ABSTRACT
Joachim of Fiore was a monastic scholar. He became a Benedictine at Corazzo sometime after 1171 and may have been made abbot there before 1177. He tried to bring Cistercian habits into this community and even to bring about its full acceptance into the Cistercian Order. But even the strictness of the Cistercians did not satisfy Joachim, and in 1192 he left to found an even stricter Order, the Florensians. The Florensians were given papal approval by Celestine III in 1196, and Pope Gregory IX in 1234 termed them one of the 'pillars' of the Church.
