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The Four Daughters of God: A Mirror of Changing Doctrine
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
In a study of the Latin, French, and English versions of the allegory of The Four Daughters of God, published some years ago, I found it necessary to include also a description of two Dutch versions in order to account for certain modifications of the allegory in fourteenth and fifteenth century French forms. These arose through the introduction of what Heinzel2 calls the Processus Belial, a suit between the devil and the Virgin which is only settled when the four Virtues enter the debate.
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References
1 H. Traver: The Four Daughters of God. A Study of the Versions of this Allegory with Especial Reference to those in Latin, French and English. (Bryn Mawr Coll. Monagraphs VI, 1907).
2 Heinzel : Z. f. d. A., XVII, 45.
3 The introduction of the Virtues, or Daughters of God, follows the Virgin's refusal to accept the procurator's crafty suggestion for a compromise, a division of mankind between them to be decided by weighing in a balance the good and evil of men. Many versions break off the trial before this point.
4 The importance of these elements is thus brought to light and their close connection with the history of the developing doctrines of the Church makes explicable the remarkable vitality of this allegory of the Four Daughters, as illustrated by the fact that versions continue to be produced in modern times : among them a nineteenth century French poem (Frederic de Rougemont: Un Mystère de la Passion. Neufchâtel, 1876), the Vorspiel printed with the text of the Passion Play which I witnessed at Erl in the summer of 1912 (Das Erler Passionsbuch: Herausgegeben von der Spielleitung, Erl in Tirol, 1912, pp. lxxiii-xciii), and a similar prelude to the Nativity Play which Longfellow introduces into his Golden Legend.
5 See Traver, op. cit., pp. 82-112.
6 This national variation must not be overemphasized or presented as if opposed to the unity of the Church in the Holy Roman Empire. Yet certain national traits may be descried. These are revealed in the feudal tone of English and French versions influenced by the Chasteau d'Amour (See Traver, op. cit., pp. 29-40), the legalistic development of the Processus Belial in Italy and France, the rivalry with the secular romances of France which produced such forms as followed the Gesta Romanorum type (See Traver, op. cit., pp. 113-124), a slight classical tinge in Italy, a pronounced eucharistic development in Spain, and a reflection of the Reformation in Germany. I have ready for publication a discussion of the versions developing in Italy and Spain, and intend to follow this by a similar treatment of the German versions.
7 At a future time I hope to illustrate further this conception of the growth of allegory by studying the evolution of certain allegories more or less connected with that of the Four Daughters. Such a study will, I believe, reveal a closer affiliation than is now recognized between allegories apparently unrelated or, if not an organic affiliation, at least a number of points of contact or cross-development. To state my hypothesis otherwise, a comparative study of several allegories might show that these allegories were simply different reflections of common problems, as the mirror was turned to their several aspects at different stages of development.
8 See Traver, op. cit., pp. 113-124.
9 For a discussion of Augustine's treatise see below, p. 88f. It is not impossible that Augustine may have known the Midrash as he was fairly well versed in Hebrew.
10 See Traver, op. cit., pp. 13-14.
11 This fusion was effected by Hugo and Bernard in their tractates on Psalm 84:11, see Traver, op. cit., pp. 11-17. The present paper is concerned only with two of the classes treated in my earlier paper, the evolution of the Processus Belial and the genesis of the type represented in the Gesta Romanorum.
12 R. H. Charles: The Rise and Development of the Belief in a Future Life in Judaism and Christianity. Oxford, 1912, p. 6. For interesting summaries of the origin and development of the apocalypses, their early importance and later decadence, see F. C. Burkitt: Jewish and Christian Apocalypses, London 1914, pp. 1-16, 44-47; F. C. Porter: The Messages of the Apocalyptical Writers, New York, 1911, pp.5, 14-15, 49-52; and Charles, op. cit., pp. 6-23.
13 This last point is illustrated when Isaiah, describing the vision of the Seventh Heaven and the descent of the Blessed, the Son of God, through the seven heavens to earth and His victorious return, explains how it came about that He was not observed and records the great wrath of Belial thereat. See Burkitt, op. cit., pp. 45-47.
