The influence of Joachim in Italy and abroad

Joachim's fame spread widely by the end of the XII century and entered the heart of the formative process of European civilization.
Joachim's thoughts have been well assimilated that they have become one of the most frequented crossroads of Western cultural and spiritual tradition.
Joachim of Fiore has to be aknowledged as one of the greatest masters of European civilization. Soon after his death, his message influenced the spiritual Franciscan movement which in turn influenced Dante Alighieri. Joachim of Fiore's new prophetic tension inspired and gave life to the Divine Comedy which Dante filled with Joachim's figures and symbols, Dante also included Joachim's trend for the moral and spiritual reformation of Christianity.

Christopher Columbus, in his writings, very often, appeals to the prophetic authority of the Calabrian Abbot, by connecting his explorations to the evangelization of the last people on earth that, together with the definite recapture of Jerusalem, would have marked the beginning of the third and last age of the world, the Age of the Holy Spirit.
Even the first Spanish Franciscan missionaries of the Observance left Europe driven by Joachim's hope to create, in the new world, that proper Ecclesia Spiritualis (spiritual Church) of the last time of the history of salvation, building up the cultural and spiritual tradition which has not vanished, even today, in South America.

Recently, the iconographic disposition of Michelangelo' frescos in the Sistine Chapel has been unequivocally traced to the concordist geometries of the biblical exegesis and to the symbolic Trinitarian figures of Joachim of Fiore. Michelangelo's theological consultants were, in fact, two important Joachimists of his own time, the Augustinian Cardinal Egidio from Viterbo and the Franciscan theologian Pietro Galatino.

For the exact and complete survey of Joachimism in European culture and literature it is useful to consult the proceedings of the five international Conferences celebrated by the International Center for Joachimist Studies (CISG), and the fundamental work of Henry de Lubac " La postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Fiore", (Jaka Book editor Milano Italy 1984) as well as the well-documented work, published in 1987, by M. Reeves and W. Gould on the influence of Joachim's thought in XIX century European literature. A great revival of rich and innovative studies on Joachim has begun in the XX century, particularly, in the second half of the same century.

The University of Oxford, boasting Marjorie Reeves the most important Joachimist scholar, and the University of London are the most productive Centres for Joachimist studies.

At Berlin and Costanza Universities, and at the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, there are many Joachimists and scholars, one of them being Herbert Grundmann.

In the USA the interest in Joachim, in prophecy and in the Apocalypse is well represented by: Robert E. Lerner at Northwestern University; Bernard McGinn at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago; Stephen Wessley at the York College of Pensylvania; Sandra Zimdars-Swarts at the University of Kansas; Delmo West at the University of Arizona; Randolph Daniel at the University of Kentucky (author of a very useful critical edition of the "Liber Concordie Novi ac Vetris Testamenti").

One of the leading Joachimist scholars, Morton Bloomfield, has taught for years at Harvard. Along with M. Reeves he is the most important scholar of Joachim in British and North American circles.

The bibliography of the XX century reported a remarkable flowering of studies and publications, either in Italy, France, Spain, Portugal and Latin America but, above all, in Mexico.

The major event of the last twenty-years is the significant presence of Joachimist themes not only in qualified magazines, but also in periodicals and daily press, as well as in those widely-circulated papers, even local ones. Articles, references, suggestions, quotations, debates and considerations on papers' literary pages, reviews and reading proposals, have been collected and recorded by the CISG (Centro Internazionale Studi Gioachimiti). There is enough work to show the increasing and understandable fascination that, in the third millennium, the figure of Joachim holds for the contemporary world.