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End Time at Hand: Innocent III, Joachim of Fiore, and the Fourth Crusade

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Book cover The End of the World in Medieval Thought and Spirituality

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Abstract

Scholarly defenders of the orthodoxy of the Calabrian abbot Joachim of Fiore (d.1202) present him as a conventional monastic theologian and exegete of his time. The fact that Pope Innocent III (1198–1216) cited Joachim’s commentary on the Book of Revelation in a letter written in October 1204, they argue, placed a papal seal of approval on Joachim’s thought. A critique of that position, this paper shows that Joachim’s exegesis of Revelation was far less mainstream than has been maintained, and that, far from identifying Innocent as a paid-up Joachite, his letter of 1204 was a one-shot rhetorical ploy, swiftly abandoned, and best understood in the context of the politics of the Fourth Crusade and in the light of what Innocent says on the same themes in other contexts.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Joachim of Fiore, Enchiridion Super Apocalypsim, ed. Edward Kilian Burger (Toronto: PIMS, 1986), 1–3; Joachim of Fiore, Introduzione all’Apocalisse, ed. Kurt-Victor Selge, trans. Gian Luca Potestà (Rome: Viella, 1995), 9–14; Joachim of Fiore, Expositio in Apocalypsim (Venice, 1527, repr. Frankfurt: Minerva GMBH, 1964). The best recent treatments of Joachim’s career are Giorgio Picasso, “Gioacchino e i cistercensi,” in Gioacchino da Fiore tra Bernardo di Clairvaux e Innocenzo III, Atti del 5º congresso internazionale di studi gioacchimiti, San Giovanni in Fiore, 16–21 settembre 1999, ed. Roberto Rusconi (Rome: Viella, 2001), 93–101; Bernard McGinn, “Joachim of Fiore and the Twelfth-Century Papacy,” in Joachim of Fiore and the Influence of Inspiration: Essays in Memory of Marjorie E. Reeves (1905–2003), ed. Julia Eva Wannenmacher (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 15–34 at 19–21. For a reading of Joachim on Apocalypse with a different thematic focus and emphasis see McGinn, “Apocalypticism and Mysticism in Joachim of Fiore’s Expositio in Apocalypsim,” at 163–196 in the present volume. Here and elsewhere in this paper, biblical quotations in English are drawn from the RSV.

  2. 2.

    Joachim of Fiore, Expositio, 154rb–154vb.

  3. 3.

    Expositio , 154vb: “Inde est quod dei filius in die resurrectionis sue primo apparuit Marie Magdalene.”

  4. 4.

    Expositio , 143rb–145vb. Cf. Joachim, Enchiridion, 22, 29, 50–51, 54, 67, 89 on the early acceptance of the Christian message by (some) Jews and by the Greeks, who both now err. Neither in this text nor in his Introduzione does he refer to the Magdalene-Peter-John account.

  5. 5.

    See, in general, Richard Marsden, “Introduction,” in The New Cambridge History of the Bible, ed. Richard Marsden and E. Ann Matter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 2:1–16 at 9–10; Nigel Morgan, “Latin and Vernacular Apocalypses,” in ibid., 2:404–26; and James T. Palmer, The Apocalypse in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

  6. 6.

    For a useful summary of her seminal contribution to this position, see Marjorie Reeves, “The Originality and Influence of Joachim of Fiore,” Traditio 36 (1980): 269–316 at 269–88. More recently, treating Joachim’s exegesis as completely traditional, coupled with a review of scholarship on this point and an appeal for his canonization on the eighth centenary of his death, see Fabio Troncarelli, Gioacchino da Fiore: La vita, il pensiero, le opere (Rome: Viella, 2002), 37–42.

  7. 7.

    E. Randolph Daniel, “Abbot Joachim of Fiore, a Reformist Apocalyptic,” in Fearful Hope: Approaching the New Millennium, ed. Christopher Kleinhenz and Fannie J. LeMoine (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), 207–10; idem, “A New Understanding of Joachim: The Concords, the Exile, and the Exodus,” in Gioacchino da Fiore tra Bernardo di Clairvaux e Innocenzo III, Atti del 5º congresso internazionale di studi gioacchimiti, San Giovanni in Fiore, 16–21 settembre 1999, ed. Roberto Rusconi (Rome: Viella, 2001), 209–22. This position would appear to modify Daniel’s earlier view that Joachim’s apocalypticism was “truly innovative,” as in idem, “Joachim of Fiore: Patterns of History in the Apocalypse,” in The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed. Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 72–88; quotation at 83.

  8. 8.