14 Ed. by R. H. Charles: The Apocrypha and Pseudepigraphia of the Old Testament, Oxford, 1913, Vol. II, pp. 163-281. The Book of Enoch.
15 This version of The Book of Enoch is described in the Jewish Encyclopedia ; it shows, according to this authority, intimate dependence upon the Slavonic version.
16 See M. R. James: The Lost Apocrypha of the Old Testament. Lond. 1920, pp. 42-51.
17 In the second chapter of Job is presented an amicable discussion between God and Satan; in Zechariah III: 1-2 a dispute is suggested, but not developed. The devil claims only the body of Moses in this apocalypse, but in tradition this soon became a claim for the soul.
18 The passages which best illustrate this are as follows: III: 1-7, 21-22, 25-8, 34; IV: 1-21; V: 31-4, 40; VI: 35-8, 54-9; VII: 1-21, 26-8, 31-5, 45-50 62-70; VIII: 1, 25-6, 35-40, 46-7, 55.
19 In The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Vol. VIII, pp. 371-74.
20 This is a daring implication that God is responsible for man's sin and cannot, therefore, justly punish it, and is similar to the stand sometimes taken by Mercy in mystery plays which utilize the debate between the Daughters of God. An attempt to meet this difficulty is made in an Armenian Life of Adam and Eve. Adam, explaining to Seth the sin of Eve, says that her Guardian Angel had mounted to heaven to make its customary report to God, “and when the angel departed from her the enemy, seeing that neither I nor the angels were near, came and spoke unto her and deceived her ….” (See J. Issaverdens, The Uncanonical Writings of the Old Testament found in the Armenian MSS. of the Library of St. Lazarus, Venice, 1901, p. 14.)
21 J. A. Robinson: Texts and Studies. Biblical and Patristic Literature. II, 2. The Testament of Abraham, ed. by M. R. James, Cambridge, 1892.
22 In this apocalypse only does intercession secure the rescue of a soul; in those of Paul and the Virgin next to be discussed the pleas for mercy secure merely one day's intermission of torture. M. Dods (Forerunners of Dante. Edinburgh, 1903, p. 176) thinks the tradition of Pope Gregory's prayers for the soul of the Emperor Trajan the first instance of such a rescue. Not intercession but hopeless grief appears in The Testament of Abraham where Abraham sees between two gates, seated on a gilded throne, one of terrible mien sometimes exulting when a few entered the narrow gate, oftener weeping over the thousands thronging the broad gate of destruction who were being pitilessly lashed by spirits of fiery aspect. A passage very like this occurs in what is perhaps “the most dramatic, realistic, and fiendish of all visions,” (ed. Luard, Rolls Series, II, 497-511) which appeared in 1206 to Thurchill, an Essex husbandman. Under the tree of Paradise sits Adam: “With one eye he laughs for the blessed, with the other he weeps for the damned.” The scales motive also reappears here. St. Paul and the devil sit one at each end of a large pair of scales in which are weighed the black souls. Ernest Becker (Medieval Visions of Heaven and Hell with special Reference to the Middle English Versions, Baltimore, 1899, pp. 16-17, 96) finds in this Vision of Thurchill a remarkable survival of Egyptian conceptions: the great judgment hall, the guide, the three judges (cf. Horus, Anubis, and Thoth), and the use of the scales. In the Egyptian account the final sentence is pronounced by Osiris, king of the infernal world. May not the selection of Abel as judge in The Testament of Abraham, an idea not elsewhere found in Jewish literature, be also “a reminiscence of the Egyptian myth of Osiris, who after his own victory in the case brought against him by Set became the judge of all men? For Osiris and Abel were both righteous men who were murdered by an evil brother ; and it was a characteristic of Alexandrian Christianity to adopt the features of foreign religion under the guise of traditional names.” One novel feature in the Vision of Thurchill is a theatre where devils amuse themselves by making sinners act their crimes and tortures. For Adam's weeping, see also the Mohammedan tradition related by P. L. Johnstone (Muhammad and his Power, 1901, pp. 84 ff.).
