Bernard of Morlaix

Bernard of Cluny by John Balnaves.
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CHAPTER 7 ALLEGORY

Interpretive allegory

When C.S. Lewis referred to the allegory of the twelfth century as "a genuinely new creation" he had in mind chiefly the developments which led to the Romance of the rose in the thirteenth century.¹ As he is at pains to make clear, allegory did not develop first in the vernacular literatures. "Allegory, in some sense, belongs not to medieval man but to man, or even to mind, in general."² The allegory of the twelfth century had roots in classical antiquity and in the Scriptures. This chapter attempts to indicate those roots, to explore something of the complexity of allegory and to identify what "genuinely new" contribution twelfth-century poets, especially Latin poets, made to the development of allegory. Bernard of Morlaix was not principally an allegorist. He wrote no work which could be called "an allegory." But he made extensive use of allegorical techniques and played a part in the new creation to which Lewis refers.

Bernard's poem In libros Regum is in the form of a commentary on the first three of the four books of Kings.³ As such, one would expect it to be difficult to understand without a knowledge of the passages of Scripture upon which it comments. Bernard expects that knowledge from his readers, either from a first-hand acquaintance with the Vulgate or from reading of a summary or popular version, like the Carmen in libros Regum of his contemporary Hildebert of Lavardin, which is a rendering in elegiac couplets of an abridged form of the four books of Kings.⁴ But even a reader with a good knowledge of the Vulgate version of the books of Kings could be excused for finding much of Bernard's commentary difficult. Take, for example, the lines:

Ultima vero prior dat prolem prima suprema.
Dat conversio opus, gratia dona operis.

Even in the context of the story of the two wives of Elcana (Phenenna, who had children, and Anna, who had no children) the lines are not easy to interpret. The clue to their significance is found in the Commentaria in libros IV Regum of Hrabanus Maurus.

Phenenna interpretatur conversio; Anna gratia interpretatur. Qui vult effici possessio Dei,⁵ ducat has duas uxores, et jungat sibi primum eam quae nobilior est, hoc est, gratiam. Haec enim prima per fidem conjungitur homini, ut Apostolus ait: "Gratia enim Dei salvati estis per fidem (Ephes.2,8)." Secundo conjungatur Phenennae, id est conversioni, quia post gratiam credulitatis, morum emendatio sequi debet. Prima filios nobis generat Phenenna, quia primos nobis fructus proferimus per conversionem.⁶

The commentary of Hrabanus Maurus, written in 834, was well known and influential throughout the middle ages. It provided a basis for much of the subsequent commentary on Kings. His interpretations are repeated, with variations, in most subsequent works. Angelom of Luxeuil, in his Enarrationes in libros Regum, though he adds much material of his own, copies extensively from Hrabanus. In relation to Phenenna and Anna, for example, he has the following:

Et ideo qui vult effici possessio Dei, has duas ducat uxores: activam scilicet primum, et deinceps transeat ad contemplativam. Seu, ut aliter dicamus, conjugat sibi eam quae nobilior est, Annam, hoc est gratiam. Haec enim prima conjungitur homini per fidem, ubi Apostulus ait "Gratia enim Dei salvi facti estis per fidem (Ephe. 2,8)." Secundo conjungatur Phenennae, id est conversioni, quia post gratiam credulitatis, sequi debet emendatio morum. Prima filios generat Phenenna, quia primi fructus proferentur per conversionem.⁷

Much of Angelom's borrowing is even more blatant, and there is a great deal of simple word-for-word transcription from Hrabanus' commentary. He concludes with an appeal to the reader.

This laborious task is at last finished. I have been assisted by the help of the Almighty, and now that it is done, I humbly beg the reader to give joyful thanks to the Lord, if he considers it worth reading or copying ...⁸

Hrabanus' commentary was used by many commentators after Angelom, and when the Glossa ordinaria came to be compiled, it relied heavily on Hrabanus, both in general and as far as Kings is concerned.⁹ The Glossa has been variously ascribed to Walafrid Strabo and Anselm of Laon. Migne took the view that Walafrid was responsible for the marginal glosses and Anselm for the interlinear, but Beryl Smalley regards that attribution as "a bibliographical legend." The fifteenth-century editors regarded the Glossa as a work of composite and uncertain authorship, but still a work of the greatest authority. The Glossa has "a twelfth- rather than a ninth-century origin" and the responsibility for the major part of the compilation probably lies with Anselm of Laon and his brother Ralph.¹⁰

In view of the persisting popularity of Hrabanus' commentary, it was quite reasonable for Bernard to expect a degree of familiarity with it from his monastic readers. The In libros Regum seems, in part, to be intended as a useful summary of Hrabanus' commentary on the first three books of Kings, with an emphasis on its doctrinal and moral elements. Bernard thought it important to produce popular and readable versions of doctrinal and devotional works. In the prologue to the De contemptu mundi, he writes with approval of those who, in this time of revealed grace, when the crucified Jesus is ruling nations everywhere, have not been afraid to render even the Gospels themselves in metrical form. He believed that poets wrote in metre because they could thereby express the truths they wished to convey more pleasingly and persuasively than in prose.¹¹ In that sense, his In libros Regum may perhaps be regarded as a companion to Hildebert's Carmen in libros Regum.

Bernard follows Hrabanus quite closely until he comes, towards the end of his poem, to the throne of Solomon.¹² That, of course, is not the end of the third book of Kings. Bernard does not deal with the death of Solomon or any of the exciting events which follow it in the second half of the third book, and he does not deal at all with the fourth book. And yet the In libros Regum does not appear, like the Instructio sacerdotis,¹³ to be incomplete. As a commentary on Kings, the In libros Regum is less than complete. But it is a good deal more than a commentary.

The opening of Bernard's commentary on the throne of Solomon is a greatly abbreviated summary of Hrabanus' commentary on the same passage and, like all that precedes it, is hard to follow without some knowledge of Hrabanus' interpretation. Much of Hrabanus' detail is missing, but Bernard stresses the general theme that the throne is a figure of the Church.

Then Solomon made for himself a great throne of ivory, just as Christ made himself a church from chaste souls. And he overlaid the throne he made with a great deal of tawny gold, just as Christ adorns his church with portents and with his love. The top of the throne was round behind, just as the supreme crown rewards the good when their life is ended. Six steps led to the throne, denoting its completeness.¹⁴ Good works, in the perfect number of six, provide us with the means of climbing to heaven. There were two hands on either side holding up the seat. Divine grace holds up the throne [of the church] for both Jews and Gentiles.¹⁵ Two lions stood, one at each hand. They represent the holy men of the Old and New Testaments, crying out, "We are nothing without God." And twelve little lions stood upon the six steps, on the one side and on the other. The little lions stand for the company who follow the teaching of the Apostles. Their tongues give strength by their words; their hands create justice in their dealings; their holiness increases the flock of Christ by their prayers.¹⁶ There was no such work made in any kingdom. When God is the craftsman, the work is the flower of masterpieces. The Catholic Church is both the worker and the work of God. Man cannot work unless God, the craftsman, is in charge.¹⁷

Up to this point, Bernard has been adapting the work of Hrabanus Maurus to his purpose. Now, he takes a surprising new direction. "Now", he says, "I move from the general to the specific, and I apply to Mary the Mother of God what previously I applied to the Church."¹⁸ The remaining hundred lines of the poem constitute a hymn of praise of Mary. This interpretation of the throne of Solomon is not found in Hrabanus or in any other Western commentator.¹⁹ It is Bernard's own, and it is clearly the purpose and point of his poem. All that has gone before was designed to lead up to this culmination. From this point of view, In libros Regum is not so much a commentary on Kings as a poem about Mary. The In libros Regum has a different metre from the Mariale and it has no rhyme, but similarities of content, vocabulary and style of these concluding lines suggest that the attribution of the Mariale to Bernard of Morlaix may be correct.

King Solomon made a great throne out of ivory. Christ the King made his mother so that he could be made by her. He made the woman whom he chose to be his mother. He did not violate her intact virginity. His mother's virginity was preserved [when he was born], just as his godhead was preserved. The elephant is chaste, and the ivory of his tusks signifies chastity. This mother is more chaste than the elephant; her Son is more powerful. Mary is the throne of the Word, the heavenly home of God, the dwelling place of the Lamb, the milk of the flock, the house of David, the mountain of Sion, the citadel of God.²⁰

Bernard goes on to interpret the throne of Solomon in relation to Mary. The gold with which Solomon covered the throne is the love of Christ for his mother. And Mary's love for her son was so great that his crucifixion was a sword through her heart. She was crucified with Christ, a bundle of myrrh between her breasts.²¹ The throne of Solomon, clad with gold, is Mary, the shining star of the sea, clad with gold. The geometric perfection of the roundness of the throne signifies Mary, who is totally pure and without sin. Horace was wrong to say that nothing is perfect in all respects.²² Mary's soul is perfect in all respects. Bernard uses all the characteristics of the throne to develop his theme of the praises of Mary and her place in the scheme of salvation. Apostles, patriarchs and prophets, martyrs, virgins and fathers of the Church, all have their place in heaven, but Mary's place is above them all.²³

Bernard is so little interested in the literal meaning of Kings that he does not even present it, let alone explicate it. And from Hrabanus' commentary, he selects only those elements which serve the homiletic and devotional purposes of his poem. The Glossa ordinaria, by contrast, gives considerable attention to clarification and explanation of the literal meanings of Scripture, as well as to other kinds of interpretation. In relation to the throne of Solomon, for example, it quotes Hrabanus as follows:

The throne or chair of state is an imperial seat, which in the Canticle of canticles is called a litter, because the person sitting in it can be carried or moved about from place to place. Six steps lead up to it. Beneath the chair is a golden footstool. The top of the throne is rounded, extending outwards into two arms or handles, alongside which there are two lions which help to hold up the seat.²⁴

Hugh of St. Victor, while recognising the importance of the "mystical and allegorical meanings" of Scripture, berates those who superstitiously ("superstitiose") find them and elaborate them when they are not there. Of the author of Ecclesiastes, he says that he was concerned with the reasons why the human heart should scorn the things of this world, rather than with mysterious spiritual meanings.²⁵

The importance of the literal sense of Scripture is stressed even more strongly by Saint Thomas Aquinas. Saint Augustine said: "If I were called upon to write a book which was to be vested with the highest authority, I should prefer to write it in such a way that a reader could find re-echoed in my words whatever truths he was able to apprehend."²⁶ Saint Thomas explains that Saint Augustine was referring to literal meanings, but the sense of "literal" is not simple. Literal meanings may be divided into historical ("cum simpliciter aliquid proponitur"); aetiological ("cum causa dicti assignatur"); and analogical. The analogical sense includes parables, in which the literal meaning is not the parable, but what the parable is meant to convey. Similarly with metaphors, the literal sense does not stop with the imagery, but includes also what the imagery signifies. "He sat down with his disciples" has a literal meaning, directly expressed. But "He sits at the right hand of the Father" is a metaphor, in which the literal meaning is indirectly expressed.

Saint Thomas distinguishes the literal sense of Scripture from the spiritual sense, which again may be divided into three: the allegorical (when the things of the old law signify the things of the new); the moral (when Scripture provides us with models of behaviour); and the anagogical (when the state of eternal life is foreshadowed). All spiritual meanings are based on literal meanings, and arguments can be drawn only from literal meanings. "Nothing necessary for faith is contained under the spiritual sense that is not openly conveyed through the literal sense elsewhere [in Scripture]."²⁷

The various senses of Scripture discussed by Saint Thomas can be found in the New Testament itself. For example, the story of Jonah and the whale is interpreted as a figure of Christ's death and resurrection (Matthew 12, 39-41); Abraham's domestic life is interpreted as referring to the Jewish and Christian dispensations (Galatians 4, 22-31); the rituals and sacrifices of the Mosaic law are taken as symbols of the divine nature and of Christ's redeeming sacrifice (Hebrews, especially chapters 9 and 10). Furthermore, Saint Thomas' definition of allegory has Scriptural warrant. "For it is written that Abraham had two sons: the one by a bondwoman and the other by a free woman ... Which things are said by an allegory (hatina estin allegoroumena). For these are the two testaments ..."²⁸ Saint Paul is not suggesting that Abraham's sons are fictional. The allegorical relation here is a relation between real things. That is the only meaning of allegory which Saint Thomas (unlike Bede) allows.

