Costruire al tempo della fine. La "Dispositio Novi Ordinis" di Gioacchino da Fiore

In Christian culture, the goal of all goals is the éschaton, the end understood as the fulfillment of history. Here the ‘good’ pronounced by the Almighty in the Genesis creation narrative evolves into the ‘very good’ of the Apocalypse. The final course of history does not merely entail the return to Eden envisioned in the nostalgic mythologies of the golden age, but rather an expansion, the fulfilment of a ‘project’ anticipated in the Christian ‘forms of life’ and perfected through the experimentum mundi, albeit without ever losing sight of the end. In the 12th century Joachim of Fiore argued that a penultimate time – meaning a time still within the framework of the historical process involving the succession of the three ages of the Father, of the Son and of the Spirit, albeit encompassing the end – should engage in the experimentum mundi, involving the territorialisation of the Christian ideal. This is understood as an expansion of the monastic utopia to encompass the entire societas christiana. Joachim of Fiore’s figurae, which are contained in the Liber Figurarum, can now be interpreted from an architectural perspective.

The article examines table XII of the Gioachimitic "Liber Figurarum" in its aspect of utopian architecture. The essay inserts this architectural and social project into the general framework of Gioacchino da Fiore's thought.