CHAPTER XXVII SCRIPTURAL ALLEGORIES IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES; HONORIUS OF AUTUN Words, pictures, and other vehicles of expression are symbols of whatever they are intended to designate. A certain unavoidable symbolism also inheres in human mental processes; for the mind in knowing “turns itself to images,” as Aquinas says following Aristotle; and every statement or formulation is a casting together of data in some presentable and representative form. An example is the Apostles’ Creed, called also by this very name of Symbol, being a casting together, an elementary formula, of the essentials of the Christian Faith. In the same sense the “law of gravitation” or a moral precept is a deduction, induction, or gathering together into a representative symbol, of otherwise unassembled and uncorrelated experience. In the present and following chapters, however, the term symbol will be used in its common acceptation to indicate a thing, an act, or a word invested with an adventitious representative significance. All statements or expressions (through language or by means of pictures) which are intended to carry, besides their palpable meaning, another which is veiled and more spiritual, are symbolical or figurative, and more specifically are called allegories.[32]These devices of the mind have a history as old as humanity. From inscrutable beginnings, in time they become recognized as makeshifts; yet they remain prone to enter new stages of confusion. The mind seeking to express the transcendental, avails itself of symbols. All religions have teemed with them, in their primitive phases scarcely distinguishing between symbol and fact; then a difference becomes evident to clearer-minded men, while perhaps at the same time others are elaborately maintaining that the symbol magically is, or brings to pass, that which it represents. Such obscuring mysticism existed not merely in confused Egypt and Brahminical India, but everywhere—in antique Greece and Rome, and then afterwards through the times of the Christian Church Fathers and the entire Middle Ages. Fact and symbol are seen constantly closing together and becoming each other like the serpent-souls in the twenty-fifth canto of Dante’s Inferno. Allegory properly speaking, which involves a conscious and sustained effort to invest concrete or material statements with more general or spiritual meaning, played an interesting rÔle in epochs antecedent to the patristic and mediaeval periods. Even before Plato’s time the personal myths of the gods shocked the Greek ethical intellect, which thereupon proceeded to convert them into allegories. Greek allegorical interpretation of ancient myth was apologetic to both the critical mind and the moral sense. With Philo, the Hellenizing Jew of Alexandria, whose philosophy revolted from the literal text of Genesis, the motive for allegorical interpretation was similar. But the document before him was most unlike the Iliad and Odyssey. Genesis contained no palpably immoral stories of Jehovah to be explained away. Its account of divine creation and human beginnings merely needed to be invested with further ethical meaning. So Philo made cardinal virtues of the four rivers of Eden, and through like allegorical conceits transformed the Book of Genesis into a system of Hellenistic ethics. Not cosmogonic myths, but moral meanings, he had discovered in his document. Advancing along the path which Philo found, Christian allegorical interpretation undertook to substantiate the validity of the Gospel. To this end it fixed special symbolical meanings upon the Old Testament narratives, so as to make them into prefigurative testimonies to the truth of Christian teachings.[33] Allegory was also called on to justify, as against educated pagans, certain acts of that heroic but peccant “type” of Christ, David, the son of Jesse. Such special apologetic needs hardly affected the allegorical interpretation of the Gospel itself, which began at an early day, and from the first was spiritual and anagogic, constantly straining on to educe further salutary meaning from the text. The Greek and Latin Church Fathers created the mass of doctrine, including Scriptural interpretation,[34] upon which mediaeval theologians were to expend their systematizing and reconstructive labours. Through the Middle Ages, the course of allegory and symbolism strikingly illustrates the mediaeval way of using the patristic heritage—first painfully learning it, then making it their own, and at last creating by means of that which they had organically appropriated. Allegory and symbolism were to impress the Middle Ages as perhaps no other element of their inheritance. The mediaeval man thought and felt in symbols, and the sequence of his thought moved as frequently from symbol to symbol as from fact to fact. The allegorical faculty with the Fathers was dogmatic and theological; ingenious in devising useful interpretations, but oblivious to all reasonable propriety in the meaning which it twisted into the text: controversial necessities readily overrode the rational and moral requirements of the “historical” or “literal” meaning. For the deeply realized allegorical significance was a law unto itself. These characteristics of patristic allegory passed over to the Middle Ages, which in the course of time were to impress human qualities upon the patristic material.The Bathsheba and Uriah episode in the life of David was of course taken allegorically, and affords a curious example of a patristic interpretation originating in the exigencies of controversy, and then becoming authoritative for later periods when the echoes of the old controversy had long been silent. Augustine was called upon to answer the book of the clever Manichaean, Faustus, the stress of whose attacks was directed against the Old Testament. Faustus declared that he did not blaspheme “the law and the prophets,” but rejected merely the special Hebrew customs and the vile calumnies of the Old Testament writers, imputing shameful acts to prophets and patriarchs. In his list of shocking narratives to be rejected, was the story “that David after having had such a number of wives, defiled the little woman of Uriah his soldier, and caused him to be slain in battle.”[35] Augustine responds with a general exclamation at the Manichaean’s failure to understand the sacramental symbols (sacramenta) of the Law and the deeds of the prophets. He then speaks of certain Old Testament statements regarding God and His demands, and proceeds to consider the nature of sin and the questionable deeds of the prophets. Some of the reprehended deeds he justifies, as, for instance, Abraham’s intercourse with Hagar and his deceit in telling Abimelech that Sara was his sister when she was his wife. He also declares that Sara typifies the Church, which is the secret spouse of Christ. Proceeding further, he does not justify, but palliates, the conduct of Lot and his daughters, and then introduces its typological significance. At length he comes to David. First he gives a noble estimate of David’s character, his righteousness, his liability to sin, and his quick penitence.[36] Afterwards he considers, briefly as he says, what David’s sin with Bathsheba signifies prophetically.[37] The passage may be given to show what a mixture of banality and disregard of moral propriety in drawing analogies might emanate from the best mind among the Latin Fathers, and be repeated by later transitional and mediaeval commentators. “The names themselves when interpreted indicate what this deed prefigured. David is interpreted ‘Strong of hand’ or ‘Desirable.’ And what is stronger than that Lion of the tribe of Judah that overcame the world? and what is more desirable than him of whom the prophet says: ‘The desired of all nations shall come’ (Hag. ii. 7)? Bathsheba means ‘well of satiety,’ or ‘seventh well.’ Whichever of these interpretations we adopt will suit. For in Canticles the Bride who is the Church is called a well of living water (Cant. iv. 15); and to this well the name of the seventh number is joined in the sense of Holy Spirit; and this because of Pentecost (the fiftieth), the day on which the Holy Spirit came. For that same festival is of the weeks (de septimanis constare) as the Book of Tobit testifies. Then to forty-nine, which is seven times seven, one is added, whereby unity is commended. By this spiritual, that is ‘Seven-natured’ (septenario) gift the Church is made a well of satiety; because there is made in her a well of living water springing up unto everlasting life, which whoso has shall never thirst (John iv. 14). Uriah, indeed, who had been her husband, what but devil does his name signify? In whose vilest wedlock all those were bound whom the grace of God sets free, that the Church without spot or wrinkle may be married to her own Saviour. For Uriah is interpreted, ‘My light of God’; and Hittite means ‘cut off,’ or he who does not stand in truth, but by the guilt of pride is cut off from the supernal light which he had from God; or it means, he who in falling away from his true strength which was lost, nevertheless fashioneth himself into an angel of light (2 Cor. xi. 14), daring to say: ‘My light is of God.’ Therefore this David gravely and wickedly sinned; and God rebuked his crime through the prophet with a threat; and he himself washed it away by repenting. Yet likewise He, the desired of all nations, was enamoured of the Church bathing upon the roof, that is cleansing herself from the filth of the world, and in spiritual contemplation surmounting and trampling on her house of clay; and knowledge of her having been had at their first meeting, He afterwards killed the devil, apart from her, and joined her to himself in perpetual marriage. Therefore we hate the sin but will not quench the prophecy. Let us love that (illum) David, who is so greatly to be loved, who through mercy freed us from the devil; and let us also love that (istum) David who by the humility of penitence healed in himself so deep a wound of sin.”[38] Augustine’s interpretation of the story of David and Bathsheba was embodied verbatim in a work upon the Old Testament by Isidore of Seville.[39] The voluminous commentator Rabanus Maurus took the same, also verbatim, either from Isidore or Augustine.[40] His pupil, Walafrid Strabo, in his famous Glossa ordinaria, cited, probably from Rabanus, the first part of the passage as far as the reference to the well of living water from John’s Gospel. He abridged the matter somewhat, thus showing the smoothing compiler’s art which was to bring his Glossa ordinaria into such general use. Walafrid omitted the lines declaring that Uriah signified the devil. He did cite, however, again probably from Rabanus, part of a long passage, taken by Rabanus from Gregory the Great, where Bathsheba is declared to be the letter of the Law, united to a carnal people, which David (Christ) joins to himself in a spiritual sense. Uriah is that carnal people, to wit, the Jews.[41] Thus far as to the comments on the narrative from the eleventh chapter of the Second Book of Samuel, otherwise called the Second Book of Kings. When Rabanus came to explain the sixth verse of the first chapter of Matthew—“And David begat Solomon from her who was the wife of Uriah”—he said: “Uriah indeed, that is interpreted ‘My light of God,’ signifies the devil, who fashions himself into an angel of light, daring to say to God: ‘My light of God,’ and ‘I will be like unto the Most High’ (Isaiah xiv.).”[42] Here pupil Walafrid follows his master, but adds: “Whose bewedded Church Christ became enamoured of from the terrace of His paternal majesty and joined her, made beautiful, to himself in matrimony.”[43] With Rabanus and Walafrid, as with Isidore and the Venerable Bede who were the links between these Carolingians and the Fathers, the interest in Scripture relates to its allegorical significance. Unmindful of the obvious and literal meaning of the text, they were unabashed by the incongruity of their allegorical interpretations.[44] Rabanus, for instance, had unbounded enthusiasm for Exodus, because of its rich symbolism: “Among the Scriptures embraced in the Pentateuch of the Law, the Book of Exodus excels in merit; in it almost all the sacraments by which the present Church is founded, nourished, and ruled, are figuratively set forth. For there, through the corporeal exit of the children of Israel from the terrestrial Egypt, our exit from the spiritual Egypt is made clear. There again, through the crossing of the Red Sea and the submersion of Pharaoh and the Egyptians, the mystery of Baptism and the destruction of spiritual enemies are figured. There the immolation of the typifying lamb and the celebration of the Passover suggest the passion of the true Lamb and our redemption. There manna from heaven and drink from a rock are given in order to teach us to desire the heavenly bread and the drink of life. There precepts and judgments are delivered to the people of God upon a mountain in order that we may learn to be subject to supernal discipline. There the construction of the tabernacle and its vessels is ordered to take place with worship and sacrifices, that therein the adornment of the marvellous Church and the rites of spiritual sacrifices may be indicated. There the perfumes of incense and anointment are prepared, in order that the sanctification of the Holy Spirit and the mystery of sacred prayers may be commended to us.”[45] The same commentator compiled a dictionary of allegories entitled Allegoriae in universam sacram scripturam,[46] saying in his lumbering Preface: “Whoever desires to arrive at an understanding of Holy Scripture should consider when he should take the narrative historically, when allegorically, when anagogically, and when tropologically. For these four ways of understanding, to wit, history, allegory, tropology, anagogy, we call the four daughters of wisdom, who cannot fully be searched out without a prior knowledge of these. Through them Mother Wisdom feeds her adopted children, giving to tender beginners drink in the milk of history; to those advancing in faith, the food of allegory; to the strenuous and sweating doers of good works, satiety in the savoury refection of tropology; and finally, to those raised from the depths through contempt of the earthly and through heavenly desire progressing towards the summit, the sober intoxication of theoretical contemplation in the wine of anagogy.... History, through the ensample which it gives of perfect men, incites the reader to the imitation of holiness; allegory, in the revelation of faith, leads to a knowledge of truth; tropology, in the instruction of morals, to a love of virtue; anagogy, in the display of everlasting joys, to a desire of eternal felicity. In the house of our soul, history lays the foundation, allegory erects the walls, anagogy puts on the roof, while tropology provides ornament, within through the disposition, without through the effect of the good work.”[47] This work, alphabetically arranged, gave the allegorical significations of words used in the Vulgate, with examples; for instance: “Ager (field) is the world, as in the Gospel: ‘To the man who sowed good seed in his field,’ that is to Christ, who sows preaching through the world.“Amicus (friend) is Christ, as in Canticles: ‘He is my friend, daughters of Jerusalem,’ for He loved His Church so much that He would die for her.... “Ancilla (handmaid) is the Church, as in the Psalms: ‘Make safe the son of thine handmaid,’ that is me, who am a member of the Church. Ancilla, corruptible flesh, as in Genesis: ‘Cast out the handmaid and her son,’ that is, despise the flesh and its carnal fruit. Ancilla, preachers of the Church, as in Job: ‘He will bind her with his handmaids,’[48] because the Lord through His preachers conquered the devil. Ancilla, the effeminate minds of the Jews, as in Job: ‘Thy handmaids hold me as a stranger,’ because the effeminate minds of the Jews knew me through faith.