragram in the perspective of the Trinitarian becoming which will give its famous Figure known as the “three Ages” of concatenated circles. (see https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_de_Flore ) It rather and emblematically offers a reference to the Greek alphabet Alpha and Omega: “The first definition – namely the Father-Son concordance, ndr – is indicated by the letter A, which is a triangular letter, the second by the letter ω, in which a line is drawn in the middle of two lines” (p 81). In the Psaltery Joachim will truncate the angle at the top of the letter Alpha to indicate graphically that the Father – or Nature – is not begotten. Joachim thus establishes the Trinitarian becoming as a process of coexistence and dominance according to the Ages. He writes: “Thus since the persons of the divinity are three, co-eternal among themselves and co-equal, according to what relates to the resemblance of the same persons it is important to remember that the first state of Adam goes up to Christ, the second of King Uzziah until the present and the third of the blessed Benedict until the end of this world” (p 81) And so it is with the other two people in the concordances of Diagram A.
This process of coexistence and dominance is essential. Joachim sets out to illustrate it by other means, including the basic graphic of the Historical Tree given on page 101. The common stock Father-Adam-Jacob, then Ozia already expressing the Trinity which will lead to Christ and to Benoit according to the lineage that we cited above because it embodies the main axis of the passage from one Age to Another. But in the historical development of concordances the expression of other types of persons does not disappear. To give a modern example, the capitalist mode of production establishes the dominance of the extraction of surplus value through the structural intensification or productivity of the labor force marshalling the use of machines and the organization of work. But productivity does not eliminate the role of working time which characterized pre-capitalist societies – absolute surplus value – nor conjonctural intensification of work or relative surplus value. These forms coexist but under the dominance of one of them. With the socialist-communist mode of production, the dominance of productivity will give way to social surplus value, since the surplus value will no longer be accumulated by the private owners but instead it will be collectively reinvested optimally by democratic planning, giving priority to social and individual essential means. Something capitalism cannot do.
This reasoning applies to the possible dominance and coexistence of Modes of Production. There is a whole literature on the comparative analysis of modes of production, starting with Marx’s analysis of ancient, slavery, feudal and even socialist modes of production, but it is unfortunately forgotten and neglected today because of the brainless hegemony of marginalism, especially speculative, which, by falsifying human psychological evolution – the Ages and the Seals of Joachim! – would like to claim that the Marginalist “acquisitive mind” is a perennial ontological given that prevails diachronically and synchronically. Even the German historian school with Gustav Schmoller did not take this seriously, a subjective meter being unable to quantify the “calculation of joys and sorrows” proposed by Menger et al.
However, by abusing university and cultural selection, the Austrian School succeeds in imposing this inept doxa of the “God market”, that is to say the hegemony of the parasite-exploiter whom Marx depicts as the « man with the purse » in Capital, Book I. The latest version of this deception takes the form of the anti-Rousseau and anti-Marx “indigenous critique” of ethnology and social sciences, for example that of David Graeber, who died young. It is hard to understand how people with even minimal training can take this formless gibberish seriously.
Hence, Joachim graphically expresses the idea by three large circles aligned next to each other, each containing three small internal circles, the internal Trinitarian becoming. (p 130) He does the same for the double series of Fathers and Judges: the 12 patriarchs representing the figure of the Father, the 12 tribal chiefs that of the Son and the 12 chiefs of Israel the Holy Spirit; to which respond for the Second Age the 12 apostles before Jesus representing the Father, the same 12 after becoming apostles representing the figure of the Son and the 12 churches – the 5 plus the 7 created in Ephesus by the universalist apostle Paul. We will see that in Book 3 this will be exposed very specifically in “the marble causeway” as a “monad” to use the term that G. Bruno will give to this dialectical pulsating heart that will be taken up later, in their own way, by Spinoza – natura naturans – and Marx – the dialectic of historical materialism and the Labor law of the value. It was eventually reversed by the Rosicrucian Leibnitz and then, following him, by Hegel.
We now understand better why Joachim, respectful of numbers and series, is not dogmatic to the point of allowing literal reasoning to interfere with the concrete dialectical expression of becoming in History. Especially when it comes to updating a dominant “narrative” without attacking it head on. In Book 3, he will add the variable of intelligences to better account for “conflicts”.
Arrived at this point, Joachim can return to conclude this great fresco of historical becoming on the Omega Scheme, which concludes the process by the opening to the Third Age. Of course, contrary to what Potestà expected, who sees a contradiction in it, Joachim does not seek to predict or establish a precise concordance materializing the 3 persons in this third Age since this constitutes the conclusion of the Trinitarian syllogism. Of course, the Trinity does not disappear, as indicated by the three small circles internal to the circle of the Third Age, but here the Trinitarian-dialectic tension disappears and this union – in effect, the “contradictory identity” of the individual and collective historical Subject according to my correction of the Hegelian absurdity of the “unity of opposites” – gives the fullness of Man as an individually and socially free and emancipated being. It is all about the “contradictory identity” of the Subject, individual and collective, which actively combines within itself the Dialectic of Nature and the Dialectic of History.
Joachim had moreover announced this finality of the historical development by quoting in the Prologue the universalist Paul: “And a little further on “Go Daniel, for the words are written and sealed until the established time”. And if this be so, it is clear that it is not given to one alone to know everything, but that this is conceded to each one and to the other separately, according to the measure of the Spirit, until that, as the Apostle says, “we all come to the perfect man at the end of the fullness of the Age of Christ.” (p 34) However, the establishment of the Third Age does not exclude conflicts before reaching fullness. Also, the monks announce and prepare the Third Age, which does not exclude worldly backsliding like those that Joachim reproaches the Cistercians.
The Marxists and Maoists will draw the same conclusions, Mao finding and paraphrasing the expression of Saint Matthew: “they wave the red flag to betray the red flag”. In short, the transition will not be easy, but the important thing will be – Book 4 – to specify as best as possible the opening of the 6th and 7th Seals – or Epochs – leading to the inauguration of the Third Age. What Joachim feels he can say with certainty is that the New – monastic – Social Order will go through a phase of preparation for equality according to the principle “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his work” and then to apply the rule of the Act of the Apostles “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”
Book III sets out the theory of the 7 Seals in more detail and summarizes it in the graph of the “Marble Causeway”, the Trinitarian dialectical monad. Already in Book I, Joachim had given an overview of these 7 historical Epochs or “conflicts” and their concordances in the first two Ages. It is based on the Apocalypse of Saint John, that is to say on the Apostle most aware of astronomy and of the conflicting development of the times who responds and specifies more precisely the few elements provided by Ezekiel and Daniel. We are then very far from the static narration of Saint-Augustine in his City of God. The salvation of Man takes place in historical development in a conflicting manner according to the Trinitarian tension.
