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Revelation 11.

I infer this from the following facts. The coming of the Antichrist in

the passage corresponds to the beast in Revelation 11, verse 7. Enoch and Elijah and
their conflict with Antichrist match other medieval descriptions of the two witnesses in
Rev. 11: 3 and following.

The death of Antichrist in the passage corresponds to

medieval interpretations of the great earthquake of Rev. 11: 13.

And the conversion of

the whole world to the true faith of Christ matches medieval interpretations of Rev. 11:
15, where "the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his
Christ."

It seems logical then, that Dolcino's rapture teaching in this passage was also

exegetically based in or around Revelation 11.

For Dolcino, the rapture may have been symbolized in the sounding of the

trumpet in Rev. 10:7, as it was for a contemporary interpreter, Arnold of Villanova.

Or,

it may have been symbolized in the ascension of the two witnesses in Revelation 11:12.
This is in keeping with many medieval commentaries on Revelation, in which 1 Thess
4:17, a passage about the church being caught up in the clouds, is cited as an interpretive
cross-reference to the passage about the ascension of the two witnesses.

(I have

included in your handout an illustration of the two witnesses being caught up in a cloud,
from a thirteenth-century Apocalypse commentary.)

The rapture teaching of Dolcino may have been based on an ecclesiastical

interpretation of the rapture of the child in Revelation 12:5. Or the rapture teaching of
Dolcino could have been exegetically based on the passage about the woman in the
wilderness in Revelation 12. The woman, interpreted as God's end-time people, are
persecuted by a dragon, interpreted as the Antichrist. The woman is then given two
wings, by which she might fly away from her persecutor into the desert, and there be
protected. Since many medieval exegetes interpreted the desert in the passage as
Paradise or heaven, it would not be much of a stretch if Dolcino saw the rapture of the
saints in the flight of the woman.

(And I have provided several other illustrations in

your handout from medieval Apocalypse commentaries, which show the woman flying
into heaven away from the dragon. In the last illustration, once the woman had been
given the wings and had flown away, she is placed safely in a tower. Interestingly, a
tower is a very common feature in medieval iconography of Paradise.

Which ever of these verses near Revelation chapter 11, that Dolcino's rapture

teaching was founded upon, I would emphasize that his interpretation of the rapture of
the saints as a means of protection from Antichrist was not far removed from other
medieval exegetical traditions associated with the Book of Revelation. And there is
evidence that other apocalyptic-minded believers in the fourteenth century expected to be
caught up in the clouds to meet Christ, and to later descend back to the earth and live for
a thousand years.

CONCLUSION

I am not suggesting that pretribulationism was the dominant view of the rapture in

the fourteenth century. But the text of The History of Brother Dolcino seems to indicate
that in the fourteenth century a teaching very similar to what we call a pretribulation