Joachim of Fiore

Just like it was easy 30 years ago with the Branch Davidians, or with the fiery visions of Anne Wentworth in 17th-century England, or the followers of Joachim of Fiore in medieval Italy.

We shall have occasion to recur to this, and need only say here that a section of the Franciscans were strongly inclined to the mysticism which now began to show itself, and that the writings of Abbot Joachim of Fiore, now revived and hardily developed, predicted the downfall, in 1260, of the existing order of things in Church and State, the substitution of a new evangel for that of Christ, and the replacement of the hierarchy by mendicant monachism.