[49] Ancilla, the lowly, as in Genesis, ‘and meal for his handmaids,’ because Holy Church affords spiritual refection to the lowly. “Aqua is the Holy Spirit, Christ, subtle wisdom, loquacity, temporal greed, baptism, the hidden speech of the prophets, the holy preaching of Christ, compunction, temporal prosperity, adversity, human knowledge, this world’s wealth, the literal meaning carnal pleasure, eternal reflection, holy angels, souls of the blessed, saints, humility’s lament, the devotions of the saints, sins of the elect which God condones, knowledge of the heretics, persecutions, unstable thoughts, the blandishments of temptations, the pleasures of the wicked, the punishments of hell. “Mons, mountain (in the singular) the Virgin Mary, montes (in the plural) angels, apostles, sublime precepts, the two Testaments, inner meditations, proud men, the Gentiles, evil spirits.”[50] Thus Rabanus dragged into his compilation every meaning that had ever been ascribed to the words defined. In him and his contemporaries, the allegorical material, apart from its utility for salvation, seems void of human interest or poetic quality, as yet unstirred by a breath of life. That was to enter, as allegory and all manner of symbolism began to form the temper of mediaeval thought, and became a chosen vessel of the mediaeval spirit in poetry and art. The vital change had taken place before the twelfth century had turned its first quarter.[51] There flourished at this time a worthy monk named Honorius of Autun, also called “the Solitary.” It has been argued, and vehemently contradicted, that he was of German birth. At all events, monk he was and teacher at Autun. Those about him sought his instruction, and also requested him to put his discourses into writing for their use; their request reads as if at that time Honorius had retired from among them.[52] This is all that is known of the man who composed the most popular handbook of sermons in the Middle Ages. It was called the Speculum ecclesiae. Honorius may never have preached these sermons; but still his book exists with sermons for Sundays, saints’ days, and other Church festivals; a sermon also to be preached at Church dedications, and one “sermo generalis,” very useful, since it touched up all orders of society in succession, and a preacher might take or omit according to his audience. Before beginning, the preacher is directed to make the sign of the cross and invoke the Holy Spirit: he is admonished first to pronounce his text of Scripture in the Latin tongue, and then expound it in the vernacular;[53] he is instructed as to what portions of certain sermons should be used under special circumstances, and what parts he may omit in winter when the church is cold, or when in summer it is too hot; or this is left quite to his discretion: “Here make an end if you wish; but if time permits, continue thus.”Most of these sermons are short, and contain much excellent moral advice put simply and directly. They also make constant use of allegory, and evidently Honorius’s chief care in their composition was to expound his text allegorically and point the allegory’s application to the needs of his supposed audience. Neither he nor any man of his time devised many novel allegorical interpretations; but the old ones had at length become part of the mediaeval spirit and the regular means of apprehending the force and meaning of Scripture. Consequently Honorius handles his allegories more easily, and makes a more natural human application of them, than Rabanus or Walafrid had done. Sometimes the allegory seems to ignore the moral lesson of the literal facts; but while a smile may escape us in reading Honorius, the allegories in his sermons are rarely strained and shocking, likewise rarely dull. A general point from which he regards the narratives and institutions of the Old Testament is summed up in his statement, that for us Christ turned all provisions of the law into spiritual sacraments.[54] The whole Old Testament has pre-figurative significance and spiritual meaning; and likewise every narrative in the Gospels is spiritual. Two or three examples will illustrate Honorius’s edifying way of using allegory. His sermon for the eleventh Sunday after Pentecost is typical of his manner. The text is from the thirty-first[55] Psalm: “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.” Opening with an exhortation to penitence and tears and almsgiving, the preacher turns to the self-righteous “whose obstinacy the Lord curbs in the Gospel for the day, telling how two went up into the temple to pray, the one a Pharisee, to wit, one of the Jewish clergy, the other a Publican.” After proceeding for a while with sound and obvious comment on the situation, Honorius says: “By the two men who went up into the temple to pray, two peoples, the Jewish and the Gentile, are meant. The Pharisee who went close to the altar is the Jewish people, who possessed the Sanctuary and the Ark. He tells aloud his merits in the temple, because in the world he boasts of his observance of the law. “The Publican who stands afar off is the Gentile people, who were far off from the worship of God. He did not lift up his eyes to heaven, because the Gentile was agape at the things of earth. He beat his breast when he bewailed his error through penitence; and because he humbled himself in confession, God exalted him through pardon. Let us also, beloved, thus stand afar off, deeming ourselves unworthy of the holy sacraments and the companionship of the saints. Let us not lift up our eyes to heaven, but deem ourselves unworthy of it. Let us beat our breasts and punish our misdeeds with tears. Let us fall prostrate before God; and let us weep in the presence of the Lord who made us, so that He may turn our lament to joy, rend asunder our garb of mourning, and clothe us with happiness.” Honorius lingers a moment with some further exhortations suggested by his parable, and then turns to the edification to be found in fables wisely composed by profane writers. Let not the congregation be scandalized; for the children of Israel despoiled the Egyptians of gold and gems and precious vesture, which they afterwards devoted to completing the tabernacle. Pious Christians spoil the Egyptians when they turn profane studies to spiritual account. The philosophers tell of a woman bound to a revolving wheel, her head now up now down. The wheel is this world’s glory, and the woman is that fortune which depends on it. Again, they tell of one who tries to roll a stone to the top of a mountain; but, near the top, it hurls the wretch prostrate with its weight and crashes back to the bottom; and again, of one whose liver is eaten by a vulture, and, when consumed, grows again. The man who pushes up the stone is he who toilsomely amasses dignities, to be plunged by them to hell; and he of the liver is the man upon whose heart lust feeds. From that pest, they say, Medusa sprang, with noble form exciting many to lust, but with her look turning them to stone. She is wantonness, who turns to stone the hearts of the lewd through their lustful pleasure. Perseus slew her, covering himself with his crystalline shield; for the strong man, gazing into virtue’s mirror, averts his heart’s countenance (i.e. from wantonness). The sword with which he kills her is the fear of everlasting fire. Then, continues Honorius, we read of a boy brought up by one of the Fathers in a hermitage; but as he grew to youth he was tickled with lust. The Father commanded him to go alone into the desert and pass forty days in fasting and prayer. When some twenty days had passed, there appeared a naked woman foul and stinking, who thrust herself upon him, and he, unable to endure her stench, began to repel her. At which she asked: “Why do you shudder at the sight of me for whom you burned? I am the image of lust, which appears sweet to men’s hearts. If you had not obeyed the Father, you would have been overthrown by me as others have been.” So he thanked God for snatching him from the spirit of fornication. Many other examples lead us to the path of life. Honorius closes with the story of the “Three Fools,” observed by a certain Father: the first an Ethiopian who was unable to move a faggot of wood, which he would continually unbind and make still heavier by adding further sticks; the second, a man pouring water into a vase which had no bottom; and, thirdly, the two men who came bearing before them crosswise a beam of wood; as they neared the city gate neither would let the other precede him even a little, and so both remained without. The Ethiopian who adds to his insupportable faggot is he who continually increases his weight of sin, adding new sins to old ones unrepented of; he who pours water into the vase with no bottom is he who by his uncleanness loses the merit of his good acts; and the two who bear the beam crosswise are those bound by the yoke of Pride.[56] Such are good examples of the queer stories to which preachers resorted. One notices that whatever be the source from which Honorius draws, his interest is always in the allegory found in the narratives. Another very apt example of his manner is his treatment of the story of the Good Samaritan, so often depicted on Gothic church windows. For us this parable carries an exhaustless wealth of direct application in human life; it was regarded very differently by Honorius and the glass painters, whose windows are a pictorial transcription of the first half of his sermon.[57]“Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly”—this is the text; and Honorius proceeds: “Adam was the unhappy man who through the counsel of the wicked departed from his native land of Paradise and dragged all his descendants into this exile. He thus stood in the way of sinners, because he remained stable in sin. He sat ‘in the seat of the scornful,’ because by evil example he taught others to sin. But Christ arose, the blessed man who walketh in the counsel of the Father from the hall of heaven into prison after the lost servant. He did not walk in the counsel of the ungodly when the devil showed Him all the kingdoms of the world; He did not stand in the way of sinners, because He committed no sin; He did not sit in the seat of the scornful, since neither by word nor deed did He teach evil. Thus as that unhappy man drew all his carnal children into death, this blessed man brought all His sons to life. As He himself sets forth in the Gospel: ‘A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and robbers attacked and wounded him, stripped him and went away. And by chance there came that way a certain priest, who seeing him half-dead, crossed to the other side. Likewise a Levite passed by when he had seen him. But a Samaritan coming that same way, had compassion on the poor wretch, bound up his wounds and poured in oil and wine, and setting him on his own beast, brought him to an inn. The next day he gave the innkeeper two pence and asked that he care for him, and if more was needed He promised to repay the innkeeper on His return.’ “Surely man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho when our first parent from the joys of Paradise entered death’s eclipse. For Jericho, which means moon, designates the eclipse of our mortality. Whereby man fell among thieves, since a swarm of demons at once surrounded the exile. Wherefore also they despoiled him, since they stripped him of the riches of Paradise and the garment of immortality. They gave him wounds, for sins flowed in upon him. They left him half-dead, because dead in soul. The priest passed down the same way, as the Order of Patriarchs proceeded along the path of mortality. The priest left him wounded, having no power to aid the human race while himself sore wounded with sins. The Levite went that way, inasmuch as the Order of Prophets also had to tread the path of death. He too passed by the wounded man, because he could bear no human aid to the lost while himself groaning under the wounds of sin. The wretch half-dead was healed by the Samaritan, for the man set apart through Christ is made whole. “Samaria was the chief city of the Israelitish kingdom whose chiefs were led away to idolatry in Nineveh, and Gentiles were placed in her. The Jews abhorred their fellowship, making them a byword of malediction. So when reviling the Lord, they called Him a Samaritan. The Lord was the true Samaritan, being called guardian (custos) since the human race is guarded by Him. He went down this way when from heaven He came into this world. He saw the wounded traveller, inasmuch as He saw man held in misery and sin. He was moved with compassion for him, since for man He undergoes all pains. Approaching, He bound his wounds when, proclaiming eternal life, He taught man to cease from sin. He bound his wounds together with the two parts of the bandage when He quelled sins through two fears—the servile fear which forbids through penalties, and the filial fear which exhorts the holy to good works. He drew tight the lower part of the bandage when He struck men’s hearts with fear of hell. Their worm, He said, does not die, and their fire is not quenched. He drew tight the upper part when He taught the fear which belongs to the study of good. ‘The children of the kingdom,’ said He, ‘shall be cast into outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ He poured in wine and oil when He taught repentance and pardon. He poured in wine when He said, ‘Repent ye’; He added oil when He said, ‘for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ He set him upon His beast when He bore our sins in His body on the Cross. He led him to the inn when He joined him to the supernal Church. The inn, in which living beings are assembled at night, is the present Church, where the just are harboured amid the darkness of this life until the Day of Eternity blows and the shadows of mortality give way. “The next day He tendered the two pence. The first day was of death, the next of life. The day of death began with Adam, when all die. The day of life took its beginning from Christ, in whom all shall be made alive. Before Christ’s resurrection all men were travelling to death; since His resurrection all the faithful have been rising to life. He tendered the two pence the next day—when after His resurrection He taught that the two Testaments were fulfilled by the two precepts of love. He gave the pence to the innkeeper when He committed the doctrine of the law of life to the Order of Doctors. He directed him to tend the sick man when He commanded that the human race should be saved from sin. The stench drove the sick man from the inn, because this world’s tribulation drives the righteous to seek the things celestial. Two pence are given to the innkeeper when the Doctors are raised on high by Scriptural knowledge and temporal honour. If they should require more, He repays them on His return; for if they exemplify good preaching with good works, when the true Samaritan returns to judgment and leads him, aforetime wounded but now healed, from the inn to the celestial mansion, He will repay the zealous stewards with eternal rewards.”