    For Joachim’s immediate predecessors, see Guy Lobrichon, “Stalking the Signs: The Apocalypse Commentaries,” in The Apocalyptic Year 1000: Religious Expectation and Social Change, 950–1050, ed. Richard Landes, Andrew Gow, and David C. Van Meter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 67–79; idem, “Les commentaires sur l’Apocalypse du prétendu ‘siècle obscur’ jusque vers 1100,” in Tot sacramenta quot verba: Zur Kommentierung der Apokalypse des Johannes von den Anfängen bis ins 12. Jahrhundert, ed. Konrad Huber, Rainer Klotz, and Christoph Winterer (Münster: Aschendorff, 2014), 195–213.

  9. 9.

    Bernard McGinn, The Calabrian Abbot: Joachim of Fiore in the History of Western Thought (New York: Macmillan, 1985), 51–97; idem, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages, rev. ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 126–41; idem, “Ratio and visio: Reflections on Joachim of Fiore’s Place in Twelfth-Century Theology,” in Gioacchino da Fiore tra Bernardo di Clairvaux e Innocenzo III, Atti del 5º congresso internazionale di studi gioacchimiti, San Giovanni in Fiore, 16–21 settembre 1999, ed. Roberto Rusconi (Rome: Viella, 2001), 27–39; and John Van Engen, “Medieval Monks on Labor and Leisure,” in Faithful Narratives: Historians, Religion, and the Challenge of Objectivity, ed. Andrea Sterk and Nina Caputo (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014), 47–62 at 59–61.

  10. 10.

    Ferruccio Gastaldelli, “Goffredo di Auxerre e Gioacchino da Fiore: Testi e personaggi a confronto,” in Studi su San Bernardo e Goffredo di Auxerre (Florence: SISMEL Edizioni di Galluzzo, 2001), 375–422; Picasso, “Gioacchino e i cistercensi,” 97–98; see also Kurt-Viktor Selge, “L’origine delle opere di Gioacchino da Fiore,” in L’attesa della fine dei tempi nel medioevo, ed. Ovidio Capitani and Jürgen Miethke (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990), 87–131 at 107–8, 123–24, all of whom focus on the critique of Geoffrey of Auxerre. Cf. Julia Eva Wannenmacher, “Ein Wandel in der Auslegung der Apokalypse durch Joachim von Fiore?” in Tot sacramenta quot verba: Zur Kommentierung der Apokalypse des Johannes von den Anfängen bis ins 12. Jahrhundert, ed. Konrad Huber, Rainer Klotz, and Christoph Winterer (Münster: Aschendorff, 2014), 289–310, who roots Joachim’s exegetical innovations in his reappropriation of Tyconius, with his own eschatological twist, seen as prophetic in his own day by both supporters and detractors. For the Premonstratensians, see Carol Neel, “Man’s Restoration: Robert of Auxerre and the Writing of History in the Early Thirteenth Century,” Traditio 44 (1988): 253–74 at 271–74; Robert (†1211) was “dubious about Joachim’s chiliasm,” at 273.

  11. 11.

    Brett Edward Whalen, Dominion of God: Christendom and Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), at 9–41 for the pre-Joachim background, at 100–24 for Joachim, his use of the Fourth Gospel, and his treatment of Judaism; quotation at 102. For other insights on Joachim and the Jews, see Beatrice Hirsch-Reich, “Joachim von Fiore und das Judentum,” in Judentum im Mittelalter: Beiträge zum christlich-jüdischen Gespräch, ed. Paul Wilpert (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 1966), 228–63, who focuses on Geoffrey of Auxerre’s canard that Joachim was a Judaizer or of Jewish extraction owing to his emphasis on the continuities between the Old and New Testaments; and Anna Sapir Abulafia, “The Bible in Jewish-Christian Dialogue,” in The New Cambridge History of the Bible, ed. Richard Marsden and E. Ann Matter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 2:616–37 at 626–27, who notes that, while Joachim thought that the finding of common ground between Christian and Jewish understandings of the Old Testament would hasten the arrival of the End Time and the conversion of the Jews, he offered no specific strategy for achieving it.

  12. 12.

    Biblia Latina cum glossa ordinaria, ed. Karlfried Froelich and Margaret T. Gibson, 4 vols. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992 [repr. of Strasbourg: Adolph Rusch, 1480–81]), 4:547–78. See Wilhelm Kamlah, Apokalypse und Geschichtstheologie: Die mittelalterliche Auslegung der Apokalypse vor Joachim von Fiore (Berlin: Emil Ebering, 1935), 7–38; Guy Lobrichon, “Un nouveauté: Les gloses de la Bible,” in Le moyen âge et la Bible, ed. Pierre Riché and Guy Lobrichon (Paris: Beauchesne, 1984), 95–114; both accent features of the Glossa ordinaria that differentiate it from Joachim on Revelation. For another approach to that contrast, cf. Robert E. Lerner, “The Medieval Return to the Thousand-Year Sabbath,” in The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed. Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 51–71.

