The Eschatological Future of the Jews in the ‘Vine Diagram’ of Joachim of Fiore

Abstract

Against the background of Early Scholasticism, with its reinvigorated Christocentrism and recently developed anti-Jewish polemics, the theology of Joachim of Fiore stands out markedly. Although, in his Trinitarian view of history, the Age of the Holy Spirit as the third and final stage will be introduced by the conversion of the Jews, Joachim’s visual theology goes even further. In his ‘vine diagram,’ the Jews and the Gentiles as the two peoples of history are pictured as making up its tripartite course which is first dominated by the Jews, then by the Gentile Christians and, finally, by the union of the two peoples. This diagram and its view of history, however, cannot be reduced to a numerical structure in the shape of its three circles formed by two branches. As a remarkable achievement of manuscript illumination, a luxuriant and overabundant foliage crowns the figure with the aesthetic quality of incalculability.