Reformation Attitudes toward Allegory and the Song of Songs

Author(s): George L. Scheper

Reviewed work(s):
Source: PMLA, Vol. 89, No. 3 (May, 1974), pp. 551-562
Published by: Modern Language Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/461591 .
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GEORGE L. SCHEPER
Reformation Attitudes toward
Allegory
and the
Song
of
Songs
WHEN
representative
hermeneutic treatises
of the Middle
Ages
and the Reformation
are examined
closely,
it becomes rather
difficult to make
generalizations
about the dif-
ferences in attitude toward the senses of
Scripture
(particularly allegory)
between the medieval theo-
logians and the Reformers. This is confirmed
by
a
comparative analysis
of the medieval and Refor-
mation commentaries on the
Song
of
Songs,
the
locus classicus of the
allegorical interpretation
of
Scripture,
for the traditional
allegorization
rested
secure in the Reformation. Nonetheless, the most
cursory
examination reveals fundamental differ-
ences between medieval and Protestant
spirituality
as 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 of
human love to
symbolize
the love between God
and man.
I. The Senses of
Scripture
in
the Reformation
Prevalent
generalizations about Reformation
exegesis, sharply differentiating
it from medieval
allegorical exegesis
in its heightened concern for
textual
accuracy,
historical
context,
and the
plain
literal sense,
lay great stress on certain famous
animadversions
by the
early Reformers on medie-
val
allegory. These animadversions leave the
impression
that the Reformers were simply and
unequivocally opposed
to
anything other than a
single,
literal sense of
Scripture.1 In Luther's
words: "In the schools of
theologians it is a well-
known rule that
Scripture
is to be understood in
four
ways, literal, allegoric, moral, anagogic. But
if we wish to handle
Scripture aright, our one effort
will be to obtain
unum, simplicem, germanum, et
certum sensum literalem." "Each passage has one
clear, definite,
and true sense of its own. All others
are but doubtful and uncertain
opinions" (quoted
in Farrar, p. 327; italics
mine). Consequently,
Luther's remarks on
allegory
are
characteristically
caustic: "An
interpreter
must as much as
possible
avoid
allegory,
that he
may
not wander in idle
dreams."
"Allegories are
empty speculations, and
as it were the scum of
Holy Scripture." "Allegory
is a sort of beautiful harlot, who
proves herself
specially
seductive to idle men."
"Allegories are
awkward, absurd, invented, obsolete, loose
rags"
(Farrar, p. 328).
Nonetheless, Luther does allow for a homiletic
use of
allegory
for illustrative
purposes.2 More-
over, the theoretical insistence on a
plain literal
sense tended to be belied in
practice by
the
rigors
of
interpreting Scripture according
to the
analogy
of faith (i.e., interpreting Scripture by Scripture)
and
especially by
the
reading
of
Christology
in the
whole Bible-two hallmarks of Luther's her-
meneutics.3 The latter doctrine, that the Bible
everywhere teaches Christ, necessitates at least one
kind of
figural interpretation, typology,
which
Luther and his followers would
perforce sharply
distinguish from allegory. As Luther said, "When
I was a monk, I was an expert in allegories. I
allegorized everything. Afterwards through the
Epistle to the Romans I came to some knowledge
of Christ. There I saw that allegories were not
what Christ meant but what Christ was."4 This
accounts for the fact that in practice Luther can be
as allegorical a commentator as Origen himself-
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.
Calvin carried forward the doctrine of one plain
literal sense with even greater thoroughness than
Luther and rejected allegorical interpretation even
when invoked for purely ornamental and homiletic
purposes. Yet on typology he was ambivalent.
Theoretically, he professed to eschew typology and
Christocentric interpretations even of the pro-
phetic writings.5 But confronted with the typologi-
551
Reformation
Attitudes toward
Allegory
and the
Song of Songs
cal
interpretations
made
by
Paul himself, he is
forced to
regard
them as illustrative references or
"accommodations"6 or else to admit
thatmany
Old
Testament
types actually
refer
directly
or immedi-
ately
to Christ and not to the
apparent
referent at
all
(lest
a
multiple
sense be
implied).7 Moreover,
Calvin and his followers were not averse to read-
ing
their favorite doctrines as
applications
into
passages
where a modern
expositor
would not find
them8 and Calvin himself maintained that it was
less harmful to
allegorize
Mosaic law than to ac-
cept
its
imperfect morality
as the rule for Christian
men
(see Farrar, p. 350). (We
are reminded of
Erasmus' dictum that "We
might
as well read
Livy
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 Calvin
maintained a
completely
traditional view of the
allegorical interpretation
of the
Song
of
Songs,
to
the
point
of
expelling
Castellio from Geneva for
denying
it.
For the
English
Protestant tradition, Tyndale's
Obedience
of
a Christian Man has
long
been noted
as the classic statement of
antiallegorical,
literal
exegesis. In his section on the four senses of
medieval exegesis, Tyndale views the allegorical
senses as a papist device to secure Catholic doc-
trines from scriptural refutation: "The literal sense
is become nothing at all: for the pope hath taken
it clean away, and hath made it his possession,"9
so that our captivity under the pope is maintained
by these "sophisters with their anagogical and
chopological sense" (p. 307). In contrast, Tyndale
stoutly 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 literal sense is the root and ground of all,
and the anchor that never faileth, whereunto, if
thou cleave, thou canst never err or go out of the
way" (p. 304). For the whole of Scripture teaches
Christ, as Luther said, and as God is a spirit, all
his words are spiritual: "His literal sense is
spiritual" (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 as
our own figures of speech are an inherent part of
our direct meaning, not another "sense." In in-
terpreting such similitudes as are used by the
Scripture writers themselves, we must, Tyndale
says, 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, like
Luther, Tyndale theoretically
admits
only
one
kind of
allegory, radically distinguished
from all
others-typology.
But as has been noted, there is a certain dis-
crepancy
between the
purity
of these theoretical
statements, polemical
in context, and the actual
exegetic practice
of the Reformers. Moreover, the
rejection
of
allegory
and the insistence on one un-
divided sense
hinged
for the
early
Reformers on
maintaining
a radical distinction between
typology
and
allegory.
But the more
systematic
Protestant
hermeneutic treatises reveal, as Madsen has
shown, that
any
essential distinction was
impossi-
ble to maintain. For instance, Flacius
Illyricus
at
first tried to fix the difference
by defining types
as a
comparison
between historical deeds and
allegory
as a matter of words
having
a
secondary meaning
-but this was no different from the old Catholic
discrimination between
figures
of
speech (part
of
the literal
sense)
and the
spiritual
sense
(arising
out
of the
significance
of
things).
So Flacius shifts to a
second distinction: that
types
are restricted to
Christ and the Church, while
allegories
are accom-
modations to ourselves-but that is hardly an es-
sential difference (being no more than the dis-
tinction between allegory proper and tropology in
the fourfold scheme) and breaks down his initial
distinction between the significances that arise
from words and deeds.10
In any case, types remain as a significant in-
stance of what the Catholics called the spiritual
sense but what the Reformers insisted on calling
the full literal sense, a purely semantic distinction.