Joachim had taken care to specify his conceptual method of concordances, for example on page 35 of the Prologue concerning the spiritual meaning of “numbers” – see above – but he had taken care to specify the method in Book II: “ We specifically define concord as a resemblance of equal proportion between the New and the Old Testament. By saying equal, we refer more to the number than to the value: namely when person and person, order and order, conflict and conflict look at each other with reciprocal glances by virtue of a certain resemblance, like Abram and Zacariah, Sarah and Elizabeth, Isaac and John the Baptist, Jacob and the man Jesus Christ, the 12 patriarchs and apostles of the same number, and the like.” (p 68)
The analysis of the 7 Seals, which is based on the 5 senses, and their opening thus refer to the expression of the 7 typical forms of intelligence – topological, allegorical, contemplative, anagogic etc. – at different levels, from person to person, from people to people, from State to State. This dialectical development is summarized by the (monadic) graphic of the “marble causeway” which specifies for the 7 Seals – or “tribulations” – the correspondences graphically summarized in the Tree of the 3 historical Ages. In both cases the Trinitarian dialectic is given from the beginning – monad – and then develops according to the precise level of analysis, Age or Epochs – or Seals.
Here too, there can be no question for Joachim of giving graphically the details of the Epochs in the Third Age. He does not claim to be either a seer or a prophet. What is more particularly important to him is to specify as well as possible, by analyzing so to speak “the spirit of the times” and its individual and collective materializations, the end of the 6th Seal and the probable pace of the 7th and last Seal of the Second Age in which he lives. And this leads him to situate the passage to the Third Age around 1260. In the stabilized count of the 42 generations of 30 years per Age, Joachim places the beginning of the 41st generation in 1200-1201, so that the presumed end of the 42nd would happen in 1260. We have already seen that despite the Catholic millenarian recovery to which Potestà still succumbs in the Introduction, Joachim does not believe in the coming of any Antichrist before the “Sabbath” or « rest » but he foresees final tribulations without equal in the History of all those who will oppose the announcement and the Advent of the Third Age, which is quite different from an Augustinian day of rest or from the Christian “salvation” according to Peter Lombard, one strictly subjected to the ecclesial hierarchy.
He specifies: “And I say it clearly: indeed, the time is near in which these things must come to pass; but only the Lord himself knows the day and hour. However, based on the construction of the concord, I retain that a peace compared to these evils is conceded until the end of the year 1200 of the incarnation of the Lord; from this moment on, so that these things do not happen unexpectedly, I must always consider the times and moments. There will then be a great tribulation, such as has never been verified since the beginning of the world, as it clearly results from the book of Revelation from the opening of the 6th seal…” (p. 221-222) And again: “In the Church in truth the forty-first generation will begin during the year 1201 of the incarnation of the Lord.” (p291). And again: “In the Church, the forty-second generation will begin in the year and the hour which God knows. And during this generation, following the conclusion of the general tribulation followed by the careful separation of the wheat from the chaff, there will arise from Babylon a new guide, namely a new universal pontiff of the New Jerusalem, that is -saying of the holy mother Church, in reference to which it is written in the Apocalypse “I saw an angel coming out from the east, and who had the seal of the living God, and with him the rest of those who had been oppressed.” (p 293-294).
Joachim, a monk, then placed himself in the lineage of Saint-Benedict, founder of the Latin monastic order, from whom he was inspired to write the Rule of the Order of Flora. “Ora et labora” We know that the end of the writing of Book IV of the Concordia corresponds with his departure to Sila, to lay the foundation of the mother house of the Order of Fiore in Jure Vetere, entrusted with the announcement of the Third Age, the ‘Age of emancipation, tolerance and general peace.
Book IV offers the conclusion by recalling the double process of the Trinitarian march of the Ages and the conflicts – the openings of the Seals – particularly for the 6th and 7th era. This is in no way a repetition. While the Prologue and Book I had announced the stakes of Concordia and exposed the method, Book IV exposes the conflicts marking the transition to the Third Age by specifying more concretely and directly the present conflicts, those which it had already provided for in Book III for the 41st generation, his own, and for the 42nd. For it is the destiny of the Church or, better, of the Community which is at stake. He thus denounces the Church in its tendency to become the New Babylon (“figli della Nuova Babylonia”, p 287) as well Cistercians who become worldly and who, as his attack on Geoffroy d’Auxerre makes clear, misunderstand contemporary issues, in particular the opposition between temporal power and spiritual power.
These attacks, let us call them “ethico-political”, to borrow an expression from Gramsci, retain all their “breath” today, they still speak intimately to the souls of contemporaries. We know that G. Vico, taken up by Paul Lafargue, had shown that the etymology of the term “soul” was “breath”, that is to say Life leading to the development of instinct – the 5 senses of Joachim – and to the blossoming of Intelligence and its 7 forms intended to lead to common spiritual emancipation. Conscience, said, according to Plato, the Pythagorean Socrates, makes the difference between Ethical Good and utilitarian Good.
For Joachim, the monks, including the Cistercians to whom he still belonged, have the mission of announcing the Holy Spirit and preparing its advent. Their mission should not be to defend the absurd temporal claims of the popes. However, he says, they transform “Gold into blackened lead ” (284) thus denying their historical spiritual mission. These less misguided “do not access the altar through God, but through men, and certainly not out of consideration for divine gains, but to obtain a temporal gift. And, in fact, he does not seek to take care of the flock, but of themselves, nor to BREASTFEED THEIR CHILDREN but rather to dominate the plebs. ” (p 285) And again: “But even those LITTLE ONES whose milk was taken away CALL FOR BREAD AND NO ONE IS FOUND TO BREAK IT FOR THEM; in fact, some, understanding that they are poorly versed in the canonical Scriptures, look for someone who could enlighten them and find no one, because everyone is looking for their own interest rather than that of Jesus Christ. ” (p 285) namely, that of the Community.
Joachim will even go so far as to recall his version of Constantine’s donation: the emperor having offered Pope Sylvester temporal power, the latter refused it as not being in conformity with the humbly spiritual mission of the papacy. Here too we wonder how Podestà, professor at the Catholic University of Milan, manages to miss the explicit meaning of the text of Joachim that he claims to introduce, since he simply claims that the accusation of New Babylon is directed against the emperor ! We know that Innocent III and the papist “Joachimites”, quickly taking the form of dogmatic Conventual Franciscans, went so far as to claim that Frederick II was the Antichrist predicted – according to them and according to Potestà – by Joachim himself! Innocent III – and Potestà after him – even sought to accredit the thesis according to which the pope, like Joachim’s Christ, would unite in himself the two lines of Kings and Judges!!! In agreement with Peter Lombard, there would therefore no longer be any egalitarian and emancipatory overcoming or transcendence possible.
