Reformation Attitudes toward Allegory and the Song of SongsAuthor(s): George L. ScheperReviewed work(s):Source: PMLA, Vol. 89, No. 3 (May, 1974), pp. 551-562Published by: Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/461591 .Accessed: 29/04/2012 22:47

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GEORGE L. SCHEPER

Reformation Attitudes toward Allegory and the

Song of Songs

WHEN representative hermeneutic treatises of the Middle Ages and the Reformation are examined closely, it becomes rather

difficult to make generalizations about the dif- ferences in attitude toward the senses of Scripture (particularly allegory) between the medieval theo- logians and the Reformers. This is confirmed by a comparative analysis of the medieval and Refor- mation commentaries on the Song of Songs, the locus classicus of the allegorical interpretation of Scripture, for the traditional allegorization rested secure in the Reformation. Nonetheless, the most cursory examination reveals fundamental differ- ences between medieval and Protestant spirituality as manifested in those commentaries. But the dif- ference has little to do with exegetic principles; rather, it stems from fundamentally different in- terpretations of the nuptial metaphor, the use of human love to symbolize the love between God and man.

I. The Senses of Scripture in the Reformation

Prevalent generalizations about Reformation exegesis, sharply differentiating it from medieval allegorical exegesis in its heightened concern for textual accuracy, historical context, and the plain literal sense, lay great stress on certain famous animadversions by the early Reformers on medie- val allegory. These animadversions leave the impression that the Reformers were simply and unequivocally opposed to anything other than a single, literal sense of Scripture.1 In Luther's words: "In the schools of theologians it is a well- known rule that Scripture is to be understood in four ways, literal, allegoric, moral, anagogic. But if we wish to handle Scripture aright, our one effort will be to obtain unum, simplicem, germanum, et certum sensum literalem." "Each passage has one clear, definite, and true sense of its own. All others are but doubtful and uncertain opinions" (quoted

in Farrar, p. 327; italics mine). Consequently, Luther's remarks on allegory are characteristically caustic: "An interpreter must as much as possible avoid allegory, that he may not wander in idle dreams." "Allegories are empty speculations, and as it were the scum of Holy Scripture." "Allegory is a sort of beautiful harlot, who proves herself specially seductive to idle men." "Allegories are awkward, absurd, invented, obsolete, loose rags" (Farrar, p. 328).

Nonetheless, Luther does allow for a homiletic use of allegory for illustrative purposes.2 More- over, the theoretical insistence on a plain literal sense tended to be belied in practice by the rigors of interpreting Scripture according to the analogy of faith (i.e., interpreting Scripture by Scripture) and especially by the reading of Christology in the whole Bible-two hallmarks of Luther's her- meneutics.3 The latter doctrine, that the Bible everywhere teaches Christ, necessitates at least one kind of figural interpretation, typology, which Luther and his followers would perforce sharply distinguish from allegory. As Luther said, "When I was a monk, I was an expert in allegories. I allegorized everything. Afterwards through the Epistle to the Romans I came to some knowledge of Christ. There I saw that allegories were not what Christ meant but what Christ was."4 This accounts for the fact that in practice Luther can be as allegorical a commentator as Origen himself- notably in his comments on Genesis, Job, Psalms, and above all the Song of Songs, for which he de- vised his own unique historical allegorization.

Calvin carried forward the doctrine of one plain literal sense with even greater thoroughness than Luther and rejected allegorical interpretation even when invoked for purely ornamental and homiletic purposes. Yet on typology he was ambivalent. Theoretically, he professed to eschew typology and Christocentric interpretations even of the pro- phetic writings.5 But confronted with the typologi-

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Reformation Attitudes toward Allegory and the Song of Songs cal interpretations made by Paul himself, he is forced to regard them as illustrative references or "accommodations"6 or else to admit thatmany Old Testament types actually refer directly or immedi- ately to Christ and not to the apparent referent at all (lest a multiple sense be implied).7 Moreover, Calvin and his followers were not averse to read- ing their favorite doctrines as applications into passages where a modern expositor would not find them8 and Calvin himself maintained that it was less harmful to allegorize Mosaic law than to ac- cept its imperfect morality as the rule for Christian men (see Farrar, p. 350). (We are reminded of Erasmus' dictum that "We might as well read Livy as Judges or other parts of the Old Testa- ment if we leave out the allegorical meaning," quoted in Grant, p. 142.) We shall see how Calvin maintained a completely traditional view of the allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs, to the point of expelling Castellio from Geneva for denying it.

For the English Protestant tradition, Tyndale's Obedience of a Christian Man has long been noted as the classic statement of antiallegorical, literal exegesis. In his section on the four senses of medieval exegesis, Tyndale views the allegorical senses as a papist device to secure Catholic doc- trines from scriptural refutation: "The literal sense is become nothing at all: for the pope hath taken it clean away, and hath made it his possession,"9 so that our captivity under the pope is maintained by these "sophisters with their anagogical and chopological sense" (p. 307). In contrast, Tyndale stoutly maintains the doctrine of one literal sense: "Thou shalt understand, therefore, that the scrip- ture hath but one sense, which is the literal sense. And that literal sense is the root and ground of all, and the anchor that never faileth, whereunto, if thou cleave, thou canst never err or go out of the way" (p. 304). For the whole of Scripture teaches Christ, as Luther said, and as God is a spirit, all his words are spiritual: "His literal sense is spiritual" (pp. 319-20). As for the parables, simili- tudes, and allegories used by Scripture writers, they are simply a part of the literal sense, just as our own figures of speech are an inherent part of our direct meaning, not another "sense." In in- terpreting such similitudes as are used by the Scripture writers themselves, we must, Tyndale says, avoid private interpretation, ever keep in "compass of the faith" (i.e., be guided by plain

texts) and apply all to Christ (p. 317). That is, like Luther, Tyndale theoretically admits only one kind of allegory, radically distinguished from all others-typology.

