Light and Silence

Among all the Antichrists who will appear in the world two are worse than the others: the one who is denoted by the seventh head and the one denoted by the tail. He who is denoted by the seventh head will come in hidden fashion like John the Baptist, who was not known to be Elias. He who is denoted by the tail will come in open fashion like Elias, who will come openly. The Lord promised one Elias and nonetheless two will come, one of who will be called Elias. God's saints have specifically spoken of one Antichrist and nonetheless there will be two, one of whom will be the Greatest Antichrist.

The devil strives for nothing more than to appear like the Most High in every way possible. Because Jesus Christ came in hidden fashion, Satan himself will do his works hiddenly, that is, signs and false wonders will be designed to seduce even the elect if possible. Because at the end of the world Jesus Christ will come to Judgment in open fashion, so too the devil himself will go forth at the end of the world and will appear openly in the days of Gog.... (140-1)

Though the details are very different, it does, actually, sound kind of like The Late Great Planet Earth, or Left Behind, hardly like the kind of writer 21st-century readers would expect to be a key path toward first revolution and then rationalism. His prediction of great change, indeed the end of the world, around 1260 also hasn't helped his reputation, and much of his work was condemned after his death.

Finding those connections means looking elsewhere in Joachim's works, particularly to his Book of Concordance. His three periods are described in Chapter 3 of the first part of Book 2:

This journey, however, on which we have begun to proceed with God's guidance has a more secure route than our traveler's, because our route is not left to chance as it was when the trip started, but it is guided by the wisdom and teaching of God, which has its inns spaced at regular intervals. These intervals ought to be considered according to diverse modes, broadly and narrowly, that is by distinguishing greater blocks of time, medium blocks, and short blocks, all of which are calculated on the basis of the number of generations and the particular property of a tempus.

For that tempus in which men lived according to the flesh was one block of time, the period that began with Adam and continued up to Christ. This is another tempus in which people live between two poles, that is between the flesh and the spirit. This tempus had its starting point with Elisha, the prophet, or with Josiah, kind of Judah, and has continued to the present time. There is still another tempus in which people live according to the spirit, a tempus that began in the days of Saint Benedict and will continue until the end of the wold. Thus the harvest or the particular property of the first tempus - or as we ought better say of the first status - lasted from Abraham to Zachary, the father of John the Baptist....

The harvest of the third status will last from that generation which was twenty-second from Saint Benedict until the consummation of the age. This status started with Saint Benedict. These status are proposed and shown to us by faith but I know that few will accept them unless manifest reason provides proof. (123-4)

Joachim of Fiore connects these period to the Trinity, using that description to fill in his expectations for these similarly overlapping periods. Chapter 7 lays this out, bringing his story to his present. The description of the third status in particular echoes Tillich's description.

Our statement that three generations ought to be taken as one beginning does not conflict with the sacred mystery of the holy and indivisible Trinity. For if the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not three beginnings but one beginning, this is by reason of a mystery...

Thus the concordia between the three status of the world ought to be assigned to these same orders so that the concordia may not be diverted either to the right or to the left. Even if events are numerous, God has revealed them one after another even up to the third status so that he might show himself to be triune in his persons. If God were one person, we ought not seek three distinct works nor assign the concordia to one of them alone.

Because, in fact, there are three persons, although the three are one God, the Son says about the Father and himself: "My Father is working still, and I am working." (John 5:17) When did the Father work without the Son, or the Son without the Father? But the Son, who made the statement is "working still," wanted the particular properties of the images to be understood. Therefore, just as the likeness of the Father ought to be venerated in those who are called Fathers up to Christ, so in those who have been redeemed by his blood and have been born by means of water and the Holy Spirit we should venerate the image of the Son himself who has wanted to have brothers on earth (although he is Lord of all and Creator of the universe) in order that he should be, as Paul says, "the first-born of many brothers." (Romans 8:29)

When in fact the apostles had performed baptisms already, the same Lord and Redeemer said: "You will be baptized by the Holy Spirit before many days." (Acts 1:25) Hence the work of the Holy Spirit will be revealed after these things in the spiritual men. This revelation, although it will have been foreshadowed in some persons, ought to be expected chiefly near the end of the age, when that promise of the Lord which has begun in a few will be consummated in many.