More important, it needs to be pointed out that
the early Reformers' denunciations of allegory had
a specific historical context. The allegorical ex-
travagances condemned by Luther, Calvin, and
Tyndale accurately characterize not the central
patristic and medieval exegetic tradition but rather
the products of one school of allegorical exegesis
that flourished especially in the late Middle Ages
and came to predominate in the Renaissance
Catholic commentaries contemporary with the
Reformers. These "dialectical" commentaries (as
C. Spicq calls them"1) rigorously systematized the
different dimensions of allegorization in monu-
mental compilations full of elaborate and ingeni-
ous explanations, scholastic distinctions, and
rhetorical patterns. The margins of the fourteenth-
century commentaries of Hugh of St. Cher, for
552
George
L.
example,
are filled with references to
things
"tri-
plex," reinforcing
a
pervasive
trinitarian
symbol-
ism at
every point.
In his
commentary
on the
Song
he notes that there are three
adjurations
not
to awaken the
sleeping
bride because
spiritual
sleep
is
threefold,l2
and three times she is called to
ascend because there are three
stages
in the
spiritual
life.13 In the fifteenth
century, Dionysius
the Carthusian became the first to
present,
in his
commentary
on the
Song,
an
unvaryingly system-
atic threefold
allegorization
for
every
verse on the
following pattern:
of Christ and the
Sponsa
Uni-
versali (the Church),
of Christ and the
Sponsa
Particulari
(the soul), and of Christ and the
Sponsa Singulari (Mary)-a
method that allows
him to draw
lengthy
doctrinal
essays
and devo-
tional exercises out of
any
verse whatsoever.14
This method became the hallmark of much Catho-
lic
exegesis
in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies, in commentaries such as those of Martin
Del Rio and Michael Ghislerus. And Blench
argues
in
great
detail in his
study
of
Preaching
in
England
in the Late
Fifteenth
and Sixteenth Cen-
turies that the
exegetic practice
of the Catholic
preachers
in these centuries, such as Fisher and
Longland,
is marked
by
a
thoroughgoing allegori-
zation even of the New Testament (such that the
six
pots
at the
wedding
of Cana, for instance, are
taken to
symbolize
the six
qualities
that
impelled
Christ to assume flesh, or the six heavinesses ex-
perienced by
the
Apostle during
the
Passion"5),
and
that in
general
these
preachers
demonstrate an 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" school
of
exegesis,
which flourished in the late Middle
Ages
and the
Renaissance, mainly
in the schools,
to which
Tyndale's
attack is
appropriate.
Now this
dialectical school, in
subjecting every
verse to a
rigidly systematic
and
uniformly
detailed and
manifold
allegorization,
in effect revived the ab-
stract, antihistorical
allegorical technique
of the
Hellenistic school of Philo and the Gnostics. The
difference between the Hellenistic and dialectical
modes on the one hand and the Palestinian, bibli-
cal, and
patristic
mode of
allegory
on the other, is
the difference between
regarding
Adam and Eve
as
symbols
of reason and
sensuality
and
regarding
them as historical
types
of Christ and the Church.
From the time of
Origen,
the Hellenistic mode
Scheper
553
entered, to a
greater
or lesser
degree, irrevocably
into the tradition of Christian
allegorical exegesis,
creating
a
complex
attitude toward
history and
spirit
that is at the root of medieval
exegesis. But
the Hellenistic mode never became itself the cen-
tral tradition of
patristic
and medieval
exegesis.17
In
actuality,
it seems to us that the overwhelm-
ingly
central tradition of medieval
exegesis
is in
accord with the Reformers on most basic
points.
There is no
question
in either tradition of the
verbal
inspiration
of
Scripture,
the
harmony
and
even
uniformity
of biblical
theology,
the universal
Christology
of both Testaments, the wholeness of
the sense of
Scripture
and its foundation in the
letter, nor even of the fact that much biblical
language
is
figurative.
On the crucial last
points
we need
only cite, for the medieval tradition, the
complete
accord of
Augustine's
De Doctrina
Christiana, Hugh
of St. Victor's Didascalicon, and
St. Thomas' remarks on
scriptural interpretation.
Like
Augustine, Hugh
bases the idea of
spiritual
senses on the basic
conception
that
things
as well
as words can be
signs,
and that the
significance
of
words, including figures
of
speech,
is the literal
sense, while the
significance
of
things ("the voice of
God
speaking
to
men") yields
the
spiritual
senses.18
Like
Augustine
and
Origen, Hugh
discriminates
three basic senses, the literal, the
allegorical,
and
the moral, and notes that while some
passages may
have a
"triple sense," many
will be
simply
histori-
cal, purely moral, or
entirely spiritual-or any
combination thereof.
Superior
as
they may be, the
spiritual
senses must be
grounded
in the letter, not
only
in the sense that the factual biblical
history
is
the basis of all revelation, but in that the letter is
"the
meaning
of
any
narrative which uses words
according
to their
proper
nature. And in the sense
of the word, I think that all the books of either
Testament . . .
belong
to this
study
in their literal
meaning" (Hugh, Did., p. 121).
I would take this
to mean that even works that are
purely allegori-
cal, such as Canticles, have a literal, albeit
figura-
tive, sense
(the
human
similitude).
In short, Hugh
says,
"And how can
you
'read' the
Scriptures
without
'reading'
the letter? If one does
away
with
the letter, what is left of the
Scriptures?"'"19
Unlike
Philo, Hugh
does not
regard every phrase
in the
Bible as
susceptible
of
allegorical interpretation
nor does he
regard history
itself as
unimportant
or
contemptible
unless
allegorized. Perhaps
the term
"allegorical interpretation"
is a misnomer for the
Reformation
Attitudes toward Allegory
and the Song of Songs
tradition
represented by Augustine
and
Hugh,
and
belongs
to the Alexandrians; it is not
allegorical
interpretation
but the
interpretation
of allegories
with which
Hugh
is concerned.
Precisely
the same
points
are
repeated by
Thomas in
passages
in Quodlibet20 and his com-
mentary
on Galatians iii.28
(quoted
in Lubac,
Pt.
II11,
Vol.
II, p. 295)
and
especially
in the
following
classic statement in the Summa Theologica:
Therefore that first
signification whereby
words signify
things belongs
to the first sense, the historical or lit-
eral. That
signification whereby things signified by
words have themselves also a
signification
is called the
spiritual sense, which is based on the literal, and pre-
supposes
it. Now this
spiritual
sense has a threefold
division. . . . Therefore, so far as the
things
of the
Old Law
signify
the
things
of the New Law, there is
the allegorical sense; so far as the
things
done in
Christ, or so far as the
things
which
signify Christ,
are signs
of what we
ought
to do, there is the moral
sense. But so far as
they signify
what relates to eternal
glory,
there is the
anagogical
sense. Since the literal
sense is that which the author intends, and since the
author of Holy Scripture is God, Who by one act
comprehends all things in His intellect, it is not unfit-
ting, as Augustine says, if, even according to the lit-
eral sense, one word in Holy Scripture should have
several senses.21
It is important to notice how in the last sentence
Thomas defines that which the author-God-
intends to be the literal sense (not, as some critics
seem to think, saying that the literal sense, as one
among others, is the one that God intended!). It is
in this sense that every text in Holy Scripture
naturally has a literal sense, and it implies a con-
ception of "literal sense" that actually embraces
all four senses as being the full sense intended by
God, and thus the three specific spiritual dimen-
sions (allegory, tropology, and anagogy) "unfold"
from this one whole sense.22 In any case, Thomas
makes clear that the spiritual senses are founded
upon the "literal" sense in the usual, narrower
sense of the term, as he reiterates in replying to the
objection that the multiplicity of senses would
cause confusion; to that objection he replies that
the multiple senses do not arise from ambiguity in
the letter but from the significance of the desig-
nated things:
Thus in Holy Scripture no confusion results, for all
the senses are founded on one-the literal-from
which alone can any argument be drawn, and not
from those intended allegorically, as Augustine says.
