Bl. Joachim of Fiore – Order in the time of the Antichrist

Source : Annales des Frères Mineurs, 1680

Joachim of Calabria, Abbot and founder of the Monastery of Floran, who lived around the year 1195, wrote in these terms:

“There will be two men, one from here, the other from beyond, that is to say two Orders, one Italian, the other Spanish; after them there will come a third clothed in sacks, in whose time the son of iniquity, who is the Antichrist, will appear.”

He then describes the spread of the Friars Minor throughout the whole world, where they are to convert the infidels and shed their blood. This Abbot was so well enlightened by God on this matter that he had the statues of St. Dominic and St. Francis made in mosaic in the Church of St. Mark in Venice, with their habits exactly as they have worn them since; and he had written beneath one of them these two Greek words, “Saint Dominic,” and marked the other with the five wounds of Jesus Christ. St. Antoninus and Bartholomew of Pisa are reliable witnesses to this truth.