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Reformation Attitudes toward Allegory and the Song of Songs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

George L. Scheper
George L. Scheper*
Affiliation:
Essex Community College, Baltimore County, Maryland
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Abstract

Common generalizations about Reformation attitudes toward allegory are based on polemical denunciations by reformers of medieval “dialectical” exegesis. But Reformation definitions of the senses of Scripture are basically in accord with the definitions of medieval theologians. The reformers' attempts to draw a radical distinction between typology and allegory never succeeded and Reformation commentaries continued to allegorize, as demonstrated in the numerous Protestant commentaries on the Song of Songs. The crucial difference between medieval and Protestant spirituality in the Song commentaries lies not in their attitude toward allegory but in their conception of the nuptial metaphor, wherein human love symbolizes the love between God and man. Some Protestant commentators deny there is any reference to carnal love at all; those that do not, regard the metaphor as too dangerous for explication. Generally, they see that the aptness of the metaphor lies in the moral, domestic virtues of the marriage contract. In contrast, the mystical tradition of the Song, epitomized in Bernard, sees that the metaphor's aptness lies precisely in the passionate nature of the sexual union: it is the union of two in one flesh that is the most perfect symbol of the love of God.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 89 , Issue 3 , May 1974 , pp. 551 - 562
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1974

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References

Note 1 in page 560 See, e.g., Frederic W. Farrar, History of Interpretation (London: Macmillan, 1886), pp. 342–53.

Note 2 in page 560 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 Martin Luther, trans. William Hazlitt (London: H. G. Bohn, 1859), pp. 326–27.

Note 3 in page 560 See John Reumann, The Romance of Bible Scripts and Scholars (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1965), pp. 55–91. On Luther's typology in general, see James Samuel Preus, From Shadow to Promise (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1969), pp. 153–271 ; Heinrich Bornkamm, Luther und das Alte Testament (Tubingen: Mohr, 1948); Jaroslav Pelikan, Luther the Expositor (St. Louis: Concordia, 1959); Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966).

Note 4 in page 560 Quoted in Robert Grant, A Short History of the Interpretation of the Bible, rev. ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1963), p. 129; also see Table Talk, p. 328.

Note 5 in page 560 Calvin, A Commentarie upon Galathians, trans. R. Vaux (London, 1581), p. 104.

Note 6 in page 560 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.

Note 7 in page 560 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.

Note 8 in page 560 See J. W. Blench, Preaching in England in the Late Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1964), p. 57.

Note 9 in page 560 William Tyndale, Doctrinal Treatises, ed. Henry Walter, Parker Society, No. 42 (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1848), p. 303.

Note 10 in page 560 Clavis Scripturae Sacrae (1567; rpt. Jena, 1674); see discussion in Madsen, pp. 30–31.

Note 11 in page 560 Esquisse d'une histoire de l'exégèse latine au Moyen Age (Paris: J. Vrin, 1944), pp. 212–18.

Note 12 in page 560 Hugonis de Sancto Charo, Opera, 8 vols. (Venice: Nicolaum Pezzana, 1703), i, 136v (on Cant, viii.4).

Note 13 in page 560 Opera, I, 121r (on Cant, iii.6), 133r (on Cant.vi.10), and 136v (on Cant, viii.5).

Note 14 in page 560 Dionysius Cartusianus, Opera Omnia, 42 vols. (Mon-strolli: Typis Cartusiae S. M. de Pratis, 1896–1935), vu, 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).

Note 15 in page 560 See MS. Lambeth 392, fols. 168–70 (discussed by Blench, p. 4).

Note 16 in page 560 Yet even a preacher like Longland preserves a reasonable, 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 expositions 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 Longlqndi. . . Très Condones (London [1527?]), 61v, 48r.

Note 17 in page 560 On this matter of Gnostic-Philonic allegory in comparison with rabbinic-patristic allegory, see esp. J. Bonsir-ven, “Exégèse allégorique 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. Kennedy, Philo'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.

Note 18 in page 560 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.

Note 19 in page 560 Hugh, De Scriptoris et Scriptoribus Sacris —quoted by John McCall, “Medieval Exegesis,” Supplement 4 in William Lynch, Christ and Apollo (New York: New American Library, 1960), p. 223; cf. Spicq, pp. 98–103.

Note 20 in page 560 Quodlibet, vu, Q. 14–16—the passage is quoted and analyzed in Henri de Lubac, Exégèse médiévale, 2 pts. in 4 vols. (Paris: Aubier, 1959–64), Pt. II, Vol. ii, 273.

Note 21 in page 560 S.T., I,1,10, in Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, ed. Anton Pegis, 2 vols. (New York: Random, 1945), i, 16–17.

Note 22 in page 560 The text of the last sentence in the Summa passage should be examined carefully: “Quia vero sensus litteralis est quern 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. II, Vol. II, 280–82 and cf. Synare, “La Doctrine de S. Thomas d'Aquin sur le sens littéral des Ecritures,” Revue Biblique, 35, 1926, 40–65).

Note 23 in page 560 S.T., i,l,10, reply obj. 1, in Basic Writings, i, 17.

Note 24 in page 560 S.T., i,l,10, reply obj. 3.

Note 25 in page 560 S.T., I-II, 102, 2—quoted in Lubac, Pt. ii, Vol. ii, 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 ambiguity retained by Thomas. But Madsen unaccountably asserts that a third meaning—figurative language in general—further confuses Thomas' discussion (From Shadowy Types to Truth, p. 22), when in fact one of Thomas' contributions is that he specifically excludes figurative language in general from the province of allegory.