Nevertheless, nothing
of Holy Scripture perishes
because of this, since nothing necessary
to faith is
contained under the spiritual
sense which is not else-
where
put
forward clearly by
the Scripture
in its
literal sense.23
And, like Hugh,
Thomas notes that figurative
language
is
part
of the literal sense:
The
parabolical
sense is contained in the literal, for
by
words things
are signified properly
and figuratively.
Nor is the
figure itself, but that which is figured,
the
literal sense. When Scripture speaks
of God's arm, the
literal sense is not that God has such a member, but
only
what is signified by
this member, namely, opera-
tive
power.
Hence it is
plain
that nothing
false can
ever underlie the literal sense of Holy Scripture.24
(Still,
for Thomas, the literal sense alone, divorced
from the
spiritual
sense, is carnal and Judaic- the
Holy
Ghost is sent into the hearts of believers "ut
intelligerunt spiritualiter quod
Judaei carnaliter
intelligunt.")25
We can see in this passage
the real
basis of the frequent
assertion by
the commenta-
tors, seemingly
so contrary
to the fact, that the
Song
has
only
a
spiritual
sense. For just as the
"arm of God" literally (but by means of similitude)
means His
operative power, so, too, we may say,
the
Song
is
literally
about Christ and the Church,
by
means of the "sweet similitude" of human love.
Similar
analyses
are found in the Catholic theorists
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such as
Escalante or Serarius (see Madsen, pp. 23-25).
This
puts
a different light upon the assertions of
Luther, Calvin,
and Tyndale
that they were re-
verting
to the idea of one, literal sense presumably
lost
sight
of
by
the medieval commentators.
In
fact, William Whitaker, the most thoughtful of
English Reformation scriptural critics, overtly
says
that he does not wholly reject the theory of
spiritual
senses as defined by Catholics like
Gregory
or Thomas,
but still maintains that the
sense of
Scripture
is one and undivided ("but" is
Whitaker's
perception;
as we have seen, Thomas
believed in the undivided single sense of Scripture
too).
"These
things
we do not wholly reject: we
concede such things as allegory, anagoge, and
tropology
in
scripture;
but meanwhile we deny
that there are
many
and various senses. We affirm
that there is but one true, proper and genuine sense
of
scripture,
arising
from the words rightly under-
stood, which we call the literal; and we contend
that
allegories, tropologies,
and anagoges are not
various senses, but various collections from one
554
George
L.
Scheper
sense, or various
applications
and accommoda-
tions of that one
meaning."
"The literal sense,
then, is not that which the words
immediately sug-
gest,
as the Jesuit
[i.e., Bellarmine] defines it; but
rather that which arises from the words them-
selves, whether
they
be taken
strictly
or
figura-
tively."26
Thus, the
allegories
woven
by
the New Testa-
ment writers, for instance, "are not various mean-
ings,
but
only
various
applications
and accom-
modations of
scripture" (Whitaker, p. 406).
"When we
proceed
from the
sign
to the
thing
signified,
we
bring
no new sense, but
only bring
out into
light
what was before concealed in the
sign.
When we
speak
of the
sign by itself, we ex-
press only part
of the
meaning;
and so also when
we mention
only
the
thing signified:
but when the
mutual relation between the
sign
and the
thing
sig-
nified
is
brought out, then the whole
complete sense,
which
isfounded upon
this similitude and
agreement,
is set
forth."27 Thus, as in Thomas, the term
"literal sense"
really
has two
meanings
for
Whitaker: the narrower
being
the
grammatical-
historical sense, the broader
being
the
full
sense
(including spiritual accommodations). It would
seem that Whitaker differs from the Catholics only
in restrictiveness, limiting what they call allegory
more or less to the types invoked by the New
Testament writers, and he expressly states that the
interpretation of David's battle with Goliath as
Christ's battle with Satan is purely an application,
not a bona fide part of the "full" meaning and
certainly not the one grammatical-historical mean-
ing. And yet there is an unedited manuscript com-
mentary on the Song of Songs by Whitaker, in
which he perpetuates in the most conventional
way the allegorical interpretation of that book
(which has no direct New Testament sanction as a
type).28 We shall see that many Protestants (almost
all of whom accepted the allegorical interpretation
of the Song) insisted even more fervently than the
Catholics that the Song had only a spiritual sense
and neither a typological historical reference to
Solomon (which many Catholics accepted) nor
any reference to carnal love at all-which virtually
denies that this love song between Christ and the
Church even uses the similitude of human love.
Indeed, it was their very scruples about admit-
ting any implication of multiple senses that led a
number of later Protestant theorists of exegesis to
admit a more extreme brand of allegorization than
the medieval Catholics, a brand closer to the
Alexandrian tradition. Thus, Solomon Glass re-
tains the
rejection of
multiple
senses for the doc-
trine of one full sense, but the latter now
clearly
includes
spiritual meanings (the significance
of
things),
which
may
be
allegorical, typological,
or
parabolic.29
All essential distinction between
type
and
allegory
is abandoned. In Madsen's words:
"By
the middle of the seventeenth
century
the dis-
tinction between the Catholic
theory
of manifold
senses and the Protestant
theory
of the one literal
sense had, for all
practical purposes,
become
meaningless.
Both sides
agreed
that
only
the literal
meaning
could be used to
prove doctrine, that
literal-figurative meanings
must conform to the
analogy
of faith, that
'typical' passages
in the Old
Testament had a double
meaning,
and that various
'allegorical
accommodations'
might
be
gathered
from the text for homiletic
purposes
even
though
they
were not intended
by
the author"
(p. 38).
Indeed, the
left-wing
Protestants went further than
the Catholics in
admitting allegorical readings;
in
strongly distinguishing
the letter as the written
word of
Scripture
from the
spirit
as the
living
Word of God as communicated to the soul, non-
conformists like Samuel How and John Saltmarsh
and John Everard viewed the whole written Scrip-
ture, including the New Testament, as only a
figurative rendering of ineffable spiritual truths;
Everard says, for example, "Externall Jesus Christ
is a shadow, a symbole, a figure of the Internal:
viz. of him that is to be born within us. In our
souls" (quoted in Madsen, p. 41). Finally, with
Gerard Winstanley and even more the Platonist
Henry More, the literal-historical reality of the
biblical narratives is actually denied and we have
come full circle back to Philo and the Gnostics.
II. The Song of Songs in Reformation Exegesis
The Protestant commentaries on the Song of
Songs in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
reinforce the contentions offered above, for they
provide a striking contrast to the innovative stance
of the treatises on exegesis, being overwhelmingly
conservative in purveying the traditional allegori-
cal interpretation. An initial objection here might
be that the commentaries on the Song are an
anomaly, that they represent an insignificant rem-
nant of the older tradition, the last bastion of al-
legory to give way. In hindsight this might be true,
but it is a teleological interpretation of intellectual
555
Reformation
Attitudes toward
Allegory
and the
Song of Songs
history
and does not reflect how the
age
saw itself.
