monk. On his return to Calabria, Joachim retired fi rst
to the Cistercian monastery of Sambucina and then to
the monastery of Corazzo, near Catanzaro. There he
professed and was ordained in 1168. Sometime before
1177, he was elected abbot. Joachim found administra-
tion arduous; and when negotiations to have Corazzo
offi cially accepted by the Cistercian order led to a two-
year residence at the Cistercian monastery of Casamari
(1182–1184), he took advantage of the respite to begin
two major works of biblical exegesis. These were Liber
de concordia Novi ac Veteris Testamenti (Book on the
Concordance between the Old and the New Testaments)
and Expositio in Apocalypsim (Exposition of the Apoca-
lypse). Now convinced that exegesis was his real calling,
Joachim turned to the papacy to obtain a release from
administration. When Pope Lucius III took up residence
in nearby Veroli during 1184, Joachim obtained Lucius’s
permission to devote himself to writing for a year and a
half. He received a renewal of this permission from Pope
Urban III in 1186, and another from Pope Clement III in
- Clement also seems to have approved Joachim’s
resignation as abbot of Corazzo, which was now fully
incorporated into the Cistercian order.
In the mid-1180s, Joachim became dissatisfi ed with
the Cistercian life. He moved to a hermitage at Petralata,
and then to San Giovanni in Fiore, in the Sila mountains.
Meanwhile, his reputation as a prophet was growing. In
1191, he was summoned to an interview with Richard I
Coeur de Lion (Lion-Heart) at Messina; later that year
he was summoned to another, with Emperor Henry VI
near Naples. The Cistercian leadership did not approve
of Joachim’s activities, however. In 1192, the order’s
chapter general declared that if Joachim and his com-
panion Ranier of Ponza did not return to Corazzo by
the feast of John the Baptist in 1193, they would be
considered fugitives. Joachim ignored the deadline
and instead founded his own order at Fiore. Again he
turned to the papacy to legitimize his actions. The rule
of Joachim’s new order, based on that of the Cistercians
but more austere, was approved by Pope Celestine III in - Joachim also received a charter for his monastery
and an annual stipend from Emperor Henry VI. The new
order spread rapidly, establishing thirty-eight houses in
Calabria and twenty-two elsewhere within the fi rst few
decades of its existence. But its growth stopped in the
mid-thirteenth century, apparently because of competi-
tion from the Mendicant orders. It was united with the
Cistercian order in 1570.
Joachim died at the Florensian monastery of San
Martino di Giove near Canale. In 1240, his body was
translated to San Giovanni, where it became the center
of a local cult.
Joachim’s fame rests on his novel method of scrip-
tural exegesis. He sought understanding of what he
called concordia—harmony between the Old Testa-
ment and the New Testament, manifested in parallel
events. Joachim described this as “a similarity of equal
proportion between the Old and the New Testaments,
equal, I say, as to number, not as to dignity.” The idea
of concordia had no real precedent in earlier Christian
exegesis. Typology had been used to argue that certain
Old Testament events and fi gures foreshadowed Christ
and that Christ was therefore the fulfi llment of Old Tes-
tament prophecies, but Joachim’s concordia presumed
a steady parallel between Old Testament and Christian
history. Moreover, Joachim treated Christ as one of
many parallel fi gures and events in scriptural concordia,
whereas previous exegetes had seen Christ as the only
fi gure foreshadowed in the Old Testament. It has been
suggested that Joachim’s concordia derived from a
desire, common in the twelfth century, to fi nd meaning
and pattern in human history. In this sense, Joachim’s
exegesis was very much in the spirit of his time.
Joachim believed that three visions had given him
the spiritual insight to perceive scriptural concordia.
His study of concordia revealed, in turn, the patterns of
history. These were overlapping numerical sequences of
events, arranged mainly in twos, threes, and sevens. The
two most important were the synchronous diffi nitio al-
pha and diffi nitio omega. Diffi nitio alpha divided history
into three status or states, corresponding to the persons
of the Trinity and symbolizing the spiritual progress of
humanity. Diffi nitio omega was arranged in two stages
corresponding to the Old Testament on the one hand, and
the New Testament, the Christian era, and a fi nal period
of special spiritual understanding on the other. This
fi nal period would be the completion of the Christian
era. The fi rst status of diffi nitio alpha was marked by
an order of married people and the second by an order
of clerics; the third would be characterized by an order
of monks. This third status would be a time of joyous
contemplation and understanding of the scriptures, in
which the church would become truly spiritual. Joachim
thought that the second status was gradually giving way
to the third in his own rime. On the basis of the pattern
of twos that he saw throughout the Old and New Testa-
ments, he predicted that the church would be led into
the new status by two new orders of spiritual men: one
an order of hermits, the other of preachers. These orders
would not end the Roman church but would, rather,
lead its transition to a higher quality of spiritual life.
There would be a period of peace before the last great
persecution preceding the last judgment.
Joachim subdivided the stages of historical diffi nitio-
nes into lesser overlapping patterns, also numerically
based. For example, the fi rst status featured twelve
patriarchs who founded twelve tribes, the second had
twelve apostles who founded twelve churches, and the
third had twelve great religious who founded twelve
monasteries. Although each set of twelve dominatedJOACHIM OF FIORE