The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: Antichrist a System, Not an Individual

The preceding four chapters have carried the survey of Joachimite writers to the peak of development in the second generation of Spirituals, who around 1300 were proclaiming the fulfillment of apocalyptic prophecies in their own day and the near future. The reversal of the Tichonius-Augustine tradition was complete in the Joachimites, the historical view of prophetic interpretation was in the ascendant, and the finger of prophecy was being pointed at the worldly church, the monastics, and even the popes. PFF1 786.1

But this chapter must pause for a backward look before going on to consider the attitudes of certain groups outside the main body of the church—the reforming and antisacerdotal heretics and schismatics who had gained momentum and were increasingly clashing with ecclesiastical authority by the thirteenth century, and who, driven underground, would nevertheless seep later into the springs which were to feed the Reformation. We must turn back to look at some aspects of ecclesiastical and political development which had a bearing on both the Joachimite movements and the schismatic tendencies of the time. PFF1 786.2

Even as the maturing power of the Papacy neared its peak, as Rome was perfecting its organization, its canon law and its Inquisition, and fastening the supreme control of its priest hood, through spiritual penalties, on all Christendom, there emerged a titanic struggle for supremacy between the popes and the emperors. ¹ This struggle, with first one and then the other antagonist in the ascendancy, formed part of the back ground of the Joachimite prophetic exposition, and at the same time it gave rise to still another development in prophetic interpretation—one which, along with the Joachimite emphasis on the year-day principle, pointed toward the later pre-Reformation and Reformation views regarding the historical Papacy. PFF1 786.3