The formulation of the four senses of Scripture (though not necessarily in precisely Saint Thomas' terms) came very early in biblical exegesis, going back at least as far as Bede.²⁹ Bede treats allegory more generally than Saint Thomas. "Allegory is a trope which means something other than what it says". It includes irony, antiphrasis, enigma, charientismus, paroemia, sarcasm and asteismus. "It is important to observe that allegory is sometimes historical and sometimes purely verbal ... Whether allegory is verbal or historical, sometimes it prefigures an event literally, sometimes it prefigures typologically an event in the life of Christ or of the Church, sometimes it figuratively expresses a tropological or moral principle, and sometimes it figuratively expresses an analogical sense, that is, a sense leading the mind to higher things." Bede includes as allegory some tropes which Saint Thomas regards as literal, but neither of them regards parables as allegory. For Bede, they are an example of Homoesis, "the designation of a thing which is less familiar by a comparison with something which is better known."³⁰

The four senses are set out in the Prothemata Glossae ordinariae in terms very similar to those of Saint Thomas. From the beginning, they presented problems. Angelom of Luxeuil attempted to overcome some of the problems by subtle distinctions, so that the three spiritual senses are extended to seven.³¹ Beryl Smalley comments that St. Thomas' teaching "that the literal sense was all that the sacred writer intended, sharpened the problem by the very fact of clarifying its nature."³² Certainly, his insistence on the importance of the literal sense (in his sense of "literal") carried the day as far as Scriptural exegesis is concerned. In the Postilla super totam Bibliam of Nicholas of Lyra, the emphasis is very strongly on the literal interpretation of Scripture. Commenting on the throne of Solomon, for example, he has the following:

The king also made a great ivory throne. It was another very beautiful and ornate work. Six steps led to its seat. The top of the throne was rounded, as is often the case with wooden chairs. There were two handles, one on each side, at the rear of it, and two lions were carved there, adding to the beauty and ornament of the work. The meaning of everything else in these verses is obvious.³³

Nicholas of Lyra represents the culmination of a movement for the study of Hebrew and rabbinics. The scholars (especially the friars) of the thirteenth century carried on and enlarged the method of their twelfth-century predecessors, especially the compilers of the Glossa.³⁴

In the context of the fourfold exegetical method (literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical), the gloss which explains the story of Elcana, Phenenna and Anna in terms of faith, grace and conversion would seem to be moral, while the relationship which Bernard, following Hrabanus, establishes between the throne of Solomon and the Church could be argued to be allegorical (the things of the old law signifying the things of the new). But Bernard's explanation of the throne in terms of Mary, the mother of God, does not fit very comfortably into the fourfold scheme as defined by Saint Thomas. The concepts of faith, grace and conversion are abundantly conveyed in a literal sense by other passages of Scripture, in a way that Mary's attributes and her place in the economy of salvation are not. This kind of interpretation has been called the "accommodated" sense, that is to say, a meaning given by artifice to a biblical text not warranted by its context in Scripture or in tradition. It is useful for private meditation or for a homily, but it has no place in Scriptural exegesis, according to Saint Thomas. Bernard's use of allegory may be called poetic rather than exegetic. It added very little to the study of the Scriptures, but it contributed significantly to the development of allegory in the Latin verse of the twelfth century.

Bernard's use of allegory is not limited to Scripture. His treatment of the Golden Age, for example, has allegorical elements. It even lends itself to quadripartite analysis, although not strictly in Saint Thomas' sense, and although it is not in any sense Scriptural. His descriptions of the Golden Age are pagan rather than Christian.³⁵

That was the best race, the soundest race, sober in heart. They did not know how to gather marketable goods, but they were rich in virtue. They did not know how to cheat or how to exalt themselves, but they were zealous for justice. They knew no crime and did not allow themselves to be consumed with greed. They were never prosecuted because they were never guilty. Dutifully, they cultivated the fields entrusted to them and their ancestral homes. They always kept agreements. The only battles they fought were with natural misfortunes. They thought it was wrong to seek power or to know anything about crime.³⁶

The people of Bernard's Golden Age married late in life, engaged in sexual intercourse only in order to beget children, drank no wine and ate frugally.

Peace brought them holy leisure, agriculture kept them busy. The earth gave them vegetables to eat, the rivers gave them water to drink. Their belts were made of rope. Cattle served them. They lived in caves. They ate barley. Grass was their beds, rocks were their seats, hides were their clothes ...³⁷

That is the Golden Age of Hesiod,³⁸ Vergil,³⁹ Ovid,⁴⁰ and Boethius⁴¹ rather than of Saint Augustine.⁴² At the literal level, it means the Classical Golden Age, which Bernard of Morlaix, like Otto of Freising,⁴³ had no difficulty in accepting as historical. At the allegorical level, as Engelhardt points out, it refers to the early Church.⁴⁴ At the anagogical level, it has to do with the nature of mankind before the Fall and after Redemption. At the moral level, for Bernard the most important level, it is all about holy poverty, nudus nudum Christum sequi.

Bernard returns to the theme of the Golden Age in De octo vitiis. He takes some verses from De consolatione philosophiae⁴⁵ and interweaves his own verses with them - _Nexa tuis feci metris mea."⁴⁶ Given the requirements of metre and rhyme, the result is interesting, though it does not lend itself to translation. In the following example, Bernard is in italics, Boethius in Romans:

Iam cepit metas felix nimium prior etas
Congaudens parvis, contenta fidelibus arvis,
Nec carnis fluxu nec inherti perdita luxu.
Numquam prandebat facili que sera solebat
Vite servande jejunia solvere glande
Sobria rite docens nec Bacchia munera noscens,
Parcior ut ventri, confundere melle liquenti
Nec vesti procerum prelucida vellera serum
Fucato ceno Tirio miscere veneno ...⁴⁷

The mingling of the verses gets more complex, and Bernard does more violence to Boethius, as the passage proceeds, but it recovers at the end:

... Unde labant mentes, gemmasque latere volentes
Que vermis rodit, preciosa pericula fodit?⁴⁸

In De contemptu mundi and in De octo vitiis, the description of the Golden Age introduces complaint about the moral decline of all classes of society. In addition to the literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical meanings, the Golden Age is also used to convey a complex image of Rome. It represents the stern values of Republican Rome, compared with the decadence of the Rome of later ages (a classical commonplace). But it also represents the Rome of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, when it was nourished by the blood of the martyrs, as compared with the decadence of the Rome of Bernard's day.

Rome, you are the chief of cities, made great by the Catos and famous by the Scauri. You are a very greedy city. Why are you always gobbling up huge wealth? The crucified King took pains to bestow upon you more than Caesar ever did. Caesar gives you foreign territory, but only Christ gives you heavenly realms. You grew strong, made great by the Catos and the Scipios. Now your strength is broken, and yet, in the dispensation of Christ, you are stronger than before. You flourished under Jupiter. Under Jupiter you were bright and rich. You will be weak under the cross [of Christ]. Under the cross, you will be ruined and feeble. But, poor as you are, you are a richer city; weak as you are, you are a stronger city; ruined as you are, you stand taller than ancient Rome. The cross makes you so ... Peter stands higher than the Caesars. God stands higher than the pagan gods ... Rome, you were given to Peter, you were developed by Peter's preaching, you were made subject to Christ. Why do you waste in sin all the blessings which I describe in these verses? ... You were made great enough by the Cornelii and by the three hundred Fabii, but you are made even greater by the teaching of that one man, Peter. And another man died that you might live, for Paul also was yours ...⁴⁹

The Donation of Constantine was already being given unfavourable critical attention in Bernard's day,⁵⁰ sometimes because it was thought to be a forgery, but mostly because, whether genuine or not, it was thought to have had a disastrous effect on the development of the Church. Bernard does not explicitly mention the Donation, but he expresses very clearly the view that there is an important distinction between the roles of sacerdotium and regnum, and his major complaint about the Church is that it is too deeply involved in secular affairs and given to Simony and avarice.⁵¹

Bernard has no veltro,⁵² but his ideas and his rhetoric about relations between church and state are in some ways similar to those of Dante.⁵³ But Bernard was not ahead of his time. His views are also similar to those of Arnold of Brescia.⁵⁴ And of Arnold himself it has been said, "The most fervent of Arnold's admirers could scarcely claim for his teaching the merit of originality."⁵⁵ But Bernard is not interested in political theory. He does not enter into such questions as whether both the spiritual and temporal swords are entrusted to the Church's keeping, with a delegation to the secular power, as Saint Bernard of Clairvaux argued,⁵⁶ or whether, as Arnold and Dante argued, secular authority is given directly by God to the civil power.⁵⁷

The complex inter-relationships of ideas and images which Bernard connects with the Golden age go well beyond the restraints which are associated with biblical exegesis. The same may be said of Bernard's treatment of the end of the world and of the city of Sion. But, like allegory in Scriptural exegesis, all of them are examples of interpretive, rather than compositional allegory, even though the Golden Age, the end of the world and the city of Sion are certainly not regarded by Bernard as fictions. In its simplest sense, interpretive allegory moves from a fiction, often a personification, to a deeper meaning, for example from the fictional character of Athene to the deeper meaning of Wisdom. Compositional allegory, on the other hand, personifies abstract concepts and fashions a narrative around them.⁵⁸ Compositional allegory is discussed later in this chapter.

Some of the problems of interpretive allegory may be illustrated from the Commentum super sex libros Eneidos Virgilii of Bernardus Silvestris. According to Bernardus, Vergil's poem describes allegorically by means of an "integument" what the human spirit does and endures while temporarily placed in the human body. "The integument is a type of exposition which wraps the apprehension of truth in a fictional narrative, and thus it is also called an envelope (involulcrum)."⁵⁹ That is to say, the story of the Aeneid is fiction and its true meaning is its allegorical meaning.

Bernardus, following Macrobius, maintains that Vergil designed the Aeneid to contain two kinds of instruction, and that a reader who wishes to understand the poem must recognise them. The first kind of instruction is given through the poetic fiction of the narrative, which gives pleasure because of verbal ornament, the figures of speech and the various adventures and works of men which it describes. In his preface to his commentary (like Bernard of Morlaix in his preface to the De contemptu mundi) Bernardus quotes Horace:

Aut prodesse volunt aut delectare poetae,
aut simul et jucunda et idonea dicere vitae.⁶⁰

There is, says Bernardus, a twofold advantage for the reader. The first is skill in composition, which comes from imitation, and the second is the guide to good behaviour which the examples of the story provide. For example, the labours of Aeneas give us an example of patience, his care for Anchises and Ascanius gives an example of pietas, his veneration of the gods, sacrifices, and prayers give an example of religious devotion. Likewise, we are warned about the dangers of lust by his immoderate love for Dido.⁶¹

The second kind of instruction is given through the allegorical meaning of the poem, and it is instruction in philosophical truth. Vergil is a philosopher writing about the nature of human life (humane vite naturam).⁶²

It is unlikely that Vergil intended the story and the characters of the Aeneid, including the gods, to be regarded as fictions. But the Aeneid invites interpretations beyond the literal. Vergil was a poet of great learning and his work is deeply imbued with the literary traditions of his time. For "the subtlest mind in literary history"⁶³ there are always "different layers of meaning".⁶⁴ In order to evaluate Bernardus' approach to those layers of meaning, it may be useful to consider, in some detail, one element of the Aeneid, namely the character of Anchises. Bernardus interprets Anchises as follows:

Aeneas is said to be the son of Anchises and Venus. Anchises means "celsa inhabitans", inhabiting the heavens; we understand him to be the father of all who presides over all. We read that there are two Venuses, one lawful and the other the goddess of lust ... Therefore, whenever you find Venus as the wife of Vulcan, the mother of Jocus and Cupid, interpret her as the pleasure of the flesh ... But whenever you read that Venus and Anchises have a son, interpret that Venus as the harmony of the world and Aeneas as the human spirit ... Therefore Aeneas is the son of Venus and Anchises, since the human spirit comes from God through concord to live in the human body. We have said these things about Anchises, Aeneas and Venus because in many places in this work we will find these interpretations necessary.⁶⁵

Bernardus' interpretation of Anchises as "the father of all who presides over all" has some basis in the text as well as in the meaning of "celsa inhabitans" which Bernardus gives to his name. Anchises is not merely the recipient of Aeneas' pietas. He is a major character in the narrative.⁶⁶ He is a hero in his own right⁶⁷ who commands the respect of all who know him.⁶⁸ Anchises, despite his disability and age, is still a great chieftain.⁶⁹ Those aspects of Anchises find some reflection in Bernardus' interpretation. But Vergil's Anchises is much more complex. In some Greek legend Anchises was blind.⁷⁰ In most Roman legend he was lame, largely because of the transformation of Aeneas from Homeric hero to exemplar of pietas.⁷¹ Servius sometimes writes as if he believes the Anchises of the Aeneid to be blind⁷² and Vergil nowhere specifies his disability.⁷³ Aeneas has to carry his father from defeated Troy (2,707-717). A blind Anchises would not need to be carried. Pictorial representations of Anchises as a blind man show him being led by the hand by Aeneas. It is the lame Anchises who is depicted as being carried, clutching the penates.⁷⁴

Vergil must have been aware of the legend of Anchises' blindness. Although it is not found in the poem at the literal level, it influenced Vergil in his treatment of the character of Anchises at other levels of interpretation. Vergil is at pains to establish Anchises as the chieftain, enjoying the loyal support of his son (3,480), and few commentators have drawn attention to his negative aspects.⁷⁵ Bernardus certainly does not. But Vergil also shows Anchises as a hindrance rather than a help in the quest for a new home in Italy. It cannot be due to accident or to what Gibbon called "the haste or irreligion of Virgil"⁷⁶ that, on every occasion when Anchises has anything to do with that quest, he is blind to the significance of events and portents.⁷⁷

Neither at the level of poetic fiction nor at the level of philosophical truth does Bernardus find any place for this aspect of Anchises' character, prominent though it is in the text. He has such difficulty in perceiving it, that he sees Anchises as the driving force, "regally adding threats to his pleas" when Aeneas hesitates.⁷⁸ Perhaps even more surprising is the fact that he does not make much of the re-appearance of Anchises after his apotheosis. Bernardus devotes less than a quarter of his commentary to books one to five of the Aeneid. He devotes more than three-quarters to Book 6, which he takes to be a fictional description of a descent into the underworld.⁷⁹ Bernard of Morlaix, by contrast, took Vergil's description quite literally, and scolded him for getting it wrong.⁸⁰

According to Bernardus Silvestris, the descent to the underworld is fourfold: the first is natural, the second is virtuous, the third is sinful, the fourth is artificial. Vergil, he says, is concerned with the fourth, because in the narrative Aeneas makes his descent through necromancy and artifice. But he is especially concerned with the second, which occurs when any wise person descends to mundane things through meditation, not so that he may put his desire in them, but so that, having recognised their frailty, he may turn from them and acknowledge God the creator of all.⁸¹ Bernardus makes very little of the significance of Aeneas' meeting with Anchises in the underworld, though Vergil seems to want to give it special significance. The Aeneid is, for Bernardus, the story of Aeneas' progress from infancy to maturity, from ignorance to understanding, from wilfully oblivious involvement with Dido to reunion with Anchises and a revelation of the source and end of life. Yet his allegory does not develop the significance of the reunion with Anchises.