However, we understand better why, according to Potestà, speaking euphemistically, Joachim declares that he is engaging in “a concerned assessment of the Church of his time”. (p 22) Finished the writing of Book IV of the Concordia Joachim was ready to go up to Sila to implement his great project of spiritual and social reform by founding the monastery of Jure Vetere (in open Pythagorean reference to the Ancient Law.) In Calabrian, “jure” means flower just like the Italian term “fiore”. The ancient surname of the royal domain ceded to Joachim for the founding of the Order of Flora is “Fiore” and dates back to Roman times. A tenacious local legend has it that Joachim founded his monastery in the mountains in Jure Vetere when oxen stopped at this precise location. The origin of this fable, which in effect occults the Pythagorean origin of Jure Vetere, comes from the tradition of the ancient Greeks who proceeded in this way to found their new colonies, seeing in it the good auspices of the gods. The oxen then ended up as holocaust or burnt offering. (14) Calabria was once the prosperous Magna Grecia.
However, through these critical and unvarnished developments, Joachim seizes the opportunity not only to criticize the Church and the monastic Orders, which were in full worldly and temporal drift, but to specify the main characteristics necessarily arising from the culmination of the Trinitarian syllogism of human emancipation in the Third Age, namely freedom, equality through collective property and private possession, love – or fraternity –, tolerance and universal peace.
This is why he founded his own monastic Order, more rigorously spiritual than that of the Cistercians. Irony of History, all the malevolence of the popes since Innocent III has not succeeded in erasing the message of Joachim and of Jure Vetere, the first Abbey of Fiore, whose ruins are today in a state of indecent abandonment due to regional and local negligence. Let us repeat that Innocent III was the faithful disciple of Peter Lombard, the Sorbonne theorist – followed later by Bonaventure and Saint Thomas – of the biblical quaternity refuted by Joachim, according to which there could be no salvation for peoples outside of submission to the church hierarchy. Even at the Council of Anagni – 1254-55 – Joachim could not be attacked head-on because he had written on the order and with the support of three successive popes. Furthermore, as we have already said, the attempt to merge the Order of Fiore into the Cistercian Order after the death of Joachim in March 1202 came up against the rule according to which a monastic order could not regress towards a less rigorous rule.
Fiore thus retained a certain autonomy, and remained faithful to its founding Abbot as demonstrated by the Antiphon and by the lamp which burned for a long time in the crypt of the abbey that was rebuilt at San Giovanni in Fiore after Jure Vetere had been burned in murky yet un-clarified circumstances in 1214 and that certain monks had rebelled under the pretext that the location of Jure Vetere was located in the “frigid Sila”. Concerning this Antiphon: “… an investigation by Gennaro Sanfelice from Cosenza on May 1, 1680 testified to an immemorial cult and a ritual dating back to the 13th century. (…) It emerges with clarity that the Antiphon of Vespers heard and read by the supreme poet inspired the dantesque verses (Paradise, XII, 139-141)” (Gioacchino da Fiore “il calavrese abate Gioacchino di spirito profetico dotto”, La Provincia di Cosenza, N. 604, 10/12/1997, p 119)
The withdrawal to San Giovanni in Fiore placed under the patronage of Saint John the Baptist, therefore even before the announcement of the Second Age, was worthy of Innocent III and the new Curia; one thing leading to another, this inevitably led to the creation of the ‘Inquisition with its myriad of crimes against Men and against the Spirit. Ratzinger, head of the modern inquisition, the Congregation of the Faith, was consistent with the regressive and renegade Church since Joachim, and with Bonaventure. But this maneuver had little success. Joachim’s successor, Abbot Matteo, was a faithful among the faithful, he succeeded in making his Order prosper and in disseminating Joachim’s books and message. As far as Tuscany – as witnessed by Dante and the socially-minded Joachimites – and far beyond. Frederick II also reconfirmed all his possessions. (See the 2 volumes of the fundamental book by Romano Napolitano S. Giovanni in Fiore, monastica e civica, 1981)
This story of emancipation, enlightened by Joachim and taken up by many others, including Karl Marx, continues its inevitable path, despite ups and downs. The battles for Italian agrarian reform, relaunched by the Neapolitan Revolution of 1799, and then again after the First and Second World Wars – Paolo Cinanni and the defense of the “usi civici” after 1943, etc. – clearly shows that the message of the Calabrian Abbot, endowed with a prophetic spirit according to Dante, had continued to fuel the battles and resistance of the inhabitants of San Giovanni in Fiore and Sila. Paolo Cinanni, with his intellectual acuity and probity, regretted the fact that he and his comrades, who knew little of the deep history of Sila Altopiano at the beginning of their struggles, had not relied on this deeply rooted collective consciousness faced with the usurpations by notables of abbey lands formerly owned and worked in common, according to a principle that G Winstanley subsequently rediscovered and which is fundamentally different from modern Anglo-Saxon or ecological “common goods”, which do not claim to call into question neither private ownership, nor the organization of work, nor the common management of the allocation of the fruits of labor.
I have already commented on Table XII of Liber figurarum concerning the New Monastic and Social Order. (See: “Short notes on Joachim of Fiore, Pythagorean presented at the conference organized by the Gunesh cultural association”, August 27, 2016, in http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org/short-notes-joachim-of-fiore-pythagorean-presented-at-the-conference-organized-by-the-gunesh-cultural-association-august-27-2016 ) Let us underline that the ownership of the immense domain of Fiore on the Sila Altopiano was royal-imperial and that it was ceded to the Order of Fiore while remaining a State domain. As a result, this property was legally inalienable, which fueled peasant and citizen struggles over time and as abusive occupations multiplied with the support of the popes since Innocent III. In the Order of Fiore, property was commonly held in member abbeys and workers had the right to enjoy possession and in particular the fruit of their labor. They were actually known in ancient legal texts as “communists” in the etymological sense of the term, a reality that will affect many reformers in the Middle Ages and long after, including Gerrard Winstanley in England, not to mention modern socialists and communists, without forgetting the Chinese Taiping. (15)
In his work, and especially in the Concordia, Joachim lays down the key principles of his new egalitarian – “communist” – order of the Third Age of general human emancipation, principles that remain fundamental today. He had taken up the motto of Saint Benedict “Ora et labora”. Inspired by the Act of the Apostles, he sets the ideal: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” and, to ensure the transition period “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his work”.