But as has been noted, there is a certain dis- crepancy between the purity of these theoretical statements, polemical in context, and the actual exegetic practice of the Reformers. Moreover, the rejection of allegory and the insistence on one un- divided sense hinged for the early Reformers on maintaining a radical distinction between typology and allegory. But the more systematic Protestant hermeneutic treatises reveal, as Madsen has shown, that any essential distinction was impossi- ble to maintain. For instance, Flacius Illyricus at first tried to fix the difference by defining types as a comparison between historical deeds and allegory as a matter of words having a secondary meaning -but this was no different from the old Catholic discrimination between figures of speech (part of the literal sense) and the spiritual sense (arising out of the significance of things). So Flacius shifts to a second distinction: that types are restricted to Christ and the Church, while allegories are accom- modations to ourselves-but that is hardly an es- sential difference (being no more than the dis- tinction between allegory proper and tropology in the fourfold scheme) and breaks down his initial distinction between the significances that arise from words and deeds.10

In any case, types remain as a significant in- stance of what the Catholics called the spiritual sense but what the Reformers insisted on calling the full literal sense, a purely semantic distinction. More important, it needs to be pointed out that the early Reformers' denunciations of allegory had a specific historical context. The allegorical ex- travagances condemned by Luther, Calvin, and Tyndale accurately characterize not the central patristic and medieval exegetic tradition but rather the products of one school of allegorical exegesis that flourished especially in the late Middle Ages and came to predominate in the Renaissance Catholic commentaries contemporary with the Reformers. These "dialectical" commentaries (as C. Spicq calls them"1) rigorously systematized the different dimensions of allegorization in monu- mental compilations full of elaborate and ingeni- ous explanations, scholastic distinctions, and rhetorical patterns. The margins of the fourteenth- century commentaries of Hugh of St. Cher, for

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example, are filled with references to things "tri- plex," reinforcing a pervasive trinitarian symbol- ism at every point. In his commentary on the Song he notes that there are three adjurations not to awaken the sleeping bride because spiritual sleep is threefold,l2 and three times she is called to ascend because there are three stages in the spiritual life.13 In the fifteenth century, Dionysius the Carthusian became the first to present, in his commentary on the Song, an unvaryingly system- atic threefold allegorization for every verse on the following pattern: of Christ and the Sponsa Uni- versali (the Church), of Christ and the Sponsa Particulari (the soul), and of Christ and the Sponsa Singulari (Mary)-a method that allows him to draw lengthy doctrinal essays and devo- tional exercises out of any verse whatsoever.14 This method became the hallmark of much Catho- lic exegesis in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- turies, in commentaries such as those of Martin Del Rio and Michael Ghislerus. And Blench argues in great detail in his study of Preaching in England in the Late Fifteenth and Sixteenth Cen- turies that the exegetic practice of the Catholic preachers in these centuries, such as Fisher and Longland, is marked by a thoroughgoing allegori- zation even of the New Testament (such that the six pots at the wedding of Cana, for instance, are taken to symbolize the six qualities that impelled Christ to assume flesh, or the six heavinesses ex- perienced by the Apostle during the Passion"5), and that in general these preachers demonstrate an in- difference to and even a contempt for the literal, historical sense that fully justifies Tyndale's char- acterization.16

Thus, it is specifically this "dialectical" school of exegesis, which flourished in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, mainly in the schools, to which Tyndale's attack is appropriate. Now this dialectical school, in subjecting every verse to a rigidly systematic and uniformly detailed and manifold allegorization, in effect revived the ab- stract, antihistorical allegorical technique of the Hellenistic school of Philo and the Gnostics. The difference between the Hellenistic and dialectical modes on the one hand and the Palestinian, bibli- cal, and patristic mode of allegory on the other, is the difference between regarding Adam and Eve as symbols of reason and sensuality and regarding them as historical types of Christ and the Church. From the time of Origen, the Hellenistic mode

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entered, to a greater or lesser degree, irrevocably into the tradition of Christian allegorical exegesis, creating a complex attitude toward history and spirit that is at the root of medieval exegesis. But the Hellenistic mode never became itself the cen- tral tradition of patristic and medieval exegesis.17

In actuality, it seems to us that the overwhelm- ingly central tradition of medieval exegesis is in accord with the Reformers on most basic points. There is no question in either tradition of the verbal inspiration of Scripture, the harmony and even uniformity of biblical theology, the universal Christology of both Testaments, the wholeness of the sense of Scripture and its foundation in the letter, nor even of the fact that much biblical language is figurative. On the crucial last points we need only cite, for the medieval tradition, the complete accord of Augustine's De Doctrina Christiana, Hugh of St. Victor's Didascalicon, and St. Thomas' remarks on scriptural interpretation. Like Augustine, Hugh bases the idea of spiritual senses on the basic conception that things as well as words can be signs, and that the significance of words, including figures of speech, is the literal sense, while the significance of things ("the voice of God speaking to men") yields the spiritual senses.18 Like Augustine and Origen, Hugh discriminates three basic senses, the literal, the allegorical, and the moral, and notes that while some passages may have a "triple sense," many will be simply histori- cal, purely moral, or entirely spiritual-or any combination thereof. Superior as they may be, the spiritual senses must be grounded in the letter, not only in the sense that the factual biblical history is the basis of all revelation, but in that the letter is "the meaning of any narrative which uses words according to their proper nature. And in the sense of the word, I think that all the books of either Testament . . . belong to this study in their literal

meaning" (Hugh, Did., p. 121). I would take this to mean that even works that are purely allegori- cal, such as Canticles, have a literal, albeit figura- tive, sense (the human similitude). In short, Hugh says, "And how can you 'read' the Scriptures without 'reading' the letter? If one does away with the letter, what is left of the Scriptures?"'"19 Unlike Philo, Hugh does not regard every phrase in the Bible as susceptible of allegorical interpretation nor does he regard history itself as unimportant or contemptible unless allegorized. Perhaps the term "allegorical interpretation" is a misnomer for the

Reformation Attitudes toward Allegory and the Song of Songs tradition represented by Augustine and Hugh, and belongs to the Alexandrians; it is not allegorical interpretation but the interpretation of allegories with which Hugh is concerned.

Precisely the same points are repeated by Thomas in passages in Quodlibet20 and his com- mentary on Galatians iii.28 (quoted in Lubac, Pt. II11, Vol. II, p. 295) and especially in the following classic statement in the Summa Theologica:

Therefore that first signification whereby words signify things belongs to the first sense, the historical or lit- eral. That signification whereby things signified by words have themselves also a signification is called the spiritual sense, which is based on the literal, and pre- supposes it. Now this spiritual sense has a threefold division. . . . Therefore, so far as the things of the Old Law signify the things of the New Law, there is the allegorical sense; so far as the things done in Christ, or so far as the things which signify Christ, are signs of what we ought to do, there is the moral sense. But so far as they signify what relates to eternal glory, there is the anagogical sense. Since the literal sense is that which the author intends, and since the author of Holy Scripture is God, Who by one act comprehends all things in His intellect, it is not unfit- ting, as Augustine says, if, even according to the lit- eral sense, one word in Holy Scripture should have several senses.21

It is important to notice how in the last sentence Thomas defines that which the author-God- intends to be the literal sense (not, as some critics seem to think, saying that the literal sense, as one among others, is the one that God intended!). It is in this sense that every text in Holy Scripture naturally has a literal sense, and it implies a con- ception of "literal sense" that actually embraces all four senses as being the full sense intended by God, and thus the three specific spiritual dimen- sions (allegory, tropology, and anagogy) "unfold" from this one whole sense.22 In any case, Thomas makes clear that the spiritual senses are founded upon the "literal" sense in the usual, narrower sense of the term, as he reiterates in replying to the objection that the multiplicity of senses would cause confusion; to that objection he replies that the multiple senses do not arise from ambiguity in the letter but from the significance of the desig- nated things:

Thus in Holy Scripture no confusion results, for all the senses are founded on one-the literal-from which alone can any argument be drawn, and not from those intended allegorically, as Augustine says.