Especially interesting is Bernardus' treatment of the problem of the gates of Sleep. Anchises' final act is to send his son and the Sibyl out of Hades through what appears to be the wrong gate (6,893-898). The horn and ivory gates are mentioned in the Odyssey, in connection with Penelope's dream of the killing of the suitors. Penelope tells Odysseus that she cannot guarantee the dream's truth because it did not come through the horn gate.⁸² Servius' comment on Aeneid 6,893 is "vult autem intellegi falsa esse omnia quae dixit." Poetically, he says, the meaning is clear. Vergil means that "everything he has said is false." In physical terms, the horn gates signify the eyes, which are of the colour of horn and are more robust then other members of the body, for they do not feel the cold. The ivory gates signify the teeth. What we say can be false, but what we see is without doubt true. Bernardus repeats those comments, and adds to them the comments of Macrobius, which relate the horn and ivory to two parts of the soul. Bernardus is unhappy about Servius' interpretation "sed falsa esse omnia quae dixit." First, he waters it down. They are "fabulosa et falsa ex parte." Then he says that Aeneas went out through the ivory gate because he really did see all those things, but he thought perhaps he had seen them in a dream.⁸³

The problem of the gates of Sleep is complex, and has generated much commentary. D.A. West, for example, relates it to the Golden Bough.⁸⁴ Brooks Otis thinks it relates to "a realm of experience beyond experience."⁸⁵ Whatever may be the explanation, it is clear that it is Anchises, not the Sibyl, who directs the course of his son through the ivory gate (6,898). The Sibyl, in fact, does not know her way around. She has to ask directions from Musaeus, and she does not know that the souls in Elysium have no fixed abodes (6,666-674). Bernardus cannot fit either the gates of Sleep or Anchises' responsibility for sending Aeneas through the ivory gate into his scheme, either in terms of poetic fiction or of allegorical truth.

The Aeneid is a poem of tensions, of "contrasts between opposing attitudes, exploration of divergent points of view".⁸⁶ The glory of Rome's achievement is contrasted with the suffering it caused; the Homeric hero is contrasted with the Roman hero; heroic valour is contrasted with pietas; the mundane world is contrasted with the world of the gods; the individual's ability to choose is contrasted with his control by external forces. At another level, similar contrasts are evident in the character of Anchises. He is a hero who is lame; a leader who misleads; a seer who fails to see. He is "the conscience of Aeneas,"⁸⁷ yet it is not he, but Aeneas' vision of him which guides Aeneas.⁸⁸ Polonius-like, he is given some of the best lines ("quisque suos patimur manis" 6,743). He represents Troy, which Aeneas must leave behind and rise above, yet in Book 6 he presents the spectacle of the Rome of the future.⁸⁹ But he is also responsible for casting doubt upon the significance of all this by his use of the ivory gate.⁹⁰ All of these are features of the Aeneid which Bernardus' interpretive allegory fails to elucidate.

That brief analysis of Vergil's treatment of one character in the Aeneid is perhaps sufficiently detailed to show, on the one hand, that the poem contains some elements of allegory, and that in many respects it invites allegorical interpretation; but that, on the other hand, neither the Aeneid as a whole nor any major part of it was written as compositional allegory. The analysis may also serve to point up some of the differences between the interpretive allegory of Bernardus Silvestris, which attempts to interpret a whole book, and that of Bernard of Morlaix, which is concerned rather to use a relatively brief text as a starting point for imaginative and creative discourse.

The allegory of the Bible is allegory "in facto." The notion that there can be allegorical correspondence not only between fictitious things and real things, but also between one set of real things and another is established in the Bible itself. In addition to the passage from Galatians, quoted above, we find, in the Apocalypse "The heaven departed as a book folded up (6,14)," which is itself a reference to Isaias 34,4: "The heavens shall be folded together as a book." In the context of the Bible, the notion makes sense, if one regards God as the author of the Bible as well as the author of the whole of creation.

But the people who actually wrote the Scriptures, at least as far as the Old Testament is concerned, did not necessarily intend anything except the literal meaning of what they wrote.⁹¹ It was, of course, supposed that biblical inspiration is a special and exceptional charisma. Nevertheless, there is a "divine inspiration which prompts the writing of any good work, for to St Thomas, as to St Ambrose, `every truth and by whomsoever uttered is of the Holy Ghost.'"⁹² Interpretive allegory in Scriptural exegesis is not specifically Christian. We find it, for example, in Philo of Alexandria. And interpretive allegory is older than biblical exegesis. We find it, for example, in the sixth century BC, with the philosophic interpretation of Homer.

There is a certain vagueness (evident, for example, in Bede) about the distinction between allegory "in verbis" and allegory "in facto". That vagueness makes possible the kind of imaginative allegory in which Bernard of Morlaix engages. It encourages the allegorist to give his poetry a Scriptural dimension, a kind of borrowed authority, which can be seen in Bernard's allegory, and even more strikingly in the apocalyptic work of Joachim of Flora. John Whitman points out the dangers. "Figures of speech may be as `significant' as facts, but by the same token, facts are thereby liable to be reduced to mere figures of speech."⁹³ Does the throne of Solomon have any real existence? Is the Golden Age merely fiction?

Medieval allegorists would not, perhaps, be perturbed by the suggestion that Vergil did not intend the allegorical interpretations which they put upon the Aeneid, or upon the fourth Eclogue. Even for a modern commentator, it is not obvious that an allegorical interpretation has to be intended by the author in order to be valid. C.S. Lewis, referring to Republic, 361-362, says:

Plato in his Republic is arguing that righteousness is often praised for the rewards it brings - honour, popularity, and the like - but that to see it in its true nature we must separate it from all these, strip it naked. He asks us therefore to imagine a perfectly righteous man treated by all around him as a monster of wickedness. We must picture him, still perfect, while he is bound, scourged, and finally impaled (the Persian equivalent of crucifixion). At this point the Christian reader starts and rubs his eyes. What is happening? Yet another of those lucky coincidences? But presently he sees that there is something here that cannot be luck at all.⁹⁴

As regards the fourth Eclogue, he is uncertain.

If I think (as I cannot help thinking) about the birth of Christ while I read that poem of Virgil's, or even if I make it a regular part of my Christmas reading, this may be a sensible and edifying thing to do. But the resemblance which makes such a reading possible may after all be a mere coincidence (though I am not sure that it is). I may be reading into Virgil what is wholly irrelevant to all he was, and did, and intended ... But when I meditate on the Passion while reading Plato's picture of the Righteous One, or on the resurrection while reading about Adonis or Balder, the case is altered. There is a real connection between what Plato and the myth-makers most deeply were and meant and what I believe to be the truth. I know that connection and they do not. But it is really there. It is not an arbitrary fancy of my own thrust upon the old words. One can, without any absurdity, imagine Plato or the myth-makers if they learned the truth, saying, "I see ... so that is what I was really talking about. Of course. That is what I really meant, and I never knew it."⁹⁵

We may wonder if Vergil would exclaim, "That is what I really meant" if he were to read Bernardus' interpretive allegory of the Aeneid. But we can at least see that it was not entirely irrational for the interpretive allegorists of both the ancient and the medieval worlds to read meanings into works which their authors did not intend, and that it was especially easy for Christians to do so, in the light of their experience with biblical exegesis.

But allegorical interpretation of the Bible was not applied, according to a uniform scheme, to the whole Bible, or even to the whole of the Old Testament, or even to a whole book, and very rarely even to a whole chapter. It was, as the examples cited above show, applied to relatively short passages of Scripture, according to particular exegetical needs. Saint Gregory puts it clearly.

... He that treats of sacred writ should follow the way of a river, for if a river, as it flows along its channel, meets with open valleys on its side, into these it immediately turns the course of its current, and when they are copiously supplied, presently it pours itself back into its bed. Thus unquestionably, thus should it be with everyone that treats of the Divine Word, that if, in discussing any subject, he chance to find at hand any occasion of seasonable edification, he should, as it were, force the streams of discourse towards the adjacent valley, and when he has poured forth enough upon its level of instruction, fall back into the channel of discourse which he had prepared for himself.⁹⁶

The analysis of the Commentum of Bernardus Silvestris suggests that interpretive allegory cannot be made to work very well when it is used in an extended fashion to propound a hidden meaning which the author of a lengthy and complex text did not intend. That is not to denigrate Bernardus' commentary, which has been reckoned "the most important and extensive commentary on the Aeneid produced in the later Middle Ages."⁹⁷

The weaknesses of interpretive allegory were recognised and exploited by twelfth-century satirists. The Apocalypse of Golias offers an example. Like Saint John's Apocalypse, to which it constantly alludes, and like Piers plowman, it uses the literary device of a dream or vision. Like the Canterbury tales, it starts in May. "When the hot lamp of Cynthius was casting its arrows of burning rays at the Bull", the poet, in the shadows of a wood, saw a vision of Pythagoras, who transported him to a place where he saw Aristotle, Boethius, Ovid and other such sages, and where an angel said to him, "Stand still, and you will see what Saint John saw." The vision he is granted is not of the seven Asian churches, but of "the seven English churches". The poem is full of the usual puns (liber, libra; marca, Marcus and so forth) and the interminable commonplaces of medieval anticlerical satire, but his treatment of them is cleverer than most. He presents the clerical hierarchy under the symbols from Saint John's Apocalypse, conventionally assigned to the four Evangelists⁹⁸:

The lion represents His Holiness the Pope. He is ravenous. He is hungry for money, so he pawns the things of God. He cares a great deal for the silver mark, but not at all for Saint Mark. He sails the ship of the Church through spiritual waters, but his anchor is firmly stuck in money. The bull represents the bishop, who runs fast in front of the herd through the pasture. He grazes and chews the cud. That is what he knows best. He is full fed with wealth that belongs to others. The eagle, which soars on its wings, represents the archdeacon. He is a predator. He sees his prey from afar and follows it. He flies around and lives by pillage. The creature in human form represents the dean. He is full of secret tricks. He carries out fraudulent operations under the guise of justice and he deceives good people with his appearance of honesty.⁹⁹

When it goes beyond the bounds set out by Saint Thomas, interpretive allegory becomes a very unreliable tool for exegesis. The Apocalypse of Golias is meant to be funny, but its allegory is no more far fetched than many attempts at allegorical exegesis which are meant to be perfectly serious. Interpretive allegory is at its best in meditation and homily, rather than in exegesis and commentary. In that regard, C.S. Lewis' reference to meditating on the Passion is illuminating.

It may be useful to compare the interpretive allegory of Bernard of Morlaix with a certain kind of midrash. Jacob Neusner distinguishes between midrash as paraphrase, midrash as prophecy and midrash as parable.¹⁰⁰ The last of these is very similar to the kinds of interpretive allegory discussed above. It is homiletic rather than exegetic in its purpose. Addison G. Wright describes it as follows:

The purpose of the midrash was the instruction and edification of the masses, and consequently the midrashist by reason of this religious rather than purely scholarly aim endeavoured not so much to seek the original meaning of the text as to find religious edification, moral instruction, and sustenance for the thoughts and feelings of his audience. The text of Scripture was the point of departure for it was God's word, valid for all time. The interpreter would begin with the plain sense. If it was useful religiously, it would be thus expounded. But if in the course of his reflection the biblical text suggested some idea other than that immediately apparent, then this idea would be set forth in connection with the text ... If the plain sense was obvious or if it was not useful religiously, then a hidden meaning would be sought.¹⁰¹

Thus, for example, the four rivers of Eden (Genesis 2,10-14) are taken to represent the four kingdoms which oppressed Israel, namely Babylonia, Media, Greece and Rome, and in Leviticus Rabbah, which came to redaction about 450 AD, the interpretation is worked out in detail.¹⁰² Irving Jacobs argues that midrash, in its original, pre-literary form, was a living process involving both live preachers and live audiences in the ancient synagogues of the Holy Land. The audiences, he suggests, were not simply passive listeners. They influenced the development of midrash.

Relying on his congregation's familiarity with well-known traditions, the preacher could challenge their perceptiveness by selecting a text, not for its obvious verbal or thematic link with the pericope, but because of its more subtle allusion to a popular tradition associated with the principal character, or main event in the morning's lection.¹⁰³

Bernard's interpretation of the throne of Solomon as representing Mary and her place in the economy of salvation is very similar to that kind of midrash.