This is the promise of the prophet Joel who said "It will happen in the last days that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters will prophesy." (Joel 2:28) But enough has been said on these matters for now. (126-7, paragraph breaks added)

Jaroslav Pelikan expands on Joachim's perspective and its larger meaning a bit in his The Growth of Medieval Theology (600-1300):

The vision of a new spiritual church that was yet to be did not invalidate the institutional church that had preceded it. The older form of the church was like John the Baptist, worthy of respect even though it was being superseded. "For even if, with the substitution of the things that are new, the things that are old were to pass away, this was not as though these things had not in their own time been instituted by God for righteousness, but rather because lesser things are to be left behind so that more powerful mysteries might be given to the faithful for their salvation. A "new [form of] religion, which will be altogether free and spiritual," was to replace the obsolete "ecclesiastical order, which struggles over the letter of the Gospel."

As Christ rose from the dead on the third day, so in this third age of history the church would be raised. What would rise, as from the grave of the old church, was a new "spiritual church," into which the true "lovers of Christ" would pass over just as some Jews, those who had believed in Christ, had passed over from the synagogue to the church; in this restored spiritual church all the Jews would finally be converted to Christ.

With "the coming again of the Lord in the Holy Spirit," there would come a basic change of attitude, for in the spiritual church "men will cease being zealous for those institutions that have been established temporarily [pro tempore et ad tempus]." Thus there would have to arise "a new leader, a universal pontiff of the new Jerusalem" which would seem to mean quite explicitly "that the papacy it has had hitherto cannot continue and cannot even provide from within itself the spiritual leaders of the future." Even the sacraments of the church would be replaced, just as they in their turn had replaced the observances of the Old Testament. The institutional church would be transformed into the spiritual church, and the kingdoms of this world would yield to the kingdom of God. (302-3)

The idea of the Holy Spirit breaking through in a new spiritual church was a deeply disruptive notion. The beliefs that the Kingdom is at hand, and the Spirit accessible to all, often give people the motivation they need to take on what seem like classically lost causes. Peasants rise against their masters, or sects declare themselves separate from the world, or religious orders challenge their hierarchies.

Umberto Eco's narrator, Adso of Melk, tells one story of the challenges such viewpoints helped support in The Name of the Rose:

Saint Francis had appeared, spreading a love of poverty that did not contradict the precepts of the church...

many of those monks of Saint Francis were opposed to the Rule that the order had established, and they said the order had by now assumed the character of those eccelesiastical institutions it had come into the world to reform...

Many of them rediscovered then a book written at the beginning of the twelfth century of our era, by a Cistercian monk named Joachim, to whom the spirit of prophecy was attributed. He had in fact foreseen the advent of a new age, in which the spirit of Christ, long corrupted through the actions of his false apostles, would again be achieved on earth. And he had announced certain future events in a way that made it clear to all that, unawares, he was speaking of the Franciscan order. And therefore many Franciscans had greatly rejoiced, even excessively, it seems, because then, around the middle of the century, the doctors of the Sorbonne condemned the teaching of that abbot Joachim...

But I was speaking of the heresy (if such it was) of the Joachimites. And in Tuscany there was a Franciscan, Gerard of Borgo San Donnino, who repeated the predictions of Joachim and made a deep impression on the Minorites.... some monks in the Marches rebelled... Among these freed prisoners there was one, Angelenus Clarenus, who then met a monk from Provence, Pierre Olieu, who preached the prophecies of Joachim, and then he met Ubertino of Casale, and in this way the movement of the Spirituals originated. In those years, a most holy hermit rose to the papal throne, Peter of Murrone, who reigned as Celestine V; and he was welcomed by the Spirituals. "A saint will appear," it has been said, "and he will follow the teachings of Christ, he will live an angelic life: tremble, ye corrupt priests." Perhaps Celestine's life was too angelic, or the prelates around him were too corrupt... Celestine resigned his through and retired to a hermitage. But in the brief period of his reign, less than a year, the hopes of the Spirituals were all fulfilled. (49-51)

Celestine's retirement left the Spirituals in a difficult place, forming the background to Eco's book, and Ubertino shortly afterward gets to speak for himself:

"The abbot Joachim spoke the truth, you know. We have reached the sixth era of human history, when two Antichrists will appear, the mystic Antichrist and the Antichrist proper. This is happening now, in the sixth era, after Francis appeared to receive in his own flesh the five wounds of Jesus Crucified. Boniface was the mystic Antichrist, and the abdication of Celestine was not valid. Boniface was the beast that rises up from the sea whose seven heads represent the offenses to the deadly sins and whose ten horns the offenses to the commandments, and the cardinals who surrounded him were the locusts, whose body is Apollyon! But the number of beast, if you read the name in Greek letters, is Benedicti!"

He stared at me to see whether I had understood, and he raised a finger, cautioning me: "Benedict XI was the Antichrist proper, the beast that rises up from the earth! God allowed such a monster of vice and iniquity to govern his church so that his successor's virtues would blaze with glory!"

"But Sainted Father," I replied in a faint voice, summoning my courage, "his successor is John!"

