Download pdf - Reformation Attitudes Toward Allegory

7/30/2019 Reformation Attitudes Toward Allegory

1/13

Modern Language Association

Reformation Attitudes toward Allegory and the Song of SongsAuthor(s): George L. ScheperSource: PMLA, Vol. 89, No. 3 (May, 1974), pp. 551-562Published by: Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/461591

Accessed: 26/02/2010 17:26

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless

you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you

may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mla.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed

page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Modern Language Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to PMLA.

http://www.jstor.org
http://www.jstor.org/stable/461591?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mlahttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mlahttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/461591?origin=JSTOR-pdf


2/13

GEORGE L. SCHEPERReformationAttitudes toward Allegory and theSong of Songs

WHEN representative hermeneutic treatisesof the Middle Ages and the Reformationare examined closely, it becomes ratherdifficult to make generalizations about the dif-ferences in attitude toward the senses of Scripture(particularlyallegory)between the medieval theo-logians and the Reformers. This is confirmedby acomparative analysis of the medieval and Refor-mation commentaries on the Song of Songs, thelocus classicus of the allegorical interpretationofScripture,for the traditional allegorizationrestedsecure in the Reformation. Nonetheless, the mostcursory examination reveals fundamental differ-ences betweenmedieval and Protestantspiritualityas manifested in those commentaries. But the dif-ference has little to do with exegetic principles;rather, it stems from fundamentally different in-terpretations of the nuptial metaphor, the use ofhuman love to symbolize the love between Godand man.

I. The Senses of Scriptureinthe ReformationPrevalent generalizations about Reformationexegesis, sharply differentiatingit from medievalallegorical exegesis in its heightened concern fortextual accuracy,historical context, and the plainliteral sense, lay great stress on certain famousanimadversionsby the early Reformers on medie-

val allegory. These animadversions leave theimpression that the Reformers were simply andunequivocally opposed to anything other than asingle, literal sense of Scripture.1 In Luther'swords: "In the schools of theologians it is a well-known rule that Scriptureis to be understood infour ways, literal, allegoric, moral, anagogic. Butif we wish to handleScripturearight,our one effortwill be to obtain unum, simplicem, germanum, etcertum sensum literalem." "Each passage has oneclear,definite, and truesense of its own. All othersare but doubtful and uncertain opinions" (quoted

in Farrar, p. 327; italics mine). Consequently,Luther's remarks on allegoryare characteristicallycaustic: "An interpretermust as much as possibleavoid allegory, that he may not wander in idledreams." "Allegoriesare empty speculations, andas it were the scum of Holy Scripture.""Allegoryis a sort of beautiful harlot, who proves herselfspecially seductive to idle men." "Allegories areawkward, absurd, invented, obsolete, loose rags"(Farrar, p. 328).Nonetheless, Luther does allow for a homileticuse of allegory for illustrative purposes.2More-over, the theoretical insistence on a plain literalsense tended to be belied in practiceby the rigorsof interpretingScripture accordingto the analogyof faith (i.e., interpretingScripture by Scripture)and especiallyby the readingof Christologyin thewhole Bible-two hallmarks of Luther's her-meneutics.3 The latter doctrine, that the Bibleeverywhere eaches Christ,necessitatesat least onekind of figural interpretation, typology, whichLuther and his followers would perforce sharplydistinguish from allegory.As Luther said, "WhenI was a monk, I was an expert in allegories. Iallegorized everything. Afterwards through theEpistle to the Romans I came to some knowledgeof Christ. There I saw that allegories were notwhat Christ meant but what Christ was."4 Thisaccounts for the fact that in practiceLuther can beas allegorical a commentator as Origenhimself-notably in his comments on Genesis, Job, Psalms,and above all the Song of Songs, for which he de-vised his own unique historical allegorization.Calvincarried forwardthe doctrine of one plainliteral sense with even greater thoroughness thanLuther and rejected allegorical interpretationevenwhen invokedfor purely ornamentalandhomileticpurposes. Yet on typology he was ambivalent.Theoretically,he professedto eschewtypology andChristocentric interpretations even of the pro-phetic writings.5But confronted with the typologi-551


3/13

ReformationAttitudes owardAllegoryand theSong of Songscal interpretations made by Paul himself, he isforced to regardthem as illustrativereferencesor"accommodations"6or else to admitthatmanyOldTestamenttypes actually referdirectlyor immedi-ately to Christ and not to the apparentreferentatall (lest a multiple sense be implied).7Moreover,Calvin and his followers were not averse to read-ing their favorite doctrines as applications intopassageswherea modernexpositorwould not findthem8and Calvin himself maintained that it wasless harmful to allegorize Mosaic law than to ac-cept its imperfectmoralityas the rule for Christianmen (see Farrar, p. 350). (We are reminded ofErasmus' dictum that "We might as well readLivy as Judges or other parts of the Old Testa-ment if we leave out the allegorical meaning,"quoted in Grant, p. 142.)We shall see how Calvinmaintained a completely traditional view of theallegoricalinterpretationof the Song of Songs, tothe point of expelling Castellio from Geneva fordenying it.For the English Protestanttradition, Tyndale'sObedienceof a ChristianMan has long been notedas the classic statement of antiallegorical, literalexegesis. In his section on the four senses ofmedieval exegesis, Tyndale views the allegoricalsenses as a papist device to secure Catholic doc-trines from scripturalrefutation:"The literalsenseis become nothing at all: for the pope hath takenit clean away, and hath made it his possession,"9so that our captivityunder the pope is maintainedby these "sophisters with their anagogical andchopological sense" (p. 307). In contrast, Tyndalestoutly maintains the doctrine of one literal sense:"Thou shalt understand,therefore,that the scrip-ture hath but one sense, which is the literal sense.And that literalsense is the root and ground of all,and the anchor that never faileth, whereunto, ifthou cleave, thou canst never err or go out of theway" (p. 304). For the whole of ScriptureteachesChrist, as Luther said, and as God is a spirit, allhis words are spiritual: "His literal sense isspiritual"(pp. 319-20). As for the parables, simili-tudes, and allegories used by Scripture writers,they are simply a part of the literal sense, just asour own figures of speech are an inherentpart ofour direct meaning, not another "sense." In in-terpreting such similitudes as are used by theScripture writers themselves, we must, Tyndalesays, avoid private interpretation, ever keep in"compass of the faith" (i.e., be guided by plain

texts) and apply all to Christ(p. 317). That is, likeLuther, Tyndale theoretically admits only onekind of allegory, radically distinguished from allothers-typology.But as has been noted, there is a certain dis-crepancy between the purity of these theoreticalstatements, polemical in context, and the actualexegetic practice of the Reformers. Moreover, therejectionof allegoryand the insistence on one un-divided sense hinged for the early Reformers onmaintaininga radicaldistinctionbetweentypologyand allegory. But the more systematic Protestanthermeneutic treatises reveal, as Madsen hasshown, that any essential distinctionwas impossi-ble to maintain. For instance, Flacius Illyricus atfirst triedto fix the differenceby defining types as acomparison between historical deeds and allegoryas a matter of words having a secondary meaning-but this was no different from the old Catholicdiscriminationbetween figures of speech (part ofthe literalsense)and the spiritualsense(arisingoutof the significanceof things). So Flacius shifts to asecond distinction: that types are restricted toChristand the Church,while allegoriesare accom-modations to ourselves-but that is hardly an es-sential difference (being no more than the dis-tinction between allegoryproper and tropology inthe fourfold scheme) and breaks down his initialdistinction between the significances that arisefrom words and deeds.10In any case, types remain as a significant in-stance of what the Catholics called the spiritualsense but what the Reformers insisted on callingthe full literal sense, a purely semantic distinction.More important, it needs to be pointed out thatthe earlyReformers' denunciationsof allegoryhada specific historical context. The allegorical ex-travagances condemned by Luther, Calvin, andTyndale accurately characterize not the centralpatristicand medievalexegetictradition but ratherthe products of one school of allegorical exegesisthat flourished especially in the late Middle Agesand came to predominate in the RenaissanceCatholic commentaries contemporary with theReformers. These "dialectical" commentaries(asC. Spicq calls them"1) igorously systematizedthedifferent dimensions of allegorization in monu-mental compilations full of elaborate and ingeni-ous explanations, scholastic distinctions, andrhetoricalpatterns. The margins of the fourteenth-century commentaries of Hugh of St. Cher, for

