The wheel of the Aetates Mundi — the Ages of the World

The whole wheel is a machine for saying that all of time, from Eden to the moment when this manuscript was written, is one ordered, providential sequence. "

Prima etate mundi Adam in paradiso locatur

," in the first age of the world Adam is placed in paradise, and afterwards cast out.

The medallion at the hub reads ETATES MUNDI

The six sectors radiating from it are the six ages of history in the scheme medieval writers inherited from Augustine, Isidore and Bede: Adam to the Flood, then the Flood to Abraham, and so on through "VI Romanorum regibus regnantibus," the sixth and final age under the kings of Rome.

Around the rim Lambert bolts this onto the other great medieval scheme of history, the succession of world empires: with Rome at the bottom with Julius — ending at the right edge with XPS (Christ), ECCL[ESI]A, and CESAR AUGUST[US]: Christ born under Augustus, the Church as where history is heading.

Image 2

: Rosette diagram of the

Six Ages of the World

The same historical scheme as the wheel, but now rebuilt in a more abstract form: six red almond-shaped loops (vesicas) arranged as a rosette inside the blue ring of the cosmos, with a face peering out of the central medallion where all six ages converge

Sex etates per sex milibus...

— the six ages reckoned through six thousands of years, "making an end" in a specified year of the Lord: the old sex millennia doctrine, in which world history runs six thousand years mirroring the six days of creation, with the seventh age as the world's sabbath.

The bottom of the page, in display capitals:

MICROCOSMOS

, glossed

hoc est minor mundus

— "that is, the lesser world" — followed by

DESCRIPTIO ETATIS HOMINIS

, the description of the ages of man: infancy, boyhood, youth, and onward through the lifespan. This is the classic

mundus–annus–homo

move:

the six ages of the world above, the ages of a single human life below, macrocosm and microcosm running on the same clock

. — man as a small world whose stages, humors, and elements repeat the structure of the big one. The face in the hub of the rosette sits at the pivot of that idea: history, time, and the human being sharing one center.

The Three Ages of the Spirit

The Three Eras is a medieval Christian scheme of periodization in historiography. It supposed that world history was made up of three periods corresponding to the persons of the Trinity, consisting of an era of the Father, followed by an era of the Son, and finally an era of the Holy Spirit.

7 Ages of the World

The Six Ages of the World (Latin: sex aetates mundi), also rarely Seven Ages of the World (Latin: septem aetates mundi), is a Christian historical periodization first written about by Augustine of Hippo c. 400.

The Six Ages, as formulated by Augustine of Hippo, are defined in De catechizandis rudibus (On the catechizing of the uninstructed), Chapter 22:

• The First Age "is from the beginning of the human race, that is, from Adam, who was the first man that was made, down to Noah, who constructed the ark at the time of the flood", i.e. the Antediluvian period.
• The Second Age "extends from that period on to Abraham, who was called the father indeed of all nations".
• The Third Age "extends from Abraham on to David the king".
• The Fourth Age is "from David on to that captivity whereby the people of God passed over into Babylonia".
• The Fifth Age is "from that transmigration down to the advent of our Lord Jesus Christ"
• The Sixth Age: "With His [Jesus Christ's] coming the sixth age has entered on its process."

The redemption of Israel will come about through the mystic force of the letter "Vav" [which has the numerical value of six], namely, in the sixth millennium. ... Happy are those who will be left alive at the end of the sixth millennium to enter the Shabbat, which is the seventh millennium; for that is a day set apart for the Holy One on which to effect the union of new souls with old souls in the world (Zohar, Vayera 119a). - The Zohar

Joachim of Fiore and the Three Ages of the Spirit

Joachim of Fiore gave the West one of its most influential mystical readings of history: the unfolding of three ages corresponding to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Core themes

• The Age of the Father
• The Age of the Son
• The Age of the Holy Spirit
• History as spiritual revelation
• The coming of a spiritual Church
• Monastic renewal and prophetic time
• Apocalypse as transition between ages
• The danger and power of millenarian expectation

Topics to expand

• Joachim’s life and monastic vision
• The three ages
• The spiritual Church
• The Eternal Gospel
• Influence on apocalyptic movements
• Franciscan spirituals
• Modern progress myths as secularized Joachimism
• Relation to Revelation and the New Jerusalem

Library of Light Edition 1.0 — Last revised: May 2026