[58] Here Honorius proceeds to expound the allegory contained in the healing of the dumb man and the ten lepers, and closes his sermon with two narratives, one of a poor idiot who sang the Gloria without ceasing, and was seen in glory after death; the other of a lay nun (conversa) around whose last hours were shed sweet odours and a miraculous light, while those present heard the chant of heavenly voices. The parables of Christ present types which we may apply in life according to circumstances. In the concrete instance of the parable we find the universal, and we deem Christ meant it so. Thus we also view the parables as symbols, which they were. Honorius, with the vast company of mediaeval and patristic expounders, ordinarily directs the symbolism of the parables in a special mode, whereby—like the stories of the Old Testament—they become figurative of Christ and the needy soul of man, or figurative of the Christian dispensation with its historical antecedents and its Day of Judgment at the end. The like may be said of Honorius’s allegorical interpretation of Greek legends. These ancient stories have the perennial youth of human charm and meaning ever new. They had been good old stories to the Greeks, and then acquired further intendment as later men discerned a broader symbolism in them. Even in classic times, Homer’s stories had been turned to allegories, philosophers and critics sometimes finding in them a spiritual significance not unlike that which the same tales may bear for us. But with this difference: the later Greeks usually were trying to explain away the somewhat untrammelled ways of the Homeric pantheon, and therefore maintained that Homer’s stories were composed as allegories, the wise and mystic poet choosing thus to veil his meaning. To-day we find the clarity of daybreak in Homer’s tales, and if we make symbols of them we know the symbolism is not his but ours. Honorius chooses to think that allegory had always lain in the old story; he will not deem it the invention of himself or other Christian writers. Here his attitude is not unlike that of the apologetic Greek critics. But his interpretations are apt to differ from theirs as well as from our own. For his symbolism tends to abandon the broadly human, and to become, like the mediaeval Biblical interpretations, figurative of the tenets of the Christian Faith. There is an interesting example of this in the sermon for Septuagesima Sunday, which was written on a somewhat blind text from the twenty-eighth chapter of Job. Honorius proceeds expounding it through a number of strained allegories, which he doubtless drew from Gregory’s Moralia; for that great pope was the recognized expositor of Job, and the Book of Job was simply Gregory through all the Middle Ages. Perhaps Honorius felt that this sermon was rather soporific. At all events he stops in the middle to give a piece of advice to the supposed preacher: “Often put something of this kind in your sermon; for so you will relieve the tedium.” And he continues thus: “Brethren, on this holy day there is much to say which I must pass over in silence, lest disgusted you should wish to leave the church before the end. For some of you have come far and must go a long way to reach your houses. Or perhaps, some have guests at home, or crying babies; or others are not swift and have to go elsewhere, while to some a bodily infirmity brings uneasiness lest they expose themselves. So I omit much for everybody’s sake, but still would say a few words. “Because to-day, beloved, we have laid aside the song of gladness and taken up the song of sadness, I would briefly tell you something from the books of the pagans, to show how you should reject the melody of this world’s pleasures in order that hereafter with the angels you may make sweet harmonies in heaven. For one should pick up a gem found in dung and set it as a kingly ornament; thus if we find anything useful in pagan books we should turn it to the building up of the Church, which is Christ’s spouse. The wise of this world write that there were three Syrens in an island of the sea, who used to chant the sweetest song in divers tones. One sang, another piped, the third played upon a lyre. They had the faces of women, the talons and wings of birds. They stopped all passing ships with the sweetness of their song; they rent the sailors heavy with sleep; they sank the ships in the brine. When a certain duke, Ulysses, had to sail by their island, he ordered his comrades to bind him to the mast and stuff their ears with wax. Thus he escaped the peril unharmed, and plunged the Syrens in the waves. These, beloved, are mysteries, although written by the enemies of Christ. By the sea is to be understood this age which rolls beneath the unceasing blasts of tribulations. The island is earth’s joy, which is intercepted by crowding pains, as the shore is beat upon by crowding waves. The three Syrens who with sweet caressing song overturn the navigators in sleep, are three delights which soften men’s hearts for vice and lead them into the sleep of death. She who sings with human voice is Avarice, and to her hearers thus she tunes her song: ‘Thou shouldst get together much, so as to be able to spread wide thy fame, and also visit the Lord’s sepulchre and other places, restore churches, aid the poor and thy relatives as well.’ With such baneful song she charms the miser’s heart, until the sleep of death oppresses him. Then she tears his flesh, the wave devours the ship, and the wretch by fierce pains is waked from his riches and plunged in eternal flame. She who plays upon the pipe is Vainglory (Jactantia), and thus she pipes her lay for hers: ‘Thou art in thy youth, and noble; make thyself appear glorious. Spare no enemies, but kill them all when able. Then people will call thee a good knight.’ Again will she chant: ‘Thou shouldst win Jerusalem, and give great alms. Then thou wilt be famous, and wilt be called good by all.’ To the lay brethren (conversis) she sings: ‘Thou must fast and pray always, singing with loud voice. Then wilt thou hear thyself lauded as a saint by all.’ Such song with vain heart she makes resound till the whirlpool of death devours the wretch emptied of worth. “She who sings to a lyre is Wantonness (Luxuria), and she chants melodies like these to her parasites: ‘Thou art in thy youth; now is the time to sport with the girls—old age will do to reform in. Here is one with a fine figure; this one is rich; from this one you would gain much. There is plenty of time to save your soul.’ In such way she melts the hearts of the wanton till Cocytus’s waves engulf them suddenly tripped by death. “They have the faces of women, because nothing so estranges man from God as the love of women. They have wings of birds, because the desire of worldlings is always unstable, their appetites now craving one thing, and again their lust flying to another object. They have also the talons of birds, because they tear their victims as they snatch them away to the torments of hell. Ulysses is called Wise. Unharmed he steers his course by the island, because the truly wise Christian swims over the sea of this world, in the ship of the Church. By the fear of God he binds himself to the mast of the ship, that is, to the cross of Christ; with wax, that is with the incarnation of Christ, he seals the ears of his comrades, that they may turn their hearts from lusts and vices and yearn only for heavenly things. The Syrens are submerged, because he is protected from their lusts by the strength of the Spirit. Unharmed the voyagers avoid the peril, inasmuch as through victory they reach the joys of the saints.”[59]
CHAPTER XXVIII THE RATIONALE OF THE VISIBLE WORLD: HUGO OF ST. VICTOR Just as the Middle Ages followed the allegorical interpretation of Scripture elaborated by the Church Fathers, so they also accepted, and even made more precise, the patristic inculcation of the efficacy of such most potent symbols as the water of baptism and the bread and wine transubstantiated in the Eucharist.[60] Passing onward from these mighty bases of conviction, the mediaeval genius made fertile use of allegory in the polemics of Church and State, and exalted the symbolical principle into an ultimate explanation of the visible universe. Notable was the career of allegory in politics. Throughout the long struggle of the Papacy with the Empire and other secular monarchies, arguments drawn from allegory never ceased to carry weight. A very shibboleth was the witness of the “two swords” (Luke xxii. 38), both of which, the temporal as well as spiritual, the Church held to have been entrusted to her keeping for the ordering of earthly affairs, to the end that men’s souls should be saved. Still more fluid was the argumentative nostrum of mankind conceived as an Organism, or animate body (unum corpus, corpus mysticum). This metaphor was found in more than one of the Latin classics; but patristic and mediaeval writers took it from the works of Paul.[61] The likeness of the human body to the body politic or ecclesiastic was carried out in every imaginable detail, and used acutely or absurdly by politicians and schoolmen from the eleventh century onward.[62] We turn to the symbolical explanation of the universe. In the first half of the twelfth century, a profoundly meditative soul, Hugo of St. Victor by name, attempted a systematic exposition of the symbolical or sacramental plan inhering in God’s scheme of creation. Of the man, as with so many monks and schoolmen whose names and works survive, little is known beyond the presentation of his personality afforded by his writings. He taught in the monastic school of St. Victor, a community that had a story, with which may be connected the scanty facts of the short and happy pilgrimage to God, which made Hugo’s life on earth.[63] When William of Champeaux, according to Abaelard’s account, was routed from his logical positions in the cathedral school of Paris,[64] he withdrew from the school and from the city to the quiet of a secluded spot on the left bank of the Seine, not far distant from Notre-Dame. Here was an ancient chapel dedicated to Saint-Victor, and here William, with some companions, organized themselves into a monastic community according to the rule of the canons of St. Augustine. This was in 1108. If for a time William laid aside his studies and lecturing, he soon resumed them at the solicitations of his scholars, joined to those of his friend Hildebert, Bishop of Le Mans.[65] And so the famous school of Saint-Victor began. William remained there only four years, being made Bishop of Chalons in 1112, and thereafter figuring prominently in Church councils, frequent in France at this epoch.Under William’s disciple and successor, Gilduin, the community flourished and increased. King Louis VI., whose confessor was Gilduin himself, endowed it liberally, and other donors were not lacking. Saint-Victor became rich, and its fame for learning and holiness spread far and wide.[66] Abbot Gilduin lived to see more than forty houses of monks or regular canons[67] flourishing as dependencies of Saint-Victor. He died in 1155, some years after the death of the young man whose scholarship and genius was the pride of the Victorine community. Notwithstanding a statement in an old manuscript, that Hugo was born near Ypres in Flanders, the ancient tradition of Saint-Victor, confirmed by the records of the cathedral of Halberstadt, shows him to have been a son of the Count of Blankemberg, and born at Hartingam in Saxony.[68] His uncle Reinhard was Bishop of Halberstadt, where his great-uncle, named Hugo like himself, was archdeacon. Reinhard had been a pupil of William of Champeaux at Saint-Victor, and after becoming bishop continued to cherish a profound esteem for him. The young Hugo renounced his inheritance and entered a monastery not far from Halberstadt; but soon, in view of the disturbed affairs of Saxony, his uncle Reinhard urged him to go and pursue his studies at Saint-Victor. The young man persuaded his great-uncle Hugo to accompany him. By circuitous routes, visiting various places of pious interest on the way, the two reached Saint-Victor, where they were received with all honour by the abbot Gilduin. This was not far from the year 1115, and Hugo was about twenty at the time. He was already an accomplished scholar, and doubtless it is to his previous studies that he refers when he speaks as follows in his book of elementary instruction, called the Didascalicon: “I dare say that I never despised anything pertaining to learning, and learned much that might strike others as light and vain. I practised memorizing the names of everything I saw or heard of, thinking that I could not properly study the nature of things unless I knew their names. Daily I examined my notes of topics, that I might hold in my memory every proposition, with the questions, objections, and solutions. I would inform myself as to controversies and consider the proper order of the argument on either side, carefully distinguishing what pertained to the office of rhetoric, oratory, and sophistry. I set problems of numbers; I drew figures on the pavement with charcoal, and with the figure before me I demonstrated the different qualities of the obtuse, the acute and the right angle, and also of the square. Often I watched out the nocturnal horoscope through winter nights. Often I strung my harp (Saepe ad numerum protensum in ligno magadam ducere solebam) that I might perceive the different sounds and likewise delight my mind with the sweet notes. All these were boyish occupations (puerilia) but not useless. Nor does it burden my stomach to know them now.”[69] Not long after Hugo’s arrival at Saint-Victor he began to teach at the monastery school, and upon the death of its director, in 1133, succeeded to the office, which he held until his death in 1141.[70] Colourless and grey are the outer facts of a monk’s life, counting but little. The soul of a Hugo of Saint-Victor did not soil itself with any interest in the pleasures of the world: “He is not solitary with whom is God, nor is the power of joy extinguished because his appetite is kept from things abject and vile. He rather does himself an injustice who admits to the society of his joy what is disgraceful or unworthy of his love.”[71] Hugo belonged to the aristocracy of contemplative piety, with its scorn of whatever lies without the pale of the soul’s companionship with God. In his independent way he followed Augustine, and Augustine’s Platonism, which was so largely the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus and Porphyry. He also followed the real Plato speaking in the Timaeus, with which he was acquainted. Plato would have nothing to do with allegorical interpretation as a defence of Homer’s gods; but he could himself make very pretty allegories, and his theory of ideas as at once types and creative intelligences lent itself to Christian systems of symbolism. In this way he was a spiritual ancestor of Hugo, who found in God the type-ideas of all things that He created. Moreover, if not Plato, at least his spiritual children—Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Plotinus—recognized that the highest truths must be known in modes transcending reason and its syllogisms, although these were the necessary avenues of approach. Hugo likewise regarded rational knowledge as but the path by which the soul ascends to the plateau of contemplation. The general aspects of his philosophy will be considered in a later chapter. Here he is to be viewed as a mediaeval symbolist, upon whom pressed a sense of the symbolism of all visible things. An examination of his great De sacramentis Christianae fidei will disclose that with Hugo the material creation in its deepest verity is a symbol; that Scripture, besides its literal meaning, is allegory from Genesis to Revelation; that the means of salvation provided by the Church are sacramental, and thus essentially symbolical, consisting of perfected and potent symbols which have been shadowed forth in the unperfected sacramental character of all God’s works from the beginning.