To a sixteenth- or
seventeenth-century
commenta-
tor, the idea that the
allegorization
of the
Song
was an
anomaly
would have been
incomprehensi-
ble. The modern oblivion of the book has tended
to blind us to the
really
crucial
position
it holds in
exegetic history,
not
only
for the
question
of al-
legory
but for the central matter of the relation of
divine to
profane love, and in fact, as Ruth Waller-
stein has said, the
Song
involved for the Middle
Ages
and Renaissance the whole
question
of the
place
of the senses in the
spiritual
life and
helped
"to
shape
man's ideas of
symbolism
and of the
function of the
imagination."30
This
helps explain
the
prodigious exegetic history
of the book; the
number of commentaries is
astounding.
The
early
catalogs
and
bibliographies
tend to list more com-
mentaries on the
Song
than on
any
other biblical
book save the Psalms, all of Paul's
epistles
taken
together,
and the
Gospels.31 My
own checklist of
commentaries
through
the seventeenth
century
totals 500 and is still far from
complete.
There are
over a score of
printed
commentaries
by English
Protestants in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies, including monumental compilations like the
Puritan John Collinges' two volumes on just the
first two chapters of the Song (a total of almost
1,500 pages).32 It has seemed to previous historians
of exegesis absolutely distinctive of the High Mid-
dle Ages that it was preoccupied with the Song of
Songs and that it was then regarded in some ways
as the pinnacle of Scripture-and indeed there are
sixty or seventy extant commentaries from the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries alone. But the data
for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries would
indicate a similar "preoccupation" among the Re-
formers.33 Again and again the Reformers, like the
medieval Cistercian monks, express their highest
regard for the Song, for nowhere else, they say, is
Christ's divine love better taught.34 There are, to be
sure, tremendous differences between the spiritual-
ity of the monastic and Puritan commentaries on
the 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 texts
from the Song, as well as a prominent use of the
allegorized Song in a variety of works of Protestant
spirituality. For instance, the Anabaptist Melchior
Hofmann interperts adult Christian initiation as a
betrothal between Christ and the faithful soul, the
whole
process interpreted according
to the
imagery
of the
Song
of
Songs-much
as
Cyril
of Jerusalem
and St. Ambrose used texts from the
Song
to de-
scribe each
step
of the
baptismal
rite as
they
knew
it.35 And
George
Williams has shown that noncon-
formists like
Bunyan
and
separatist
sects like the
Quakers, Huguenots, Swedenborgians,
and Pi-
etists, who maintained a
"theology
of the wilder-
ness"
(the
idea of a
holy community living
in
spiritual
isolation from decadent
society),
fre-
quently
invoke the verses of the
Song
in which the
divine lover calls his bride
up
from the wilderness
(Cant. iii.6, viii.5).36 Furthermore, Protestant
tracts and sermons on
marriage,
such as Croft's
The Lover
(1638),
not
infrequently
cite the al-
legorized Song
as a
presentation
of the divine
archetype
which human
marriage
should imitate.37
Indeed, there are a number of sermons
specifically
devoted to the theme of the
spiritual marriage
and
a notable treatise on the
subject by
Francis Rous
(1675),
based
throughout
on the
Song
of
Songs
and
ending
in a devotional
piece
called "A
Song
of
Loves"
quite
in the tradition of St. Bernard or
Richard Rolle.38
When we add to this the evidence of the poetic
paraphrases and of other Protestant poetry di-
rectly inspired by the Song, the centrality of that
book to Reformation spirituality cannot be
doubted. 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-five
extant English poetic paraphrases through the
seventeenth century, most being elaborate allego-
rizations in the traditional mold.39 Besides these,
there is a considerable body of Protestant poetry
based directly on the Song, notably the emblem
books of Van Veen, Hermann Hugo, and Francis
Quarles.40 To give one other example, fully one
third of the preparatory meditations on the
eucharist, the magnum opus of Edward Taylor,
are a poetic commentary on verses from the Song.
Returning to the formal commentaries, they are,
as noted, in all essentials thoroughly traditional in
allegorizing the book. It is true that one Reformer,
Sebastian Castellio, had rejected this tradition and
concluded that, being nothing but a colloquy of
Solomon and his beloved Shulamite, the Song had
no spiritual significance and should be excluded
from the Canon. This conclusion was so anathema
556
to Calvin that he had Castellio
expelled
from
Geneva because of it. In this case, Calvin's
posi-
tion was no different from that of the fathers of the
Second Council of
Constantinople
of 553, who
condemned Theodore of
Mopsuesta
for the same
opinion.41 Indeed, some Protestant
allegorists
went
to extremes not
contemplated by
the medieval
commentators. One minor school viewed the book
as a
prophetic-historical work, so that
just
as the
Targum
saw in the book the
history
of God's deal-
ings
with Israel, the
English
commentator
Bright-
man read it as a
history-prophecy extending
from
the
reign
of David to 1700
(a commentary
turned
into the
unlikely
form of
poetic paraphrase by
Thomas
Beverley,
to a
length
of 70
pages [see
n.
39]). And Martin Luther devised the
completely
unique allegorical interpretation
that the
Song
was
Solomon's
praise
of and
thanksgiving
for a
happy
and
peaceful
realm.42 But most Protestants
rejected
such unconventional
allegorization
in favor of the
traditional
reading
that saw the
Song
as a
dialogue
between Christ and the Church or the faithful soul.
Indeed, the
continuity
of the tradition between the
Middle
Ages
and the Reformation is
strikingly
evident from an examination of the authorities
utilized
by
the
English
commentators. In com-
mentary
after
commentary
we discover the domi-
nant
explicit
influence of
Augustine
and Bernard,
and favorable citation of authors like
Gregory
the
Great, Ambrose, Jerome, and even
Rupert (author
of a Marian
commentary
on
the'Song).43
To an outside observer the
continuity
with the
past
in these commentaries would far
outweigh
any
innovative elements. To be sure, the Protes-
tant commentaries almost
uniformly adopt
a
pri-
marily
ecclesial
allegory,
with the
tropological
dimension as a valid
application.
But so, in fact, is
the medieval tradition built on the foundation of
the ecclesial
interpretation,
and even those com-
mentaries devoted most
strikingly
to the Christ-
soul
allegory,
such as Bernard's, recognize
that the
ultimate
priority
remains with the ecclesial in-
terpretation. Similarly,
the Protestant commen-
taries
deplored
the mechanical
allegorization
of
every particular
detail in the scholastic, dialectical
commentaries, but so do
Origen
and Bernard
eschew
any
such
allegorization
of
particulars.
Nevertheless, the Protestant commentaries are dis-
tinctly
Protestant in
opposing
what
they
called
papist
and monkish
interpretations,
that is, alle-
gorizations that reflect the ecclesiastical structures
L.
Scheper
557
of the Catholic Church or the monastic milieu
(e.g.,
the enclosed
garden
as the monastic
cloister),
replacing
them with
allegorizations reflecting
Protestant ecclesiastical structure, vocabulary,
and
doctrine
(such as
justification by
faith or the im-
puted righteousness
of
Christ).
