OF SIX MEDLEVAL WOMEN 



and said to embody the revelations of Abbot 

 Joachim of Flora (11301202), proclaimed that 

 the dispensations of God the Father and God 

 the Son the first two eras of the Church 

 were past or passing, and that these would be 

 succeeded by a third era that df the Holy 

 Ghost when men's eyes would be opened by 

 the Spirit, and when there would be a time of 

 perfection and freedom, without the necessity 

 of disciplinary institutions. In this fair age it 

 was the hermits, monks, and nuns who, whilst 

 not superseding the rulers of the Church, were 

 to lead it into new paths, for to Joachim the 

 visible Church could not, where all is moving, 

 remain unchanged, and his counsel was, to keep 

 pace with the advancing world. Naturally such 

 sentiments aroused ecclesiastical alarm, and, later, 

 were condemned by the fourth Lateran Council 

 (1215), though Dante, withal a good son of the 

 Church, made bold to see in Paradise the 

 " Abbott Joachim, endowed with prophetic 

 Spirit" (Par. xii. no). 1 When Mechthild 

 wrote her predictions on the last days, Joachim's 

 teachings, owing to the stir which their un- 

 orthodoxy had created not only in the Church 

 and amongst the preaching friars, but also in the 

 University of Paris, whence all manner of 

 polemical discussions freely circulated were 

 well known in Germany, and there can be but 

 little doubt that Mechthild knew of them, prob- 



1 Cf. Edmund G. Gardner, Joachim of Flora and the Everlasting 

 Gospel. Franciscan Essays, Bri. Soc.of Fran. Studies, extra series, vol.i. 



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