Here is how Joachim expresses it: “And therefore, (the first 5 abbeys of the enriched Cistercian order) as the patriarchs of the people (the 5 original tribes) enjoyed seeing their families prosper, so they enjoyed possession of sheep and breeding flocks; yet all these things – which do not pertain so much to the exalted condition of the free person, but rather to the despised condition of the slave – cannot remain in such a condition for long. It is absolutely necessary that there be a true resemblance to the apostolic life, according to which one did not acquire possession of an earthly heredity, but rather sold it, as it is written: “All who had houses and fields sold them and gathered the earnings of what they sold and laid them at the feet of the apostles. We then divided between the individuals, according to the needs of each…” (p 309)
In his treatise On the Life and Rule of Saint Benedict, which he used to conceive the Rule – today inexplicably lost – of his new Order of Fiore, Joachim warns against the corruption and extortion that invade the Church: “ Similarly, care should be taken that the hairs of the carnal nature do not damage them, namely the parents whom they love carnally and to whom they extend the goods of the Church intended for the poor” (p 67) He adds: “But if this is so, why then do some abbots not wish to be considered fathers but rather as bosses, why do they not want to be loved but feared, regardless of what is written: he does not is there no fear in charity, because perfect charity drives out fear? They therefore love those who by their hunts provide them with food, they preach obedience to them, as if it were no better to seek poverty in freedom of spirit than to worry about greed, so that with the pretext of obedience, or again as if it were not necessary to require of a monk interior obedience more than that exterior, and the fruits of justice more than treasures.”» (idem p 65)
Obviously, the Calabrian Abbot was well endowed with a “prophetic spirit”! And Joachim concludes with this powerful image: “On the contrary, using an example in this regard: what do those who rest their hopes in such things do with the sentence issued by the Savior: if a blind leads a blind, both will fall into the grave.” idem p 65. In Italian the term “fossa” means both hole and grave. ) In the Capodimonte Museum in Naples you can admire the superb painting by Breughel the Elder who, still in his time, made the same dramatic observation, having lived and worked in Italy.
Joachim advised the monks to “go up on the Mount” and set an example: “Is it not perhaps true that one will follow a thousand, and that two will put ten thousand to flight? And that this is what will be possible for God, even if it seems impossible to men, that blessed poverty has many imitators, that the freedom to be poor has many sons. What is happier in this life devoid of worries, fear of thieves or suspicion, than the sober absence of property today which makes riches present in the future? But in truth, even against this choice of life the devil wages his war, all the more strongly as he is pursued by the ardor of envy” (idem p 111)
4) Conclusion.
The rise of urbanization and the merchant bourgeoisie already forcefully raised the question of the disorders produced by what would later be theorized as the “acquisitive mind” of capitalism. “What is the worth of a man?” asked Hobbes in his Leviathan during the English merchant revolution? Joachim was the first to theorize the damage caused as well as the need for a new Pythagorean-Christic, that is to say egalitarian, historical overcoming. His message will be received even after the evolution of scientific and historical knowledge – witness Galileo, G. Bruno and Vico among others – and will quite naturally lead to the abandonment of the biblical-Joachimite “noble lie”, as Joachim had himself predicted when foreseeing the effect of the work of Consciousness during the 3rd Age. The New Monastic and Social Order imagined so powerfully by Joachim as a herald of the Third Age was based on common property and private possession based on work and needs, this material and institutional organization ensuring the material conditions for the emancipation of consciences. The march towards the Advanced Social State, or even towards socialism and fully-blown communism, is nothing else.
The new social order will continue to include households – coniugi – clerics and monks. The social division of labor and intelligences, recognized to have all equal dignity between them in the formation of an egalitarian and harmonious Community, will include work, reading and praise, or, if you will, in modern terms, manual work, intellectual work and “spiritual” or ethico-political direction by those whom the Bolsheviks aptly called “responsible workers”. Joachim writes “In the celestial homeland – and by extension in the 3rd Age, ndr – in reality it will not be so, but nevertheless it will be the same, since, although the battle – the conflicts or Seals, ndr – is finished, to each one will be assigned the dwelling which is best suited to him so that he will receive his reward according to his work…” (Psaltery, p 76)
He often returns to this idea in his work, but this reward according to the “diversity of merits” is qualitative, it must not taint the general equality or the freedom of choice of individuals. It must, moreover, be read in the context of “the secularization of the Spirit” – to use Henry Mottu’s expression – implemented by Joachim. “The difference between the reprobate and the elect is of another nature, as is of another nature that which distinguishes those who will be judged and saved and those who will not only be saved but will be judges, so that each will receive his own merchandise according to his work” (idem p 85) But it is the same here as for the vocation of monks. Joachim is basically a “libertarian communist”: “But what? It would perhaps be necessary to force everyone so that, having abandoned all possession, all become monks, even those who not only cannot, but also those who can and do not want to, since the love they feel is proportional to their knowledge? Certainly not ! Because it is not a question of necessity, but of a voluntary choice” (idem, p 67)
For good measure, Joachim affirms that these principles apply to the Church, and more broadly to the dominant structures, with the Pope himself calling other bishops “brothers” and not “sons”. “Consequently even the Roman pontiff, who is the head of all bishops, was not in the habit of calling them sons, but brothers, since it is certainly more humble to have brothers rather than sons, co-heirs rather than heirs; in fact our Lord Jesus Christ deigned to call the apostles brothers, so that he is the eldest of many brothers. In fact, the order of reason does not admit that fathers serve sons like brothers their own brothers, even the youngest; undoubtedly this behavior is praised while the other appears absurd and almost detestable. Therefore, in order that it may be evident that the monastic order belongs to the Spirit which proceeds from the Father and the Son, it was necessary that in its antecedents there should be resemblance with the patriarchs, and in its successors with the apostles, so that it is clear that according to concord they correspond to each other. And likewise the earthly lifestyle of the promise did not change although the succession (of the Ages, ndr) was changed as is the case today” (Concordia, p 309)
Joachim had already explained – see above – that the transition from private property to collective property and common possession, going hand in hand with the dignity of work, better suits the free person. (p 309) General human emancipation is the stake of the Trinitarian dialectical becoming in History. This is why at the conclusion of Book IV he does not hesitate to affirm: “And the Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world” (p 312). But in peace and tolerance, a prelude to what secularism will become through the general emancipation of consciences during the 3rd Age: “Nowadays those who observe the Law are those religious who give priority to the traditions of the oldest over God’s grace. From this fault must be guarded those who, not having in themselves the gentleness of charity, rise up against others as if they were more just than them, only because they do not share the same. habits.” (p 310)
This general announcement is not only valid as the Eternal Gospel, according to the quickly repressed and concealed attempt of Gerrardo da Borgo San-Donnino, still enmeshed in biblical narration, but in its modern dialectical form, that of the historical future of human emancipation in equality, liberty, fraternity, tolerance and peace.