[72] Hugo’s little Preface (praefatiuncula) mentions certain requests made to him to write a book on the Sacraments. In undertaking it, he proposes to present in better form many things dictated from time to time rather negligently. Whatever he has taken from his previous writings he has revised as seemed best. Should there appear any inconsistency between what he may have said elsewhere and the language of the present work, he begs the reader to regard the present as the better form of statement. His method will be to treat his matter in the order of time; and to this end his work is divided into two Books. The first discusses the subject from the Beginning of the World until the Incarnation of the Word; the second continues it from the Incarnation to the final Consummation of all things. He explains that as he has elsewhere spoken at length upon the primary or historical meaning of Holy Writ,[73] he will devote himself here rather to its secondary or allegorical significance. Hugo further explains the subject of his treatise in a Prologue: “The work of man’s restoration is the subject-matter (materia) of all the Scriptures. There are two works, the work of foundation and the work of restoration, which include everything whatsoever. The former is the creation of the world with all its elements; the latter is the incarnation of the Word with all its sacraments, those which went before from the beginning and those which follow even to the end of the world. For the incarnate Word is our King, who came into this world to fight the devil. And all the saints who were before His coming, were as soldiers going before His face; and those who have come and will come after, until the end of the world, are as soldiers who follow their king. He is the King in the centre of His army, advancing girt by His troops. And although in such a multitude divers shapes of arms appear in the sacraments and observances of those who precede and come after, yet all are soldiers under one king and follow one banner; they pursue one enemy and with one victory are crowned. In all of this may be observed the work of restoration. “Scripture gives first a brief account of the work of creation. For it could not aptly show how man was restored unless it had previously explained how he had fallen; nor could it show how he had fallen, without first showing how God had made him, for which in turn it was necessary to set forth the creation of the whole world, because the world was made for man. The spirit was created for God’s sake; the body for the spirit’s sake, and the world for the body’s sake, so that the spirit might be subject to God, the body to the spirit, and the world to the body. In this order, therefore, Holy Scripture describes first the creation of the world which was made for man; then it tells how man was made and set in the way of righteousness and discipline; after that, how man fell; and finally how he was restored (reparatus).” In these first little chapters of his Prologue, Hugo has grouped his topics suggestively. The world was made for man, and therefore the account of its creation is needed in order to understand man. Moreover, that man’s body exists for his spirit’s sake, at once suggests that a significance beyond the literal meaning is likely to dwell in that account of the material creation which enables us to understand man. The soul needs instruction and guidance; and God in creating the world for man surely had in view his most important interests, which were not those of his mortal body, but those of his soul. So the creation of the world subserves man’s spiritual interests, and the divine account of it carries spiritual instruction. The allegorical significance of the world’s creation, which answers to man’s spiritual needs, is as veritable and real as the facts of the world’s material foundation, which answers to the needs of his body. Thus symbolism is rooted in the character and purpose of the material creation; it lies in the God-implanted nature of things; therefore the allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures corresponds to their deepest meaning and the revealed plan of God. These principles underlie Hugo’s exposition of the Christian sacraments, whose unperfected prototypes existed in the work of the Creation. No fact of sacred history, no single righteous pre-Christian observance, was unaffiliated with them. An adequate understanding of their nature involves a full knowledge not only of Christian doctrine, but of all other knowledge profitable to men—as Hugo clearly indicates in the remaining portion of his Prologue: “Whence it appears how much divine Scripture in subtle profundity surpasses all other writings, not only in its matter but in the way of treating it. In other writings the words alone carry meaning: in Scripture not only the words, but the things may mean something. Wherefore just as a knowledge of the words is needed in order to know what things are signified, so a knowledge of the things is needed in order to determine their mystical signification of other things which have been or ought to be done. The knowledge of words falls under two heads: expression, and the substance of their meaning. Grammar relates only to expression, dialectic only to meaning, while rhetoric relates to both. A knowledge of things requires a knowledge of their form and of their nature. Form consists in external configuration, nature in internal quality. Form is treated as number, to which arithmetic applies; or as proportion, to which music applies; or as dimension, to which geometry applies; or as motion, to which pertains astronomy. But physics (physica) looks to the inner nature of things. “It follows that all the natural arts serve divine science, and the lower knowledge rightly ordered leads to the higher. History, i.e. the historical meaning, is that in which words signify things, and its servants, as already said, are the three sciences, grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. When, however, things signify facts mystically, we have allegory; and when things mystically signify what ought to be done, we have tropology. These two are served by arithmetic, music, geometry, astronomy, and physics. Above and beyond all is that divine something to which divine Scripture leads, either in allegory or tropology. Of this the one part (which is in allegory) is right faith, and the other (which is in tropology) is good conduct: in these consist knowledge of truth and love of virtue, and this is the true restoration of man.”[74] Hugo has now stated his position. The rationale of the world’s creation lies in the nature of man. The Seven Liberal Arts, and incidentally all human knowledge, in handmaidenly manner, promote an understanding of man as well as of the saving teaching contained in Scripture. This was the common mediaeval view; but Hugo proves it through application of the principles of symbolism and allegorical interpretation. By these instruments he orders the arts and sciences according to their value in his Christian system, and makes all human knowledge subserve the intellectual economy of the soul’s progress to God. An exposition of the Work of the Six Days opens the body of Hugo’s treatise. God created all things from nothing, and at once. His creation was at first unformed; not absolutely formless, but in the form of confusion, out of which in the six days He wrought the form of ordered disposition. The first creation included the matter of corporeal things and (in the angelic nature) the essence of things invisible; for the rational creature may be said to be unformed until it take form through turning unto its Creator, whereby it gains beauty and blessedness from Him through the conversion which is of love. Thus the matter of every corporeal thing which God afterwards made, existed from the time of His first creation, and likewise the image of everything invisible. For although new souls are still created every day, their image existed previously in the angelic spirits. Then God made light, the unformed material of which He had created in the beginning. “And at the very moment when light was visibly and corporeally separated from darkness, the good angels were invisibly set apart from the wicked angels who were falling in the darkness of sin. The good were illumined and converted to the light of righteousness, that they might be light and not darkness. Thus we ought to perceive a consonance in the works of God, the visible work conforming to the issue of the invisible in such wise that the Wisdom which worked in both may in the former instruct by an example and in the latter execute judgment.” The severance of light from darkness is the material example of how God executes judgment in dividing the good from the evil. In this visible work of God a “sacrament” is discernible, since every soul, so long as it is in sin, is in darkness and confusion. All the visible works of God offer spiritual lessons (spiritualia praeferunt documenta). They have sacramental qualities, and yet are not perfected and completed sacraments, as will hereafter appear from Hugo’s definition. Following the order of creation, Hugo now speaks of the firmament which God set in the midst of the waters to divide them: “He who believes that this was made for his sake will not look for the reason of it outside of himself. For it all was made in the image of the world within him; the earth which is below, is the sensual nature of man, and the heaven above is the purity of his intelligence quickening to immortal life.” The rational and unseen are a world as well as the material and visible. The sacramental quality of the material world lies in its correspondence to the unseen world. When Hugo speaks of the “sacramenta” in the creation of light and the waters divided by the firmament, he means that in addition to their material nature as light and water, they are essentially symbols. Their symbolism is as veritably part of their nature as the symbolical character of the Eucharist is part of the nature of the consecrated bread and wine. The sacraments are among the deepest verities of the Christian Faith. And the same representative verity that exists in them, exists, in less perfected mode, throughout God’s entire creation. So the argument carries out the principles of the sacraments and the principles of symbolism to a full explanation of the world; and Hugo’s work upon the Sacraments presents his theory of the universe. “Many other mysteries,” says Hugo, closing the first “Part” of his first Book, “could be pointed out in the work of the creation. But we briefly speak of these matters as a suitable approach to the subject set before us. For our purpose is to treat of the sacrament of man’s redemption. The work of creation was completed in six days, the work of restoration in six ages. The latter work we define as the Incarnation of the Word and what in and through the flesh the Word performed, with all His sacraments, both those which from the beginning prefigured the Incarnation and those which follow to declare and preach it till the end.” It is unnecessary to follow Hugo through the discussion, upon which he now enters, of the will, knowledge, and power of the Trinity, or through his consideration of the knowledge which man may have of God. In Part V. of the first Book, he considers the creation of angels, their qualities and nature, and the reasons why a part of them fell. With Part VI. the creation of man is reached, which Hugo shows to have been causally prior, though later in time, to the creation of the world which God made for man. From love God created rational creatures, the angels purely spiritual, and man a spirit clothed with earth.[75] Hugo considers the corporeal as well as the spiritual nature and qualities of man, and his condition before the Fall. The seventh Part is devoted to the Fall itself, and discusses its character and sinfulness. At length, in the eighth Part, Hugo reaches the true subject of his treatise, the restoration of man. Man’s first sin of pride was followed by a triple punishment, consisting in a penalty, and two entailed defects, the penalty being bodily mortality, the defects carnal concupiscence and mental ignorance. “Regarding his reparation three matters are to be considered, the time, the place, the remedy. The time is the present life, from the beginning to the end of the world. The place is this world.[76] The remedy is threefold, and consists in faith, the sacraments, and good works. Long is the time, that man may not be taken unprepared. Hard is the place, that the transgressor may be castigated. Efficacious is the remedy, that the sick one may be healed.” Hugo then sets forth the situation, the case in court as it were, to which God, the devil, and man, are the three parties. In this trial “... the devil is convicted of an injury to God in that he seduced God’s servant by fraud and holds him by violence. Man also is convicted of an injury to God in that he despised His command and wickedly gave himself to evil servitude. Likewise the devil is convicted of an injury toward man, in first deceiving him and then bringing evil upon him. The devil holds man unjustly, though man is justly held.” Since the devil’s case against man was unjust, man might defeat his lordship; but he needed an advocate (patronus), which could be only God. God, angry at man’s sin, did not wish to undertake man’s cause. He must be placated; and man had no equivalent to offer for the injury he had done Him; for he had deserted God when rational and innocent, and could deliver himself back to God only as an irrational and sinful creature. Therefore, in order that man might have wherewithal to placate God, God through mercy gave man a man whom man might give in place of him who had sinned. God became man for man and as man gave himself for man. Thus He who had been man’s Creator became also his Redeemer. God might have redeemed man in some other way, but took the way of human nature as best suited to man’s weakness. After our first parent had been exiled from Paradise for his sin, the devil possessed him violently. But God’s providence tempered justice with mercy, and from the penalty itself prepared a remedy. “He set for man as a sign the sacraments of his salvation, in order that whoever would apprehend them with right faith and firm hope, might, though under the yoke, have some fellowship with freedom. He set His edict informing and instructing man, so that whoever should elect to expect a saviour, should prove his vow of election in observance of the sacraments. The devil also set his sacraments, that he might know and possess his own more surely. The human race was at once divided into opposite parties, some accepting the devil’s sacraments and some the sacraments of Christ.... Hence it is clear, that from the beginning there were Christians in fact, if not in name.” Hugo proceeds to show that the time of the institution of the sacraments began when our first parent, expelled from Paradise, was subjected to the exile of this mortal life, with all his posterity until the end. “As soon as man had fallen from his first state of incorruption, he began to be sick, in body through his mortality, in mind through his iniquity. Forthwith God prepared the medicine of his reparation through His sacraments. In divers times and places God presented these for man’s healing, as reason and the cause demanded, some of them before the Law, some under the Law and some under grace. Though different in form they had the one effect and accomplished the one health. If any one inquires the period of their appointment he may know that as long as there is disease so long is the time of the medicine. The present life, from the beginning to the end of the world, is the time of sickness and the time of the remedy. When a sacrament has fulfilled its time it ceases, and others take its place, to bring about that same health. These in turn have been succeeded at last by others, which are not to be superseded.” Having followed Hugo’s plan thus far, one sees why it is only at the commencement of the ninth Part of his first Book that he reaches the definition and discussion of those final and enduring sacraments which followed the Incarnation. He has hitherto been developing his theme, and now takes up its very essence. Laying out the matter scholastically, he says “there are four things to consider: first, what is a sacrament; second, why they were instituted; third, what may be the material of each sacrament, in which it is made and sanctified; and fourth, how many sacraments there are. This is the definition, cause, material, and classification.” Proceeding to the definition, he says that the doctors have briefly described a sacrament as the token of the sacred substance (sacrae rei signum). “For as there is body and soul in man, and in Scripture the letter and the sense, so in every sacrament there is the visible external which may be handled and the invisible within, which is believed and taught. The material external is the sacrament, and the invisible and spiritual is the sacrament’s substance (res) or virtus. The external is handled and sanctified; that is the signum of the spiritual grace, which is the sacrament’s res and is invisibly apprehended.” Having thus explained the old definition, Hugo objects to it on the ground that not every signum rei sacrae is a sacrament; the letters of the sacred text and the pictures of holy things are signa rei sacrae, and yet are not sacraments. He therefore offers the following definition as adequate: “The sacrament is the corporeal or material element set out sensibly, representing from its similitude, signifying from its institution, and containing from its sanctification, some invisible and spiritual grace.”