Nevertheless, nothing of Holy Scripture perishes because of this, since nothing necessary to faith is contained under the spiritual sense which is not else- where put forward clearly by the Scripture in its literal sense.23

And, like Hugh, Thomas notes that figurative language is part of the literal sense:

The parabolical sense is contained in the literal, for by words things are signified properly and figuratively. Nor is the figure itself, but that which is figured, the literal sense. When Scripture speaks of God's arm, the literal sense is not that God has such a member, but

only what is signified by this member, namely, opera- tive power. Hence it is plain that nothing false can ever underlie the literal sense of Holy Scripture.24

(Still, for Thomas, the literal sense alone, divorced from the spiritual sense, is carnal and Judaic- the

Holy Ghost is sent into the hearts of believers "ut

intelligerunt spiritualiter quod Judaei carnaliter

intelligunt.")25 We can see in this passage the real

basis of the frequent assertion by the commenta-

tors, seemingly so contrary to the fact, that the

Song has only a spiritual sense. For just as the "arm of God" literally (but by means of similitude) means His operative power, so, too, we may say, the Song is literally about Christ and the Church,

by means of the "sweet similitude" of human love. Similar analyses are found in the Catholic theorists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such as Escalante or Serarius (see Madsen, pp. 23-25).

This puts a different light upon the assertions of

Luther, Calvin, and Tyndale that they were re-

verting to the idea of one, literal sense presumably lost sight of by the medieval commentators. In fact, William Whitaker, the most thoughtful of English Reformation scriptural critics, overtly

says that he does not wholly reject the theory of

spiritual senses as defined by Catholics like

Gregory or Thomas, but still maintains that the sense of Scripture is one and undivided ("but" is Whitaker's perception; as we have seen, Thomas believed in the undivided single sense of Scripture

too). "These things we do not wholly reject: we concede such things as allegory, anagoge, and

tropology in scripture; but meanwhile we deny that there are many and various senses. We affirm that there is but one true, proper and genuine sense of scripture, arising from the words rightly under- stood, which we call the literal; and we contend that allegories, tropologies, and anagoges are not various senses, but various collections from one

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sense, or various applications and accommoda- tions of that one meaning." "The literal sense, then, is not that which the words immediately sug- gest, as the Jesuit [i.e., Bellarmine] defines it; but rather that which arises from the words them- selves, whether they be taken strictly or figura- tively."26

Thus, the allegories woven by the New Testa- ment writers, for instance, "are not various mean- ings, but only various applications and accom- modations of scripture" (Whitaker, p. 406). "When we proceed from the sign to the thing signified, we bring no new sense, but only bring out into light what was before concealed in the sign. When we speak of the sign by itself, we ex- press only part of the meaning; and so also when we mention only the thing signified: but when the mutual relation between the sign and the thing sig- nified is brought out, then the whole complete sense, which isfounded upon this similitude and agreement, is set forth."27 Thus, as in Thomas, the term "literal sense" really has two meanings for Whitaker: the narrower being the grammatical- historical sense, the broader being the full sense (including spiritual accommodations). It would seem that Whitaker differs from the Catholics only in restrictiveness, limiting what they call allegory more or less to the types invoked by the New Testament writers, and he expressly states that the interpretation of David's battle with Goliath as Christ's battle with Satan is purely an application, not a bona fide part of the "full" meaning and certainly not the one grammatical-historical mean- ing. And yet there is an unedited manuscript com- mentary on the Song of Songs by Whitaker, in which he perpetuates in the most conventional way the allegorical interpretation of that book (which has no direct New Testament sanction as a type).28 We shall see that many Protestants (almost all of whom accepted the allegorical interpretation of the Song) insisted even more fervently than the Catholics that the Song had only a spiritual sense and neither a typological historical reference to Solomon (which many Catholics accepted) nor any reference to carnal love at all-which virtually denies that this love song between Christ and the Church even uses the similitude of human love.

Indeed, it was their very scruples about admit- ting any implication of multiple senses that led a number of later Protestant theorists of exegesis to admit a more extreme brand of allegorization than

the medieval Catholics, a brand closer to the Alexandrian tradition. Thus, Solomon Glass re- tains the rejection of multiple senses for the doc- trine of one full sense, but the latter now clearly includes spiritual meanings (the significance of things), which may be allegorical, typological, or parabolic.29 All essential distinction between type and allegory is abandoned. In Madsen's words: "By the middle of the seventeenth century the dis- tinction between the Catholic theory of manifold senses and the Protestant theory of the one literal sense had, for all practical purposes, become meaningless. Both sides agreed that only the literal meaning could be used to prove doctrine, that literal-figurative meanings must conform to the analogy of faith, that 'typical' passages in the Old Testament had a double meaning, and that various 'allegorical accommodations' might be gathered from the text for homiletic purposes even though they were not intended by the author" (p. 38). Indeed, the left-wing Protestants went further than the Catholics in admitting allegorical readings; in strongly distinguishing the letter as the written word of Scripture from the spirit as the living Word of God as communicated to the soul, non- conformists like Samuel How and John Saltmarsh and John Everard viewed the whole written Scrip- ture, including the New Testament, as only a figurative rendering of ineffable spiritual truths; Everard says, for example, "Externall Jesus Christ is a shadow, a symbole, a figure of the Internal: viz. of him that is to be born within us. In our souls" (quoted in Madsen, p. 41). Finally, with Gerard Winstanley and even more the Platonist Henry More, the literal-historical reality of the biblical narratives is actually denied and we have come full circle back to Philo and the Gnostics.

