ABSTRACT
He presents this debate on more than 2,100 folio pages covering more than 3,000 authors.10 Since, Wol declares, the clergy in general and the popes in particular have always proved to be depraved11 and since, according to the ‘Abbas Ioachimus’, the Roman Church was like the Babylonian whore, who fornicates with secular princes while its prelates fail to blush with shame, the church deserved to be abolished.12 Although the demand for reform has been concomitant with the church’s historical existence, Wol can think of only a few eective attempts, including those in the ninth and tenth centuries initiated by the emperors Charlemagne, his son Louis the Pious, and Otto I. e next gure chronologically to be cited as a reformer is ‘Abbas Ioachimus de reformatione futurâ’. Referring to the two Joachite commentaries Super Hieremiam and Super Esaiam, Wol emphasizes those prophecies which concern a future preacher of the Gospel who will revolutionize the church.13 Above all, he aims at a specic reformer, Martin Luther, who is deemed to have been predicted by Joachim and
still more explicitly by Telesphorus of Cosenza.14 It is obviously Luther who, by virtue of the Holy Spirit, had identied the church’s traditions as false and had restored the preaching of the true Bible.15