That the
Song
of
Songs
is a
spiritual
book is a
premise
shared
by
medieval and Protestant com-
mentators alike, but for the Protestants, more con-
cerned with the idea of a
single sense, there is more
of a
problem
in
defining
the relation of the
allegory
to 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 less
what the medieval commentators said, but with
less
rigorous
intent. James Durham, one of the
ablest commentators, said: "I
grant
it hath a literal
meaning,
but I
say,
that literal
meaning
is not
immediate . . . but that which is
spiritually
and
especially
meant
by
these
Allegorical
and
Figura-
tive
speeches,
is the Literal
meaning
of the
Song:
So that its Literal sense is mediate, representing
the
meaning,
not
immediately
from the Words, but
mediately
from the
Scope,
that is, the intention of
the
Spirit,
which is couched under the
Figures
and
Allegories
here made use of."44
Consequently,
there is
great
confusion about whether the
Song
is
typological
or not, with
opinion
about
equally
divided, but with some Protestant commentators,
such as Durham and Beza, taking
a
position
as
strongly
as Luis de Leon's
inquisitors
that there
can be no historical reference to Solomon and
Pharaoh's
daughter (which
would be
dangerously
lewd),
because the
Song speaks solely
of Christ and
the Church.45 With such an extreme view, one
could
hardly
dwell on the
aptness
of the
Song's
praises
of the lovers' bodies to the
figurative
situa-
tion
(historia),
in the
way
that even the Cistercian
monk Gilbert of Hoilandia does in
explicating
the
praise
of the bride's breasts: "Those breasts are
beautiful which rise
up
a little and swell moder-
ately,
neither too elevated, nor, indeed, level with
the rest of the chest.
They
are as if
repressed
but
not
depressed, softly restrained, but not
flapping
loosely."46
In contrast, the Protestant Durham
says
that "our Carnalness makes it hazardous and un-
safe, to descend in the
Explication
of these Simili-
tudes" (Clavis, p. 401), and the Puritan
Collinges
says
that " the
very
uncouthness of the same ex-
pressions,
is an
argument,
that it is no meer
Woman here intended"47
(although
how
inap-
Reformation
Attitudes toward
Allegory
and the
Song of Songs
propriate praise
of a woman could serve as an
apt
metaphor
for love of God seems rather obscure).
Commentators like
Origen, Bernard, and Guil-
laume de
Saint-Thierry,
who
thoroughly allego-
rized the
Song,
nonetheless devoted considerable
attention to
setting
forth the
aptness
of the letter,
though
to be sure with cautions
against allowing,
in
Origen's words, "an
interpretation
that has to
do with the flesh and the
passions
to
carry you
away."48
In short, the medieval attitude toward
the letter of the
Song
was that one can talk about
the
story (historia)
without immediate reference to
the
spiritual meaning,
but that the
story's
real
meaning
is the
spiritual
sense. The
apparent
con-
troversy
between those who asserted that the
Song
has a literal sense (in the narrow
meaning
of a
historical
sense) and those who seemed to
deny
it
is
purely
rhetorical: those who discerned a literal
sense
(such as a reference to Solomon and Phar-
aoh's
daughter)
all
acknowledged
that it is artifi-
cial to talk about the story apart from its spiritual
significance, while those who denied that the Song
has a literal meaning always acknowledged that
the spiritual sense is conveyed "under the simili-
tude" of human love and that the interpretation of
the letter is in fact nothing other than the explica-
tion of that similitude. For instance, if the bride's
breasts are compared to twin roes feeding among
the
lilies, one needs to know what quality in a
woman is being commended in that comparison
before one can
appreciate the significatio-hence
Gilbert's comments on feminine pulchritude cited
above. Thus far the medieval and Reformation
exegetes
are once again seen to have comparable
attitudes, except that the conscientiousness about
one sense and possibly a greater puritanism seems
to make the Protestants rather more shy of the
carnal similitudes.
It is at this point, I believe, that we encounter
the really fundamental difference between the
spirituality embodied in the Catholic and Protes-
tant commentaries on the Song, that is, in their
conception of the central metaphor underlying the
allegorized Song, the spiritual marriage, or divine
love conveyed under the similitude of carnal hu-
man love. There is complete agreement among the
Protestant commentators with the traditional view
that
spiritual truths can, in the last analysis, be
expressed only metaphorically (although it might
be
pointed out that this symbolist conception of
truth almost always sits side by side with the ra-
tionalistic assertion that
nothing
is said
figura-
tively
in
Scripture
that is not elsewhere in the
Bible stated
discursively-an ambiguity going
back
at least to
Augustine's
De
Doctrina). They
are
moreover
agreed
that the
nuptial metaphor
is
uniquely
suited to
expressing
the
highest mystery
of all (as Paul calls it in
Ephesians),
the love be-
tween God and His
people,
and that therefore the
human
language
of the
Song
is
dramatically ap-
propriate.49
But
precisely
wherein consists that
pe-
culiar
aptness
of the
nuptial metaphor?
On this
there is
surprisingly
little elaboration in the Protes-
tant commentaries, but what there is
mostly
de-
velops
the
aptness
of the
nuptial metaphor
in
terms of the moral, domestic virtues of Christian
marriage: faithfulness, tenderness, affection, mu-
tual consent, the
holding
of
things
in common, the
headship
of the husband. In other words, as Sibbes
says explicitly,
the
metaphor
is based on the nature
of the
marriage
contract.50 Dove elaborates on the
analogy between the marriage rite and the history
of redemption (God giving away His Son; the Last
Supper as a wedding banquet; the procreation of
spiritual fruit) (Conversion, pp. 87-89). Beyond
this, there is some reference to the passionate na-
ture of love and to the one-flesh union of marriage
as a symbol of union with God.51 But generally,
when the sexual aspect of the union tends to sur-
face, the commentators avert their eyes and allude
to the dangers of lewd interpretation. Thus,
Homes says, "away, say we, with all carnal
thoughts, whiles we have heavenly things pre-
sented us under the notion of Kisses, Lips,
Breasts, Navel, Belly, Thighs, Leggs. Our minds
must be above our selves, altogether minding
heavenly meanings."52 And on Canticles v.4 ("My
beloved put his hand in the hole and my bowels
were moved for him"), the Assembly Annotations
exclaims, "to an impure fancy this verse is more
apt to foment lewd and base lusts, than to present
holy and divine notions. ... It is shameful to men-
tion what foul ugly rottenness some have belched
here and how they have neglected that pure and
Christian sense that is clear in the words."53
Now, to be sure, these cautions are to be found
in the medieval commentaries as well, but what is
in dramatic contrast to the Protestant analysis of
the aptness of the nuptial image in terms of the
moral qualities of the marriage contract is the
whole tradition, stretching from Gregory of Nyssa
through Bernard and Guillaume de Saint-Thierry
558
George
L.
Scheper
to John of the Cross, which identifies sexual union
itself as the
foremost aspect
of the
spiritual
mar-
riage metaphor-in
its total self-abandon, its in-
tensity,
its immoderation and
irrationality,
and
above all its union of two
separate beings,
the one-
flesh union that is the
supreme type
of the one-
spirit
union between ourselves and Christ. We
have
just quoted
the
Assembly
Annotations on the
filth belched
up
in connection with an erotic verse
of the
Song;
but note in contrast Bernard's
analy-
sis of the
"belching"
of the intoxicated, impas-
sioned bride herself in the
Song:
"See with
wvhat
impatient abruptness
she
begins
her
speech....