23 A germ for this may be seen in Daniel 7:7-14.
24 Note the famous word “Tekel” on the wall at the feast of Belshazzer, also Job 31: 6, IV Esdras 3:34, Psalm 62:9 etc. “The only other apocalypse belonging to an early period is a Coptic apocalypse of which Oscar von Lemm gives scanty particulars in Brückstucke Sahid. Bibelübersetz., p. viii …. In Mohammedan mythology, as given by Wolff (Muhammedanische Eschatologie, p. 140), the weighing of souls is a process which takes place at the day of judgment. Each man has his sins recorded on forty-nine enormous rolls. In the case of a believer, a leaf no bigger than an ant's head inscribed with the confession of faith will outweigh all these.” (M. R. James, Texts and Studies. ed. J. A. Robinson, Cambridge, 1892; II, 2, pp. 71-72).
25 A. Maury (Recherches sur l'Origin des Représentations Figurées de la Psychostacie ou Pèsement des Ames et sur les Croyances qui s'y rattachaient in Revue Archeologique, 1844. I, 235-49, 291-307) assembles a number of most interesting illustrations in art and literature of the belief in psychostacy and describes the various trickeries to which the devil resorts, but always to be frustrated by the Virgin or some saint, usually St. Michael. The legend of St. Martin rescuing from perdition Odo, Count of Champagne, whose life had been wholly unedifying, approaches the form which is of interest ot us: St. Martin, appealing to Divine Mercy and the redemption of which the benefits belong to all men, confounded the devils by his eloquence and by the skill with which he reversed the natural action of the scales. I do not know the date of this legend, so cannot tell whether it preceded the use of the scales motive in The Vision of Thurchill above mentioned or that of an eloquent pleading for mercy in the legend recounted by Caesarius von Heisterbach which I discussed in my earlier study (pp. 58-60). Maury, like Dr. James, finds in Egypt the origin of the scales motive and traces it from there to Greece. In this connection he gives three illustrations from early Christian art which show confusion between Mercury, the weigher of souls in Virgil, and Michael, the conductor of souls in Jewish and early Christian literature. This introduction of Mercury into early Christian psychostacy he ascribes to gnostic influences upon the early Church. He also quotes St. Augustine's development of the scales idea: “Erit tibi sine dubio compensatio bonorum malorumque et velut in statero posita utraque pars, quae demerserit illa eorum quo momentum vergitur, operarium vendicabit si erga malorum multitudo superavit, operarium suum pertrahit ad gehennam. Si vero majora fuerint opera bonorum summa vi obsistent, et repugnabunt malis atque operatorem suum, ad regionem vivorum in ipso etiam gehennae confinio, convocabant.” He records an interest in this scales motive in de Deguileville, Bartolus, Milton, Klopstock, and Schiller, all of whom I have discussed either in my work already published or in that to come. K. Cust (ed. The Booke of the Pylgrymage of the Sowle translated from the French of Guillaume de Guileville, printed by William Caxton, Anno 1483, with Illustrations taken from the Manuscript Copy in the British Museum, Egerton 615, London 1859) notes in appendix B, the interest taken in the scales motive by Homer (Iliad viii. 68; xxii. 209), Virgil (Aeneid xii. 72), Milton (Paradise Lost iv. 999) and that Æschylus founded a tragedy on the same idea, of which only a few fragments remain but which from Plutarch's account of it and a drawing from it on an Etruscan vase seems to have had close analogy with our subject. Achilles and Memnon are in the scales before Jupiter, and at either side are their mothers, praying for them. Cf. also Mâle, E.: L'Art Religeouse du XIIIe Siècle en France. Paris, 1919.
