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A Middle English Treatise on Hermeneutics: Harley Ms. 2276, 32V-35V
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
The fourfold interpretation of Holy Writ or of other authoritative texts, through the technique of exegesis commonly known as allegorical interpretation, was a well known cultural phenomenon throughout the Middle Ages.3 The practice of allegorical interpretation itself was well developed in the Western world by the time of Plato,4 and the fourfold method may be regarded as a further refinement of this technique. It constituted a tradition of remarkable vitality: as late as the early fifteenth century we find Erasmus inveighing against its abuses in The Praise of Folly with as much emphasis as Dante had defended it in his famed letter to Can Grande in an earlier century. It was taught at the University of Paris during the Middle Ages5.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1950
References
1 “Medieval Gloom and Medieval Uniformity”, Speculum, I (1926), 267.
2 Cited in G. R. Owst, Literature & Pulpit in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1933), p. 59.
3 It first appears among the Alexandrian philosophers as a technique employed to reconcile Greek philosophy with Christian theology and thus attain gnosis, according to A. Sabatier, art. “Herméneutique”, Encyclopédie des Sciences Religieuses, vi, 210-219. For general accounts see E. C. Knowlton, “Notes on Early Allegory”, JEGP, xxiv (1930), 159-181; E.v. Dobschütz, “Vom vierfachen Schriftsinn”, in Harnack-Ehrung (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1921); H. Caplan, “The Four Senses of Scriptural Interpretation and the Medieval Theory of Preaching”, Speculum, iv (1929), 282-290; É. Gilson, “Michel Menot et la technique du sermon médiéval”, Rev. d'hist. Franciscaine, ii (1925), 301-350. St. Thomas' views on allegorical interpretation are expounded in the Summa Theologica, pt. I, quœst. i, art. 10, reply obj. 3; cf. further, F. A. Blanche, “Le sens littéral des Ecritures d'après St. Thomas d'Aquin”, Rev. Thomiste, xiv (1906), 192 ff.
4 The rôle of Plato in fostering allegorical interpretation is ambiguous: on the one hand his school ridiculed the efforts of the Stoics to allegorize Homeric symbols (as in Phaedrus 229C, Republic 378D), while on the other hand his doctrine of form stimulated the search for the ideal behind the imperfect show of things; cf. J. A. Stewart, The Myths of Plato (London, 1905); A.B. Hersman, Studies in Greek Allegorical Interpretation (Chicago diss., 1906); E. Zeller, Stoics, Epicureans, & Sceptics (London, 1870), esp. chapt. xiii.
5 See letter of Guy of Bazoches, dated 1180, cited in J. A. Clerval, Les écoles de Chartres au moyen âge (Chartres, 1895), p. 79. According to G. Robert, Les écoles et l'enseignement de la théologie pendant la première moitié du XIIe siècle (Paris 1909), pp. 96-99, the prevailing guide in such matters was the De Doclrina Christiana of St. Augustine, bks. ii-iii.
6 Cf. W. O. Ross, ME Sermons in Royal MS. 18 B. xxiii, EETS OS No. 209, pp. xliii-lxiii; E. W. Talbert, “A Fifteenth Century Lollard Sermon Cycle”, Univ. of Texas Studies in English (1939), pp. 1-30; G. R. Owst, Preaching in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1926), chap. viii.
7 EETS OS No. 171, fol. 175r.
8 History of Interpretation (London, 1886), p. 246, n. 1.
9 Philosophie der Symbolischen Formen, zweiter Teil: “Das Mythische Denken” (Berlin, 1925), pp. 314-315.
10 Cat. Harl. MSS. (1808), ii, 637; short exerpts in Owst, Lit. & Pulpit, pp. 59-60.
11 Excerpts in Owst, ibid.
12 Cf. H. Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum et Definitionum, ed. C. Bennwart and J. Umberg (Freiburg i. B., 1932).
13 Orologium Sapientiae, ed. K. Horstmann from Douce MS. 114, Anglia, x (1888). 328/22.
14 Cf. S. K. Workman, Fifteenth Century Translation as an Influence on English Prose, Princeton Studies in English, No. 18 (1940).
15 Aureate terms, such as splendidious, puberitude, are likewise avoided; cf. J. C. Menden-hall, Aureate Terms: A Study in the Literary Diction of the Fifteenth Century (Perm, diss., 1919).
16 Horstmann, op. cit., p. 325/32.
17 Edited by P. S. Moore and J. A. Corbett (Notre Dame Pub. in Medieval Studies, iii, 1938).
18 Cf. B. Smalley, “Stephen Langton and the Four Senses of Scripture”, Speculum, vi (1931), 60-76.
19 Didascalicon v, cap. iii; in Migne Pat. Lot., clxxvi, col. 790.
20 G. R. Owst, Preaching in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1926), p. 134, notes that the Lollards were fond of pointing to the Cana story as evidence that Jesus went among the people, in an obscure town, as justification for their own rôle as itinerant “poor preachers.”
21 MS has a scratched out it before is not myn hour …
22 Wycliffite New Testament: “prynce of e hous”; Pepsyian Gospel Harmony (EETS OS No. 157, p. 12, 10): “chief of e fest.”
23 Possibly a reference to the table of four legs which the Lord commanded Moses to have placed in the tabernacle: Exodus, xxv, 23-26. This story is the basic topic of the elaborate allegory of Peter of Poitiers, Allegoriœ super Tabernaculum Moysi, ed. P. S. Moore and J. A. Corbett (1938).