Midrash, properly speaking, is always concerned with interpretation of Scripture in the rabbinic tradition But, like interpretive allegory, its vitality is such that its techniques have been borrowed in other fields.¹⁰⁴

Interpretive allegory owed much, by way of the Scriptures, to a more ancient Hebrew tradition. In relation to biblical exegesis, it reached its peak in the twelfth century, after which exegesis became increasingly more concerned with the plain meaning of the text. But it fostered art and skills which were developed in Latin poetry and which passed into vernacular literature and were important in the flowering of allegory in the later middle ages.

The development of interpretive allegory was only part of the story. Equally important was the development of compositional allegory. Bernard of Morlaix made a significant contribution to the imaginative use of interpretive allegory. His contribution to compositional allegory was less significant; in that area the most important work was the Cosmographia of Bernardus Silvestris, who contrived a fusion of compositional with interpretive allegory. His work, and that of other poets, are considered below. But the poems of Bernard of Morlaix show him to be part of the genuinely new creation of allegory in the twelfth century, and they show also how that new creation was not seen as a revival or renewal, but rather as emerging from the living and continuing Latin literary tradition.

Compositional allegory

Compositional allegory starts with an abstract concept and represents it as a concrete person or situation. It frequently entails personification. Peter the Venerable, in a letter to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, offers an example:

Consider the mistress of a household. Concerned for the welfare of the whole of her household, she tells some of her servants to plough the earth with oxen, others to dig the vineyard. She sends some to the forest to cut firewood. She tells some to light the fire and others to fetch water and others again to go to the market for shopping. One she berates because he is slack, another she praises for his hard work and urges him to do better. But, although she tells different people to do different things, she herself does not change. And the diversity of the orders she gives does not result in a conflict of benefits. All the various tasks work together for a single, straightforward purpose, the welfare of the household. That is the one end of all the many different tasks. The mistress of the household is not at fault because she tells one to do this, another to do that, because all the orders she gives are for that single purpose. She is not contradicting herself when she gives different orders. So it is with charity. Charity manages all things for the sole purpose of the welfare of the household of the Lord, so she cannot be said to contradict herself. Whatever orders Charity gives, through whatever messengers and at whatever times, must be obeyed without hesitation. If Charity issues different orders at different times through different messengers, those orders are not wrong. There are different orders and different messengers and different circumstances, but they all serve the will of God for the purpose of human salvation. There is no conflict between them. Charity manages everything for a single purpose, quite sure that she is doing the right thing.¹⁰⁵

Peter's allegory is part of an argument about adherence to the Benedictine Rule, in the context of the family quarrel between Cluniacs and Cistercians. He presents the concrete figure of the lady of a household in order to elucidate the characteristics of the abstract concept of charity.

There is little of that kind of allegory in the works of Bernard of Morlaix. His one significant essay in compositional allegory involves personification. It is not urbane and polished like Peter's. It involves a fictitious character called "the Bishop of Belly,"¹⁰⁶ who represents the laxity and worldliness of the clergy.

In the morning, he fills the worthless tomb of his belly with a fat capon. Then the worthy bishop goes hawking or hunting for hares. The dogs are loosed. They seek out and chase after their wild prey. A sleek horse, better than those of Greece or Thrace, adds splendour and dignity to the bishop. A soldier walks beside him, adding to his prestige, but he is not accompanied by a single cleric. The hunting horn blares and the woods resound with its echoes. They start a doe and she runs into the nets, betrayed by her flight. They return late, the dogs barking and leaping, as cool night begins to fall, and at night a lavish banquet is prepared. The wine steward pours Falernian or Egyptian wine. It is a rich banquet. The bishop reclines on his majestic couch. Food is everywhere ... The cook produces roast game, the wine steward prepares strong wine, the baker does the rest. The cook in his apron is busy, the fire glows in the hearth, it is all very jolly. The halls are cheerful, full of light and crowded with people ... The door is firmly bolted against the unfortunate poor people outside. The Bishop of Belly, a traitor to his calling, is stuffed with food. Full though he is, he gets up and arranges for more wine to be served. There is another round of drinking, to which the bishop again gives his blessing. He breathes hard, having taken good care of his gullet, and the great sack of his belly sticks out. He talks about the energetic deeds he has done and how brave he is. He is a veritable Epicurus, full of wine and fat with feasting. As he is about to offer prayers on behalf of his flock and his prince, he finds himself quite worn out by his troubles, so he makes his way, very late, to his bedroom and the soft sheets of his bed. A lamp and candles in golden candlesticks have been already placed there. A maid turns down the silken covers of his soft bed, and the great fleshy dumpling, the worthy sinner, snores shamelessly.

Next morning, the bishop's household bustles about. The Church's suitor¹⁰⁷ makes his way to his cathedral and enters the sanctuary. When he has stood for as short a time as possible, there is a seat ready for him. He finishes his episcopal sermon with a resounding peroration ... He does not take the trouble to say any prayers for the pope and the bishops, or for his prince and the magistrates, not even for his flock and himself. He does not try, through repentance, to rescue his flock and himself from damnation. He knows very little about canon law and practises it even less. In his words, he is God-fearing, but his actions belie his words. He is a sinner".¹⁰⁸

This style of allegory is similar to that of Langland. Gloton, for example, is a fictional character representing the abstract concept of Gluttony.

There was laughynge and lourynge and "Lat go the cuppe!"
Til Gloton had yglubbed a galon and a gille.
His guttes bigonne to gothelen as two gredy sowes;
He pissed a potel in a Paternoster-while,
And blew his rounde ruwet at his ruggebones ende,
That alle that herde that horn helde his nose after
And wisshed it hadde ben wexed with a wispe of firses!¹⁰⁹

But Bernard's Bishop of Belly is not part of a larger allegory, as Langland's Gloton is. Like Peter the Venerable's lady of the household, Bernard's fictional character exists to make a single point, not to take part in a complex allegorical narrative.

Similarly, Andreas Capellanus, in the course of his textbook on the art of love, resorts to allegory to illustrate his point. A young squire, lost in the royal forest of France, saw three companies go by. The first consisted of richly dressed ladies, each mounted on a fine horse and accompanied by three knights, one on either side and the third leading her horse. They were ladies who, during their life on earth (for each company is "exercitus mortuorum") served love wisely. The second company consisted of ladies who were surrounded by such a crowd of contending servitors that no effective service was provided and the ladies would have preferred to be left alone. They were those who gave their kindness to all who asked it. The third company consisted of ladies dressed in rags and riding scrawny nags, completely unattended. They were "those most wretched of all women who while they lived closed the palace of love to all who wished to enter it."¹¹⁰

Andreas goes on to describe the destinations of the three companies ("amoenitas", "humiditas" and "siccitas" respectively) in an extraordinary parody of the visions of heaven and hell that we looked at in another chapter. His allegory is clearly a literary device designed to illustrate a particular point, and is presented as such.

The allegory of Saint Hildegard of Bingen, on the other hand, is presented as something directly perceived, not invented by her. In a letter to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, she writes:

I have from earliest childhood seen great marvels which my tongue has no power to express but which the Spirit of God has taught me that I may believe ... Through this vision which touches my heart and soul like a burning flame, teaching me profundities of meaning, I have an inward understanding of the Psalter, the Gospels, and other volumes. Nevertheless, I do not receive this knowledge in German. Indeed, I have no formal training at all, for I know how to read only at the most elementary level, certainly with no deep analysis.¹¹¹

Hildegard's protestations of ignorance are perhaps partly conventional and partly due to her desire to stress the divine origin of her learning. But it is certainly the case that her allegories are expressions of experiences which came to her directly. "I write whatever I see and hear in the vision, nor do I set down any other words, but tell my message in the rude Latin words which I read in the vision."¹¹² They are not, at least at the conscious level, fabrications designed to illustrate a deeper truth. Like the visions of Julian of Norwich, they are not, in the ordinary sense, compositional allegory, though it would be absurd to regard them as interpretive allegory. In her letters, Hildegard uses allegory in a number of ways.¹¹³ In a letter to Eberhard, Archbishop of Salzburg, for example, she uses simple personification, rather like that of Peter the Venerable, quoted above.

Therefore, father, steep your labours in the fount of wisdom, from which Divine Love and Obedience drank, those two daughters clad in regal garments. For Wisdom along with Divine love, set all things in order bringing forth many streams, just as she says, "I alone have compassed the circuit of heaven"¹¹⁴

In a letter to Dimo, prior of Bamberg, Divine love and Obedience appear again, this time accompanied by Humility and Pride.

Two men were sitting in a house, one of whom was a knight, the other a serf. And two wise and beautiful girls came to that house, knocked on the door and said to them: You have become notorious even in far distant lands, for many people allege that you have slandered the king, and the king has asked, Who are these miscreants to be saying such things about me? Therefore, you two, hear our advice, for it will bring you victory. I am Humility: I have seen life in the incarnation of the Son of God, and I have crushed Death under my heel. The works of obedience are a mountain, and benevolence is a valley lush with flowers, though frequently choked off by nettles and thorns watered by the storms of sins ... It is the house of your heart that the knight and the serf - that is, Obedience and Pride - are sitting in, and it is at the door of your mind that the two girls - that is, Divine Love and Humility - are knocking ... ¹¹⁵

In the Scivias, Hildegard is at pains to interpret the allegories of her visions. In her letters, she for the most part leaves them unexplained. In a letter to Pope Eugenius III, for example, she writes:

A jewel lies on the road, but a bear comes along and seeing that it is very fine stretches out his paw to pick it up and carry it off. But, suddenly, an eagle swoops down and snatches the jewel, wraps it in the covering of its wings and carries it into the palace of the king. And this jewel shines so splendidly before the king that he sets great store by it, and because of his love of this jewel, he gives the eagle golden slippers, and praises it highly for its uprightness.¹¹⁶

Eugenius III is the pope to whom Bernard of Morlaix presented his petition and his poems in about 1146.¹¹⁷ Hildegard's letter, written in 1148, asks Eugenius to look with favour on her writings. Eugenius had already given his approval to the Cosmographia of Bernardus Silvestris, and he gave his blessing also to Hildegard's Scivias. We do not know how he received the poems of Bernard of Morlaix, with their antipapal and anticlerical tirades, but it seems likely that he did not reject them.¹¹⁸ Just as Arnold of Brescia had reason to be grateful to this pope, who pardoned him when he was expelled from France and allowed him to go on pilgrimage to Rome,¹¹⁹ so, perhaps, did Hildegard and Bernardus Silvestris. Under a different pope their disturbingly original work might have been less well received.

In the context of the political history of the twelfth century, one may suppose that Hildegard's bear represents the emperor and the eagle stands for the pope. The jewel is ecclesiastical independence from civil power and the golden slippers represent God's approval of papal resistance to civil encroachments upon the rights of the Church. Eugenius no doubt had little difficulty in interpreting the allegory. But the extraordinarily complex allegory of the garden and the progress of winter and summer in Hildegard's letter to Abbot Adam is difficult to unravel, even though she provides a lengthy explanation. At one point, it seems that the garden represents Abbot Adam's community. "You have a garden of people in which as the representative of Christ you seek to plant many wholesome desires and good works." The handsome young man "with bright shining hair and a comely, pleasing face" would seem, then, to be abbot Adam, while the "contorted figure with black hair and horrible face" is, we are told, vices which come from the devil. But as the explication proceeds, we learn that the young man in fact represents virtues, and the allegory turns into a treatment of the problem of evil in the world. "Then the crafty vices bring the cold cloud of ignorance upon this people, so that their wholesome desires and their good works fail, because they have faith in themselves alone. But showing obedience in their praises to God, the virtues permit this thing to be done by the just judgment of God, so that men may understand what they are."¹²⁰

All the foregoing examples of compositional allegory, varied though they are, have in common the fact that they are designed to illustrate and reinforce a particular point which the author wishes to make. Even the Scivias is not a structured and continuous whole, but a series of disparate visions on the basis of which Saint Hildegard develops doctrinal or moral themes.¹²¹

Classical compositional allegory was of the same kind. There are allegorical elements in the works of Hesiod, Vergil and Ovid, for example. Plato's simile of the cave has some of the characteristics of allegory, and indeed is called an allegory by Francis M. Cornford.¹²²

Picture men in an underground cave-dwelling, with a long entrance reaching up towards the light along the whole width of the cave; in this they lie from their childhood, their legs and necks in chains, so that they stay where they are and look only in front of them, as the chain prevents their turning their heads around. Some way off, and higher up, a fire is burning behind them, and between the fire and the prisoners is a road on higher ground. Imagine a wall built along this road, like the screen which showmen have in front of the audience, over which they show puppets ... Then picture also men carrying along this wall all kinds of articles which overtop it, statues of men and other creatures in stone and wood and other materials; naturally some of the carriers are speaking, others are silent.¹²³

That is compositional allegory in the sense that it was written precisely to be understood in a meaning other than the literal, like a parable. It has the further interest that it is an allegory "in verbis" which sets out an allegory "in facto," for its point is that that the world of ideas is real, while the world of appearances is not. But neither the Republic nor Book 7 of it represents compositional allegory in the sense of a sustained and complete allegorical narrative.