  13. 13.

    On the range of saintly and patronal functions ascribed to Mary Magdalene in the Middle Ages, see Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, trans. William Granger Ryan, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 1:379–83 (no. 96); Katherine Ludwig Jansen, The Making of the Magdalene: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); for the Cistercians’ promotion of her cult and specific “take” on her, see Alcuin Scarcez, “The Proto-Cistercian Office for Mary Magdalene and Its Changes in the Course of the Twelfth Century,” in Mary Magdalene in Medieval Culture: Conflicted Roles, ed. Peter V. Loewen and Robin Waugh (New York: Routledge, 2014), 51–74. On the Quem quaeritis plays, the most exhaustive resource remains Karl Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), 1:201–410; see also Ronald W. Vinge, A Companion to the Medieval Theatre (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989), xiv, 26, 40–41, 65, 66, 118, 172, 209–10, 294; he notes that “the Easter Quem quaeritis trope gave rise to the largest body of extant liturgical plays,” at 210; Peter Martin, ed., “Latin Liturgical Drama,” in The Medieval Stage, 500–1500, ed. William Tydeman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 53–98 at 81–98, 133–34.

  14. 14.

    Noted by Young, Drama, 1:278, 280–81, 283–84, 295–97, 317–68, 385; Martin, “Latin Liturgical Drama,” 82.

  15. 15.

    Examples with this identical wording are cited by Young, Drama, 1:278, 280–81, 283–84, 295–97, 317–68, 385; E. K. Chambers, The Medieval Stage, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1903), 2:317 first flagged the use of these formulae in a fourteenth-century Dublin version.

  16. 16.

    Thus, ignoring Émile Mâle, Religious Art from the Twelfth to the Eighteenth Century (New York: Noonday Press, 1958), 26–27, who suggests liturgical drama as a source for iconography, Jane Geddes, The St. Albans Psalter: A Book for Christina of Markyate (London: British Library, 2005), 20 and 55; Kristin Collins, Peter Kidd, and Nancy K. Turner, The St. Albans Psalter: Painting and Prayer in Medieval England (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2013), 29. At 36 n. 61 Collins and her associates note only three possible models in western art for the images in their MS, a Romanesque cloister capital from Pamplona now in the Museo de Navarra, the Casket of Paschal I (817–24) now in the Vatican Museum, and the Uta Codex (ca. 1025), now Munich Staatsbibliothek Clm. 13601 at fol. 41. Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, “From Apostola Apostolorum to Provençal Evangelist: On the Evolution of a Medieval Motif for Mary Magdalene,” in Mary Magdalene in Medieval Culture: Conflicted Roles, ed. Peter V. Loewen and Robin Waugh (New York: Routledge, 2014), 160–80 at 168–79 notes that visual representations of the tomb scene, in the earliest Christian art, are all Byzantine and always depict the Magdalene as part of a group of women, never alone. Also regarded as iconographically innovative, with the St. Albans Psalter as its only hypothetical model, is the German MS here discussed, on which see Elizabeth Monroe, “Mary Magdalene as a Model of Devotion, Penitence, and Authority in the Gospels of Henry the Lion and Matilda ,” in ibid., 99–115. While Henry II of England made two grants to St. Albans in person and could have seen the Psalter, there is no evidence that Matilda visited St. Albans before her marriage in 1168 or that she and the Henry the Lion did so during their stay at Henry II’s court between 1182 and 1185. On these travels see Nicholas Vincent, “The Pilgrimages of the Angevin Kings of England, 1154–1272,” in Pilgrimage: The English Experience from Becket to Bunyan, ed. Colin Morris and Peter Roberts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 12–45 at 20; Colette Bowie, The Daughters of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 35–39, 52, 53, 103–5. The possible connection between St. Albans and Helmarshausen is speculative. Henry the Lion and Matilda donated the Gospels to the church of St. Blaise, Brunswick, in 1188. Since Thomas Becket is depicted in its illuminations, they were likely designed after 1173, when he was canonized. For alternate datings, given by some scholars as 1185–88 after Henry and Matilda returned to Germany, see Richard Gameson, “The Early Imagery of Thomas Becket,” in Pilgrimages (as above), 46–89 at 52; Bowie, Daughters, 157.

  17. 17.

    Geddes, St. Albans Psalter, 54–55, plates 41 and 42, reproducing Hildesheim Dombibliothek MS. St. Godehard 1, fols. 50 and 51.

  18. 18.

