quite as much in the prayers of monks as in the deeds of knights? We have hardly such a vivid sight of him in Joinville or Geoffrey of Beaulieu.[1]
After this scene, the king proceeded on his way, to make ready for his voyage, and Salimbene went to Lyons, then down the Rhone to Aries, then around by sea to Marseilles, and thence to Areae, the present Hyères, which lies near the coast. Here to his joy he met with Brother Hugo of Montpellier whom he was seeking, the great "Joachite," the great clerk, the mighty preacher and resistless disputer, whom he had not forgotten since the days, long before, when he had been in Hugo's company and listened to his preaching at Siena. Even then, Minorites, Dominicans, and all men, had flocked to hear this small dark man, who seemed another Paul, as he descanted on the marvels of Paradise and the contempt one should feel for this world; but especially those Franciscans delighted in his preaching who were of the "spiritual" party, which sought to follow strictly the injunctions of the blessed Francis, and also cherished the prophesies of the enigmatical Joachim of Flora. To this Joachim was ascribed that long since vanished but much-bespoken Evangelium eternum, which appears to have been written years after his death under the auspices of John of Parma, Minister-General of the Franciscan Order.[2]
There was heresy in this book, with its doctrine of a still unrevealed, but everlasting Gospel of the Holy Ghost. Until its appearance the genuine utterances of Joachim were not prescribed, consisting as they did of prophecies, for example, as to the life of that monster Frederick II., and of denunciations of the pride and worldliness of ecclesiastics. Thus they fell in with the enthusiasms of the "spiritual" Franciscans, who still lived in an ecstasy of love and anticipation; in the coming time some of them were to be dubbed Fratricelli, and under that name be held as heretics.
John of Parma was, of course, a "Joachite"; and "I was intimate with him," says Salimbene, "from love and because I seemed to believe the writings of Abbot Joachim of the
