Modern Language Association

Reformation Attitudes toward Allegory and the Song of Songs Author(s): George L. Scheper Source: PMLA, Vol. 89, No. 3 (May, 1974), pp. 551-562 Published by: Modern Language Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/461591 Accessed: 26/02/2010 17:26
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GEORGE L. SCHEPER

Reformation Attitudes toward Allegory and the Song of Songs

representative hermeneutic treatises

of the Middle Ages and the Reformation are examined closely, it becomes rather difficult to make generalizations about the differences in attitude toward the senses of Scripture (particularly allegory) between the medieval theologians and the Reformers. This is confirmed by a comparative analysis of the medieval and Reformation 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 differences between medieval and Protestant spirituality as manifested in those commentaries. But the difference has little to do with exegetic principles; rather, it stems from fundamentally different interpretations 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 medieval 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 wellknown rule that Scripture is to be understood in four ways, literal, allegoric, moral, anagogic. But if we wish to handle Scripturearight, our one effort
will be to obtain unum, simplicem, germanum, et certum sensum literalem." "Each passage has one

WHEN

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 remarkson allegory are characteristically caustic: "An interpretermust 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 Moreover, 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 hermeneutics.3 The latter doctrine, that the Bible everywhereteaches 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 himselfnotably in his comments on Genesis, Job, Psalms, and above all the Song of Songs, for which he devised his own unique historical allegorization. Calvin carried forwardthe doctrine of one plain literal sense with even greater thoroughness than Luther and rejectedallegorical interpretationeven when invoked for purely ornamentaland homiletic purposes. Yet on typology he was ambivalent. Theoretically,he professed to eschew typology and Christocentric interpretations even of the prophetic writings.5But confronted with the typologi-

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AttitudestowardAllegoryand the Song of Songs Reformation

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 discrepancy 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 undivided 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 impossible to maintain. For instance, Flacius Illyricus at first tried to fix the differenceby definingtypes 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 significanceof things). So Flacius shifts to a second distinction: that types are restricted to Christ and the Church, while allegories are accommodations to ourselves-but that is hardly an essential difference (being no more than the distinction 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 instance 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 extravagances 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 rigorously systematized the C. Spicq calls them"1) different dimensions of allegorization in monumental compilations full of elaborate and ingenious explanations, scholastic distinctions, and rhetoricalpatterns. The margins of the fourteenthcentury commentaries of Hugh of St. Cher, for

cal interpretations made by Paul himself, he is forced to regard them as illustrative references or "accommodations"6or else to admit thatmany Old Testament types actually refer directly or immediately 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 reading 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 accept 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 Testament 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 Obedienceof a ChristianMan 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 doctrines from scripturalrefutation: "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 scripture 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, similitudes, 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 interpreting 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

George L. Scheper
example, are filled with references to things "triplex," reinforcing a pervasive trinitarian symbolism 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,l2and three times she is called to ascend because there are three stages in the spiritual life.13In the fifteenth century, Dionysius the Carthusian became the first to present, in his commentary on the Song, an unvaryingly systematic threefold allegorization for every verse on the following pattern: of Christ and the Sponsa Universali (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 devotional exercises out of any verse whatsoever.14 This method became the hallmark of much Catholic exegesis in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 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 Centuries that the exegetic practice of the Catholic preachers in these centuries, such as Fisher and Longland, is marked by a thoroughgoing allegorization 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 exand periencedby the Apostle duringthe Passion"5), that in general these preachers demonstrate an indifference to and even a contempt for the literal, historical sense that fully justifies Tyndale's characterization.16

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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 abstract, 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, biblical, 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

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 central tradition of patristic and medieval exegesis.17 In actuality, it seems to us that the overwhelmingly 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 significanceof things("the voice of God speaking to men") yields the spiritualsenses.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 historical, 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 allegorical, such as Canticles, have a literal, albeit figurative, 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 regardhistory itself as unimportant or contemptible unless allegorized. Perhaps the term "allegorical interpretation"is a misnomer for the

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AttitudestowardAllegoryand the Song of Songs Reformation