Paul De Marco
Copyright © La Commune Inc, August 14, 2023
Notes:
1) Contemporaries of the French Revolution and subsequent revolutions have always known this. An emblematic example is given to us by the novel Spiridion by George Sand in which she announces the accomplishment of the Joachimite becoming and its modern republican renewal. (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiridion ) Joachim wanted to renew the biblical narrative by re-infusing it with an egalitarian Pythagorean-Christian spirit, but he maintains that his method applies universally, which is obvious once one understands the fact that the Trinitarian becoming is only the syllogism of historical becoming. It is the Overall Dialectic of historical materialism in which the conscious, individual and collective subject – the social classes – unites in its “contradictory identity” the Dialectic of Nature, the domain of the distinct, and the Dialectic of History, the domain of opposites. The aggressive regression of the Church led to the abandonment and rejection of the biblical narrative in favor of universal history, thus renewing the images and their teaching outside the reactionary, exclusivist and inquisitorial doxa dominated by the ecclesial hierarchy. This is what Machiavelli did by weaving his objective sociological understanding of society in the light of the lessons drawn from Roman history according to Livy and a few others (his Discourses, in particular).
And this is what Giambattista Vico masterfully did after him in his Scienza Nuova which lays the scientific bases for the study of History and Social Sciences, bases which cannot be reduced to the methodologies of the more static so-called hard sciences. God creates Nature and can therefore know it, Men merely approach this knowledge empirically, however Men themselves make their own History and can therefore comprehend it, says the great Neapolitan. Verum, factum. Paul Lafargue showed how Marx was very strongly inspired by the conception of class struggle systematically presented by Vico – and before him from a pre-sociological point of view by Machiavelli. However, Marx informs and renews the method by replacing the foundation of the Vichian method of investigation, philology, with the science of political economy – the law of the value of labor power – and historical materialism which he establishes . In the end, I demonstrate here that the method of historical materialism was anticipated by Joachim while social conflicts – the Seals of the Apocalypse reinterpreted by him – are analyzed according to his concordances. In addition to novelists, philosophers and professional historians knew Vico and his predecessor Joachim perfectly well. This is unfortunately no longer the case today. We will only cite two examples here: Ernest Renan (see: “JOACHIM DE FLORE and THE ETERNAL GOSPEL”, https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Joachim_de_Flore_et_l%E2%80%99%C3%89vangile_%C3%A9ternel and Jules Michelet (see “The conception of history of J.-B. Vico and its interpretation by Michelet” Maria Donzelli, https://www.persee.fr/doc/ahrf_0003-4436_1981_num_246_1_4272 ), was not wrong, any more than Alexandre Dumas père, one of the Fathers of Italian Unification, who himself also worked for an egalitarian and united human future. My exposition of historical materialism can be found in my Methodological Introduction, freely accessible in the section Livres-Books from my old experimental site www.la-commune-paraclet.com . I deplored that the great Marxist Louis Althusser attributed without nuance to Montesquieu the discovery of the “new continent”, History, without mentioning either Vico , nor Lafargue. Montesquieu, passing through Venice, had acquired a copy of the Scienza nuova and other fundamental legal writings of Vico, the true modern theorist of Natural Law, “il diritto delle genti” inspired by Joachim.. ( See: “Althusser, or why compromising compromises should be rejected”, February 11, 2015, in https://www.la-commune-paraclet.com/Download/)
It will be noted, and this is a constant in Western history, that the becoming of human emancipation accelerates each time intellectuals rediscover ancient science and its objective method. This was the case of Joachim at the Arab-Norman Court in Palermo. This explains his criticisms against Sibelius, Arian, Peter Lombard, the conception of the Filioque by the Greeks and Jewish exclusivism. As for Valdo, a wealthy merchant from Lyons who had had the Old Testament translated to be able to read it, he noted and understood the profound dismay displayed by his attempt to return to the text of the Old Testament, as well as that of his disciples and faithful, but he does not insist since the impact on the “Trinitarian” conception is not directly at stake. Indeed, Joachim wanted to reconcile the peoples ecumenically in the scientific conception of the becoming of their common emancipation. This remains true for Ethics, which is necessarily secular, as demonstrated by this veritable intellectual monument in less than 100 pages that is The foundations of the metaphysics of morals by Immanuel Kant. See also my article : In praise of Reason and the Secular State, in https://www.la-commune-paraclet.com/fascismFrame1Source1.htm#racisme which contains “Preamble and secularism” and “What are racism and ‘anti-Semitism ” (idem)
2 ) With regard to the original Christianity or that taken over by the universalist Apostle Paul, it seems clear that this is a typical Socratic narrative aimed at proposing a ” true lie” or a « noble lie » capable of carrying out the peoples on the right path until awareness and science are more widespread. To be convinced of this, it suffices to refer to the “sacred” Pythagorean Numbers, to the texts of Plato, including the Apology of Socrates, the Banquet, the Timaeus, the Laws, and of course the Republic which offers in it conclusion the Myth of Er which is closer to the original Pythagoreans on the transmigration of the soul that to the idea of resurrection eventually borrowed from the Egyptians and Horus. It is known that for the Sumerians – the counted bread of Gilgamesh, after his journey to discover the secrets of eternity, which listed the days remaining to him to live, etc. – and for the Hebrews, there is no resurrection of the soul, justice therefore depends on Authority, on the immediate balance of power, in the end on the Law, moreover an exclusivist one, in other words it depends on the high priests and the Judges.
However, there comes a time when the narrative must be reformulated and updated again, the new knowledge making it possible to announce the advent of the Holy Spirit that will illuminate all in the same way insofar as collective property, freedom and fraternity or love ensure the material conditions of the transition to the Third Age and the individual and collective development that it promises, which will signify the end of alienation and the “recovery of Man by himself” as Karl Marx finally summarized it. The end of the world marked by the exploitation of Man by Man not to be childishly confused with the “end of the world”.
For the Pythagorean Numbers which constitute the framework of the Ten-stringed Psaltery – 1, 3,5,7,12,15, in particular: See: “Short notes on Joachim of Fiore, Pythagorean presented at the conference organized by the Gunesh cultural association”, August 27, 2016, in http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org/short-notes-joachim-of-fiore-pythagorean-presented-at-the-conference-organized-by-the-gunesh-cultural-association-august-27-2016 . Of course the Pentagram offers 5 exterior angles. Among other things, 72 x 5 =360 and considering 72 years for 1 degree of arc: 360 x 72 = 25,920, the Great Year sought by Plato or the Precession of the Equinoxes.