[77] This, he maintains, is a perfect definition, since all sacraments possess these three qualities, and whatever lacks them cannot properly be called a sacrament. As an example he instances the baptismal water: “There is the visible element of water, which is the sacrament; and these three are found in one: representation from similitude, significance from appointment, virtue from sanctification. The similitude is from creation, the appointment from dispensation, the sanctification from benediction. The first is imparted to it through the Creator, the second is added through the Saviour, the third is given through the administrator.”[78] Passing to the second consideration, Hugo finds that the sacraments were instituted with threefold purpose, for man’s humiliation, instruction, and discipline or exercise. The man contemning them cannot be saved. Yet God has saved many without them, as Jeremiah was sanctified in the womb, and John the Baptist, and those who were righteous under the natural law. “For those who under the natural law possessed the substance (res) of the sacrament in right faith and charity, did not to their damnation lack the sacrament.” And Hugo warns whoever might take a narrower view, to beware lest in honouring God’s sacraments, His power and goodness be made of no avail. “Dost thou tell me that he who has not the sacraments of God cannot be saved? I tell thee that he who has the virtue of the sacraments of God cannot perish. Which is greater, the sacrament or the virtue of the sacrament—water or faith? If thou wouldst speak truly, answer, ‘faith.’” One notes that the twelfth century had its broad-mindedness, as well as the twentieth. While passing on discursively to consider the classification of the sacraments, Hugo considers many matters,[79] and then opens his treatment of the sacraments of the natural law with a recapitulation: “The sacraments from the beginning were instituted for the restoration and healing of man, some under the natural law, some under the written law, and others under grace. Those which are later in time will be found more worthy means of spiritual grace. For all those sacraments of the former time, under the natural or the written law, were signs and figures of those now appointed under grace. The spiritual effect of the former in their time was wrought through the virtue and sanctification drawn from the latter. If any one therefore would deny that those prior sacraments were effectual for sanctification, he does not seem to me to judge aright.”[80] The sacraments of the natural law were as the umbra veritatis; those of the written law as the imago vel figura veritatis; but those under grace are the corpus veritatis.[81] The written law, though given fully only through Moses, began with Abraham, upon whom circumcision was enjoined as a sacrament and sign of separation from the heathen peoples. In obedience to its precepts lies the merit, in its promises lies the reward, while its sacraments aid men to fulfil its precepts and obtain its reward. Hugo discusses the sacraments of circumcision and burnt-offerings which were necessary for the remission of sins; then those which exercised the faithful people in devotion—the peace-offering is an example; and again those which aided the people to cultivate piety, as the tabernacle and its utensils. Hugo’s second Book, which makes the second half of his work, is devoted to the “time of grace” inaugurated by the Incarnation. It treats in detail the Christian sacraments and other topics of the Faith, down to the Last Judgment, when the wicked are cast into hell, and the blessed enter upon eternal life, where God will be seen eternally, praised without weariness, and loved without satiety. This blessed lot flows from the grace of the salvation brought by Christ, and is dependent on the sacraments, the enduring means of grace. On their part, the sacraments, whatever more they are, are symbols, in essence and function connected with the symbolical nature of God’s creation, with the prefigurative significance of the fortunes of God’s chosen people until the coming of Christ, with the import and symbolism of Christ’s life and teachings, and with the symbolism inherent in the organization and building up of Christ’s holy Church. Symbolism and allegory are made part of the constitution of the world and man; they connect man’s body and environment with his spirit, and link the life of this world with the life to come. Hugo has thus grounded and established symbolism in the purposes of God, in the universal scheme of things, and in the nature and destinies of man.[82]
CHAPTER XXIX CATHEDRAL AND MASS; HYMN AND IMAGINATIVE POEM I. Guilelmus Durandus and Vincent of Beauvais.
II. The Hymns of Adam of St. Victor and the Anticlaudianus
of Alanus of Lille. Under sanction of Scriptural interpretation and the sacraments, allegory and symbolism became accepted principles of spiritual verity, sources of political argument, and modes of transcendental truth. They penetrated the Liturgy, charging every sentence and ceremonial act with saving significance and power; and as plastic influences they imparted form and matter to religious art and poetry, where they had indeed been potent from the beginning. I In the early Church the office of the Mass, the ordination of priests, and the dedication of churches were not charged with the elaborate symbolism carried by these ceremonies in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,[83] when the Liturgy, or speaking more specifically, the Mass, had become symbolical from the introit to the last benediction; and Gothic sculpture and glass painting, which were its visible illustration, had been impressed with corresponding allegory. Mediaeval liturgic lore is summed up by Guilelmus Durandus in his Rationale divinorum officiorum, which was composed in the latter part of the thirteenth century, and contains much that is mirrored in the art of the French cathedrals. It is impossible to review the elaborate symbolical significance of the Mass as set forth in the authoritative work of one who was a bishop, theologian, jurist, and papal regent.[84] But a little of it may be given. The office of the Mass, says Durandus, is devised with great forethought, so as to contain the major part of what was accomplished by and in Christ from the time when He descended from heaven to the time when He ascended into heaven. In the sacrifice of the Mass all the sacrifices of the Ancient Law are represented and superseded. It may be celebrated at the third hour, because then, according to Mark, Christ ascended the cross, and at that hour also the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles in tongues of fire; or at the sixth hour, when, according to Matthew, Christ was crucified; or at the ninth hour, when on the cross He gave up His spirit. The first part of the Mass begins with the introit. Its antiphonal chanting signifies the aspirations and deeds, the prayers and praises of the patriarchs and prophets who were looking for the coming of the Son of God. The chorus of chanting clergy represents this yearning multitude of saints of the Ancient Law. The bishop, clad in his sacred vestments,[85] at the end of the procession, emerging from the sacristy and advancing to the altar, represents Christ, the expected of the nations, emerging from the Virgin’s womb and entering the world, even as the Spouse from His secret chamber. The seven lights borne before him on the chief festivals are the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit descending upon the head of Christ. The two acolytes preceding him signify the Law and the Prophets, shown in Moses and Elias who appeared with Christ on Mount Tabor. The four who bear the canopy are the four evangelists, declaring the Gospel. The bishop takes his seat and lays aside his mitre. He is silent, as was Christ during His early years. The Book of the Gospels lies closed before him. Around him in the company of clergy are represented the Magi and others. The services proceed, every word and act filled with symbolic import. The reading of the Epistle is reached—that is the preaching of John the Baptist, who preaches only to the Jews; so the reader turns to the north, the region of the Ancient Law. The reading ended, he bows before the bishop, as the Baptist humbled himself before Christ. After the Epistle comes the Gradual or responsorium, which relates to penitence and the works of the active life. The Baptist is still the main figure, until the solemn moment when the Gospel is read, which signifies the beginning of Christ’s preaching. The Creed follows the Gospel, as faith follows the preaching of the truth. Its twelve parts refer to the calling of the twelve apostles. Then the bishop begins his sermon; that is to say, after the calling of the Twelve, the Word of God is preached to the people, and it henceforth behoves the Church to hold fast to the Creed which has just been recited.[86] The authoritative allegorizing of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries extended the symbolism of the Mass to the edifice in which it was celebrated; as the Rationale sets forth in its opening chapter entitled “De ecclesia et eius partibus.” There it is shown that the corporeal church is the edifice, while the Church, spiritually taken, signifies the faithful people drawn together from all sorts of men as the edifice is constructed of all sorts of stones. The various names ecclesia, synagogue, basilica, and tabernacle are explained; and then why the Church is called the Body of Christ, and also Virgin, also Spouse, Mother, Daughter, Widow, and indeed Meretrix, as it shuts its bosom against no one seeking it. The form of the church conforms to that of Solomon’s temple, in the anterior part of which the people heard and prayed, while the clergy prayed and preached, gave thanks and ministered, in the sanctuary or sacred place. Solomon’s temple in turn was modelled on the Tabernacle of the Exodus, which, because it was constructed on a journey, is the type of the world which passes away and the lust thereof. It was made with the four colours of the arch of heaven, as the world consists of the four elements. Since God is in the world, He is in the tabernacle (which also means the Church militant) and in the midst of the faithful congregation. The anterior part of the tabernacle, where the people sacrificed, is also the Vita activa, in which the laity labour in neighbourly love; and the portion where the Levites ministered is the Vita contemplativa. The church should be erected in the following manner: the place of its foundation should be made ready—well-founded is the house of the Lord upon a rock—and the bishop or licensed priest should sprinkle it with holy water to dispel the demons, and should lay the first stone, on which should be carved a cross. The head of the church, that is the chancel, should be set toward the rising sun at the time of the equinox. Now if the Jews were commanded to build walls for Jerusalem, how much more ought we to build the walls of our churches? The material church signifies the Holy Church built of living stones in heaven, with Christ the corner-stone, upon which are set the foundations of Apostles and Prophets. The walls above are the Jews and Gentiles, who believing come to Christ from the four quarters of the world. The faithful people predestined to life are the stones thereof. The mortar in which the stones are set is made of lime, sand, and water. Lime is fervent love, which takes to itself the sand, that is, earthly toil; then water, which is the Spirit, unites the lime and sand. As the stones of the wall would have no stability without the mortar, so men cannot be set in the walls of the heavenly Jerusalem without love, which the Holy Spirit brings. The stones of the wall are hewn and squared, which means sanctified and made clean. Some stones are borne, but do not themselves bear any burden, and these are the feeble in the Church. Other stones are borne, yet also bear; while still others bear, but are not borne, save by Christ alone, the one foundation; and the last are the perfect. The Jews were subject to hostile attack while building the walls of Jerusalem,[87] so that with one hand they set stones, while they fought with the other. Likewise are we surrounded by hostile vices as we build the walls of the Church; but we oppose them with the shield of faith and the breastplate of righteousness, and the sword of the Word of God in our hands. The church edifice is disposed like the human body. The chancel, where the altar is, represents the head, and the cross (transept) the arms and hands. The western portion (nave and aisles) is the rest of the body. But indeed Richard of St. Victor deems that the three parts of the edifice represent in order of sanctity, first the virgins, then the continent, and lastly married people. Again, the Church is built with four walls; that is, by the teaching of the four evangelists it rises broad and high into the altitude of the virtues. Its length is the long-suffering with which it endures adversity; its breadth is love, with which it embraces its friends in God, and loves its enemies for His sake; its height is the hope of future reward. Again, in God’s temple the foundation is faith, which is as to what is not seen; the roof is charity, which covers a multitude of sins. The door is obedience—keep the commandments if thou wilt enter into life.[88] The pavement is humility. The four walls are the four virtues, righteousness, (justitia), fortitude, prudence, and temperance. The windows are glad hospitality and free-handed pity. Some churches are cruciform, to teach us that we are crucified to the world, or should follow the Crucified. Some are circular, which signifies that the Church is spread through the circle of the world. The apse signifies the faithful laity; the crypts, the hermits. The nave signifies Christ, through whom lies the way to the heavenly Jerusalem; the towers are the preachers and prelates, and the pinnacles represent the prelates’ minds which soar on high. Also a weather-cock on top of the church signifies the preachers, who rouse the sleeping from the night of sin, and turning ever to the wind, resist the rebellious. The iron rod upholding the cock is the preacher’s sermon; and because this rod is placed above the cross on the church, it indicates the word of God finished and confirmed, as Christ said in His passion, “It is finished.” The lofty dome on which the cross is set, signifies how perfect and inviolate should be the preaching and observance of the Catholic Faith. The glass windows of the church are the divine Scriptures, which repel the wind and rain, but admit the light of the true sun, to wit God, into the church, that is, into the hearts of the faithful. The windows also signify the five senses of the body.[89] The door of the church (again) is Christ—“I am the Door”; the doors are also the Apostles. The pillars are the bishops and doctors; their bases are the apostolic bishops; their capitals are the minds of the doctors and bishops. The pavement is the foundation of faith, and also signifies the “poor in spirit,” also the common crowd by whose labours the church is upheld. The rafters are the princes and preachers in the world, who defend the church by deed and word. The seats in a church are the contemplative in whom God rests without offence. The panels in the ceiling are also preachers who adorn and strengthen. The chancel, the head of the church, by being lower than the rest, indicates how great should be the humility of the clergy. The screens by which the altar is separated from the choir signify the separation of heavenly beings from things of earth. The choir stalls indicate the body’s need of recreation. The pulpit is the life of the perfect. The horologe signifies the diligence with which the priests should say the canonical hours. The tiles of the roof are the knights who protect the church from pagans. The spiral stairways concealed within the walls are the secret knowledge had only by those who ascend to the heavenly places. The sacristy, where the holy utensils are kept and the priest puts on his vestments, signifies the womb of the most holy Virgin, in which Christ put on His sacred garb of flesh. From thence the priest emerges before the public, as Christ went forth from the Virgin’s womb into the world. The lamp signifies Christ, who is the light of the world; or the lamps signify the Apostles and other doctors, whose doctrine lights the church. Moses also made seven lights, which are the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Durandus next devotes a whole chapter to the symbolism of the altar, and another to the significance and function of ornaments, pictures, and sculpture. The latter opens with the words: “The pictures and ornaments in a church are the texts and scriptures (lectiones et scripturae) of the laity.” This chapter is long; it explains how Christ and the angels, also saints, Apostles and others, should be represented, and describes the proper kinds of church ornament and utensils. Much of the detail is symbolical. Thus Durandus devised or brought together meanings to fit each bit of the church edifice, its materials and furnishings. In the work of a contemporary are stored the allegorical meanings of the subjects of Gothic sculpture and painted glass. The thirteenth century had a weakness for the word “Speculum,” and the idea it carried of a mirror or compendium of all human knowledge. The chief of mediaeval encyclopaedists was Vincent of Beauvais, a protÉgÉ of the saintly King Louis IX. An analysis of his huge Speculum majus is given elsewhere.