II. The Song of Songs in Reformation Exegesis

The Protestant commentaries on the Song of Songs in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries reinforce the contentions offered above, for they provide a striking contrast to the innovative stance of the treatises on exegesis, being overwhelmingly conservative in purveying the traditional allegori- cal interpretation. An initial objection here might be that the commentaries on the Song are an anomaly, that they represent an insignificant rem- nant of the older tradition, the last bastion of al- legory to give way. In hindsight this might be true, but it is a teleological interpretation of intellectual

555

Reformation Attitudes toward Allegory and the Song of Songs history and does not reflect how the age saw itself. To a sixteenth- or seventeenth-century commenta- tor, the idea that the allegorization of the Song was an anomaly would have been incomprehensi- ble. The modern oblivion of the book has tended to blind us to the really crucial position it holds in exegetic history, not only for the question of al- legory but for the central matter of the relation of divine to profane love, and in fact, as Ruth Waller- stein has said, the Song involved for the Middle Ages and Renaissance the whole question of the place of the senses in the spiritual life and helped "to shape man's ideas of symbolism and of the function of the imagination."30 This helps explain the prodigious exegetic history of the book; the number of commentaries is astounding. The early catalogs and bibliographies tend to list more com- mentaries on the Song than on any other biblical book save the Psalms, all of Paul's epistles taken together, and the Gospels.31 My own checklist of commentaries through the seventeenth century totals 500 and is still far from complete. There are over a score of printed commentaries by English Protestants in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- turies, including monumental compilations like the Puritan John Collinges' two volumes on just the first two chapters of the Song (a total of almost 1,500 pages).32 It has seemed to previous historians of exegesis absolutely distinctive of the High Mid- dle Ages that it was preoccupied with the Song of Songs and that it was then regarded in some ways as the pinnacle of Scripture-and indeed there are sixty or seventy extant commentaries from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries alone. But the data for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries would indicate a similar "preoccupation" among the Re- formers.33 Again and again the Reformers, like the medieval Cistercian monks, express their highest regard for the Song, for nowhere else, they say, is Christ's divine love better taught.34 There are, to be sure, tremendous differences between the spiritual- ity of the monastic and Puritan commentaries on the Song, but the materials do not reveal funda- mental distinctions in attitudes toward allegory.

Moreover, in addition to the formal commen- taries, there are innumerable sermons on texts from the Song, as well as a prominent use of the allegorized Song in a variety of works of Protestant spirituality. For instance, the Anabaptist Melchior Hofmann interperts adult Christian initiation as a betrothal between Christ and the faithful soul, the

whole process interpreted according to the imagery of the Song of Songs-much as Cyril of Jerusalem and St. Ambrose used texts from the Song to de- scribe each step of the baptismal rite as they knew it.35 And George Williams has shown that noncon- formists like Bunyan and separatist sects like the Quakers, Huguenots, Swedenborgians, and Pi- etists, who maintained a "theology of the wilder- ness" (the idea of a holy community living in spiritual isolation from decadent society), fre- quently invoke the verses of the Song in which the divine lover calls his bride up from the wilderness (Cant. iii.6, viii.5).36 Furthermore, Protestant tracts and sermons on marriage, such as Croft's The Lover (1638), not infrequently cite the al- legorized Song as a presentation of the divine archetype which human marriage should imitate.37 Indeed, there are a number of sermons specifically devoted to the theme of the spiritual marriage and a notable treatise on the subject by Francis Rous (1675), based throughout on the Song of Songs and ending in a devotional piece called "A Song of Loves" quite in the tradition of St. Bernard or Richard Rolle.38

When we add to this the evidence of the poetic paraphrases and of other Protestant poetry di- rectly inspired by the Song, the centrality of that book to Reformation spirituality cannot be doubted. In England alone, beginning with Wil- liam Baldwin's monumental Balades of Salomon (1549-the earliest printed book of original En- glish lyric poetry), 110 pages of traditional doc- trinal paraphrase, there are at least twenty-five extant English poetic paraphrases through the seventeenth century, most being elaborate allego- rizations in the traditional mold.39 Besides these, there is a considerable body of Protestant poetry based directly on the Song, notably the emblem books of Van Veen, Hermann Hugo, and Francis Quarles.40 To give one other example, fully one third of the preparatory meditations on the eucharist, the magnum opus of Edward Taylor, are a poetic commentary on verses from the Song.

Returning to the formal commentaries, they are, as noted, in all essentials thoroughly traditional in allegorizing the book. It is true that one Reformer, Sebastian Castellio, had rejected this tradition and concluded that, being nothing but a colloquy of Solomon and his beloved Shulamite, the Song had no spiritual significance and should be excluded from the Canon. This conclusion was so anathema

556

to Calvin that he had Castellio expelled from Geneva because of it. In this case, Calvin's posi- tion was no different from that of the fathers of the Second Council of Constantinople of 553, who condemned Theodore of Mopsuesta for the same opinion.41 Indeed, some Protestant allegorists went to extremes not contemplated by the medieval commentators. One minor school viewed the book as a prophetic-historical work, so that just as the Targum saw in the book the history of God's deal- ings with Israel, the English commentator Bright- man read it as a history-prophecy extending from the reign of David to 1700 (a commentary turned into the unlikely form of poetic paraphrase by Thomas Beverley, to a length of 70 pages [see n. 39]). And Martin Luther devised the completely unique allegorical interpretation that the Song was Solomon's praise of and thanksgiving for a happy and peaceful realm.42 But most Protestants rejected such unconventional allegorization in favor of the traditional reading that saw the Song as a dialogue between Christ and the Church or the faithful soul. Indeed, the continuity of the tradition between the Middle Ages and the Reformation is strikingly evident from an examination of the authorities utilized by the English commentators. In com- mentary after commentary we discover the domi- nant explicit influence of Augustine and Bernard, and favorable citation of authors like Gregory the Great, Ambrose, Jerome, and even Rupert (author of a Marian commentary on the'Song).43

To an outside observer the continuity with the past in these commentaries would far outweigh any innovative elements. To be sure, the Protes- tant commentaries almost uniformly adopt a pri- marily ecclesial allegory, with the tropological dimension as a valid application. But so, in fact, is the medieval tradition built on the foundation of the ecclesial interpretation, and even those com- mentaries devoted most strikingly to the Christ- soul allegory, such as Bernard's, recognize that the ultimate priority remains with the ecclesial in- terpretation. Similarly, the Protestant commen- taries deplored the mechanical allegorization of every particular detail in the scholastic, dialectical commentaries, but so do Origen and Bernard eschew any such allegorization of particulars. Nevertheless, the Protestant commentaries are dis- tinctly Protestant in opposing what they called papist and monkish interpretations, that is, alle- gorizations that reflect the ecclesiastical structures

L. Scheper 557

of the Catholic Church or the monastic milieu (e.g., the enclosed garden as the monastic cloister), replacing them with allegorizations reflecting Protestant ecclesiastical structure, vocabulary, and doctrine (such as justification by faith or the im- puted righteousness of Christ).