552


4/13

GeorgeL.example, are filled with referencesto things "tri-plex," reinforcinga pervasive trinitariansymbol-ism at every point. In his commentary on theSong he notes that there are three adjurationsnotto awaken the sleeping bride because spiritualsleep is threefold,l2and three times she is called toascend because there are three stages in thespiritual life.13 n the fifteenth century, Dionysiusthe Carthusianbecame the first to present, in hiscommentaryon the Song, an unvaryinglysystem-atic threefold allegorizationfor everyverse on thefollowing pattern: of Christ and the Sponsa Uni-versali (the Church), of Christ and the SponsaParticulari (the soul), and of Christ and theSponsa Singulari (Mary)-a method that allowshim to draw lengthy doctrinal essays and devo-tional exercises out of any verse whatsoever.14This method became the hallmarkof much Catho-lic exegesis in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-turies, in commentaries such as those of MartinDel Rio and Michael Ghislerus. And Blenchargues in great detail in his study of PreachinginEnglandin the Late Fifteenthand Sixteenth Cen-turies that the exegetic practice of the Catholicpreachers in these centuries, such as Fisher andLongland, is markedby a thoroughgoing allegori-zation even of the New Testament (such that thesix pots at the wedding of Cana, for instance, aretaken to symbolize the six qualities that impelledChrist to assume flesh, or the six heavinesses ex-periencedby the Apostle duringthe Passion"5),ndthat in generalthese preachersdemonstratean in-difference to and even a contempt for the literal,historical sense that fully justifies Tyndale's char-acterization.16

Thus, it is specifically this "dialectical"schoolof exegesis, which flourished in the late MiddleAges and the Renaissance, mainly in the schools,to which Tyndale'sattack is appropriate.Now thisdialectical school, in subjecting every verse to arigidly systematic and uniformly detailed andmanifold allegorization, in effect revived the ab-stract, antihistorical allegorical technique of theHellenistic school of Philo and the Gnostics. Thedifference between the Hellenistic and dialecticalmodes on the one hand and the Palestinian,bibli-cal, and patristicmode of allegoryon the other, isthe difference between regardingAdam and Eveas symbols of reason and sensualityand regardingthem as historical types of Christ and the Church.From the time of Origen, the Hellenistic mode

Scheper 553entered, to a greateror lesser degree, irrevocablyinto the tradition of Christianallegorical exegesis,creating a complex attitude toward history andspirit that is at the root of medieval exegesis. Butthe Hellenistic mode never became itself the cen-tral tradition of patristic and medieval exegesis.17In actuality, it seems to us that the overwhelm-ingly central tradition of medieval exegesis is inaccord with the Reformers on most basic points.There is no question in either tradition of theverbal inspiration of Scripture,the harmony andeven uniformityof biblical theology, the universalChristology of both Testaments, the wholeness ofthe sense of Scriptureand its foundation in theletter, nor even of the fact that much biblicallanguage is figurative. On the crucial last pointswe need only cite, for the medieval tradition, thecomplete accord of Augustine's De DoctrinaChristiana,Hugh of St. Victor's Didascalicon,andSt. Thomas' remarks on scriptural interpretation.Like Augustine, Hugh bases the idea of spiritualsenses on the basic conception that things as wellas words can be signs, and that the significanceofwords, including figures of speech, is the literalsense, while the significanceof things("thevoice ofGod speakingto men")yieldsthe spiritualsenses.18Like Augustine and Origen, Hugh discriminatesthree basic senses, the literal, the allegorical, andthe moral, and notes that while some passages mayhave a "triplesense," many will be simply histori-cal, purely moral, or entirely spiritual-or anycombination thereof. Superioras they may be, thespiritualsenses must be groundedin the letter,notonly in the sense that the factual biblical history isthe basis of all revelation, but in that the letter is"the meaning of any narrativewhich uses wordsaccordingto their propernature. And in the senseof the word, I think that all the books of eitherTestament . . . belong to this study in their literalmeaning" (Hugh, Did., p. 121). I would take thisto mean that even works that are purely allegori-cal, such as Canticles, have a literal, albeit figura-tive, sense (the human similitude). In short, Hughsays, "And how can you 'read' the Scriptureswithout 'reading'the letter? If one does away withthe letter, what is left of the Scriptures?"'"19nlikePhilo, Hugh does not regard every phrase in theBible as susceptible of allegorical interpretationnor does he regardhistory itself as unimportantorcontemptible unless allegorized. Perhapsthe term"allegorical interpretation" s a misnomer for the


5/13

ReformationAttitudes owardAllegoryandtheSongof Songstraditionrepresentedby Augustine and Hugh, andbelongs to the Alexandrians; it is not allegoricalinterpretationbut the interpretationof allegorieswith which Hugh is concerned.Precisely the same points are repeated byThomas in passages in Quodlibet20nd his com-mentary on Galatians iii.28 (quoted in Lubac,Pt. I11,Vol.II, p. 295) and especially in the followingclassic statement in the SummaTheologica:Thereforehat firstsignificationwherebywordssignifythingsbelongsto the firstsense, the historicalor lit-eral. That significationwherebythings signifiedbywordshave themselves lso a significations called hespiritual ense,which s basedon the literal,and pre-supposesit. Now this spiritualsensehas a threefolddivision. . . . Therefore, so far as the things of theOld Law signifythe thingsof the New Law,thereisthe allegoricalsense; so far as the things done inChrist,or so far as the things whichsignifyChrist,are signsof what we oughtto do, thereis the moralsense.But so far as they signifywhat relates o eternalglory, there is the anagogicalsense. Sincethe literalsense is that which the authorintends, and sincetheauthorof Holy Scripture s God, Who by one actcomprehends ll things n His intellect, t is not unfit-ting, as Augustinesays, if, even according o the lit-eral sense, one word in Holy Scripture houldhaveseveralsenses.21It is important to notice how in the last sentenceThomas defines that which the author-God-intends to be the literal sense(not, as some criticsseem to think, saying that the literal sense, as oneamong others, is the one that God intended!). It isin this sense that every text in Holy Scripturenaturallyhas a literal sense, and it implies a con-ception of "literal sense" that actually embracesall four senses as being the full sense intended byGod, and thus the three specific spiritual dimen-sions (allegory, tropology, and anagogy) "unfold"from this one whole sense.22 n any case, Thomasmakes clear that the spiritual senses are foundedupon the "literal" sense in the usual, narrowersense of the term, as he reiterates n replyingto theobjection that the multiplicity of senses wouldcause confusion; to that objection he replies thatthe multiple senses do not arise from ambiguity inthe letter but from the significance of the desig-nated things:Thus in Holy Scriptureno confusionresults,for allthe senses are founded on one-the literal-fromwhich alone can any argumentbe drawn,and notfromthose intendedallegorically, s Augustinesays.