Ubertino put a hand to his brow as if to dismiss a troublesome dream. He was breathing with difficulty; he was tired. "True, the calculations were wrong, we are still awaiting the Angelic Pope." (62)

Eco leads his readers back to the purely apocalyptic vision, interpreting Revelation to attempt to predict what will happen - and, as usually seems to be the result, failing. It's hard to imagine how Ubertino and William of Baskerville, the rationalist hero of the book, could be in the same order, much less friends. An earlier argument, though, suggests that they are both mystics, if mystics of different sorts:

"Wasn't it your Angela of Foligno who told of that day when her spirit was transported and she found herself in the sepulcher of Christ? Didn't she tell how first she kissed his breast and saw him lying with his eyes closed, then she kissed his mouth, and there rose from those lips an ineffable sweetness, and after a brief pause she lay her cheek against the cheek of Christ and Christ put his hand to her cheek and pressed her to him and - as she said - her happiness became sublime? ..."

What does this have to do with the urge of the senses?" Ubertino asked. "It was a mystical experience, and the body was our Lord's."

"Perhaps I am accustomed to Oxford," William said, "where even mystical experience was of another sort..."

"All in the head." Ubertino smiled.

"Or in the eyes. God perceived as light, in the rays of the sun, the images of mirrors, the diffusion of colors over the parts of ordered matter, in the reflections of daylight on wet leaves... Isn't this love closer to Francis's when he praises God in His creatures, flowers, grass, water, air? I don't believe this type of love can produce any snare. Whereas I'm suspicious of the love that transmutes into a colloquy with the Almighty the shudders felt in fleshly contacts. (58)

William of Baskerville is a mystic - but a mystic of a very different stripe from Ubertino. Eco has placed a character into his story with the perspective of what is to come centuries later. William does, of course, act as something of a tour guide for modern readers, providing an easier perspective to enjoy, and a buffer against the unvarnished medievalisms of the other characters. Adso, the narrator, appreciates both William's scientific approaches and the piety of Ubertino and the others, and isn't a Franciscan himself.

I wondered if Eco might have chosen the Franciscans for having both of these mystical approaches within a single order, and he seems to confirm that in his Postscript to the Name of the Rose, though he shows no sign of believing that Joachim is a key driver for both sides of the order:

One element of my world was history, and that is why I read and reread so many medieval chronicles; and as I read them, I realized that the novel had to include things that, in the beginning, had never crossed my mind, such as the debate over poverty and the Inquisition's hostility toward the Fraticelli.

For example: why are the fourteenth-century Fraticelli in my book? If I had to write a medieval story, I ought to have set it in the twelfth or thirteenth century, because I know them better than the fourteenth.

But I needed an investigator, English if possible (intertextual quotation), with a great gift of observation and a special sensitivity in interpreting evidence. These qualities could be found only among the Franciscans, and only after Roger Bacon; furthermore, we find a developed theory of signs only with the Occamites. Or, rather, it existed before, but either the interpretation of signs then was of a symbolic nature or else it tended to read ideas and notions in signs. It is only between Bacon and Occam that signs are used to acquire knowledge of individuals. So I had to set the story in the fourteenth century - much to my irritation, because I could not move easily in that period.

More reading ensued, with the discovery that a fourteenth-century Franciscan, even an Englishman, could not ignore the debate about poverty, especially if he was a friend, follower, or acquaintance of Occam. (I might add that initially the investigator was to have been Occam himself, but I gave up that idea. because I do not find the Venerable Inceptor very attractive as a human being.) (514).

Eco found himself drawn to a point in history where the Franciscans offered both his rational investigator and a broader religious framework that supported all kinds of support for that investigator.

What does this have to do with Quakerism, beyond Tillich's brief mention?

Could Eco have written a similar novel set in, say, England during the 1650s? I believe he could have, and Quakers would have provided him similarly fertile intellectual ground, though none of the rich church ornamentation he lingers on in The Name of the Rose.

After reading it and waiting a year or more to gather more background, I think I'm finally ready to start talking about about Gwyn's Apocalypse of the Word. Gwyn emphasizes the importance of Revelation in early Quaker thought, showing how Quaker spiritual breakthroughs - "Christ is come to teach his people himself" - found amidst the chaos of the English Civil War and Restoration draw on a deep belief in eschatology.

(Please note that I'm not arguing that Quakerism descends from Joachim's thought - just that it follows a somewhat parallel path, much as Tillich suggests, and that we find a lot worth learning by examining the earlier path. I suspect that Joachim's ideas were well-known in England at various times, and might have contributed to the centuries' worth of religious ferment that preceded the Quakers, but any connections are likely indirect at best.)