That the Song of Songs is a spiritual book is a premise shared by medieval and Protestant com- mentators alike, but for the Protestants, more con- cerned with the idea of a single sense, there is more of a problem in defining the relation of the allegory to the text. In a chorus, the commentators all de- clare that the sense of the Song is solely spiritual, that it has no carnal sense-which is more or less what the medieval commentators said, but with less rigorous intent. James Durham, one of the ablest commentators, said: "I grant it hath a literal meaning, but I say, that literal meaning is not immediate . . . but that which is spiritually and

especially meant by these Allegorical and Figura- tive speeches, is the Literal meaning of the Song: So that its Literal sense is mediate, representing the meaning, not immediately from the Words, but mediately from the Scope, that is, the intention of the Spirit, which is couched under the Figures and Allegories here made use of."44 Consequently, there is great confusion about whether the Song is typological or not, with opinion about equally divided, but with some Protestant commentators, such as Durham and Beza, taking a position as strongly as Luis de Leon's inquisitors that there can be no historical reference to Solomon and Pharaoh's daughter (which would be dangerously lewd), because the Song speaks solely of Christ and the Church.45 With such an extreme view, one could hardly dwell on the aptness of the Song's praises of the lovers' bodies to the figurative situa- tion (historia), in the way that even the Cistercian monk Gilbert of Hoilandia does in explicating the praise of the bride's breasts: "Those breasts are beautiful which rise up a little and swell moder- ately, neither too elevated, nor, indeed, level with the rest of the chest. They are as if repressed but not depressed, softly restrained, but not flapping loosely."46 In contrast, the Protestant Durham says that "our Carnalness makes it hazardous and un- safe, to descend in the Explication of these Simili- tudes" (Clavis, p. 401), and the Puritan Collinges says that " the very uncouthness of the same ex- pressions, is an argument, that it is no meer Woman here intended"47 (although how inap-

Reformation Attitudes toward Allegory and the Song of Songs

propriate praise of a woman could serve as an apt metaphor for love of God seems rather obscure).

Commentators like Origen, Bernard, and Guil- laume de Saint-Thierry, who thoroughly allego- rized the Song, nonetheless devoted considerable attention to setting forth the aptness of the letter, though to be sure with cautions against allowing, in Origen's words, "an interpretation that has to do with the flesh and the passions to carry you away."48 In short, the medieval attitude toward the letter of the Song was that one can talk about the story (historia) without immediate reference to the spiritual meaning, but that the story's real meaning is the spiritual sense. The apparent con- troversy between those who asserted that the Song has a literal sense (in the narrow meaning of a historical sense) and those who seemed to deny it is purely rhetorical: those who discerned a literal sense (such as a reference to Solomon and Phar- aoh's daughter) all acknowledged that it is artifi- cial to talk about the story apart from its spiritual significance, while those who denied that the Song has a literal meaning always acknowledged that the spiritual sense is conveyed "under the simili- tude" of human love and that the interpretation of the letter is in fact nothing other than the explica- tion of that similitude. For instance, if the bride's breasts are compared to twin roes feeding among the lilies, one needs to know what quality in a woman is being commended in that comparison before one can appreciate the significatio-hence Gilbert's comments on feminine pulchritude cited above. Thus far the medieval and Reformation exegetes are once again seen to have comparable attitudes, except that the conscientiousness about one sense and possibly a greater puritanism seems to make the Protestants rather more shy of the carnal similitudes.

It is at this point, I believe, that we encounter the really fundamental difference between the spirituality embodied in the Catholic and Protes- tant commentaries on the Song, that is, in their conception of the central metaphor underlying the allegorized Song, the spiritual marriage, or divine love conveyed under the similitude of carnal hu- man love. There is complete agreement among the Protestant commentators with the traditional view that spiritual truths can, in the last analysis, be expressed only metaphorically (although it might be pointed out that this symbolist conception of truth almost always sits side by side with the ra-

tionalistic assertion that nothing is said figura- tively in Scripture that is not elsewhere in the Bible stated discursively-an ambiguity going back at least to Augustine's De Doctrina). They are moreover agreed that the nuptial metaphor is uniquely suited to expressing the highest mystery of all (as Paul calls it in Ephesians), the love be- tween God and His people, and that therefore the human language of the Song is dramatically ap- propriate.49 But precisely wherein consists that pe- culiar aptness of the nuptial metaphor? On this there is surprisingly little elaboration in the Protes- tant commentaries, but what there is mostly de- velops the aptness of the nuptial metaphor in terms of the moral, domestic virtues of Christian marriage: faithfulness, tenderness, affection, mu- tual consent, the holding of things in common, the headship of the husband. In other words, as Sibbes says explicitly, the metaphor is based on the nature of the marriage contract.50 Dove elaborates on the analogy between the marriage rite and the history of redemption (God giving away His Son; the Last Supper as a wedding banquet; the procreation of spiritual fruit) (Conversion, pp. 87-89). Beyond this, there is some reference to the passionate na- ture of love and to the one-flesh union of marriage as a symbol of union with God.51 But generally, when the sexual aspect of the union tends to sur- face, the commentators avert their eyes and allude to the dangers of lewd interpretation. Thus, Homes says, "away, say we, with all carnal thoughts, whiles we have heavenly things pre- sented us under the notion of Kisses, Lips, Breasts, Navel, Belly, Thighs, Leggs. Our minds must be above our selves, altogether minding heavenly meanings."52 And on Canticles v.4 ("My beloved put his hand in the hole and my bowels were moved for him"), the Assembly Annotations exclaims, "to an impure fancy this verse is more apt to foment lewd and base lusts, than to present holy and divine notions. ... It is shameful to men- tion what foul ugly rottenness some have belched here and how they have neglected that pure and Christian sense that is clear in the words."53

Now, to be sure, these cautions are to be found in the medieval commentaries as well, but what is in dramatic contrast to the Protestant analysis of the aptness of the nuptial image in terms of the moral qualities of the marriage contract is the whole tradition, stretching from Gregory of Nyssa through Bernard and Guillaume de Saint-Thierry

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George L. Scheper to John of the Cross, which identifies sexual union itself as the foremost aspect of the spiritual mar- riage metaphor-in its total self-abandon, its in- tensity, its immoderation and irrationality, and above all its union of two separate beings, the one- flesh union that is the supreme type of the one- spirit union between ourselves and Christ. We have just quoted the Assembly Annotations on the filth belched up in connection with an erotic verse of the Song; but note in contrast Bernard's analy- sis of the "belching" of the intoxicated, impas- sioned bride herself in the Song: "See with wvhat impatient abruptness she begins her speech.... From the abundance of her heart, without shame or shyness, she breaks out with the eager request, 'Let Him kiss me with the kiss of His Mouth.' ...'He looketh upon the earth and maketh it tremble,' and she dares to ask that He should kiss her! Is she not manifestly intoxicated? No doubt of it."54

And if she seems to you to utter words, believe them to be the belchings of satiety, unadorned and unpremedi- tated. ... It is not the expression of thought, but the eructation of love. And why should you seek in such a spontaneous outburst for the grammatical arrange- ment and sequence of words, or for the rules and orna- ments of rhetoric ? Do you yourselves lay down laws and regulations for your own eructations? (II, 282-83, sermon 67).