Nevertheless, nothing of Holy Scripture perishes because of this, since nothing necessaryto faith is containedunderthe spiritualsense which is not elsewhere put forward clearly by the Scripturein its literal sense.23 And, like Hugh, Thomas notes that figurative language is part of the literal sense: The parabolicalsense is containedin the literal, for and figuratively. properly by wordsthingsare signified Nor is the figureitself, but that which is figured,the literalsense.WhenScripture speaksof God's arm,the literalsense is not that God has such a member,but only what is signifiedby this member,namely,operative power. Hence it is plain that nothing false can the literalsense of Holy Scripture.24 ever underlie (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 We can see in this passage the real intelligunt.")25 basis of the frequent assertion by the commentators, 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 differentlight upon the assertions of Luther, Calvin, and Tyndale that they were reverting 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 understood, which we call the literal; and we contend that allegories, tropologies, and anagoges are not various senses, but various collections from one

tradition representedby 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 and his comThomas in passages in Quodlibet20 mentary on Galatians iii.28 (quoted in Lubac,
Pt.II11,Vol. II, p. 295) and especially in the following

classic statement in the SummaTheologica: wordssignify that firstsignification Therefore whereby things belongs to the first sense, the historicalor literal. That significationwhereby things signified by is calledthe also a signification wordshavethemselves spiritualsense, whichis based on the literal,and presupposes it. Now this spiritualsense has a threefold
division.
. .

. Therefore, so far as the things of the

Old Law signifythe 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 signifywhatrelatesto eternal glory, there is the anagogicalsense. Since the literal sense is that which the author intends,and since the author of Holy Scriptureis God, Who by one act all thingsin His intellect,it is not unfitcomprehends ting, as Augustinesays, if, even accordingto the literal sense, one word in Holy Scriptureshould have severalsenses.21 It is important to notice how in the last sentence Thomas defines that which the author-Godintends 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 conception of "literal sense" that actually embraces all four senses as being the full sense intended by God, and thus the three specific spiritual dimensions (allegory, tropology, and anagogy) "unfold" In any case, Thomas from this one whole sense.22 senses are founded that the spiritual makes clear upon the "literal" sense in the usual, narrower sense of the term, as he reiteratesin 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 designated things: Thus in Holy Scriptureno confusion results,for all the senses are founded on one-the literal-from which alone can any argumentbe drawn, and not as Augustinesays. from those intendedallegorically,

George L. Scheper
sense, or various applications and accommodations of that one meaning." "The literal sense, then, is not that which the words immediately suggest, as the Jesuit [i.e., Bellarmine] defines it; but rather that which arises from the words themselves, whether they be taken strictly or figuratively."26 Thus, the allegories woven by the New Testament writers, for instance, "are not various meanings, but only various applications and accommodations 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 express 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 signified is broughtout, then the whole completesense, whichisfounded upon this similitudeand agreement, is set forth."27 Thus, as in Thomas, the term "literal sense" really has two meanings for Whitaker: the narrower being the grammaticalhistorical 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-historicalmeaning. And yet there is an unedited manuscript commentary 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 We shall see that many Protestants(almost type).28 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 referenceto 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 admitting any implication of multiple senses that led a number of later Protestant theorists of exegesis to admit a more extreme brand of allegorization than

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the medieval Catholics, a brand closer to the Alexandrian tradition. Thus, Solomon Glass retains the rejection of multiple senses for the doctrine of one full sense, but the latter now clearly includes spiritual meanings (the significance of things), which may be allegorical, typological, or parabolic.29All essential distinction between type and allegory is abandoned. In Madsen's words: "By the middle of the seventeenth century the distinction 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 Protestantswent furtherthan 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, nonconformists like Samuel How and John Saltmarsh and John Everardviewed the whole written Scripture, including the New Testament, as only a figurative rendering of ineffable spiritual truths; Everard says, for example, "ExternallJesus 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 allegorical interpretation. An initial objection here might be that the commentaries on the Song are an anomaly, that they represent an insignificant remnant of the older tradition, the last bastion of allegory to give way. In hindsight this might be true, but it is a teleological interpretationof intellectual

