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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 February 2016
Although the study of high- and late-medieval eschatological prophecy has gained considerable momentum in the last few decades, much ground-level work remains to be done. A case in point is the state of knowledge concerning a prophetic vision attributed to “John, Hermit of the Asturias,” published in 1941 in Alsace by the Franciscan scholar Livarius Oliger. Because no sustained treatment of this thirteenth-century text has appeared since then, Oliger's publication has remained the sole point of reference. But it is inadequate. Oliger was unable to identify the author of the text or to come within decades of a correct dating. He was also unaware of much relevant data. Whereas he knew of only two independent manuscript copies of the vision and a version included in a life of Saint Dominic, I have identified four more manuscript copies, as well as a misplaced one and a substantial passage from the vision in a fourteenth-century treatise. Given that the text is a revealing document concerning the religious history of the second quarter of the thirteenth century, it is time to return to it.
1 Oliger, Livarius, “Ein pseudoprophetischer Text aus Spanien über die Heiligen Franziskus und Dominikus (13. Jahrhundert),” in Freudenreich, Ignatius-Maria, ed., Kirchengeschichtliche Studien P. Michael Bihl als Ehrengabe dargeboten (Colmar, 1941), 13–28.Google Scholar
Robert Lerner wrote the first part of this collaborative work and Christine Morerod prepared the edition. Robert Lerner's research was greatly facilitated by expertise generously offered by Dr. Peter Linehan, St. John's College, Cambridge. He is also indebted for information and advice to Christina Bobek, Sean Field, Simona Iaria, Alexander Patschovsky, and members of the Newberry Library workshop in high- and late-medieval intellectual and religious history.Google Scholar
2 The standard biography remains Funk, Philipp, Jakob von Vitry, Leben und Werke (Leipzig, 1909).Google Scholar
3 Oliger, , Text, 19–20: his dubious arguments are not worth repeating. Unfortunately, however, Oliger's late dating entered the subsequent literature, most notably in Töfper, Bernhard Das kommende Reich des Friedens (Berlin, 1964), 124 n. 111, and Reeves, Marjorie The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1969), 162 (Reeves's “in the decade 1290–1300” is a misunderstanding of Oliger's “das 9. Jahrzehnt des 13. Jahrhunderts”).Google Scholar
4 In MS U the initial L is expanded to “Laurentius”; it appears that the expansion was made after the original work of copying.Google Scholar
5 On this work see Henriet, Patrick, “Hagiographie et politique à León au début du XIIIe siècle: les chanoines réguliers de Saint-Isidore et la prise de Baeza,” Revue Mabillon 69 (1997): 53–82, here 56. Henriet is preparing an edition. For basic data concerning Lucas of Tuy, see Lucae Tudensis Chronicon Mundi, ed. Falque, Emma, CCM 74 (Turnhout, 2003): vi–xvi. I have not consulted Hollas, Michael Lawrence “Lucas of Tuy and Thirteenth Century León,” PhD diss., Yale University, 1985.Google Scholar
6 Oliger's two other witnesses, MS U and Dietrich of Apolda, omit the section of the frame letter where this name appears.Google Scholar
7 Alonso-Getino, P. L. G., “Capitulos provinciales de la Provincia de España, Orden de Predicadores,” La ciencia tomista 13 (1916): 91–94. For a charter of King Ferdinand III of 1222, addressed “omnibus hominibus regni,” in which the king declares his affection for Suerius, see González, Julio Reinado y diplomas de Fernando III, 2 (Cordoba, 1983), 184, no. 152, correcting and updating Hinnebusch, William A. The History of the Dominican Order: Origins and Growth to 1500 (Staten Island, NY, 1965), 113 n. 98. (My thanks to Peter Linehan for informing me of González's work.)Google Scholar