Thus, when love, especially divine love, is so strong and ardent that it cannot any longer be contained with- in the soul, it pays no attention to the order, or the sequence, or the correctness of the words through which it pours itself out. . . . Hence it is that the Spouse, burning with an incredible ardour of divine love, in her anxiety to obtain some kind of outlet for the intense heat which consumes her, does not con- sider what she speaks or how she speaks. Under the constraining influence of charity, she belches forth rather than utters whatever rises to her lips. And is it any wonder that she should eructate who is so full and so inebriated with the wine of holy love? (I, 281-82; see also sermons 49, 52, 69, 73, 75)

In the highest reaches of divine love, all con- siderations of prudence, order, and decorum, all the rules of etiquette and rhetoric are transcended; again, it is for that reason that divine love is most aptly symbolized not by friendship or familial love or domestic affection, but by obliviating drunken- ness and sexual passion. In short, it is in the nature

of sexual passion to transcend all other considera- tions: "O love, so precipitate, so violent, so ardent, so impetuous, suffering the mind to entertain no thought but of thyself, content with thyself alone! Thou disturbest all order, disregardest all usage, ignorest all measure. Thou dost triumph over in thyself and reduce to captivity whatever appears to belong to fittingness, to reason, to decorum, to prudence or counsel" (nI, 435-36, sermon 79). Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Elvira, Guillaume de Saint-Thierry, John of the Cross, all agree in fixing on the passionate union of two in one flesh, rather than on the domestic hierarchical relation of husband and wife, as the principal basis for the use of human love as a symbol of the union of Christ and His people.55 Actually, this interpreta- tion of the image goes back at least to Chry- sostom's interpretation of I Corinthians xi.3 and Ephesians v.22-33, in which he argues that the nuptial symbol resides not in the domestic hierar- chy but in the joining of two in one flesh, and re- flections of that exegesis are found in the standard glosses.56

Nevertheless, in the Reformation the sexual in- terpretation of the allegory is only hinted at in the commentaries on the Song, although it does find some expression in the sermons and tracts on the spiritual marriage and especially in the poetry in- spired by the Song. But herein, we believe, lies the great change in spirituality, for it was not Protes- tant hermeneutics, the analysis of the senses of Scripture, that spelled the end of the theology of the spiritual marriage and the centrality of the Song of Songs (a demise sealed in the 18th cen- tury), but rather the supplanting of a mystical, sacramental spirituality by a more rationalistic and moralistic Christian spirit that could hardly praise, as Bernard does, spiritual drunkenness, immoderation, and impropriety. Typology was one form of allegory suited to the didactic mode and it continued to flourish, but essentially al- legory and symbolism were more conducive to a mystery-oriented rather than history-oriented Christianity. In literary terms, it is the difference between the passionate poetry of Rolle or John of the Cross and the didactic style of Paradise Re- gained or Pilgrim's Progress.

Essex Community College Baltimore County, Maryland

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Reformation Attitudes toward Allegory and the Song of Songs

Notes 1 See, e.g., Frederic W. Farrar, History of Interpretation

(London: Macmillan, 1886), pp. 342-53. 2 See, e.g., Luther's Works, ed. J. Pelikan and W. Hansen,

xxvI (St. Louis: Concordia, 1963), 435 (on Galatians iv.24). Cf. The Table Talk of Martinl Luther, trans. William Hazlitt (London: H. G. Bohn, 1859), pp. 326-27.

3 See John Reumann, The Romance of Bible Scripts and Schlolars (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1965), pp. 55-91. On Luther's typology in general, see James Samuel Preus, From Slhadow to Promise (Cambridge, Mass.: Har- vard Univ. Press, 1969), pp. 153-271; Heinrich Bornkamm, Luther un1d das Alte Testament (Tubingen: Mohr, 1948); Jaroslav Pelikan, Luther the Expositor (St. Louis: Con- cordia, 1959); Paul Althaus, Tlhe Theology of Martin Lther (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966).

4 Quoted in Robert Grant, A Short History of thie Inter- pretationl of the Bible, rev. ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1963), p. 129; also see Table Talk, p. 328.

5 Calvin, A Commenltarie upon Galathianls, trans. R. Vaux (London, 1581), p. 104.

6 E.g., on Gal. iv.24 he writes, "Paul certainly does not mean that Moses wrote the history for the purpose of being turned into an allegory, but points out in what way the history may be made to answer the present subject." Quoted in William Madsen, From Shadowy Types to Truth (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1968), p. 29.

7 See H. Jackson Forstman, Word and Spirit: Calvin's Doctrine of Biblical Authority (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1962), a study documenting Calvin's continued interest in typology.

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

9 William Tyndale, Doctrinal Treatises, ed. Henry Walter, Parker Society, No. 42 (Cambridge, Eng.: Cam- bridge Univ. Press, 1848), p. 303.

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

11 Esquisse d'une histoire de l'exegese latine au Moyen Age (Paris: J. Vrin, 1944), pp. 212-18.

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

13 Opera, i, 121r (on Cant. iii.6), 133r (on Cant.vi.10), and 136v (on Cant. viii.5).

14 Dionysius Cartusianus, Opera Omnia, 42 vols. (Mon- strolli: Typis Cartusiae S. M. de Pratis, 1896-1935), vii, passim. It should be noted that Honorius d'Autun in the 12th century was the first to apply a systematic fourfold allegorization of the Song according to the classic fourfold scheme (see PL, vol. 172, cols. 347-496).

15 See MS. Lambeth 392, fols. 168-70 (discussed by Blench, p. 4).

16 Yet even a preacher like Longland preserves a reason- able, traditional definition of scriptural senses: "A nut has a rind, a shell and a centre or kernal. The rind is bitter, the shell is hard, but the centre is sweet and full of nourishment. So in Scripture the exterior part, that is the literal sense and the surface meaning, is very bitter and hard, and seems to contradict itself. But if you crack it open, and more deeply

regard the intention of the spirit, together with the exposi- tions of the holy doctors, you will find the kernal and a certain sweetness of true nourishment." "Take the life from a body, and the body becomes still and inert; take the inward and spiritual sense from Scripture, and it becomes dead and useless." Quoted in Blench, pp. 21-22, from "Quinque Sermones Ioannis Longlandi" (1517), in Ioannis Lonlglandi. .. Tres Conciones (London [1527?]), 61v, 48r.

17 On this matter of Gnostic-Philonic allegory in com- parison with rabbinic-patristic allegory, see esp. J. Bonsir- ven, "Exegese allegorique chez les Rabbins Tannaites," Recherches de Science Religieuse, 24 (1934), 35-46; Jacob Lauterbach, "The Ancient Jewish Allegorists in Talmud and Midrash," Jewish Quarterly Review, NS 1 (1910-11), 291-333, 503-31; R. P. C. Hanson, Allegory and Event (London: S.C.M. Press, 1959), pp. 11-129; H. A. A. Ken- nedy, Phlilo's Contribution to Religion (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1919); and my "The Spiritual Marriage: The Exegetic History and Literary Impact of the Song of Songs in the Middle Ages," Diss. Princeton 1971, Ch. iv, pp. 321-400.