Note 26 in page 561 William Whitaker, A Disputation on 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 Scriptura: A Sixteenth-Century Theory of Allegory,” Huntington Library Quarterly, 25 (1961–62), 129–38. This article is an accurate representation of Whitaker's views but attributes to them an originality not really appropriate.

Note 27 in page 561 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.

Note 28 in page 561 Praelectiones Guilelmi Whitakeri in Cantica Canti-corum, Bodl. MS. 59, fols. 1–50. This MS seems to have escaped all attention.

Note 29 in page 561 Philologia Sacra (Frankfort, 1653).

Note 30 in page 561 Studies in Seventeenth-Century Poetic (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1965), p. 183.

Note 31 in page 561 Pitra found 160 Christian commentaries up to the 15th century (J. B. Pitra, Spicilegium Solesmense, 4 vols., Paris: Didot Fratres, 1852–58, in, 167–68) and Rosenmuller lists 116 from 1600 to 1830 (cited by Paul Vulliaud, Le Cantique des Cantiques d'après la tradition juive, 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 Bibliographie, 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. 111 3—17).

Note 32 in page 561 The Intercourses of Divine Love betwixt Christ and the Church, 2 vols. (London, 1676, 1683).

Note 33 in page 561 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 Cavanaugh, “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.

Note 34 in page 561 In the words of the Puritan Collinges: “I think I may further say, that there is no portion of Holy Writ so copiously 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.” Intercourses, II (1683), sig. A3r.

Note 35 in page 561 Melchior Hofmann, “The Ordinance of God” (1530), in Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers, ed. George Williams, Library of Christian Classics, 25 (Philadelphia: Westminster 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 Mystag. 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 Daniélou, The Bible and the Liturgy (Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1956), pp. 191–207 and my “Spiritual Marriage,” pp. 758–92.

Note 36 in page 561 Wilderness and Paradise in Christian Thought (New York: Harper, 1962), pp. 92–94.

Note 37 in page 561 Robert Cofts, The Lover: Or, Nuptial Love (London, 1638), Sect, xv, E5r-F4v; see also Thomas Vincent, Christ, the Best Husband (London, 1672).

Note 38 in page 561 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: Joshua Redivivus: Or, Three Hundred and Fifty-Two Religious Letters: Written between 1636 & 1661 (New York, 1836).

Note 39 in page 561 The Canticles or Balades of Salomon, Phraselyke Declared in Englysh Metres (London, 1549). The corpus of English paraphrases on the Song includes work by Drayton, Sandys, Quarles, and Wither (a version by Spenser is lost). Many are quite as bulky as Baldwin's; for instance, Thomas Beverley's An Exposition of the Divinely Prophetick Song of Songs (London, 1687), a laborious redaction of Thomas Brightman's historical allegorization, A Commentary on 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 sacrées, dont l'argument est tiré du Cantique des Cantiques,” in Poésies 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.

Note 40 in page 561 O. Van Veen, Amoris Divini Emblemata (Antwerp, 1660); Hermann Hugo, Pin Desideria: Or, Divine Addresses, trans. E. Arwaker (London, 1686) ; Francis Quarles, Emblems, Divine and Moral (London, 1736 [first pub. 1635]).

Note 41 in page 561 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 shameless 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 Historical 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 “Théodore de Mopsueste et le Cantique des Cantiques,” Etudes et Recherches, 9 (1955), 155–70.

Note 42 in page 561 See Luther's Works, Vol. 15, ed. J. Pelikan and H. Oswald (St. Louis: Concordia, 1972).

Note 43 in page 561 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:

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: Westminster Assembly, Annotations upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament, 3rd ed. (London, 1657). The commentary 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).

Note 44 in page 562 Clavis Cantici or an Exposition of the Song of Solomon (London, 1669), p. 6; cf. the definition of allegory in Robert Ferguson, The Interest of Reason in Religion: with the Import & Use of Scripture-Metaphors (London, 1675), pp. 308–09.

Note 45 in page 562 According to Beza, Psalm 45 serves as an “abridgement” 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 proposed vnto us in this Psal.”—Master Bezaes Sermons vpon the Three First Chapters of the Canticle of Canticles, trans. John Harmer (London, 1587), 4r .

Note 46 in page 562 Quoted in D. W. Robertson, A Preface to Chaucer (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1962), p. 135.

Note 47 in page 562 Intercourses, II (1683), 29.

Note 48 in page 562 The Song of Songs, trans. R. P. Lawson (Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1957), pp. 200–02.

Note 49 in page 562 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 delightful 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 congenerous to the matter ? which none can read with danger of infection, but such as bring the plague along with them” (sig. 7Gr ).

Note 50 in page 562 Sibbes, Works, ii, 201; cf. Durham, Clavis, p. 40.

Note 51 in page 562 See, e.g., Durham, Clavis, pp. 354, 365, 368, 401; William Guild, Loves Entercovrs between the Lamb & His Bride, Christ and His Church (London, 1658), p. 1; John Trapp, Solomonis IIANA'PETO: or, A Commentarie upon the Books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs (London, 1650), pp. 219–20; Bartimeus Andreas [An-drewes], Certaine Very Worthy, Godly and Profitable Sermons upon the Fifth Chapter of the Songs of Solomon (London, 1595), pp. 220–22.

Note 52 in page 562 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.

Note 53 in page 562 Assembly Annotations, sig. 712r. Cf. St. Teresa, “Conceptions 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.

Note 54 in page 562 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.

Note 55 in page 562 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 Daniélou, 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.

Note 56 in page 562 See Chrysostom, Homily xx on Ephesians, NPNF, 13 (New York, 1889), 146–47 and Homily xxvi on i 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. 1683)), sig. 5C2r; Bernard, ii, 336–38 (sermon 71).