C.S. Lewis sees a "drift towards allegory" in the development of mythological personification, and he finds it well illustrated in the Thebaid of Statius, in which Mars appears as nothing more than a personification of war and Bacchus is no more than a personification of drunkenness. That is to say, they display none of the colourful characteristics of the mythological Mars and Bacchus, but are, like Virtus, Clementia, Pietas and Natura, who also feature in the Thebaid, "potent abstractions."¹²⁴

There are allegorical aspects of the pagan gods, but the ancients certainly did not regard their gods as simply allegorical figures. For the most part, they were thought of as real supernatural, or at least superhuman, beings. Cicero, in De natura deorum, and Plutarch, in De Iside et Osiride, for example, express that view.¹²⁵ Nor did the ancients take a reductionist approach to their gods. Euhemerus, who flourished about 300 BC, was very much a lone voice in maintaining that the traditional gods and goddesses were ordinary men and women who, after dying normal deaths, had been worshipped as gods by their descendants. Cicero rejected that notion as impious and absurd.¹²⁶ But, at the same time, it was an orthodox belief that heroes such as Hercules, Castor and Pollux, Aesculapius and Romulus became gods after their death.¹²⁷ The theory of Euhemerus is perhaps no more than an extension of that belief.¹²⁸ A similar view is cogently argued in the Book of Wisdom.

For neither were [the pagan gods] from the beginning; neither shall they be for ever. For by the vanity of men they came into the world ... For a father, being afflicted with bitter grief, made to himself the image of his son who was quickly taken away: and him who then had died as a man, he began now to worship as a god, and appointed him rites and sacrifices ... Then in process of time ... this error was kept as law ... And those whom men could not honour in presence because they dwelt afar off, they brought their resemblance from afar and made an express image of the king whom they had a mind to honour ... And the multitude of men, carried away by the beauty of the work, took him now for a god that a little before was but honoured as a man.¹²⁹

Euhemerism was influential throughout the middle ages.¹³⁰ Yet the pagan gods survived. As Helen Waddell remarked, "The Latin poetry of the twelfth- and thirteenth-century scholars is pagan, as Keats is pagan."¹³¹ Or, as Charles Homer Haskins put it, "The Latin poetry of the twelfth century was far more than a mere revival of ancient modes and subjects; it was a manifold expression of the vigorous and many-sided life of the age, an age of romance as well as an age of religion."¹³² At the same time, as we saw in the discussion above on interpretive allegory, there was a tendency in the twelfth century to treat the classical gods and myths as allegorical.

A distinction needs to be drawn between two kinds of compositional allegory. On the one hand, there are works which are allegorical, in the sense that they incorporate tropes and figures which are allegorical. The Aeneid of Vergil, the Thebaid of Statius and the Metamorphoses of Ovid are examples, as also are the passages from Peter the Venerable, Bernard of Morlaix, Andreas Capellanus and Hildegard of Bingham quoted above. On the other hand, there are works which are allegories, that is to say, the whole work is designed to be read in a coherent and consistent allegorical fashion. As Stephen A. Barney puts it, "We distinguish `an allegory,' which has a plural, from `allegory' ... I consider the term `an allegory' to refer, unlike the terms `symbol' or `personification,' to a whole fiction."¹³³ Although classical antiquity offers plenty of examples of "allegory", it has no "allegories." The Metamorphoses of Lucius Apuleius, for example, is allegorical, but it is not an allegory. William Adlington, who translated the work in the sixteenth century, regarded it as allegorical.

Verily under the wrap of this transformation [of Lucius into an ass] is taxed the life of mortall men, when as we suffer our mindes so to be drowned in the sensuall lusts of the flesh, and the beastly pleasure thereof (which aptly may be called the violent confection of Witches) that wee lose wholly the use of reason and vertue, which properly should be in man, and play the parts of brute and savage beasts.¹³⁴

But he clearly does not regard the work as "an allegory." He goes on to compare it with the stories of Ulysses and Circe, and of the transformation of Nebuchadnezzar. And he finds two different allegorical interpretations.

Againe, may not the meaning of this worke be altered and turned in this sorte: A man desirous to apply his minde to some excellent art, or given to the study of any of the sciences, at the first appeareth to himselfe an asse without wit, without knowledge, and not much unlike a brute beast, till such time as by much paine and travell he hath achieved to the perfectnesse of the same, and tasting the sweet floure and fruit of his studies, doth thinke himselfe well brought to the right and very shape of a man. Finally, the metamorphosie of Lucius may be resembled to a youth, without discretion, and his reduction to age possessed with wisdome and vertue.¹³⁵

This is interpretive allegory on the part of Adlington, rather than compositional allegory on the part of Apuleius. The Metamorphoses has many allegorical elements, and lends itself to such interpretations. Not only does the story as a whole contain many tropes and figures of an allegorical nature, but it has embedded in it a version of the story of Cupid and Psyche which has some of the characteristics of "an allegory," although it retains its essentially mythical character.¹³⁶ It also has a pageant which, as well as the usual mythical characters (Paris, Minerva, Venus, Juno, Castor and Pollux), has characters that are pure personifications. "Minerva was guarded by two boys, armour-bearing companions of the battle-goddess, Terror and Fear (Terror et Metus) who leaped forward with naked swords."¹³⁷ But, despite those elements, the Metamorphoses is not an allegory.

The first example we have of compositional allegory, in the sense of a sustained, complex and complete allegorical narrative, which "everyone would call an allegory,"¹³⁸ is the Psychomachia of Prudentius, written about 405 AD. The Psychomachia produced "a kind of conceptual sequel to that philosophic poetry which we have seen developing from Homer to Vergil and his successors. At the same time, it fulfilled at last the compositional tendency to articulate a personal progress in cosmic terms."¹³⁹ It is "the first example of the genre of allegory as we know it. Although allegorical personification itself was by no means new in Prudentius' time, this is the first work which deploys such personifications as the sole figures in an extended narrative."¹⁴⁰ The whole work is a fiction designed to be read in a coherent and consistent allegorical fashion. Every character, every incident and every scene is intended to be interpreted allegorically. Unlike mythical characters, the virtues and vices of Prudentius have no being outside the allegory. "The Homeric Ares has many interests besides war. Poseidon has a life and character of his own apart from his quarrel with Odysseus. The esse of Juno is not exhausted in her opposition to the Trojans."¹⁴¹ But the characters in the Psychomachia are presented as personifications. The fourteen major protagonists (Fides and Veterum Cultura Deorum; Pudicitia and Sodomita Libido; Patientia and Ira; Mens Humilis and Superbia; Sobrietas and Luxuria; Operatio¹⁴² and Avaritia; Concordia and Discordia), as well as all the supporting cast, have their sole being within the allegory, and all their characteristics and actions are to be read in that context. The characteristics and actions of the virtues are not, perhaps, those which we might associate with virtuous people.¹⁴³ C.S. Lewis, puzzled by the bloodthirstiness of Prudentius' virtues, comments that "fighting is an activity that is not proper to most of the virtues. Courage can fight, and perhaps we can make a shift with Faith. But how is Patience to rage in battle? How is Mercy to strike down her foes or Humility to triumph over them when fallen?"¹⁴⁴ But that, says S. Georgia Nugent, is a failure to take Prudentius' abstractions seriously enough. It is to regard the characters in the Psychomachia as still in some sense individuals who are patient or lusty or faithful, rather than the abstract qualities themselves of Patientia, Libido or Fides.¹⁴⁵

The point is taken. Nevertheless, the discomfort which C. S. Lewis expresses persists. It may (if in this enlightened age it is proper to make such a suggestion) be connected with the fact that all Prudentius' characters (presumably because the abstract nouns that represent their names are feminine in gender) are ladies. More seriously, it may have to do with a weakness in the allegory itself. Kenneth R. Haworth points out that, despite appearances, Prudentius' virtues and vices are not simply rhetorical figures. "The Romans, from quite early times onwards, worshipped a class of beings, whose names we would today term abstract nouns, which were conceived of as vague spiritual, psychological and social powers."¹⁴⁶ According to Haworth, most of the virtues in the Psychomachia figured in pagan cults. The vices, though not objects of worship, were held in awe as superhuman forces which could influence human behaviour. Prudentius was as Roman as Ausonius, but he was also more Christian. His aim might well have been to satirise these strange Roman deities, while at the same time recasting them into a distinctively Christian image. "In this way, he could hope to make his Christianity more acceptable to his readers, that is, more `Roman.'"¹⁴⁷

The vividness of the visual images which Prudentius' story evokes was a major influence in the representation of the conflict between virtues and vices throughout the middle ages. The Roman character of those images persisted in medieval art.¹⁴⁸ But, although the visual imagery persisted, the deified nature of the virtues and the demonic nature of the vices did not. Medieval readers of the Psychomachia, like most modern readers, considered the virtues and vices to be personifications of abstract concepts.¹⁴⁹ If Kenneth Haworth's interpretation of the work is correct, to regard Prudentius' virtues and vices as simply personifications would be rather like regarding Bernard of Morlaix's treatment of Satan as nothing more than metaphorical.

S. Georgia Nugent has drawn attention to the complexity of the structure of the Psychomachia in the development of its theme, which may be summed up as "non simplex natura hominis."¹⁵⁰ She shows that the ordering of the poem is neither static nor chaotic. It displays an orderly progression, building hierarchically towards a climax in the sixth, and longest, battle between Operatio and Avaritia and coming to a resolution with the construction of a temple to Sapientia.¹⁵¹

Again, the point is taken. But, when all allowances have been made for the complexity of the structure, the plot of the Psychomachia remains thin. It is a series of episodes, even if the episodes are to some degree structured and increasingly complex. It has a certain amount of interaction between the characters. Spes, for example comes to the aid of Mens Humilis in her battle with Superbia; Deceit digs a trench as a snare for the virtues, but Superbia falls into it; Concordia, wounded by Discordia, is rescued by Fides; and so forth. But there is no complex system of inter-relationship between the characters. Despite the detailed and colourful descriptions of their appearance, they lack affective qualities and merely articulate formal, intellectual properties. To some degree that is an inevitable characteristic of personification. But allegory is fiction, and good fiction needs a satisfactory plot. Despite Nugent's defence, a feeling persists that the plot of the Psychomachia does not work very well. C.S. Lewis, maintaining that it "is not a good poem", argues thus:

While it is true that the bellum intestinum is the root of all allegory, it is no less true that only the crudest allegory will represent it by a pitched battle. The abstractions owe their life to the inner conflict; but when once they have come to life, the poet must fetch a compass and dispose his fiction more artfully if he is to succeed.¹⁵²

He goes on to suggest that a journey "represents far more truly than any combat in a champ clos the perennial strangeness, the adventurousness, and the sinuous forward movement of the inner life."¹⁵³ Carolynn van Dyke disagrees. "The objection that a pitched battle does not accurately represent the inner life is wrongheaded. The Psychomachia does not base itself on the inner life, and what it does say about psychological experience is said not in spite of but through the military imagery."¹⁵⁴ But at the same time she finds the allegory of the poem "remarkably frustrating."¹⁵⁵ Whatever the merits of the Psychomachia, it was not the immediate precursor of a line of allegories. There were plenty of allegorical works, but there were no "allegories," in the sense of extended fictions designed to be read in a consistent and coherent allegorical fashion, from the time of Prudentius until the twelfth century.

The De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii of Martianus Capella (early fifth century) is certainly long and complex, and it certainly has allegorical elements, which even include an allegorical journey. But it is not an allegory. C. S. Lewis calls it "a receptacle into which [Martianus] could work every scrap of erudite lumber and every excruciating quirk of his euphuism which was left over from the seven arts."¹⁵⁶ The greater part of the work is taken up with a treatise on the seven liberal arts, which is not in the least allegorical, though it is put in the mouths of allegorical figures. Most of the allegory is concentrated in the first two books, which deal with the arrangements for the wedding of Mercury and Philology, and the apotheosis of Philology. This section is modelled on the myth of Cupid and Psyche as narrated on the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, and like the work of Apuleius, it involves many mythical rather than strictly allegorical characters and much of the action and description have no allegorical aspects. These first two books, in fact, contain a wealth of religious doctrine which is only loosely related to the allegorical theme.¹⁵⁷

The story purports to be told by Martianus, as an old man, to his son. Martianus says the story was told to him by Satire, which means a dish of mixed ingredients, or a stew, and that is a fair description of the work.¹⁵⁸ At the end of the second book, Martianus says, "now the mythical part is ended; the books which follow set forth the arts. With true intellectual nourishment they put aside all fable and for the most part explain serious studies, without however avoiding entertainment."¹⁵⁹ But the third book opens as follows:

Once again in this little book the Muse prepares her ornaments and wants to tell fabricated stories at first, remembering that utility cannot clothe the naked truth; she regards it as a weakness of the poet to make straightforward and undisguised statements, and she brings a light touch to literary style and adds beauty to a page that is already heavily coloured. "But," I cried, "in the previous book notice is given that the myths have been put away and that the precepts in the volumes which follow are a work of those Arts which tell the truth." But with a laugh she joked at this and said: "Let us tell no lies, and let the Arts be clothed."¹⁶⁰

And so the treatise on the liberal arts is delivered in a series of lectures by the hypostatised Grammar, Dialectic, Rhetoric, Geometry, Arithmetic, Astronomy and Music (Harmonia), who are gifts from Mercury (who stands for eloquence) to his bride Philology (who stands for learning). At the end of the work, Martianus says to his son:

And there, Martianus,¹⁶¹ you have an old man's tale, a melange sportively composed by Satire under lamplight ... Our garrulous Satire has heaped learned doctrines upon unlearned, and crammed sacred matters into secular; she has commingled gods and the Muses, and has uncouth figures prating in a rustic fiction about the encyclopedic arts.¹⁶²

Compositional allegory (from Ylloj cgoreUw) necessarily entails an "other." What is said must be intended to carry a meaning different from the literal interpretation of the words. In most of the De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, that is to say, in the series of lectures about the liberal arts, there is no "other." What Martianus says is exactly what he means. "Verbs of the second conjugation end the first person of the present indicative with eo, as in video, vides; moneo, mones."¹⁶³ "For those who doubt the sphericity of the earth, additional evidence is found in the fact that eclipses of the sun and the moon occurring in the west are not seen by inhabitants of the east, and, similarly, inhabitants of Britain and of western lands are not aware of eclipses that occur in the east."¹⁶⁴ The allegory in the work is nothing more than a framework for his straightforward exposition of the trivium and quadrivium.¹⁶⁵

Like Boethius, Martianus mingled poetry with prose. Together with Boethius and Prudentius, he was influential throughout the middle ages, the first two books of the De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii being specially popular during the twelfth century, which also saw the greatest number of glosses and commentaries, including that attributed to Bernardus Silvestris.¹⁶⁶

Neither interpretive nor compositional allegory was invented in the twelfth century. Both had a long and continuous previous history. But "allegories," in the sense of whole fictions designed to be read in a coherent and consistent allegorical fashion, had few exemplars before the twelfth century. An interesting twelfth- century example of allegory, which may perhaps be regarded as "an allegory," is the Speculum stultorum of Nigel Longchamps (or Wireker, born about 1130), which was mentioned in Chapter 3, in connection with anticlerical literature.¹⁶⁷ Like the De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, it uses the device of a journey. It does not seem to be discussed in any of the scholarly treatments of allegory, perhaps because it is not serious or "literary." But it is an extended, sophisticated poem in elegiacs, in which an anticlerical theme is worked out allegorically through a coherent, if fantastic story.