26 See James, op. cit., pp. 19-26.
27 Origen; Homilia V in Psalmos.
28 Ante-Nicene Fathers. New York, 1906. IX, 153-163.
29 This is particularly characteristic of the Spanish morality plays, or Autos Sacramentales.
30 Ante-Nicene Fathers, IX, 169-174,
31 See W. Luecken, Michael: Eine Darstellung und Vergleichung der jüdischen und der morgenländisch-christlichen Tradition vom Erzengel Michael, Göttingen, 1898, pp. 22-26; W. O. E. Oesterley; The Jewish Doctrine of Mediation. London, 1910, pp. 39-47; Heber, The Personality and Office of the Christian Comforter … Bampton Lectures, Oxford, 1816, pp. 250-251, 287; and C. H. Wright, Zechariah and his Prophecies, Bampton Lectures, Oxford, 1878, On Zechariah III: 1.
32 Irenæus, ed. Graba. Oxon. 1702. p. III, N. I.
33 See Luecken, op. cit., p. 22.
34 Luecken, op. cit., pp. 83, 86, 129-50; Heber, op. cit., 286-287; and Bousset; Antichrist, pp. 151 ff.
35 Cf. Traver, op. cit., p. 71.
36 This sculpture greatly puzzled P. Perdrizet (La Vierge de Misericorde Paris, 1908, p. 19) who noted it as a solitary instance of such regard for an archangel as opposed to an immense series in which the Virgin of the Mantle figures. He felt that it must be due to a mere fantasy of the artist's brain, not based upon any such text as he discovered for the Virgin's series in a legend recorded by Cæsarius von Heisterbach, between 1220-1230 a.d. But we have seen how prominent for centuries before the development of Mariolatry has been the worship of Michael as protector of souls. In the Encomium of Eustathius (ed. E. A. W. Budge, p. 128; tr. p. 102) Michael spreads out his garment of light to invite the soul of that blessed woman. Compare also the vision of Oswald the Saxon who saw St. Columban extending his great mantle over a whole battlefield to protect it. (Perdrizet, p. 24).
37 Perdrizet, op. cit., pp. 115-116, 123, 205.
38 Irenæus, Contra Haeresia, V. 19.
39 F. A. Von Lehner; Die Marienverehrung in den ersten jahrhunderten, Stuttgart, 1881, pp. 181 and 451.
40 T. Livius, The Blessed Virgin in the Fathers of the First Six Centuries London, 1893, pp. 297, 397-398.
41 May not such an expression as this, of Biblical origin, have given rise to the figure of the mantle of protection, for which Perdrizet (op. cit., pp. 18-130) assiduously seeks the origin?
42 E. A. W. Budge, The Miracles of the Virgin in Ethiopia, London, 1900. Intro. An Ethiopic legend which Budge translates (No. 37 f. 83) is one of the most amazing that I have read. An ugly-tempered cannibal repeatedly besought by a leper for a drink of water, in the name first of God, then of Christ, finally of the Virgin, grudgingly yields him a single drop at the last plea because he has heard of the Virgin's favors to those who do anything in her name. Dying soon after, he is about to be haled below by devils but the Virgin claims his soul. At her prayer in the ensuing trial, the single drop of water which the cannibal had granted to the leper in the Virgin's name is put into the scales and found to outweigh the seventy-eight victims whom the cannibal had devoured. His soul is therefore rescued from the devil. My attention was directed to this legend by C. Crawford Burkitt of Cambridge University. It somewhat suggests the legend of Piers Toller.
43 Less happy was the fate of Marieken of Nymwegen, the feminine Theophilus or Faust of the Middle Ages, who, watching a “wagon-spel” called Mascheroen (one of the two Dutch versions already referred to; see also p. 78, below) was so moved by the eloquent pleading of Mercy against the devil's advocate as to pray for pardon for herself. To avert this, her demon attendant is in haste to snatch her into the air and dash her to destruction. See F. A. Snellaert Nederlandsche Gedichten uit de veentiende Eeuw, Brussels, 1869; Intro.