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whole process interpretedaccordingto the imagery of the Song of Songs-much as Cyril of Jerusalem and St. Ambrose used texts from the Song to describe each step of the baptismal rite as they knew And George Williams has shown that nonconit.35 formists like Bunyan and separatist sects like the Quakers, Huguenots, Swedenborgians, and Pietists, who maintained a "theology of the wilderness" (the idea of a holy community living in spiritual isolation from decadent society), frequently 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 allegorized Song as a presentation of the divine archetypewhich human marriageshould imitate.37 Indeed, there are a number of sermons specifically devoted to the theme of the spiritual marriageand 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 directly inspired by the Song, the centrality of that book to Reformation spirituality cannot be doubted. In England alone, beginning with William Baldwin's monumental Balades of Salomon (1549-the earliest printed book of original English lyric poetry), 110 pages of traditional doctrinal paraphrase, there are at least twenty-five extant English poetic paraphrases through the seventeenth century, most being elaborate allegorizations in the traditional mold.39Besides 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.40To 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 rejectedthis 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

history and does not reflect how the age saw itself. To a sixteenth- or seventeenth-centurycommentator, the idea that the allegorization of the Song was an anomaly would have been incomprehensible. 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 allegory but for the central matter of the relation of divine to profane love, and in fact, as Ruth Wallerstein 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 This helps explain function of the imagination."30 the prodigious exegetic history of the book; the number of commentaries is astounding. The early catalogs and bibliographies tend to list more commentaries on the Song than on any other biblical book save the Psalms, all of Paul's epistles taken together, and the Gospels.31My 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 centuries, including monumental compilations like the Puritan John Collinges' two volumes on just the first two chapters of the Song (a total of almost It has seemed to previous historians 1,500 pages).32 of exegesis absolutely distinctive of the High Middle Ages that it was preoccupied with the Song of Songs and that it was then regardedin some ways as the pinnacle of Scripture-and indeed there are sixty or seventy extant commentaries from the twelfth and thirteenthcenturies alone. But the data for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries would indicate a similar "preoccupation"among the Reformers.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 differencesbetween the spirituality of the monastic and Puritan commentaries on the Song, but the materials do not reveal fundamental distinctions in attitudes toward allegory. Moreover, in addition to the formal commentaries, 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 interpertsadult Christian initiation as a betrothal between Christ and the faithful soul, the

L. Scheper
to Calvin that he had Castellio expelled from Geneva because of it. In this case, Calvin's position was no differentfrom that of the fathers of the Second Council of Constantinople of 553, who condemned Theodore of Mopsuesta for the same Indeed, some Protestant allegorists went opinion.41 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 dealings with Israel, the English commentator Brightman 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 interpretationthat the Song was Solomon's praise of and thanksgiving for a happy and peaceful realm.42 But most Protestantsrejected 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 commentary after commentary we discover the dominant 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 Protestant commentaries almost uniformly adopt a primarily 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 commentaries devoted most strikingly to the Christsoul allegory, such as Bernard's,recognize that the ultimate priority remains with the ecclesial interpretation. Similarly, the Protestant commentaries 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 Protestantcommentaries are distinctly Protestant in opposing what they called papist and monkish interpretations, that is, allegorizations that reflect the ecclesiastical structures

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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 imputed righteousness of Christ). That the Song of Songs is a spiritual book is a premise shared by medieval and Protestant commentators alike, but for the Protestants, more concerned with the idea of a single sense, there is more of a problem in definingthe relation of the allegory to the text. In a chorus, the commentators all declare 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 Figurative speeches, is the Literal meaning of the Song: So that its Literal sense is mediate, representingthe 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.45With such an extreme view, one could hardly dwell on the aptness of the Song's praises of the lovers' bodies to the figurativesituation (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 moderately, 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 In contrast, the ProtestantDurham says loosely."46 that "our Carnalness makes it hazardous and unsafe, to descend in the Explication of these Similitudes" (Clavis, p. 401), and the Puritan Collinges says that " the very uncouthness of the same expressions, is an argument, that it is no meer Woman here intended"47(although how inap-

