Note 50 — Chapter III · - ‘THE EVERLASTING GOSPEL’

See Lea, vol. iii, pp. 18-19. ‘Unless the universe were a failure, and the promises of God were lies, there must be a term to human wickedness; and as the Gospel of Christ and the Rule of Francis had not accomplished the salvation of mankind, a new gospel was indispensable. Besides, Joachim had predicted that there would arise a new religious Order which would rule the world and the Church in the halcyon age of the Holy Ghost. They could not doubt that this referred to the Franciscans as represented by the Spiritual group, which was striving to uphold in all its strictness the Rule of the venerated founder.’ Salimbene was not a very spiritually-minded Franciscan. That most entertaining chronicler took a not entirely holy delight in the bright and frivolous things of life, and even the gross. But he was very much impressed by the prophecies of the Abbot Joachim. All prophecies appealed to his curious and inquisitive mind, those of Merlin as well as Joachim; but he was genuinely interested in their spiritual significance also, and for a time a professed Joachite. See his Chronicle, especially relating to the testimony of one, Brother Hugo of Montpellier, concerning Joachim, op. cit., pp. 97 et seq. There is a summary in Taylor, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 494-517. The place of poverty in the Franciscan Rule is discussed in St. Francis and Poverty—Franciscan Essays, pp. 18-30.