It is about a donkey called Brunellus who is unhappy about the length of his tail. He not only wanted to be a bishop (though he could not work out how to get the mitre over his ears), he also thought he would like to be a monk. In the course of narrating Brunellus' adventures, Nigel Longchamps treats us to a searching satirical review of the various orders: Templars, Hospitallers, Black Monks (Cluniacs), White Monks (Cistercians), Carthusians and others, including nuns. We have a detailed recounting of the commonplaces of twelfth century antimonasticism as we follow Brunellus on his travels, in the course of which he loses his tail. In the end, Brunellus concludes that he does not like any of the religious orders, and decides to found his own.¹⁶⁸ Like Bernard of Morlaix's Bishop of Belly, this is allegory in the style of Langland rather than Prudentius. Nevertheless, it is a successful extended fiction designed to be read in a consistent allegorical fashion, even though it is interspersed with fables and anecdotes.

Stephen A. Barney contrasts the Psychomachia with Piers Plowman in the following terms:

Piers does reduce experience and thought into the kinds of abstractions and patterns which we call allegory, but it does so in a complicated way. Where the Psychomachia has a simple, double action - battle and reestablishment of a city - Piers has a complex, single series of actions ... Where the Psychomachia develops a couple of allegorical techniques of narration - personification and simple typology - Piers explores a bewildering panoply of techniques which are intricately overlapping and interwoven.¹⁶⁹

In terms of high seriousness and poetical quality, it would be ridiculous to compare the Speculum stultorum with Piers plowman. But in allegorical technique, they have much in common. Unlike Apuleius' Metamorphoses, the Speculum stultorum does not lend itself to flights of interpretive allegory. Its allegorical meaning is clear, as is the allegorical meaning of the Psychomachia (however much one may debate the niceties of its interpretation). The Psychomachia is generally regarded as "pure" allegory. That does not mean pure personification. Although, in our discussion above, we concentrated on the personified figures of the virtues and vices, the Psychomachia has a significant element of typology. The introduction to the poem, which centres upon Abraham, is completely typological and there are also typological elements throughout, as, for example, when, during the battle with Ira, Patientia is accompanied by Job.¹⁷⁰

Two things militate against acceptance of the Speculum stultorum as "an allegory." One is the inclusion of so much matter extraneous to the allegory, in the form of anecdotes and fables. The other is the fact that Nigel frequently slips into direct and straightforward criticism of the monastic orders and the clergy, without any element of "other." He sometimes forgets to be allegorical.

Neither of these criticisms can be levelled at the Cosmographia of Bernardus Silvestris, completed about 1147.¹⁷¹ The whole work is a fiction created to be read as an allegory. All the elements of it are designed to fit into Bernardus' allegorical scheme. All the incidents in its plot, though superficially of a mythical character, are intended to represent a deeper meaning. Bernardus' use of the Golden Age is different from that of Bernard of Morlaix, whose Golden Age is the classical Age of Saturn. For Bernardus Silvestris the Golden Age is the Garden of Eden:

But still nearer to the dawn and the abode of Eurus, in the flowering bosom of the earth, there lies a region upon which the sun, still mild at its first rising, shines lovingly ... Amid the flourishing wilderness strays a winding stream, continually shifting its course; rippling over the roots of trees and agitated by pebbles the swift water is borne murmuring along. In this well watered and richly coloured retreat, I believe, the first man dwelt as a guest - but too brief a time for a guest.¹⁷²

Unlike Martianus and even, to some extent, Prudentius, Bernardus presents his supernatural characters as allegorical figures without any suggestion that they are other than fictions. Although he includes in his allegory a wealth of detail about a wide range of subjects (stars, mountains, animals, birds, plants and so forth), he does not, like Martianus, have "a propensity to collect useless information."¹⁷³ Every element of the Cosmographia contributes to the allegorical whole. Bernardus Silvestris brings together the different allegorical techniques of Hildegard of Bingen, Prudentius and Martianus, and combines with them something of the imaginative creativeness which Bernard of Morlaix shows in his interpretive allegory.

The most strictly allegorical of these diverse, composite forms [of allegory developed in the early twelfth century], and yet at the same time, perhaps the most conceptually and artistically versatile work among them, is the Cosmographia of Bernard Silvestris, composed almost at the midpoint of the twelfth century. Here interpretive and compositional allegory at last converge with full force, and in the process, decisively transform the allegorical tradition as a whole.¹⁷⁴

Bernardus was probably the author of a commentary on the De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii of Martianus Capella, as well as of the commentary of Vergil's Aeneid, discussed above. In his commentary on the Aeneid, Bernardus explains that Vergil uses "integumenta" to express his meaning.¹⁷⁵ In the commentary on Martianus, we find a definition of "integumentum." Referring to the De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, he says:

The form of instruction is figurative. Figurative discourse is a mode of discourse which is called "a veil." Figurative discourse is twofold, for we divide it into allegory and integumentum. Allegory is a mode of discourse which covers under an historical narrative a true meaning which is different from its surface meaning, as in the case of Jacob wrestling with the angel. An integumentum, however, is a mode of discourse which covers a true meaning under a fictitious narrative, as in the case of Orpheus. For in the case of the former history, and in the latter fiction, contains a profound hidden truth, which will be explained elsewhere. Allegory pertains to Holy Scripture, but integumenta to philosophical scripture.¹⁷⁶

For Bernardus, Mercury's journey is a metaphor for his education. Mercury stands for the philosopher, and his search for a bride is the philosopher's search for knowledge. Hymen personifies the universal accord permeating the cosmos, and is identified with the Holy Spirit. The gods have no reality. They are either different dispositions of the one God who created everything¹⁷⁷ or they are deified human beings.¹⁷⁸ The central thrust of Bernardus' allegorical interpretation is not inconsistent with Martianus' equation of Philologia with learning and Mercury with eloquence, though he is a good deal more serious about it than Martianus. But it is doubtful if Martianus intended many of Bernardus' interpretations of characters and events. For one thing, like his contemporary Macrobius, he was not a Christian.¹⁷⁹ He could not have intended the Christian interpretations which Bernardus creatively imposes on him.

The Cosmographia of Bernardus Silvestris is written in the alternating metres and proses of Boethius and Martianus Capella. Bernardus' own summary of his work is as follows:

In the first book of this work, which is called Megacosmos or the greater universe, Nature, as if in tears, makes complaint to Noys, or Divine Providence, about the confused state of the primal matter, or Hyle, and pleads that the universe be more beautifully wrought. Noys, moved by her prayers, assents willingly to her appeal, and straightway separates the four elements from one another. She sets the nine hierarchies of angels in the heavens: fixes the stars in the firmament: arranges the signs of the Zodiac and sets the seven planetary orbs in motion beneath them: sets the four cardinal winds in mutual opposition. There follows the creation of living creatures and an account of the position of the earth at the centre of things ... Thus in the first book is described the ordered disposition of the elements. In the second book, which is called Microcosmos or the lesser universe, Noys speaks to Nature, glories in the refinement of the universe and promises to create man as the completion of her work. Accordingly, she orders Nature to search carefully for Urania, who is queen of the stars, and Physis, who is deeply versed in the nature of earthly life. Nature obeys her instructress at once, and after searching for Urania through all the celestial spheres, finds her at last ... Then the two set out and ... discover Physis dwelling in the very bosom of the flourishing earth amid the odours of spices, attended by her two daughters, Theory and Practice ... Suddenly, Noys is present there, and having made her will known to them she assigns to the three powers three kinds of speculative knowledge, and urges them to the creation of man out of the remainder of the four elements and, beginning with the head and working limb by limb, completes her work with the feet.¹⁸⁰

The Cosmographia follows the Genesis story of creation. Bernardus uses the techniques of interpretive allegory to elucidate the Genesis story, yet his elucidation is not a clear statement of a deeper meaning which underlies Genesis. Rather, it is itself a compositional allegory. "Here at last the two traditions of allegory radically merge with each other, setting in motion an allegorical world with its own autonomy, evolving as it passes into the later Middle Ages."¹⁸¹ Only at one point does the allegory slip. In the third section of the Megacosmos Bernardus presents a panorama of history, balancing art, learning and the achievements of civilisation against the discord and excess which tend to destroy it. The passage culminates with a reference to the Incarnation.

A tender virgin gives birth to Christ, at once the idea and embodiment of God, and earthly existence realises true divinity.¹⁸²

In a sense, that steps outside the allegory, introducing the real God into a scheme in which God is allegorised under the guise of a variety of fictions. It is rather as if the real lady were to appear in the Roman de la rose, along with the personifications of her moods. But the panorama of human history has a necessary place in the scheme of the Megacosmos and it is difficult to see how else it could culminate, for a Christian poet, than in the Incarnation.¹⁸³ The passage which follows, however, has no such justification.

A bountiful godhead bestows Eugenius upon the world, and in this one gift grants all things at once.¹⁸⁴

The intrusion of Pope Eugenius III into the allegory, expressed in such extravagantly flattering terms, can be explained only by a supposition that the lines were inserted for the occasion of the public recitation of the Cosmographia before the pope in 1147.¹⁸⁵ That small blemish apart, the Cosmographia is a completely integrated fiction, successfully designed as a whole to be read in a consistent and coherent allegorical fashion. Characters, situations and plot are all integral to the allegory, and are skilfully devised to be interesting in themselves as well as to serve the purposes of the allegory.

Jon Whitman points out that the convergence of interpretive and compositional allegory in the Cosmographia decisively transformed the allegorical tradition as a whole.¹⁸⁶ The twelfth century was "the period in which allegory comes of age."¹⁸⁷ The achievements of the twelfth century, in interpretive allegory, in compositional allegory, and in the blending of the two, led to such Latin allegories as Alan de Lille's Anticlaudianus.¹⁸⁸ Alan's work is especially interesting, because of his connection with the School of Chartres, close to the priory of Saint-Denis de Nogent-le- Rotrou, and because the Anticlaudianus develops the theme of "mediocritas aurea," which was of interest also to Bernard of Morlaix.¹⁸⁹ It also led to the great vernacular allegories which followed: the Roman de la rose of Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun; the Commedia of Dante; the allegorical elements in the works of Chaucer (who translated the Roman de la rose); the Pilgrim's progress of John Bunyan.

What the poets of the twelfth century achieved was not a renaissance, for allegory had not died. It was not a revival or renewal of an ancient tradition. Like the revolution in Latin verse, which was discussed in the previous chapter, the new creation in allegory occurred within the continuing Latin literary tradition, and Bernard of Morlaix had a small but significant part in it.