Nevertheless, nothing of Holy Scriptureperishesbecauseof this, since nothingnecessary o faith iscontainedunderthe spiritual ensewhichis not else-where put forwardclearly by the Scripture n itsliteralsense.23And, like Hugh, Thomas notes that figurativelanguage is part of the literal sense:The parabolical ense is contained n the literal,forby words hingsaresignifiedproperly ndfiguratively.Nor is the figure tself,but that whichis figured, heliteral ense.WhenScripturepeaksof God'sarm,theliteralsenseis not that God has sucha member,butonly whatis signifiedby this member,namely,opera-tive power.Hence it is plain that nothingfalse caneverunderlieheliteralsenseof Holy Scripture.24(Still, for Thomas, the literalsense alone, divorcedfrom the spiritualsense, is carnaland Judaic- theHoly Ghost is sent into the heartsof believers"utintelligerunt spiritualiter quod Judaei carnaliterintelligunt.")25We can see in this passage the realbasis of the frequentassertion by the commenta-tors, seemingly so contrary to the fact, that theSong has only a spiritual sense. For just as the"arm of God" literally(butby meansof similitude)means His operativepower, so, too, we may say,the Song is literallyabout Christand the Church,by means of the "sweetsimilitude"of humanlove.Similaranalysesare found in the Catholictheoristsof the sixteenthand seventeenthcenturies,such asEscalante or Serarius(see Madsen, pp. 23-25).

This puts a different ight upon the assertionsofLuther, Calvin, and Tyndale that they were re-vertingto the idea of one, literal sense presumablylost sight of by the medieval commentators. Infact, William Whitaker, the most thoughtful ofEnglish Reformation scriptural critics, overtlysays that he does not wholly reject the theory ofspiritual senses as defined by Catholics likeGregory or Thomas, but still maintains that thesense of Scriptureis one and undivided ("but" isWhitaker'sperception; as we have seen, Thomasbelieved in the undivided single sense of Scripturetoo). "These things we do not wholly reject: weconcede such things as allegory, anagoge, andtropology in scripture; but meanwhile we denythat there are many and various senses. We affirmthat thereis but one true, properand genuinesenseof scripture,arising from the words rightlyunder-stood, which we call the literal; and we contendthat allegories, tropologies, and anagoges are notvarious senses, but various collections from one

554


6/13

George L. Schepersense, or various applications and accommoda-tions of that one meaning." "The literal sense,then, is not that which the words immediatelysug-gest, as the Jesuit [i.e., Bellarmine]defines it; butrather that which arises from the words them-selves, whether they be taken strictly or figura-tively."26Thus, the allegories woven by the New Testa-ment writers,for instance, "arenot various mean-ings, but only various applications and accom-modations of scripture" (Whitaker, p. 406)."When we proceed from the sign to the thingsignified, we bring no new sense, but only bringout into light what was before concealed in thesign. When we speak of the sign by itself, we ex-press only part of the meaning; and so also whenwe mention only the thing signified: but when themutualrelationbetweenthe sign and the thingsig-nifiedis broughtout, thenthewholecompletesense,which sfoundeduponthis similitudeandagreement,is set forth."27 Thus, as in Thomas, the term"literal sense" really has two meanings forWhitaker: the narrower being the grammatical-historical sense, the broader being the full sense(including spiritual accommodations). It wouldseem that Whitaker differsfromthe Catholicsonlyin restrictiveness,limiting what they call allegorymore or less to the types invoked by the NewTestamentwriters,and he expressly states that theinterpretation of David's battle with Goliath asChrist'sbattle with Satan is purely an application,not a bona fide part of the "full" meaning andcertainlynot the one grammatical-historicalmean-ing. And yet there is an uneditedmanuscriptcom-mentary on the Song of Songs by Whitaker, inwhich he perpetuates in the most conventionalway the allegorical interpretation of that book(which has no directNew Testamentsanction as atype).28We shall see that many Protestants(almostall of whom accepted the allegoricalinterpretationof the Song) insisted even more ferventlythan theCatholics that the Song had only a spiritual senseand neither a typological historical reference toSolomon (which many Catholics accepted) norany referenceto carnal love at all-which virtuallydenies that this love song between Christ and theChurcheven uses the similitude of human love.Indeed, it was their very scruples about admit-ting any implication of multiple senses that led anumber of later Protestanttheorists of exegesis toadmit a more extreme brand of allegorizationthan

the medieval Catholics, a brand closer to theAlexandrian tradition. Thus, Solomon Glass re-tains the rejection of multiple senses for the doc-trine of one full sense, but the latter now clearlyincludes spiritual meanings (the significance ofthings), which may be allegorical, typological, orparabolic.29All essential distinction between typeand allegory is abandoned. In Madsen's words:"By the middle of the seventeenthcenturythe dis-tinction between the Catholic theory of manifoldsenses and the Protestanttheory of the one literalsense had, for all practical purposes, becomemeaningless.Both sides agreedthat only the literalmeaning could be used to prove doctrine, thatliteral-figurativemeanings must conform to theanalogy of faith, that 'typical' passages in the OldTestamenthad a double meaning,and that various'allegorical accommodations' might be gatheredfrom the text for homiletic purposes even thoughthey were not intended by the author" (p. 38).Indeed, the left-wingProtestants went further thanthe Catholics in admitting allegorical readings; instrongly distinguishing the letter as the writtenword of Scripture from the spirit as the livingWord of God as communicated to the soul, non-conformists like Samuel How and John Saltmarshand John Everardviewed the whole written Scrip-ture, including the New Testament, as only afigurative rendering of ineffable spiritual truths;Everard says, for example, "ExternallJesusChristis a shadow, a symbole, a figure of the Internal:viz. of him that is to be born within us. In oursouls" (quoted in Madsen, p. 41). Finally, withGerard Winstanley and even more the PlatonistHenry More, the literal-historical reality of thebiblical narrativesis actually denied and we havecome full circle back to Philo and the Gnostics.II. The Song of Songs in Reformation ExegesisThe Protestant commentaries on the Song ofSongs in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuriesreinforce the contentions offered above, for theyprovidea strikingcontrastto the innovative stanceof the treatises on exegesis, being overwhelminglyconservative in purveying the traditional allegori-cal interpretation.An initial objection here mightbe that the commentaries on the Song are ananomaly, that they representan insignificantrem-nant of the older tradition, the last bastion of al-legory to give way. In hindsightthis might be true,

