Centuries [beginning from the fifth century] until the third shift in
the twelfth to fifteenth century when amillennialism was challenged in a significant
way with the rediscovery of premillennial interpretation in certain circles. (Alan
E. Kurschner, A Linguistic Approach to Revelation 19:11-20:6 and the
Millennium Binding of Satan [Linguistic Biblical Studies 23; Leiden: Brill,
2022], 182, comment in square brackets added for clarification)
The Twelfth to Fifteenth Century
The Abbot Joachim of Fiore (d. 1202) spearheaded a new direction of
Revelation commentaries. Dow notes, “What Tyconius was to the interpretation of
Revelation from AD 400 to 1200, Joachim of Fiore was for the next three or four
hundred years.” Joachim was an apocalyptic-minded monk who was fervently
concerned about worldliness creeping into the Roman Catholic Church. He argued
in his Expositio in Apocalypsim that the images and events therein
referred to past, present, and future events. So he constructed a progressive
view of history where good and evil was not at an impasse until the end, but
was “progressing toward the spiritual age in which the monastic ideal of
contemplation would be realized by society as a whole.” He believed in the rise
of a future Antichrist who would persecute the church until Jesus returned to
destroy the Antichrist. Joachim departed from the other interpreters of the
Middle Ages by interpreting the millennium similarly to the early chiliasts who
conceived of the millennium as a future kingdom on earth. However, he did not
view the visions as strictly linear, but saw recapitulated features in them
progressing historically. Nor did he interpret the visions in a general fashion
but construed in the seals epochs of church history. One salient influence of
Joachim was his eventual condemnation of the corruption in the Roman Church
with other interpreters during his time believing that the Antichrist
prophecies were fulfilled by church leaders, particularly the Pope.
Accordingly, a spate of commentators between the thirteenth and fifteenth
century ensued identifying the Pope as the beast of Revelation and the Roman
Church as the harlot; e.g. Peter Olivi, Albertus Magnus, Hugo de S. Caro,
Pseudo-Aquinas, Nicolas de Gorham, Nicolas of Lyra, Dionysius Carthusianus,
Beguins, Waldensians, Wycliffe, and Hus, among others. However, another
interpretive stream occurred in the thirteenth century. In previous centuries,
interpreters mostly construed Revelation structured to repeat the same message.
This began to change with some Franciscans, particularly Alexander Minorita (d.
1271) and Peter Auriol (d. 1322), who viewed it as a sequential-consecutive
framework depicting church history from the apostles until the second coming.
To alleviate tension with the church, this stream would shift the anti-papal
“fulfillments” to other antagonists such as those in past historical eras, as
well as current heretics, secular leaders, and Islam. (Alan E. Kurschner, A
Linguistic Approach to Revelation 19:11-20:6 and the Millennium Binding of
Satan [Linguistic Biblical Studies 23; Leiden: Brill, 2022], 187-88)
