medieval sword
Joachim of Fiore, also known as Joachim de Fiore, and Gioacchino da Fiore, was an Italian mystic, theologian and philosopher of history, a great medieval thinker with a beautiful symbolic imagination.
Fiore was a prolific writer and explored the hidden meaning of the life of the apostles and the scriptures. At the end of the twelfth century Joachim had a high international reputation.
After a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he became a Cistercian monk and by 1177 had become abbot at Corazzo, Sicily. He retired to the mountains to lead a contemplative life, and in 1196 he founded the Order of San Giovanni in Fiore. In his Book of the Harmony of the New and Old Testaments, Fiore set forth a theory of history and traced correspondences in the Old and New Testaments. In "An Exposition of the Apocalypse" he explored the symbols of the Antichrist, and in "The Ten-String Psalter" he set forth his doctrine of the Holy Trinity. A man of vivid imagination, he was proclaimed a prophet and condemned as a heretic.
Master of the Rouen Échevinage was a French artist, one of the leading 15th-century Rouen illustrators, named after the magnificent manuscripts he painted for the Bibliothèque des Echevins in Rouen. He was active between the 1450s and 1480s.
