Joachim of Floris (c.1132/35–1202), Italian mystic who traveled to the Holy Land and, upon his return, became a Cistercian monk and abbot. He later retired to Calabria, in southern Italy, where he founded the order of San Giovanni in Fiore. He devoted the rest of his life to meditation and the recording of his prophetic visions. In his major works Liber concordiae Novi ac Veteri Testamenti (‘Book of the Concordances between the New and the Old Testament,’ 1519), Expositio in Apocalypsim (1527), and Psalterium decem chordarum (1527), Joachim illustrates the deep meaning of history as he perceived it in his visions. History develops in coexisting patterns of twos and threes. The two testaments represent history as divided in two phases ending in the First and Second Advent, respectively. History progresses also through stages corresponding to the Holy Trinity. The age of the Father is that of the law; the age of the Son is that of grace, ending approximately in 1260; the age of the Spirit will produce a spiritualized church. Some monastic orders like the Franciscans and Dominicans saw themselves as already belonging to this final era of spirituality and interpreted Joachim’s prophecies as suggesting the overthrow of the contemporary ecclesiastical institutions. Some of his views were condemned by the Lateran Council in 1215. P.Gar.