44 Perdrizet (op. cit., p. 214-219) describes a picture by an unknown artist in the communal gallery of Montefalco, Umbria, which seems to him bizarre but to me germane to this legend. Before the Virgin of the Mantle kneels a mother in tears and with dishevelled locks. A demon is trying to carry off her son. The Virgin, armed with a club, will drive away the demon. Above the picture is the inscription: “Sancta Maria del Sucurro, ora pro nobis.” There are pictures on the same subject in other parts of Umbria. For other illustrations of legends dealing with the Virgin's power to rescue souls see Traver, op. cit., pp. 55-61.
45 Even in the simplest form of the Processus Belial the devil takes delight in basing his claim upon the Scriptures, which he has taken pains to bring with him. He gleefully turns to Genesis 2:17. In more developed forms of the Processus the citations from Scripture and law are carried to excess.
46 Cf. R. Lansing: “The Thirteenth Century Legal Attitude toward Women in Spain, P. M. L. A., XXXVI, 499.
47 P. Carus, The History of the Devil and the Idea of Evil, London, 1900, pp. 148-149.
48 Perdrizet, op. cit., pp. 13-14. The Salve Regina may have been written by Adhemar (†1080).
49 H. O. Taylor, The Medieval Mind, New York, 1914, p. 68.
50 A. Harnack, A History of Christian Dogma, London, 1897, VI, 22.
51 There are three fundamental types of doctrine in the ancient Catholic Church: (1) the work of Christ as revelation (the Apostolic Fathers, including Ignatius, the Apologists and the gnostics); (2) Christ's incarnation, death, and resurrection viewed as the destruction of death and the endowment of immortality (Ignatius, Barnabas, and Justin) ; and (3) Christ's death presented either as a sacrifice to God (the Apostolic Fathers) or as a ransom from an opposed spiritual power (Marcion). See R. Franks A History of the Doctrine of the Work of Christ in its Ecclesiastical Development. London, after 1911. p. 27. It is the third view which is here presented. I shall later discuss the other, more typically Greek view of the Atonement and its influence upon the West.
52 Roskoff, Geschichte des Teufels, Leipzig, 1869, I, 224-231. See for other accounts of the modifications of Marcion's views by his opponents Baur, Die Christliche Gnosis, Tübingen, 1835, pp. 272-275, Rödiger, Contrasti Antiche. Cristo e Satana, Firenze, 1887, pp. 5-26, Carus, op. cit., pp. 232-234, and especially Franks, op. cit., pp. 25-27, 41-115.
53 Tertullian (Contra Marcion, II, 2), a fierce opponent of dualism, utterly denies that the world belongs to a God of Justice, the Creator of the World. According to him the first manifestation of God is always a manifestation of Love. The manifestation of Justice follows only through man's sin. But the two are in such close relation that they can never be separated. Love created the world; Justice regulates it. Since the introduction of sin, Love and Justice work in closest union. Justice must attune her work to Love's in order that she may confer her gifts upon the worthy and deny them to the unworthy. It is this conception of the absolute union of Love, or Mercy, and Justice which Bernard develops.
54 J. M. Schmid: Des Wardapet Eznik von Kölb. Wider die Sekten. Wien. 1900. Bk. IV, ch. 1. pp. 177-178. The manuscript from which this translation was made dates from the fifteenth century.
55 Hugonis de Sancto Victore, Opera, Venetiis 1588, Vol. III. De Sacramentis Christianae Fidei. Bk. VIII, ch. 4. The same chapter is in Bk. II, ch. 8 of Miscellanea from Hugo's works (Migne, CLXXVII, col. 591-592) as a commentary on Psalm 9:4.
56 Migne, Patrol. CLXXVII, cols. 596-597; for a reference to this debate in relation to the Processus Belial, see Traver, op. cit., pp. 52 and 56.
57 Schenkl: Sitzungberichte Wien Alad. CXXIII, Abh. V, p. 14, MS. Bodl. 52; and CXXVI, Abh. IX, p. 71, MS. Phillipps 24377. Phillipps MS. is now in the Preussische Staatsbibliothek and its curator confirms Schenkl's date for it, but the Bodleian librarian tells me that the Oxford MS. is of the second half of the thirteenth century at least. MS. Lambeth 397, from which I made my abstract, is of the fourteenth century.