In the spirit of the concordances established within the Christian space, Socrates is not cited directly by Joachim but the meaning given to his death makes it possible to connect the attempted poisoning of Benedict, the precursor of the worthy monks of the 3 Age, with the meaning of the death of Christ. Joachim writes in his On the Life and Rule of Saint Benedict: “Then they mixed with wine the poison of their own lust, they tried to destroy in spirit those who were lovers of sincerity, just like the Jews, who had believed in Christ, formerly obliged the apostles, who had been their masters, to observe the commandments of the Law.” (p 87) To clarify further, according to the metaphor of the raven – Christ as a carnal man – and the dove – the Spirit: “The raven, as is generally believed, designates Christ, just as the dove designates the Holy Spirit. This same person was denigrated for us, yet accepting the likeness of the flesh of sin, so that in the Holy Spirit he could bring to his church the beauty of the dove. The role of this great teacher, who taught everyone and offered examples of humility was played by Moses in the first Age, by Paul in the second, while the question of who will hold it in the third does not is not yet known to everyone. “ (Idem, p 91)
For anyone who has doubts about the Pythagorean-Socratic foundation, here is Joachim’s clarification which leaves no possible doubt: “Also, Christ did not drink the chalice of death to teach that we must loving death, he suffered on the contrary for us like a doctor for the sick, he took upon himself our infirmities to rid us of our iniquity” (the Concordia, p 200)
Regarding the “metals” of the Socratic City described in Plato’s Republic, the metaphor of Gold, Silver and Iron – sometimes also including bronze and clay – constantly recurs in the work of the Calabrian Abbot but always to illustrate the theory of concordance and transcendence of individual or collective Figures to culminate in the “golden age” – an expression he does not use – of human emancipation in the 3rd Age. Here is a key quote from the Psaltery: “The words of the Lord are pure words, silver tested by fire, but also bronze, which symbolizes manual activity for the sustenance of the needy. With this activity the bodies are nourished: with the teaching, which is symbolized by money, the spirit of those who are children in Christ is refreshed: both activities concern love of neighbor, because the man is made up of two substances that need both activities. The third, which is symbolized by gold, concerns the love of God, which is the greatest and the first commandment. “ (p. 93-94)
Joachim connects these three states to three main intelligences, the topological for faith, the contemplative for hope, and the anagogic, the highest, for love. (idem, p 129) Hence the attacks on the Church and the worldly monks who close La Concorde, the gold becoming “blackened lead” (p 284) These supporters of the New Babylon do not seek the good of Community but their own, they desire to “dominate the plebs” (p 285) 3 )
Everyone knows that Campanella, born in Stilo in Calabria, was influenced by Joachim but in a modern perspective resulting from the work of Galileo, G. Bruno – whom he was the only one to defend courageously from the depths of his prison -, as well as the works of Arab authors, both scientific and mystical. His Città del sole, which is based on the new heliocentric knowledge insinuating a more perfect cosmic order, is strongly inspired by the knowledge of Arab thinkers as well as by The City of Adocentyn in the Picatrix, an Arabic grimoire of astrological magic. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_of_the_Sun ).
Campanella, a former pupil of the Dominicans, finally took refuge in France with the support of Richelieu. Louis XIV and his advisers derived from system ideated by Campanella particular social hierarchy, that of the absolute Monarchy with the members of his Court gravitating around the Sun King, supposed to represent the dispensation of justice equally for all his subjects. The presumed order of celestial mechanics being supposed to legitimize the terrestrial order according to the good old method of matching what is above and what is below. The Marxists, including the Althusserians and Perry Anderson, analyzed this process of the establishment of the Absolute Monarchy as a process of emergence of the bourgeoisie, damning the pawn to feudalism, still dominant, but subject to the Crown. The unity of the kingdom by the Absolute Monarchy also constituted the first link in the establishment of the National Social Formation which would then assert itself with the dominance of the capitalist mode of production.
Recently, Amedeo Fera in his essay Tommaso Campanella and Gioacchino da Fiore: due utopia a confronto. in https://www.academia.edu/6602375/Campanella_e_Gioacchino_da_Fiore_la_societa_ideale_come_comunita_monastica notes several correspondences between the two great Calabrians, although the general pattern is concentric in Campanella. Among these, we of course include the 3 Ages of Humanity and the different forms of intelligence. Concerning the new desired social organization, he adds: “It is perhaps from this approach that the fundamental idea of the social organization of the City of the Sun stems: a subdivision of work which allows, on the one hand, each citizen to carry out the tasks the most pleasant (or rather natural) and, on the other hand, the participation of each citizen in all types of work, subdivided according to the categories represented by the three collateral principles (Pon, Sin and Mor) which frame the activities. It follows from this subdivision of labor that everyone is engaged in an activity, so that “partendosi l’offizi a tutti e le arti e fatiche, non tocca fatigar quattro ore il giorno per uno” (sharing the offer to all and the arts and recreation, no one will not be required to work more than four hours per day). Once again, it seems that Campanella was inspired by the theological conceptions and the scriptural interpretations of the Calabrian abbot to elaborate his own vision of the perfect society”.
4 ) See my essay on Pythagorean Joachim in: “Short notes on Joachim of Fiore, Pythagorean presented at the conference organized by the Gunesh cultural association”, August 27, 2016, in http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org/short-notes-joachim-of-fiore-pythagorean-presented-at-the-conference-organized-by-the-gunesh-cultural-association-august-27-2016 )
5 ) Same as Note 4 above. All great logicians are easily recognized in that they know how to think by distinguishing distinct categories and opposite categories in order to understand reality in its becoming without confusing model and reality, without confusing true paradoxes and false ones. This distinguishes them from conformist – or scholastic – logicians and their often artificial and static Aristotelian oppositions. For a detailed discussion, I refer to my Methodological Introduction in the Livres-Books section of my old experimental site www.la-commune-paraclet.com. This is how Joachim expresses himself: “I, says the Son, proceed and come from the Father. And the difference between the two is this: whoever is born, proceeds, but the reverse is not true.’’ (Psaltery, p 114) In my Methodological Introduction, after having underlined the difference between distinct and opposites, in presenting the Dialectic of Nature, I also wrote : Man is produced by Nature, but the reverse is not not true. We have seen in this present essay that, for Joachim, the Father refers to Nature which precedes society and conscience.