    Monroe, “Mary Magdalene,” 101, 102–5, 106, 108, and plate 99, reproducing Wolfenbüttl Herzog August Bibliothek Cod. Guelf. Noviss. 2º, fol. 74v for the three Marys at the tomb and fol. 171r for the Magdalene’s encounter with the risen Christ and report to the disciples. At 109, Monroe argues for the St. Albans Psalter as a possible source despite the differences between the Magdalene’s images in these two MSS which she herself notes. She does not address the problem of access to the Psalter by the Gospel’s artist or patrons; cf. the literature cited in n. 16 above.

  19. 19.

    From a large bibliography on this subject see, for example, André Vauchez, “Les composantes eschatologiques de l’idée de croisade,” in Le concile de Clermont de 1095 et l’appel à la croisade, Actes du colloque universitaire international de Clermont-Ferrand (23–25 juin 1995) organisé et publié avec le concours du Conseil Régionale d’Auvergne (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1997), 233–43; Jean Flori, L’Islam et la fin des temps: L’intérprétation prophétique des invasions musulmans (Paris: Seuil, 2007), 234–95, 410–11; idem, Prêcher la croisade, XIe-XIIIe siècle: Communication et propagande (Paris: Perrin, 2012); idem, “Jerusalem terrestre, céleste et spirituelle: Trois facteurs de sacralisation de la première croisade,” in Jerusalem the Golden: The Origins and Impact of the First Crusade, ed. Susan B. Edgington and Luis García-Guijario (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 25–50; and Jay Rubenstein, Armies of Heaven: The First Crusade and the Quest for Apocalypse (New York: Basic Books, 2011). Whalen, Dominion of God, 42–49 stresses more heavily than other scholars the link between this issue and the centralizing efforts of the papacy.

  20. 20.

    E. Randolph Daniel, “Apocalyptic Conversion: The Joachite Alternative to the Crusades,” Traditio 25 (1969): 127–54; repr. in idem, Abbot Joachim of Fiore and Joachism (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 11; Flori, L’Islam, 308–12, although he calls Joachim’s message to Richard “très classique,” at 310. Less classic was Joachim’s detailed knowledge of Islam and the politics of the Near East noted by Alexander Patschovsky, “Semantics of Mohammed and Islam in Joachim of Fiore,” in Conflict and Religious Conversation in Latin Christendom: Essays in Honour of Ora Limor, ed. Israel Jacob Yuval and Ram Ben-Shalom (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 115–31. Whalen, Dominion of God, 116–18, 123 notes Joachim’s ambivalence on crusading; Penny J. Cole, Preaching the Crusade to the Holy Land, 1095–1220 (Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1991), 86–87 notes the objections of Richard’s advisors to Joachim’s ideas.

  21. 21.

    On Rainer’s biography, writings, connections with Joachim, career in Innocent’s curia, and presumed influence on him, see Bruno Griesser, “Rainer von Fossanova und sein Brief an Abt Arnald von Cîteaux,” Cistercienser Chronik 60 (1953): 151–67, with the text of the letter at 163–66; Herbert Grundmann, “Per la biographia di Gioacchino da Fiore e Raniero da Ponza,” in Gioacchino da Fiore: Vita e opere, ed. Gian Luca Potestà, trans. Sergio Sorrentino (Rome: Viella, 1997 [first pub. 1950]), 107–20; Fiona Robb, “Joachimist Exegesis in the Theology of Innocent III and Rainier of Ponza,” Florensia 11 (1997): 137–52 at 139–44; Christoph Egger, “Joachim von Fiore, Rainer von Ponza und die römische Kurie,” in Gioacchino da Fiore tra Bernardo di Clairvaux e Innocenzo III, Atti del 5º congresso internazionale di studi gioacchimiti, San Giovanni in Fiore, 16–21 settembre 1999, ed. Roberto Rusconi (Rome: Viella, 2001), 129–62 at 136–37; Troncarelli, Gioacchino, 32–33; Marco Rainini, Disegni dei tempi: Il “ Liber Figurarum ” e la teologia figurativa di Gioacchino da Fiore (Rome: Viella, 2006), 162–63, 202–4, 233; idem, Il profeta del papa: Vita e memoria di Raniero da Ponza, eremita di curia (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2016), 13–57, 60–75, 121–23, which also prints the letter to Arnold of Cîteaux at 131–37. Those rejecting the claim that Rainer was Innocent’s confessor include Griesser, “Rainer von Fossanova,” 157; Grundmann, “Per la biografia,” 112; Robb, “Joachimist Exegesis,” 139–40, reversing the position taken in eadem, “Who Hath Taken the Better Part? (Luke 10,42): Pope Innocent III and Joachim of Fiore on the Diverse Forms of the Religious Life,” in Monastic Studies, ed. Judith Loades, 2 vols. (Bangor, UK: Headstart Victory, 1991), 2:157–70 at 160–61, 165–68. Cf. Brenda Bolton, “Innocent III’s Providential Path,” in Innocenzo III: Urbs et orbis, Atti del congresso internazionale, Roma, 9–15 settembre 1998, ed. Andrea Sommerlechner, 2 vols., Miscellanea della Società Romana di Storia Patri 44 (Rome: Presso la Società alla Biblioteca Vallicelliana, 2003), 1:21–55; at 43–44 Bolton seems to be alone in arguing that it was Bernard of Clairvaux, not Joachim, whose ideas Rainer mediated to Innocent.

