born 0441; 1130/35, Celico, Kingdom of Naples
died 1201/02, Fiore
Italian mystic, theologian, and philosopher of history.
After a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he became a Cistercian monk, and by 1177 he was abbot at Corazzo, Sicily. He retired into the mountains to follow a contemplative life in 1191, and in 1196 he founded the order of San Giovanni in Fiore. His Book of Harmony of the New and Old Testaments outlined a theory of history and traced correspondences in the Old and New Testaments. In his Exposition of the Apocalypse he examined the symbols of the Antichrist , and in Psaltery of Ten Strings he expounded his doctrine of the Holy Trinity . A man of vivid imagination, he was both acclaimed as a prophet and denounced as a heretic.