Joachim of Fiore and monastic reform (review)

240 Reviews inheritance practices and mothers' advice books. At times, Wall's argument slips from the historical specificity it aims for. Whitney's playful 'Wyll and testament', for example, cannot be regarded as a text that 'reinforces a traditiontiedto women's contestedrightsto dispose of property . . . Part of the body of literature in which mothers spoke from the grave' (my italics). Whitney's text published in 1573, preceded the mothering texts which are discussed earlier in the chapter, most of which appeared in print in the early seventeenth century. It is Whitney's very innovation that is one of the most remarkable aspects of her writing. Nevertheless, The imprint of gender is a remarkable testament in its own right to the healthy state of Renaissance criticism. Fluently written and cogendy argued, the book makes explicit its debts to, and divergences from, other critics, thus clearly tracing its own inheritance. In the preface, Wall opens with the statement that it is 'difficult to write a preface for a book that devotes most of its time to critiquing book prefaces' (p. ix). Its acknowledgements set out a prestigious literary genealogy that includes such coterie names as Quilligan and Stallybrass, Lamb and Marotti. The cover illustration of the book inscribes title and author within an elaborate Renaissance border which reappears in thetextas thetitlepage border to the 1602 edition of Samuel Daniel's Works (fig. 8). The choice of iUustration for Wall's own text is no doubt as carefully (and in this case, playfully?) self-conscious as her theoretical position. That border, as she writes in relation to the Daniel text, 'monumentalizes the text and celebrates its writing origin . . . Through these trappings, contemporary poetry [or the imprint of gender!] was presented less as an ephemeral trifle and more as a contribution to a newly emerging institutionalization of English letters' (p. 75). Kim Walker Department of English Victoria University of Wellington Wessley, Stephen E., Joachim of Fiore and monastic reform (American University Studies, Series VII: theology and religion, Vol. 72), N.Y. and Bern, Peter Lang, 1990; cloth; pp. xii, 148; R.R.P. SF48.00. Joachim of Fiore is best known for his interpretation of history in terms of concords between the Old and N e w Testaments, which he set out in three works, the Liber concordiae, the Exposition in Apocalypsim and the Liber Reviews 241 figurarum. According to this interpretation, there would be a final age before the Second Coming, in which the Church would be renewed by the practitioners of a new and better kind of monasticism. Joachim called them 'viri spirituales'. Joachim himself left the monastery of Corazzo where, as abbot he had attempted to introduce Cistercian practices, and founded a new monastic order at Fiore. It is not surprising that as Wessley demonstrates convincingly, he saw this new order as the instrument of the predicted renewal. Using Joachim's commentary on the life of Saint Benedict, Wessley argues that Joachim established parallels between Benedict's life and his own and that he used Benedict's ascent of Monte Cassino to legitimate his departure from his own monastery. H e demonstrates the maintenance of these parallels by the anonymous monk of Fiore who wrote the founder's life and still apparently needed to justify his actions. The rest of the book deals with tbe role of the Florensians in conserving then founder's vision of the future, and then effect on other religious groups. It is based on two major sources: the anonymous Vita of the abbot, and the mid thirteenth-century pseudo-Joachim commentary on Jeremiah. These are supplemented by reference to other writings of Joachim, to the coUection of miracle stories produced at Fiore, and to the Vita written by the Cistercian Luke of Cosenza. This book is written very much from within the perspective of Joachimite scholarship and contains few signposts for the reader who approaches it from outside that perspective. It would, for instance, have been helpful at the outset to have an oudine of what is known of Joachim's life, rather than letting it emerge from the analysis of the sources. Joachim's contribution to monastic reform itself emerges as a combination of disillusionment...