ABSTRACT
Joachim of Fiore is one of the most original and also the more controversial authors of the higher Middle Ages. Already in his own day his contemporaries received his ideas with a mixture of amazement, fascination, and distrust, and soon aer his death in 1202 his memory was tainted not only by the Fourth Lateran Council’s condemnation of his criticism of Peter the Lombard’s Trinitarian theology but also by the use made of the work and texts disseminated under his name by the Franciscan spirituals.1 erefore, early accounts of the reception of his ideas are most valuable and merit thorough study. Interestingly, while Joachim was active in the south of Italy, the earliest historiographical accounts of his career can be found in the chronicles of the English authors Ralph Niger, Roger of Howden, and Ralph of Coggeshall and of the French Premonstratensian Robert of Auxerre, all dating from the last 10 years of the twelh and the rst years of the thirteenth century.