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tionalistic assertion that nothing is said figuratively in Scripture that is not elsewhere in the Bible stated discursively-an ambiguitygoing 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 between God and His people, and that therefore the human language of the Song is dramatically apBut precisely wherein consists that pepropriate.49 culiar aptness of the nuptial metaphor? On this there is surprisinglylittle elaboration in the Protestant commentaries, but what there is mostly develops the aptness of the nuptial metaphor in terms of the moral, domestic virtues of Christian marriage: faithfulness, tenderness, affection, mutual 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 marriagecontract.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 nature of love and to the one-flesh union of marriage as a symbol of union with God.51But generally, when the sexual aspect of the union tends to surface, 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 presented 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-

propriate praise of a woman could serve as an apt metaphor for love of God seems rather obscure). Commentators like Origen, Bernard, and Guillaume de Saint-Thierry, who thoroughly allegorized 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 controversy 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 Pharaoh's daughter) all acknowledged that it is artificial 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 similitude" of human love and that the interpretationof the letter is in fact nothing other than the explication 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 Protestant commentaries on the Song, that is, in their conception of the central metaphor underlyingthe allegorized Song, the spiritual marriage, or divine love conveyed under the similitude of carnal human 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-

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

GeorgeL. Scheper
to John of the Cross, which identifies sexual union itself as the foremost aspect of the spiritual marriage metaphor-in its total self-abandon, its intensity, its immoderation and irrationality, and above all its union of two separatebeings, the oneflesh union that is the supreme type of the onespirit union between ourselves and Christ. We have just quoted the Assembly Annotationson the filth belched up in connection with an erotic verse of the Song; but note in contrast Bernard'sanalysis of the "belching" of the intoxicated, impassioned 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

559

tremble,' and she dares to ask that He should kiss her! Is she not manifestly intoxicated? No doubt of it."54 And if she seemsto you to utterwords,believethemto and unpremedibe the belchingsof satiety,unadorned
tated. ... It is not the expression of thought, but the

of sexual passion to transcend all other considerations: "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.55Actually, this interpretation of the image goes back at least to Chrysostom'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 hierarchy but in the joining of two in one flesh, and reflections of that exegesis are found in the standard
glosses.56

eructationof love. And why shouldyou seek in sucha spontaneousoutburst for the grammaticalarrangementand sequenceof words,or for the rulesand ornaments of rhetoric ? Do you yourselveslay down laws and regulations for your own eructations? (II, 282-83, sermon67). Thus, when love, especiallydivinelove, is so strong and ardentthatit cannotany longerbe containedwithin the soul, it pays no attentionto the order, or the sequence, or the correctnessof the words through
which it pours itself out.
. .

. Hence it is that the

Spouse, burningwith an incredibleardour of divine love, in her anxietyto obtain some kind of outlet for the intense heat which consumesher, does not consider what she speaks or how she speaks. Under the constraininginfluence of charity, she belches forth ratherthan utterswhateverrises to her lips. And is it any wonderthat she shouldeructatewho is so full and so inebriatedwith the wine of holy love? (I, 281-82; see also sermons49, 52, 69, 73, 75) In the highest reaches of divine love, all considerations 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 drunkenness and sexual passion. In short, it is in the nature

Nevertheless, in the Reformation the sexual interpretation 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 inspired by the Song. But herein, we believe, lies the great change in spirituality, for it was not Protestant 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 century), but rather the supplanting of a mystical, sacramentalspiritualityby a more rationalisticand 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 allegory 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 Regained or Pilgrim's Progress. Essex CommunityCollege Baltimore County, Maryland

560 Notes

Reformation Attitudes toward Allegory and the Song of Songs

regardthe intention of the spirit, togetherwith 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 becomesstill and inert; take the inwardand spiritualsense from Scripture,and it becomes dead and useless." Quoted in Blench, pp. 21-22, from Ioannis "QuinqueSermones Ioannis Longlandi"(1517), in
17 On this matter of Gnostic-Philonicallegory in comparisonwith rabbinic-patristic allegory,see esp. J. Bonsirven, "Exegese allegorique chez les Rabbins Tannaites,"