but it is a teleological interpretationof intellectual

555


7/13

ReformationAttitudes owardAllegoryand the Song of Songshistory and does not reflecthow the age saw itself.To a sixteenth- or seventeenth-centurycommenta-tor, the idea that the allegorization of the Songwas an anomaly would have been incomprehensi-ble. The modern oblivion of the book has tendedto blind us to the reallycrucialposition it holds inexegetic history, not only for the question of al-legory but for the centralmatter of the relation ofdivine to profanelove, and in fact, as Ruth Waller-stein has said, the Song involved for the MiddleAges and Renaissance the whole question of theplace of the senses in the spiritual life and helped"to shape man's ideas of symbolism and of thefunction of the imagination."30This helps explainthe prodigious exegetic history of the book; thenumber of commentaries is astounding. The earlycatalogs and bibliographiestend to list more com-mentaries on the Song than on any other biblicalbook save the Psalms, all of Paul's epistles takentogether, and the Gospels.31My own checklist ofcommentaries through the seventeenth centurytotals 500 and is still far from complete. Thereareover a score of printed commentariesby EnglishProtestants in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-turies, includingmonumental compilations like thePuritan John Collinges' two volumes on just thefirst two chapters of the Song (a total of almost1,500pages).32t has seemedto previoushistoriansof exegesis absolutely distinctive of the High Mid-dle Ages that it was preoccupiedwith the Song ofSongs and that it was then regarded n some waysas the pinnacle of Scripture-and indeed there aresixty or seventy extant commentaries from thetwelfthand thirteenth centuriesalone. But the datafor the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturieswouldindicate a similar "preoccupation"among the Re-formers.33Again and again the Reformers,like themedieval Cistercian monks, express their highestregardfor the Song, for nowhere else, they say, isChrist's divine love bettertaught.34There are, to besure, tremendous differencesbetweenthe spiritual-ity of the monastic and Puritan commentaries onthe Song, but the materials do not reveal funda-mental distinctions in attitudes toward allegory.Moreover, in addition to the formal commen-taries, there are innumerable sermons on textsfrom the Song, as well as a prominent use of theallegorizedSong in a varietyof worksof Protestantspirituality.For instance, the AnabaptistMelchiorHofmann interpertsadult Christian initiation as abetrothalbetween Christ and the faithful soul, the

whole processinterpretedaccordingto the imageryof the Song of Songs-much as Cyril of Jerusalemand St. Ambrose used texts from the Song to de-scribeeach step of the baptismalrite as they knewit.35And George Williams has shown that noncon-formists like Bunyan and separatist sects like theQuakers, Huguenots, Swedenborgians, and Pi-etists, who maintained a "theology of the wilder-ness" (the idea of a holy community living inspiritual isolation from decadent society), fre-quently invoke the verses of the Song in which thedivine lover calls his bride up from the wilderness(Cant. iii.6, viii.5).36 Furthermore, Protestanttracts and sermons on marriage, such as Croft'sThe Lover (1638), not infrequently cite the al-legorized Song as a presentation of the divinearchetypewhich humanmarriageshould imitate.37Indeed, there are a number of sermons specificallydevoted to the theme of the spiritualmarriageanda notable treatise on the subject by Francis Rous(1675), based throughout on the Song of Songsand endingin a devotional piece called "A Song ofLoves" quite in the tradition of St. Bernard orRichard Rolle.38When we add to this the evidence of the poeticparaphrases and of other Protestant poetry di-rectly inspired by the Song, the centrality of thatbook to Reformation spirituality cannot bedoubted. In England alone, beginning with Wil-liam Baldwin's monumental Balades of Salomon(1549-the earliest printed book of original En-glish lyric poetry), 110 pages of traditional doc-trinal paraphrase, there are at least twenty-fiveextant English poetic paraphrases through theseventeenthcentury, most being elaborate allego-rizations in the traditional mold.39Besides these,there is a considerablebody of Protestant poetrybased directly on the Song, notably the emblembooks of Van Veen, Hermann Hugo, and FrancisQuarles.40To give one other example, fully onethird of the preparatory meditations on theeucharist, the magnum opus of Edward Taylor,are a poetic commentaryon verses from the Song.Returningto the formalcommentaries,they are,as noted, in all essentialsthoroughly traditionalinallegorizingthe book. It is true that one Reformer,SebastianCastellio, had rejectedthis traditionandconcluded that, being nothing but a colloquy ofSolomon and his beloved Shulamite,the Song hadno spiritual significance and should be excludedfrom the Canon. This conclusion was so anathema

556


8/13

to Calvin that he had Castellio expelled fromGeneva because of it. In this case, Calvin's posi-tion was no differentfrom that of the fathersof theSecond Council of Constantinople of 553, whocondemned Theodore of Mopsuesta for the sameopinion.41ndeed, some Protestantallegoristswentto extremes not contemplated by the medievalcommentators. One minor school viewed the bookas a prophetic-historicalwork, so that just as theTargumsaw in the book the historyof God's deal-ings with Israel, the English commentator Bright-man read it as a history-prophecyextending fromthe reign of David to 1700 (a commentaryturnedinto the unlikely form of poetic paraphrase byThomas Beverley, to a length of 70 pages [seen. 39]). And Martin Lutherdevisedthe completelyunique allegorical interpretation hat the Song wasSolomon's praise of and thanksgivingfor a happyand peacefulrealm.42But most Protestantsrejectedsuch unconventional allegorizationin favor of thetraditionalreadingthat saw the Song as a dialoguebetween Christand the Church or the faithful soul.Indeed, the continuity of the traditionbetween theMiddle Ages and the Reformation is strikinglyevident from an examination of the authoritiesutilized by the English commentators. In com-mentary after commentarywe discover the domi-nant explicit influence of Augustine and Bernard,and favorable citation of authors like GregorytheGreat, Ambrose, Jerome,and even Rupert (authorof a Marian commentaryon the'Song).43To an outside observer the continuity with thepast in these commentaries would far outweighany innovative elements. To be sure, the Protes-tant commentariesalmost uniformly adopt a pri-marily ecclesial allegory, with the tropologicaldimension as a valid application. But so, in fact, isthe medieval tradition built on the foundation ofthe ecclesial interpretation,and even those com-mentaries devoted most strikingly to the Christ-soul allegory,such as Bernard's,recognizethat theultimate priority remains with the ecclesial in-terpretation. Similarly, the Protestant commen-taries deplored the mechanical allegorization ofevery particulardetail in the scholastic, dialecticalcommentaries, but so do Origen and Bernardeschew any such allegorization of particulars.Nevertheless, the Protestantcommentariesare dis-tinctly Protestant in opposing what they calledpapist and monkish interpretations,that is, alle-gorizations that reflectthe ecclesiasticalstructures

L. Scheper 557of the Catholic Church or the monastic milieu(e.g., the enclosedgardenas the monastic cloister),replacing them with allegorizations reflectingProtestant ecclesiasticalstructure,vocabulary,anddoctrine (such as justification by faith or the im-puted righteousnessof Christ).That the Song of Songs is a spiritualbook is apremise shared by medieval and Protestant com-mentatorsalike, but for the Protestants,morecon-cernedwith the idea of a single sense, thereis moreof a problemin definingthe relationof the allegoryto the text. In a chorus, the commentators all de-clare that the sense of the Song is solely spiritual,that it has no carnal sense-which is more or lesswhat the medieval commentators said, but withless rigorous intent. James Durham, one of theablestcommentators,said: "Igrantit hath a literalmeaning, but I say, that literal meaning is notimmediate . . . but that which is spiritually andespecially meant by these Allegorical and Figura-tive speeches, is the Literal meaning of the Song:So that its Literal sense is mediate,representing hemeaning, not immediately from the Words, butmediately from the Scope, that is, the intention ofthe Spirit,which is couched underthe FiguresandAllegories here made use of."44 Consequently,there is greatconfusion about whether the Song istypological or not, with opinion about equallydivided, but with some Protestant commentators,such as Durham and Beza, taking a position asstrongly as Luis de Leon's inquisitors that therecan be no historical reference to Solomon andPharaoh'sdaughter(which would be dangerouslylewd), because the Song speakssolelyof Christ andthe Church.45With such an extreme view, onecould hardly dwell on the aptness of the Song'spraises of the lovers' bodies to the figurativesitua-tion (historia),in the way that even the Cistercianmonk Gilbert of Hoilandia does in explicatingthepraise of the bride's breasts: "Those breasts arebeautiful which rise up a little and swell moder-ately, neither too elevated, nor, indeed, level withthe rest of the chest. They are as if repressedbutnot depressed, softly restrained,but not flappingloosely."46 n contrast,the ProtestantDurhamsaysthat "our Carnalness makes it hazardous and un-safe, to descend in the Explicationof these Simili-tudes" (Clavis, p. 401), and the PuritanCollingessays that " the very uncouthness of the same ex-pressions, is an argument, that it is no meerWoman here intended"47(although how inap-


