Two Diagrams Rome and Babylon and Their Doctrinal and Moral Message

This paper deals with the diagrams of Liber Figurarum showing the two trees: Rome and Babylon. Together with their historical, concor distic and doctrinal meaning, the two figures also keep a moral meaning, present in the Calabrian abbot’s thought, but non explicitly highlighted in other diagrams of Liber Figurarum. The general theme permeating the figures is the pilgrimage of God’s people in the Ancient and New Testament. The moral dynamics of history, to which the two trees refer, has to be observed particularly in a short work of Joachim, Intelligentia super calathis. It’s a treatise of political theology inspired by Jeremy’s vision, in which God showed the prophet two baskets of figs, after Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, had deported Jeconiah, king of Jude, the people’s leaders and the artisans from Jerusalem to Babylon. The internal structure of the treatise and its themes correspond to the visual elements of two diagrams of Liber Figurarum. The moral message, addressed to 12th century men, is this: when the Church stops being holy, God moves an enemy against it. The answer to the enemy’s tribulations should be, in this case, resignation and penitence. The great theological theme of liberation from sin assumes in Joachim, and therefore in the Liber Figurarum, the form of a historical way that leads from vainglory and self-pride to humble acceptance of God’s justice

Art · Economic Justice · Epistemology · Literature · New Testament · Pilgrimage · Political theology · Politics · Pride · Theology · Byzantine Studies and History · Classics · Historical and Religious Studies of Rome · History · Law · Philosophy · Theology and Canon Law Studies

• Moralna wymowa gestu namaszczenia stóp i głowy Jezusa w Quaestio de Maria Magdalena et Maria sorore Lazari et Marthae Joachima z Fiore

  Open Access•Jan Grzeszczak•Vox Patrum•2018

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