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. Pelikanand W. Hansen, xxvI (St. Louis: Concordia, 1963), 435 (on Galatians
iv.24). Cf. The Table Talk of MartinlLuther, 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'stypology in general,see James Samuel
Preus, From Slhadow to Promise (Cambridge, Mass.: Har-

Lonlglandi. .. Tres Conciones (London [1527?]), 61v, 48r.

vard Univ. Press, 1969),pp. 153-271; HeinrichBornkamm,

Luther un1ddas Alte Testament (Tubingen: Mohr, 1948); cordia, 1959); Paul Althaus, Tlhe Theology of Martin Lther

Jaroslav Pelikan, Luther the Expositor (St. Louis: Con(Philadelphia:FortressPress, 1966). 4 Quoted in Robert Grant, A Short History of thie Inter-

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),

pretationl of the Bible, rev. ed. (New York: Macmillan,

291-333, 503-31; R. P. C. Hanson, Allegory and Event (London: S.C.M. Press, 1959), pp. 11-129; H. A. A. Kennedy, Phlilo's Contribution to Religion (London: Hodder

1963),p. 129; also see TableTalk, p. 328.

5

Calvin, A Commenltarieupon Galathianls,trans. R. Vaux

(London, 1581),p. 104. 6 E.g., on Gal. iv.24 he writes, "Paul certainlydoes not meanthat Moses wrote the historyfor the purposeof 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

and Stoughton, 1919); and my "The Spiritual Marriage: The ExegeticHistory and LiteraryImpact 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.

(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.

D. W. Robertson (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1958), esp. pp. 7-14, 34-38. John McCall, "Medieval Exegesis," Supplement 4 in WilliamLynch, Christand Apollo(New York: New American Library,1960),p. 223; cf. Spicq, pp. 98-103. 20 Quodlibet, vll, Q. 14-16-the passage is quoted and 2 pts. in 4 analyzedin Henride Lubac,Exegese medievale,
vols. (Paris: Aubier, 1959-64), Pt. 273. Vol. I, I, 21 S.T., 1,1,10, in Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, 19Hugh, De Scriptoris et Scriptoribus Sacris-quoted by

Press, 1962), a study documenting Calvin's continued interestin 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.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1848), p. 303.
10Clavis Scripturae Sacrae (1567; rpt. Jena, 1674); see

discussionin 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. (Monstrolli: Typis CartusiaeS. 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 systematicfourfold allegorizationof the Song accordingto the classic fourfold scheme(see PL, vol. 172, cols. 347-496). 15See MS. Lambeth 392, fols. 168-70 (discussed by Blench, p. 4). 16 Yet even a preacher like Longlandpreservesa reasonable, traditionaldefinitionof scripturalsenses: "A nut has a rind, a shell and a centreor kernal.The rind is bitter,the shell is hard,but the centreis sweetand full of nourishment. the exteriorpart, that is the literalsenseand So in Scripture the surface meaning,is very bitterand hard, and seems to contradictitself. But if you crackit open, and more deeply

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 examinedcarefully:"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 secundumlitteralemsensumin una litteraScripturae plures sint sensus." Here, Lubac correctly observes, the etiam proves that in the last phrase "litteralem"is to be understoodin the narrowersense, as one among the four may senses; but in the first part of the sentence,"litteralis" 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 Lubacnotes, the termallegorywas a veryimprecise 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 confusesThomas'discussion(FromShadowy

George L. Scheper
Typesto Truth,p. 22), when in fact one of Thomas'contributions is that he specificallyexcludes figurativelanguage in generalfrom the provinceof allegory.
26 William

561

For analysis of the Song and early Christianliturgy, see

Jean Danielou, The Bible and the Litulrgy (Notre Dame:

Whitaker, A Dispultationl onl Holy Scripture

Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1956), pp. 191-207 and my "SpiritualMarriage,"pp. 758-92.
36

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 SixteenthCentury Theory of Allegory," HruntingtonLibrary Quar-