From the abundance of her heart, without shame
or
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 it
tremble,' and she dares to ask that He should kiss
her! Is she not
manifestly
intoxicated? No doubt
of it."54
And if she seems to
you
to utter words, believe them to
be the
belchings
of
satiety,
unadorned and
unpremedi-
tated. ... It is not the
expression
of
thought,
but the
eructation of love. And
why
should
you
seek in such a
spontaneous outburst for the grammatical arrange-
ment and sequence of words, or for the rules and orna-
ments of rhetoric ? Do you yourselves lay down laws
and regulations for your own eructations? (II, 282-83,
sermon 67).
Thus, when love, especially divine love, is so strong
and ardent that it cannot any longer be contained with-
in the soul, it pays no attention to the order, or the
sequence, or the correctness of the words through
which it pours itself out. . . . Hence it is that the
Spouse, burning with an incredible ardour of divine
love, in her anxiety to obtain some kind of outlet for
the intense heat which consumes her, does not con-
sider what she speaks or how she speaks. Under the
constraining influence of charity, she belches forth
rather than utters whatever rises to her lips. And is it
any wonder that she should eructate who is so full and
so inebriated with the wine of holy love? (I, 281-82;
see also sermons 49, 52, 69, 73, 75)
In the highest reaches of divine love, all con-
siderations of prudence, order, and decorum, all
the rules of etiquette and rhetoric are transcended;
again, it is for that reason that divine love is most
aptly symbolized not by friendship or familial love
or domestic affection, but by obliviating drunken-
ness and sexual passion. In short, it is in the nature
of sexual
passion
to transcend all other considera-
tions: "O love, so
precipitate,
so violent, so ardent,
so
impetuous, suffering
the mind to entertain no
thought
but of
thyself,
content with
thyself
alone!
Thou disturbest all order, disregardest
all
usage,
ignorest
all measure. Thou dost
triumph
over in
thyself
and reduce to
captivity
whatever
appears
to
belong
to
fittingness,
to reason, to decorum, to
prudence
or counsel"
(nI, 435-36, sermon 79).
Gregory
of
Nyssa, Gregory
of Elvira, Guillaume
de
Saint-Thierry,
John of the Cross, all
agree
in
fixing
on the
passionate
union of two in one flesh,
rather than on the domestic hierarchical relation
of husband and wife, as the
principal
basis for the
use of human love as a
symbol
of the union of
Christ and His
people.55 Actually,
this
interpreta-
tion of the
image goes
back at least to
Chry-
sostom's
interpretation
of I Corinthians xi.3 and
Ephesians v.22-33, in which he
argues
that the
nuptial symbol
resides not in the domestic hierar-
chy
but in the
joining
of two in one flesh, and re-
flections of that
exegesis
are found in the standard
glosses.56
Nevertheless, in the Reformation the sexual in-
terpretation of the allegory is only hinted at in the
commentaries on the Song, although it does find
some expression in the sermons and tracts on the
spiritual marriage and especially in the poetry in-
spired by the Song. But herein, we believe, lies the
great change in spirituality, for it was not Protes-
tant hermeneutics, the analysis of the senses of
Scripture, that spelled the end of the theology of
the spiritual marriage and the centrality of the
Song of Songs (a demise sealed in the 18th cen-
tury), but rather the supplanting of a mystical,
sacramental spirituality by a more rationalistic and
moralistic Christian spirit that could hardly
praise, as Bernard does, spiritual drunkenness,
immoderation, and impropriety. Typology was
one form of allegory suited to the didactic mode
and it continued to flourish, but essentially al-
legory and symbolism were more conducive to a
mystery-oriented rather than history-oriented
Christianity. In literary terms, it is the difference
between the passionate poetry of Rolle or John of
the Cross and the didactic style of Paradise Re-
gained or Pilgrim's Progress.
Essex Community College
Baltimore County, Maryland
559
Reformation
Attitudes toward
Allegory
and the Song of Songs
Notes
1
See, e.g.,
Frederic W. Farrar, History of Interpretation
(London: Macmillan, 1886),
pp.
342-53.
2 See, e.g.,
Luther's Works, ed. J. Pelikan and W. Hansen,
xxvI (St. Louis: Concordia, 1963), 435 (on Galatians
iv.24). Cf. The Table Talk
of Martinl
Luther,
trans. William
Hazlitt (London: H. G. Bohn, 1859), pp. 326-27.
3 See John Reumann, The Romance
of
Bible
Scripts and
Schlolars (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1965), pp.
55-91. On Luther's
typology
in
general, see James Samuel
Preus, From
Slhadow
to Promise
(Cambridge, Mass.: Har-
vard Univ. Press, 1969), pp. 153-271; Heinrich Bornkamm,
Luther
un1d
das Alte Testament
(Tubingen: Mohr, 1948);
Jaroslav Pelikan, Luther the
Expositor (St. Louis: Con-
cordia, 1959); Paul Althaus, Tlhe Theology of
Martin Lther
(Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1966).
4 Quoted
in Robert Grant, A Short History of thie
Inter-
pretationl of
the Bible, rev. ed. (New York: Macmillan,
1963), p. 129; also see Table Talk, p. 328.
5 Calvin, A
Commenltarie upon Galathianls, trans. R. Vaux
(London, 1581), p. 104.
6 E.g., on Gal. iv.24 he writes, "Paul certainly does not
mean that Moses wrote the history for the purpose of being
turned into an allegory, but points out in what way the
history 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's
Doctrine of Biblical Authority (Stanford: Stanford Univ.
Press, 1962), a study documenting Calvin's continued
interest in typology.
8 See J. W. Blench, Preaching in England in the Late
Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (New York: Barnes and
Noble, 1964), p. 57.
9
William Tyndale, Doctrinal Treatises, ed. Henry
Walter, Parker Society, No. 42 (Cambridge, Eng.: Cam-
bridge Univ. Press, 1848), p. 303.
10 Clavis Scripturae Sacrae (1567; rpt. Jena, 1674); see
discussion in Madsen, pp. 30-31.
11
Esquisse d'une histoire de l'exegese latine au Moyen
Age (Paris: J. Vrin, 1944), pp. 212-18.
12
Hugonis de Sancto Charo, Opera, 8 vols. (Venice:
Nicolaum Pezzana, 1703), i, 136v (on Cant. viii.4).
13 Opera, 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 Cartusiae S. M. de Pratis, 1896-1935), vii,
passim. It should be noted that Honorius d'Autun in the
12th century was the first to apply a systematic fourfold
allegorization
of the Song according to the classic fourfold
scheme (see PL, vol. 172, cols. 347-496).
15
See MS. Lambeth 392, fols. 168-70 (discussed by
Blench, p. 4).
16 Yet even a preacher like Longland preserves a reason-
able, traditional definition of scriptural senses: "A nut has
a rind, a shell and a centre or kernal. The rind is bitter, the
shell is hard, but the centre is sweet and full of nourishment.
So in Scripture the exterior part, that is the literal sense and
the surface meaning, is very bitter and hard, and seems to
contradict itself. But if you crack it open, and more deeply
regard the intention of the spirit, together
with the exposi-
tions of the holy doctors, you will find the kernal and a
certain sweetness of true nourishment." "Take the life
from a body, and the body becomes still and inert; take the
inward and spiritual sense from Scripture,
and it becomes
dead and useless." Quoted in Blench, pp. 21-22, from
"Quinque Sermones
Ioannis Longlandi" (1517), in Ioannis
Lonlglandi.