  22. 22.

    Grundmann, “Per la biografia,” 120.

  23. 23.

    Joachim of Fiore, Psalterium decem chordarum, ed. Kurt-Victor Selge, MGH, Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 20 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2009), xxiii–xxiv.

  24. 24.

    Among the strongest proponents of this view are Alfred J. Andrea, ed. and trans., Contemporary Sources for the Fourth Crusade (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 116, 131; idem, “Innocent III, the Fourth Crusade, and the Coming Apocalypse,” in The Medieval Crusade, ed. Susan Ridyard (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2004), 97–106; Troncarelli, Gioacchino, 32; John C. Moore, Innocent III (1160/61–1216): To Root up and to Plant (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 133–39, 254; Flori, L’Islam, 314–28; idem, Prêcher la croisade, 203–4; Whalen, Dominion of God, 100–48, where he proposes that Joachim derived his ideas from papal apocalypticism, not vice versa; idem, The Medieval Papacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 138; McGinn, “Joachim of Fiore and the Twelfth-Century Papacy,” 21–22.

  25. 25.

    Without trying to exhaust the extensive bibliography on the Fourth Crusade, particularly helpful recent accounts accenting Innocent’s abortive efforts to proclaim and assert papal control over it include Cole, Preaching the Crusades, 80–84; Werner Maleczek, Pietro Capuano: Patrizio amalfitano, cardinale, legata alla quarta crociera, teologo (†1214), trans. Fulvio Delle Donne (Amalfi: Centro di Cultura e Storia Amalfitana, 1997), 9, 74–89, 103–220; Donald E. Queller and Thomas F. Madden, The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 1, 2–4, 8, 48, 49, 52, 101, 103, 174, 207, 233, although they do not take the story beyond the coronation of Baldwin; Jonathan Phillips, The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople (London: Jonathan Cape, 2004), passim with a good summary at 298–303, although he thinks that Innocent did not really want to rule out the participation of kings; Andrea, Contemporary Sources, 5–176 in comments on documents largely taken from Innocent’s Registers; Alfred J. Andrea and John C. Moore, “A Question of Character: Two Views on Innocent III and the Fourth Crusade,” in Innocenzo III: Urbs et orbis, Atti del congresso internazionale, Roma, 9–15 settembre 1998, ed. Andrea Sommerlechner, 2 vols., Miscellanea della Società Romana di Storia Patri 44 (Rome: Presso la Società alla Biblioteca Vallicelliana, 2003), 1:525–85, with useful historiography.

  26. 26.

    Innocent III to Alexius IV, February 1204, in Die Register Innocenz’ III, ed. Othmar Hageneder et al., 13 vols. to date (Vienna: Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1974–2015), 6:228. Subsequent references to Innocent’s letters will cite them by volume and item numbers, with pagination given in the case of quotations.

  27. 27.

    Andrea, Contemporary Sources, 99 gives a rhetorical analysis of the letter, for which see Reg. 7:152.

  28. 28.

    Reg. 7:152, 257: “Obedientiam autem Romanae ecclesie et subventionem Terre sancte, quam iuramento et scripto imperiali firmarat Alexius, adeo refutavit, ut vitam amittere preeligeret Greciamque subverti, quam quod Latinis pontificibus orientalis ecclesia subderetur.” Trans. Andrea, Contemporary Sources, 104–5. This translation of passages quoted from Innocent’s letters will be cited unless otherwise noted.

  29. 29.

    Reg. 7:152, 259: “Aderant incole Terre sancte, ecclesiastice militaresque persone, quorum pre omnibus inestimabilis erat et gratulabunda letitia, exhibitumque Deo gratius obsequium asserebant, quam si civitas sancta Christanis esset cultibus restituta …” Trans. Andrea, 108.

  30. 30.

    Reg. 7:152, 260: “nobiles et ignobiles cuiuslibet conditionis aut sexus eisdem desiderii accentos … proposita venientes omnibus apostolica indulgentia nobis et imperio nostro aut temporaliter aut perpetuo fideliter servituris.” Trans. Andrea, 110.

  31. 31.

    Reg. 7:153, 263: “ut ad defendendum et retinendum Constantinopolitanum imperium …” Trans. Andrea, 114.

  32. 32.

    Reg. 7:153, 263: “quatinus Grecorum ecclesiam in Constantinopolitanum imperium, quod ad invocationem apostolice sedis gratia tibi divina subiecit, in ipsius obedientia studeas conservare …” Trans. Andrea, 115.