9/13

ReformationAttitudes towardAllegory and the Song of Songspropriate praise of a woman could serve as an aptmetaphor for love of God seems rather obscure).Commentatorslike Origen, Bernard,and Guil-laume de Saint-Thierry,who thoroughly allego-rized the Song, nonetheless devoted considerableattention to setting forth the aptness of the letter,though to be sure with cautions against allowing,in Origen's words, "an interpretationthat has todo with the flesh and the passions to carry youaway."48In short, the medieval attitude towardthe letter of the Song was that one can talk aboutthe story (historia)without immediate reference tothe spiritual meaning, but that the story's realmeaning is the spiritual sense. The apparent con-troversybetweenthose who assertedthat the Songhas a literal sense (in the narrow meaning of ahistorical sense) and those who seemed to deny itis purely rhetorical: those who discerneda literalsense (such as a referenceto Solomon and Phar-aoh's daughter) all acknowledged that it is artifi-cial to talk about the story apart from its spiritualsignificance,while those who denied that the Songhas a literal meaning always acknowledged thatthe spiritual sense is conveyed "under the simili-tude" of human love and that the interpretationofthe letter is in fact nothing other than the explica-tion of that similitude. For instance, if the bride'sbreasts are compared to twin roes feeding amongthe lilies, one needs to know what quality in awoman is being commended in that comparisonbefore one can appreciatethe significatio-henceGilbert's comments on feminine pulchritudecitedabove. Thus far the medieval and Reformationexegetes are once again seen to have comparableattitudes, except that the conscientiousness aboutone sense and possibly a greater puritanismseemsto make the Protestants rather more shy of thecarnal similitudes.It is at this point, I believe, that we encounterthe really fundamental difference between thespiritualityembodied in the Catholic and Protes-tant commentaries on the Song, that is, in theirconception of the centralmetaphor underlyingtheallegorized Song, the spiritual marriage,or divinelove conveyed under the similitude of carnal hu-man love. Thereis complete agreement among theProtestantcommentators with the traditionalviewthat spiritual truths can, in the last analysis, beexpressed only metaphorically (although it mightbe pointed out that this symbolist conception oftruth almost always sits side by side with the ra-

tionalistic assertion that nothing is said figura-tively in Scripture that is not elsewhere in theBiblestateddiscursively-an ambiguitygoing backat least to Augustine's De Doctrina). They aremoreover agreed that the nuptial metaphor isuniquely suited to expressingthe highest mysteryof all (as Paul calls it in Ephesians), the love be-tween God and His people, and that thereforethehuman language of the Song is dramatically ap-propriate.49But preciselywhereinconsists that pe-culiar aptness of the nuptial metaphor? On thisthere is surprisingly ittleelaborationin the Protes-tant commentaries, but what there is mostly de-velops the aptness of the nuptial metaphor interms of the moral, domestic virtues of Christianmarriage: faithfulness, tenderness, affection, mu-tual consent, the holding of things in common, theheadshipof the husband.In otherwords, as Sibbessays explicitly,the metaphoris based on the natureof the marriagecontract.50Dove elaborates on theanalogy between the marriage rite and the historyof redemption (God giving away His Son; the LastSupper as a wedding banquet; the procreationofspiritual fruit) (Conversion, pp. 87-89). Beyondthis, there is some reference to the passionate na-ture of love and to the one-flesh union of marriageas a symbol of union with God.51But generally,when the sexual aspect of the union tends to sur-face, the commentators avert their eyes and alludeto the dangers of lewd interpretation. Thus,Homes says, "away, say we, with all carnalthoughts, whiles we have heavenly things pre-sented us under the notion of Kisses, Lips,Breasts, Navel, Belly, Thighs, Leggs. Our mindsmust be above our selves, altogether mindingheavenlymeanings."52 And on Canticles v.4 ("Mybeloved put his hand in the hole and my bowelswere moved for him"), the Assembly Annotationsexclaims, "to an impure fancy this verse is moreapt to foment lewd and base lusts, than to presentholy and divine notions. ... It is shameful to men-tion what foul ugly rottenness some have belchedhere and how they have neglected that pure andChristian sense that is clear in the words."53Now, to be sure, these cautions are to be foundin the medievalcommentariesas well, but what isin dramatic contrast to the Protestantanalysis ofthe aptness of the nuptial image in terms of themoral qualities of the marriage contract is thewhole tradition, stretchingfrom Gregoryof Nyssathrough Bernard and Guillaume de Saint-Thierry

558


10/13

GeorgeL. Scheperto John of the Cross, which identifies sexual unionitself as the foremost aspect of the spiritual mar-riage metaphor-in its total self-abandon, its in-tensity, its immoderation and irrationality, andabove all its union of two separatebeings, the one-flesh union that is the supreme type of the one-spirit union between ourselves and Christ. Wehavejust quoted the Assembly Annotationson thefilth belched up in connection with an erotic verseof the Song; but note in contrast Bernard'sanaly-sis of the "belching" of the intoxicated, impas-sioned bride herself in the Song: "See with wvhatimpatient abruptness she begins her speech....From the abundance of her heart, without shameor shyness, she breaks out with the eager request,'Let Him kiss me with the kiss of His Mouth.'...'He looketh upon the earth and maketh ittremble,' and she dares to ask that He should kissher! Is she not manifestly intoxicated? No doubtof it."54And if she seems o youto utterwords,believe hem obe thebelchingsof satiety,unadorned ndunpremedi-tated. ... It is not the expression of thought, but theeructationof love.Andwhyshouldyou seek in suchaspontaneousoutburst for the grammaticalarrange-mentandsequenceof words,or for therulesandorna-ments of rhetoric Do you yourselves ay down lawsandregulationsoryourowneructations?II, 282-83,sermon67).Thus,whenlove, especiallydivine ove, is so strongandardent hat t cannotanylongerbecontainedwith-in the soul, it pays no attention to the order,or thesequence,or the correctnessof the words throughwhich it pours itself out. . . . Hence it is that theSpouse, burningwith an incredibleardourof divinelove, in heranxiety o obtain some kindof outlet forthe intense heat which consumesher, does not con-siderwhat she speaksor how she speaks. Undertheconstraining nfluenceof charity,she belches forthrather hanutterswhatever ises to her lips.And is itanywonder hat she shouldeructatewho is so full andso inebriatedwiththe wine of holy love? (I, 281-82;see also sermons49, 52,69, 73, 75)