.. Tres
Conciones (London [1527?]), 61v, 48r.
17 On this matter of Gnostic-Philonic allegory
in com-
parison with rabbinic-patristic allegory,
see esp. J. Bonsir-
ven, "Exegese allegorique
chez les Rabbins Tannaites,"
Recherches de Science
Religieuse,
24 (1934), 35-46; Jacob
Lauterbach, "The Ancient Jewish Allegorists
in Talmud
and Midrash," Jewish
Quarterly Review, NS 1 (1910-11),
291-333, 503-31; R. P. C. Hanson, Allegory
and Event
(London: S.C.M. Press, 1959), pp. 11-129; H. A. A. Ken-
nedy, Phlilo's
Contribution to Religion (London:
Hodder
and
Stoughton, 1919); and
my
"The Spiritual Marriage:
The Exegetic History and Literary Impact
of the Song of
Songs
in the Middle
Ages," Diss. Princeton 1971, Ch. iv,
pp. 321-400.
18
Hugh
of Saint
Victor, Didascalicon, trans. Jerome
Taylor
(New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1961), pp.
121-22. For
Augustine,
see On Christian Doctrine, trans.
D. W. Robertson
(New
York: Liberal Arts Press, 1958),
esp. pp. 7-14, 34-38.
19 Hugh,
De
Scriptoris
et
Scriptoribus
Sacris-quoted by
John
McCall,
"Medieval
Exegesis,"
Supplement 4 in
William
Lynch,
Christ and
Apollo
(New
York: New Amer-
ican
Library, 1960), p.
223; cf.
Spicq, pp. 98-103.
20
Quodlibet,
vll,
Q.
14-16-the
passage
is quoted and
analyzed
in Henri de
Lubac, Exegese
medievale, 2 pts. in 4
vols.
(Paris: Aubier, 1959-64),
Pt. I, Vol. I, 273.
21
S.T., 1,1,10,
in Basic
Writings of
Saint Thomas Aquinas,
ed. Anton
Pegis,
2 vols. (New
York: Random, 1945), I,
16-17.
22 The text of the last sentence in the Summa passage
should be examined
carefully: "Quia
vero sensus litteralis
est
quem
auctor
intendit, auctor autem sacrae Scripturae
Deus
est, quia
omnia simul suo intellectu comprehendit,
non est
inconveniens, ut Augustinus
dicit xII Conf., si
etiam secundum litteralem sensum in una littera Scripturae
plures
sint sensus."
Here,
Lubac correctly observes, the
etiam
proves
that in the last
phrase
"litteralem" is to be
understood in the narrower
sense,
as one among the four
senses; but in the first
part
of the
sentence,
"litteralis" may
have the
meaning
of the
full, encompassing
sense (see
Lubac,
Pt.
I,
Vol.
I,
280-82 and cf.
Synare,
"La Doctrine
de S. Thomas
d'Aquin
sur
le
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, reply obj.
3.
25
S.T.,
i-a, 102, 2-quoted
in
Lubac,
Pt. a, Vol. a, p.
296. As Lubac
notes,
the term
allegory
was a very imprecise
one, esp.
in that it sometimes denoted all the spiritual
senses and sometimes the doctrinal sense alone, an am-
biguity
retained
by
Thomas. But Madsen unaccountably
asserts that a third
meaning-figurative
language in gen-
eral-further confuses Thomas' discussion (From Shadowy
560
George
L.
Scheper
Types
to Truth, p. 22), when in fact one of Thomas' contri-
butions is that he
specifically
excludes
figurative language
in
general from the province
of
allegory.
26 William Whitaker, A
Dispultationl onl Holy Scripture
against the
Papists,
trans. William Fitzgerald, Parker
Society,
No. 45 (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge Univ.
Press, 1849), pp. 404-05. See Charles Cannon, "William
Whitaker's
Disputatio
de Sacra
Scriptllra:
A Sixteenth-
Century Theory
of
Allegory," Hruntington Library Quar-
terly, 25 (1961-62), 129-38. This article is an accurate
representation of Whitaker's views but attributes to them
an
originality
not
really appropriate.
27
Whitaker, p. 407 (italics mine). Cannon
(pp. 132-35)
has noticed the
correspondence
of this
interpretation
to
modern definitions of
metaphor
in scholars like Cassirer
and I. A. Richards.
28 Praelectiones Gulilelmni Whitakeri inl Ccantica Canti-
corum, Bodl. MS. 59, fols. 1-50. This MS seems to have
escaped all attention.
29
Philologia Sacra (Frankfort, 1653).
30
Studies in Seventeenthl-Century Poetic (Madison: Univ.
of Wisconsin Press, 1965), p. 183.
'31 Pitra found 160 Christian commentaries up to the 15th
century (J. B. Pitra, Spicilegiumnl Solesmenlse,
4 vols., Paris:
Didot
Fratres, 1852-58, ill, 167-68) and Rosenmuller lists
116 from 1600 to 1830 (cited by
Paul Vulliaud, Le Cantique
des
Cantiques d'apres Ila tradition ]uive, Paris, 1925, p. 18).
Salfeld counted over 100 Jewish commentaries from the
9th to the 16th centuries (S. Salfeld, "Die judischen
Er-
klarer des
Hohenliedes,
ix-xvi.
Jahr.," Hebraeische Bibli-
ographie, 9, 1869, 110-13, 137-42). The most complete
bibliography, LeLong's,
lists a total of 400 commentaries
(Jacques LeLong,
Bibliotheca
Sacra, Paris, 1723, pp.
1113-
17).
32 The Intercourses
of
Divine Love betwixt Christ and the
Church,
2 vols.
(London, 1676, 1683).
33 This observation is in contrast to the usual view, as
expressed,
for
instance, by
Sister Cavanaugh, that the
Reformers "said little about the Song of Solomon," that
they
indeed "shied
away"
from it. See Sr. Francis Cava-
naugh,
"A Critical Edition of The Canticles or Balades of
Salomon
Phraselyke
Declared in
English Metres by William
Baldwin," Diss. St. Louis Univ. 1964, p. 21.
34 In the words of the Puritan Collinges: "I think I
may
further
say,
that there is no
portion
of Holy Writ so copi-
ously
as
this, expressing
the infinite love, and transcendent
excellencies of the Lord Jesus Christ. None that more
copiously
instructs
us, what he will be to us, or what we
should be toward
him,
and
consequently none more worthy
of the
pains
of
any
who desires to Preach Christ." Inter-
courses,
i
(1683), sig. A3r.
35 Melchior
Hofmann,
"The Ordinance of 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 "The
Catechetical Lectures of S. Cyril," trans. Gifford, Library of
the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd ser.,
vII
(New
York: Christian
Literature, 1894), 1-159 (see esp. Cat. 3,
13, 14, and My
stag. 2). For Ambrose, see Theological and
Dogmatic Works, trans. Roy Defarrari (Washington, D. C.:
Catholic Univ. of America Press, 1963), pp. 3-28, 311-21.
For
analysis
of the
Song and
early
Christian
liturgy, see
Jean Danielou, The Bible and the
Litulrgy (Notre Dame:
Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1956), pp.
191-207 and
my
"Spiritual Marriage," pp. 758-92.
36 Wilderness alnd Paradise in Clhristiani Thouglht (New
York: 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 [first pub. 1635]), esp. pp.
