[572] just as the same sects did in the Reformation^a period, to participate in the revolution. In all these cases, one idea was extremely important, namely the idea of the third stage of history. This is a very old idea, and its origin can be sought in Joachim di Fiore ^b(whose name you all know), a monk of the 12th century. This man wrote, in the beginning of the 12th century, prophecies on the basis of which he gave the first---not the first, but a very important---anti-Augustinian^c sectarian interpretation of history^d, namely that the Trinity is not only eternal but is also HISTORICALLY relevant, that there is an age of the Father, and an age of the Son, and an age of the Holy Spirit; that the Old Testament and all before it, represents the age of the Father, that the thousand years of church history represents the age of the Son, and that now the age of the Spirit will come in which the whole society will be transformed, the earthly and ecclesiastical authorities will disappear; every individual^e will be taught directly by the Divine Spirit; everybody will become a monk. And by abstinence from sexual relationships^f, mankind and, with it, history, will come to an end. Now these prophecies had a tremendous influence on the Franciscan movement, and the later Franciscans revolted^g against the papal hierarchies in the name of the prophecies of Joachim di Fiore^h, in the hope that the third stage of historyⁱ will now start with the Order of Saint Francis. They were suppressed by the power of the popes^j, and their ideas remained in a more secularized^k form. And the idea of a third stage of history is from now on a continuous symbol, as you can call it, for such ideas---for all revolutionary movements in the Western world. The sects of the Reformation^l period used the idea, and later on the bourgeois fulfillers, largely dependent on the