¹C.S.Lewis, The allegory of love; a study in medieval tradition, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1936, p.84.
²ibid., p.44.
³According to the Vulgate. That is to say, the two books of Samuel and the two books of Kings according to the Authorised Version.
⁴PL 171, 1239-1264.
⁵The name Elcana means possessio Dei.
⁶PL 109, 14.
⁷PL 115, 259.
⁸PL 115, 550.
⁹PL 113, 539-630. Whatever the deficiencies of Migne's version of the Glossa, it has the advantage of being readily available, and it was thought to be sufficient for the purposes of this thesis.
¹⁰Beryl Smalley, The study of the Bible in the middle ages, 3rd ed., Oxford, Blackwell, 1983, p.x-xi, 56-66. See also the same author's The gospels in the schools c.1100-c1280, London, Hambledon Press, 1985, p.3-7.
¹¹Ut quae minus poterant plano sermone digesta, metrico depicta grata redderent. De contemptu mundi, Prologus.
¹²3 Kings 10,18-20.
¹³The incompleteness of the Instructio sacerdotis is discussed above, p.120ff.
¹⁴Hrabanus gives reasons why six denotes completeness or perfection, for example that God made the world in six days. Also, half six is three, one third of six is two and the sixth part of six is one, while one, two and three add up to six. But the number six also represents good works. PL 109, 196.
¹⁵"Dona superna tenent gente in utraque thronum." Hrabanus interprets "bina" in relation to the Old and New Testaments. In libros Regum, 906; PL 109, 197.
¹⁶"Quorum linga, manus, devocio dat, facit, auget/ Verbis, re, precibus robora, jura, gregem." (lines 911-912). The rhetorical device ("versus rapportati" or "singula singulis") goes back to late Greek antiquity and is found also in English. Shakespeare, for example, has "The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword" (Hamlet, 3,1). It is described in Curtius, European literature in the Latin middle ages, p.286-287. It is a favourite device of Bernard's. In this case, it serves a further purpose than the purely rhetorical, because it clearly indicates twelve items.
¹⁷In libros Regum, 897-916.
¹⁸In libros Regum, 917-918.
¹⁹Hrabanus is the only commentator mentioned in the Glossa in relation to the throne of Solomon. PL 113, 602.
²⁰In libros Regum, 919-926.
²¹Canticle of canticles 1,12.
²²Horace, Odes 2,16,27.
²³In libros Regum, 929-1018.
²⁴PL 113, 602.
²⁵In Salomonis Ecclesiasten homiliae XIX, PL 175, 115.
²⁶Confessions, 12,31. See also De utilitate credendi, caput 3, PL 42, 68-72.
²⁷Summa theologiae, 1a, 1, 10.
²⁸Galatians 4,24
²⁹Thomas Gilbey, "The senses of scripture", appendix 12 in vol. 1 of St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, London, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1964, p.140. For the patristic origins of the definition and formulation of the quadripartite method, see Henri de Lubac, Exegese medievale; les quatre sens de l'ecriture, book 1, part 1, Paris, Aubier, 1959, p.171-219. He discusses Clement of Alexandria, Saint Augustine, Gregory, Cassien, Eucher, and Origen.
³⁰Bede the Venerable, De schematibus et tropis, PL 90, 184-186.
³¹Enarrationes in libros Regum, Praefatio, PL 115, 245-246. See also his Commentarius in Genesis, PL 115, 110.
³²Smalley, Study of the Bible, p.xv.
³³Nicholas of Lyra, Postilla super totam Bibliam, vol.1, Strasbourg, 1492 (facsimile reprint, Frankfurt, Minerva, 1971), unpaged, at 3 Kings 18-20.
³⁴Smalley, Study of the Bible, p.355.
³⁵De contemptu mundi, 2,1-98 and De octo vitiis, 1070-1095.
³⁶De contemptu mundi, 2,19-26.
³⁷ibid., 2,83-86.
³⁸Works and days, 109 ff.
³⁹Aeneid, 8,314-327.
⁴⁰Metamorphoses, 1,1,89-112.
⁴¹De consolatione philosophiae, 2,5.
⁴²De civitate Dei contra paganos, 22,30 ad fin. Augustine's Golden Age is in the future, the seventh of seven ages. "Post hanc tamquam in die septimo requiescat Deus, cum eundem diem septimum, quod nos erimus, in se ipso Deo faciet requiescere." At the anagogical level, Bernard's Golden Age converges with Augustine's.
⁴³Otto of Freising, The two cities; a chronicle of universal history to the year 1146 AD, translated ... by Charles Christopher Mierow, New York, Columbia University Press, 1928, p.145. "These beginnings of the Roman kingdom had their inception in the Golden Age, that is, the period that was free from idle luxury and the tumult of wars, at Laurentum, under Saturn."
⁴⁴George J. Engelhardt, "The De contemptu mundi of Bernardus Morvalensis, Book 2," Mediaeval studies, 26(1964):110. "The first age of man in the pagan myth becomes an allegory of which the historical sense is the first age of the Christian Church and the tropological sense the first or spiritual resurrection ... The golden age is envisioned as a state of justice to which at any time the individual man can return by that conversion to God of which the primitive Church gave witness in the epoch of persecution."
⁴⁵De consolatione philosophiae, 2,5.
⁴⁶De octo vitiis, 1096.
⁴⁷ibid., 1070-1078.
⁴⁸De octo vitiis, 1094-1095.
⁴⁹De contemptu mundi, 3,631-677.
⁵⁰For example, Wetzel: "Mendacium vero illud et fabula heretica, in qua refertur, Constantinum Silvestro imperialia symoniace concessisse, in Urbe ita detecta est, ut etiam mercennarii et mulierculae quoslibet etiam doctissimos super hoc concludant, et dictus apostolicus [Eugenius III] cum suis cardinalibus in civitate pre pudore apparere non audeat." (P. Jaffe (ed.), Monumenta Corbeiensia, Berlin, 1864, reprinted Scientia Verlag Aalen, 1964 (Bibliotheca rerum Germanicorum, 1), p.542.) Compare Dante: Ahi, Constantin, di quanto mal fu matre, Non la tua conversion, ma quella dote Che da te prese il primo ricco patre! (Inferno, 19, 115-117).
⁵¹De contemptu mundi, 2,261-272.
⁵²Dante, Inferno, 1,101; Purgatorio, 7,971; Paradiso, 17,82-83; 30,133-138.
⁵³For example, Purgatorio, 16,98-129; Paradiso, 18,94-136; 27,40-66.
⁵⁴G. W. Greenaway, Arnold of Brescia, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1931, p.164-189.
⁵⁵ibid., p.164.
⁵⁶Bernard of Clairvaux, De consideratione, 4,3 (PL 182,776). "Uterque ergo Ecclesiae et spiritualis scilicet gladius, et materialis; sed is quidem pro Ecclesia, ille vero et ab Ecclesia exserendus: ille sacerdotis, is militis manu, sed sane ad nutum sacerdotis, et jussum imperatoris".
⁵⁷loc. cit. supra. See also Dante's De monarchia, 3,16: "Solus eligit Deus, solus ipse confirmat".
⁵⁸Jon Whitman, Allegory; the dynamics of an ancient and medieval technique, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1987, p. 3-5. See also Jean Pepin, La tradition de l'allegorie de Philon d'Alexandre a Dante; etudes historiques, Paris, Etudes Augustiniennes, 1987, p.252-253. The same distinction is made by Robert Hollander, who uses the terms critical (for interpretive) and creative (for compositional) allegory (Allegory in Dante's Commedia, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1969, p.3-4).
⁵⁹Bernardus Silvestris, Commentum super sex libros Eneidos Virgilii, edited by Julian Ward Jones and Elizabeth Frances Jones, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1977, p.3.
⁶⁰Ars poetica, 333-334.
⁶¹Commentum, p.2-3.
⁶²ibid., p.3.
⁶³W.F. Jackson Knight, "Virgil's Elysium", in Virgil, ed. D.R. Dudley, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969, p.171.
⁶⁴ibid. p.172.
⁶⁵ibid., p.9-10.
⁶⁶He is mentioned in every book except Book 11. He plays a large role in the second half of Book 2 and has a significant part of the action of Book 3. Even in Book 4 he appears every night in Aeneas' dreams. (4,351-353). He is brought to our attention throughout Book 5, which deals with his apotheosis and funeral games, and he is the central character of the second part of book VI. Even after that, though he never appears, as it were, on stage, we are constantly reminded of him by what other characters say about him and there is a particularly important description of him before disaster struck him (8,155ff). Right at the end of the poem he is poignantly brought to attention again (12,933-934).
⁶⁷He is not simply the father of his famous son. On the contrary, Aeneas is frequently recognised as the son of his famous father (1,617-618; 6,125-126; 6,322; 3,82; 8,152-171). And throughout the poem Aeneas is referred to as "Anchisa generatus", "Anchisa satus" or "Anchisiades".
⁶⁸Helenus has special gifts for Anchises (3,469) and addresses him "multo honore" (3,474). Gifts given to Acestes (5,535) and Latinus (7,245) are regarded as specially valuable because they are associated with Anchises. The Trojans who decide to settle in Sicily appoint a priest for Anchises' tomb (5,760- 761). It is in the name of Anchises that Magus asks for mercy (10,524) and Turnus for his body to be restored to his father, Daunus (12,931-938).
⁶⁹Aeneas, with his family, lives in his father's palace (2,299-300). Anchises is the chieftain who commands the Trojans to commence their journey (3, 9). It is he who appoints religious rites and calls upon the gods (3,263-264; 3,525-526). It is he who manages to reassure the terrified Achaemenides (3,610- 611). When Helenus has finished his prophetic utterance to Aeneas, he gives to Anchises, who is still the chieftain, not to Aeneas, the commission to make for Italy, although he knows that Anchises will never get there (3, 377-477). Aeneas prays to him, "salve sancte parens" (5,80). During the ceremonies at his tomb his apotheosis is indicated by the omens of the snake (5,84-93) and the flaming arrow (5,525-528). And after that, when Anchises appears to his son, he says that he is in Elysium (5,733-735). When the Trojans have reached their destination, Aeneas instructs them to pray to Anchises (7,133-134).
⁷⁰Theocritus 1, 106-7. See also Gow's explanation of this cryptic passage (A.S.T. Gow (ed), Theocritus, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1952, v.1, p.12, v.2, p.23-24). Also relevant is Servius, ad Aen. I, 617, 2,35 and 2,687. Hesiod mentions Anchises (Theogony, 1008-1010) but not his punishment. The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite V deals with Anchises' seduction by Aphrodite but not with his punishment, although the goddess threatens him with a thunderbolt. The Little Iliad (14,9) mentions him, but not his punishment.
⁷¹G. K. Galinsky, Aeneas, Sicily and Rome, Princeton University Press, 1969, passim.
⁷²For example, Anchises was not present during the argument about the wooden horse "propter caecitatem, ut docet Theocritus" (Servius, ad Aen. 2,35).
⁷³Vergil's only account of Anchises' disability is not, perhaps, inconsistent with blindness (2,648-649) and there are other hints in the text. Anchises, after the miracle of Ascanius' halo, asks Jupiter for a sign, as though he had not seen the sign already given. It is the sound of the thunderbolt that convinces him (2,678-694). It is Aeneas, not Anchises, who sees the white horses (3,537). Anchises' apparent observation of Charybdis might mean no more than that he heard the noise and therefore gave warning (3,555-558). He is certainly not blind in the Elysian Fields. There he is explicitly said to see something ("vidit Aenean", 6,684-685) and he is described as reviewing the troops of his progeny (6,752-892). But it is clear that, as a "felix anima" (6,669), he is neither blind nor lame in Elysium.
⁷⁴See Galinsky, Aeneas, Sicily and Rome, where there are numerous illustrations of coins, vases and other representations, including a comic mural from Pompeii.
⁷⁵Perhaps only one. Cristoforo Landino sees him as representing sensuality (Disputationes Camaldulenses, Sansoni, 1980, p.130 ff.)
⁷⁶Edward Gibbon, Memoirs of my life, ed. B. Radice, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1984, p.14.
⁷⁷When Aeneas, on his divine mother's instructions (2,595-598), seeks to rescue his father, the old man at first refuses to go (2,638-649). At the cost of valuable time, it takes a double miracle to persuade him (2,679-698). When Aeneas' prayers to Apollo are answered (3,96), Anchises misinterprets the message and sends the Trojans to Crete (3,103-117). When that proves disastrous, he tells Aeneas to go to Apollo's oracle at Ortygia (3,143), having no insight that Apollo will take the initiative and send to Aeneas a vision of the Trojan penates (3,148-171). After that, much too late, he remembers that Cassandra had prophesied the Trojans' Italian destiny (3,182-188). While Helenus is engaged in giving copious good advice to Aeneas, Anchises, instead of listening, is fussing about organising the preparation of the fleet (3,472-473). When they see four white horses, Anchises says confidently, "bellum, o terra hospita, portas"(3,539). But then, unhelpfully, he reconsiders. They might portend peace (3,543).
⁷⁸Commentum, p.53. From the context, one might suppose that "precibusque minas regaliter addit" is a quotation from the Aeneid. It is, in fact, from Ovid, Metamorphoses 2,397, where it is Jupiter who does the threatening.
⁷⁹Commentum, p.30.
⁸⁰De contemptu mundi, 1,643-646
⁸¹Commentum, p.30.
⁸²Odyssey, 19,562-569.