112-25. Also
note the Bernardine use of the
Song
in Samuel Rutherford's
letters: Joshlula Redivivus: Or, Thlree Hundred anid Fifty-
Two Religiouls Letters, Writte;i betweenl 1636 & 1661 (New
York, 1836).
39 The Canlticles or Balades
of Salomonl, Phraselvke
Declared inl Englysh Metres (London, 1549). The corpus of
English paraphrases on the
Song includes work
by Dray-
ton, Sandys, Quarles, and Wither (a version
by Spenser is
lost). Many are
quite
as
bulky
as Baldwin's; for instance,
Thomas
Beverley's An
Expositionr of
the Divinely Prophetick
Song of Songs (London, 1687), a laborious redaction of
Thomas
Brightman's historical
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 tire
du Cantique des Cantiques," in Poesies Chrestiennes
(Paris, 1646), pp. 147-266. These paraphrases and other
poems relating to the Song are the focus of my study of the
exegetic and literary relations of the Song of Songs in the
Renaissance, which is in progress.
40 0. Van Veen, Amoris Divini Emblemata (Antwerp,
1660); Hermann Hugo, Pia Desideria: Or, Divine Ad-
dresses, trans. E. Arwaker (London, 1686); Francis
Quarles,
Emblems, Divine and Moral (London, 1736 [first pub.
1635]).
41 In Calvin's words, "Our principal dispute concerned
the Song of Songs. He considered that it is a lascivious and
obscene poem, in which Solomon has described his shame-
less love affairs" (quoted in H. H. Rowley, The Servant of
the Lord, London: Lutterworth Press, 1954, p. 207). For
an account of the dispute, with quotations from Calvin,
Castellio, and Beza, see Pierre Bayle, The
Dictionary
His-
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. On Theodore of Mopsuesta see Adrien-M. Brunet
"Theodore de Mopsueste et le Cantique des 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).
43
Clapham provides the fullest list of citations, headed
by Augustine, Isidore of Seville, Lombard, and Rabbi Ibn
Ezra, followed by Ambrose, Bernard, Theodoret, Origen,
Gregory, Rupert, and Thomas: Henoch Clapham, Three
Partes of Salomon his Song of Songs (London, 1603).
Mayer's commentary is actually a catena, providing for
English readers a running paraphrase of the commentaries
of Gregory, Justus Urgellensis, the Targum, and Bernard:
561
Reformation
Attitudes toward
Allegory
and the Song of Songs
John
Mayer, A
Commentary upon
the Whole Old Testament
(London, 1653). The definitive 3rd ed. of the Westminster
Assembly Annotations
frequently cites authorities like
Augustine, Ambrose, Rupert,
and
esp.
Bernard: West-
minster
Assembly, Annotations
upon
All the Books of
the
Old and New Testament, 3rd ed. (London, 1657). The com-
mentary
of Dove, one of the earliest
English expositions
of the
Song, cites
only
a
couple of Protestant authorities in
passing,
but makes
frequent
use of
Cyprian,
Jerome,
Chrysostom, Thomas, and above all
depends
on Augustine
for doctrine and Bernard for
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 definition of allegory
in
Robert
Ferguson, The Interest
of
Reason in Religion:
with
thle
Import
& Use
of Scripture-Metaphors (London, 1675),
pp.
308-09.
46 According to Beza, Psalm 45 serves as an "abridge-
ment" of the
Song and, like the
Song,
is to be taken "and
altogether to be vnderstood in a spirituall sense," without
any reference to Solomon's marriage,
for "farre it is from
all reason to take that alliaunce &
marriage
of his to haue
bin a
figure
of so
holy
& sacred a one as that which is pro-
posed
vnto us in this Psal."-Master Bezaes Sermons vpon
the 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: Princeton Univ.
Press, 1962), p. 135.
47
Intercourses,
11 (1683),
29.
48 The
Song of Songs,
trans. R. P. Lawson
(Westminster,
Md.: Newman Press, 1957), pp. 200-02.
49
See, e.g.,
Richard Sibbes:
any
"sinful abuse of this
heavenly
book is far from the intention of the Holy Ghost
in
it,
which is
by stooping
low to
us,
to take advantage to
raise us
higher
unto
him,
that
by taking
advantage of the
sweetest
passage
of our
life, marriage,
and the most delight-
ful
affection, love,
in the sweetest manner of expression,
by
a
song,
he
might carry up
the soul to
things
of a heavenly
nature"-from "Bowels
Opened" (1639),
in The Complete
Works
of
Richard
Sibbes,
ed. A. B. Grosart (Edinburgh,
1862),
ii,
5-6. See also
Assembly
Annotations: "being a
work of
highest
love and
joy,
it can be no blame to it, that
it is now and then
abrupt
and
passionate....
it could be
expressed noway
more
happily,
than in such similitudes as
were
proper
to such
persons,
and such
subjects....
That
crimination and
exceptions against
the kisses and oynt-
ments and other affectionate
speeches
of
it,
are so far from
blemishing
or
polluting it, that
they
beautifie and enoble it;
for if they had been away, how had it remained an Epithal-
aminon ? how had those dear extasies and sympathies been
expressed? how had the language been sutable and con-
generous to the matter? which none can read with danger
of infection, but such as bring the plague along with them"
(sig. 7Gr).
50
Sibbes, Works,
II,
201; cf. Durham, Clauis, p. 40.
6'
See, e.g., Durham, Clauis, pp. 354, 365, 368, 401;
William Guild, Loves Entercovrs
hetween
the Lamb & His
Bride, Christ and His Church (London, 1658), p. 1; John
Trapp, Solomonis
IIANA'PETOO:
or, A Commentarie upon
the Books of Prouerbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs
(London, 1650), pp. 219-20; Bartimeus Andreas [An-
drewes], Certaine Very Worthy, Godly anld Profitable
Sermons upon the Fifth Chapter of the Songs of Solomon
(London, 1595), pp.
220-22.
52 Nathanael Homes, A Commentary Literal or Historical,
and
Mystical or Spiritual on the Whole Book of Canticles
(London, n.d.),
bound
separately paged in The Works of
Dr. 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 Saint
Teresa
of Jesus,
trans. E. A.
Peers,
3 vols. (New York:
Sheed and
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
(sermon 7).
Hereafter cited in text.
65
See
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. Jean
Danielou,
trans. Musurillo
(London:
John
Murray, 1962);
for the
Spanish mystics,
see
E.
Allison
Peers,
Studies of
the
Spanish Mystics,
3 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1927,
1930, 1960).
Note the
analogous interpretations
of sexual
imagery
in Gnostic
texts,
in the
Kaballah,
and in Eastern
Tantric and Vishnaite cults and Sufism-see
my "Spiritual
Marriage," pp.
156-79.
56
See
Chrysostom, Homily xx on
Ephesians,
NPNF,
13
(New York, 1889),
146-47 and
Homily
xxvi on X Cor.,
Library of
the Nicene and Post-Nicene
Fathers,
xii (New
York: Christian
Literature, 1889),
150-51. Cf. the Glossa
ordinaria on i Cor.
xi.3, PL,
Vol.
114,
col. 537; Assembly
Annotations, sig. DDD4V;
Matthew
Poole,
Annotations
upon
the
Holy
Bible
(Edinburgh,
1801
[first pub.
16831),
sig.
SC2r;
Bernard, II,
336-38
(sermon
71).
562