8 I have not seen the unedited Latin copy of the Miracula. But Dr. Raymond McClus-key has generously sent me a copy of the dedicatory letter from a Castilian translation of the Miracula printed in Salamanca in 1525. The opening words are “Al muy devoto y Rvdo. Suero, P. Fray, Lucas, diácono indigno,” and the text continues: “Oh buen Padre Fray Suero, Prior Provincial de la santa Orden de Predicadores in España, ya sabe vuestra paternidad que yo soy compelido por la obigación de vuestro saludable mandamiento.”Google Scholar
9 Bagliani, Agostino Paravicini, Cardinali di Curia e “familiae” cardinalizie dal 1227 al 1254, 2 vols. (Padua, 1972), 1: 110–12.Google Scholar
10 Lucas's De altera vita is currently available only in a seventeenth-century edition: Lucae Tudensis episcopi De altera vita (Ingolstadt, 1612). (Peter Linehan was kind enough to send me a copy from the Cambridge University Library.) For the passages in question, see, respectively, 96, 178, 180, 170.Google Scholar
11 Henriet, , “Hagiographie et politique,” 57 n. 27: “electo Tudensi L. magistro scholarum.”Google Scholar
12 De altera vita, 103.Google Scholar
13 De altera vita, 170. The dates of the interregnum are determined by Henriet, Patrick, “Sanctissima patria: Points et thèmes communs aux trois oeuvres de Lucas de Tuy,” Cahiers de linguistique et de civilisation hispaniques médiévales 24 (2002): 249–77, here 251 n. 21, superseding Eubel, Conrad Hierarchia catholica 1 (Münster, 1913), 299.Google Scholar
14 Henriet, , “Sanctissima patria,” 253 with n. 21.Google Scholar
15 Milan, Bibl. Ambrosiana H. 163 Inf., fols. 174vb–175ra: “Hec ideo vestre scripsi paternitati, quia prudens inter gramina colligere flores scitis. Noverit preterea vestre glorie celsitudo per Petrum Arie Legionensem decanum in eadem civitate superstitionem maximam esse ortam [MS: ortamur], ita ut populi [MS: populo] maxima multitudo adorandum quemdam fontem et ossa cuiusdam heretici extracta de cloaca convenirent [MS: convevenirent], et cunctos clericos voce blasphema [MS: blasphemia] hereticos conclamando fanum nepharium extruxerunt. Obsistat ergo pravis paternitas [vestra] et dominum Martinum Legionensem [MS: Legionum] electum, virum sanctum et providum honestum, misericorditer habeat commendatum. Ego vero, quam citius potuero, veniam ad debitum servicium impendendum, prout Deus dederit et vestre contulerit gratia potestatis.”Google Scholar
16 On Peter as dean in 1230, Catón, José Maria Fernández, Colección documental de la catedral de León: 1188–1230 (León, 1991), 492–94, no. 1966. On his connection to Cardinal Pelayo, see Linehan, Peter The Spanish Church and the Papacy in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 1971), 292. (Peter Linehan called my attention to the identity of Peter Arias.)Google Scholar
17 I follow Hollas, , Lucas of Tuy, 33 n. 50, as reported by Linehan, Peter “Dates and Doubts about don Lucas,” Cahiers de linguistique et de civilisation hispaniques médiévales 24 (2002): 201–17, here 203 n. 8, in placing Lucas still in Rome in 1234. Linehan challenges this date on what appear to me to be insufficient grounds, even though he points out persuasively (203) that the most likely date for Lucas's having heard the Franciscan General, Brother Elias, preach in Rome would have been Easter 1233.Google Scholar
18 On the steps to Dominic's canonization, see Hinnebusch, , Dominican Order, 108.Google Scholar
19 A thorough examination of this question is Conde, F. J. Fernández, “Albigenses en León y Castilla a cominzos del siglo XIII,” in León medieval: Doce Estudios (León, 1978), 97–114.Google Scholar
20 Martin Alonso is recorded as archdeacon of León in February, 1232 and as bishop-elect between December 1232 and November 1233: Asencio, José Manuel Ruiz, Colección documental de la catedral de León: 1230–1269 (León, 1993), 16, 20, 26–27 (nos. 1991, 1993, 1997).Google Scholar
21 De altera vita, 90.Google Scholar
22 I quote Henriet, , “Sanctissima patria,” 255.Google Scholar
23 De altera vita, 101–3; at 101–2, Lucas quotes verbatim 1 Celano, 94–95.Google Scholar
24 Ibid., 178, 180.Google Scholar
25 For Jacques's relations with the new mendicant orders, see Bird, Jessalyn, “The Religious's Role in a Post-Fourth-Lateran World: Jacques de Vitry's Sermones ad status and Historia occidentalis,” in Muessig, Carolyn, ed., Medieval Monastic Preaching (Leiden, 1998), 209–30, here 220–22.Google Scholar
