Eschatology and Discernment of Spirits:
- Eschatology and Discernment of Spirits:The Impact of Peter of John Olivi's Remedia contra Temptationes Spirituales (14th-15th Centuries)1
In the last years of his life, between 1292 and 1298, the Franciscan Peter of John Olivi wrote a series of short devotional texts, known as Opuscula, aimed at the religious edification of the laity. Olivi's perspective was strongly eschatological: in his opinion, the imminence of the end of time made lay religious experience more authentic than that of the clergy, which would eventually oppose the final evangelical renewal.
Among the twelve surviving Opuscula, the most eschatologically oriented is titled Remedia contra temptationes spirituales. The Remedia are characterized by a cautious and rigorous judgment on spiritual gifts, such as visions and raptures. According to Olivi, these phenomena are particularly difficult to discern when the Antichrist is approaching and "some will renounce the faith by paying heed to deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons" (I Tim 4, 1). Following this apocalyptic perspective of discretio spirituum, the Remedia are divided into two parts: the first includes twelve remedies against spiritual temptations, whereas the second puts forward four remedies against corrupt teachers and their doctrines. This structure, however, is not fixed. The work is transmitted by a huge number of manuscripts, and is often attributed, as we will see, to other authors (Bonaventure, Venturino of Bergamo), or forms part of larger works (such as Ludolph of Saxony's Vita Christi or Vincent Ferrer's Tractatus de vita spirituali). Accordingly, its structure remains fluid from version to version.
By focusing on the Latin and Italian vernacular traditions of the Re-media, this paper will identify two ways of reading Olivi's work: one more [End Page 287] radical, which emphasizes the eschatological orientation of the text; the other more focused on erasing or blurring its apocalyptic implications.
1. Olivi's Opuscula in Context
Peter of John Olivi was born around 1248 and entered the Order of Friars Minor at the age of twelve, around 1260. In 1292 he moved to the Occitan town of Narbonne to be the lector of the local Franciscan house, where he died on 14 March 1298.
Just before his death, Olivi wrote his famous commentary on the Apocalypse (the Lectura super Apocalypsim), where he combined his usual eschatological evaluation of Francis and his order with a negative judgement of the corruption and decay of ecclesiastical authority.2 Even though it enjoyed a wide circulation, often anonymously and not always in heterodox contexts,3 the Lectura super Apocalypsim was officially condemned as heretical by Pope John XXII in 1326. Even before this condemnation, many copies of this work were publicly burned.
During the years he spent in Narbonne, Olivi also wrote other works which were absolutely orthodox. From the classes taught between 1293 and 1295 in his convent he drew up a treatise on contracts (De contractibus), which provided a global view of economics, with innovative reflections on the concept of value as well as of merchant "capital" (capitale). The De contractibus was widely read and used by authors as influential as Bernardino of Siena and Antonino of Florence, and is now considered by historians a masterpiece of scholastic economic reflection.4
During the same years, Olivi also wrote a treatise on the Mass. The De missa was composed for the benefit of less cultivated priests, so that they could administer the sacrament with greater awareness of its theological implications.5 In this case the audience was clerical, not lay; but [End Page 288] like the De contractibus, the treatise on the Mass was intended to address to a larger audience, with a practical purpose, abstract reflections usually being inaccessible to the unlearned.
Finally, in the last years of his life Olivi embarked upon a religious subject, but for a lay audience, in thirteen short devotional texts known as Opuscula. As underlined by Antonio Montefusco, these texts share a similar bipartite structure: the first part briefly puts forward several moral reflections (external pedagogy); while the second tends to develop them in a more contemplative manner (inner experience).6
This twofold structure, which divides human life into its outer and inner spheres, was...