In the highest reaches of divine love, all con-siderations of prudence, order, and decorum, allthe rules of etiquetteand rhetoric are transcended;again, it is for that reason that divine love is mostaptly symbolizednot by friendshipor familialloveor domestic affection, but by obliviating drunken-ness and sexualpassion. In short, it is in the nature

of sexual passion to transcendall other considera-tions: "O love, so precipitate,so violent, so ardent,so impetuous, sufferingthe mind to entertain nothought but of thyself, content with thyself alone!Thou disturbest all order, disregardestall usage,ignorest all measure. Thou dost triumph over inthyself and reduce to captivity whatever appearsto belong to fittingness,to reason, to decorum, toprudence or counsel" (nI, 435-36, sermon 79).Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Elvira, Guillaumede Saint-Thierry,John of the Cross, all agree infixing on the passionate union of two in one flesh,rather than on the domestic hierarchical relationof husbandand wife, as the principalbasis for theuse of human love as a symbol of the union ofChrist and His people.55Actually, this interpreta-tion of the image goes back at least to Chry-sostom's interpretationof I Corinthians xi.3 andEphesians v.22-33, in which he argues that thenuptial symbol residesnot in the domestic hierar-chy but in the joining of two in one flesh, and re-flections of that exegesisare found in the standardglosses.56Nevertheless, in the Reformation the sexual in-terpretationof the allegory is only hinted at in thecommentaries on the Song, although it does findsome expression in the sermons and tracts on thespiritual marriageand especially in the poetry in-spired by the Song. But herein,we believe, lies thegreat change in spirituality, for it was not Protes-tant hermeneutics, the analysis of the senses ofScripture,that spelled the end of the theology ofthe spiritual marriage and the centrality of theSong of Songs (a demise sealed in the 18th cen-tury), but rather the supplanting of a mystical,sacramentalspiritualityby a more rationalisticandmoralistic Christian spirit that could hardlypraise, as Bernard does, spiritual drunkenness,immoderation, and impropriety. Typology wasone form of allegory suited to the didactic modeand it continued to flourish, but essentially al-legory and symbolism were more conducive to amystery-oriented rather than history-orientedChristianity.In literary terms, it is the differencebetween the passionate poetry of Rolle or John ofthe Cross and the didactic style of Paradise Re-gained or Pilgrim's Progress.Essex CommunityCollegeBaltimoreCounty, Maryland

559


11/13

ReformationAttitudes towardAllegory and the Song of SongsNotes

1See, e.g., Frederic W. Farrar, History of Interpretation(London: Macmillan, 1886),pp. 342-53.2 See,e.g., Luther's Works, ed. J. PelikanandW. Hansen,xxvI (St. Louis: Concordia, 1963), 435 (on Galatians

iv.24). Cf. The Table Talk of MartinlLuther, trans. WilliamHazlitt (London: H. G. Bohn, 1859),pp. 326-27.3 See John Reumann, The Romance of Bible Scripts andSchlolars (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1965), pp.55-91. On Luther's ypologyin general,see JamesSamuel

Preus, From Slhadow to Promise (Cambridge, Mass.: Har-vardUniv. Press, 1969),pp. 153-271;HeinrichBornkamm,Luther un1ddas Alte Testament (Tubingen: Mohr, 1948);Jaroslav Pelikan, Lutherthe Expositor(St. Louis: Con-cordia, 1959); Paul Althaus, Tlhe Theology of Martin Lther(Philadelphia:FortressPress,1966).

4 Quotedin RobertGrant,A Short History ofthie Inter-pretationl of the Bible, rev. ed. (New York: Macmillan,1963),p. 129;also see TableTalk,p. 328.5 Calvin, A Commenltarieupon Galathianls,trans. R. Vaux(London, 1581),p. 104.

6 E.g., on Gal. iv.24 he writes,"Paul certainlydoes notmean that Moseswrote the historyfor the purposeof beingturned into an allegory, but points out in what way thehistory may be made to answer the present subject."Quoted in William Madsen, From Shadowy Types to Truth(New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1968),p. 29.7 See H. Jackson Forstman, Word and Spirit: Calvin'sDoctrine of Biblical Authority (Stanford: Stanford Univ.Press, 1962), a study documenting Calvin's continuedinterest n typology.

8 See J. W. Blench, Preaching in England in the LateFifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (New York: Barnes andNoble, 1964),p. 57.9 William Tyndale, Doctrinal Treatises, ed. HenryWalter, ParkerSociety, No. 42 (Cambridge,Eng.: Cam-bridgeUniv. Press, 1848), p. 303.10Clavis Scripturae Sacrae (1567; rpt. Jena, 1674); seediscussion n Madsen,pp. 30-31.

11Esquisse d'une histoire de l'exegese latine au MoyenAge (Paris:J. Vrin, 1944), pp. 212-18.12Hugonis de Sancto Charo, Opera, 8 vols. (Venice:Nicolaum Pezzana, 1703), i, 136v (on Cant. viii.4).13Opera, i, 121r (on Cant. iii.6), 133r (on Cant.vi.10),and 136v(on Cant.viii.5).14 Dionysius Cartusianus,Opera Omnia, 42 vols. (Mon-strolli: Typis CartusiaeS. M. de Pratis, 1896-1935),vii,passim. It should be noted that Honorius d'Autunin the12th centurywas the first to apply a systematicfourfoldallegorizationof the Song according o the classic fourfoldscheme (see PL, vol. 172, cols. 347-496).15See MS. Lambeth 392, fols. 168-70 (discussed byBlench,p. 4).16 Yet even a preacher ike Longlandpreservesa reason-able, traditionaldefinitionof scriptural enses:"A nut hasa rind,a shell and a centreor kernal.Therind is bitter,theshell is hard,butthe centre s sweetand full of nourishment.So in Scriptureheexteriorpart, that is the literalsenseandthe surfacemeaning, s very bitterand hard, and seems to

contradict tself.But if you crack t open, and moredeeply

regard he intention of the spirit,togetherwiththe exposi-tions of the holy doctors, you will find the kernaland acertain sweetness of true nourishment." "Take the lifefrom a body,and thebodybecomes tilland inert;taketheinward and spiritualsense from Scripture,and it becomesdead and useless." Quoted in Blench, pp. 21-22, from"QuinqueSermonesoannis Longlandi" 1517),inoannisLonlglandi. .. Tres Conciones (London [1527?]), 61v, 48r.

17 On this matter of Gnostic-Philonicallegoryin com-parisonwithrabbinic-patristicllegory,see esp. J. Bonsir-ven, "Exegese allegoriquechez les Rabbins Tannaites,"Recherches de Science Religieuse, 24 (1934), 35-46; JacobLauterbach,"The Ancient Jewish Allegoristsin Talmudand Midrash," Jewish Quarterly Review, NS 1 (1910-11),291-333, 503-31; R. P. C. Hanson, Allegoryand Event(London: S.C.M. Press, 1959),pp. 11-129; H. A. A. Ken-nedy, Phlilo's Contribution to Religion (London: Hodderand Stoughton, 1919);and my "The SpiritualMarriage:The Exegetic Historyand Literary mpactof the Song ofSongs in the MiddleAges," Diss. Princeton1971,Ch. iv,pp. 321-400.