[90] It was made up of the Mirror of Nature, the Mirror of human Knowledge and Ethics, and the Mirror of History. The compiler and his assistants laboured during the best period of Gothic art, and from their work, industry may draw an exhaustive commentary upon the series of topics presented by the sculpture and glass of a cathedral.[91] The Mirror of Nature appears carved in the sculpture of Chartres or Bourges. In rendering the work of the Six Days, the Creator is shown (under the form of Christ)[92] contemplating His work, or resting from His toil; here and there a lion, sheep, or goat, suggests the animal creation, and a few trees the vegetable world. This is the necessary symbolism of the sculptor’s art. But Gothic animals and plants sometimes have other definite symbolic meanings, as in the instance of the well-known signs of the four Evangelists, the man, the lion, the ox, the eagle. The allegorical interpretations of Scripture were an exhaustless source of symbolism for Gothic sculptors; another was the Physiologus and its progeny of Bestiaries, with their symbolic explanations of the legendary attributes of animals. Intentional symbolism, however, did not inhere in all this carving, much of which is sheer fancy and decoration. Such was the character of the splendid Gothic flora, of the birds and beasts that move in it, and of the grotesque monsters. They were not out of place, since the Gothic cathedral was itself a Speculum or Summa, and should include the whole of God’s creation, not omitting even the devils who beset men’s souls. Vincent may have drawn from Hugo of St Victor the current doctrine that the arts have part in the work of man’s restoration; a doctrine abundantly justifying the presence of the sciences and crafts (composing the Mirror of Knowledge) in the sculpture and painting of the cathedral. There the Seven Liberal Arts are rendered, through allegorical figures; and the months of the year are symbolized in the Zodiac and the labours of the field which make up man’s annual toil. Philosophy is shown and Fortune’s wheel; the Virtues and Vices are represented in personifications, and even their conflict, the Psychomachia, may be shown. At last the Mirror of History is reached. This will teach in concrete examples what has been learned from the figures of the abstract Virtues and Vices. Its chief source is the Bible. Those Old Testament incidents were selected which for centuries had been interpreted as prefigurements of the life of Christ; and each was presented as a pendant to the Gospel scene which it typified. These make the chief subjects of the coloured glass of Chartres and Bourges and other cathedrals where the windows are preserved. Here may be seen the Passion of Christ, surrounded by scenes from the Old Testament typifying it; likewise His Resurrection and its ancient types; and other significant incidents in the life of the Saviour and His virgin mother.[93] The latter is typified by the burning bush, by the fleece of Gideon, by the rod of Aaron, even as in the hymns of Adam of Saint-Victor.[94] Besides these incidents, leading personages of the Old Testament are presented as prefigurative of Christ, as in the great series of statues of Melchizedek, Abraham, Moses, Samuel, David, on the north portal of Chartres; while the four greater and twelve minor prophets are shown as types of the four Evangelists and the twelve Apostles. Christ himself is depicted on a window at St. Denis, between the allegorical figures of the Ancient Law and the Gospel,—figures which are allied to those of the uncrowned and blinded Synagogue and the triumphant Church, so frequently seen together upon cathedrals. Everywhere the tendency to symbolize is strong. Parts of the Crucifixion scene are rendered symbolically, and many of the parables. That of the Good Samaritan constantly appears upon the windows, and is always designed so as to convey the allegorical teaching drawn from it in Honorius’s sermon.[95] Obviously this Mirror of History was chiefly sacred history. Pagan antiquity was scantily suggested by the Sibyls, who stand for the dumb pagan prophecy of Christ. Scenes from the history of Christian nations were more frequent; but they always told of some victory for Christ, like the baptism of Clovis, or the crusading deeds of Charlemagne, Roland or Godfrey of Bouillon. God’s drama closed with the Last Judgment, the damnation of the damned and the beatitude of the elect. The Last Judgments, usually over-arching the tympanums above cathedral doors, are known to all—as at Rheims, at Chartres, at Bourges. They are full of symbolism, and full of “historic” reality as well. The treatment becomes entirely allegorical when the sculptor enters Paradise with the redeemed, and portrays in lovely personifications the beatitudes of the blessed, as on the north portal of Chartres.Those bands of nameless men who carved the statues and designed the coloured glass which were to make Gothic cathedrals speak, faithfully presented the teachings of the Church. They rendered the sacred drama of mankind’s creation, fall, redemption, and final judgment unto hell or heaven: they rendered it in all its dogmatic symbolism, and with a plastic adequacy showing how completely they thought and felt in the allegorical medium in which they worked. They also created matchless ideals of symbolism in art. The statuary of the portals and faÇades of Rheims and Chartres are in their way comparable to the sculptures of the pediment of the Parthenon. But unlike those masterpieces of antique idealism, these Christian masterpieces do not seek to set forth mortal man in his natural strength and beauty and completeness. Rather they seek to show the working of the human spirit held within the power and grace of God. Theirs is not the strength and beauty of the flesh, or the excellence of the unconquerable mind of man; but in them man’s mind and spirit are palpably the devout creatures of God’s omnipotence, obedient to His will, sustained and redeemed by His power and grace. Attitude, form, feature, alike designed to express the sacred beauty of the soul, are not invested with physical excellence for its own sake; but every physical quality of these statues is a symbol of some holy and beautiful quality of spirit. These statues attain a symbolic, and not a natural, ideal in art. Yet many of them possess the physical beauty of form and feature, inasmuch as such may be the proper envelope for the chaste and eager soul.[96] On the other hand, in the filling out of the illustrative detail of life on earth, of handicraft and art, the sculptor showed how he could carve these actualities, and present earth’s beauty in the cathedral’s wealth of vine and flower and leaf. The level commonplace of humanity is deftly rendered, the daily doings of the forge and field and market-place, the tugging labourer, the merchant with his stuffs, the scholar with his scrolls. He knew life well, this artist, and had an eye for every catching scene, also for Nature’s subtle beauties. Sometimes a certain passing show was represented because a window was given by some drapers’ guild, desirous of seeing its craft shown in a place of honour; and the artist loved his scenes from busy life, as he loved his ornament from Nature. Such scenes (which rarely held specific allegory) were not unconnected with the rest of the drama of creation and redemption mirrored in the cathedral, nor was the exquisitely cut leaf and rose without its suggestion of the grace incarnate in the Virgin and her Son. Daily life and natural ornament had at least an illustrative pertinency to the whole, of which they were unobtrusive and lovely elements; and since that whole was primarily a visible symbol of the unseen and divine power, these humble elements had part in its unutterable mystery, and were likewise symbols. Finally, have not these nameless artists—even as Dante and our English Bunyan—presented by their art a synthesis of life’s realities? Their feet were on the earth; with sympathy and knowledge their hands worked in the media of things seen and handled, and fashioned the little human matters which are bounded by the cradle and the grave. Such were the materials from which Dante formed his Commedia, and Bunyan drew the Progress of his Pilgrim soul to God. Yet as with Bunyan and Dante, so with these artists in stone and coloured light, the mortal and the tangible were but the elements through which the poem or story, or the carved or painted picture, was made the realizing symbol of the unseen and eternal Spirit. II Beneath the Abbey Church of Saint-Victor there was a crypt consecrated to the Mother of God. Here a certain monk was wont to retire and compose hymns in her honour. One day his lips uttered the lines: “Salve, mater pietatis,
Et totius Trinitatis
Nobile triclinium;
Verbi tamen incarnati
Speciale majestati
Praeparans hospitium!” Whereupon a flood of light filled the crypt, and the Virgin, appearing to him, inclined her head. The monk’s name was Adam,[97] and he is deemed the best of Latin hymn-writers. Breton born, he entered Saint-Victor in his youth, about the year 1130. He was favoured with the instruction of Hugo till the master’s death in 1141. Adam must have been of nearly the same age as Richard of Saint-Victor, that other pupil of Hugo who makes the third member of the great Victorine trio. Their works have been the monastery’s fairest fame. Hugo was a Saxon; Adam a Breton; Richard was Scotch. So Saint-Victor drew her brilliant sons from many lands. Richard, whose writings worthily supplemented those of his master Hugo,[98] died in 1173; his friend Adam outlived him, and died an old man as the twelfth century was closing. He was buried in the cloister, and over him was placed an elegiac epitaph upon human vanity and sin, in part his own composition. Adam’s hymns were Sequences[99] intended for church use. Their author was learned in Christian doctrine, skilled in the Liturgy, and saturated with the spirit of devotional symbolism. His symbolism, which his gift of verse made into imagery, was that of the mediaeval church and its understanding of the Liturgy; he also shows the special influence of Hugo. Adam’s hymns, with their powerful Latin rhymes, cannot be reproduced in English; but a translation may give the contents of their symbolism. The hymn for Easter, beginning “Zyma vetus expurgetur,”[100] is an epitome of the symbolic prefiguration of Christ in the Old Testament. Each familiar allegorical interpretation flashes in a phrase. Literally translated, or rather maltreated, it is as follows: “Let the old leaven be purged away that a new resurrection may be celebrated purely. This is the day of our hope; wonderful is the power of this day by the testimony of the law. “This day despoiled Egypt, and liberated the Hebrews from the fiery furnace; for them in wretched straits the work of servitude was mud and brick and straw.[101] “Now as praise of divine virtue, of triumph, of salvation, let the voice break free! This is the day which the Lord made, the day ending our grief, the day bringing salvation. “The Law is the shadow of things to come, Christ the goal of promises, who completes all. Christ’s blood blunts the sword the guardians removed.[102] “The Boy, type of our laughter, in whose stead the ram was slain, seals life’s joy.[103] Joseph issues from the pit;[104] Christ returns above after death’s punishment. “This serpent devours the serpents of Pharaoh secure from the serpent’s spite.[105] Whom the fire wounded, them the brazen serpent’s presence freed.[106] “The hook and ring of Christ pierce the dragon’s jaw;[107] the sucking child puts his hand into the cockatrice’s den, and the old tenant of the world flees affrighted.[108] “The mockers of Elisha ascending the house of God, feel the bald-head’s wrath;[109] David, feigning madness, the goat cast forth, and the sparrow escape.[110] “With a jaw-bone Samson slays a thousand and spurns the marriage of his tribe. Samson bursts the bars of Gaza, and, carrying its gates, scales the mountain’s crest.[111]“So the strong Lion of Judah, shattering the gates of dreadful death, rises the third day; at His father’s roaring voice, He carries aloft His spoils to the bosom of the supernal mother.[112] “After three days the whale gives back from his belly’s narrow house Jonas the fugitive, type of the true Jonas. The grape of Cyprus[113] blooms again, opens and grows apace. The synagogue’s flower withers, while flourishes the Church.[114] “Death and life fought together: truly Christ arose, and with Him many witnesses of glory. A new morn, a glad morn shall wipe away the tears of evening: life overcame destruction; it is a time of joy. “Jesu victor, Jesu life, Jesu life’s beaten way, thou whose death quelled death, bid us to the paschal board in trust. O Bread of life, O living Wave, O true and fruitful Vine, do thou feed us, do thou cleanse us, that thy grace may save us from the second death. Amen.” From the time of that old third-century hymn ascribed to Clement of Alexandria,[115] hymns to Christ had been filled with symbolism, the symbolism of loving personification of His attributes, as well as with the more formal symbolism of His Old Testament prefigurements. Adam’s symbolism is of both kinds. It has feeling even when dogmatic,[116] and throbs with devotion as its theme approaches the Gospel Christ. Prevailing modes of thought and feeling may prescribe topics for verse which a succeeding age will find curiously unpoetic. Yet if the later time have a sympathetic understanding for the past, it will recognize how fervid and how songful was that bygone verse—the verse of Adam’s hymns, for instance. In one for Christmas Day, beginning: “Potestate, non natura,
Fit Creator creatura,”[117] a stanza touches on the reason why the Creator thus became creature. It would be impossible to render its feeling in English, and much circumlocution would be needed to express even its literal meaning in any language but mediaeval Latin. This stanza has twelve lines: “Causam quaeris, modum rei:
Causa prius omnes rei,
Modus justum velle Dei,
Sed conditum gratia.” “Thou askest cause and modus of the fact: the causa rei was before all, the modus was God’s righteous willing, but seasoned with grace.” These lines are scholastic. In the next four, the feeling begins to rise, yet the phrases repel rather than attract us: “O quam dulce condimentum
Nobis mutans in pigmentum,
Cum aceto fel cruentum
Degustante Messya!” “Oh! how sweet the condiment changing for us into juice, as the Messiah tastes the bloody gall and vinegar.” The feeling touches its climax with the four concluding lines, in which the parable of the Good Samaritan is invested with the special allegorical significance set forth in the sermon of Honorius:[118] “O salubre sacramentum,
Quod nos ponit in jumentum
Plagis nostris dans unguentum
Ille de Samaria.” “O health-giving sacrament which sets us on a beast, giving ointment for our stripes,—he of Samaria.”[119] Two stanzas from another of Adam’s Christmas hymns will show how curiously intricate could be his symbolism. Having spoken of the ineffable wonder of the Incarnation, he proceeds: “Frondem, florem, nucem sicca
Virga profert, et pudica
Virgo Dei Filium.
