A Vulcanological Joachim of Fiore and an Aerodynamic Francis of Assisi in Colonial Latin America

Abstract

Cataclysms of nature and apocalyptic beliefs have always gone hand in hand. While Christians have had no monopoly on such beliefs, expectations of this kind have been an important part of the Western religious tradition both in Christian Europe and in the ‘millennial New World’, the latter a time and place of heightened eschatological anticipation. One of the ‘best-sellers’ among Christians in medieval Europe wasThe Fifteen Signs before Doomsday, a work that detailed the cataclysms which would occur before the end. But in another region of the world – a new world replete with frequent seismic and volcanic activity – it became even more so a type of prophecy that would captivate the religious imagination of colonizers and missionaries.