6 ) see my Methodological Introduction in the Livres-Books section of my old experimental site www.la-commune-paraclet.com
7 ) On and Sibelius an Arian, here is: “Sabelius wanted to expose this problem but his boat ran aground on the pitfalls. And Arian, while trying to avoid this danger, ends up in deep mud. In fact Sabelius says that God is one person, but by his will he is now the Father, now the Son, now the Holy Spirit. Arian, disapproving of this, says that these are three persons, but distinct – and it is blasphemy to claim this – in their essence and their majesty.’’ (Psaltery, p 11) As for the Greeks, the Father alone generates both the Son and the Holy Spirit, thus eliminating the Trinitarian syllogistic becoming. See the presentation of the logical argument against Pierre Lombard in http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org/short-notes-joachim-of-fiore-pythagorean-presented-at-the-conference-organized-by-the-gunesh-cultural-association-august-27-2016 )
8) See my comment on Table XII of Liber figurarum in: http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org/short-notes-joachim-of-fiore-pythagorean-presented-at-the-conference-organized-by-the-gunesh-cultural-association-august-27-2016 )
9 ) On composition of Images, Signs and Ideas, 1991, by Giordano Bruno, see https://www.la-commune-paraclet.com/ItaliaFrame1Source1.htm#vinci
10) “Winstanley drew frequently on local experience when providing examples of the gentry’s failings towards the poor, as when he complained of their exploitation of commons and accused them of interfering whenever the poor “cut Wood, Heather, Turf or Furseys, in places about the Common, where you disallow”. His Cobham experiences must also have provided the basis for the quite subtle analysis of contemporary rural social relations he displays in his Diggers writings – one that differentiated the poor not only from the gentry but also from the “rich Freeholders”, those prosperous yeomen who joined with the gentry in making “the most profit of the Commons, by your over-stocking of them with Sheep and Cattle”, while the poor were left with the smallest share. » (John Gurney, 2013, p 21)
We know that the anti-Althusserian English historian EP Thompson, the same one who claimed to make William Blake the “last of Muggletonians”, the same one who under the guise of academic Marxologism well anchored in “polite culture” – i.e., Burkean tradition – hunted for anything that might resemble Jacobinism or, even worse, Bolshevism, and developed a “cultural” conception of English “secularity”. Let alone his « making of the English working class », in this matter at hand, he recalled that the Blacks – i.e., peasants – in England had at least the right, inherited from the Magna Carta and the Common Law, to be judged before being hanged for petty thefts, particularly on Common lands. Barrington Moore showed how the English Revolution and Restoration caused more deaths than the French or Bolshevik Revolutions. The same applies for the Blacks, or peasants. In fact, without realizing it, this anti-Althusserian pitre, flanked for this work of ideological-theoretical cleansing by Ralph Milliband and others as demonstrated by their coup against New Left Review, illustrated the cynical and bloody class character of bourgeois justice, a subject that, unfortunately, authentic Marxists have somewhat neglected. (See my Pour Marx, contre le nihilisme, 2002, in the Livres-Books Section of my old experimental site www.la-commune-paraclet.com
For the importance of public goods produced and offered by public enterprises supervised by planning and public credit, see the chapter « Biens publics : sauvons ce qui peut encore être sauvé » in Tous ensemble – idem. This chapter was written when Enron was going bankrupt and the Fraser Institute was making its cynical and demagogic proposal ironically christened by me the “British-Columbian model”: namely, since short-term speculative capital cannot finance infrastructures which require long-term immobilised investments, the State must take charge of these projects and then, once completed, pass them on to the private sector for a symbolic dollar in order to assure customers – not beneficiaries or users – the “fair market price”. Here you have it: we are at this « ground zero » level of academic and ethico-political decay.
And this continues with all the chutzpah required in such matters. This deserves to be underlined in the post-Reagan and climatological context in which the “common goods” notion is used in reality to protect private oligopolies while guaranteeing their profits through all kinds of aid, subsidies, grants for carbon certificates and other speculative Green Bonds. . Think global, but – don’t disturb and – act local, by privatizing and without calling into question the imperfect competition conceptualised by Tirole et Co. according to which sovereign States must give way to “private global governance” exercised by stateless transnational oligopolies which will regularly consult their customers with cookies and other such electronic means in order to take their concerns into account as best as possible, without harming their profits. Nothing else is needed! No more « Baby-Bells », too out-dated. Of course, not everyone is a customer, but hey! too bad for them. In addition, “customers”, who are no longer “users” or « beneficiaries » of public services received as citizen’s rights guaranteed by the Constitution, are only worthy of interest if they are solvent…
11) On Paolo Cinanni see: “Cinanni, Paolo: un comunista esemplare calabrese”, 17 luglio 2017, in http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org/cinanni-paolo-un-comunista-esemplare-calabrese-17-luglio-2017 / For the very particular concept of “usi civici” in Sila, and the struggles of the peasants which we mentioned in the text and the problems of post-war mass migration, see P. Cinanni, Lotte per la terra e comunisti in Calabria 1943/1953 and Emigrazione e unità operaia: un problema rvoluzionario. I still have to update my text on the great Calabrian communist by incorporating these two fundamental books. See also : Recensione argomentata del libro di Pino Fabiano « Contadini rivoluzionari del sud: la figura di Rosario Migale nella storia dell’antagonismo politico, Città del Sole Edizioni, March 2011, in http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org/recensione- argomentata-del-libro-pino-fabiano-contadini-rivoluzionari-del-sud-la-figura-rosario-migale-nella-storia-dellantagonismo-politico-citta-del-sole-edizioni-marzo-2011/
12) See “Disoccupazione di massa come orizonte del capitalismo moderno”, in http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org/disoccupazione-di-massa-come-orizonte-del-capitalismo-moderno /
13) Concerning the Precession of the Equinoxes, the Pythagorean Pentagram – and the Great Year of Plato already in the Republic then in the Laws etc. – leave no doubt. (72 x 5 = 360 then 1 degree of arc every 72 years, 72 x 360 = 25,920 years.) In the Cena de le ceneri Giordano Bruno puts Copernicus’ contribution into perspective by recalling that Filolao, contemporary and disciple of Pythagoras, never forgotten in Calabria and Southern Italy, already taught that the Earth revolved around the Sun and that the Sun was not the center of the galaxy. In his latest major work On composition G. Bruno applies the Joachimite theory of concordances but in a scientific manner oriented towards astronomy and its history. As for Galileo, he added that more powerful telescopes would reveal many other celestial objects not excluding life, although probably in other forms.
However, thinking carefully, it seems to me that the astronomical advances of the Ancients since the beginnings of thinking Humanity and at least since the Neolithic and its mega-structures, begin with the organization of the Starry Sky and its movement in relation to the Milky Way – Ouroboros, the circle of time or snake that eats its tail -, and its numerous constellations. The mega-structures were built to resist the wear and tear of time in order to be able to verify astronomical hypotheses for very long durations. The Zodiac, that is to say the few constellations, in fact 12 in the end, all crossed by the apparent movement of the Sun, came later and presents an organization of the Sky and Time which supposes the transition from the lunar calendar to the solar calendar. We do not realize it today because atmospheric pollution, including light, obscures the splendor of the Milky Way in the starry sky on a cloudless night. La Sila, where Joachim built his first abbey in Jure Vetere, still allows you to admire the spectacle today by moving away a little from the town of San Giovanni in Fiore. We note that ancient history, including the narrations of the Old and New Testaments, tells us with a certain precision about the passage of three constellations, Taurus, Aries and Pisces, each passage being associated with a general civilizational step forward. It is not excluded, on the contrary, that our Ancients preceded the Neolithic and prepared its hypotheses and its verification methods. For example at Gobekli Tepe. Thus, the entire Atlantic coast is covered with megaliths – therefore at several latitudes – while we know that the Druids communicated with the Egyptians and that Pythagoras himself was educated in Egypt – probably in Heliopolis, the archive city of the Pharaohs and their predecessors – and in the Indus etc.
