Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/27

 JOACHIM OF FLORA. u Joachim considered himself inspired, and though in 1200 he submitted his works unreservedly to the Holy See, he had no hesi- tation in speaking of them as divinely revealed. During his life- time he enjoyed the reputation of a prophet. When Kichard of England and Philip Augustus were at Messina, they sent for him to inquire as to the outcome of their crusade, and he is said to have foretold to them that the hour had not yet come for the de- liverance of Jerusalem. Others of his fulfilled prophecies are also related, and the mystical character of the apocalyptic speculations which he left behind him served to increase, after his death, his reputation as a seer. His name became one customarily employed for centuries when any dreamer or sharper desired to attract at- tention, and quite a literature of forgeries grew up which were ascribed to him. Somewhat more than a century after his death we find the Dominican Pipino enumerating a long catalogue of his works with the utmost respect for his predictions. In 1319 Bernard Delicieux places unlimited confidence in a prophetical book of Joachim's in which there were representations of all fut- ure popes with inscriptions and symbols under them. Bernard points out the different pontiffs of his own period, predicts the fate of John XXII., and declares that for two hundred years there bad been no mortal to whom so much was revealed as to Joachim. Cola di Bienzo found in the pseudo-prophecies of Joachim the en- couragement that inspired his second attempt to govern Borne. The Franciscan tract De ultima ^Etate Ecclesice, written in 1356, and long ascribed to "Wickliff, expresses the utmost reverence for Joachim, and frequently cites his prophecies. The Liber Con- formitatum, in 1385, quotes repeatedly the prediction ascribed to Joachim as to the foundation of the two Mendicant Orders, sym- bolized in those of the Dove and of the Crow, and the tribulations to which the former was to be exposed. Not long afterwards the hermit Telesforo da Cosenza drew from the same source prophe- cies as to the course and termination of the Great Schism, and the line of future popes until the coming of Antichrist — prophecies which attracted sufficient attention to call for a refutation from Henry of Hesse, one of the leading theologians of the day. Car- dinal Peter d'Ailly speaks with respect of Joachim's prophecies concerning Antichrist, and couples him with the prophetess St. Hildegarda, while the rationalistic Cornelius Agrippa endeavors