  33. 33.

    On this issue, see Christoph Egger, “Papst Innocenz III als Theologe,” Archivum Historiae Pontificae 30 (1992): 55–123 at 113–17; Atria A. Larson, Master of Penance: Gratian and the Development of Penitential Thought and Law in the Twelfth Century (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014), 455–60, 468, with a review of the literature at 455 n. 39.

  34. 34.

    For alternative assessments of Innocent’s attitude, cf. Andrea, Contemporary Documents, 115, opting for an enthusiastic conversion marked by the letter’s “exuberant style” and Nikolaus G. Chrissis, Crusading in Frankish Greece: A Study of Relations and Attitudes, 1204–1282 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), 2–15, 45–51, 95, who reads it as devious self-promoting rhetoric.

  35. 35.

    Reg. 7:154, 264–70, quotation at 264: “Constantinopolitanum imperium a superbis ad humiles, ab inobedientibus ad devotos, a scismaticis ad catholicos, a Grecis videlicet transtulit ad Latinos.” Trans. Andrea, 116–17.

  36. 36.

    Reg. 7:154, 265: “Petrus unam construxit ecclesiam, videlicet ecclesiarum omnium unum caput. … Ioh(anne)s autem in Asia plures ecclesias stabilivit tamquam unius capitis multa membra.” Trans. Andrea, 119.

  37. 37.

    Reg. 7:154, 266: “doctores Grecorum ad plenam intelligentiam Veteris Testamento et profunda misteria deitatis nec hactenus nec nunc etiam pervenerunt nisi forte perpauci.” My trans.

  38. 38.

    Reg. 7:154, 267–68 for the passages quoted from Joachim. Andrea, Contemporary Documents, 121–22, 123, conveniently prints these passages in Italics in his translation. For Joachim’s own text, see Expositio, 143vb–144va.

  39. 39.

    Reg. 7:154, 266: “quia Latinus populus usque ad interiora et profundiora Veteris Testamenti misteria penetravit …” My trans.

  40. 40.

    Reg. 7:154, 268: “et sic facti sunt primi novissimi et novissimi primi. Videbit enim quod Petrus viderat, et credet quod credit ecclesia Latinorum, ut ammodo simul ambulant in domo Domini cum consensu.” My trans.

  41. 41.

    Reg. 7:154, 269: “quasi diceret: Licet Messiam esse me credas a lege ac prophetis omnibus repromissum, tamen Deo Patri me non credis equalem.” Trans. Andrea, 125.

  42. 42.

    Reg. 7:154, 269: “Deus hoc misterium per vestrum ministerium operatur … ut, cum plenitudo gentium ad fidem intraverit, tunc etiam Isr(ae)l salvus fiat.”

  43. 43.

    Reg. 7:203, 354: “Navis ergo Simonis est ecclesia Petri, … quam Christus commisit Petro regendam, ut unitas divisionem excludat. Ascendit autem Iesus per effectum in navem Symonis, cum ecclesiam Petri fecit ascendere, quod a tempore Constantini apparuit evidenter …” Trans. Andrea, 132. See also Barbara Bombi, “Innocent III and the Baltic Crusades,” in Crusading on the Edge: Ideas and Practice of Crusading in Iberia and the Baltic Region, 1100–1500, ed. Torben Kjersgaard Nielsen and Iben Fonnesberg-Schmidt (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), 117–33, who notes this shift in Innocent’s rhetoric, relating it to the politics informing his support of Waldemar II of Denmark’s Baltic expedition.

  44. 44.

    Reg. 7:203: 356: “Sed postquam ad obedientiam apostolice sedis omnes omnino reversi fuerint Christiani, tunc multitudo gentium intrabit ad fidem, et sic omnis Isr(ae)l salvus fiet.” Trans. Andrea, 135–36.

  45. 45.

    Reg. 7:203 for the letter to the clergy; Reg. 7:204 for the letter to Baldwin; Reg. 8:19, written 30 March 1205 to Morosini himself, confirms his plenipotentiary authority as patriarch. See Reg. 7:206 to Doge Enrico Dandolo for Innocent’s lifting of the Venetians’ excommunication.

  46. 46.

    Reg. 8:126 for the letter to Philip; Reg. 8:127 for the letter to Peter of Capua. An excellent summary of the conditions in the Holy Land which made Peter’s decision a rational response to the logic of immediate circumstances there is provided by Maleczek, Pietro Capuano, 201–3.

  47. 47.

    Reg. 8:64.

  48. 48.

    Reg. 8:134.

  49. 49.

    Reg. 8:131. On Innocent’s recognitions and concessions at this juncture, see Andrea, Contemporary Sources, 172; Phillips, Fourth Crusade, 306.

