rk. Then began for Gioacchino a life of wandering from convent to
convent, which carried him even as far as Lombardy, to Verona, where we
find him with Pope Urban III.

When he returned to the south, a group of disciples gathered around him
to hear his explanations of the most obscure passages of the Bible.
Whether he would or no he was obliged to receive them, to talk with
them, to give them a rule, and, finally, to instal them in the very
heart of the Sila, the Black Forest of Italy,[37] over against the
highest peak, in gorges where the silence is interrupted only by the
murmurs of the Arvo and the Neto, which have their source not far from
there. The new Athos received the name of Fiore (flower), transparent
symbol of the hopes of its founder.[38] It was there that he put the
finishing touch to writings which, after fifty years of neglect, were to
become the starting-point of all heresies, and the aliment of all souls
burdened with the salvation of Christendom. The men of the first half of
the thirteenth century, too much occupied with other things, did not
perceive that the spiritual streams at which they were drinking
descended from the snowy mountain-tops of Calabria.

It is always thus with mystical influences. There is in them something
vague, tenuous, and penetrating which escapes an exact estimation. Let
two choice souls meet, and they will find it a difficult thing to
analyze and name the impressions which each has received from the other.
It is so with an epoch; it is not always those who speak to her the
oftenest and loudest whom she best understands; nor even those at whose
feet she sits, a faithful pupil, day after day. Sometimes, while on the
way to her accustomed masters, she suddenly meets a stranger; she barely
catches a few words of what he says; she knows not whence he comes nor
whither he goes; she never sees him again, but those few words of his go
on surging in the depths of her soul, agitating and disquieting her.

Thus it was for a long while with Gioacchino di Fiore. His teachings,
scattered here and there by enthusiastic disciples, were germinating
silently in many hearts.[39] Giving back hope to men, they restored to
them strength also. To think is already to act; alone under the shadow
of the hoary pines which surrounded his cell, the cenobite of Fiore was
laboring for the renovation of the Church with as much vigor as the
reformers who came after him.

He was, however, far from attaini