Fert coelestem vellus rorem,
Creatura creatorem,
Creaturae pretium.
“Frondis, floris, nucis, roris
Pietati Salvatoris
Congruunt mysteria.
Frons est Christus protegendo,
Flos dulcore, nux pascendo,
Ros coelesti gratia.”[120] “A dry rod puts forth leafage, flower, nut,[121] and a chaste Virgin brings forth the Son of God. A fleece bears heavenly dew,[122] a creature the Creator, the creature’s price. “The mysteries of leafage, flower, nut, dew are suited to the Saviour’s tender love (pietas). The foliage by its protecting is Christ, the flower is Christ by its sweetness, the nut as it yields food, the dew by its celestial grace.” One observes that here the symbolism first touches Christ’s birth, the dry rod and the fleece representing the Virgin. Then the leafage, flower, nut and dew typify His qualities. The remaining stanzas of this hymn carry out in further detail the symbolism of the nut. Besides the hymns devoted to the Saviour, the greater part of Adam’s hymns are symbolical throughout. Those written for the dedication of churches are among the most interesting. One beginning “Quam dilecta tabernacula”[123] sketches the Old Testament facts which prefigure Christ’s holy Church. The keynote is in the lines: “Quam decora fundamenta
Per concinna sacramenta
Umbra praecurrentia!” “How seemly the foundations through the appropriate sacraments, the forerunning shadow.” The shadow is the Old Testament, and these three lines sum up the teaching of Hugo as to the sacramental nature of the Old Testament narratives. Throughout this hymn Adam follows Hugo closely.[124] In another dedicatory hymn[125] Adam gives the prefigurative meaning of the parts of Solomon’s temple. There is likewise much symbolism in the grand hymns addressed to the Virgin. One for the festival of the Assumption[126] gives the figures of the Virgin in the Old Testament—the throne of Solomon, the fleece of Gideon, the burning bush. Then with more feeling the metaphorical epithets pour forth, voicing the heart’s gratitude to the Virgin’s saving aid to man. A still more splendid example of like symbolism and ardent metaphor is the great hymn beginning: “Salve mater Salvatoris,
Vas electum, vas honoris,” which won the Virgin’s greeting for the poet.[127] The lives of Honorius, of Hugo, of Adam, from whose works we have been drawing illustrations of mediaeval symbolism, vie with each other in obscurity; and properly enough since they were monks, for whom self-effacement is becoming. This personal obscurity culminates with one last example to be drawn from monastic sources. The man himself was an impressive figure in his time; a sight of him was not to be forgotten: he was called magnus and doctor universalis. Nevertheless it has been questioned whether he lived in the twelfth or the thirteenth century, and whether one man or two bore the name of Alanus de Insulis. There was in fact but one, and he belongs to the twelfth century, dying almost a centenarian, in the year 1202. The cognomen de Insulis has also been an enigma. From it he has been dubbed a Sicilian, and then a Scot, born on the island of Mona. But the name in reality refers to the chief town of Flanders, which is called Lisle; and Alanus doubtless was a Fleming.He became a learned man, and lectured at Paris. That he was possessed with no small opinion of his talents would appear from the legend told of him as well as of St. Augustine. He had announced that on a certain day in a single lecture he would set forth the complete doctrine of the mystery of the most Holy Trinity. The afternoon before the day appointed, he walked by the river, thinking how he should arrange his subject so as to include it all. He chanced upon a child who was dipping up the river water with a snail shell and dropping it into a little trench. Smiling, he asked what should be the object of this; and the child told him that he was putting the whole river into his trench. As the great scholar was explaining that this could not be done, he suddenly felt himself chidden and taught—how much less might he perform what he had set for the next morning. He stood speechless at his presumption, and burst into tears. The next day ascending the platform he said to the crowd of auditors, “Let it suffice you to have seen Alanus”;[128] and with that he left them all astonished, and himself hastily set out for Citeaux. On arrival he asked to be admitted as a conversus, and was given charge of the monastery’s sheep. Patient and unknown, he long plied this humble vocation. But at length it chanced that the abbot took him to a council at Rome, in the capacity of hostler. And there he beat down the arrogance of a heretic with such arguments that the latter cried out that he was disputing either with the devil or Alanus, and would say no more. Such is one story. By another he is made to seek the monastery of Clairvaux, and there become a monk under St. Bernard. It is also written that he became an abbot, and then a bishop, but afterwards resigned his bishopric. However all this may have been, he died and was buried, and was subjected to many epitaphs. On what purports to be an old copy of his tomb at Citeaux, he is shown with St. Bernard, and called Alanus Magnus. The title Doctor universalis has always clung to his memory, which will not altogether fade. For if Adam of Saint-Victor was the greatest of Latin mediaeval hymn-writers, Alanus has good claim to be called the greatest of mediaeval Latin poets in the field of didactic and narrative poetry.[129] The many works ascribed to Alanus include an allegorical Commentary on Canticles, a treatise on the art of preaching, a book of sententiae, another of theologicae regulae, sundry sermons, and a lengthy work “contra haereticos”; also a large dictionary of Biblical allegorical interpretations, entitled Liber in distinctionibus dictionum theologicalium.[130] All these are prose. He composed besides his Liber de planctu naturae,[131] and his Anticlaudianus, a learned and profound, and likewise highly imaginative allegorical poem upon man.[132] Its Preface in prose casts a curious light upon the author’s enigmatical personality, which combined the wonted or conventional humility of a monk with the towering self-consciousness of a man of genius. “The lightning scorns to spend its force on twigs, but breaks the proud tops of exalted trees. The wind’s imperious rage passes over the reed and drives the assaults of its wild blasts against the highest summits. Wherefore let not envy’s flame strike the pinched humility of my work, nor detraction’s breath overwhelm the driven poverty of my little book, where misery’s wreck demands a port of pity, far more than felicity provokes the sting of spite.” More sentences of turgid deprecation follow, and the author begs the reader not to approach his book with disgust and irritation, but with pleasant anticipations of novelty (not all a monk speaks here!). “For although the book may not bloom with the purple vestment of flowering speech, nor shine with the constellated light of the flashing period, still in the tenuity of the fragile reed the honey’s sweetness may be found, and parched thirst can be tempered with the scant water of a rill. In this book let nothing be made vulgar (plebescat) with ribaldry, nor let anything be open to biting reproof, as if it smacked of the coarseness of the moderns [to whom does he refer?]; but let the flower of my talent be presented, and the dignity of diligence; for pigmy humility, thus raised upon a height, may overtop the giant. Let not those dare to tire of this work, who are squalling in the cradles of elementary instruction, sucking milk from nurses’ paps; nor let those seek to cry it down, who are pledged to the service of the higher learning; nor those presume to discredit it, who strike heaven from the top-notch of philosophy. For in this work, the sweetness of the literal meaning will tickle the puerile ear; moral teaching will instruct the more proficient understanding; and the finer subtilty of allegory will sharpen the finished intellect. Wherefore let all those be kept from ingress who, abandoned to the mirrors of the senses, are not charioteered by reason, and, pursuing the sense-image, have no appetite for reason’s truth,—lest indeed what is holy be defiled by dogs, and the pearl be trampled by the feet of swine. But such as will not suffer the things of reason to rest with the base images, and dare to lift their view to forms divine, may thread the narrow passes of my book, while they weigh with discretion’s scales what is suited to the common ear, and what should be buried in silence.” This Preface of strained sentence and laboured metaphor, of forced humility and overweening self-consciousness, hardly augurs well for the poem of which it is the prelude. But prefaces are authors’ pitfalls, and, moreover, many writers have floundered in one medium of speech while in another they have moved with ease. From the ungainly prose of the Persones Tale, no one would expect the ease and force of Chaucer’s verse. And the reader of Alanus’s Preface need not be discouraged from entering upon his poem. Its subject is man; its philosophic or religious purpose is to expound the functions of God, of Nature, of Fortune, of Virtue and Vice, in making man and shaping his career. The poem is an allegory, original in its general scheme of composition, but in many of its parts following earlier allegorical writings. The opening lines tell of Nature’s solicitude to bestow her gifts so that the finished work may present a fair harmony: as a patient workman she forges, trims and files, and fashions with reason’s chisel. But when she seeks to invest her work with qualities beyond her giving, she is obliged to call on the Celestial Council of her Sisters. Responding, pilgrim-like the Crown of Heaven’s soldiery comes from on high, brightens the earth with its light, and clothes the ground with blessed footprints. Leading this galaxy, Concord advances, foster-child of Peace; then Plenty comes, and Favour, and Youth with favour anointed, and Laughter, banisher of mental mists; then Shame and Modesty, and Reason the measure of good, and Honesty, Reason’s happy comrade; then Dignity (decus) and Prudence balancing her scales, and Piety and true Faith, and Virtue. Last of all Nobility (nobilitas), in grace not quite the others’ equal.[133] In the midst of a great wood blessed with fountains and multitudinous bird-song, a cloud-kissing mountain rose with level top. Nature’s palace was erected here, gemmed and golden; and within was a great hall hung upon bronze columns. Here the painter’s art had rendered the ways of men, and inscriptions made plain the pictured story. “O new wonders of painting,” exclaims the poet; “what cannot be, comes into being; and painting, the ape of truth, deluding with novel art, turns shadows to realities, and transforms particular falsehood into (general) truth.”[134] There might be seen the power of logic pressing its arguments and conquering sophistry. There Aristotle was preparing his arms, and, more divinely, Plato mused on heaven’s secrets. There Seneca moralized, and Ptolemy explained the stars in their times and courses. There spoke the word of Tully, while Virgil’s muse painted many lies, and put truth’s garb on falsehood. There was also shown the might of Alcides and Ulysses’ wisdom, Turnus’s valour prodigal of life, and Hippolytus’s shame, undone by Venus’s reins.[135] Such and many other tropes of things and dreams of truth, this royal art set forth. Here, standing in the midst of her Council, Nature, with bowed head, spoke her solemn words: “Painfully I remake what my hand’s solicitude has wrought. But the hand’s penitence does not wipe out the flaws. The shortcomings of our works must be repaired by some perfect model, some man divine, not smelling of the earth and earthly, but whose mind shall hold to heaven while his body walks the earth. Let him be the mirror in which we may see what our faith, our potency, and virtue ought to be. As it is, our shame is over all the earth.” When the Council had approved these words, Prudence arose in all her beauty.