Sophie Wrote:
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> You'll have to provide other evidence of this
> "deeply held view," Bernard, because the teachings
> of Joachim de Fiore were soon repudiated by the
> church, by the Lateran Council and following, and
> demolished by Thomas Aquinas.

Be that as it may. What I know is the millenarian vision of Fiore was revived and was the driving force behind the evangelizing efforts of the Franciscans in the New World. The idea was that (1)the Indians were the Lost Tribes of Israel (2) that. if they were converted, they together with the Franciscans could set up the “New Jerusalem” and (3) bring about the Second coming. This is clearly set out in John l. Phelan. 1972. The Millenarian Kingdom of the Fransicans in the New World and also in a book I translated G. Baudot. 1995. Utopia and History in Mexico. Trans. B.R. Ortiz de Montellano and T. Ortiz de Montellano. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.
A quote from the latter:

pp. 80-85 In spite of these reverses, the tradition of the "spirituals" persisted, but in a purified and reorganized fashion in several orthodox movements which returned to the original observance of the rules in 1334. Thus, under the direction of Colette de Corbin and Bernard of Siena, this "observant" movement triumphed in the fifteenth century, and in 1517, Leon X, in the bull Ite vos in vineam meam, clearly separated the "observants" from the "conventuals," but kept them within the same order. From then on, the "observants" who represented a continual pressure for reform by a segment of the Franciscan family, emerged in several later reforms, as the heirs of Joachinist hopes, after the disappearance of the "spirituals" in the preceding century.
Spain at the end of the Middle Ages was one of the areas where the ideals of the "observants" often prevailed and exercised considerable influence.
Cardinal Ximénez de Cisneros, the most illustrious of the "observants" is well-known, as is also the exceptional role he played in the affairs of the kingdom. Cisneros, at the request of Isabella I, undertook a reform of the regular clergy that embodied the purest concepts of that faction of the Franciscan family. The convents were closed, the ideal of apostolic poverty was given a boost, and the apocalyptic interpretation of history was ratified. In fact, with the discovery of America those ideas would gain an extraordinary revitalization, which explains the impact of the appearance of a New World on medieval cosmography. Later, we will examine that aspect, since the discovery of the New World. and, above all, of the pre-Columbian civilizations, forced the millenarians to integrate those events into a new apocalyptic perspective. The particular situation of the Franciscans in Spain, at the time of the American discoveries, requires further study, since it is revealing in several ways.
During the years in which Columbus' enterprise was being planned and had its beginning, an important reform was underway in the Franciscan organization in Spain. As the inheritor of many of the ideas of the above mentioned Franciscan factions, it was important as the spiritual cradle of the Mexican chroniclers that interest us. A brief history follows.
The reform was the work of an "observant," Father Juan de Guadalupe who, like many others, dreamed of returning to the unadulterated Franciscan origin. Taking advantage of the General Chapter meeting in Toulouse, in 1496, Guadalupe went to Rome and got the bull Sacrosanctae Militantis Ecclesiae from Pope Alexander VI which set forth the principles of an authentic return to the most absolute Franciscan ideals, and authorized for that purpose the founding an experimental house in Granada.
. . .
Returning to Rome, Guadalupe again obtained a bull, Super familiam Domus Dei from Alexander VI, on July, 1499, which confirmed and expanded the earlier arrangements. From that time on, Guadalupe-type establishments began to be set up. By 1500, five monasteries belonged to the movement: Alconchel, Trujillo, Salvaleón, and Villanueva del Fresno in Extremadura and Villaviciosa in Portugal. After several controversies, some of them serious, with the Province of Santiago, to which Extremadura belonged, and which saw Guadalupe's reform prosper at its expense, it was finally securely established, after the death of its founder in 1505. At first, it was named the Custody of the Holy Gospel of Extremadura (a name the Franciscans, when they became established in Mexico, would also use in order to emphasize their spiritual allegiance), and afterwards the Custody of San Gabriel, in 1517, and finally the independent Province of San Gabriel, in 1519. The triumph of Guadalupe's reform and of Cortés's landing on the Mexican coast took place the same year.
It is impossible to emphasize the importance of this enough, if we are to thoroughly know the concerns and spiritual objectives of the first missionaries in Mexico. Besides the fact that the vast majority of them came from San Gabriel, the ambition that motivated the bold enterprise of the ethnographic chroniclers was clearly the result of the ambitions and dreams of the reformed custody.
We have seen that the creation of the latter was based on a return to the extremist traditions held by the visionary "spirituals," which revived the apocalyptic views of Joachinism. Historical events supported this view marvelously. It should be remembered that Guadalupe's reform began four years after the discovery of America and was definitely established the same year as the beginning of the conquest of Mexico. There is no doubt that, in the view of the Joachinists, this perfect synchrony was not just due to chance. We cannot flatly assert that the reformist impulse that impelled Guadalupe in 1496 was the result of an eschatological reflection, provoked by the incredible news of the discovery of America four years before, but we cannot either lightly dismiss the impact of that event on the reappearance of Joachinism in Spain at the beginning of the century; in fact, in all of Europe. Wasn't it in 1519, that Fiore's principal work, the Liber Concordia Novi ac Veteris Testamenti, was republished and distributed beyond the usual circles that normally thought and studied it?