24 Galatians, IV, 22; Genesis, xvi, xxx. This allegorical interpretation was a favorite: cf. Cassian Collaliones, xiv, 8, in Migne Pat. Lat., XLIX, col. 963.
25 I.e., the Amorites; Joshua, xiii, 21.
26 The doctrine that false reports, or misuse, of the five senses contributed to the commission of the seven deadly sins was frequent: e.g., Jacob's Well, EETS OS No. 115, cap. xxxiii: “De quinque sensibus corporis”; “The ME St. Brendan's Confession”, in Herrig's Archiv, clxxv (1939), 44.
27 Cf. Peter of Poitiers Allegoriœ (ed. cit., p. 1) : “ad comprehensivam pertinet sensus anagogicus, per quem cognoscitur quid in futuro nobis collaturus sit Deus.” The fanciful etymologies for allegoria, tropologia, and anagogia advanced by Robert Rypon (fl. 1401), sub-prior of Durham, in a sermon for the fourth Sunday in Lent, and preserved in Harley MS. 4894, ff. 114r-114v, have been printed by G. R. Owst, Lit & Pulpit, pp. 59-60.
28 A favorite allegorical interpretation; cf. Guibert of Nogent, “Liber quo ordine sermo fieri debeat”,'in Migne Pat. Lat., clvi, col. 25D. Jerusalem was likewise a symbol of the attainment of purification in mediœval pilgrimage literature, which survives, of course, in Pilgrim's Progress and The Faerie Queene, bk. i; cf. Lydgate's trans, (c. 1426) of Deguile-ville's Pilgrimage, EETS ES No. 83,ll.8926-33.
29 The author presumably has St. Augustine's De Doctrina Christiana, ii-iii, in mind; but I cannot cite the exact reference.
30 An allusion to the fabled marriage of St. John to Mary Magdalene: cf. The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine, trans. G. Ryan & H. Ripperger (London 1941), ii, 363.
31 The author has apparently confused, or “fused”, Cana with Canaan and then used Passover in its secondary sense of “exodus” (cf. Exodus, XII).
32 The author's gloss is pure fancy: the expression “it is not myn oure yeomen” translates the Vulgate “nondum venit hora mea”, which is usually taken to mean that the active ministry of Jesus had not yet begun.
33 The superiority of the New Law over the Old Law was a prime concern of St. Paul; cf. esp. Galatians, i-iv. The same general attitude is taken by St. Augustine, who argues that the Old Law does not provide grace to enable the fulfillment of behests: “Decalogis quoque occidit, nisi adsit gratia” (“De Spiritu et Littera”, cap. xiv, in Migne Pat. Lat., XLIV, col. 215). St. Thomas cites St. Augustine with approval (Summa Theologica, ii, i, quaest. 99, 2nd art., reply obj. 3); and also argues that the Old Law depended on timor while the New Law depends on amor (Summa Theologica, ii, i, quœst. 107, 1st art., reply obj. 2). Gower, Vox Clamantis, iii, cap. xxv, advances another (unorthodox?) interpretation of the relation between the Old Law and the New Law.
34 MS dauyp. The usual form was David; but this reading may have authority since there was frequent interchange between d and th in both ME and Mediaeval Latin, especially in an intervocalic position; cf. J. W. D. Skiles, The Lalinity of Ærbeo's ‘Vita Sancti Corbiniani’ … (Chicago diss., 1938), p. 83; Wright, ME Grammar, 270. Gawain, 1. 2418, has “Dauyth.”
35 The last two letters are blurred in the MS.
36 n., “obstinate childhood” (perhaps the scribe has omitted a d after chil). Cf. citations in Wright, English Dialect Diet., s.v., “stiff”, adj.; and the OE form steopcild. Not in NED.
37 Mediœval devotional literature usually describes the seven cardinal virtues as fides, spes, caritas, prudencia, temperencia, iusticia, and fortitudo. However, some treatises do tabulate a series of six virtues, such as the section in the Speculum Christiani, EETS OS No. 182, p. 105, entitled “Hec sex custodiunt hominem in bone et servant eum a malo”, which lists such virtues as “honest occupacioun” and “kepe thi fyue wyttes from al wickede thynges.” The problem of finding tropological meanings for the six water pots was not too difficult for the author. For an authoritative work on the symbolism of number, see V. F. Hopper, Medieval Number Symbolism (Columbia Univ. Press, 1938).
38 Cf. the purification passage in the early Irish Bigoiian Penetenlial (c. 700-725), printed in J. T. McNeill and H. M. Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance, Columbia Univ. Records of Civilization, xxix (1938), 150.
39 The textual segregation of the Jews as a group living under the Old Law perhaps facilitated, by making available “textual authority” for, mediœval anti-Semitism such as this dogmatic statement in Brunne's Handlyng Synne: “For e Iew ys Ihesus enemye” (EETS
40 The allusion is presumably to the concept of the Church as a “chaast virgyn Cristis gloriouse spouse” (as in The Lanterne of List, EETS OS No. 151, p. 23/8-17). The doctrine is ultimately derived from Ephesians, v, 25, 27.
41 The doctrine of merit, or “good works”, in Catholic apologetics, is derived from Matt.t vi, 1 sq.: Mark, xii, 41 sq.: I Cor., x, 31; cf. J. Schwane, Dogmengeschichte der Neueren Zei (Freiburg i. B., 1890),pp. 230 ff.