18 Hugh of Saint Victor, Didascalicon, trans. Jerome Taylor (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1961), pp. 121-22. For Augustine, see On Christian Doctrine, trans. D. W. Robertson (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1958), esp. pp. 7-14, 34-38.

19 Hugh, De Scriptoris et Scriptoribus Sacris-quoted by John McCall, "Medieval Exegesis," Supplement 4 in William Lynch, Christ and Apollo (New York: New Amer- ican Library, 1960), p. 223; cf. Spicq, pp. 98-103.

20 Quodlibet, vll, Q. 14-16-the passage is quoted and analyzed in Henri de Lubac, Exegese medievale, 2 pts. in 4 vols. (Paris: Aubier, 1959-64), Pt. I, Vol. I, 273.

21 S.T., 1,1,10, in Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, ed. Anton Pegis, 2 vols. (New York: Random, 1945), I,

16-17. 22 The text of the last sentence in the Summa passage

should be examined carefully: "Quia vero sensus litteralis est quem auctor intendit, auctor autem sacrae Scripturae Deus est, quia omnia simul suo intellectu comprehendit, non est inconveniens, ut Augustinus dicit xII Conf., si etiam secundum litteralem sensum in una littera Scripturae plures sint sensus." Here, Lubac correctly observes, the etiam proves that in the last phrase "litteralem" is to be understood in the narrower sense, as one among the four senses; but in the first part of the sentence, "litteralis" may have the meaning of the full, encompassing sense (see Lubac, Pt. I, Vol. I, 280-82 and cf. Synare, "La Doctrine de S. Thomas d'Aquin sur le sens litteral des Ecritures," Revue Biblique, 35, 1926, 40-65).

23 S.T., 1,1,10, reply obj. 1, in Basic Writings, I, 17. 24 S T., i,1,10, reply obj. 3. 25 S.T., i-a, 102, 2-quoted in Lubac, Pt. a, Vol. a, p.

296. As Lubac notes, the term allegory was a very imprecise one, esp. in that it sometimes denoted all the spiritual senses and sometimes the doctrinal sense alone, an am- biguity retained by Thomas. But Madsen unaccountably asserts that a third meaning-figurative language in gen- eral-further confuses Thomas' discussion (From Shadowy

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George L. Scheper Types to Truth, p. 22), when in fact one of Thomas' contri- butions is that he specifically excludes figurative language in general from the province of allegory.

26 William Whitaker, A Dispultationl onl Holy Scripture against the Papists, trans. William Fitzgerald, Parker Society, No. 45 (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1849), pp. 404-05. See Charles Cannon, "William Whitaker's Disputatio de Sacra Scriptllra: A Sixteenth- Century Theory of Allegory," Hruntington Library Quar- terly, 25 (1961-62), 129-38. This article is an accurate representation of Whitaker's views but attributes to them an originality not really appropriate.

27 Whitaker, p. 407 (italics mine). Cannon (pp. 132-35) has noticed the correspondence of this interpretation to modern definitions of metaphor in scholars like Cassirer and I. A. Richards.

28 Praelectiones Gulilelmni Whitakeri inl Ccantica Canti- corum, Bodl. MS. 59, fols. 1-50. This MS seems to have escaped all attention.

29 Philologia Sacra (Frankfort, 1653). 30 Studies in Seventeenthl-Century Poetic (Madison: Univ.

of Wisconsin Press, 1965), p. 183. '31 Pitra found 160 Christian commentaries up to the 15th

century (J. B. Pitra, Spicilegiumnl Solesmenlse, 4 vols., Paris: Didot Fratres, 1852-58, ill, 167-68) and Rosenmuller lists 116 from 1600 to 1830 (cited by Paul Vulliaud, Le Cantique des Cantiques d'apres Ila tradition ]uive, Paris, 1925, p. 18). Salfeld counted over 100 Jewish commentaries from the 9th to the 16th centuries (S. Salfeld, "Die judischen Er- klarer des Hohenliedes, ix-xvi. Jahr.," Hebraeische Bibli- ographie, 9, 1869, 110-13, 137-42). The most complete bibliography, LeLong's, lists a total of 400 commentaries (Jacques LeLong, Bibliotheca Sacra, Paris, 1723, pp. 1113- 17).

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

33 This observation is in contrast to the usual view, as expressed, for instance, by Sister Cavanaugh, that the Reformers "said little about the Song of Solomon," that they indeed "shied away" from it. See Sr. Francis Cava- naugh, "A Critical Edition of The Canticles or Balades of Salomon Phraselyke Declared in English Metres by William Baldwin," Diss. St. Louis Univ. 1964, p. 21.

34 In the words of the Puritan Collinges: "I think I may further say, that there is no portion of Holy Writ so copi- ously as this, expressing the infinite love, and transcendent excellencies of the Lord Jesus Christ. None that more copiously instructs us, what he will be to us, or what we should be toward him, and consequently none more worthy of the pains of any who desires to Preach Christ." Inter- courses, i (1683), sig. A3r.

35 Melchior Hofmann, "The Ordinance of God" (1530), in Spiritual and Aiiabaptist Writers, ed. George Williams, Library of Christian Classics, 25 (Philadelphia: West- minster Press, 1957), pp. 182-203. For Cyril, see "The Catechetical Lectures of S. Cyril," trans. Gifford, Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd ser., vII (New York: Christian Literature, 1894), 1-159 (see esp. Cat. 3, 13, 14, and My stag. 2). For Ambrose, see Theological and Dogmatic Works, trans. Roy Defarrari (Washington, D. C.: Catholic Univ. of America Press, 1963), pp. 3-28, 311-21.

For analysis of the Song and early Christian liturgy, see Jean Danielou, The Bible and the Litulrgy (Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1956), pp. 191-207 and my "Spiritual Marriage," pp. 758-92.

36 Wilderness alnd Paradise in Clhristiani Thouglht (New York: Harper, 1962), pp. 92-94.

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

38 See Francis Rous, The Mystical Marriage, 3rd ed. (London, 1724 [first pub. 1635]), esp. pp. 112-25. Also note the Bernardine use of the Song in Samuel Rutherford's letters: Joshlula Redivivus: Or, Thlree Hundred anid Fifty- Two Religiouls Letters, Writte;i betweenl 1636 & 1661 (New York, 1836).

