BRITISH MAGAZINE, AND MONTHLY REGISTER OF RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL INFORMATION, PAROCHIAL HISTORY, AND DOCUMENTS RESPECTING THE STATE OF THE POOR, PROGRESS OF EDUCATION, &c. VOL. XVII. LONDON: J. G. F. & J. RIVINGTON, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD, AND WATERLOO PLACE, PALL MALL; J. TURRILL, 250, REGENT STREET, AND T. CLERC SMITH, REGENT STREET. MD CCCXL. ANTICHRIST IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.-No. IV. BEFORE we conclude this second head of the followers of Joachim, in which the adoption of his views of prophecy by the Waldensians is shewn, another observation may be added. Among the remnants of that interesting sect, whose matter and language exhibit all the appearance of authenticity, may be numbered their Novel Sermon, or New Discourse, of which Raynouard has published a mangled extract.* It concludes thus They shall be happy who are of the perfect, When there shall be completed the number of the elect. The attribution of those three perfections to God is common and obvious; but the assigning them to the three persons, severally and distributively, is presumptuous, seems to be utterly unfounded, and is of an heretical character. But it was the Abbé Joachim's doctrine of the three persons, to whom severally and successively appertain the three status mundi; the Father's power being displayed in the severity of the first status, the Son's wisdom in the doctrine of the second, and the love and charity of the Spirit in the freedom of the third. This curious passage (while it stamps this poem with the seal of antiquity, and separates it from the theology of the Reformation and the forgeries thence emanating) confirms in the highest degree all that has been premised on the Joachism of the authors of the Noble Lesson. But in regarding the offensive distribution of the three attributes to the three persons as a potent evidence of their qualified Joachism, we Poesies 2, p. 105–10. He has in like manner mutilated another noble monument of Waldism, the Novel Confort; of which the concluding lines are not unworthy of Dante : Vene, e non atenda a la noyt tenebrosa, VOL. XVII.-Jan. 1840. B are by no means to regard the Waldensians as having adopted the tres status mundi of Joachim, or as having assigned to the three persons three successive reigns. We have already intimated that they were not of the class of Joachites proper; and the Noble Lesson proves it. For there we find three states, or, as they are termed, three laws ;* and those three are the natural or patriarchal, the Levitical, and the Christian. The Christian law, described as the present law, is also the third and final one, for "Other law from henceforwards are we not to have." 3. Amaury of Chartres, or Amalricus Carnotensis, was a native of the village of Bene in the Pays Chartrain; and having entered into holy orders, became an assiduous scholar in theology at the University of Paris, which then excelled all others in that faculty. He is described as a man of excellent natural endowments, without the discretion to employ them rightly. He was a contemporary, but whether an acquaintance we know not, of Joachimus Abbas. But he began to make himself conspicuous in A.D. 1204, being the fourth year of the pretended transition from the second status mundi to the third, and from the dominion of Christ and the Letter to that of the Holy Ghost and the Spiritual Intelligence, and from two to three years after the Abbot of Flore had closed his mortal career. In that year he maintained at Paris that all Christians were firmly held and bound to believe that they were, each of them, members of Christ, and united to his body; and except he so believed, no man could be saved. This proposition was received with general dissent by the University of Paris, who condemned it in a very full and solemn assembly of their body. And upon appeal made by Amaury to Innocent III., that pope confirmed their judgment, and obliged him to retract his opinion. To those who believe in the sacramental presence, the speculations of Amaury (when separated from the damnatory clause which he had the audacity to introduce) will perhaps not appear calculated to excite such alarm, or provoke such decided condemnation, in an assembly of catholics. But the probability is, that Amaury's lofty doctrine did not appear sacramental in its origin or character, but was viewed as an attempt to engraft upon Christianity the debasing and almost atheistical principles of Pantheism. The humiliation he experienced on this occasion is supposed to have shortened his life, which he ended, in apparent peace with the church, in A.D. 1207. More does not appear to be known of his views and tenets, except as they were afterwards developed in the proceedings of the Amalricians. After his death he became possessed of an importance which he had not when living; for his followers and admirers lost no time in forming themselves openly into a sect which professed doctrines such as he had not in his lifetime been generally known to cherish. Not con See Nobla Leyczon, vss. 437-454. + Celeberrima comitia. C. E. Du Boulay Hist. Univers. Paris. anno 1204, tom 3, p. 25. "When our Lord was crucified," (said Amaury,)" his faithful disciples experienced in their members the same pains as he did in his." Gaguin cit. ibid. P. 48. |