26 Baldwin, John W., Masters, Princes, and Merchants: The Social Views of Peter the Chanter and His Circle, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1970), 1:38.Google Scholar
27 As cited by Merlo, Grado G., Valdesi e valdismi medievali (Turin, 1984), 18 n. 32.Google Scholar
28 Grundmann, Herbert, “Der Typus des Ketzers in mittelalterlicher Anschauung,” in Kultur- und Universalgeschichte: Walter Goetz zu seinem 60. Geburtstage (Leipzig, 1927), 91–107, here 100. For the frequent appearance of the image in the anti-heretical bulls of Innocent III in particular, see Oliver, Antonio Táctica de propaganda y motivos literarios en las cartas antiheréticas de Inocencio III (Rome, 1957), 180–82.Google Scholar
29 De altera vita 160, 166, 187. For a characterization of Lucas's views on heresy, with particular reference to the fox stereotype, see Patschovsky, Alexander, “Feindbilder der Kirche: Juden und Ketzer im Vergleich,” in Haverkamp, Alfred, ed., Juden und Christen zur Zeit der Kreuzzüge (Sigmaringen, 1999), 327–57, here 336–42.Google Scholar
30 Lucy Pick (University of Chicago) has informed me that a copy of the illuminated Apocalypse commentary of Beatus of Liébana was almost certainly present in Lucas of Tuy's convent of San Isidoro when he was writing, and that it includes an image of a fox and a cock. Without excluding the possibility that the illuminations may have fanned Lucas's imagination, the image in question depicts a fox that has caught a cock by the neck, and consequently does not correspond to the narrative of John the Hermit's vision. See Williams, John, The Illustrated Beatus 3 (London, 1998), 34–35 (for the location in León), and fig. 300.Google Scholar
31 Grundmann, Herbert, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages, trans. Rowan, Steven (Notre Dame, IN, 1995; orig. German: Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter [Berlin, 1935]).Google Scholar
32 Lerner, Robert E., “Weltklerus und religiöse Bewegung im 13. Jahrhundert: Das Beispiel Philipps des Kanzlers,” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 51 (1969): 94–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
33 Moorman, John, A History of the Franciscan Order (Oxford, 1968), 122. See the venomous reaction of the contemporary Dominican, Thomas of Cantimpré, in Tugwell, Simon, ed., Early Dominicans: Selected Writings (New York, 1982), 136.Google Scholar
34 See the text and summary of the bull in Rainini, Marco, “I predicatori dei tempi ultimi: La rielaborazione di un tema escatologico nel constituirsi dell'identità profetica dell'Ordine domenicano,” Cristianesimo nella storia 23 (2002): 307–43, here 322–23.Google Scholar
35 Lerner, Robert E., “The Vocation of the Friars Preacher: Hugh of St. Cher between Peter the Chanter and Albert the Great,” in Bataillon, Louis-Jacques et al., eds., Hugues de Saint-Cher (†1236): bibliste et théologien (Turnhout, 2004), 215–31, here 229–31.Google Scholar
36 Rainini, , “I predicatori,” 327–29.Google Scholar
37 Töfper, Bernhard, Reich des Friedens (n. 3 above), 35.Google Scholar
38 Hildegard of Bingen, Liber divinorum operum, ed. Derolez, A. and Dronke, P., CCM 92 (Turnhout, 1996), bk. 3, 5, 16 (433–34) (same in PL 197:1017–18); eadem, Epistola ad Wernerum (Werner of Kirchheim), in Epistolarium, ed. Van Acker, L., CCM 91A (Turnhout, 1993), 335–36 (same in PL 197:270); eadem, Epistola ad pastores ecclesiae (viz. the clergy of Cologne), in Epistolarium, ed. Van Acker, L., CCM 91 (Turnhout, 1991), 41–44 (same in PL 197:250–51).Google Scholar
39 Epistola ad Wernerum, 335: “Principes enim et temerarius populus super uos, o sacerdotes … irruent et uos abicient et fugabunt.”Google Scholar
40 Epistola ad pastores, 42: “Sic iniquitas que iniquitatem purgabit super uos ducetur.”Google Scholar
41 For numerous late-medieval examples see my “Medieval Millenarianism and Violence,” in Pace e guerra nel basso medioevo: Atti del XL Convegno storico internazionale, Todi, 12–14 ottobre 2003 (Spoleto, 2004), 37–52.Google Scholar