⁸³Commentum, p.127-128. Julian Ward Jones and Elizabeth Frances Jones (Commentum, Introduction p.xviii) argue that the last part of the Commentum is by a different hand and is the work of a continuator who brought the commentary down to the end of Book 6. That might in part explain the failure of the allegory to handle the reunion with Anchises and the gates of Sleep.
⁸⁴D.A. West, "The bough and the gate," in S.J. Harrison (ed), Oxford readings in Vergil's Aeneid, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1990, p.224-238).
⁸⁵Brooks Otis, Virgil: a study in civilized poetry, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1963, p.304-305.
⁸⁶R.D. Williams, An introduction to Virgil's Aeneid, Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1977, p.11.
⁸⁷Otis, Vergil, p.267.
⁸⁸Aeneas confuses the sources of revelations granted to him (1,382; 2,596ff). It is his wife Creusa who gives him the earliest and one of the most precise prophecies he ever receives (2,780-784). Of all gods and men, nobody except Helenus gives Aeneas so clear an indication of his destiny as this. Similarly, it is the Harpies who give what appears to be a frightening prognostication about hunger which will drive the Trojans to eat their tables (3,257) and it is Helenus who reassures Aeneas that he should not worry about it (3,394). Yet when it happens (7,116), Aeneas wrongly attributes the prophecy to his father (8,122-127).
⁸⁹There is, of course, much more than this to the profundity and significance of Book 6. Vergil is clearly referring to Homer (Odyssey, 11, passim, the halls of Hades) and to Plato (Republic, 10,613E-end, the myth of Er) and to Cicero (Republic, 6,9-end, the dream of Scipio).
⁹⁰It is unlikely that Wu Ch'eng en ever read Vergil, but he employs a device not dissimilar to Vergil's Gates of Sleep. When the pilgrims, having been cheated with blank scriptures, return to Buddha to change them, he says: "But these blank texts are actually true, wordless scriptures and they are just a good as those with words" (Journey to the West, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1980-1983, v.4, p.393).
⁹¹Summa theologiae, 2a2ae 171, 1-6; 172,4; 173, 2-4.
⁹²Thomas Gilbey, "Biblical inspiration in St. Thomas Aquinas," appendix 3 in volume 1 of Summa theologiae, London, Blackfriars and Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1964, p.143.
⁹³Whitman, Allegory, p.129.
⁹⁴C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, London, Collins, 1977 (Fount Paperbacks), p.87-88.
⁹⁵ibid., p.90-91.
⁹⁶Quoted in Smalley, Study of the Bible, p.33. See also De Lubac, Exegese medievale, 1,1, p.119-138; Whitman, Allegory, p.82-83.
⁹⁷Earl G. Schreiber and Thomas E. Maresca, Commentary on the first six books of Virgil's Aeneid, by Bernardus Silvestris, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1979, p.xix.
⁹⁸Apocalypse 4,7.
⁹⁹Thomas Wright (ed.), The Latin poems commonly attributed to Walter Mapes, Hildesheim, Olms, 1968 (First published London, 1841), p.7.
¹⁰⁰Jacob Neusner, What is midrash? Philadelpia, Fortress Press, 1987 (Guides to biblical scholarship), p.7-12.
¹⁰¹Addison G. Wright, The literary genre midrash, New York, Alba House, 1967, p.64.
¹⁰²Neusner, What is midrash? p.60-67
¹⁰³Irving Jacobs, The midrashic process; tradition and interpretation in rabbinic Judaism, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995, p.80.
¹⁰⁴See, for example, Midrash and literature, edited by Geoffrey H. Hartman and Sanford Budick, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1986, where midrash is discussed in relation to Milton, Defoe, Borges, Kafka, Agnon, Derrida and Jabes.
¹⁰⁵The letters of Peter the Venerable, edited by Giles Constable, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1967, v.1., p. 96-97.
¹⁰⁶De contemptu mundi, 3, 404, 448.
¹⁰⁷There is a reference to line 404: "Ventris episcopus, Ecclesiae procus est, neque sponsus". "The Bishop of Belly is a suitor, not a bridegroom of the Church".
¹⁰⁸De contemptu mundi, 3, 422-468.
¹⁰⁹Piers plowman, B-text, Passus 5, 337-345.
¹¹⁰Andreas Capellanus, De amore libri tres, edited by E. Trojel, 2nd ed., Munich, Eidos, 1964 (first published 1892), p.91-108.
¹¹¹Hildegard of Bingen, The letters of Hildegard of Bingen, volume 1, translated by Joseph L. Baird [and] Radd K. Ehrman, New York, Oxford University Press, 1994, p.27-28.
¹¹²From Hildegard's letter to Guibert of Gembloux, quoted by Elizabeth Alvilda Petroff, Medieval women's literature, New York, Oxford University Press, 1986, p.30.
¹¹³Baird and Ehrman, in the introduction to their translation of volume 1 of the letters, discuss Hildegard's allegory in some detail (p.14-16). See also Peter Dronke, "Platonic-Christian allegories in the homilies of Hildegard of Bingen," in From Athens to Chartres; neoplatonism and medieval thought, studies in honour of Edouard Jeauneau, edited by Haijo Jan Westra, Leiden, Brill, 1992, p.381-396.
¹¹⁴Letters, translated by Baird and Ehrman, p.85.
¹¹⁵ibid., p.136.
¹¹⁶ibid., p.34. This letter is also in Migne, PL 197, 147, but the Patrologia lacks many of the 400 or so extant letters and "many of the letters ... have been spuriously reassigned to correspondents of higher social status so as to enhance Hildegard's standing in the world, and, moreover, some letters have been conflated with others" (Baird and Ehrman, p.25).
¹¹⁷See above, p.81.
¹¹⁸The manuscript of the four poems edited by Halvarson are currently in the Vatican Library, but the press mark (Vaticanus Reginensis Latinus 134) indicates that it belongs to the great Reginensis collection donated to the Vatican by Queen Christina of Sweden in the seventeenth century.
¹¹⁹Arnold was still alive and at liberty in 1153, when Eugenius died. Eugenius was succeeded by Anastasius IV, who died in 1154. In the same year was elected, as Adrian IV, Nicholas Breakspear, the only English pope, who shares with Frederick Barbarossa and the Roman senate the responsibility for Arnold's execution.
¹²⁰Letters, trans. Baird and Ehrman, p.195-196. PL 197, 191-192.
¹²¹PL 197, 383-738.
¹²²Francis Macdonald Cornford, The Republic of Plato, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1941, p.222.
¹²³Plato, Republic 7,514-515.
¹²⁴Lewis, Allegory of love, p.48-56.
¹²⁵John Daniel Cooke, "Euhemerism; a medieval interpretation of classical paganism," Speculum, a journal of medieval studies 2(1927)397.
¹²⁶De natura deorum, 1,42.
¹²⁷ibid, 2,24.
¹²⁸We do not know precisely what Euhemerus intended. Ennius translated his work from Greek to Latin, but both translation and original are lost, and Euhemerus is known only from references by other writers.
¹²⁹Wisdom, 14,13-20. Douai version.
¹³⁰Cooke, "Euhemerism," passim. See also Jean Seznec, The survival of the pagan gods, New York, Pantheon, 1953 (Bollingen series 38, first published 1940), p.13ff.
¹³¹Helen Waddell, The wandering scholars, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1954 (Pelican books), p.139.
¹³²Charles Homer Haskins, The renaissance of the twelfth century, New York, World Publishing, 1957 (Meridian books), p.154.
¹³³Stephen A. Barney, Allegories of history, allegories of love, Hamden, Archon Books, 1979, p.29.
¹³⁴Apuleius, The golden asse, translated out of Latin by William Adlington. London, Richard Lesley, 1946 (first published 1566), p.6.
¹³⁵ibid., p.7.
¹³⁶Apuleius, Metamorphoses, 4,28-6,24.
¹³⁷ibid., 10,31.
¹³⁸Barney, Allegories of history, p.61.
¹³⁹Whitman, Allegory, p.83. See also Lewis, Allegory of love, p.66-67.
¹⁴⁰S. Georgia Nugent, Allegory and poetics; the structure and imagery of Prudentius' Psychomachia, Frankfurt, Peter Lang, 1985 (Studien zur klassichen Philologie 14), p.9. Nugent cites C. Magazzu, Gaston Boissier and Edward Kenneth Rand in support.
¹⁴¹Lewis, Allegory of love, p.51-51.
¹⁴²Nugent (Allegory and poetics, p.66) suggests that Avaritia's opponent is called Operatio because Caritas is "inadmissible in Latin hexameters."
¹⁴³Fides, for example, squashes the eyeballs of Cultura underfoot and the other virtues exult in this victory (Psychomachia, 30-35); Mens Humilis, assisted by Spes, chops off the head of Superbia as she lies helpless and begging for mercy (Psychomachia 280-283); Fides drives her spear through Discordia's mouth, whereupon the mob of virtues hasten to tear Discordia into pieces, which they feed to the dogs and crows or throw into the sewer (Psychomachia 715-723).
¹⁴⁴Lewis, Allegory of love, p.69. See also Carolynn van Dyke, The fiction of truth; structures of meaning in narrative and dramatic allegory, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1985, p.32-33.
¹⁴⁵Nugent, Allegory and poetics, p.19-20.
¹⁴⁶Kenneth R. Haworth, Deified virtues, demonic vices and descriptive allegory in Prudentius' Psychomachia, Amsterdam, Hakkert, 1980, p.56. Martha A. Malamud (A poetics of transformation; Prudentius and classical mythology, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1989, p.55) makes the same point and adds "The cult of personified virtues may well have influenced Prudentius' description of the Virtues' appearance and costumes."
¹⁴⁷Haworth, Deified virtues, p.58.
¹⁴⁸Adolf Katzenellenbogen, Allegories of the virtues and vices in medieval art from early Christian times to the thirteenth century, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1989 (Medieval Academy reprints for teaching 24, first published 1939), p.4-6. See also plate 1, which shows similarities between illustrations in a tenth-century manuscript and reliefs on the columns of Marcus Aurelius and Trajan.
¹⁴⁹Haworth, Deified virtues, p.7-8.
¹⁵⁰Nugent, Allegory and poetics, p.71-85. Psychomachia, 904.
¹⁵¹Nugent, Allegory and poetics, p.70.
¹⁵²Lewis, Allegory of love, p.68.
¹⁵³ibid., p.69.
¹⁵⁴Carolynn Van Dyke, The fiction of truth; structures of meaning in narrative and dramatic allegory, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1985, p.63.
¹⁵⁵ibid., p.31.
¹⁵⁶Lewis, Allegory of love, p.79.
¹⁵⁷William Harris Stahl, Martianus Capella and the seven liberal arts, Volume 1, the Quadrivium of Martianus Capella; Latin traditions in the mathematical sciences 50 BC - AD 1250, with a study of the allegory and the verbal disciplines by Richard Johnson with E.L. Burge, New York, Columbia University Press, 1971, p.83.
¹⁵⁸De nuptiis, 1,2.
¹⁵⁹ibid., 2,220.
¹⁶⁰ibid., 3,221-222. Translation by William Harris Stahl, Richard Johnson and E.L. Burge.
¹⁶¹Martianus was also his son's name.
¹⁶²De nuptiis, 9,997.
¹⁶³ibid., 3,315.
¹⁶⁴ibid., 6,594.
¹⁶⁵Whitman, Allegory, p.98.
¹⁶⁶Stahl, Martianus Capella and the seven liberal arts, v.1, p.55-71.
¹⁶⁷See above, p.170.
¹⁶⁸Wright, The Anglo-Latin satirical poets, p.81- 96. Nigel de Longchamps, Speculum stultorum, ed. John H. Mozley and Robert R. Raymo, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1960.
¹⁶⁹Barney, Allegories of history, p.102.
¹⁷⁰Psychomachia, 160-161.
¹⁷¹Peter Dronke, Bernardus Silvestris Cosmographia, Leiden, Brill, 1978, p.2..
¹⁷²Cosmographia, 1,3,317-338.
¹⁷³Lewis, Allegory of love, p.79.
¹⁷⁴Whitman, Allegory, p.219. See also Waddell, Wandering scholars, p.137-138; Lewis, Allegory of love, p.98.
¹⁷⁵Bernardus Silvestris, Commentum super sex libros Eneidos Virgilii, edited by Julian Ward Jones and Elizabeth Frances Jones, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1977, p.3.
¹⁷⁶Bernardus Silvestris, Commentum in Martianum, 2,70-78 (The commentary on Martianus Capella's De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii attributed to Bernardus Silvestris, edited by Haijo Jan Westra, Toronto, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1986 (Studies and texts 80), p.70.)
¹⁷⁷ibid., 3,104-136 (Westra p.52-53).
¹⁷⁸ibid., 6,287-301; 6,347-352 (Westra p.139, 141). Euhemerism was discussed above, p.396.
¹⁷⁹Raby, Secular Latin poetry, vol.1, p.100. C.S. Lewis says that it is uncertain whether he was a Christian or a pagan. "Indeed, the distinction scarcely applies to him; such men do not have beliefs." (Allegory of love, p.78.)
¹⁸⁰Bernardus Silvestris, Cosmographia, edited with introduction and notes by Peter Dronke, Leiden, Brill, 1978 (Textus minores in usum academicum 53), p.95-96. Translation adapted from that of Winthrop Wetherbee, The Cosmographia of Bernardus Silvestris, New York, Columbia University Press, 1973, p.65-66).
¹⁸¹Whitman, Allegory, p.221.
¹⁸² Exemplar speciemque dei virguncula Christum Parturit, et verum secula numen habent. Cosmographia 1,3,53-54.
¹⁸³Winthrop Wetherbee discusses this passage in relation to determinism and the influence of the stars. Wetherbee, The Cosmographia of Bernardus Silvestris, p.47.
¹⁸⁴Munificens deitas Eugenium comodat orbi,/ Donat et in solo munere cuncta semel. Cosmographia 1,3,55-56.
¹⁸⁵Wetherbee, The Cosmographia of Bernardus Sivestris, p.20.
¹⁸⁶Whitman, Allegory, p.219.
¹⁸⁷ibid., p.259.
¹⁸⁸Anticlaudianus sive de officio viro boni et perfecti, libri IX, PL 210, 482-576.
¹⁸⁹See above, p.271 ff. See also John M. Trout, The voyage of Prudence; the world of Alan of Lille, Washington, University Press of Amerca, 1979.