18 Hugh of Saint Victor, Didascalicon, trans. JeromeTaylor (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1961), pp.121-22. For Augustine, see On Christian Doctrine, trans.D. W. Robertson(New York: LiberalArts Press, 1958),esp. pp. 7-14, 34-38.19Hugh, De Scriptoris et Scriptoribus Sacris-quoted byJohn McCall, "Medieval Exegesis," Supplement 4 inWilliamLynch,ChristandApollo New York: New Amer-ican Library,1960),p. 223;cf. Spicq,pp. 98-103.20 Quodlibet, vll, Q. 14-16-the passage is quoted andanalyzed n Henri de Lubac,Exegesemedievale, pts. in 4vols. (Paris: Aubier, 1959-64), Pt., Vol. , 273.21 S.T., 1,1,10, in Basic Writingsof Saint Thomas Aquinas,ed. Anton Pegis, 2 vols. (New York: Random, 1945), ,16-17.22 The text of the last sentence in the Summapassageshould be examinedcarefully:"Quia vero sensus litteralisest quem auctor intendit,auctor autem sacrae ScripturaeDeus est, quia omnia simul suo intellectucomprehendit,non est inconveniens,ut Augustinus dicit xII Conf., sietiam secundum itteralem ensum n unalitteraScripturae

plures sint sensus." Here, Lubac correctlyobserves, theetiam proves that in the last phrase"litteralem"s to beunderstood n the narrower ense, as one among the foursenses;but in the firstpartof the sentence,"litteralis"mayhave the meaning of the full, encompassingsense (seeLubac, Pt.I, Vol. I, 280-82 and cf. Synare, "La Doctrinede S. Thomas d'Aquinsurle sens litteral des Ecritures,"Revue Biblique, 35, 1926, 40-65).23 S.T., 1,1,10,reply obj. 1, in Basic Writings, I, 17.24 S T., i,1,10, replyobj. 3.25S.T., i-a, 102, 2-quoted in Lubac, Pt. a, Vol. a, p.296. As Lubacnotes,the termallegorywasa very mpreciseone, esp. in that it sometimes denoted all the spiritualsenses and sometimes the doctrinal sense alone, an am-

biguity retainedby Thomas. But Madsen unaccountablyasserts that a third meaning-figurative language n gen-eral-further confusesThomas' discussion FromShadowy

560


12/13

George L. ScheperTypes o Truth,p. 22),when in fact one of Thomas'contri-butionsis that he specificallyexcludes figurative anguagein general rom the provinceof allegory.

26 William Whitaker, A Dispultationl onl Holy Scriptureagainst the Papists, trans. William Fitzgerald, ParkerSociety, No. 45 (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge Univ.Press, 1849), pp. 404-05. See CharlesCannon, "WilliamWhitaker's Disputatio de Sacra Scriptllra: A Sixteenth-Century Theory of Allegory," HruntingtonLibrary Quar-terly, 25 (1961-62), 129-38. This article is an accuraterepresentation f Whitaker'sviews but attributes o theman originalitynot reallyappropriate.

27 Whitaker,p. 407 (italics mine). Cannon (pp. 132-35)has noticed the correspondenceof this interpretation omodern definitionsof metaphorin scholars like Cassirerand I. A. Richards.28 Praelectiones GulilelmniWhitakeri inl Ccantica Canti-corum,Bodl. MS. 59, fols. 1-50. This MS seems to haveescapedall attention.29 Philologia Sacra (Frankfort, 1653).30 Studies in Seventeenthl-CenturyPoetic (Madison: Univ.of WisconsinPress, 1965),p. 183.'31Pitrafound 160Christian ommentariesup to the 15thcentury(J. B. Pitra,Spicilegiumnlolesmenlse, vols., Paris:Didot Fratres,1852-58, ill, 167-68) and Rosenmuller ists116from 1600 o 1830 citedby PaulVulliaud,Le Cantiquedes Cantiques d'apres Ilatradition ]uive, Paris,1925, p. 18).Salfeld counted over 100 Jewish commentaries rom the9th to the 16th centuries S. Salfeld,"Die judischen Er-klarer des Hohenliedes, x-xvi. Jahr.,"Hebraeische Bibli-ographie,9, 1869, 110-13, 137-42). The most completebibliography,LeLong's,lists a total of 400 commentaries(JacquesLeLong, Bibliotheca acra,Paris,1723, pp. 1113-

17).32 The Intercourses of Divine Love betwixt Christ and theChurch,2 vols. (London, 1676, 1683).33This observationis in contrast to the usual view, asexpressed, for instance, by Sister Cavanaugh, that theReformers"said little about the Song of Solomon," thatthey indeed "shied away" from it. See Sr. FrancisCava-naugh, "A Critical Edition of The Canticles or Balades ofSalomon Phraselyke Declared in English Metres by WilliamBaldwin,"Diss. St. Louis Univ. 1964, p. 21.34 n the words of the PuritanCollinges:"I thinkI mayfurthersay, that thereis no portionof Holy Writ so copi-ously as this, expressing he infinite ove, and transcendentexcellencies of the Lord Jesus Christ. None that morecopiously instructsus, what he will be to us, or what weshould betowardhim,andconsequentlynonemoreworthyof the pains of any who desiresto PreachChrist."Inter-courses, i (1683),sig. A3r.35MelchiorHofmann,"The Ordinanceof God" (1530),in Spiritual and Aiiabaptist Writers, ed. George Williams,Library of Christian Classics, 25 (Philadelphia: West-minster Press, 1957), pp. 182-203. For Cyril, see "TheCatecheticalLectures f S.Cyril," rans.Gifford,Library fthe Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd ser., vII (NewYork: ChristianLiterature,1894),1-159 (see esp. Cat. 3,13, 14, and Mystag. 2). For Ambrose, see Theological andDogmaticWorks, rans.Roy DefarrariWashington,D. C.:Catholic Univ. of AmericaPress,1963), pp. 3-28, 311-21.

For analysis of the Song and early Christian iturgy,seeJean Danielou, The Bible and the Litulrgy(Notre Dame:Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1956), pp. 191-207 and my"SpiritualMarriage,"pp. 758-92.36 Wilderness alnd Paradise in ClhristianiThouglht(NewYork: Harper,1962),pp. 92-94.37 Robert Cofts, The Lover: Or, Nuptial Love (London,1638), Sect. xv, E5r-F4v; see also Thomas Vincent,

Chlrist,the Best Husband (London, 1672).38 See Francis Rous, The Mystical Marriage, 3rd ed.(London, 1724 [firstpub. 1635]), esp. pp. 112-25. Alsonotethe Bernardine se of the Songin SamuelRutherford'sletters: JoshlulaRedivivus: Or, Thlree Hundred anid Fifty-Two ReligioulsLetters, Writte;i betweenl1636 & 1661 (NewYork, 1836).39 The Canlticles or Balades of Salomonl, PhraselvkeDeclared inlEnglysh Metres (London, 1549). The corpus ofEnglishparaphrases n the Song includeswork by Dray-ton, Sandys,Quarles,and Wither(a versionby Spenser s

lost). Many are quite as bulkyas Baldwin's;for instance,Thomas Beverley's An Expositionrof the Divinely ProphetickSong of Songs (London, 1687), a laborious redactionofThomas Brightman'shistorical allegorization, A Com-mentary onl the Canticles (in Works, London, 1644, pp.971ff.), into 70 pages of poetic paraphrase.Moreover,there are comparable works in French, such as Ant.Godeau's "Eglogues sacrees, dont l'argument est tiredu Cantique des Cantiques," in Poesies Chrestiennes(Paris, 1646), pp. 147-266. These paraphrasesand otherpoemsrelating o the Songarethe focusof my studyof theexegeticand literaryrelationsof the Song of Songs in theRenaissance,whichis in progress.40 0. Van Veen, Amoris Divini Emblemata (Antwerp,