42 Lerner, Robert E., “Refreshment of the Saints: The Time after Antichrist as a Station for Progress in Medieval Thought,” Traditio 32 (1976): 97–144.Google Scholar
43 Idem, “Joachim of Fiore's Breakthrough to Chiliasm,” Cristianesimo nella storia 6 (1985): 489–512.Google Scholar
44 Because I had not then investigated his work, I failed to mention the Hermit of the Asturias in “The Medieval Return to the Thousand-Year Sabbath,” in Emmerson, Richard K. and McGinn, Bernard, eds., The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 1992), 51–71.Google Scholar
45 Töpfer, , Reich des Friedens, 124 n. 111, states that the vision can “hardly be described as Joachimite,” without elaborating; mostly likely he was thinking of these points.Google Scholar
46 Reeves, , Influence (n. 3 above), 162: “the vision is in a Joachimist vein,” solely with reference to the common use of the animals and wheels of Ezekiel.Google Scholar
47 Lerner, Robert E., The Feast of Saint Abraham: Medieval Millenarians and the Jews (Philadelphia, 2001), 29–37.Google Scholar
48 Fraja, Valeria De, “Usi politici della profezia gioachimita,” Annali dell'Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento 25 (1999), 375–400, here 390–95, notes that a Florensian monk, “Frater Ioseph,” was a notary in Gregory IX's curia from at least October 1233 until May 1235.Google Scholar
49 Oliger, , Text (n. 1 above), 17.Google Scholar
50 For both the folding of the letter and the identification of the recipient, ibid., 15.Google Scholar
51 de Roquetaillade, Jean, Liber ostensor quod adesse festinant tempora, ed. Vauchez, André et al. (Rome, 2005), 582–83. Before quoting from the vision Rupescissa remarks: “quam visionem exposui in uno ex libris Pentilibri.”Google Scholar
52 For the context, see Lerner, Robert E., The Powers of Prophecy (Berkeley, 1983), 93–101; esp. 94–95 n. 22.Google Scholar
53 For the fullest description of manuscript P, see Ouy, Gilbert, Les manuscrits de l'abbaye de Saint-Victor: Catalogue établi sur la base du répertoire de Claude de Grandrue, 2 vols. (Turnhout, 1999), 2:135–36, and for the career and manuscripts of Simon de Plumetot, ibid., 1:15–19. Ouy dates the manuscript to the first quarter of the fifteenth century, and a cluster of texts in the relevant section refers to events of the continuing schism of the first decade of the century. Apparent complications arise from the fact that a short eschatological treatise in the relevant section (fol. 144r–v) states internally that it was written in the thirty-fourth year of the “present century.” This led Herbert Grundmann (“Über die Schriften des Alexander von Roes,” Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 8 [1950], 154–237, here 192 n. 17) to conclude that the treatise was written in 1434; Grundmann claimed further to have found a computation on f. 128v of the manuscript that showed it was written in 1451. But Grundmann knew nothing of the role of Simon de Plumetot in compiling the manuscript, a fact that would rule out the date of 1451 because Simon was then no longer alive. (Nor can I find the passage supposedly pointing to 1451.) The reference to “the present century” could allude to the fourteenth century.Google Scholar
54 MS V (Vat. lat. 3822) appears to consist of three roughly contemporary anthologies that were bound together. The first part, in which our vision is located, is an extensive collection of short prophetic texts. For the most exhaustive list of contents of Vat. lat. 3822, see Wannenmacher, Julia Eva, Hermeneutik der Heilsgeschichte (Leiden, 2005), 285–95. (But Wannenmacher is unable to identify the vision of John the Hermit.)Google Scholar
55 MS Vb (Vat. Borgh. 190) contains in its first quire – later bound with the remainder of the manuscript – the vision of John the Hermit followed by Joachim of Fiore's Epistola universis Christi fidelibus.Google Scholar
56 The main text of Milan, Ambrosiana, I 163 Inf. is a postill on the Apocalypse by Hugh of Saint Cher, OP (fols. 1–167v). This is followed by the revelations of Pseudo-Methodius (fols. 168r–173v), John the Hermit (fols. 173v-175r), and the Tiburtine Sibyl (fols. 175r-176v).Google Scholar