39 The Canlticles or Balades of Salomonl, Phraselvke Declared inl Englysh Metres (London, 1549). The corpus of English paraphrases on the Song includes work by Dray- ton, Sandys, Quarles, and Wither (a version by Spenser is lost). Many are quite as bulky as Baldwin's; for instance, Thomas Beverley's An Expositionr of the Divinely Prophetick Song of Songs (London, 1687), a laborious redaction of Thomas Brightman's historical allegorization, A Com- mentary onl the Canticles (in Works, London, 1644, pp. 971ff.), into 70 pages of poetic paraphrase. Moreover, there are comparable works in French, such as Ant. Godeau's "Eglogues sacrees, dont l'argument est tire du Cantique des Cantiques," in Poesies Chrestiennes (Paris, 1646), pp. 147-266. These paraphrases and other poems relating to the Song are the focus of my study of the exegetic and literary relations of the Song of Songs in the Renaissance, which is in progress.

40 0. Van Veen, Amoris Divini Emblemata (Antwerp, 1660); Hermann Hugo, Pia Desideria: Or, Divine Ad- dresses, trans. E. Arwaker (London, 1686); Francis Quarles, Emblems, Divine and Moral (London, 1736 [first pub. 1635]).

41 In Calvin's words, "Our principal dispute concerned the Song of Songs. He considered that it is a lascivious and obscene poem, in which Solomon has described his shame- less love affairs" (quoted in H. H. Rowley, The Servant of the Lord, London: Lutterworth Press, 1954, p. 207). For an account of the dispute, with quotations from Calvin, Castellio, and Beza, see Pierre Bayle, The Dictionary His- torical and Critical, 2nd ed., 5 vols. (London, 1734-38), II, 361-62, n.d. Also see The Cambridge History of the Bible: The West from the Reformation to the Present Day, ed. S. L. Greenslade (Cambridge, Eng.: Univ. Press, 1963), pp. 8-9. On Theodore of Mopsuesta see Adrien-M. Brunet "Theodore de Mopsueste et le Cantique des Cantiques," Etudes et Recherches, 9 (1955), 155-70.

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

43 Clapham provides the fullest list of citations, headed by Augustine, Isidore of Seville, Lombard, and Rabbi Ibn Ezra, followed by Ambrose, Bernard, Theodoret, Origen, Gregory, Rupert, and Thomas: Henoch Clapham, Three Partes of Salomon his Song of Songs (London, 1603). Mayer's commentary is actually a catena, providing for English readers a running paraphrase of the commentaries of Gregory, Justus Urgellensis, the Targum, and Bernard:

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Reformation Attitudes toward Allegory and the Song of Songs John Mayer, A Commentary upon the Whole Old Testament (London, 1653). The definitive 3rd ed. of the Westminster Assembly Annotations frequently cites authorities like Augustine, Ambrose, Rupert, and esp. Bernard: West- minster Assembly, Annotations upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament, 3rd ed. (London, 1657). The com- mentary of Dove, one of the earliest English expositions of the Song, cites only a couple of Protestant authorities in passing, but makes frequent use of Cyprian, Jerome, Chrysostom, Thomas, and above all depends on Augustine for doctrine and Bernard for interpretation: John Dove, The Conversion of Salomon (London, 1613).

44 Clavis Cantici or an Exposition of the Song of Solo- mon (London, 1669), p. 6; cf. the definition of allegory in Robert Ferguson, The Interest of Reason in Religion: with

thle Import & Use of Scripture-Metaphors (London, 1675), pp. 308-09.

46 According to Beza, Psalm 45 serves as an "abridge- ment" of the Song and, like the Song, is to be taken "and altogether to be vnderstood in a spirituall sense," without any reference to Solomon's marriage, for "farre it is from all reason to take that alliaunce & marriage of his to haue bin a figure of so holy & sacred a one as that which is pro- posed vnto us in this Psal."-Master Bezaes Sermons vpon the Three First Chapters of the Canticle of Canticles, trans. John Harmer (London, 1587), 4r.

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

47 Intercourses, 11 (1683), 29. 48 The Song of Songs, trans. R. P. Lawson (Westminster,

Md.: Newman Press, 1957), pp. 200-02.

49 See, e.g., Richard Sibbes: any "sinful abuse of this heavenly book is far from the intention of the Holy Ghost in it, which is by stooping low to us, to take advantage to raise us higher unto him, that by taking advantage of the sweetest passage of our life, marriage, and the most delight- ful affection, love, in the sweetest manner of expression, by a song, he might carry up the soul to things of a heavenly nature"-from "Bowels Opened" (1639), in The Complete Works of Richard Sibbes, ed. A. B. Grosart (Edinburgh, 1862), ii, 5-6. See also Assembly Annotations: "being a work of highest love and joy, it can be no blame to it, that it is now and then abrupt and passionate.... it could be expressed noway more happily, than in such similitudes as were proper to such persons, and such subjects.... That crimination and exceptions against the kisses and oynt- ments and other affectionate speeches of it, are so far from

blemishing or polluting it, that they beautifie and enoble it; for if they had been away, how had it remained an Epithal- aminon ? how had those dear extasies and sympathies been expressed? how had the language been sutable and con- generous to the matter? which none can read with danger of infection, but such as bring the plague along with them" (sig. 7Gr).

50 Sibbes, Works, II, 201; cf. Durham, Clauis, p. 40.

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

52 Nathanael Homes, A Commentary Literal or Historical, and Mystical or Spiritual on the Whole Book of Canticles (London, n.d.), bound separately paged in The Works of Dr. Nathanael Homes (London, 1652), p. 469.

63 Assembly Annotations, sig. 712r'. Cf. St. Teresa, "Con- ceptions of the Love of God," in Complete Works of Saint Teresa of Jesus, trans. E. A. Peers, 3 vols. (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1950), ii, 360.

54 Saint Bernard's Sermons on the Canticle of Canticles, trans. by a priest of Mount Melleray, 2 vols. (Dublin, 1920), i, 50-51 (sermon 7). Hereafter cited in text.

65 See my "Spiritual Marriage," pp. 404-13, 425-30, 535-40. For Gregory of Nyssa, see From Glory to Glory: Texts from Gregory of Nyssa's Mystical Writings, ed. Jean

Danielou, trans. Musurillo (London: John Murray, 1962); for the Spanish mystics, see E. Allison Peers, Studies of the Spanish Mystics, 3 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1927, 1930, 1960). Note the analogous interpretations of sexual imagery in Gnostic texts, in the Kaballah, and in Eastern Tantric and Vishnaite cults and Sufism-see my "Spiritual Marriage," pp. 156-79.

56 See Chrysostom, Homily xx on Ephesians, NPNF, 13 (New York, 1889), 146-47 and Homily xxvi on X Cor., Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, xii (New York: Christian Literature, 1889), 150-51. Cf. the Glossa ordinaria on i Cor. xi.3, PL, Vol. 114, col. 537; Assembly Annotations, sig. DDD4V; Matthew Poole, Annotations upon the Holy Bible (Edinburgh, 1801 [first pub. 16831), sig. SC2r; Bernard, II, 336-38 (sermon 71).

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