Disputes on the apocalyptic ideas of Joachim of Fiore and its impact on the orders of 13th century

Disputes of religious poverty were one of the most crucial items on the agenda of medieval Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries. Regarding both the economic developments of the period and the moral missions that Christianity imposed on them, the believers thought that they should lead a poor life as Jesus advised the apostles, and thus they adopted a rigid understanding of poverty en masse which, at times, led to strong reactions and sanctions by the Church against these people. The Franciscan Order, which was established at the beginning of the 13th century with the permission of the Church in accordance with the atmosphere of the period, was perhaps the most prominent representative of the understanding of religious poverty. Yet they could not solve the problem of how poverty should be experienced among themselves, thereby causing intense disputes and separations among the Franciscans over poverty. With the involvement of the Church, the dispute spilled over the order and turned into a conflict between the Franciscans and the Church. The greatest motivation of the Franciscan friars, who believed that poverty should be severely experienced during these disputes and conflicts, was the idea of the Sabbath Age that they believed to await the Christian community. A monk named Joachim of Fiore (1135-1202) who lived in the 12th century lied at the heart of this idea. Joachim, an exegete trying to descipher the hidden meaning of the Bible, found himself in the middle of a struggle between the Franciscans and the Church approximately fifty years after his death. Keywords: Apocalypticism, Eschatology, Prophecy, Spiritual Franciscans, Poverty, Church, Christianity