However, logically, as soon as you have documented 3 zodiacal passages, it is possible for you to theoretically reconstruct backwards and forwards. The Mayas, Incas and Aztecs did the same. But how does one check if not by building very solid and in a precise alignment? Thus we can hypothesize that the Neolithic monuments surrounded by their ocean-moat – the Milky Way – and also aligned with the winter solstice were built for this kind of double verification. The Great Pyramid, aligned with Orion also points to Sirius, the Egyptians’ flagship star that allowed them to predict the floods of the Nile. The Sky was the great spectacle of our ancestors and they quickly understood its relationship with Nature and the cycles of vegetable, animal and maritime life.
Today, amid general indifference, the tip of Sagittarius’ arrow points towards the Mouth of Ouroboros, a spectacle that lasts a thousand years every 25,920 years more or less. I believe this is where the reference to “a thousand years” comes from, which we often find in ancient mythology, including that of Hercules and Atlas. But we have to check.
14) On the patronymic surname “Fiore” see http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org/short-notes-joachim-of-fiore-pythagorean-presented-at-the-conference-organized-by-the-gunesh-cultural-association-august-27-2016
15) Ironically, the remark comes from the Christian Democrat San Giovannesse author Salvatore Meluso. He developed early an obsession with the history of the Bandiera Brothers, of which his ancestor, a Calabrian from San Giovanni in Fiore, acted as a guide during their patriotic expedition and as one of the two members who betrayed it, the other being a Corsican, Boccheciampe. We are confronted here with a disconcerting personal drama, Salvatore Meluso being at first convinced that his ancestor had played a part, along with the Bandiera, in the vanguard of the patriotic fighters who made the unity of Italy. For him, he was the “face of courage” itself. However, all the texts demonstrate without a shadow of a doubt that, since his infiltration of the expeditionary group before its departure from Corfu on June 13, 1844 towards Calabria to disembark near the mouth of the Neto on June 16, he had been taken in charge by the consulates present in the Island and by the police. He had and will retain the support of the Prince of Cerenzia who will allow him to surrender without danger after his flight, following the bloody capture of the Bandiera, of whom he was the “guide”, at the Col de la Stragola on Mount Gimmella, in San Giovanni in Fiore, on June 19, 1844. As a matter of fact, he had taken refuge in Corfu after a number of villainous crimes of brigandage including the death of man with the support of pro-bourbon notables, their police and militia. He was finally killed on April 2, 1848 after he had typically infiltrated the previously peaceful peasant demonstrations in San Giovanni in Fiore in order to incite them to take violent action, thus allowing open repression by the police. He went there armed and while shouting “Long live the republic”, which was clearly a provocation in the political context of the time, he fired a shot in the direction of the police who had been watching him for some time and who fired back and killed him. This very much resembles the umpteenth action of a provocateur, one armed moreover, and one seeking to provoke a bloodbath among the peasants to discourage the movement demanding back the access to the usurped lands of the Fiore domain.
This is all quite disconcerting and tragic at the same time since the author, a good Calabrian of parody and a demo-christian to boot, does not seem to understand that the faults of the ancestors do not taint their survivors, the guilt being personal under our legal and constitutional order. When he understood that his ancestor was one of the worst brigands and thugs in the country, he spent his time rewriting the history of the expedition by shamelessly denying what the documents do establish without the shadow of a doubt. Calabria numbered many of the worst criminal brigands who had played their part in the horrendous and bloody Vendean Jacquerie organized against the Parthenopean Republic by Cardinal Ruffo. Afterwards – and still today – these bloodthirsty criminals, remained at the service of the police and of the most reactionary pro-Bourbon notables in the country. See, for instance, the portrayal of the hideous brigand « Rivelli, ruffian del re » in L’Amante della rivoluzione: la vera stroai di Luisa Sanfeliice e della Repubblica napoletana del 1799, Mondadori, 1998. In fact, many had taken refuge in the Capuchin convent in San Giovanni in Fiore, quickly spreading their demoniac know-how. Thus, as Lampedusa would say in his Gattopardo, in terms of territorial control, the more things change…
To cite just one example, this author began to carefully twist the necks of the most telling documents, including those from the consulates in Corfu, which not only confirm his infiltration of the group of Patriots, but also the fact that the authorities linked to the Bourbons and their police had been duly warned of the landing and the presence of Meluso among the group of patriots!!! In addition, he tries to deny any desire for a popular uprising in Calabria, the Patriots being thus described as violent fools. In reality, the group accompanying the Bandiera Brothers had finally chosen the landing in Calabria due to the uprising in March 1844 of several dozen patriots from Cosenza and neighboring villages. Unfortunately, these Patriots had been arrested shortly before the landing of the Bandiera who were unaware of this fact and who had chosen to pass through San Giovanni in Fiore on their way to Cosenza in order to make their junction. Mentalities are slowly evolving in San Giovanni in Fiore, a place of permanent abuse against people, domiciles, property and the “civil, peaceful and constructive” democratic opposition groups since the death of Joachim, though through no fault of his … since he had chosen the location of Jure Vetere which he had placed under the auspices of John Evangelist! However, for those who know how to read objectively and between the lines, his books remain valuable works for understanding the History of our City and of “La Sila e la sua gente”
For abuse against people and domiciles, apart from the daily chronicle, see the wall-to-wall institutional complicity of the police-mafia type here: http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org/category/totalitarismo-italiano
For abuses against “civil, peaceful and constructive” democratic citizen groups, see http://rivincitasociale.altervista.org/category/comitato-cittadino-per-il-lavoro-dignitoso/
For the betrayal of Joachim’s message, see: Appunti su Gioacchino da Fiore e San Giovanni in Fiore: Il message, la sua difesa e la sua falsificazione. in https://www.la-commune-paraclet.com/ItaliaFrame1Source1.htm#ITALIA
We understand better why our Country is running on a forced march towards its socio-economic and ethical-political ruin.
6 ) Illustrations: The Tree of the 3 Ages (p 101), The 3 Circles with the 3 inner circles (p 131), The Marble Causeway (p 157), The ruins of Jure Vetere in March 2014
The Tree of the 3 Ages (p 101)
The 3 Circles with the 3 inner circles (p 131)
The Marble Causeway (p 157)
The ruins of Jure Vetere in March 2014