1± THE SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS. and expressed its approbation of his Order of Flora ; but notwith- standing this the monks found themselves derided and insulted as the followers of a heretic, until, in 1220, they procured from Honorius III. a bull expressly declaring that he was a good Cath- olic, and forbidding all detraction of his disciples.* His most important writings, however, were his expositions of Scripture composed at the request of Lucius III., Urban III., and Clement III. Of these there were three — the Concordia, the De- cachordon, or Psalterium decern Cordarum, and the Expositio in ApocaJtjpsin. In these his system of exegesis is to find in every incident under the Old Law the prefiguration of a corresponding fact in chronological order under the ]Sew Dispensation, and by an arbitrary parallelism of dates to reach forward and ascertain what is yet to come. He thus determines that mankind is des- tined to live through three states — the first under the rule of the Father, which ended at the birth of Christ, the second under that of the Son, and the third under the Holy Ghost. The reign of the Son, or of the Xew Testament, he ascertains by varied apoca- lyptic speculations is to last through forty-two generations, or 1260 years — for instance, Judith remained in widowhood three years and a half, or forty-two months, which is 1260 days, the great number representing the years through which the Xew Testament is to endure, so that in the year 1260 the domination of the Holy Ghost is to replace it. In the forty-second generation there will be a purgation which will separate the wheat from the chaff — such tribulations as man has never yet endured : fortunately they will be short, or all flesh would perish utterly. After this, religion will be renewed ; man will live in peace and justice and joy, as in the Sabbath which closed the labors of creation ; all shall know God, from sea to sea, to the utmost confines of the earth, and the glory of the Holy Ghost shall be perfect. In that final abundance of spiritual grace the observances of religion will be no longer
- Concil. Lateran. IV. c. 2.— Theiner Monument Slavor. Meridional. I. 63 —
Lib. i. Sexto, 1, 2 (Cap. Damnamus). — Wadding, ann. 1256, No. 8, 9. — Salim- bene Chron. p. 103. Nearly half a century later Thomas Aquinas still considered Joachim's specu- lations on the Trinity worthy of elaborate refutation, and near the close of the fourteenth century Eymerich reproduces the whole controversy. — Direct. Inqui- sit. pp. 4-6, 15-17.