58 Cf. Traver, op. cit., pp. 63-68.
59 Dr. Carleton Brown called my attention to the reference to this sermon in Migne, Vol. CCXI, and for a summary of it I am indebted to Mrs. E. C. Lyders. It is found in two manuscripts of the Bibliothèque Ste. Geneviève, Paris, No's. 61 and 239, pp. 13-21. Compare the versions cited in my earlier study, pp. 29-40, which offer points of contact.
60 Text in Migne, Patrol. CCVII, cols. 750-75, and LaBigne, Biblioteca Maxima Patrum, XXIV, col. 1144. For a summary and discussion of authorship, see L. Bourgain, La Chaire Française au douzieme siècle, Paris 1879, pp. 214 ff. My attention was called to this sermon by E. N. S. Thompson in a review of my dissertation (M. L. N. XXIII, 233); but its significance did not fully appear until I compared the other sermon attributed to Stephen of Tournai. Though this sermon seems intermediate between Hugo and the Processus Belial, it had diverged along a path which led toward the form popular in Spanish plays, instead of directly leading toward the Processus Belial.
61 Traver, op. cit., pp. 58-60. A variant of this is found in the Legenda Aurea, cap. CXIX, “De Assumtione S. Mariae Virginis,” §4 (ed. Graesse, pp. 514, 515).
62 For summaries of the chief variants see Traver op. cit., pp. 50-54, 62-66, J. P. W. Crawford, “The Catalan Mascaron and an Episode in Jacob van Maerlant's Merlijn.” (P. M. L. A. XXVI, 31-50), and Stintzing (infra).
63 Stintzing: Geschichte des Popularen Literatur des Kanonischen-römischen Rechts in Deutschland am Ende des XV und Anfang des XVI Jahrhunderts. Leipzig, 1867, pp. 260 ff.
64 The title of the version by Jacapo da Teramo, Consolatio Peccaiorum … is frankly theological and the whole is a scholastic demonstration that Christ has actually conquered the devil's power; but all legal forms are carefully observed.
65 Jacob van Maerlant's Merlijn: Steinforter MS. ed. Van Vloten. Leiden, 1880. See Traver, op. cit., pp. 50-62.
66 F. A. Snellært: Nederlandsche Gedichten uit de veertiende eeuw, van Jan Boendale, Hein van Aken, en Anderen, Brussels, 1869, pp. xiii-xxviii, 493-549. See Traver, op. cit., pp. 62-63.
67 My conclusions, based upon a comparison of the texts available at the British Museum, are confirmed by an excellent paper by G. D. Huet, “Jets over Maskaroen” (Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsche Taal-en-lellerkunde XXVIII, 262-273), which I stumbled upon after I had completed my own comparison. Both Huet and Crawford (see above, note 62) were led to this study by my dissertation on the Four Daughters, in which I mistakenly referred to the Catalan Mascaron as a Spanish version. My error thus gave opportunity for two independent discussions of the problem. Crawford studies only three versions,—the Merliin, the Mascaron, and a Latin version which he calls Ascaron—and has no difficulty in demonstrating their striking resemblances, although his comparison is limited to that part of the action which is found in the Catalan version. Crawford concludes that the Catalan version is the oldest, and, through a lost French intermediary, was the source of the Netherlandish and Latin versions. This opinion, however, I cannot accept; for, as Huet remarks, it is not in accordance with the trend of literary development that a Netherlandish or Catalan version should be the source of Latin and French redactions. On the other hand, a Latin version originating in France may easily have passed at once to the borderlands, both north and South, and thus account for the early Netherlandish and Catalan texts.