  50. 50.

    Reg. 8:70, 127: “a superbis ad humilis, a superstitiosis ad religiosis, a scismaticis ad catholicos, ab inobedientes transferens ad devotos.” My trans. The other letters in this group are Reg. 8:71 to the same French archbishops requesting liturgical books and monks; Reg. 8:72 to the University of Paris requesting school books and scholars; Reg. 8:73 to the cathedral chapter of Soissons and Philip II of France requesting funds and supplies; Reg. 8:74 to religious orders dragging their feet on the clerical tax assessed in 1199.

  51. 51.

    Reg. 8:70, 127: “quod Spiritus sanctus, qui est unitatis equalitatisque conexio, procedat a Filio, sicut a Patre procedit.” My trans. For discussion, literature, and reference to figures who cite this formula, see Marcia L. Colish, Peter Lombard , 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 1:104–5, 238–30.

  52. 52.

    Innocent III, Reg. 15:218, in Opera omnia 3, PL 216: 817A–822A; quotation at 818B: “qui jam fecit nobiscum signum in bonum, quod finis huius bestiae approprinquat, cuius numerus secundum Apocalypsin Joannis intra sexcenta sexaginta sex clauditur, ex quibus jam pene sexcenti sunt anni completi.” Trans. Jonathan and Louise Riley-Smith, eds., in The Crusades: Idea and Reality, 1095–1274 (London: Edward Arnold, 1981), 120; noted also by Cole, Preaching the Crusades, 103–8, 117–26, 140–41; Flori, L’Islam, 335–36; idem, Prêcher la croisade, 231–39.

  53. 53.

    On Innocent’s policy toward the Jews, see Reg. 3:276, issued 15 September 1199 to addressee(s) unspecified; on the Baltic Crusade, see Reg. 12:103 of 31 October 1209 to King Waldemar II of Denmark. For discussion and literature on these letters, see Marcia L. Colish, Faith, Fiction, and Force in Medieval Baptismal Debates (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014), 275–76, 285–86; on the letter to Waldemar see Bombi, “Innocent III,” 122–33.

  54. 54.

    Giles Constable, “The Interpretation of Mary and Martha,” in Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 1–141, at 14–43 for the period before the twelfth century, at 44–92 for that century, and at 13, 93–96 on Joachim on contemplation as the unum necessarium.

  55. 55.

    Ferruccio Gastaldelli, “Spiritualità e missione del vescovo in una sermone inedito di Goffredo di Auxerre su San Gregorio,” in Studi su San Bernardo e Goffredo di Auxerre (Florence: SISMEL Edizione del Galluzzo, 2001), 587–606, at 601–6 for the sermon text.

  56. 56.

    Constable, “Mary and Martha,” 97–99; Kenneth Pennington, Pope and Bishops: The Papal Monarchy in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), 108–12; Egger, “Papst Innocenz III,” 65–67; Robb, “Who Has Chosen the Better Part?” 157–60; eadem, “Joachimist Exegesis,” 141; Moore, Pope Innocent III, 162. On Innocent’s devotion to Bernard and support of his liturgy, see Egger, “Papst Innocenz III,” 64. On Bernard as a major source for Innocent’s view of papal primacy, which he went well beyond, see Pennington, Pope and Bishops, 39, 42–58, 78–100, 154–95; Klaus Schatz, Papal Primacy: From Its Origins to the Present, trans. John A. Otto and Linda M. Mahoney (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996), 81–93; Francis Oakley, The Mortgage of the Past: Reshaping the Ancient Political Inheritance, 1050–1300 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 174–84, with an excellent review of the literature on this subject at 180–81. Scholars emphasizing the influence of previous popes, scholastics, and canonists over that of Bernard include Colin Morris, The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050 to 1250 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 418, 421–33, 450; Robert L. Benson, Law, Rulership, and Rhetoric: Selected Essays, ed. Loren J. White, Giles Constable, and Richard H. Rouse (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014), nos. 20–36, 204–45; James M. Powell, “Two Popes Before and After the Fourth Lateran Council,” in idem, The Papacy, Frederick II, and Communal Devotion in Medieval Italy, ed. Edward Peters (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), no. 6 at 3, 8, 12. For Bernard himself on the papacy, see Alice Chapman, Sacred and Temporal Power in the Writings of Bernard of Clairvaux (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 6, 123–45, 159–61, 168–69; at 194 she agrees that Innocent went beyond him.

  57. 57.

