--San
Giovanni in Fiore was founded in the XIII century around the Florens Abbey which
was built by Gioacchino
da Fiore, a medieval mystic and Cistercian monk, who wrote a lot of books about the prophecy of the salvation
of the human race; for which
he was very renowend even that time. Dante in the Divine Comedy decribed him as one "endowend
whith prophetic spirit".
--Joachim now retired to the hermitage of
Pietralata, and finally founded the Abbey of Fiore (or Flora)
among the Calabrian mountains, which became the center of
a new and stricter branch of the Cistercian Order approved
by Celestine
III in 1198.