should want no sufficient aid to put to flight the great heaps of heretics. But forasmuch as in this extreme cruelty of the world, when all charity is waxed so cold, I am not ignorant how small credit these things shall find at many men's hands, like as also other counsels of moderations before mine have been neglected: wherefore it should be the best for me to leave these kind of men to their own will, rather than to sing unto such as are deaf, and so to lose both time and labour.
But now let us return unto the martyrs; but before we do enter into that lamentable story, we do think it worth our labour, to show first certain prophecies of sundry men, whereby so many great persecutions of the world were prefigui-ed. And first to begin with Joiachun the abbot, we will rehearse what was found of him in an old monument of Hoveden: Thus he saith, "Richard, the king of England, in his expedition unto Jerusalem, hearing tell of the great fame of Joiachim of Calabria, abbot of Curacon, who, by the spirit of prophecy, did foreshow things to come. What time as he sojourned at Sicily he caused the said abbot to be sent for to him, to hear of him, amongst other things more, what he could declare as touching Antichrist: he then, expounding the mystery of the seven kings in the Revelation, whereof five were fallen, &c. said "The seven kings are seven persecutors, Herod, Nero, Constantinus, Mahomet, Melsemutus, Saladinus, and Antichrist." But as touching Antichrist, he said thus. That even at that present he should be bred in Rome, and should be exalted in the apostolic see, of whom the apostle speaketh, he is exalted above all things that is called God.'"
Thus much writeth Hoveden; and this abbot was in the year of our Lord 1290. There is also the prophecy of Hildegard (of whom we have spoken before), in the 29th book of Vincentius. " In the year," says she, "after the incarnation of Christ, 1200, the doctrine of the apostles, and the fervent justice which God had appointed amongst the spiritual Christians, began to wax slack and doubtful, but this womanly time shall not so long continue as it hath hitherto continued." Thus much writeth he; neither did Fluentius, the bishop, doubt openly to preach that Antichrist was born in his days, as it appeareth by Sabellicus. Also before these days, A. D. 1239, Gerardus, bishop of Laodicea, in his book entitled "Of the Preservation of the Servants of God," doth conjecture Antichrist to be even at hand, by the rarity of prophesying and the gift of curing. There is also a certain prophecy of Jerome Savonarola, evident (if it be worthy credit) 69 years before, wherein he doth affirm in this manner, "that Italy should be plagued with the scourge of God, for the manifold sins thereof, even amongst the princes, as well ecclesiastical as secular; and when the cities of Rome and Florence are overthrown then should the church be renewed, the which should happen very shortly; and that the Turks, and Mauritanians, in these our days, should be converted unto the true knowledge of Christ." He foreshowed also, that "there should one pass the Alps, like unto Cyrus,[1] who should subvert all Italy." Thus much have we found in the book of Caspar Hedio, entitled the "Paralipomena."
- ↑ Like Cyrus, in the greatness of his achievements, but like Hannibal rather, in his passage of the Alps.—Ed.