68 The largest number of texts in any one place which I was able to assemble for comparison were in the British Museum. There I found one Placitum (I.A. 49268) beg. “Incipit placitum habitum intergenus humanum tanquam reum et totum genus diabolicum tanquam actores …”; seven variously entitled Litigado or Processus Sathane (C9.a23; I.A.. 42441; 11868; 3907.aa.17; 505.a.1; 877.C.20; 1020.a.2); four which I, following Crawford, call Ascaron from the beg. “Accessit Mascaron” or “Accessit Ascaron” but which are actually entitled Processus Judicarius (I.B.5545) or Libellus or Tractatus Procuratoris (I.A. 18704; I.A. 18033; I.A. 18437); and two Questiones (I.A. 11837 and I.B 29882) beg. “Incipit Bartoli legum doctoris processus contemplationis questionis ventilate coram domino nostro hiesu christo …”; besides the 1611 edition of the Processus Iuris Ioco-serius (244.1.10) which contains both the Questiones and the Belial. For copies elsewhere consult Hain, Grasse, Brunet, etc. To this list of Latin incunabula should be added two manuscripts in the Bib. Nat. Paris, and the Franco-Norman poem L'Advocacie de Notre Dame, (edited from a manuscript of Evreux which contains other documents dating from the first twenty years of the fourteenth century. A. Chassant edited only part in 1855, Paris, but M. Raynaud printed the whole in 1896, Paris), which has been attributed to Jean de Justice †1353, learned alike in theology, law, and the “gai science”, but without conclusive evidence. Of the two manuscripts in the Bib. Nat., Huet, in the article above mentioned, has described MS. lat. 10770 fol. 189 and Haureau (Notices et Extraits des MSS. lat. de la Bib. Nat., VI (1893) has printed MS. lat. 18216. These manuscripts seem to be nearest the Litigacio, while the Advocacie agrees with the Placitum in places where that differs from the Litigacio.
69 Biblioteca Español. LIX: 90.
70 Huet, op. cit., p. 269. There is from this point more or less variation in the several Latin texts.
71 President H. N. MacCracken suggests that the poet of Psalm 84 was inspired by a specific phenomenon, a spring thunder shower occurring at a temple festival. Back of the incident lies surely, he is convinced, mythical attributes of nature in the union of Earth, Sun, Rain and Vegetation, which were the common property of religious poets of Israel. Constantly one hears of the Sun of Righteousness, Showers of Mercy, Life (or vegetation) as Truth. Christ who said: “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life,” also called Himself the Vine and was quickened into Earthly Life by showers of mercy. Thus Psalm 84:11-12: “Mercy (showers) and Truth (plant-life) have met together; Righteousness (the Sun) and Peace (Earth) have kissed. Truth (plant-life) shall spring out of the earth; and Righteousness (the Sun) shall look down from heaven.” For the allegorizing of the Narcissus myth, see J. A. Stewart, The Myths of Plato, Lond. 1905, pp. 239, 360.
72 A. A. Bevan, The Hymn of the Soul (in Texts and Studies, V. 3). See also F. C. Burkitt, Early Eastern Christianity. London, 1904, pp. 193-223.
73 G. R. S. Mead, Pistis Sophia. A Gnostic Miscellany. London, 1921. On the importance of this document in the history, not only of Christianized gnosticism, but also of religion in the West, see p. SO and Harnack: Über das gnostische Buck Pistis Sophia (in Texte und Untersuchungen, 1891, vii:2).
74 St. Augustine: Ennarationes in Psalmos (Migne Patrol. XXXVII, col. 1069-1081, esp. 1078-1079; tr. Nicene and Post Nic. Fathers, 1st Ser., VIII, 405 ff.).
75 See Traver, op. cit., 29-40.
76 Augustine, in Nic. and Post-Nicene Fathers, VIII, 406, col. 2
77 Harnack, op. cit., II, 295; in II Cor.XI:2-3 there is a Christian suggestion for the conception of the erring bride.
78 Bigg, The Christian Platonists of Alexandria, Oxford 1913, p. 188. See also K. Raab, Vier Allegorische Motive, Leoben, pp. 19-23; Cuthbert Butler, Western Mysticism, Lond. 1922, pp. 138-42, 150, 160-7.
79 Harnack, op. cit., VI, 11.