    Jansen, Making of the Magdalene, 50–92, at 100–4 for Innocent, the early mendicants, and the Magdalene; for another of Innocent’s sermons on the Magdalene, see eadem, “Innocent III and the Literature of Confession,” in Innocenzo III: Urbs et orbis, Atti del congresso internazionale, Roma, 9–15 settembre 1998, ed. Andrea Sommerlechner, 2 vols., Miscellanea della Società Romana di Storia Patri 44 (Rome: Presso la Società alla Biblioteca Vallicelliana, 2003), 1:369–82. It is also worth noting that, while the mendicant orders were not officially constituted until after Innocent’s pontificate, the best known image of this pope is Giotto’s portrayal of him in the upper church at Assisi dreaming of St. Francis, who props up the Lateran basilica just before Lateran IV; on this image, see Michael Goodich, “Biography, 1000–1250,” in Historiography in the Middle Ages, ed. Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 353–85 at 369.

  58. 58.

    Jansen, Making of the Magdalene, 63–64, 89, 100–1.

  59. 59.

    On the Humiliati, see Brenda Bolton, “Tradition and Temerity: Papal Attitudes toward Deviants, 1159–1216;” “Poverty as Protest: Some Inspirational Groups at the Turn of the Twelfth Century;” “The Poverty of the Humiliati,” all in eadem, Innocent III: Studies in Papal Authority and Pastoral Care (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1995), nos. 12, 13, and 14; and most fully in Frances Andrews, The Early Humiliati (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 12, 39–44, 48, 57, 59, 62–98, 136–37, 254–58. Cf. Robb, “Who Hath Chosen the Better Part?” 168–70, who sees Innocent’s support of the Humiliati as consonant with the desiderata of Joachim, as mediated by Rainer of Ponza.

  60. 60.

    Giulio Cipollone, Trinità e liberazione tra cristianità e islam (Assisi: Citadella, 2000), quotation at 210: “La vita religiosa trinitaria non è una fuga mundi, ma il mezzo ritenuto più efficace per produrre opera di carità,” with the Trinitarian Rule given in Latin, at 72–79 and in Italian, at 79–87. My trans. For a less effusive discussion, see James M. Powell, “Innocent III, the Trinitarians, and the Renewal of the Church, 1198–1200,” in La liberazione dei “captivi” tra cristianità e islam: Oltre la crociata e il gihad. Tolleranza e servizio umanitario, Atti del congresso interdisciplinare di studi storici (Roma, 16–19 settembre 1998) organizzato per l’VIII centenario dell’approvazione della regola dei Trinitari da parte del Papa Innocenzo III il 17 dicembre 1198, ed. Giulio Cipollone (Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2000), 245–54.

  61. 61.

    Brian Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertine Order, c. 1130–c. 1300 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 7–60, 85, 109, 236–39 on Gilbert’s life and the foundation, structure, history, and calling of his order; 61–66 on his canonization; on Wulfstan see David Hugh Farmer, Oxford Dictionary of Saints, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 518–19. For Wulfstan as a reformer of the slave trade and promoter of clerical celibacy see David Wyatt, Slaves and Warriors in England and Ireland, 800–1200 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 150, 219, 292, 299; for Wulfstan’s political career see David Bates, William the Conquerer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 215, 250, 275, 343–44, 376, 381, 432–33, 458. As is noted by Emma Mason, St. Wulfstan of Worcester, c. 1008–1095 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 113–14, during the dispute over the election of Stephen Langton King John chose Wulfstan as his patron saint, in light of his reputed loyalty to the crown; one wonders what Innocent thought of this calculated act of devotional provocation.

  62. 62.

    Jansen, Making of the Magdalene, 104–5; beyond this quotation she notes the connection between this innovative canonization and Innocent’s concern for ministries of all kinds to and by the laity. For more on Omnobono, see André Vauchez, The Laity in the Middle Ages: Religious Beliefs and Devotional Practices, ed. Daniel E. Bornstein, trans. Margery J. Schneider (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), Chapter 6; idem, Omnobono di Cremona (†1197), laico e santo: Profilo storico (Cremona: Nuova Editrice Cremonese, 2001); idem, “Innocent III, Sicard de Crémone, et la canonization de Saint Homobon (†1197),” in Innocenzo III: Urbs et orbis, Atti del congresso internazionale, Roma, 9–15 settembre 1998, ed. Andrea Sommerlechner, 2 vols., Miscellanea della Società Romana di Storia Patri 44 (Rome: Presso la Società alla Biblioteca Vallicelliana, 2003), 1:435–53; Donald S. Prudlo, Certain Sainthood: Canonization and the Origins of Papal Infallibility in the Medieval Church (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015), 63–66, 116–17.

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    Marcia L. Colish

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    Erica Gelser

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Colish, M.L. (2019). End Time at Hand: Innocent III, Joachim of Fiore, and the Fourth Crusade. In: Knibbs, E., Boon, J., Gelser, E. (eds) The End of the World in Medieval Thought and Spirituality. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14965-9_10

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