"Joachim Abbas" is Joachim of Fiore (1135-1202), a 12th
century mystic from Calabria who became abbot of a monastic
order (hence "Abbas") and who devoted himself to study of the
hidden meanings of the Bible, especially those of the book of
Revelation. His three manuscripts of apocalyptic philosophy
became hugely influential, particularly for their innovative
understanding of the divine plan for history. But Stephen has
been looking at a later prophetic text falsely attributed to
Joachim.
Joyce probably took the honorific "Abbas"
from a book he found in Marsh's
library, though he could also have encountered it in
Dante's Paradiso 12.140. The book that Joyce read in
the library was one in a series of manuscripts and printed
texts produced from the late 13th century onward, filled with
prophecies concerning a series of popes from Pope Nicholas III
(in the 1270s) onward. These books had titles like Vaticinia
Pontificum (Prophecies of the Popes) or Vaticinia
de Summis Pontificibus, and at some point in the 15th
century they became attributed to Joachim.
Joyce apparently connected Joachim with Jonathan Swift ("Abbas
father, furious dean, what offence laid fire to their
brains?") because they are associated in The
Tables of the Law, a story published in 1897 by William
Butler Yeats. Thornton notes that Stephen Hero
records Stephen's reading of the story, and Gifford observes
that the story's protagonist, Owen Aherne, believes in
Joachim's prophecies and connects their fervor with Swift's.
The relevance of the Yeats story was first noted by Joseph
Prescott in "Notes on Joyce's Ulysses," Modern
Language Quarterly 13 (1952): 149-62.
Joachim's "fading prophecies" innovated on
the linear, teleological
understanding of history established early in Christian
doctrine, and on the figural aspect of that historiography
developed in the Middle Ages, which saw biblical events as
"figures" or "types" predicting later events. For instance,
theologians saw the Jews' 40 years of wandering in the
wilderness, narrated in Exodus, as prophetically
anticipating Christ's 40 days in the desert in Matthew and
Luke, in a richly significant patterning scripted by the
divine artificer. (Jesus instructs his disciples in these
historical predictions of his life at Luke 24:27.)
Joachim remade this typological historiography in a Trinitarian image. The times
represented in the Hebrew Bible (from the Creation until
Christ's birth) constituted the reign of the Father, when
mankind was subject to the divine Law of the Ten Commandments.
The times from the New Testament era through Joachim's own
(until 1260 AD) constituted the reign of the Son, when human
nature was joined with divine nature through faith in Christ
and his new law (Love your neighbor as yourself). Future times
would fall under the reign of the Holy Spirit, when mankind
would have direct contact with God and follow a new law. Each
age manifested the divine purpose for humanity more perfectly
than the last.
In the coming age of the Holy Spirit, ecclesiastical
hierarchy would disappear, and Christians would find common
purpose with Muslims. The mystical meanings of scripture would
be understood intuitively, rather than by parsing inferences
from the literal sense of the texts. And human beings would,
at last, realize the radical freedom and love prophesied in
the gospels. It is easy to imagine how Stephen would have been
intrigued by this apocalyptic thinking, given his interest in
Blake. But Joachim's
prophecies seem to be "fading" not only on the page, but also
in Stephen's hopes, as he comes to terms with the dreary and
unimproving course of human
history.