Wilderness alnd Paradise in ClhristianiThouglht (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.

terly, 25 (1961-62), 129-38. This article is an accurate of Whitaker'sviews but attributesto them representation an originalitynot really appropriate. 27 Whitaker,p. 407 (italics mine). Cannon (pp. 132-35) has noticed the correspondenceof this interpretationto modern definitions of metaphor in scholars like Cassirer and I. A. Richards.
28

(London, 1724 [first pub. 1635]), esp. pp. 112-25. Also note the Bernardine use of the Song in SamuelRutherford's
letters: JoshlulaRedivivus: Or, Thlree Hundred anid FiftyTwo Religiouls Letters, Writte;i betweenl 1636 & 1661 (New

York, 1836).
39 The Canlticles or Balades of Salomonl, Phraselvke Declared inlEnglysh Metres (London, 1549). The corpus of

Praelectiones GulilelmniWhitakeri inl Ccantica Canti-

corum,Bodl. MS. 59, fols. 1-50. This MS seems to have escapedall attention.
29

30

Philologia Sacra (Frankfort, 1653). Studies in Seventeenthl-CenturyPoetic (Madison: Univ.

on the Song includes work by DrayEnglish paraphrases ton, Sandys, Quarles,and Wither(a version by Spenseris lost). Many are quite as bulky as Baldwin's;for instance,
Thomas Beverley's An Expositionrof the Divinely Prophetick Song of Songs (London, 1687), a laborious redaction of

of WisconsinPress, 1965),p. 183. '31 Pitrafound 160 Christiancommentariesup to the 15th 4 vols., Paris: century(J. B. Pitra,Spicilegiumnl Solesmenlse, Didot Fratres, 1852-58, ill, 167-68) and Rosenmullerlists 116 from 1600to 1830(cited by Paul Vulliaud,Le Cantique des Cantiques d'apres Ila tradition ]uive, Paris, 1925, p. 18). Salfeld counted over 100 Jewish commentariesfrom the 9th to the 16th centuries(S. Salfeld, "Die judischen Erklarer 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 Sacra,Paris, 1723, pp. 1113(JacquesLeLong, Bibliotheca 17).
32

Thomas Brightman's historical allegorization, A Commentary 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 paraphrasesand other poems relatingto the Song are the focus of my study of the exegetic and literaryrelationsof 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-

The Intercourses of Divine Love betwixt Christ and the

Church,2 vols. (London, 1676, 1683). 33This 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

dresses,trans.E. Arwaker (London, 1686);FrancisQuarles,

Emblems, Divine and Moral (London, 1736 [first pub.

Baldwin,"Diss. St. Louis Univ. 1964, p. 21. 34In the words of the PuritanCollinges: "I think I may furthersay, that there is no portion of Holy Writ so copiously as this, expressingthe infinitelove, 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 towardhim, and consequentlynone moreworthy of the pains of any who desires to Preach Christ." Intercourses, i (1683), sig. A3r. 35Melchior Hofmann, "The Ordinanceof God" (1530),
in Spiritual and Aiiabaptist Writers, ed. George Williams,

1635]). 41 In Calvin's words, "Our principaldispute concerned the Song of Songs. He consideredthat it is a lasciviousand obscenepoem, in which Solomon has describedhis shameless love affairs"(quoted in H. H. Rowley, The Servantof the Lord, London: LutterworthPress, 1954, p. 207). For an account of the dispute, with quotations from Calvin, Castellio, and Beza, see PierreBayle, The DictionaryHistorical 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 Theodoreof Mopsuestasee 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.

Library of Christian Classics, 25 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1957), pp. 182-203. For Cyril, see "The CatecheticalLecturesof 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

Oswald(St. Louis: Concordia,1972). 43Clapham provides the fullest list of citations, headed by Augustine,Isidoreof 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).

trans.Roy Defarrari D. C.: (Washington, DogmaticWorks, Catholic Univ. of America Press, 1963), pp. 3-28, 311-21.