[136] She discoursed upon man’s dual nature, spirit and body. Nature and her helpers may be the artificers of his mortal body, but the soul demands its heavenly Artificer, and laughs at our rude arts. God’s wisdom alone can create the soul, as Prudence shows by an exposition of its qualities. Now Reason raised his reverend form, holding his triple glass in which appear the causes and effects and qualities of things. He humbly disclaimed the power to instruct Minerva,[137] and applauded the plan by which a new Lucifer should sojourn in the world. May he unite all the gifts which they can bestow, and be their champion against the Vices. Now let their suppliant vows be sped to Him who alone can create the divine mind. A legate should be despatched above, bearing their request. For this office none is so fit as Prudence, to whom the secrets of Heaven are known, and whose energy and wisdom will surmount the difficulties of the way. Prudence at first refuses; but Concordia rises, the inspirer of chaste loves, she who knit the souls of David and Jonathan, Pirithous and Theseus, Nisus and Euryalus, Orestes and Pylades. Persuasively she speaks, and points out all the ills the world had suffered by disobedience to her behests. Prudence is won over to the task, and now wills only as her sisters will. She thinks upon the means and way. Wisdom orders a chariot to be made, in which the sea, the stars, the heavens may be traversed. Its artificers are her seven daughters, wise and fair, who unite the skill and knowledge of all those wise ancients who had excelled in any Art. First Grammar (her functions and great writers being told) forms the pole which goes before the axle-tree (temo praeambulus axis). Then Logic makes the axle-tree; and Rhetoric adorns the pole with gems and the axle with flowers. Arithmetic constructs one wheel of the chariot, and Music the second, Geometry the third, and the fourth wheel is made by Astronomy.[138] Now Reason, at Nature’s nod, yokes to the chariot the five horses, to wit, the Senses disciplined and controlled, Sight, Hearing, Smell, Taste, and Touch. He himself mounts as charioteer, and bids Prudence follow. Amid the farewells and plaudits of all, the chariot soars aloft. As it speeds along, Prudence investigates atmospheric phenomena, and then the spirits of evil who wander through the air. They passed on through the upper ether, reached the citadel and fount of light, where the Sun holds sway; next was reached the region where Venus and the star of Mercury sing together and Lucifer exults, the herald of the day. Then to their rapid flight appeared Mars’ flaming palace, seething with fire and wrath. Onward they passed to the glad light and unhurtful flames of Jupiter, and then to Saturn’s sphere. At length they ascended the stellar region where the Pole stars contend in brightness, where are seen Hercules and Orion, Leda’s twins, the fiery Crab, the Lion, and the rest of the Zodiac’s constellations.[139] Here at heaven’s entrance the chariot halted. Those five horses of the Senses, charioteered by Reason, could ascend no farther. But a damsel was seen, seated upon the summit of the Pole. She scrutinizes the hidden Cause and End of all things, holding scales in her right hand and in her left a sceptre. On her vestments a subtile point traces God’s secrets, and the formless is figured in form. Reverently Phronesis, that is Prudence, saluted this Queen of the Pole, and set forth the purpose of her journey, telling of Nature’s desire and her limitations. In reply Theology, for it is she,[140] offered herself as a companion, and bade Prudence leave her chariot, but keep the second courser (Hearing) to bear her on. Prudence now surmounted the starry citadels, and marvelled at heaven’s nodes, where the four ways begin and the crystalline waters flow, shot with agreeing fires; for here, in universal harmony transcending Nature’s laws and Reason’s power, Concord unites those elements which war below. Onward leads the way among those joys celestial which know no tears, where there is peace without hate, and light above all brightness. Here dwell the angel bands, the Thunderer’s princes, regulators of the world; here glow the seraphim, and cherubim drain draughts from the mind of God; and here are the Thrones whereon God balances His weighed decrees, and with His band of Powers conquers the tyrants.[141] Here also rest the saints, freed from earth’s dross and passion, clothed in virgin white or martyr’s purple, or wearing the Doctor’s laurel. Joyful alike are they, yet diverse in merit, shining with unequal splendour.[142] Here finally, in honour surpassing all, is the Virgin Mother, clad in the garb of our salvation—Star of the Sea, Way of Life, Port of Salvation, Limit of Piety, Mother of Pity, Garden closed, Sealed Font, Fruitful Olive, Sweet Paradise, Rose without Thorn, Guiltless Grace, Way of the Wanderer, Light of the Blind, Rest of the Tired—untold, unnumbered, and unspeakable are her praises.[143] Phronesis cannot bear the sight. Queen Theology calls to her sister Faith to aid the fainting one. Faith comes and holds her Mirror before the eyes of Phronesis; and in this glass her eyes can endure the shaded glory of the overpowering vision. She staggers on, her trembling steps supported by Faith and Theology. In the glass she sees the eternal and divine, the enduring, moveless, sure; species unborn, celestial ideas, the forms of men and principles of things, causes of causes and the course of fate, the Thunderer’s mind; why God condemns some, predestines others, prepares that one for life and from this one withdraws His rewards; why poverty presses upon some and want is filled only with tears; why riches pour on others, why one is wise, another lacking, and why the worthies of the past have been endowed each with his several gifts.[144] Marvelling at all these sights, Prudence, supported by the sisters, reached at last the palace of the King, and fell prostrate before God himself. He bade her rise, and speak. Humbly she set forth Nature’s plight and the evil upon earth, and presented her petition. God accedes benignantly. He will not destroy the earth again, but will send a human spirit endowed with heavenly gifts, a pilgrim to the earth, a medicine for the world. Prudence worships. God summons Mind, and orders him to fashion the type-form, the idea of the human mind. Mind searches among existing beings for the traces of this new idea or type.[145] His difficult search succeeds at last, and in the Mirror which he constructs, every grace takes its abode: Joseph’s form, the intelligence of Judith, the patience of righteous Job, the modesty of Moses, Jacob’s simplicity, Abraham’s faith, Tobias’s piety. He presents this pattern-type to God, who sets an accordant soul therein, and then entrusts the new-made being to Phronesis, while Mind anoints it with an unguent against the attacks of the Vices. Phronesis, with her prize, turned to the way by which she had ascended, regained her chariot and Reason her charioteer. Together they sped back to the congratulations of Nature and her Council. For this perfect soul Nature now forms a beautiful body. Concord unites the two, and a new man is formed, perfect and free from flaw. Chastity and guardian Modesty endow him with their gifts; Reason adds his, and Honesty. These Logic follows, with her gift of skill in argument; Rhetoric brings her stores, then Arithmetic, next Music, next Geometry, next Astronomy;[146] while Theology and Piety are not behind with theirs; and to these Faith joins her gifts of fidelity and truth. Last of all comes Nobility, Fortune’s daughter. But because she has nothing of her own to give, and must receive all from her mother, she betakes herself to Fortune’s house of splendid mutability. What will Fortune give? The two return to Nature’s palace, and Fortune’s magnificence is proffered by her daughter; but Reason, standing by, will allow only a measured acceptance.[147] The report of this richly endowed creature reached Alecto. Raging she summoned her pests, the chiefs of Tartarus, doers of ill, masters of every sin—Injury, Fraud, Perjury, Theft, Rapine, Fury and Anger, Hate, Discord, Strife, Disease and Melancholy, Lust, Wantonness and Need, Fear and Old Age. She roused them with a harangue: their rule is threatened by this upstart Creature, whom Parent Nature has prepared for war; but what can his untried imbecility do against them in arms? All clamour assent, and in a tumult of rage make ready for the strife. The hostile ranks approach. The first attack is made by Folly (Stultitia) and her comrades, Sloth, Gaming, Idle Jesting, Ease and Sleep. But faithful Virtues protect the constant youth against these foes. Next Discord leads its mutinous band, but only to defeat. Onslaughts follow from Poverty, next from Ill-Repute, from Old Age and Disease. Then Grieving advances, and is overthrown by Laughter. More deadly still are the attacks of Venus and Lust; then Excess and Wantonness take up the fray; and at the end Impiety and Fraud and Avarice. But still the man conquers with the aid of his Virtues ever true. The fight is over. The Virtues triumph and receive their Kingdoms; Vice succumbs; Love reigns instead of Discord; the man is blessed; and the earth, adorned with flowers in a new spring of youth, brings forth abundance. The Poet sums up his poem’s teaching: From God must everything begin and in Him end. But our genius may not stand inert; ours is the strife as well, according to our strength and faculty. Let the mind attach itself to the things which are and do not pass, even as Plato sings, from things of sense reaching on ever to the grades Angelic and Olympus’s steeps. Then it shall behold the universal praise of God and the true ascription of all good to Him. He in himself is perfect, Part and likewise Whole, and everywhere uncircumscribed. Nothing has power in itself, but all would fall to nothing, did He close the flux of hidden power. Alanus, a good Christian Doctor, is also an eclectic in his thought. A consistent system is hardly to be drawn from his poem. It suggests Christ. But its hero is not the God-man of the Incarnation. Its figures are semi-pagan. The virtue Faith, for example, is the Fides, the Good Faith, of the antique Roman, though it is the Christian virtue Faith as well. In language the poem is antique; its verse has vigorous flow; its imagery lacks neither beauty nor sublimity. It is in fact a poem, a creation, having a scheme and unity of its own, although the author borrows continually. Martianus Capella is there and Dionysius the Areopagite; there also is the Psychomachia of Prudentius and its progeny of symbolic battles between the Virtues and the Vices.[148] Yet Alanus has achieved; for he has woven his material into a real poem and has reared his own lofty allegory. His work is another grand example of mediaeval symbolism. Thus we see the ceaseless sweep of allegory through men’s minds. They felt and thought and dreamed in allegories; and also spent their dry ingenuity on allegorical constructions. It was reserved for one supreme poet to create, out of this atmosphere, a supreme poem which is as complete an allegory as the Anticlaudianus. But the Divina Commedia has also the power of its human realities of actually experienced pain and joy, and hate and love. Compared with it, the Anticlaudianus betrays the vapourings of monk and doctor, imaginative indeed, but thin. The author’s feet were not planted on the earth of human life. But the Middle Ages did not demand that allegory should have its feet planted on the earth, so long as its head nodded high among the clouds—or its sentiments wandered sweetly in fancy’s gardens. In one of these dwelt that lovely Rose, whose Roman once had vogue. In structure the Roman de la rose is an allegory from the beginning of the first part by De Lorris to the very end of that encyclopaedic sequel added by De Meun. The story is well known.[149] One may recall the fact that in De Lorris’s poem and De Meun’s sequel every quality and circumstance of Love’s sentiment and fortunes are figured in allegorical personifications—all the lover’s hopes and fears and the wavering chances of his quest. In this respect the poem is the courtly and romantic counterpart of such a philosophical or religious allegory as the Anticlaudianus. Personifications of the arts and sciences, the vices and virtues, current since the time of Prudentius’s Psychomachia and Capella’s Nuptials of Philology, were all in the Anticlaudianus, while in the Roman de la rose figure their secular and romantic kin: in De Lorris’s part, Love, Fair-Welcome, Danger, Reason, Franchise, Pity, Courtesy, Shame, Fear, Idleness, Jealousy, Wicked-Tongue; then, with De Meun, others besides: Richesse, False-Seeming, Hypocrisy, Nature, and Genius.[150] The figures of the Roman de la rose have diverse antecedents scattered through the entire store of knowledge and classic literature possessed by the Middle Ages; perhaps their immediate source of inspiration was the scheme of courtly love which the mediaeval imagination elaborated and revelled in.[151] The poem of De Lorris was a veritable romantic allegory. De Meun, in his sequel, rather plays with the allegorical form, which he continues; it has become a frame for his stores of learning, his knowledge of the world, his views of life, his wit and satire, and his great literary and poetic gifts. Yet it ends in a regular Psychomachia, in which Love’s barons are hard beset by all the foes of Love’s delight, though Love has its will at last.
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