1660); Hermann Hugo, Pia Desideria: Or, Divine Ad-dresses, rans.E. ArwakerLondon,1686);FrancisQuarles,Emblems, Divine and Moral (London, 1736 [first pub.1635]).41 In Calvin'swords, "Our principaldisputeconcernedthe Songof Songs.He considered hat it is a lasciviousandobscenepoem, in whichSolomonhasdescribedhisshame-less love affairs" quotedin H. H. Rowley, The Servantofthe Lord,London: LutterworthPress, 1954, p. 207). Foran account of the dispute, with quotations from Calvin,Castellio,and Beza, see PierreBayle, The DictionaryHis-torical and Critical, 2nd ed., 5 vols. (London, 1734-38), II,361-62, n.d. Also see The Cambridge History of the Bible:The West from the Reformation to the Present Day, ed.S. L. Greenslade(Cambridge,Eng.: Univ. Press, 1963),pp. 8-9. OnTheodoreof Mopsuesta ee Adrien-M.Brunet"Theodorede Mopsuesteet le Cantiquedes Cantiques,"Etudes et Recherches, 9 (1955), 155-70.42 See Luther's Works, Vol. 15, ed. J. Pelikan and H.Oswald(St. Louis: Concordia,1972).43Claphamprovidesthe fullest list of citations,headedby Augustine,Isidoreof Seville,Lombard,and Rabbi IbnEzra, followed by Ambrose,Bernard,Theodoret,Origen,Gregory, Rupert,and Thomas: Henoch Clapham,ThreePartes of Salomon his Song of Songs (London, 1603).Mayer'scommentary s actually a catena, providing forEnglishreadersa runningparaphrase f the commentaries

of Gregory,Justus Urgellensis, he Targum,and Bernard:

561


13/13

ReformationAttitudes towardAllegory and the Song of SongsJohn Mayer, A Commentaryupon the Whole Old Testament(London, 1653).The definitive3rded. of the WestminsterAssembly Annotations frequently cites authorities likeAugustine, Ambrose, Rupert, and esp. Bernard: West-minster Assembly, Annotations upon All the Books of theOld and New Testament, 3rd ed. (London, 1657). The com-mentaryof Dove, one of the earliestEnglishexpositionsof the Song,citesonlya coupleof Protestantauthoritiesnpassing, but makes frequent use of Cyprian, Jerome,Chrysostom,Thomas,and above all dependson Augustinefor doctrineand Bernard or interpretation:John Dove,The Conversion of Salomon (London, 1613).

44 Clavis Cantici or an Exposition of the Song of Solo-mon(London, 1669),p. 6; cf. the definitionof allegory nRobert Ferguson, The Interest of Reason in Religion: withthle Import & Use of Scripture-Metaphors (London, 1675),pp. 308-09.

46 Accordingto Beza, Psalm 45 servesas an "abridge-ment"of the Song and, like the Song, is to be taken"andaltogether o be vnderstood n a spirituall ense,"withoutany reference o Solomon'smarriage, or "farre t is fromall reason to take that alliaunce& marriageof his to hauebin a figureof so holy & sacreda one as thatwhichis pro-posed vnto us in this Psal."-Master Bezaes Sermons ponthe Three First Chapters of the Canticle of Canticles, trans.John Harmer London, 1587),4r.

46 Quoted in D. W. Robertson, A Preface to Chaucer(Princeton:PrincetonUniv. Press, 1962),p. 135.47Intercourses, 1 (1683),29.48 The Song of Songs, trans.R. P. Lawson(Westminster,Md.: Newman Press, 1957), pp. 200-02.49See, e.g., Richard Sibbes: any "sinful abuse of thisheavenlybook is far from the intentionof the Holy Ghost

in it, whichis by stoopinglow to us, to takeadvantage oraise us higherunto him, that by takingadvantageof thesweetestpassageof ourlife, marriage, nd themostdelight-ful affection, love, in the sweetest mannerof expression,bya song,hemightcarryupthe soul to thingsof a heavenlynature"-from "BowelsOpened" 1639), in The CompleteWorks of Richard Sibbes, ed. A. B. Grosart (Edinburgh,1862), ii, 5-6. See also Assembly Annotations: "being aworkof highest ove andjoy, it can be no blameto it, thatit is now and then abruptand passionate.... it could beexpressednowaymorehappily, han in suchsimilitudesaswere properto such persons,and such subjects.... Thatcriminationand exceptions against the kisses and oynt-mentsand otheraffectionate peechesof it, areso far from

blemishingor polluting t, thattheybeautifieand enoble t;for if theyhad beenaway,how had it remainedan Epithal-aminon? how had those dearextasiesandsympathiesbeenexpressed?how had the languagebeen sutable and con-generousto the matter?which none can read with dangerof infection,but such as bring he plaguealongwiththem"(sig. 7Gr).50 Sibbes, Works,I, 201; cf. Durham, Clauis, p. 40.6' See, e.g., Durham, Clauis, pp. 354, 365, 368, 401;William Guild, Loves Entercovrsetween the Lamb & HisBride, Christ and His Church (London, 1658), p. 1; John

Trapp, SolomonisIIANA'PETOO: or, A Commentarie uponthe Books ofProuerbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs(London, 1650), pp. 219-20; Bartimeus AndreasAn-drewes], Certaine Very Worthy, Godly anld ProfitableSermons upon the Fifth Chapter of the Songs of Solomon(London, 1595),pp. 220-22.

52 Nathanael Homes, A CommentaryLiteral or Historical,and Mystical or Spiritual on the Whole Book of Canticles(London, n.d.), bound separatelypaged in The WorksofDr. Nathanael Homes (London, 1652), p. 469.

63 Assembly Annotations, sig. 712r'. Cf. St. Teresa, "Con-ceptions of the Love of God," in Complete Works of SaintTeresaof Jesus, trans. E. A. Peers, 3 vols. (New York:Sheedand Ward,1950), ii, 360.

54 Saint Bernard's Sermons on the Canticle of Canticles,trans. by a priest of Mount Melleray, 2 vols. (Dublin,1920), i, 50-51 (sermon7). Hereafter ited in text.65See my "Spiritual Marriage,"pp. 404-13, 425-30,535-40. For Gregory of Nyssa, see From Glory to Glory:Texts from Gregory of Nyssa's Mystical Writings, ed. JeanDanielou, trans. Musurillo London:John Murray,1962);for the Spanish mystics, seeE. Allison Peers, Studiesof

the Spanish Mystics, 3 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1927,1930, 1960).Note the analogous interpretations f sexualimagery n Gnostic texts, in the Kaballah,and in EasternTantricand Vishnaitecults and Sufism-see my "SpiritualMarriage,"pp. 156-79.56 See Chrysostom,Homilyxx on Ephesians,NPNF, 13(New York, 1889), 146-47 and Homily xxvi on X Cor.,Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, xii (NewYork: ChristianLiterature,1889), 150-51. Cf. the Glossaordinaria n i Cor. xi.3, PL, Vol. 114, col. 537; AssemblyAnnotations, sig. DDD4V; Matthew Poole, Annotationsupon the Holy Bible (Edinburgh, 1801 [first pub. 16831),sig. SC2r;Bernard, I, 336-38 (sermon71).

562