The fact is that the Joachinist perspective provided a satisfactory explanation, which was considered indispensable by those Christians who were concerned and astounded by the disconcerting discoveries (new civilizations and new human beings) that the new Atlantic route had brought. Thus, in renewing the tradition of the "spirituals" and the accompanying Joachinist ideology, Guadalupe tried to alert a determined and dynamic group of his fellow Franciscans of a possibly extraordinary epoch. It gave his followers the opportunity to play a decisive role in the final ordering of humanity, which the Gospel had prophesied, and which the history of his time projected. Actually history presented euphoric events, if they were interpreted as being so many revelations of the design of Providence, and if one wished to read into them the symbolic texts and the cryptograms of the Scriptures. The coincidence of the Americanist vocation, which was very quickly announced by the Custody of San Gabriel, and the interest of its members in carrying out the Joachinist interpretation, is not surprising. It cannot be denied that those two lines of action developed a in parallel form until they became two components of the same program, which was implicitly admitted by the Franciscans of San Gabriel. In them we can recognize the premises of the ethnographic chroniclers of pre-Columbian life. An obsession for the supernatural destiny of mankind at the same time explains the inseparable mixture of the two of them. The wish to play an active role in the fulfillment of eschatological prophecies around 1496-1522, meant that action in the American colonial empire became a priority, and, at the same time, placed it in a re-interpretation of the Gospel, which would fulfill Fiore's ideas. In this way, the most dynamic group of the Franciscans, whom Guadalupe's providential reform had specifically prepared for the task through a return to evangelical poverty, had a clear vision of their mission: first, to convert the Indians, those last gentiles hidden until then by the impenetrable divine will, and whose appearance was a clear sign of the proximity of the end time, and afterwards, to explain their origin, their existence and their destiny in the light of the Gospel.
There were two tasks, one as urgent as the other, within the perspectives of the preparation for the approaching arrival of the Millennium. The fulfillment of the promises of the Apocalypse depended on the conversion of the Indians, but there was still a need to tie the latter, in one way or another, to Adam's descendants and with the peoples of the Old Testament. . . . . .
The definite apocalyptic meaning given to the evangelizing mission and the conviction of living in the prelude to the end time, of being on the eve of the reign of the Holy Spirit promised by Fiore as an prelude to the Millennium should be stressed, "... In the last age of the world...". . .
The different elements that made up the profile of the future apostle of Mexico were coherent and clearly had a real identification with a prophetic spirituality, impregnated with the eschatological views of millenarian Joachinism.
. . .
There is no doubt that the men chosen by los Angeles and Valencia to make up the first group of missionaries to face the unknown in Mexico had been selected because of their belief in the views of their guardians and because they shared the same hopes about the ultimate significance of their enterprise. Two of the first chosen, Fray Toribio de Benavente and Fray Martín de la Coruña, who later participated in the ethnographic inquiries about the native civilizations, were clearly oriented in those directions. It also appears that subsequent missionaries chosen were also believers in Guadalupism and were fervent followers of San Gabriel, and this was done long enough to maintain and make the particular ethos of the Mexican mission irreversible.
This is one of the best reasons for the very special tenor of the evangelization of the Mexican territories by the Franciscans between 1524 and 1564. We know today, as the result of several revisionist studies in the last few years, that the Franciscans of Mexico planned their actions in the New World according to a Joachinist inspired millenarian program. The very characteristics of that New World which was surprising, as much for its unexpected geographical location as for its strange peoples, were of such a providential nature that they inspired a belief that the Joachinist prophecies had begun to be realized, in 1524, with the arrival in Mexico of the twelve reformed Franciscans. The Franciscans of New Spain themselves tell of this in their texts. Between 1585 and 1596, Mendieta, a late disciple of San Gabriel and an attentive follower of Motolinía in analyzing the goals sought in the first years of the odyssey of the conversion of the Mesoamerican peoples, gave the clearest written version of this program of action. Reading the available correspondence of Mendieta, and his Historia eclesiastica indiana, as well as Motolinia's Historia, one learns of the broad design conceived and put into action to achieve the dreams of Joachinism during the period in which the Franciscans had a monopoly on the future of Mexico. Thus we find that the Franciscans were pleasantly surprised at the malleability of their native catechumens, and by the promise such an attitude implied, "... the mass of Indians were prepared to be the purest Christians and the best behaved in the whole world..."
. . .


Bernard