Mayer's commentaryis actually a catena, providing for of the commentaries Englishreadersa runningparaphrase of Gregory,Justus Urgellensis,the Targum,and Bernard:

562

Reformation Attitudes toward Allegory and the Song of Songs

blemishingor pollutingit, that they beautifieand enobleit; for if they had been away, how had it remainedan Epithalbeen aminon? how had those dearextasiesand sympathies expressed?how had the language been sutable and congenerousto the matter?which none can read with danger of infection,but such as bringthe plaguealong with them" (sig. 7Gr).
50
6'

John Mayer, A Commentary upon the Whole Old Testament

(London, 1653). The definitive3rd 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 com-

mentary of Dove, one of the earliest English expositions in of the Song, cites only a coupleof Protestantauthorities passing, but makes frequent use of Cyprian, Jerome, Chrysostom,Thomas,and above all dependson Augustine for doctrine and Bernardfor interpretation:John Dove,
The Conversion of Salomon (London, 1613). 44 Clavis Cantici or an Exposition of the Song of Solo-

Sibbes, Works, II,

201; cf. Durham, Clauis, p. 40.

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

mon (London, 1669), p. 6; cf. the definitionof allegoryin pp. 308-09. 46 According to Beza, Psalm 45 serves as an "abridgement" of the Song and, like the Song, is to be taken "and altogetherto be vnderstoodin a spirituallsense," without any referenceto Solomon'smarriage,for "farreit is from all reason to take that alliaunce& marriageof his to haue bin a figureof so holy & sacreda one as that which is proJohn Harmer(London, 1587),4r.
46 Quoted

[An(London, 1650), pp. 219-20; Bartimeus Andreas

drewes], Certaine Very Worthy, Godly anld Profitable Sermons upon the Fifth Chapter of the Songs of Solomon

Robert Ferguson, The Interest of Reason in Religion: with thle Import & Use of Scripture-Metaphors (London, 1675),

(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 separatelypaged in The Worksof

Dr. Nathanael Homes (London, 1652), p. 469. 63 Assembly Annotations, sig. 712r'. Cf. St. Teresa, "Conceptions of the Love of God," in Complete Works of Saint

vpon posed vnto us in this Psal."-Master Bezaes Sermons the Three First Chapters of the Canticle of Canticles, trans. in D. W. Robertson, A Preface to Chaucer

Teresa of Jesus, trans. E. A. Peers, 3 vols. (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1950), ii, 360. trans. by a priest of Mount Melleray, 2 vols. (Dublin, 1920), i, 50-51 (sermon 7). Hereaftercited in text. 65See my "Spiritual Marriage," pp. 404-13, 425-30,
535-40. For Gregory of Nyssa, see From Glory to Glory: Texts from Gregory of Nyssa's Mystical Writings, ed. Jean
54 Saint

Bernard's Sermons on the Canticle of Canticles,

(Princeton:PrincetonUniv. 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. 49See, e.g., Richard Sibbes: any "sinful abuse of this heavenlybook is far from the intentionof the Holy Ghost in it, which is by stooping low to us, to take advantageto raise us higher unto him, that by taking advantageof the sweetestpassageof our life, marriage, and the most delightful affection, love, in the sweetest manner of expression, by a song,he mightcarryup the soul to thingsof a heavenly nature"-from "Bowels Opened"(1639), in The Complete work of highestlove and joy, it can be no blameto it, that it is now and then abrupt and passionate.... it could be expressednoway more happily,than in such similitudesas were proper to such persons, and such subjects.... That criminationand exceptions against the kisses and oyntmentsand other affectionatespeechesof it, are so far from
Works of Richard Sibbes, ed. A. B. Grosart (Edinburgh, 1862), ii, 5-6. See also Assembly Annotations: "being a

Danielou, trans. Musurillo(London: John Murray,1962); for the Spanish mystics, seeE. Allison Peers, Studies of
the Spanish Mystics, 3 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1927,

of sexual 1930, 1960). Note the analogous interpretations imageryin Gnostic texts, in the Kaballah,and in Eastern Tantricand Vishnaitecults 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: ChristianLiterature,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 (sermon71).